7.W. 'AT. 



Somerset, and the insolence of Buckingham, but he permitted 



the ruin of Cranficld \ who might have made him absolute, and 



icon, whom he affected to leave to justice, but who was 



.redly no worse man than some of those whom he saved 



from justice. 



At home and abroad, England made considerable progress 

 during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Slow but 

 substantial improvement was made in agriculture, more obvious 

 growth was manifested in commercial enterprise. During 

 Elizabeth's reign, all classes had been trained by an enforced 

 economy. Hence simplicity of life and manners survived the 

 earlier occasion of their necessity. It would not be difficult, 

 from a study of such accounts as survive, to describe the 

 ordinary life of nobles and gentlefolk in the early part of this 

 century, and to illustrate its dignity, its parsimony, its decorum. 

 Even those who resented the harshness of the Puritanic 

 temper, were attracted by its decency and its thrift. There 

 was but little margin for extravagance, and economy was 

 necessary, and even honourable. Probably the reckless ex- 

 penditure of Buckingham was as offensive as his pride and 

 arrogance. The representative of his family has the picture 

 of his apotheosis, painted in the workshop of Rubens. An 

 Englishman would hardly have undertaken the preposterous 

 commission. 



The quarrel between James and the House of Commons 

 (the Lords were of no account in Parliament till the Restora- 

 tion) began with his reign. Sir Thomas Phelips, the Speaker 

 of the first Parliament after the accession of James, was an 

 excellent type of those great men, who founded or recovered 

 the British constitution and House of Commons, who formu- 

 lated its procedure, guaranteed its privileges, and maintained 

 its order 2 . Perhaps the escape of both Estates from the plot 



1 Among my accounts is one of Cranfield's in his earlier days. The estate was 

 :id was managed by C ran field's father. See the years 1614, 1615. 



a The rules of procedure which Phelips framed were contained in Hatsell. They 

 were omitted, for no intelligible reason, by May. Their restoration or enforcement, 

 as I urged in the Parliament of 1880, is sufficient for order. 



