supreme power into its own hands. the antiquaries are on Charles's side. have alienated both. As yet the lawyers and It is no wonder that the lawyers and antiquaries did not venture as yet to justify that claim. Even Eliot himself, who Eliot's Monarchy of Man. had done more than any man living to give it prominence, hid from his own mind the full significance of his actions. In the Monarchy of Man, the political and philosophical treatise which was the result of his enforced leisure in the Tower, Eliot drew a picture of government as he conceived that it ought to be. Of all governments he pronounced monarchy the best. The King was to rule for the good of his subjects, not for his own private advantage. He was to conform his actions to the law. But beyond this there was a sphere particularly his own. He had to look to 'the safety and preservation of the whole.' In this was 'involved a higher care and providence for prevention of those evils which the law by power or terror cannot reach, . . . the practice and invasion of their enemies, or sedition and defection in the subjects, as also for the operation of all good which industry and wisdom shall invent for the benefit and commodity of the kingdom, wherein, though the notions flow from others, princes only can reduce them into act.' To all this Charles might fully have subscribed. Even when Eliot speaks of the way in which this power is to be exercised, the difference between his view and Charles's is rather suggested than expressed. Charles had once said, that he was ready to allow to Parliament the right of counselling him, not the right of controlling him. Eliot here asks for no more. He dwells, indeed, upon the wisdom of Parliaments, and upon the safety which lies in taking advice. But he distinctly argues that it is 'the true explication of a Senate and the duty it sustains, to conceive and form all actions and designs,'' to give them preparation and maturity, but no further, the resolution and production resting wholly in the King." Such an argument was no contribution to practical politics. Harl. MSS. 2228. Mr. Forster, in his extracts, took no notice of these important words. The whole work has since been published by Dr. Grosart. 1631 THE MONARCHY OF MAN? 225 The King's case was that Parliament had come persistently and hopelessly to a wrong conclusion, and that it threatened to make all government impossible till its own errors had been carried into practice. Eliot held that the conclusion come to by Parliament had been right, but he did not touch the question whether in such a case Parliament might in any way force its opinions upon the King. If, however, Eliot had no particular medicine to offer for the sickness of the commonwealth, he could lay his hand, as Bacon had laid his hand before him, on the true source of the disease. It had all come, he held, because there had been no sympathy between the King and his people, because the King had not striven to understand their thoughts, or to feel for their grievances. To the misfortunes of the State he declared the art of government must now be applied, 'so to dispose the several parts and members that they may be at peace and amity with each other, reciprocally helpful and assistant by all mutual offices and respects as fellow-citizens and friends, brethren of the same mother, members of one body, nay individually one body, one consolid substance; . . . and likewise to compose them to that concord and agreement as they may be at unity in themselves, rendering that harmony of the heavens, that pure diapason and concent,' and in that strength to encounter all opposition of the contrary for the public utility and good, the conservation and felicity of the whole. For these, because no single ability is sufficient, helps and advantages are provided,' laws, 'which are a level and direction,' and a council 'to be aiding and assistant . . . a supply of that defect which may be in one person by the abilities of more, that by many virtues so contracted one Panaretus might be formed, an allsufficiency in virtue and fulness of perfection, the true texture and concinnity of a king.'2 Eliot had not many more months of life before him. "I have these three days been abroad," he wrote to Hampden in March, "and as often brought in new impressions of the colds, Had Eliot seen a copy of Milton's lines At a Solemn Music, supposed to have been written in 1630? 2 Page 67. VOL. VII. 1632. March 29. Eliot's last letter. yet both in strength and appetite I find myself bettered by the motion. Cold at first was the reason of my sickness, heat and tenderness by close keeping in my chamber has since increased my weakness. Air and exercise are thought most proper to repair it. As children learn to go, I shall get acquainted with the air. O the infinite mercy of our Master! Dear friend, how it abounds in us that are unworthy of His service! How broken, how imperfect, how perverse and crooked are our ways in obedience to Him! How exactly straight is the line of His providence unto us, drawn out through all occurrents and particulars to the whole length and measure of our time! . . . What can we render? what retribution can we make worthy of so great a Majesty, worthy such love and favour! We have nothing but ourselves, who are unworthy above all; and yet that, as all other things, is His. For us to offer up that is but to give Him of His own, and that in far worse condition than we at first received it, yet, so infinite is His goodness for the merits of His Son,-He is contented to accept. This, dear friend, must be the comfort of His children; this is the physic we must use in all our sickness and extremities; this is the strengthening of the weak, the enriching of the poor, the liberty of the captive, the health of the diseased, the life of those that die, the death of that wretched life of sin! And this happiness have his saints. . . . Friends should communicate their joys; this as the greatest, therefore, I could not but impart unto my friend." for leave to For six months the curtain drops on Eliot's sufferings and upon his abounding joyfulness. Then he petitioned the Court October. of King's Bench for leave to go into the country for He petitions the benefit of his health. Richardson, the new Chief go abroad. Justice, referred him to the King. Charles answered that the prisoner's request was not sufficiently humble. Eliot would not save his life by an acknowledgment that he had erred. 'Sir,'-this was the utmost to which he could be drawn,—' I am heartily sorry I have displeased your Majesty, and having so said, do humbly beseech you once again to set me at liberty, that when I have recovered my health I may return back to my prison, there to undergo such punishment as God hath 1632 ELIOT'S LAST DAYS. 227 allotted unto me.' It was not in Charles's nature to listen to such a petition. No hope in this life remained for Eliot. The dying patriot had no harsh words for him who was causing his death. Anger on account of his own sufferings was not a feeling which found entrance into his mind. What he had endured was to him but part of the great purpose of God working out the deliverance of His Church and of the English nation. His enforced leisure, as the motto prefixed to The Monarchy of Man testified,' had proceeded from the hand of God. The misery in the Tower, as the last petition testified, had been a punishment allotted by God. He had fought a good fight, he had wrestled hard for his fellow-countrymen, for generations yet unborn. As a testimony to those coming generations who would take up his work he had prepared his Negotium Posterorum, the unfinished record of his unfinished labours. One thing remained, to bequeath to his own family the memorial of his great struggle. When his descendants one after another took their place at Port Eliot they must not be allowed to think of him only as he was represented in the portrait taken in the days of early manhood. The dying man sent for a painter, bidding him to reproduce upon canvas the wan, emaciated features which were all the reward of his heroic perEliot's death. sistency. Then a few days later came the end. On November 27 that noble and unconquered spirit passed away from amongst living men. Nov. 27. The life of Gustavus had ended in far other fashion but three weeks before. In the main the task of the two men was Eliot and the same, to defend the living spirit of nations against Gustavus. the pressure of misinterpreted legal obligations. Charles had heard of the death of Gustavus with a feeling of relief. When Eliot died the feeling of relief was tinged with rancorous animosity. To Charles, Eliot was but a factious and unprincipled rebel who had murdered Buckingham with his tongue, and who would have pulled down the throne itself if it had been in his power. He drily refused a request from the son of his deceased Charles refuses leave to transport the body to Port Eliot. 1 Deus nobis hæc otia. prisoner, that he might convey his father's mortal remains to rest at Port Eliot, where he had been loved and honoured in his life. 'Let Sir John Eliot,' wrote the King on the petition, 'be buried in the church of that parish where he died.' The dust of the first of England's Parliamentary statesmen lies unnoticed and undistinguishable amongst that of so many others, none more noble than himself. The idea for which he lived and died was the idea that the safest rule of government was to be found in the free utterance of the thoughts of the representatives of the people. He was the martyr, not of spiritual and intellectual, but of political liberty. He had confidence in the common sense of ordinary citizens, not indeed to govern directly, but to call in question those who were guilty of crime or mismanagement, and to insist that the direction of affairs should be entrusted to purer or abler hands. Valentine remain in It is not the punishment inflicted, but the character of the victim, which constitutes the martyr. Eliot's sufferings have never been forgotten; but, till a very recent and Strode time, posterity had entirely forgotten that two of prison. his companions in misfortune, Valentine and Strode, resisted as firmly as he did, the temptation to buy liberty by subservience, and remained in prison till the Short Parliament was summoned, more than seven years after Eliot's death.1 1631. Wentworth What the House of Commons was to Eliot, the King's authority was to Wentworth. He had no confidence in the common sense of ordinary citizens. With him, government was a question of ability and authority. in the North. It is a chaste ambition if rightly placed," he said afterwards when he was put upon his defence, "to have as much power as may be, that there may be power to do the more good in the place where a man lives."2 When his enemies brought him to bay, they had much to say about the illegality of the Court over which he presided, and of its incompatibility with the ordinary legal system of the country. They had no charge to bring of personal injustice against Wentworth, Rossingham's News-Letter, Jan. 24, 1640. Add. MSS. 11,645, fol. 87. 2 Rushworth, Trial of Strafford, 146. |