Читать книгу The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne онлайн

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The Parliament—the notorious Long Parliament—met on the day appointed. Within ten days, Strafford, who had taken his seat in the Lords, was impeached and arrested. About a month later, Laud had also been impeached and, like Strafford, imprisoned in the Tower.

Charles soon discovered that he was no longer governing, but governed. The Parliament negotiated with the Scots without consulting him or even taking him into its confidence. Eventually the Commons voted that £300,000 should be given to the King’s enemies, the Scots, as a “Brotherly Assistance”.

The King’s affairs kept going rapidly from bad to worse. We cannot here deal with the trials and the executions of Newcastle’s two friends, Strafford and Laud—for Laud also was a friend of Newcastle—or the Root and Branch Bill, or the Grand Remonstrance, or the Rebellion in Ireland which is said to have cost that country nearly half its population. We shall presently have enough to do with Newcastle himself without troubling ourselves about general politics; but it has been necessary to take a brief survey of them in so far as they led up to the most important events in Newcastle’s life.