capable of greatness, remained his devoted counsellor. Buckingham, however, had shown himself unready to take good advice, and had pestered Bacon with constant attempts to interfere in suits depending in chancery. At the end of March, when charges of corruption had been raised against Bacon, Buckingham indeed threw himself impetuously into his friend's defence, and called on the king to dissolve the accusing parliament. In April this chivalric impetuosity had cooled down, and he talked of Bacon as having richly deserved the disgrace which had fallen upon him. When, however, on 18 April, Bacon's case came before the House of Lords, Buckingham raised what points he could in his favour, and on the 24th obtained a vote excusing him from being brought to the bar. Buckingham, in short, was ready to do as much for his old friend as could be done without risking his own position.
On 30 April the favourite sustained a new shock. Yelverton, brought from his prison in the Tower to the bar of the House of Lords, talked of the threats brought against him for refusing to support some of the most questionable of the monopolies, and threatened Buckingham with the fate of Hugh Spencer [see Despencer, Hugh] for ‘placing and displacing officers about a king.’ Buckingham haughtily urged that his accuser might be allowed to proceed with his charge. ‘He that will seek to stop him,’ he said, ‘is more my enemy than his.’ On 12 May Buckingham moved that the House of Lords should censure Yelverton for an attack on the king's honour. The house insisted on hearing the prisoner's defence, but on the 16th delivered a sentence which included the payment of five thousand marks to Buckingham. With a magnificent show of generosity Buckingham remitted his portion of the fine, and then boasted that he was ‘parliament proof.’ At the same time the charges against Sir Edward and Christopher Villiers were allowed to drop (Gardiner, iv. 112–16).
That Buckingham had saved himself was partly owing to his own versatility, but still more because a quarrel with him was tantamount to a quarrel with the king, for which neither house was as yet prepared. He was always ready with a display of magnanimity, and in July he obtained the liberation of a number of political prisoners, some of whom had been placed in durance in consequence of their hostility to himself. When parliament met after its summer adjournment it was occupied with foreign affairs, but Buckingham did not, so far as we know, openly take part in the discussions. Yet there could be no doubt that he was at this time opposed to any war in defence of the German protestants, while he eagerly advocated a war against the Dutch on account of their ill-treatment of English merchants in the East Indies. In September 1621 he even went so far as to betray to Gondomar a letter sent by Frederick to the king, assuring him at the same time that not a penny of English money should be spent in the palatinate. When the opposition between the king and the commons had grown to a head, Buckingham, on 30 Dec., supported in the council James's resolution to dissolve parliament, and immediately afterwards congratulated Gondomar on the result.
Whatever changes might take place in the political world, there was no change in Buckingham's unbounded influence at court. In the early part of 1622 he used it to wring from Bacon the sale of York House by refusing to allow him to come to London till the house passed into his own possession (Spedding, Life and Letters of Bacon, vii. 304–47). About the same time Buckingham, whose wife had now virtually reverted to the Roman catholic faith, was thinking of changing his own religion, while his mother was looking in the same direction. James, however, was apparently displeased, and on 3 Jan. Buckingham, with his wife, mother, and several kinswomen, was confirmed by the bishop of London. On 24 May a conference took place between Laud and the jesuit Fisher, ostensibly for the satisfaction of Buckingham's mother—now Countess of Buckingham—but in reality for the satisfaction of Buckingham himself. As far as the old lady was concerned all Laud's arguments were thrown away; but either by the conference itself or by reasoning used in private, Buckingham resolved to abandon all thought of change, and accepted Laud as his confessor. On the great question of the day—the Spanish marriage—he had been on the side of Spain, and as he had now as much influence over Charles as he ever had with his father, he can hardly have been a stranger to the promise given by the young prince to Gondomar before the latter returned to his own country that he would follow him to Madrid if the Spaniard advised him to do so (Gardiner, iv. 369).
For Buckingham, as for James, the Spanish marriage could not now be dissociated from the maintenance of the palatinate in the hands of the king's son-in-law, and in September 1622, when Tilly was besieging Heidelberg, he addressed a strong remonstrance to Gondomar (Cabala, p. 224), and, after the news of the fall of the place reached England, despatched Endymion Porter to Madrid to prepare the way for a visit from the prince
