come. His sister had told him that she would not marry Charles, because the English Prince was a Protestant. At the Spanish Court the king and the royal family lived in a very formal way. Charles was not allowed to see the Infanta privately. One day he heard that she was in a garden, and jumped over a wall to talk to her. To his surprise she shrieked and ran into the house. Philip tried to make Charles break off the marriage by asking him to grant liberty to the English Catholics to worship without being punished for it. Charles promised anything he was asked to promise, without thinking whether he would ever be able to keep his word. At last Philip told Charles that he must go back to England and do what he had engaged to do, and that then, if he really did it, the Infanta should be sent after him to be his wife. not very willingly, agreed to this. English grammar and dictionary, and began studying the language which she would have to use here. Charles however thought that he was being treated with contempt. He came back to England, and refused to marry the Infanta unless her brother would give back the Palatinate. The king of Spain said that he could not do this, and the marriage was no more thought of. The Infanta put her English grammar and dictionary away. A few years afterwards she married a German Catholic Prince, the son of the Emperor, and was probably a great deal happier than if she had come to live as Charles's wife, amongst the English Protestants.

The Infanta,
She got an

9. End of James's Reign.-James called another

Parliament which voted him money, and which would have been very well pleased if he had at once gone to war with Spain. He told the members that he was ready to fight to recover the Palatinate, but he must first send some more ambassadors to find out what allies he was likely to have. Before the Parliament came to an end, it learned that James wanted to marry his son to Henrietta Maria, the sister of Louis XIII., king of France. Englishmen would have been much better pleased to hear that Charles was going to marry a Protestant lady. To give some little satisfaction, both James and Charles promised that they would not engage to the king of France to give freedom of worship to the English Catholics. After the session of Parliament had come to an end, James found that the king of France would not give up his sister unless both James and Charles would engage to let the Catholics worship freely. Rather than be disappointed in this marriage as they had been disappointed in Spain, they both engaged to do this, and so broke their promise to the Parliament. They were therefore afraid to summon Parliament again till the marriage was actually over, when it would be too late for any one to grumble. This was the more disastrous because they had already made some preparations for war, and had arranged that 12,000 English soldiers should go under Count Mansfeld, a German officer, to conquer the Palatinate. As Parliament was not sitting to vote money, the poor men were sent off without pay and without food in the middle of winter. When they arrived in Holland they were put in large boats to be taken

up the rivers. It began to freeze hard, and the ice prevented the boats from moving. If the kind Dutch had not brought them bread and cheese, the soldiers would have been starved to death. As it was, they had nothing but a little straw with which to cover themselves, and they fell so ill with the bitter cold that in two or three weeks only 3,000 men of the 12,000 were able to march. They were not enough to conquer the Palatinate, and the whole expedition was a failure. About this time. James died.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHARLES I. AND HIS FIRST THREE
PARLIAMENTS.

(1625-1629.)

1. The First Parliament of Charles I.—Charles I. now summoned Parliament and asked for money for the war. The Commons knew that the young king did everything that Buckingham asked him to do, and that Buckingham had managed the sending out of Mansfeld's expedition without food or money. They also suspected that Charles had not kept his promise about the English Catholics. Instead therefore of giving him the large sum of money that he wanted, they gave him very little. Charles said he must have more. They told him that as long as he consulted no one but Buckingham how money

was spent, they could not help him. If he would take the advice of others whom they trusted, they would give more money. Charles was very angry, and dissolved his first parliament.

2. The Expedition to Cadiz.-Buckingham advised Charles to go on with the war whether Parliament gave him anything or not. He got just enough money

together to send a fleet and army to Cadiz. When the army landed, instead of attacking the town it marched in another direction to attack some Spanish troops which its con mander had heard of. As there were no Spanish troops near, the soldiers only got very hot and tired, and as their commander had forgotten to see that they had any provisions with them, they were very hungry too. They found a large quantity of wine

in a Spanish village, and swallowed it so greedily that the whole army was soon drunk, and if there had been an enemy near every man might have been killed. The next day the troops marched back to Cadiz; but the town was too well fortified to be taken. The fleet and army came back to England without doing anything at all. In some books of nursery rhymes is still to be found the following account of this expedition :

'There was a fleet that went to Spain;
When it got there, it came back again.'

3. The Second Parliament of Charles I. and the Forced Loans.-In the next Parliament Buckingham was impeached-that is to say, he was accused before the Lords by the Commons, of making himself rich and ruining the nation. Before the trial was finished, the king dissolved his second Parliament as he had dissolved his first. He was in great difficulty for money. He sent to ask his subjects to give him some; but scarcely any one would give him anything at all, and it was against the law to make any one give. Somebody however told Charles that though he could not make his subjects give he could make them lend. As he was not likely ever to be able to repay what he borrowed, there was not much difference between lending and giving. Nevertheless he took the advice and ordered all persons with property to pay him money as a forced loan. He threw into prison the chief men who would not pay, and he got a large

sum from those who had rather pay than go to

prison.