I shall further add, that even if the parliament had discovered the deceit in Buckingham's narrative, this ought not to have altered their political measures, or made them refuse supply to the king.

They had supposed it practicable to wrest the Palatinate by arms from the house of Austria; they had represented it as prudent to expend the blood and treasure of the nation in such an enterprise; they had believed that the king of Spain never had any sincere intention of restoring that principality.

It is certain that he had not now any such intention; and though there was reason to suspect, that this alteration in his views had proceeded from the ill conduct of Buckingham, yet past errors could not be retrieved; and the nation was undoubtedly in the same situation which the parliament had ever supposed, when they so much harassed their sovereign by their impatient, importunate, and even undutiful solicitations.

To which we may add, that Charles himself was certainly deceived by Buckingham when he corroborated his favorite's narrative by his testimony.

Party historians are somewhat inconsistent in their representations of these transactions.