The disgust of the commons was fixed in foundations too deep to be easily removed.

They began with applications for a general fast; by which they intimated that the nation was in a very calamitous condition: they addressed against the king's guards, which they represented as dangerous to liberty, and even as illegal, since they never had yet received the sanction of parliament: they took some steps towards establishing a new and more rigorous test against Popery: and what chiefly alarmed the court, they made an attack on the members of the cabal, to whose pernicious counsels they imputed all their present grievances.

Clifford was dead: Shaftesbury had made his peace with the country party, and was become their leader: Buckingham was endeavoring to imitate Shaftesbury; but his intentions were as yet known to very few.

A motion was therefore made in the house of commons for his impeachment: he desired to be heard at the bar, but expressed himself in so confused and ambiguous a manner, as gave little satisfaction.

He was required to answer precisely to certain queries which they proposed to him.