JAMES THE SECOND.

85

many years, the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments to CHAr .hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or un- "i 6 85.acceptable, -svhich are uttered from the throne.*

It was then the custom that, after the King had conciselyexplained his reasons for calling Parliament together, theminister who held the Great Seal should, at more length,explain to the Houses the state of public affairs. Guildford,in imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon, Bridgeman,Shaftesbury, and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborateoration, but found, to his great mortification, that his serviceswere not wanted.**

As soon as the Commons had returned to their own Debatechamber, it was proposed that they should resolve themselves 'com-into a Committee, for the purpose of settling a revenue on the mons 'King.

Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like speech ofwhat he was, the chief of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, Seym0UI '‘with the artificial ringlets clustering in fashionable profusionround his shoulders, and a mingled expression of volup-tuousness and disdain in his eye and on his lip, the likenessesof him which still remain enable us to imagine. It was not,the haughty Cavalier said, his wish that the Parliament shouldwithhold from the crown the means of carrying on the govern-ment. But was there indeed a Parliament? Were there noton the benches many men who had, as all the world knew, noright to sit there, many men whose elections were tainted bycorruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctantvoters, and many men returned by corporations which had nolegal existence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled,in defiance of royal charters and of immemorial prescription?

Had not returning officers been everywhere the unscrupulousagents of the Court? Seeing that the very principle of re-

♦ London Gazette, May 25. 1685; Evelyn’s Diary, May 22. 1085.

** North’s Life of Guildford, 256.