It is remarkable, as Hume observes, that the most vulnerable point in Lord Bristol’s attack was altogether ignored by the Commons in this “large impeachment.” The most blamable circumstance in Buckingham’s whole life, as the same historian observes, was the Duke’s conduct in breaking the Spanish treaty, and in hurrying the nation into a war in order to gratify his private passions. But there was a general conviction of the insincerity of Spain; and the unjustifiable conduct of the Duke, in the affairs relative to that country, was suffered to escape unnoticed, whilst charges, almost untenable, were got up in the hope of ruining him with the King.
Charles was, however, infatuated. His youth and inexperience, the pernicious example set him by his father, plead for _him_, but nothing can extenuate the want of manly boldness in Buckingham, in not facing his foes and demanding a trial. His answers to the impeachment, thirteen in number, were, it is true, to borrow the words of Sir Henry Wotton, “very diligently and civilly couched,” and “savoured of an humble spirit, though his heart was big.” One consideration swayed with the public, which was, that in the “bolting and sifting of near fourteen years of such power and favour, all that came out could not be expected to be pure and white, and fine metal; but must needs have withal among it a certain mixture of padars and bran in this lower range of humane fragility.”[318]
The Duke’s answers were very clear and satisfactory,[319] and his address to the Lords appears to have been ingenuous and courteous. He reminded them how full of danger and prejudice it was to give too ready an ear, too easy a belief, to reports and testimony not upon oath; upon such allegations none ought, he argued, to be condemned. Then, with a grace that was natural to him, he acknowledged, with humility, “how easy a thing it was for him in his younger years, when inexperienced, to fall into thousands of errors in these two years wherein he had the honour to serve so great and so open-hearted a master.”[320] He concluded with professions of attachment to the Church of England, hoping that for the future “he might watch over all his actions, public and private, so as not to give cause of just offence to any one.” And such was probably his sincere determination; and Buckingham, had he lived, might have proved an excellent and, as times went, an honest minister.