Clifford retired into the country, and soon after died.
{1674.} The parliament had been prorogued, in order to give the duke
leisure to finish his marriage; but the king's necessities soon obliged
him again to assemble them; and by some popular acts he paved the way
for the session. But all his efforts were in vain. 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.
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