And now the time had come at which the hoarded illhumour of six months was at liberty to explode.  On the sixteenth of November the Houses met.  The King, in his speech, assured them in gracious and affectionate language that he was determined to do his best to merit their love by constant care to preserve their liberty and their religion, by a pure administration of justice, by countenancing virtue, by discouraging vice, by shrinking from no difficulty or danger when the welfare of the nation was at stake.  “These,” he said, “are my resolutions; and I am persuaded that you are come together with purposes on your part suitable to these on mine.  Since then our aims are only for the general good, let us act with confidence in one another, which will not fail, by God’s blessing, to make me a happy king, and you a great and flourishing people.”

It might have been thought that no words less likely to give offence had ever been uttered from the English throne.  But even in those words the malevolence of faction sought and found matter for a quarrel.  The gentle exhortation, “Let us act with confidence in one another,” must mean that such confidence did not now exist, that the King distrusted the Parliament, or that the Parliament had shown an unwarrantable distrust of the King.  Such an exhortation was nothing less than a reproach; and such a reproach was a bad return for the gold and the blood which England had lavished in order to make and to keep him a great sovereign.  There was a sharp debate, in which Seymour took part.  With characteristic indelicacy and want of feeling he harangued the Commons as he had harangued the Court of King’s Bench, about his son’s death, and about the necessity of curbing the insolence of military men.  There were loud complaints that the events of the preceding session had been misrepresented to the public, that emissaries of the Court, in every part of the kingdom, declaimed against the absurd jealousies or still more absurd parsimony which had refused to His Majesty the means of keeping up such an army as might secure the country against invasion.  Even justices of the peace, it was said, even deputy-lieutenants, had used King James and King Lewis as bugbears, for the purpose of stirring up the people against honest and thrifty representatives.  Angry resolutions were passed, declaring it to be the opinion of the House that the best way to establish entire confidence between the King and the Estates of the Realm would be to put a brand on those evil advisers who had dared to breathe in the royal ear calumnies against a faithful Parliament.  An address founded on these resolutions was voted; many thought that a violent rupture was inevitable.  But William returned an answer so prudent and gentle that malice itself could not prolong the dispute.  By this time, indeed, a new dispute had begun.  The address had scarcely been moved when the House called for copies of the papers relating to Kidd’s expedition.  Somers, conscious of innocence, knew