Eliot, SIR JOHN

Eliot, SIR JOHN, English statesman, the earnest champion of the supremacy of parliament in the government of the nation, was the son of a country gentleman of Cornwall, in which county, at Port Eliot on the Tamar, he was born, 20th April 1592. His education was that usual for young men of his position. During the course of his continental travels he became acquainted with Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, an acquaintance-ship which had a most important influence upon his subsequent parliamentary career. In fact his relations with Buckingham, first in support of the duke, and afterwards in antagonism to him, and his position as an ardent champion of the independence of the House of Commons are the two chief determining factors of his public life. He entered the parliament of 1624 as an adherent of Buckingham, whom he heartily supported in his warlike policy against Spain. But during the course of the next parliament (1625) his eyes seem to have become opened to the true character and designs of the favourite, and he finally broke with him that same year, owing to an arrogant refusal on Buckingham's part to acknowledge the House of Commons as the real ruling power in the nation. And in Eliot's case, as in that of most enthusiastic impetuous natures, it was almost a matter of course that, having become convinced of the unworthiness of his former leader, he should swing over to the extreme of fierce, implacable hostility to him. Accordingly, in the next parliament, in which, from the force of circumstances, Eliot was the leading spirit, his policy was in the main one of antagonism to the king, and finally culminated in the impeachment of Buckingham. For this he was sent to the Tower on 11th May, and not released until the 19th. In the parliament of 1628 Eliot raised his voice against arbitrary taxation, and was instrumental in forcing from Charles the celebrated Petition of Right. For having again protested formally against the king's proceedings in matters of taxation and religion, Eliot was, on 4th March 1629, sent, along with eight other members, to the Tower; and steadfastly refusing to acknowledge himself to have been in error, was kept in confinement until his death, on 27th November 1632. During his incarceration, Eliot composed an account of Charles's first parliament, Negotium Posterorum (first printed in 1881); a philosophico-political treatise, The Monarchy of Man (1879); and An Apology for Socrates (1881), a vindication of his own public conduct. Besides these he also left De Jure Majestatis, a Political Treatise of Government, and the Letter-book of Sir John Eliot, both published in 1882. See the Biography by John Forster (2d ed. 1871).