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THE LIFE AND TIMES

OF

GEOEGE VILLIERS,

DUKE 01 BnCKINflHAM.

FROM ORIGINAL AND AUTHENTIC SOURCES.

r BY MRS. THOMSON,

AUTHOK OF

"MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF HENRY THE EIGHTH,"

"LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH,"

"MEMOIRS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH,"

&c., &c.

m THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. m.

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1860.

The right of Translation is reserved,

9.,

LONDON :

printed by r. born, gloucbstkr street,
regent's park.

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER I.

Death of the Earl of Suffolk — His Address to the Heads of
Houses — The Opportunity seized upon by the King to
make Buckingham Chancellor — Indignation of the House of
Commons — Injudicious Conduct of the King — "Vehement
Debates — Sir Dudley Digges and Elliot sent to Prison —
Buckingham's Motives for Engaging in a War with France
— He endeavours to send away the Queen's Servants — His
Fear of losing his Influence — Arrival of Soubise and
Rohan — The Duke goes to Dover — To Portsmouth— Letters
from the Duchess — From his Mother — He sets sail for
Rochelle — His First Operations Successful — Care taken by
him of his Troops— 1626-1627 1

CHAPTER II.

The Delay in Sending Provisions — The Impossibility of reduc-
ing the Citadel by Famine — The Duke's own means were
embarked in the Cause— Sir John Burgh — His Death —
Letter of Sir Edward Conway to his Father — Buckingham's
Sanguine Nature— Efforts of Sir Edward Nicholas . 41

IV CONTENTS.

CHAPTER m.

Felton — His Character — Uncertainty of his Motives — Circum-
stances under which he was brought into Contact with
Buckingham — Motives of his Crime discussed — The Re-
monstrance— The Fate of La Rochelle — Buckingham's
Unpopularity — Returns to Rhe — Misgivings of his Friends —
Interview with Laud — with Charles I.— His Farewell —
He enters Portsmouth — Felton — The Assassination —
Original Letters from Sir D. Carlton and Sir Charles
Morgan — The King's Grief 89

CHAPTER IV.

Character of the Duke of Buckingham — His Patronage of
Art — His Collection — The Spanish Court Described — Col-
lection by Charles I. — Fate of these Pictures . . 137

CHAPTER V.

Patronage of the Drama by Charles and the Duke of Buck-
ingham— Massinger — Ben Jonson — Their Connection with
the Court, and with the Duke 183

CHAPTER VI.

Beaumont and Fletcher — Their Origin — Their Joint Produc-
tions— Character of Bishop Fletcher — Anecdotes about the
Use of Tobacco — Ford, the Dramatist — Howell — Sir Henry
Wotton — The Character of the Duke of Buckingham Con-
sidered 267

Appendix 321

CHAPTER I.

DEATH OF THE EARL OF SUFFOLK — HIS ADDRESS TO THE
HEADS OF HOUSES — THE OPPORTUNITY SEIZED UPON
BY THE KING TO MAKE BUCKINGHAM CHANCELLOR
INDIGNATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS — INJU-
DICIOUS CONDUCT OF THE KING, VEHEMENT DE-
BATES— SIR DUDLEY DIGGES AND ELIOT SENT TO

PRISON — Buckingham's motives for engaging in

A WAR WITH FRANCE — HE ENDEAVOURS TO SEND
AWAY THE queen's SERVANTS — HIS FEAR OF LOSING
HIS INFLUENCE — ARRIVAL OF SOUBISE AND ROHAN

THE DUKE GOES TO DOVER — TO PORTSMOUTH

LETTERS FROM THE DUCHESS — FROM HIS MOTHER —
HE SETS SAIL FOR ROCHELLE — HIS FIRST OPERATIONS
SUCCESSFUL — CARE TAKEN BY HIM OF HIS TROOPS

—1626-1627.

VOL. III.

LIFE AKD TIMES OF

GEORGE VILLIERS.

CHAPTER I.

Whilst these matters were in agitation, the
death of the Earl of Suffolk, Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge, afforded the King an
opportunity of evincing his unbounded favour to
the Duke of Buckingham, even vrhilst he lay
under the very shadow of a parliamentary im-
peachment.

A few years previously, the unpopularity of the
Duke at Cambridge had been manifested by a
play, in which his measures were satirized, and
which had been acted by the scholars of Ben'et
College.

b2

4 LIFE AND TIMES OF

The ancient discipline of the University appears,
indeed, to have so greatly relaxed, that in 1625-6
— in compliance with a letter from the King
— Lord SuiFolk had found it expedient to address
the Heads of Houses, vrhom he styled " Gentle-
men, and my loving friends," exhorting them to
restore order and " consequent prosperity to their
University."

The last sentence had an ominous sound, for
there were few cases in which the King- thouofht it
necessary to interfere, in which Buckingham did
not prompt the royal mind to active measures.

Notwithstanding the unpopularity of his min-
ister, disregarding the public notion that, as the
patron and personal friend of Laud, Buckingham
was the patron of Eoman Catholics, and in direct
defiance of the impeachment, all the influence of
the Crown was employed to procure the Duke's
election to the office of Chancellor.

That dignity was considered then, as it now is,
one of the highest tributes to personal character,
as well as to political eminence, that the nation
could offer. It happened that Doctor Mew, the
Master of Trinity College, was the King's Chap-
lain. No fewer than forty-three votes were ob-
tained by his means; nevertheless, there was a
powerful opponent in Lord Thomas Howard, son
of the late Chancellor ; a hundred and three votes

GEORGE VILLIEES. 5

against the Duke were secured by him, and with
more exertion, it is supposed, that he might have
defeated the Duke's partisans.^

Buckingham therefore was elected : thus did
Charles, to use the words of Sir Henry Wotton,
"add to the facings or fringings of the Duke's
greatness the embroiderings or listing of one
favour upon another." But the King, in point
of fact, was doing his favourite the greatest injury,
by thus marking him out as an object for the
justly-aroused indignation of the public.

His doom was, however, at hand. What-
soever he may have intended to do for Cambridge
was cut short by the hands of destiny. There
remains, however, a very characteristic memorial
of Buckingham in that Univeisity. The silver
maces still in use, carried by the Esquire Bedells,
were a present from the ill-fated Duke,^ whose
presiding office was of so short continuance.

It was to be expected that the House of Com-
mons would receive with great anger this fresh
proof of the King's contempt for their body. Ke-
gardlng this election as a reflection upon them,
a resolution was passed to send to the Uni-
versity a remonstrance against their choice.

* Brodie, vol. ii., p. 117-

2 Masters, 137. —Nichols' "Leicestershire," iii., p. 200.

6 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Charles, however, considering — and with some
justice — that this remonstrance would be an
invasion of the privileges of the University,
despatched a message to the House, by Sir
Richard Weston, desiring them not to interfere ;
inditing, at the same time, a letter to the Univer-
sity, expressing his approbation of their election
of the Duke.3

The Duke's answer to the impeachment was
put in on the tenth of June : on the fourteenth
the Commons presented a petition, praying for
liberty to proceed in the discharge of their duty
— and entreating that Buckingham might, during
the impeachment, be removed from the royal
presence.

Had the King yielded to a prayer so reason-
able and equitable, the fury of the public might
have been appeased. But he viewed the most
important question of this early period of his
reign, as between man and man, not as between
a monarch and his subject. Buckingham's great
fault, he considered, w^as being his favourite. No
criminality could be proved in any department of
his conduct as minister.'^ Nor could Charles,
who had hung over the death-bed of his father,
treat with anything but contempt the accusation

' Brodie, from Rushworth.
* Hume.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 7

of poison. The King believed that all the other
articles of the impeachment were prompted by a
resolution, after attacking his minister, to assail
his own prerogative. He had been reared in the
greatest jealousy on that one point, and with the
strongest and most conservative value for the
sovereign authority. Charles, accomplished as a
man, was profoundly ignorant and prejudiced as
a king : his views were narrow, and his knowledge
of the constitution of his country limited. His
notions had been warped by a residence at the
courts of France and Spain. The immediate
effects of a despotic rule are to a superficial ob-
server imposing. It is only to those who look
into the interior circumstances of a people, and
who well consider the tendencies of an arbitrary
government to blight honest ambition, to cramp
and weaken the national character, that its real
misery and degradation are apparent.

In Spain, with Buckingham ever at his side ; in
a court full of picturesque splendour ; in youth,
with hope and love before him, Charles had pro-
bably forgotten the aching hearts in the prisons
of the Inquisition. In France, the irresistible
fascinations of Richelieu had not, it is reasonable to
suppose, been wanting to bias the mind of one
likely to be so nearly allied to the royal family of
France. Most of all those influences that betrayed

8 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Charles to his ruin must, however, be ascribed
to the dogmatic fallacies of his father. James
had educated according to his own contracted
opinions not only his son, but the favourite who
was hereafter, as it is expressed by Sir Henry
Wotton, to be "the chief concomitant" of the
future sovereign of England.^

Of late years, before the quarrel with the
Commons, the popularity of Buckingham had in-
creased. The whole scene of affairs had been
changed from Spain to France; the alteration
was satisfactory to many, and was ascribed to the
Duke — and he had not only become suddenly a fa-
vourite with the public, but had been extolled in
Parliament.^ This was, indeed, says Wotton, "but
a mere bubble or blast, and like an ephemeral fit
of applause, as eftsoon will appear in the sequel
and train of his life." The contrast, therefore,
between a success so recent and the present
odium into which he had fallen, was no doubt the
cause of much chagrin to the harassed favourite,
who seems, like most men of sensitive natures,
to have valued popularity, and to have been fully
aware that his political life depended upon it.
He knew that no man could lono^ resist the force
of public opinion in this country. Even in those

» Reliquiae Wottonianae, p. 212.
« Ibid

GEORGE VILLIERS. 9

days, suppressed as it was by a fettered press, and
by the gaunt spectre of injustice in Star-chambers,
it had exploded into one burst of forcible indigna-
tion in the House of Commons. Somewhere the
dauntless spirit of an Englishman must speak out,
and it then began to make itself heard in that great
assembly which had hitherto been almost as sub-
servient to Court influence as the French Cham-
ber of the present day.

The answer of the Duke to the Impeachment
was drawn out with much skill by Sir Nicholas
Hyde,^ the uncle of Edward Hyde, afterwards
Lord Clarendon. Sir Nicholas was considered to
be a sound lawyer, and a man of honourable cha-
racter. He was a " staunch stickler," says Lord
Campbell, " for prerogative ; but this was sup-
posed to arise rather from the sincere opinion
he formed of what the English constitution was
or ought to be, than from a desire to recommend
himself for promotion." ^ He succeeded Sir Ran-
dolf Crewe, who was suddenly removed from his
seat to make room for one who had no objection
to the arbitrary acts by which Charles endea-
voured to support Buckingham, and who was

^He was the son of Lawrence Hyde, of Gussage St.
Michael, in the county of Dorset, and of a west country
branch of the ancient family of " Hyde of that Ilk." — See
Lord Campbell.

^ Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. iv., p. 381.

10 LIFE AND TIMES OF

ready to conduct the war with France without
the aid of parliament.

The debates which were now carried on with
vehemence seemed to produce little impression on
the counsels which incited Charles and Bucking-
ham to acts of insanity. The chief orators on the
side of the parliament were Selden, Noy, and
Thomas Wentworth, member for Oxford, and, be-
fore their commitment. Sir Dudley Digges, and Sir
John Eliot. To this list several others must be
added ; amongst the most notable were those of
Burton and Prynne. Burton had been one of the
clerks of the closet to King Charles when Prince
of Wales, and had been offended by not accom-
panying his royal master to Spain, but grew still
more indignant at the preferment of Laud ; and
by being himself regarded as an ^' underling." He
was afterwards dismissed the court for various acts
of insolence, and became, as a matter of course,
the bitterest enemy of his late patron.^

There were now, to use the language of Sir
Edward Coke, '' two leaks in the ship," or State.
''Two leaks," he declared, " would drown any
ship ;" ^° yet Lord Campbell, as well as other his-
torians, is of opinion that had it not been for the
attempt to force episcopacy on Scotland, Charles,

9 Heylyn, 149
" Lord Campbell, vol. vi., 322, passim.

^ GEORGE VILLIERS. 11

and even his descendants, might have continued
to rule by absolute power, until, in the course of
centuries, the public voice might have forced a
revolution upon the country.

Whilst the levying of a loan, by which
Charles hoped to supply the place of a grant
from Parliament, was going on, Buckingham was
using every effort to return to that country where,
either as a lover or as a conqueror, he hoped to
see Anne of Austria once more. According to
Clarendon, he had sworn that he would see the
Queen in spite of all the power of France, and
that determination had originated the war which
was now on the eve of commencing:.

In order to challenge reprisals, since there was
no pretence to warrant a proclamation of war
with France, Buckingham encouraged the capture
of French vessels by English ships and privateers,
taking the vanquished vessels as prizes. He
began, also, to make his great influence available
by his efforts to lower the French nation in the
eyes of the King, fearing lest the young and beau-
tiful queen should oppose the war. He endea-
voured, it is alleged, to alienate the affections of
the King from the bride of his choice, and to shew
her personally every species of insolence and rude-
ness. Once, when she did not call upon his
mother, as she had promised to do by appoint-

12 LIFE AND TIMES OF ^

ment, Buckingham entered her Majesty's room in
a rage ; the Queen answered him harshly : upon
which he told her that there had been Queens in
England who had lost their heads. ^^

Buckingham appears to have been in a fever of
jealousy ; hitherto he had exercised a sole in-
fluence over his royal master. Henceforth, the
less public but more sure sway of an idolized
wife would for ever interfere with his counsels.
Infuriated against the French, yet madly in love
with their Queen, Buckingham had only been
deterred from returning to France as a private
individual by a dread of assassination on the part
of Richelieu, who had, it appears, entertained that
design. Having persuaded Charles to send back,
contrary to treaties, the Queen's French attend-
ants, he now drove the inexperienced and irritated
Henrietta Maria to despair ; and finding herself
in a foreign country, where all around her were
inimical to her religion, and to herself, she passion-
ately entreated to be allowed to return to France.
Buckingham, rejoicing at the success of his
schemes, besought Charles to allow him to con-
duct the Queen home. But that proposal, when
transmitted to Paris, was indignantly rejected by
the French Court, and the Duke was confirmed
in his resolution to commence a war with a nation
" Brodie, after Clarendon.

* GEORGE VILLIERS. 13

which had the courage to decline his friend-
ship.

His scheme for sending back the Queen's
French servants had been, however, agreeable in
the extreme to Charles — and it may even have been
suggested by the King, who, in answer to a letter
from the Duke, writes to him thus : — " Steenie,
" I have received your letters by Die Graeme.
" This is my answer : I command you to send all
" the French away to-morrow out of town; if you
" can, by fair means, but stick not long in dis-
" patching, otherwise force them away like so
" many wyld beasts, until ye have shipped them,
" and so the devil go with them. Let me hear
" no more answer, but of the performance of my
^^ command ; so trust your faithful and constant
" friend, Charles E. Dated Oaking, 7 Aug.
" 1626."^2

His former loan of ships to the French implies
a more friendly footing with that nation than these
later passages of the Duke's life may seem to in-
dicated^ It was in fact his dread of any influence
stronger than his own that caused Buckingham to
induce Charles to break off the treaty with Spain ;
and had instigated his animosity to Fran ce. Haunted

"Brodie, vol ii., note, from Ayscough's MSS. Brit. Mus.,

i» Ibid.

14 LIFE AND TIMES OF

by the dread of being superseded in Charles's
favour, there were moments when his over-
burdened mind was opened to some humble
friends, and the apprehensions of the King's re-
gard being alienated were imparted in agony to
a confidant.

Buckingham was also aware of that intriguing
and uncertain disposition in Henrietta Maria,
which, in spite of a certain heroism of character
which she possessed, shewed itself in mournful co-
lours in later periods of her chequered life. The
patronage which she wished to divide among her
French followers was also a source of jealousy to
the Duke, who had hitherto disposed of all Court
offices to people who would support him in his
state of power, or aid him if he fell. Henrietta
was attended on her arrival in this country by
many younger sons of good families in France,
who looked to England as the field where golden
honours were plentifully to be reaped. " They
devoured so much," we are told, ^*that all the thrift
of Bishop Juxom, who had amassed much,
was gulped down by these insatiable sharks." ^^
Patronage and influence being withdrawn, the
Duke's ruin must, he knew, be complete. He had
nothing to expect from his country, for he had

>* Brodie, from Racket's Life of Williams, part ii.,
p. 96.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 15

never considered the interests of his native land
as identified with his own. There were in his
mind some motives of a higher class and a more
general nature, although we must not look for lofty
principles of action in those days.

The intrigues of Richelieu, who was now Buck-
ingham's rival and foe, worked in England through
the Queen. The Duke had been overreached by
the Cardinal, and thirsted for open revenge. By
denying the troops of Count Mansfeldt a passage
through France, the army of that celebrated
general had perished. There was no doubt of
Richelieu's determination to extirpate the Pro-
testants, and all promises of befriending them had
long since proved faithless ; the Duke, therefore,
saw that he had been compromised, and he re-
sented that superiority in trickery, which it is
difficult for a mind like his to bear. Whilst he
had thus been deceived by France, Buckingham
was suiFering by the popular cry against recusants ;
and the Romish priests, adding to that cry, were
enjoining on Henrietta Maria, as a penance, that
she should walk bare- footed to Tyburn, as a
tribute to the memory of the Jesuits, who had
been executed at that spot of sad remembrances.
Thus, the cause of the suffering Protestants in
France had become the cause of the people, and
Buckingham hoped to regain his popularity by

16 LIFE AND TIMES OF

espousing it — whilst, at the same time, by sending
away the French attendants of the Queen, he
should banish the emissaries of Richelieu. Much
of his conduct has been attributed to the influence
of a French Abbot, who was related to the Duke
of Orleans, who was also a violent enemy to the
Cardinal.^^

Fortunately for Buckingham's endeavours to
regain popularity, the Due de Soubise, who, to-
gether with the Due de Rohan, his brother, were
the great leaders of the Protestant party in
France, arrived during the summer, after the dis-
solution of Parliament in England. The Abbot,
it seems, who had incited Buckingham against
Richelieu, had at the same time acquainted the
Due de Soubise with the state of affairs in England.
The alliance of these two great noblemen was
eagerly accepted by Buckingham. The Due de
Rohan engaged to supply 4000 foot and 200
horse, to assist the English on landing in France;
which was an enterprize eagerly coveted by
Buckingham. ^^

M. de Soubise had at his command a fleet of
twenty-three sail, which was to proceed at once
to La Rochelle, then closely besieged by Richelieu,

'^ Brodie, from Rushworth., vol. I, p. 424.
" Letter from Admiral Pennington to Buckingham, State
Paper Office, inedited.

GEORGE VILLIEIIS. 17

atid to throw provisions into the town. The
English Government engaged to fit these ships
un, to victual thenij and to store them with pro-
visions for La Rochelleu Private information dis-
closed, however, that these " ships were miserable
rotten things, of little or no force." Their crews
amounted to 1,261 wretched French sailors, who
had neither bread nor drink till the Duke's vice-
admiral went down to Plymouth.^^ Soubise had,
afterwards, a supply of beef and pork allowed for two
days a week; of fish, for the other four ; some small
store of butter and cheese, and some eighteen or
twenty tons of cider. This seems to have been all the
provisions for all the ships ; and Admiral Penning-
ton, writing to the Duke, said : — "I wish the French-
men had all the rest, for our people will never eat
it, only the best of it." So like the English now
were the English then. A hundred tons of beer
were to be supplied out of the town.*^

But other unforeseen difficulties occurred, and
the greatest was the want of men. The miser-
able provisions, or, perhaps, the lingering presence
of the plague, now produced sickness and death
among the seamen; "so that few of the captains,"
writes Pennington, " have sufficient men to bring
their ships about." He begs to have a strict com-

" Letter from Admiral Pennington to Buckingham.
" Ibid.

VOL. III. C

18 LIFE AND TIMES OF

mand for the " press " sent him ; i^ but even that
was of no avail , as the strongest men fled up the
country and hid themselves in the woods.

Then certain merchants, to whom the Lord-Ad-
miral looked for a supply of ships in war, were un-
willing to lend their vessels. They even disabled
their vessels to prevent their being used ; and it
became necessary for Pennington, as he stated, to
send his carpenters to repair them — and after all
he was obliged to wait for a reinforcement from
Ireland. 20 The poor Vice-Admiral wrote anxious
letters, praying that the useless merchant-ships
might be sent away ; whilst the others, French
and all, might be well provisioned at once. He
entreated that a ship-load of cordage, cables,
anchors, and sails for the furnishing of other ships,
might come forthwith. This was a miserable be-
ginning of an aggressive war, and Charles must
now have seen his folly in having quarrelled with
Parliament. Eventually, Pennington informed the
Duke that he was obliged to discharge all the
merchant ships, except a few from Ireland, which
were in good condition.^^

The situation of the Duke seems, at this mo-

"A request which was quickly complied with, as we find
in the State Paper Office : " Orders given to impress men
for the fleet," addressed to Admiral Pennington.
20 Ibid. « Ibid.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 19

ment, to have been truly pitiable. It has been
already stated that he received and answered all
letters himself ; and the applications made to him,
in his capacity of High Admiral, seem to have
been of the most minute character. vSometimes
among his correspondence we find a letter from
Admiral Burgh, wanting to know what he was to
do with some Newfoundland fish which had come
into his possession as Vice-Admiral.^^ Then follow
numerous complaints of the dilapidated state of the
forts and castles which ought to have guarded
the coasts. In 1625, however, they were reported
to be in a perfect state for defence.

Often was the Duke addressed as "the most noble
Prince George ; " whilst in numerous epistles a tri-
bute is paid to his justice and circumspection, which
would surprise those who take the ordinary view
of his character. His powers and his province
were alike important. A Lord High Admiral was,
to use the words of an eminent writer, "one to whom
is committed the government of all things done
upon or beyond the sea in any part of the world —
all things done upon the sea-coast in all ports
and harbours, and upon all rivers below the first
bridge next towards the sea." So far for his
powers ; the following were among the list of his
privileges : —

" Ibid.

c2

20 LIFE AXD TIMES OF

" To the Lord High Admiral belong all penal-
ties of all transgressions at sea or on the shore,
the goods of pirates and felons, all stray goods,
wrecks at sea and headlands, a share of all lawful
prizes not granted to lords of manors adjoining
the sea ; all great fishes, as sea-dogs, and other
great fishes, called royal fishes, except whales and
sturgeon."23

Questions arising out of these privileges, and
disputes between Lord Zouch and the captains of
vessels, on the subject of wrecks, occur inces-
santly among the documents in the State-paper
Office, which almost supply a history of the period.

In the beginning of the year 1626, Buckingham
had commenced his naval operations by sending to
impress twenty of the best merchant-ships in the
Thames or elsewhere ; " such," were his instruc-
tions, "as shall be most ready to go to sea, and most
able to do his Majesty's service in his present
employments." ^^

The impressment of these vessels does not seem
to have been successful in this instance ; and
although the captains to command them were ap-
pointed by Government, they found great diffi-
culty, as has been before stated, in manning
their ships.

2* Chamberlayne's State of Great Britain in the seven-
teenth century.

«♦ State Papers, edited, 1626.

GEORGE VILLIEES. 21

Great, meantime, were Buckingham's endea-
vours to clear the seas of pirates, as well as to
recover that dominion over the narrow seas upon
which encroachments had been made. The Duke
now began to be assisted by Sir Edward Nicholas,
whose name appears at this period as the writer
of the Duke's answers to suitors, and who was
evidently regarded with much confidence by
Buckingham. ^^

Although a fleet of twenty sail, of the king's
ships, and others had been prepared so early as
the 6th of January, 1625-6, for a service of six
months,^^ yet it was not until June that the Duke
suddenly left the court, and, with all the haste
of his impetuous nature, went on board the
fleet at Dover so unexpectedly that his secre-
tary Nicholas could not join him before he
set out, but was a few hours too late. Neither
had due preparations been made; shoes, shirts,
and stockings were wanting for three thousand
men ; the surgeons' chests were not supplied with
medicines ; many of the soldiers' arms were want-
ing ; the colonels and captains begged to have
new colours ; the soldiers to have hammocks ;

25 State Papers, edited, 1626.

26Brodie (vol. ii., p. 147) says that only ten sail of the
hundred ships that formed Buckingham's fleet were the
king's ships ; but it seems from these letters that the num-
ber was much greater.

22 LIFE AKD TIMES OF

and it was represented to the Duke that their food
ought not to be so inferior as it then was to that
of the sailors.^^

The Duke, according to Sir Henry Wotton's state-
ment, was personally employed on either element ;
both "Admiral and General," there seems to
have been a deficiency of discipline; several
murders were committed by the soldiery, and an
enforcement of martial law was recommended.

His haste and secrecy had, perhaps, another
object. It precluded those farewells which are
the most touching to those who encounter the
chances of war. In Buckingham's case, the part-
ing with his wife, whom he might never see again,
must have been mingled mth self-reproach as
well as sorrow. He evaded it therefore by flight,
notwithstanding a promise that he should see her
again, nay even by an assurance that he should not
go with the expedition to Khe.^^ This conduct
wounded the poor Duchess to the heart, and
it was perhaps these traits of conduct that
alienated her affections, and made her less re-
luctant to a second marriage than might have
been expected from one of her gentle nature.
Buckingham's apparent neglect would have been

" State Papers, vol. Ixvi., No. 19.

'^ Ibid., Domestic, vol. Ixviii., No. 3 ; see also Preface to
Calendar, by ISir. Bruce, p. 11.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 23

inexplicable were it not remembered how com-
pletely an unhallowed passion for another severs
and rends all domestic ties ; and that, long before
the links are broken, they are loosened by the first
deviation from duty, even in thought. The fol-
lowing letters were probably found among the
Duke's papers at the time of his death, and so
conveyed to the State-Paper Office, where they
have remained buried — the words of reproach
and sorrow, unheeded and unknown. They are
evidently strictly confidential ; but they explain
and excuse, if anything can excuse, the after-con-
duct of the Duchess. Much that followed the
Duke's decease is accounted for in this epistle : —
" My Lord, — Now as I do to plainly se you
have deceved me, and if I judge you accord-
ing to y" one * words I must condemn you not only
in this but in your accation | you so much
forswore. I confese I deed ever fere you wood
be catched, for there was no other likelyhoode
after all that showe but you must needs go — for
my part, but I have bine a very miserable woman
hitherto that never could have you keepe at
home, but now 1 will ever looke to be so till some
blessed ocasion comes to draw you quite from the
Cort, for ther is non more miserable than I am,
and till you leve this life of a cortyer w"^ you have
* Own. f Action.

24 LIFE AND TIMES OF

bine ever since I knewe you, I shall ever thjnke
myself unhappye. I am the unfortunate of all
outher, that ever v^rhen I am w"" child I must have
so much cause of sorrow as to have you go from me,
but I never had so great a cause of greeve as novr.
I hope God of his mercie give me patience, and if
I were sure ray soule wood be well I could wish
myself to be out of this miserable world, for till
then I shall not be happye : now I will no more
right to hope you do not goe, but must betake my-
self to my prayers for your safe and prosperous
jorney w* I will not fayle to do, and for your
quicke returne: but never, whilst I live, will I trust
you agane, nor never will put you to your oathe
for any thinge agane. I wonder why you sent
me word by crowe * that you wood se me shortly,
to put me in hopes : I pray God never woman may
love a man as I have done you that non may
fele that w*"^ I have done for you : sence ther is no
remedy but that you must go, I pray God to send
you gon quickly, that you may be quickly at home
again, and whosoever that wisht you to this jorney
by side yourselfe, that they may be punished for
it, because of a greete dele of greeve to me ; but
that is no mater now ther is no remedy but pa-
tience w'^ God send me. I pray God to send me

* Sir Sackville Crowe, who had been keeper of the Duke's
privy purse, and was now treasurer of the Navy.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 25

wise, and not to hurt myself w*^ greeving now. I am
very well, I thanke God, and so is Mall and so
I bid farewell. — Your poor greeved and obedient
wife, "K. Buckingham.

" I pray give order before you goe for the
Jewells w°'' I owe for .... burn this : for God's
sake, go not to lande: and pity me, for I feel (most
miserable) at this time : be not angry with me for
righting, for my hart is so full I cannot chuse, be-
cause I deed not looke for it.

"I would to Jesus that there were in any way
in the world to fetch you out of the jorney with
y' honor, if any prayers or any surfering of mine
could do it I were a most happy woman, but you
have send y'self and made me miserable : God for
give you for it.

" You have forgoten poore Dicke Turpin for all
y' promis to me.*

" 26tli June, 1627.
" To the Duke of Buckingham." 29

And again, on the sixteenth of June, was sent
another epistle, full of affection : —

* "My dere Lord, — I was very much joy'd at
the receiving y'" leter last night, and I will assure
you I do not only right cheerfully, but am so in

• The spelling of this original letter is preserved here :
the punctuation alone is altered.

2» State Papers, vol. Ixv., No. 3.

26 LIFE AND TIMES OF

my hart, and outwardly every on may see it, and
80 they do, for they tell me they ar glad to see me
so cheerfull, and I hop sences. I will assure you I
will not fayle to keep my promis w**' you ; I hope
you will not deseve me in breaking yours, for I pro-
test if you should, it wooid half kill me : and
I give you humble thanks for saying you will
likewise keepe your word with me in the outher
mane bisnes,* as you call it. I am very glad you cam
so well to y' jorneys end, but sorey it was so latt,
for Mr. Murey told me it was nine a clocke before
you gott thether. I pray lett me here as often
from you as you can, and send me word when I
shall be so hapye as to se you, for I shall think it
very longe, my lord : I thanke God I am very well,
80 farwelle, my dere Lord, your true loving, and
obedient wife,

" K. BUCKINGHAM.^^

" My Lord, for God sake lett some of that money
w*"^ you in tended to have at portsmouth to be left
w*^ Dick Oliver, if it be but five hundred pound to
pay Mr. Ward for a ringe and for a cross w^ you
gave to my Lady Exeter : for Jesus sake do this, for
I am so hanted with them for it, that I do not
know what to do ; if you will but send me 400/. I

30 Vol. xvii. No. 28.
* Main business.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 27

will dispatch them myself, for I cannot ster for
them.*

^^ I beseech you remember my cusin Turpine.

" To the Duke of Buckingham,
my dere husband." ^^

This epistle was soon followed by another letter,
expressive of great affection — the poor Duchess
begging of the Duke not to deceive her, and
to love no one but herself. " It was impossible,"
she writes, " for woman to love a man more than
she did him." Again she writes : — " beginning
to fear" that some hints in which he had encouraged
a hope of their meeting again before he sailed
were but deceptions, and that she should not see him
again, " she was grieved," she added, " that he
had not told her the truth." ^-

The Duke's example and presence, however,
after all these delays, had so great an effect both
on officers and men, that, on the second of June,
Sir Fulke Greville had to write word from Cowes
Castle, that he could, with a " perspective," see
a part of the fleet in Stokes Bay.^^ The Duke,
meantime, was harassed with difficulties; affairs
were far from being in a satisfactory condition ;
there was continual difficulty in getting seamen,

'* State Papers, 2, vol. Ixvii., date uncertain. No. 60.
« No. 96, Ibid. 3=^ S. P., vol. Ixvi., No. 14.

* For the Duke's creditors.

28 LIFE AND TIMES OF

and supplies of money were wanting to leave the
coast guarded, to repair the navy, to furnish
stores, and to pay the sailors on their return from
Khe.34

Meantime the town of Portsmouth was glad-
dened by the presence of the King, who walked
round the fortifications ; and, judging for himself
of the ruinous state of the bulwarks, promised
that they should be repaired. It was Buck-
ingham's intention at this time to build a new
dock at Portsmouth, in order to supersede that at
Chatham, and thus to benefit the naval service
incredibly .^^ Charles entered into this admirable
plan. Accompanied by Monsieur de Soubise,
the Earls of Rutland and Denbigh, Lord Carlisle
and the Lord Chamberlain, he went aboard
several of the ships, and dined at last in the
"Triumph." At table his conversation ran all day
on the armament, and he asked Sir John Watts,
in his own language, whether " she " (the
"Triumph") " could yar or not ? " The repast went
off with great hilarity : the Duke's musicians play-
ing merrily, and Archie the fool, and Sir Robert
Deale, adding to the general jollity. Well might
the Duchess, nevertheless, mourn at the departure
of her husband. The plague was raging in the fort

^^ State Papers, vol. Ixvi., No. 33.
« Ibid., Xo. 35 and 67.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 29

of La Rocbelle with as much fury as In Eng-
land.

At length, on the 27th of June, the Duke
sailed from Portsmouth. If we could accept as
sincere the good wishes which attended his depar-
ture, no mail ever left England with greater
assurances of devotion. " Secretary Conway was
ready," he declared, "to carry his hand all the world
cries for the Duke's service." " The Duke's good
works," he said, " came forth with a better grace
than he ever observed in the acts of any other
man. Besides his own duty, affection, and hum-
ble endeavour and thorough hope," he "joyed "
to consign to the Duke the duty, thankfulness,
faith, and affection of his posterity .^^

Secretary Cope sent a message of good wishes
in these terms : " God direct his ways and his
ends, and make them acceptable to himself and
all good men.^^ Even the Queen, between
whom and the Duke there had been so great a
coolness, sent him a letter, with best wishes. "Sir
George Goring, writing to his " ever and above
all most honoured Lord," the Duke of Buckingham,
engaged to " keep the Duke safe with the Queen."
The Duchess could not, however, he said, reconcile
herself to his departure, without one word of

'« State Papers, No. 71.
'abid., No. 76.

30 LIFE AND TIMES OF

farewell ; and the Duke's mother thought a " word
or two in " excuse would revive her much.^^

It was not therefore, it seems, the departure
alone of her husband, but his neglect, that pained
her. Fond, indeed, and true were the hearts that
mourned for his absence in peril. His sister, the
Countess of Denbigh, shed many a tear when she
missed the Duke at chapel on the morning of his
departure with the King.

His mother's blessing was given in these few,
but very expressive words : —

"My deare and most beloved Sonne, —
Your departure lies grevous at my hart, being
oprest with many motherly feres, and were it not
for the great joy I beheld in your face that pre-
sages some good fortunes, I had bene much worse,
but since it must be as it is, I will omit all (with
you) to God's pleasure, assuring my selfe he that
hath done so much for you, will make you a happy
instrument of his further glory, and your eternall
comfort ; to which end I will addres all my prayers
to our sweet Saviour Jesus, — being your ever most
assured loving Mother,

M. Buckingham.^^

" To the Duke of Buckingham."

The first letter, written according to the Duke's

MYol. 68, No. 18.
"Ibid., 105.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 31

orders, by Sir James Bagg, who accompanied
him, to Secretary Nicholas, shewed how unabated
v;as the impetuous and arbitrary spirit of the
favourite. ^' The Duke," Bagg wrote, "is very desir-
ous to have the refusers of the loan sent for to the
council, which will make the western people sen-
sible that Eliot and Coryten do not only lie by
the heels for my Lord's sake." ^^

He set out, however, in high spirits, excited by
the change of scene, and full of confidence in his
projected movements. It is agreeable to find a
concern for the comfort and health of the troops,
which amounted in all to between six and seven
thousand, under his command. On the twelfth of
July, the " Triumph," with nineteen great ships of
the fleet, was seen near St. Martin's, at Rochelle ;
King Charles's colours, the white flag, and the St.
Andrew's cross, in the main tops, being visible to
the dismayed French over in the port ; and
firing from our ships was instantly commenced.
Whilst these operations were going on, we find
Buckingham writing to Secretary Nicholas, de-
siring that victuals may be sent after them with
all possible speed ; and, above all, to take care that
the fieet be furnished out of hand with London
beer ; " the beer from Portsmouth," adds the
Lord- Admiral, " proves naught, and the soldier is
4" State Papers,vol. Ixviii., No. 25.

32 LIFE ANH TIMES OF

better satisfied with his beer, if it is good, than
with his victuals.'*^ At first the Duke's expedition
was attended with success ; a landing at St. Mar-
tin's point, opposite to Rochelle roads, was effected,
and the French, who attacked the invaders, were
driven back with considerable slaughter. On the
14th of July the troops advanced inland, and
took the small fort of St. Marie, and the town of
La Flotte ; on the eighteenth they gained posses-
sion of the town of St. Martin's. Great praises
of the Duke's valour were transmitted to England,
by a writer who penned his epistle on a drum's
head, near St. Martin's. The forces then beleaguered
the fort, erecting a battery of twenty-one pieces
of " ordnance." " The Lord-General," wrote
Sir Allen Apsley, "is the most industrious,
and in all business one of the first in
person in dangers. Last night the enemy's ord-
nance played upon his lodging, and one shot
lighted upon his bed, but did him no harm."'*^
"Unluckily," adds the same writer, "there was
no bread and beer thought of for the soldiers —
wheat instead of bread, and wine instead of
beer."

There appeared every prospect of a long siege,
unless reinforcements from England should arrive

*' State Papers, vol. Ixxi., No. 43.
*^ Ibid., No. 36

GEORGE VILLIERS. 33

to strengthen the Duke's efficiency. Whilst the
fort held out, the citizens of La Rochelle knew not
which side to take. The Duke, every writer from
St. Martin's agreed, behaved in the most admirable
manner, shewing qualities which no one suspected
him of possessing. ^^His care is infinite, his courage
undauntable, his patience and continual labours
beyond what could have been expected." Such
was the language of one of Secretary Conway's
correspondents. " Himself," continues this writer,
" views the grounds, goes to the trenches, visits the
batteries, observes where the shell doth light, and
what effects it works." ''^ The greatest vigilance
was indeed necessary, owing to the carelessness of
some of the officers ; there was no one of any great
capacity except the Duke and Sir John Burgh —
a brave but rough soldier, whose plain speaking
was often offensive to Buckingham. His chief ad-
viser in military affairs was Monsieur Dulbier, a
man of great experience, but devoid of any striking
talents.'^''

Meantime the poverty of the Treasury at home
impeded the speedy supplies for which Bucking-
ham incessantly wrote. It was his urgent neces-
sity that stimulated the unjust and extortionate
collection of the loan — in default of contributions
to which imprisonment was the instant puni8h-

" State Papers, vol. Ixxii., No 18. " Ibid.

VOL. III. D

34 LIFE AND TIMES OF

ment. Several Frenchmen, also, were about this
time committed for trying to allure Sir Sackville
Crowe's workmen into France to cast ordnance.'''^

Disheartened by the delay of the supplies, Buck-
ingham wrote word that he was making trenches,
but, owing to the stony nature of the ground, they
went on slowly, whilst the Fleet was dispersed
round the Island of Rhe; so that unless some
speedy succour came, the expedition could scarcely
be benefited by anything that might be sent. The
citadel, he considered, would be impregnable, if once
the fortifications were perfected ; in its present
unfurnished state, the only way would be to take
it by famine. Already thirty musketeers who had
been sent out to get water had been captured.
ToiraSjthe Governor, was likely *Ho make the place
his death-bed." The enemy were strong, and the
siege would doubtless be a long one, but he was
confident that the King would not let him want
aid. By the advice of the Due de Soubise, he had
issued a proclamation, setting forth that the King's
intention was only to assist the Protestants.'*^

But the Protestants in La Kochelle unhappily
refused the aid* of the ever-hated English. Louis
XIL was ill ; the court was divided into factions :

« State Papers, vol. Ixxii., No. 28. *• Ibid., No. 29.

* This letter is dated July 28, which contradicts Hume's
assertion that the Duke had given the Governor five days
respite. — See Hume, Life of Charles I., 1627.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 35

and favourable terms were even offered the Hu-
guenots, provided that they did not admit the
English into the citj.'*^

The Duke, during all this time of deep anxiety,
attended religious service daily, and was, it is possi-
ble, the more inclined to have recourse to the One
Source of help and safety, an attempt to assassinate
him having been made whilst he was beleaguering
Fort St. Martin. No impression was made upon
the enemy, who were three thousand strong in
garrison. Mines were resorted to ; two water-
pipes were cut off, and the besieged were driven
out of their outworks; but Buckingham wrote
word from the camp that his army, without a sup-
ply, would soon not only be disabled from continu-
ing the siege, but would lose what they had
gained.'^^ His anxiety on this point was expressed
in every letter, and in the most earnest terms, and
it was fully responded to by Charles I., but still a
reinforcement of two thousand men which had
been promised did not arrive. Money could not
be raised, and the King was obliged to wait the
issue of " three bargains " offered to him before he
could send out either provisions or men.

Nothing could be more vexatious than the posi-
tion of the Duke. He was within a distance of

*^ Broclie, vol. ii., p. 151.

" State Papers, Ixxii., No. 87 and 90.

D 2

36 LIFE AND TIMES OF

what was then three or four days' sail from
England — his credit, his honour, perhaps his life,
were staked on the relief of the Huguenot citizens
of La Rochelle. Forty days, nevertheless, elapsed
without even a message by fisher-boat reaching
the famishing troops, "who were well supplied
with wheat, but had neither means to grind, or
ovens to bake it."'*^

It was not until the twenty-seventh of August,
two calendar months since the expedition had
sailed from Portsmouth, that arms, ammunition, and
victuals were sent off by Nicholas — "honest
Nicholas," as the Duke used to call him ; but no
money came. Of that which was intended for the
Duke, some was raised by his own stewards, but
was detained on account of pressing claims in his
own affairs. The want of money was almost dis-
tracting. Nothing could be extracted from the
Lord Treasurer Middlesex ; even at home the
young Queen Henrietta Maria declared herself
to be terribly incommoded for want of it.

" Send us men," was the burden of every letter
from the camp; and a small contribution from a
quarter little suspected of patriotism was the an-
swer to this appeal — Lady Hatton furnishing six
stalwart volunteers from Purbeck, clothed and
armed from head to foot.^°

*» Letter from Sir Allen Apsley to Secretary Nicholas.
60 State Papers, voL Ixxv., No. 20.

GEORGE VILLIEKS. 37

The Duke's mother, too, after the manner of
mothers, remitted him some money, and, at the
same time sent him, as mothers do on such occa-
sions, a reproving letter. But, unhappily, she who
had implanted the lessons of worldly wisdom, and
those alone, and whose whole life had been a com-
mentary on those precepts, could not hope to in-
fluence her son for good. She indeed reaped as
she had sown. One cannot, however, avoid pity-
ing the alarm which was soon to be so fearfully
realized by the events which succeeded the fatal
enterprize.

"My deerly BELOVED SONNE — I am very
sorrie you have entered into so great busines, and so
little care to supply your wants as you see by the
little hast that is mad to you. I hop your eys wil be
oppened to se what a greate goulfe of businesses
you have put your selfe into, and so little regarded
at home, wher all is mery and well plesed, though
the shepes be not vitiled as yet, nor mariners to go
with them : as for monyis the kingdom will not
supply your expences, and every man grones
under the burden of the tymes. At your departuer
from me, you tould me you went to make pece,
but it was not from your hart : this is not the
way for you to imbroule the hole christian world
in warrs, and then to declare it for religion, and
make God a partie to this wofull afFare so far

38 LIFE AND TIMES OF

from God as light and darknes ; and the high way
to make all christian Princes to bend ther forces
against us, that other ways in policie would have
taken our parts. You knew the worthy King your
master * never liked that way, and as far as I can
perseve ther is non that crise not out of it. You
that acknowleg the infinite mercy and providence
of all mightie god in preserving your life amongest
so many that false doune ded on every side
you, and spares you for more honor to himself, if
you would not be wilfully blind and overthro your
selfe, body and soule, for he hath not I hope
made y so great and gevin you so many exsellent
parts as to suffer you to die in a dich, — let me that
is your mother intreat you to spend some of your
ouers in prayers, and meditating what is fitting
and plesing in His sight that has done so much for
you, and that honor you so much strive for : bend
it for his honor and glorie, and you will sone find
a chang so great that you would not for all the
kinddomes in w^orld for goe, if you might have
them at your disposing : and do not think it out of
fere and timberousnes of a woman I perswad you
to this ; — no, no, it is that I scorne. I w^ould have
you leve this bluddy way in which you are exept
into, 1 am sure contray to your natuer and dispo-
sition. God hath blessed you w^th a vartuis wife
* King James.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 39

and swet daughter, with an other sonne, I hope,
if you do not distroy it by this way you take : she
can not beleve a word you speke, you have so
much deseved herself e : she works carefully for
you in sending monies with the supply that is now
in coming, though slowly : it would have bene
worse but for her. But now let me come to my
selfe. If I had a world you should command it,
and whatsoever I have ore shall have it : it is all
yours by right, but, alas, I have layd out that mony
I had, and mor by a thousand ponds, by your con-
sent in bying of Gould smise Grang which I am
very sory for now. I never dremed you should
have neded any of my helpe, for if I had ther
should have wanted all and my selfe before you.
I hop this servant will bring us better newes of
your resolutions then yett we here of; which I
pray hartily for and give almass for you that it
will pleas Allmighty God to deret your hart the
best way to his honor and glorie. I am ever
"your most loving affectionat sad Mother,
" M. Buckingham.

'' To the Duke of Buckingham." "

Very different was the style in which the affec-
tionate-hearted Duchess thus addressed him. The
characters of these two women are singularly con-
trasted in these letters: —

*i Vol. Ixxv., No. 22, State Paper Office, Conway Papers.

40 LIFE AXD TIMES OF GEORGE VILLIERS.

"My dere Lord — Already do I begine to
thinke what a longe time I shall live without
seeing you : truly there can be no greater affliction
to me in the world than your absences, and I con-
fese you have layd a very harde comand upon me
in biding me be merey now in y absences, but I
will assure yo nothing can be harde to me when I
know I pleas you in the doing of it, thoughe
outherways it would be : — remember your promis
to me, but do not deseve me, for now I believe any
thinge you saye, and love me only still, for it is
impossible for woman to love mane more than I
do you, and you have left me very well satisfied
w*^ you. My Lord, I have sent you a letter which
I beseech you give to the Commissioner about my
sister Wasington's deat, because without that
my Lord Savage can do nothing, and the touther
is a warrant to Oliver for the allowances you give
her, w** he refuses to paye w*^ out one : — good my
Lord, dispatch Dicke Turpin, and I shall thinke
myself infinitely obliged to you for it. I am very
well, I thanke God : you shall be sure to heare
often, and do not forget to right often to me and
remember your promis, thus wishing you aU hap-
py nes, I rest, your trewe loving and obedent wife,

" K. Buckingham.

" Pray remember my duty to my Father.
''To the Duke of Buckingham. "*2

" Vol. Ixvii., No. 60, Conway Papers.

CHAPTER 11.

THE DELAY IN SENDING PROVISIONS — THE IMPOSSIBILITY
OF REDUCING THE CITADEL BY FAMINE — THE DUKE's
OWN MEANS WERE EMBARKED IN THE CAUSE — SIR

JOHN BURGH — HIS DEATH LETTER OF SIR EDWARD

CONWAY TO HIS FATHER — BUCKINGHAM'S SANGUINE
NATURE — EFFORTS OF SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS.

43

CHAPTEE II.

In spite of incessant appeals to the authorities at
home, the end of August arrived, and no provi-
sions were received at the camp. The Duke
then addressed Sir William Becher, enclosing a
letter to be shewn to the King, stating that, if pro-
visions did not arrive within twenty days, it would
be impossible to detain the mariners at Rhe. Pro-
visions, the Duke said, were getting low ; and the
cannon did little harm to the citadel, which would
only be subdued by famine.^^ All seemed of no
avail. " Everything," as Sir William Becher com-
plained to Nicholas, " seemed to go backwards."
Even the Duke's own money, which he had wished
to advance to the victuallers, was still kept back by
his stewards ; and six hundred quarters of wheat
belonging to him, which he had left at Portsmouth

'' State Papers, vol. Ixxv., No. 53 and 57.

44 LIFE AND TIMES OF

as a supply, were still in that seaport. One cannot
help echoing the exclamation of Sir Edward Con-
way, in writing to his father, General Conway —
"If we lose this island it shall be your faults in Eng-
land ! " Every letter, meantime, spoke of the care-
lessness of life shown by the Duke, of the sanguine
nature that encouraged others, and of his great affec-
tion to the King, and to the cause he had under-
taken.^'* The difficulties which were encountered in
getting provisions together are almost inconceivable
at the present day : the merchants refused to sup-
ply anything that would not yield them fifteen
per cent ; but at last, Sir Edward Nicholas pre-
vailed with some Bristol speculators, his friends,
to send provisions, on condition that their men
should not be pressed into the service, and that
the vessels should be laden with salt.^^ This aid
was, indeed, timely, for the troops were beginning
to consider themselves neglected and forgotten by
their country .^^ And a great loss contributed to
the general dejection. Sir John Burgh, the brave
though uncourtly officer who had quarrelled with
the Duke, was shot through the body in the
trenches, and killed. Sir Edward Conway, writing
to his father, thus simply, and as a true soldier,
remarks, that " the sorrow of the Duke, and the

•« State Papers, 26. » Ibid., 34.

"Ibid., Iviiii., 65.

GEOKGE VTLLIERS. 45

honours he doth in his burial, are sufficient en-
couragements to dying." " There was some dif-
ference" he adds, '^ between Burgh and the Duke?
through some inconsiderate words, on the part of
former, which were by the Duke so freely for-
given, and through these Conway thought " an
honest man and the Duke could not be enemies."
By Buckingham's orders the old general's remains
were sent home, to be interred in Westminster
Abbey. " The army," the same writer relates,
"grows daily weaker — purses are empty, ammuni-
tion consumes, winter grows, their enemies in-
crease in number and power, and they hear nothing
from England." ^^ At length, on the twenty-first of
September a letter* came from one of Bucking-
ham's friends. Sir Kobert Pye, who, whilst declar-
ing that the reinforcements were in great forward-
ness, begged of the Duke to *' consider the end,"
and to reflect on the exhausted state of the re-
venue, which was forestalled, he states, for three
years ; much land had been sold, all credit lost, and
Government was at the utmost shift with the com-
monwealth. " Would that I did not know so much
as I do," added the courtier. Deputy-Lieutenants

" State Papers, vol. Ixxviii., No. 71.

* Edward Conway was the eldest son of the first Baron
Conway of Rugby, in the County of Warwick, and suc-
ceeded his father, an eminent and popular Minister under
James I. and Charles I. — Burke's Extinct Peerage.

46 LIFE AND TIMES OF

were supine, and Justices of the Peace of the
better sort willing to be put out of the commis-
sion : — every man " doubting and providing for
the worst," so that all were in a sort of panic.
All these discomforts were ascribed to the loan,
and the loan was the consequence of the projec-
ted war with France and Spain. Too late did
Charles, who had hitherto left everything to the
Duke, ^'knit his soul unto business," and endea-
♦ vour to provide for the fruitless contest.

The month of October proved even more dis-
astrous to the English than September. Hopes
were entertained of a surrender. Two gentlemen
from the citadel came to treat of surrendering ;
and, after trying to make conditions, asked leave
till the next day to consider them. The night was
dark and stormy; notice was given of the approach
of an enemy ; the Duke put out to sea himself,
but the barques took a wrong direction, and the
enemy's fleet of thirty-five barques broke through
that of the English, and the Admiral of the Fleet
was taken prisoner. Fourteen or fifteen of the
enemy's barques, however, furnished with a
month's provisions, got through to the citadel,
which was thus relieved. On account of the
sickness produced by the immoderate eating of
grapes, and also considering the uncertainty of
supplies from England, there were many of the

GEORGE VILLIERS. 47

Colonels who now recommended retiring from be-
fore Rhe; and so discouraged was the Duke at
this failure, that he was on the point of going
back to England, when an offer from the citi-
zens of La Rochelle to take a thousand sick
into their town, and to send to the camp five
hundred men with provisions, encouraged him
to wait for reinforcements.

On this incident the fortune of the whole siege
seemed to hinge, and it must have been extremely-
tantalizing, when the citadel was on the very eve of
surrendering, to find that relief had been poured
into it by the enemy. No one could imagine how
it had been managed. There was a nightly watch
of six hundred boats ; the Duke was generally
among the men in these boats, or in the trenches,
till near midnight ; even the common sailors pitied
his exertions, and felt for his anxieties. Then
there was a battery of seven cannon, that fired
upon the very landing-place, beneath the Fort,
besides sunken collies that played on the same
spot. The wind was then fair for Rhe, and the
merchant ships that had been hired were making
for the Island ; but the others were detained,
since no supplies from England had arrived to
enable them to act. In the midst of all his un-
certainties the following letter from the Duchess
was despatched to the Duke : —

48 LIFE AND TIMES OF

" My Lord — I ded the last night here very-
good nwse that you had taken the ships w''^ cam
to releve the fort, which I hope will so much dis-
curage them as now they will be out of all hope, and
quickly yeelde it upe, and then I hope you will
remember your promise in making hast home, for
I will assure you both for the publicke, and our
private good here in cort, ther is great neede of
you, for your great Lady,* that you believe is so
much your frend, uses your f rends something worse
then when you were here, and your favour has
made her so great as now shee cares for nobody :
and poore Gordon is the basist used that ever any
creature was, for now you ar not here to take his
part they do flie most fercly uppon him, but when
you com I hope all things will be mended. I pray
say nothing of this, and be sure to burne this leter
when you have rede it. I thanke God I am very
well. Mall is very well, I thanke God. I thanke
you for the orange water you sent me, but yett I
dare not us it coming from the Governor,! thus
praying for your health, in hast, I rest

" your trewe loving and obedent wife,

" K. Buckingham.

" 10th Octr."
1627(?) — (on the hack of the original letter in pencil.)

* Probably Lady Hatton.

t The Governor of La Rochelle, whom the Duchess seems
to have mistrusted.

GEOKGE VILLIEKS. 49

Whilst money was thus called for in vain, to
carry on the war, the defences at home were daily
becoming more and more ruinous. The castles in
the Downs were in danger of being swallowed by
the sea: and water got into the moat of Deal
Castle; the Lanthorn of that fort was wholly
destroyed, the loss of which, being a sea-mark,
was a source of bitter complaint ; Walmer Castle
was in ruins.^^ Friends there were who wrote to
Buckingham to urge strongly on his attention all
that was threatening the country, and to suggest
his return ; amongst these the Viscount Wilmot*
was one whose expressions were modified by great
kindness, and evident partiality for the Duke;
whilst advice came less graciously from Viscount
Wimbledon, whose recent failure must have ren-
dered his comments on the affair far from palatable.

Before his letter of suggiestion and advice
could have arrived, Buckingham had, however,
consented to a retreat. The state of despair into
which his troops had been thrown by the rein-
forcement of the citadel, and their discovery of the
false representations of the amount of provisions
on which the besieged could count, induced him

*8 State Papers, vol. Ixxxv., No. 7.

* Viscount Wilmot of Athlone, here referred to, was tke
grandfather of John Wilmot, the dissolute, yet penitent,
Earl of Rochester, whose death has been described by
Bishop Burnet.

VOL. III. E

50 LIFE AND TIMES OF

to take this fatal step. Presently, however, better
information was obtained; and though the sick
had been sent into La Rochelle, and the ordnance
embarked, the vacillating Duke again determined
to " stay and bide it out."

In the midst of this perplexity, on the fifteenth
of October, a valuable auxiliary was sent in the
person of Charles, Viscount Wilmot.^^ Lord
Holland also set sail, but the Duke now found
it diflScult to persuade the men to await the long
promised assistance. " Pity our misery !" was their
cry. The people were "looking themselves and
their perspectives" (as telescopes were then styled)
"blind in watching for Lord Holland from the tops
of houses ;" yet that nobleman lingered at Ports-
mouth, pretending to believe that Buckingham,
who, he said, he knew "would stay till the last
hite,^^ might be supplied with victuals from the
west. Then he feared also, as he stated, that the
Duke might have sailed towards home; that he was
ill supplied with provisions ; and that he might be
obliged to put back into France or Spain. The
King, meantime, was wondering and asking why
Holland lingered first at Portsmouth and then in
the Downs ? Charles's impatience was expressed
with a force unusual to his gentle character. Until
the eighteenth of October, no one in England, it

"Letter from Viscount Wilmot to Secretary Conway,
State Papers, vol. Lkxx. No. 65.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 51

appears, knew of the great distress into which
Buckingham and the forces were plunged by
the failure of the supplies.®^

Whilst the wind was against the Duke's return,
no one could suppose that he would throw up the
whole end of the expedition, and sail homewards ;
yet reports of his preparing to do so continually
got abroad, as may be seen from the following
letters from the Countess of Denbigh, Bucking-
ham's only sister, by whom he was much
beloved : —

'^MouST DEERE BROTHER — I hope these nue
supplys will give you such advantage to you, that
your busines will be ended to your honer and
contentment. I pray be not be to hasty to ingage
your selfe in any other afares till you see howe
you shall be supplyed. I would you could but
see our afares here : wee ar sometymes for Ware,
some tymes a showe of Peace : poor I must be
patiend: I have much to speeke to lett you
knowe of all particulars, but I am a bad relater of
thinges. I will promis you to play my part in
patience, and when you com you well not be lede
away with them that doth not love you, and be
false to you and all yours. I pray God to bles you :
forgit not to rede of the booke I gave you, and if

«° State Papers, Ixxxii., vol. 18.

E 2

52 LIFE AND TIMES OF

you will take phisick this fall of the leafe you
shall do very well, so I take my leave.

^^ your loving sister,
" 20th Octr. 1627. Su. Denbigh." ^i

" To the Duke of Buckingliam."

*' MousT DEERE BROTHER — I hope you Will be

sure of supplyes before you undertake to go to

Kocchell, for ether ther hath beene some grate

mistake or neglicte : that you [should have beene]

in any distrecs, it doth grefe my very hart and sole.

I heare you have beene in great wantes, but I

hope before this you are released. I pray be not

to venterus, and I hope you well not forgit the

booke I gave you, to looke over it often, at the

leaste morning and evening, so with my best love,

I take my leave.

" your loveing sister,

"26th Octr., 1627. Su. Denbigh."

" To the Duke of Buckingham, my deere Brother." ^-

It must have been peculiarly aggravating, amidst
the anxieties of the Duchess and Lady Denbigh,
to find that all the Duke's perplexities, priva-
tions, and sufferings had not in the slightest
degree mitigated his unpopularity at home. It
must have been still more irritating to know that,
whilst the troops before St. Martin's Fort were in

^1 State Papers, vol. Lsxxii. 39.
^2 Vol. Ixxxiii , No. 3.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 53

a state of starvation, there was the greatest dis-
order and carelessness in sending the supplies.
" There is," Lord Wilmot wrote to Conway,
^'neither commissary of victuals, nor any one to
give account of arms. They find one thousand
muskets, but no pikes nor armour." Meantime the
Duke's army were in want of clothes, and mostly
went barefoot.^^ Then Lord Holland, when at last
on board the fleet, complained that there was no
one officer or creature who could tell what there
was aboard the provision ships, five of which were
Dutch, and might steal away at any moment.
There seems to have been neither patriotism at
home, in regard to this expedition, nor honour in
allies, nor even common honesty in the comman-
ders of hired vessels.

For several days the wind continued contrary to
Lord Holland's departure from Plymouth. The
twenty-sixth of October had arrived, and the Duke,
as it appeared from private letters, had " stayed it
out till the last bit of bread :" — such is the expres-
sion of John Ashbumham, a devoted partisan of
Buckingham's: fears were even entertained that
the fleet and army were lost ; then " such a rotten,
miserable fleet set out to sea as no man ever saw ;"
" our enemies," Ashburnham adds, " seeing it, may

«' Letter from Lord Wilmot to Secretary Conway, State
Papers, No. 45.

54 LIFE AND TIMES OF

scoff at our nation." Lord Holland, who had been
expected by the Duke on the fifteenth, was still
waiting for a fair wind at Plymouth on the twenty-
seventh,^'' employing himself there in trying to ex-
pedite recruits^ and to send out a Scottish regiment.
"In his responsibility" (as he wrote to the
King) " he had provided two or three hundred
live sheep, to go out for the sick men, who die for
want of fresh meat f—^' three thousand pairs of
stockings for the men in the trenches ; physic also,
and an apothecary." Despair, however, possessed
all minds ; and a report now began to disquiet even
the sanguine, stating that the French were land-
ing an army on the Island of Rhe. The report
was true; one fatal mistake had been made by
Buckingham — he had left the fort of St. Pre
unmolested.

This castle, seated, as its name bespeaks, in a
meadow, had appeared too paltry a conquest to
the sanguine and impetuous Buckingham, when he
had first landed at Rhe. He had passed it un-
touched, but it was now well garrisoned with
French troops from the mainland; still its im-
portance was not fully comprehended until the
fatal moment came for a retreat from before Fort
St. Martin. It is evident that the Duke had
overlooked that which should have been a pre-
" State Papers, No. 3 and 8.

GEOEGE VILLIERS. 55

Hminary step in his march ; and that his attention
had been distracted by an undertaking too arduous
for a man whose life had been passed in a very dif-
ferent battle-field from that on which he now ven-
tured his fortunes. Hitherto, he had been a mere
civilian, knowing nothing of war, but in the Tourney
— nothing of nautical matters, but in gala-vessels,
or some favourite ship ; and little of the sea, but on
maps. Well might his mother caution him not to
engage in too " great business ;" it was not, in his
case, an idle warning, but desperation had impelled
him to make the fatal experiment of being at once
General and Admiral in a contest with warriors
so perfect as the French. Had he been reinforced
in good time, — had the measures at home been
directed by energy, or even by good faith
merely— the events which so overclouded his later
actions with a shade of shame might not have
happened. From the moment when the French
occupied the Fort St. Pre, the game was,
however, virtually lost.

Meantime, Charles I., it is manifest from his
letters to Lord Holland, was beginning to be se-
riously displeased with the negligence of the Com-
missariat Department. He was also desirous of
impressing Lord Holland, not only with the great
importance of the result of the expedition, but like-
wise of his anxiety for the safety of the Duke, " to

56 LIFE AND TIMES OF

whom," the King writes, "whosoever does the
best service is the most happy, be it for life
or death." 6^

So late as the latter end of October, Bucking-
ham was resolved either to stay in the island if
supplies came, — or, if they did not arrive, to put
himself and the army into La Rochelle, and " run
their fortune." ^^ This was his last resolution. At
one time he had fully determined on leaving, for
some of his soldiers were barefooted : others were
sick of the siege, and had neither bread, meat, nor
beer ; but the Due de Soubise had re-assured him,
and, promising eight hundred men from La Ro-
chelle, had encouraged Buckingham to decide on
scaling the Fort St. Martin.^^ Meantime, Lord
Holland did not appear : he was still at Plymouth.
Contrary to the advice of the mariners, he had
forced the whole fleet out of the Catwaters into
Plymouth Sound ; but it was driven back by the
"cruellest storms" of twenty hours' duration that
had ever been known. Great damage was done :
it was now necessary to stay to repau' the crazy
ships — the wind, as Lord Wilmot expressed it,
" did so overblow." The violence of the elements,
and the knavery or indifference of man, seemed

8* State Papers, — Letter of Secretary Conway to the Earl
of Holland, vol. Ixxxiii., No. 12.
«« Ibid., No. 17.
•^ Ibid., No. 27.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 57

combined to keep back aid from the hungry soldiers
in the Island of Rhe, and to ruin their general.

Perhaps the best, or, as many persons think,
the only excuse for Buckingham in the step he
eventually took, is contained in a touching letter
from Sir Allen Apsley to " Honest Nicholas."
Apsley, described in one of the letters from the
camp as " very sick and melancholy," dates his
letter '^ from his sick and lately senseless bed on
board the Nonsuch." ^^ " No man," he begins by
saying, "has he more cause more faithfully and
more affectionately to love than Nicholas." " His
soul melts with tears to think that a State sliould
send so many men, and no provision at all for
them. But for Nicholas's provision, through mer-
chants, they had been miserably starved long since."
He then goes on to relate that " there were about
five thousand seamen and four thousand landsmen
in great distress for meat and drink. The army
had already lost four thousand men, and all their
commanders."

A sort of responsive testimony to the Duke's
sufferings, and to the cruel neglect of the authori-
ties at home, is conveyed in a letter from William,
Earl of Exeter, to Buckingham. " What cannot
be obtained by your courage," writes the descend-

«8 State Papers. The letter is dated Nov. 1., 1627. Vol.
Ixxxiv., Ko. 1.

58 LIFE AND TIMES OF

ant of the great Burleigh, " must in the end be
submitted to your patience." K the Duke " sowed
onions, he would be sure of onions; if he sowed
men, they are in danger, for the most part, to
come up ingrates." " The indolence," he adds,
" which his highness has cause to resent, is as
great infidelity as is that of commission." Then
he cites examples of great generals, who, with-
out loss of honour, abandoned enterprizes which
could not be accomplished ; what the Duke had
already done was, he said, " miraculous." ^^

Neither did the Duke receive any encourage-
ment to remain, even from one of his best friends.
Sir George Goring, the faithful adherent in the
great rebellion of Charles I.* Goring had, in a
former letter, represented to the Duke how futile
would be any dependence on supplies ; for the
" City," he wrote, " whence all present money
must now be raised, is so infected by the malig-
nant part of this kingdom, that no man will lend
any money upon any security, if they think it
will go the way of the Court, which is now made
diverse from the State — such is the present dis-

•9 State Papers, Ibid., Nov. 16. Dated London, Nov. 3.

* He was afterwards successively Baron Goring and
Earl of Norwich ; his son, General Goring, whose charac-
ter is so ably drawn by Clarendon, pre-deceased his father
by two years ; both titles became extinct in 1672. — Burke^s
Extinct Peerage.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 59

temper." The King, it was said, might choose
to break all his bonds, and then, when should
they be paid?" Under these circumstances, Goring
strongly advised the Duke to return home, and
'* to curb the insolence of the French some other
way." 70

On the very day on which this letter was
written, a newsletter, dated on board the Tri-
umph, in the Road of Rhe, announced that the em-
barkation of the troops had already taken place.
La Rochelle had by that time been completely
blockaded by the French — too late it had declared
for the English. For the safety of that city it
was essential that Buckingham should remain ;
but, although he has been almost universally con-
demned for retiring, it is evident that the want
of provisions, and the delay of reinforcements
from England, extenuate, if they do not wholly
justify, that step. He had now been expecting
Lord Holland's arrival for nearly a fortnight, and
Lord Holland was still at Teignmouth — having
been again driven back by contrary winds.'^^

During all this time, no words could describe
all the distress of mind suffered by Buckingham
better than those of his biographer and attached
adherent, Sir Henry Wotton. ^'In his countenance,

'" State Papers, vol. Ixxxiv., No. 20.
" Nov. 6.

60 LIFE AND TIMES OF

which is the part that all eyes interpret, no open
alteration," even after his reverses, could be de-
tected, but the suppressed feelings were the more
poignant for that disguise.

" For certain it is," adds Sir Henry, " that to
his often-mentioned secretary, Dr. Mason, whom
he had in pallet near him, for natural ventilation
of all his thoughts, he broke out into passionate
expressions of anguish, declaring, in the absence
of all other ears and eyes, ' that never his dis-
patches to divers princes, nor the great business
of a fleet, of an army, of a siege, of a treaty, of
war, of peace, both on foot together, and all ot
them in his head at a time, did not so much
trouble his repose as a conceit that some at home,
under His Majesty, of whom he had well deserved,
were now content to forget him." ^^

Wotton partly ascribes the Duke's failure to one
cause — an improvident confidence, brought with
him from a Court where fortune had never de-
ceived him. Besides, he adds, " We must con-
sider him yet but rude in the profession of arms,
though greatly of honour, and zealous in the
cause."

By others he is considered to have committed
an error in not having first attacked the Isle of
Oleron, which was not only weakly garrisoned,
" Beliquiae Wottonianee, p. 227.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 61

but well supplied with wine and oil, and other
provisions. But his great mistakes arose from
his impulsive nature — a disposition often the con-
comitant of energy. Without waiting for the
advice of Soubise, he had invested St. Martin's ;
in marching to St. Martin's, he had overlooked
the Meadow Castle, as St. Pre was called by his
soldiers ; and that fort was now the chief impedi-
ment to his retreat.

Having been urged in vain by Soubise to
remain, Buckingham aimed one last blow. He
attempted to storm Fort St. Martin. He was
perhaps incited to this rash and fruitless act by
the taunting conduct of the besieged, who^ know-
ing that he intended to starve them into submis-
sion, hung provisions on the walls. No breach
was made, and the assault had no other result
than the loss of soldiers. A retreat was then
decided on. The forces could not now return by
St. Pre, and a new route was to be taken. A
causeway amid deep salt-marches was their only
choice ; and this causeway, or mound, was termi-
nated by a bridge that joined to E,he the second
island of Vie. Here no fort to protect the
bridge had been erected, and there was therefore
no passage over to Vie. The French had all this
time been close in pursuit. Buckingham was
in the rear, and, as a contemporary observed, " had

62 LIFE AND TIMES OF

like to have been snapped," ^^ if he had not ridden
through the troops on the narrow causeway,
where more than eight or ten could not ride
abreast. It was not until the English had
reached the Island of Yie that the French chose
to attack them ; then the delay of forming a
bridge gave the pursuers time to make their onset
with an advantage they could not have had on the
causeway, where a handful of men might have set
at defiance a host. The French drove the Eng-
lish horse on Sir Charles Birch's regiment of
foot, and both he and Sir John Radcliffe were
killed. A hot skirmish ensued. "Our men,"
says a newsletter, " spoiled one another, and
more were drowned than slain. The Duke was
the last man in the rear, and carried himself
beyond expression bravely." ^'* Ultimately the
bridge was made good, and on the following day
the embarkation of the crest-fallen English was
safely effected. Buckingham was of course
blamed by one faction, and excused by the other,
for this failure. Denzil, afterwards Lord Holies,
the great leader of the Presbyterian party, a
man who, during his whole life, never changed
sides, censured him in forcible terms, quoting the

" Letter of Denzil Holies to Sir Thomas Wentworth.
Strafford Letters, vol. i., p. 42.
'* News Letter, State Papers, Ibid., No. 24.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 63

words of one whom he styles " a prophet of their
own sides," in saying that the enterprize was "ill
begun, badly carried on, and the result accord-
ingly most lamentable." " It was a thousand to
one," Holies adds, " that all our ships had not been
lost." Ten days' provision alone remained ; when
that was exhausted the Duke must have sub-
mitted to the enemy.'^ No one disputed Buck-
ingham's courage; he brought back, as Hume
expresses it, " the vulgar praise of courage and
personal bravery." He was justly, nevertheless,
condemned for the risk he ran in the retreat;
for, it was said, had the General been lost, what
would have become of the troops, who had re-
treated in disorder ?

The letters in the State-Paper Office, to which
reference has been made, though they do not
refute the charge that the enterprize was "ill
begun," exonerate Buckingham, nevertheless,
from much blame : he had every reason to expect
reinforcements, for which he was continually
begging ; no Commander-in-Chief was ever left in
a predicament more cruel ; and he was justified
in retiring by the certainty that provisions must
soon fail, and the uncertainty of any fresh supply
from the tardy and corrupt authorities at home.

The confusion in the retreat was stated to be
'5 Strafford Letters.

64 LIFE AND TIMES OF

sucli that " no man," Denzil Holies wrote, " can
tell what was done, nor no account can be given
how any man was lost — not the lieutenant-
colonel how his colonel, nor lieatenant how his
captain, which was a sign that things were ill
carried." " This every man alone knows — that
since England was England, it received not so
dishonourable a blow."

The loss was indeed severe ; thirty standards
had been taken, but more lost; four colonels
killed, and about two thousand of our men
perished during the retreat.

On the tenth of November the fleet left Rhe,
and on the twelfth it was seen in Portsmouth
Roads, Buckingham's ship, the Triumph, being
distinguished. The Duke, however, who was re-
turning home under such painful circumstances,
was not in that vessel. As the fleet neared Ply-
mouth, he quitted his ship, and, getting into a
ketch, went into the port, in order to gather some
account why the succours so long expected at
St. Martin's had never arrived. He had also
another step to take — that of sending off an im-
mediate despatch to the King, in order that His
Majesty might be apprized by himself alone of
the great loss and failure incurred in the attempt
on Rhe. The messenger was sworn, on forfei-
ture of his head, to secrecy ."^^

'« State Papers, vol. kxxv., No. 56 and 57.

GEORGE -VILLIERS. 65

" Charles received the news," Conway wrote, in
reply, "with the wisdom, courage, and constancy
of a great king, and has declared so much kingly
justice and goodness, with affection, to the Duke,
as renders his grace, in the king's judgment, and
in the opinion ol' all those who heard him, clear
from all imputation, and honoured by his actions :
all guiltiness remaining upon this State for what-
soever fault or misconduct is come to that army."
Considering the delay in sending succour, the
event was thought to have been better than could
have been expected.'^'

A letter soon followed from Sir Edward Nicholas,
informing the Duke that, six weeks ago, the state
of provisions at Rhe was mentioned to the King
and the Lords, " but was not credited." He re-
commended his patron to do nothing until after
his arrival in London : all things were at a stand,
he says, until the Duke should give them " life
and direction." Secretary Conway, in a letter to
his son, even "joyed" to find so few had been
killed, and so little, "in point of honour," lost,
taking the greatest loss to be in the quality of some
half dozen persons."^^

Three days after the Duke had landed at Ply-
mouth, the Duchess wrote to him : —

" State Papers, vol. Ixxxv., No. 67. '« Ibid., No. 74.
VOL. III. F

66 LIFE AND TIMES OF

" My Lord — Sence I hurd the newse of thy
landing I have bine still every hower looking for
you, that I cannot now till I see you sleepe in the
nights, for every minite, if T do here any noyes, I
think it is on from you, to tell me the happy
newes what day I shall see you, for I confese I
longe for it w* much imptience. I was in great
hope that the bisnes you had to do at Ports-
mouth wood a bine don in a day, and then I
should a scene you here to-morrow, but now I
cannot tell when to expect you. My Lord, there
has bine such ill reports made of the great lose
you have had by the man that came furst, as your
frends desiers you wood com to clere aU w*^ all
speede : you may leve some of the Lords there to
se what you give order for don, and you need not
stay yourself any longer : — this, beseeching you to
com hether on Sunday or Munday w*^out aU fayle.

I rest yours,

" true loving and obedent wife,

" K. Buckingham.

"Mr. Maule desires you to com to the King,
though you stay but on night, for they were never
so busie as now.

"To the Duke of Buckiiigliam.'"^

Many were the welcomes offered to the Duke
'^ State Papers, vol. Ixxxvi., No. 80.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 67

on his return. Henry, Earl of Manchester,
"hoped that God had preserved him to add to
his honour;" and begged him not to be discourag-
ed, for no captain nor general could play his part
better ; Sir James Bagge declared that the Duke
was " dearer to him than children, wife, or
life;" and Mr. Mohun and Sir Bernard Granville
"will put down their lives and fortunes," they
wrote, "at the Duke's feet." ^^

It seems, however, from the following letter — half
reproachful, yet ever affectionate — that some time
passed before the Duke saw his wife, and that
even then he had thoughts of returning to Rhe : —

"My dere Lord — I was in great hope by on
of your leters that I should a hade the happynes
to a sene you this weeke, but sences I have not
had it confirmed by any more, and in this I
received by my lady's mane I was in hope wood
a tould me sartanly when I should a had the
happnes to a sene you, but your leter not saying
on worde makes me begine now to fere that you
have but deceived me all this whill in givino- me
assurances that you deed not, and now I begine to
be much greeved that you wood not a tould me
the truth; but yet I cannot absolutly dispare, be-
cause I hope you will yett be as good as your word,
for I confese, if you should go, I should not have
8" State Papers, vol. Ixxxvi., No. 93.

r2

68 LIFE AND TIMES OF

a stout Kart. My Lord, these too cusens of yours
desires you to accept of there servis, and lett
them go w*^ you, for thay had rather venter ther
lives w*^ you than stay behind, but I hope you
will put them in some way for ther advancement,
for thay deserve very well, and I hope will till
the last, I am very well, I thanke God, and ever
'^ your trewe loving and obedent wife,

" K. Buckingham.®^

" To the Duke of Buckingham."

It is a terrible state when esteem and affection
are opposed ; for, in a woman's heart the latter is
sure to gain the ascendancy. Allowance must,
however, be made for the Duke's almost over-
whelming occupations at this time, and for the
harassed state of his mind, which prevented him
writing to his wife.

Upon arriving in Plymouth, Buckingham, how-
ever, experienced a greater act of friendship than
any mere welcome in words. The warmest and
most estimable of his friends was Sir George
Goring, one of those true-hearted Cavaliers of
whom Englishmen of every party may be truly
proud. To Goring the Duke left, in some
measure, the care of his mother, when he sailed
for La Rochelle. Goring's blessings had followed
the Duke on his voyage. " My dearest Lord,"

*> State Papers, vol. Ixvii., No. 96 — Conway Papers.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 69

are the terms in whicli Goring addressed him ;
and he showed that he was, as he himself
wrote, faithful in every point to him for whom
he professed friendship.

The incident which now occurred rests on the
authority of Sir Henry Wotton, the long-trusted
servant of James I., and the devoted adherent of
Buckingham, by whose influence he had been
made Provost of Eton.

Scarcely had Buckingham set off from Ply-
mouth, on his way to London, than a messenger,
sent in haste from Goring, warned him not to
take the usual road, for that his friend had
authentic information that a design upon his life
would be attempted on his journey. The Duke
received the letter when on horseback, and,
crushing it into his pocket, without the slightest
sign of apprehension, rode on. He was at-
tended by seven or eight gentlemen only ; and
they were merely provided with the swords they
usually wore, and had no other means of defence.
There was one among them, however, who was
personally bound to the Duke by ties of kind-
ness and affection ; this was his nephew, the
young Lord Fielding, the son of that sister
who had wept when she saw that the Duke
was not at chapel with the King. The most
cordial union, indeed, existed between all the

70 LIFE AND TIMES OF

members of the Yilliers' family; and they were
bound by gratitude as well as by affection to the
Duke.

The party rode on, when, about three miles
from the town, they were stopped by an aged
woman, who came out of a house on the road,
and asked '^ whether the Duke were in the com-
pany?" Buckingham was pointed out to her;
and she then, coming close up to his saddle,
told him that in the very next town through
which he was to pass she had heard some
desperate men " vow his death ; " she therefore
advised him to take another road, which she offered
to show him.

This circumstance, added to the warning letter
sent by Goring, greatly impressed those around
the Duke ; and they entreated him to take the
old woman's advice. But whether from his usual
recklessness of consequences, or from an idea
that his showing fear would provoke taunts from
his enemies, does not appear; the Duke obsti-
nately refused to comply. And yet this " strange
accident," as Wotton calls it, was the more
remarkable, as it was a sort of prelude to his
fate, and in itself was of importance to a man
whose unpopularity before he left England was
now, at his return, tenfold more general than
it had ever been during his career.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 71

As they were disputing, the Duke still reso-
lute, his youDg nephew, Fielding, went up to
him, and entreated him to honour him by giving
him his coat and the blue ribbon of the Garter,
that he might wear them through the town ; and
he urged his request by pleading that the Duke's
life, in which the welfare of the whole family
was concerned, was the most "precious thing
under Heaven." He declared that he could so
muffle himself up in the Duke's hood, in the
way his uncle was accustomed to do in cold
weather, that no one could fail to be deceived —
so that, attention being withdrawn, the Duke
would be able to defend himself.

The Duke caught the noble-spirited youth in his
arms, and kissed him. " Yet," he said, " he would
not accept that offer from a nephew whose life
he valued as he did his own ;" then rewarding the
poor woman for her good-will to him, he gave
orders to his retinue how to act in case of
attack, and rode calmly onwards.

Scarcely had he entered the tbwn, when a half-
drunken soldier caught hold of his bridle, as if
he wanted to beg ; instantly a gentleman of the
Duke's train, though at some distance, rode up,
and, with a violent thrust, severed the man from
the Duke, who, with the others, galloped quickly
through the streets. Either from his usual in-

72 LIFE AND TIMES OF

difference to clanger, or fearing, as Sir Henry
Wotton says, to "resent discontentments too
deep" to be allayed, no notice was taken of
this incident of Buckingham's journey to London,^^
nor any inquiries made as to the projected
assassination.

On his return to Court, the king received him
graciously; no change appeared in the outward
demeanour of those who met him ; but his horse
regiment had been composed of the sons of the
noblest families in the land, and smothered regrets
for the loss of " such gallant gentlemen " were
as prevalent amid the higher classes, as deep re-
sentment was in the indignant and vehement
lower orders of society.

"The effects of this overthrow," Lord Claren-
don observes, " did not at first appear in whis-
pers, murmurs, and invectives, as the retreat
from Cadiz had done ; but produced such a
general consternation over the face of the whole
nation, as if all the armies of France and Spain
were united together, and had covered the
land." 83

Charles was, however, resolved to see no fault in
his favourite, to acknowledge no disgrace ; with a
confidence in the Duke that would have done honour

8" Reliquiae Wottonianse, p. 230.
** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 40-1.

GEORGE VILLIERS. ^3

to a private friendship, he wrote to him, saying, that
with " whatever ill success he came, he should ever
be welcome — one of his greatest griefs being that
he was not with him in that time of trial, as they
might have much eased each other's griefs."
Adding, that the Duke "had gained, in his mind,
as much reputation as if he had performed all his
desires.''*^'' The terms on which they stood to-
wards each other were those of one young man
towards another — his companion in pleasures and
pursuits, his fellow-traveller, his confidant — not
those existing between a sovereign and a trusted
subject, amenable to public opinion.

The step which Buckingham took, on his
arrival in London, was to ask immediately for a
public audience with the King and Lords in
Council. Then he plunged at once into the
subject about which the country was in a
ferment. He " delivered a clear account of the
passages, descending even to the good and bold
actions of private soldiers." He extolled the
patience of the army, and " the fair opportunity
offered of turning their suft^erings into glory, if
their virtue had been seconded with the power
and succours designed for it." He named every
officer in terms of great praise ; and if both
officers and men were sensible of " the honours

^* State Papers, vol Ixxxv., No. 10 and 11.

74 LIFE AND TIMES OF

and obligations done them by the Duke, they
would," Conway wrote, " live with their swords,
or die with them in their hand, to pay him that
duty." The King, also, put the " right interpre-
tation on the Duke's actions." This open way of
forestalling criticism, and, perhaps, impeachment,
was certainly as sagacious as it was fearless.

The Duke, before leaving the coast, had pro-
vided carefully for the soldiers who were sick and
wounded, and amongst whom a fearful infectious
disease prevailed, so that those in whose
houses men were billeted died of the same
malady. A storm soon damaged fifteen or six-
teen of those foted ships which had returned
from Rhe : and such was the poverty of the
State, that, so late as the fifth of January, 1620,
we find the sailors, who had deserved so much
from their country, ill from want of clothes. ^^
There was no money for their pay, which was in
arrears ; there arose, of course, a mutinous spirit
among them. The sailors were so destitute of cloth-
ing, that they would not do their duty in their
ships, and many fell dead into the harbours. Still
money could not be raised, although every pos-
sible expedient to obtain it was employed by the
King. Among others who supplied him was Sir
Francis Crane, Garter King-at-Arms, to whom
•"^ State Papers, vol. xc, No. 5.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 15

Charles gave certain royal manors for security, to
the extent of seven thousand five hundred pounds.

The Court was now both dull and partially de-
serted ; the beautiful masques of Ben Jonson were
no longer called into requisition : they had been
discontinued since 1 626, and were not resumed until
two years after Buckingham had ceased to exist ;
and the only diversion specified for the Christmas
festivity of this, his last Christmas, was " a run-
ning masque," to be performed on a Sunday,
hastily got up, and of no particular note.^^

Throughout the whole of the winter, the con-
dition of the navy was the incessant theme of
Buckingham's various official correspondents.
" Many of the men," writes Sir Henry Mervyn,
^'for want of clothes, are so exposed to the
weather, that their toes and feet miserably rot
away piecemeal." Yet a fresh expedition was,
so early as the twelfth of January, in contempla-
tion ; and, hearing this, the French prisoners, to
whom an allowance of eightpence a-day was
given, refused to go back, as they said there
would soon be a fleet fitted out for La Rochelle.
Meanwhile news arrived of great naval prepara-
tions in France, and the sailing from Bordeaux
of ships which were to be sunk in the Channel
before La Eochelle.

^^ State Papers, vol. xc, No. 10.

76 LIFE ANT> TIMES OF

During all these troubles, and whilst a storm
hovered over him, an heir was granted to the
parents, who were anxious for the boon — and
George, the second Duke of Buckingham, of the
house of Yilliers, was born. Owing to the death
of his elder brother, Charles, when an infant, his
birth was a source of great delight to the Duke
and Duchess.* And great need was there for all
that could solace the days that were now num-
bered. All that had been brilliant in the career
of Buckingham had faded into gloom ; the
country was justly irritated by the measures
which he had recommended — the war, the im-
pressment of seamen, the scheme for granting to
the King the tonnage and poundage for the Cus-
toms during Charles's life — were subjects which
kept all classes — some from anger, some from
fear — in continual agitation. The impressment
of seamen had formerly been applied only to the
lower classes ; but they had been taught by the
higher orders, who had felt the burden of oppres-
sion themselves, to understand their condition and
their rights, and a determined spirit of resistance
ensued ; yet it must, in justice, before we draw our

* This event took place on or before the 2nd of February,
1628 (when Sir John Hippisley wished " the Duke joy of
his young son " ), and not on the 30th of January, as is
usually stated.

GEORGE VILLIEES. 77

conclusions, be remembered, that the Government
was only indirectly responsible for the present
shattered condition of the navy, and for the depth
of misery into which the brave sailors had sunk,
Grenerally, the great business of setting out ships
had been charged on the port towns and neigh-
bouring shires, but it was now too heavy a bur-
den on them to bear. The Privy Council, there-
fore, cast up the whole charge of the fleet, which
was prepared in February, 1628, and divided it
among all the counties,*

Neither does it appear that there was in the
expenses of the navy, even during the time of
war, any extravagance. The error was in the
original neglect of the maritime forces, and in-
justice to a noble profession ; the ruin incident
to total indifference to its maintenance during the
reign of James I. Had not Buckingham, in a few
brief years, done much towards its renovation, the
naval power would have been almost extinct.

Whilst at Eochelle, he had placed the
affairs of the navy in the hands of commissioners.
On the 28th of February (1681) the Council
called for these commissioners, and gave them
" the King's thanks for past services, letting them

* See State Papers, vol. xcii., No 88. The county of
Anglesea was to be charged 1111. ; the money, as the King's
letter intimated, was to be paid before the 1st of March.

78 LIFE AND TIMES OF

know that it was his pleasure in these stirring
times to use again the ancient offices of the
Admiralty."®^ The commissioners, on retiring,
gave in their certificates, signed by the Duke as
Lord Admiral, of the expenses of the navy, both
ordinary and extraordinary, in harbours, and the
ordinary at sea, containing six ships and four
pinnaces, for the year 1628. It amounted to
forty thousand, eight hundred, and seventy-six
pounds, fourteen shillings and fourpence^^ — the
rest of the fleet being supplied by merchants, and
paid by local contributions. But the country
was little disposed to view any point with le-
niency. Their grievances were, indeed, almost
daily increasing ; and whilst the landholders
were impoverished, the loss of all commerce
between England and France completely alien-
ated the mercantile community from the Court.

A Parliament was summoned. During the
preceding year the Duchess of Buckingham had
apprehended great danger to the Duke in allow-
ing the commission of inquiry into the affairs of
the navy to drop ; and had expressed her fears that
the abuses brought to light, and unremedied,
might hereafter be laid on the Duke.®^ There had

^ State Papers, xciv., No. 57.

88 Ibid., 108.

^ State Papers, vol. Ldi., No. 7. Dated May 7, 1627.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 79

been no time then, in the hurry of the ill-starred
expedition to Rochelle, to complete that inquiry ;
but the Duchess's fears were indeed realized,
when, after the Petition of Right had been
passed by both Houses, the King went to the
House of Lords, sent for the Commons, and then,
in his chair of state, and when the Petition had
been read to him, instead of giving his consent to
the bill in the concise form in which the monarch,
in Norman French, declares that "Le Roy le
veult," delivered an evasive answer, promising
much, but signifying nothing.

The indignation of the House of Commons
first descended on the head of Mainwaring, after-
wards Bishop of St. Asaph, who had preached, by
the King's order, a sermon containing doctrines sub-
versive of liberty. Mainwaring, although he had
acted under royal authority, had been fined a thou-
sand pounds, imprisoned, and suspended during
three years.* After h^ had been sentenced, the
House proceeded to pass " strong condemnation on
Buckingham," whose name had hitherto not been
mentioned. It must have been a singular scene,
when, on the fifth of June, the House being as-
sembled, a message was delivered to them from
the King, announcing that, as he meant to pro-

* At the end of the session, Charles not only pardoned
Mainwaring, but gave him a valuable living.

80 LIFE AND TIMES OF

rogue Parliament in six days, he desired that no
new business, which might consume time, nor lay-
any aspersion on His Majesty's ministers, should
be commenced. A deep dejection was observed
on all faces ; but when Sir John Eliot, the most
impassioned speaker of that period of earnest and
eloquent men, rose, and was about to denounce
Buckingham as the author of all the national mis-
fortunes, he was stopped by Sir John Finch,
the speaker, who, rising from his chair, his eyes
full of tears, told the House that he had been
commanded to interrupt every member who laid
aspersions on any minister of state A profound and
melancholy silence succeeded ; then, after several
members had broken it, by resuming the debate,
it was strange again to hear that voice which had
never deceived his fellow-subjects, and to behold
Sir Edward Coke rise, and remind them of
former parliamentary impeachments, and tell
them that it was their province to regulate pre-
rogative and correct abuses ; and he added, " If
they flattered man, God would never prosper
them." Then the name fell from his lips that
none since the King's message had dared to
utter : he denounced Buckingham ; he called him
the grievance of grievances; and, setting at
nought the royal mandate, declared, that till the
King were informed of that truth, the Commons

GEORaE VILLIERS. 81

could neither continue together, " nor depart
with honour."

Thus the fears of the poor Duchess of Buck-
ingham were finally and fully realized. One
member imputed to the Duke the ruin of the
shipping, in the restoration of which he had so
incessantly laboured. The faults of others were
thus laid on him. Another stated that there were
Papists in every branch of the public service. The
intolerant fierceness of Puritanical opinions, on
this occasion, blazed out. Selden proposed a de-
claration of grievances, and suggested that, though
a mantle had been thrown over the charge against
the Duke in the last Parliament, it ought to be
resumed, and judgment demanded. Whilst the
question was being put, on this motion, whether
the Duke should be named as the primary cause
of grievances, the Speaker begged leave to retire
for a few minutes, and soon returned with a mes-
sage from the King to adjourn.

The consternation at the Court must have been
extreme; for Charles now retraced his former
steps ; again went to the House, and, giving his
consent to the Petition of Right, in the usual
form since the Norman Conquest, " Soit droit
fait comme il est desire,^ was received with loud
acclamations. His popularity did not, however,
last very long. He took this opportunity to com-

VOL. III. G

82 LIFE AND TIMES OF

mit an act whicli was both dangerous to himself
and to his friend. When, by the dissolution of a
former parliament, the impeachment of the Duke
had been stopped, Charles, to save appear-
ances, ordered an information against him to
be filed in the Star Chamber. He now ordered
this information to be taken off the file; thus
insulting the Commons, who had named Buck-
ingham as the " grievance of grievances." ^°

It may easily be imagined how deeply cha-
grined Buckingham must have been during these
proceedings. Among the common people his name
was held in still greater detestation than even by
his parliamentary opponents.

It was durino^ this session that Sir Thomas
Wentworth, recently created Viscount Strafford,
distinguished himself by his eloquence, which
he exerted in support of Buckingham, thus aban-
doning his former show of patriotism, in the
fervour of which he had denounced the Council
of State.

^' They have taken from us," he exclaimed —
"what shall I say? — indeed, what have they
left us 1 They have taken from us all means of
supplying the King, and ingratiating ourselves
with them, by tearing up the roots of all pro-
perty." 91

90 Brodie, p. 202. Hume's " Charles I."
" Brodie, p, 170.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 83

In the midst of this declaration the President-
ship of the County of York was deemed likely
to be vacated, owing to the illness of Lord
Scrope, who then held it ; and Wentworlh had
not scrupled to solicit the promise of it in the fol-
lowing terms of abject flattery to Bucking-
ham. The letter is addressed to Lord Conway : —
" Wentworth, this 20th of January, 1625.

"My much honored Lord, — The duties of
the place I now hold not admitting my absence
out of these parts, I shall be bold to trouble your
lordship with a few lines, whereas otherwise I
would have attended you in person. There is a
strong and general beleaf with us here that my
Lord Scrope purposeth to leave the President-
shippe of York ; whereupon many of my friends
have earnestly moved me to use some means to
procure it, and I have at last yielded to take it a
little into consideration, more to comply with them
than out of any violent inordinate desire there-
unto in myself. Yett, as on the one side I have
never thought of it unless it might be effected,
w*^ the good liking of my Lord Scrope, soe will
I never move further in it till I know also how
this may please my Lord of Buckingham, seeing,
indeed, such a scale of his gracious good opinion
would comfort me much, make the place more ac-
ceptable ; and that I am fully resolved not to

G 2

84 LIFE AND TIMES OF

ascende one steppe in this kind except I may take
along with me by the way a special obligation to
my Lord Duke, from whose bountye and good-
ness I doe not only acknowledge much allready,
but, justified in the truth of my own hartte, doe
still repose and rest under the shadow and pro-
tection of his favour. I beseach y'r Lorp., there-
fore, be pleased to take some good opportunity
fully to acquaint his Grace hearunto, and then to
vouchsafe, with y'r accustomed freedom and noble-
ness, to give me your counsel and direction, wh.
I am prepared strictly to observe, as one albeit
chearfully embracing better means to doe his
Majesty humble and faithful service in the parttes
whear I live, yet can w^^ as well contented a
mind, rest wher I am, if by reason of my manie
imperfections I shall not be judged capable of
neuer appointment or trust. There is nothing
more to add for the present save that I must
rest much bounden unto y'r Lorp. for the light
I shall borrow from y'r judgement and affection
hearin and soe borrow it too, as may better enable
me more effectually to express myself hereafter.
— Y'r Lorp. most humble and affec**^ kinsman to

be commanded,

"T. Wentworth.

"To tlie Right Honble. my much honored Lord the Lorde
Conway, Principall Secretary to his Majestic." ^^

» State Papers, Domestic, 1625.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 85

This favour being granted, and Sir Thomas
having been created a Viscount, he appeared in
the upper house as an advocate for the ministers
whom he had, only a few months previously, de-
nounced ; but the adherence of Strafford was of
little benefit to Buckingham, as his new ally was
the most unpopular of men. One unhappy re-
sult, however, this unprincipled alliance produced.
The new partisan ingratiated himself with Charles
during his late and brief support of Buckingham ;
and the seeds were laid of that influence which so
tended to undermine the future stability of the
Crown, and pioneered the way to Charles's fall.

The most unjust aspersions were now circu-
lated throughout all society. It was Bucking-
ham's custom to cast away, as unworthy of consi-
deration, all reports that were brought to him.
On one occasion, hearing that two Colonels, when
before St. Martin's Fort, had said to a third that
they observed the Duke often go in his barge to the
fleet, and that they believed he would steal away to
England some day; and that if he did, they swore
they would hand out the white flag, and deliver
up the town and i:?land to Tonar, the Governor ;
the Duke called a council of war, the accused
being absent, and charged these gentlemen with
their words. They flatly denied them on their
swords. The Duke, without further inquiry, be-

86 LIFE AND TIMES OF

lieved them, and dismissed tlie court. Nor did
he ever pay any attention to things said about
him, either in the Commons or in the camp.

In the same way he appears to have treated
James Howell, who, presuming on having been
in his service, and on the affabilities of the Duke,
and a facility of character which had its advan-
tages as well as disadvantages, wrote an imperti-
nent letter, saying, that in his "shallow appre-
hension" it might be well for the Duke to
part with some of his places, and so to avoid
opprobrium. " Your Grace," he remarked, " might
stand more firm without an anchor." Then he
next threw out some suggestions as to the better
regulation of the Duke's family and private
affairs; and ended by saying that he knew the
Duke did not, nor need not, affect popularity.
" The people's love," he added, " is the strongest
citadel of a sovereign prince, but wrath often
proved fatal to a subject, for he who pulleth off
his hat to the people giveth his head to the
prince." And he ends by referring to "a late
unfortunate Earl," who, a little before Queen
Elizabeth's death, had drawn the axe across his
own neck; he had become so unpopular, that
he was considered dangerous to the State. This
very unpleasant reference was taken, at all events,
amicably by Buckingham. The fate of Essex

GEORGE YILLIERS. 87

was often supposed to shadow forth his own ;
and the rapid rise, the more rapid fall, the
generous, careless nature, the very early doom
of both, to have suggested that parallel between
the Earl of Essex and Buckingham, in which
Lord Clarendon has placed the characters of
both before the reader in delicate touches.

In one respect they were very different. Essex,
when attacked, even before going to Ireland,
wrote an apology, which he dispersed with his
own hands. Buckingham left his fame to his
contemporaries, and to posterity, just as they
choose to view it. On an offer once being made
to him to write a justification of his actions, he
refused it, says Lord Clarenden, "with a pretty
kind of thankful scorn, saying that he would trust
to his own good intentions, which God knew,
and trust to Him for the pardon of his errors ;
that he saw no " fruit of apologies but the multi-
plying of discourse, which, surely," even Lord
Clarenden observes, " was a well-settled matter."^^

But there were dangers lurking in his path
which no defence could avert. Personal danger
did not appal him. Slander did not affect him.
Yet a forgotten, morbid, disappointed man was
the instrument of destiny ; and even in this crisis

"' Parallel between Essex and Buckingham — " Reliquiae
Wottonianae."

88 LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE VILLIERS.

Buckingham seems never to have shrunk from
the assassins, even in imagination : he knew that
he had abeady escaped great perils — and that
consciousness gave him security.

CHAPTER III.

FELTON — HIS CHARACTER — UNCERTAINTY OF HIS MOTIVES

CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH HE WAS BROUGHT

INTO CONTACT WITH BUCKINGHAM — MOTIVES OF HIS
CRIME DISCUSSED — THE REMONSTRANCE — THE FATE
OF LA ROCHELLE — BUCKINGHAM'S UNPOPULARITY —

RETURNS TO RHE — MISGIVINGS OF HIS FRIENDS

INTERVIEW WITH LAUD — WITH CHARLES I. — HIS

FAREWELL HE ENTERS PORTSMOUTH FELTON THE

ASSASSINATION ORIGINAL LETTERS FROM SIR D.

CARLETON AND SIR CHARLES MORGAN — THE KING'S
GRIEF.

91

CHAPTER III.

Whilst all these events were pending, dark
designs were being formed and cherished in the
distempered mind of one far from the Court, and
probably wholly forgotten by him to whose
destiny he gave the final stroke.

Hitherto Buckingham had escaped all bodily
harm. He had rallied speedily from illness, and
was in the full vigour of his life ; he had returned
unhurt from the perilous service at Rhe ; he had
repeatedly crossed the Channel, and tracked even
the great ocean when the science of navigation,
as well as of ship-building, was imperfect, and
when a thousand dangers encompassed his course :
he had escaped the pestilence by which the army
lost many of its best men. And yet his days
were numbered.

92 LIFE AND TIMES OF

In the remote county of Suffolk the unhappy
John Felton was born. He was the youngest
son of an ancient family, and in somewhat narrow
circumstances, and had been a lieutenant in a
regiment of foot, under the command of Sir John
Ramsey, in the expedition against Rhe. He was
a man of great reserve, which, though he had long
led a soldier's life, in the course of which he ap-
pears to have risen from the ranks, was still silent
and gloomy. In person he was diminutive, with a
meagre form, and a face rendered almost ghastly
from the expression of that deep, habitual, and
apparently cau eless melancholy to which we
give the term morbid; and thus singularly did
these outlines of his character correspond with
the circumstances of his daily life. So strange
was it to discover in the young soldier the cha-
racteristics attributable to a cloister rather than
to a camp, that one turns to the mournful plea of
insanity for explanation. But no defence of that
nature, or on that ground, was ever attempted
for Felton ; unhappily, so much has lunacy in-
creased in modern times, that it forms now one
point in almost every case of unaccountable
crime. In the days of our ancestors it was
different. Such an excuse was rare, and only
applied to imbecility, or to mania, when too
apparent to be disputed.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 93

To this da}', indeed, there has been found no
adequate motive for the deed, which Felton long
contemplated in the depths of a soul that never
gave utterance to its joys or sorrows, and ex-
changed no sympathies with others. Whatever
" may have been the immediate or greatest motive
of that felonious conception," Sir Henry Wotton
declares, " is even yet in the clouds." ^"^ The
origin of that dark design has, nevertheless, been
referred to a disappointment in Felton's military
career. This he subsequently denied, by saying
that the Duke had always shown him respect.
Whilst at Rhe, Felton's captain having died in
England, he naturally applied to Buckingham for
promotion. The Duke, however, consulted the
colonel of the regiment, and, by his suggestion,
gave the company to an officer named Powell,
who happened to be lieutenant of the colonel's
company, and a man of great bravery; and
Felton himself acknowledged the justice and ex-
pediency of this preference of Powell to himself.
So that, to follow the same authority, the idea
of any rancour being harboured, owing to this
arrangement, can have no foundation.^^ But the
notion has been taken up by historians adverse to
Buckingham — and such are in the majority —

^■* Wottonianae Reliquiae, p. 233.
95 Ibid.

94 LIFE AND TIMES OF

rather to heighten the impression that he suf-
fered for an act of injustice, for which his death
was, more or less, a retribution, than from any-
certain conviction on the point.

There was also another cause assigned for the
crime which Felton meditated. In his native
county there was a certain knight wdiom the
Duke had latterly favoured ; and between this
individual and Felton there "had been ancient
quarrels not yet healed," which might be festering
within his breast, and worked up by his own
grievance into frenzy. But this explanation is
also rejected by Sir Henry Wotton, whose evi-
dence is the best that can be given, as proceeding
from a man of principle, and a contemporary and
friend of Buckingham's.

Three hours before his execution, however,
Felton, either as a palliation to others, or to ex-
cuse the deed to himself, alleged that the
book written by Dr. Egglisham, King James's
Scottish physician, in which the Duke was por-
trayed as one of the foulest monsters upon earth,
unfit to live in a Christian court, or even within
the pale of humanity, had a great effect upon
his mind, in inciting him to what he deemed an
act of heroic virtue. The fact, indeed, it is plain,
was, that his religious convictions had an all-
powerful influence upon his judgment, which was

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 95

warped by the gloomy bigotry which casts a
shadow over the noblest and most encouraging
hopes of the Christian. The tenor of this un-
happy man's life had been marked by seriousness
and religious observances ; but it was the religion
which condemned all who differed — the religion,
not of love, but self-righteousness and hatred.

During the leisure of peace — if peace that can
be called in which all the elements of civil war
were being engendered — the Petition of Eight —
that great measure, which even Clarendon allows,
"was of no prejudice to the Crown" — received
the King's assent. Not contented with what
they found might prove a bare declaration of the
law, the Commons drew up a Eemonstrance,
addressed to the King, in order that the too
great power of Buckingham might be diminished.
The promotion of Papists, the protection of
Arminians, under the patronage of Neal and
Laud, were the chief subjects, and were calculated
to arouse and inflame the passions of a fanatic,
like Felton, and to have suggested the reasoning
that was soon warped, by prejudice and hatred,
into the form and conception of guilt. There
were other subjects of complaint in that celebrated
Remonstrance, which touched him also — the stand-
ing commission of general continued to Buck-
ingham in time of peace, the dismissal of faithful

96 LIFE AND TIMES OF

officers from various places of trust, the failures at
Cadiz and at Rhe — these were but a small part of
that important document, but they were the por-
tion most likely to excite such a mind as that of
Felton. He stated, indeed, that the idea of
assassination, which he had repelled by stern
efforts of conscience — for he was a man misled
and mistaken, but not devoid of certain principles,
and he dared to make use of that solemn and
misguiding word, conscience — was revived, with
irresistible force, by the Remonstrance. Never,
hitherto, had the members most distinguished for
oratory in parliament reasoned with so much
force, and so much research, and so great a depth
of legal argument, as on the Petition of Right,
and its successor, the Remonstrance. It was the
era of good taste and profound argument in that
great assembly .^^ All tended to strengthen Felton
in the conviction that the Duke was a traitor and
oppressor, whom any patriot would do well to
assassinate.

Then he read works which maintained the law-
fulness of ridding a nation of an oppressor ; and
the voice of conscience was heard no more — a
false heroism was thenceforth the spectre that
lured him onwards. Never was there a more
striking instance of the influence of one mind
9« Brodie.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 97

over another than that which the books of the clay
had over the mind of Felton ; never was there a
more prominent exemplification of the responsibili-
ties of a writer, even if his words chance to have
only an ephemeral reputation, than this man's crime.

The resolution was then formed — Buckingham's
life was to be sacrificed for the public good. Sir
Henry Wotton seems to think that every plea
adopted by Felton in explanation of this design
was to be distrusted. " Whatever were the
true motives, which, I think, none can deter-
mine but the Prince of Darkness itself, he did
thus prosecute the eflPort."

He bought for tenpence, in a cutler's shop on
Tower Hill, a knife — that instrument, the blow
of which paralyzed England — and sewed the
sheath into the lining of his pocket, so that he could
at any time draw out the knife with one hand
— his other being maimed and powerless.

Being thus provided, he watched in gloom and
privacy (for he was very poor) the opportunity
over which he brooded.

Meantime, Buckingham was mingling, in the
full confidence of his fearless nature, in the affairs
of that world which he was so soon to quit for
ever. His unpopularity was at its acme, and if
he feared not for himself, there were friends who
trembled for his safety. Sir Clement Throgmor-

VOL. III. H

98 LIFE AND TIMES OF

ton, a man of great consideration and judgment,
one day asked a private conference, and advised
the Duke to wear a coat of mail underneath his
his outer garment. The Duke received the sug-
gestion very kindly, but gave this reply,
"Against popular fury a coat of mail would be
but a weak defence, and with regard to an attack
from any single man, he conceived there was no
danger." " So dark," says Wotton, " is destiny."
This consciousness of being the object of uni-
versal hatred probably increased the keen desire
which now possessed the Duke's mind of retriev-
ing the discredit into which his failure had
plunged him. During the whole of the spring,
preparations for a fresh descent on La Rochelle
had been in contemplation. As good a squadron
as that which Admiral Pennington had previously
commanded was ready at Plymouth by the end
of February, ten ships having been pressed into
the service. Several new vessels were built, not>-
withstanding that the workmen of the navy at
Chatham complained that they had not received
any pay for seven months. Buckingham was,
at one time, on the point of visiting Plymouth,
but went to Newmarket instead.^' During the
session of Parliament his brother-in-law, the Earl

"^ Calendar, vol. xciv., No. 96.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 99

of Denbigh, was dispatched with a fleet to the
relief of La Rochelle, which was blockaded by
the French, but he returned without even at-
tempting to effect anything ; and the unfortunate
town was left to its fate. Richelieu^ besieging
it by circumvallations, constructed a mole
across the mouth of the harbour, leaving room
only for the ebb and flow of the sea; and
destruction seemed inevitable. It was, therefore,
a very probable means of recovering his credit
at home, for the Duke again to attempt the relief
of those who, as Protestants, represented a cause
dear to English hearts. Independently of this, it
is not unlikely that old rivalship with the saga-
cious Cardinal may have influenced Buckingham
to undertake a second expedition to La Rochelle.^^
It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that Bucking-
ham's name should be covered with so much oppro-
brium after his death, when the fate of the heroes
w^ho defended La Rochelle is remembered. In the
October of the year in which the Duke perished.
La Rochelle, long refusing to yield, was forced
to submit. The inhabitants surrendered at dis-
cretion— even with an English fleet, commanded
by Lord Sidney, in sight. Of fifteen thousand
men who had been enclosed in the town, only
four thousand survived famine and fatigue, to lay

»8 Brodie — Hume.

H 2

100 LIFE AND TIMES OF

down their arms before the generals sent by
Richelieu.

To make a last effort for these valiant sufferers
was, therefore, the wisest determination that
Buckingham could form. The fleet which Lord
Denbigh had commanded was in good condition,
and all at home had learned experience through
failure. He had taken that severe lesson to his
own heart. Had Buckingham been spared to
relieve La Rochelle, and to recover for England the
honour of her sullied reputation, his errors would
doubtless have been forgiven.

Before leaving London, the Duke went to take
leave of Laud, then Bishop of London. Laud
had now, both in civil and ecclesiastical matters,
a great influence over the King : of this Buck-
ingham was fully sensible.

Sir Henry Wotton, who had made some in-
quiries whether the Duke had had any presen-
timent of his death, relates a touching scene be-
tween the Duke and Laud.

" My Lord," Buckingham said, " you have, I
know, very free access to the King, our sovereign ;
let me pray you to remind his Majesty to be good
to my poor wife and children."

At these words, or perhaps rather on looking
at the expression of countenance with which they
were uttered, the Bishop, with some uneasiness,

GEORGE YILLIERS. 101

asked the Duke whether he had any forebodings
in his mind which he did not like to betray ?

"No," replied the Duke; "but I think some
adventure may kill me as much as any other
man"

The day before he was assassinated, the Duke
being ill, Charles the First visited him whilst he
was in bed. After a long and serious conversation
in private, they separated, Buckingham embrac-
ing the King " in a very unusual and passionate
manner ; " and he also showed great emotion on
taking leave of Lord Holland, "as if his soul
had divined he should see them no more."

The twentieth of August was his birthday. He
had completed his thirty-sixth year — that
period which has been marked by a great writer
as the departure of youth* — it might have been,
perhaps, in Buckingham's case, the beginning of
wisdom extracted from experience.

It was the age of omens and other superstitious
weaknesses ; and supernatural warnings were not
wanting to heighten the effect of the tragedy that
was soon to be acted. Neither did they who fore-
boded evil to the Duke wait until after the event
to bring forth their ghostly revelations. One day,
some little time before the Duke's death, he was
playing at bowls with the King in Spring Gardens.
* Student.

102 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Buckingham, as he usually did,even in Charles's pre-
sence, kept his hat on, a piece of presumption which
irritated a Scotsman named Wilson, who, in his
wrath, tossed off the Duke's hat, and declared he
would punish impertinence wherever he met it in
the same way. On looking round for this man, he
had vanished, and was nowhere to be found. The
courtiers marvelled at the incident, and regarded
it as ominous of the Duke's fate ; but he laughed
at them for their folly, and showed no fear.^^

His indifference was regarded as infatuation;
in fact, it proves that the Duke was, in some
respects, superior to those whom he most re-
spected. There was no lone spinster in the
country more given to believe in dreams and
omens than Laud ; and his diary contains perpetual
references to his dreams. Every slight incident
had its peculiar meaning, foreshadowing some
great event. Nor does Lord Clarendon rise
above the tone of the times, in his relation of that
famous ghost story which forms one of the most
prominent incidents of Buckingham's latest days.

Old Sir George Villiers had now been dead
eighteen years, and perhaps few of his family,
and certainly not his wife, who had been
twice married, ever wished to see him again.

«* Balfour's Annals, MSS., Advocate's Library, quoted
from Brodie, vol. ii., p. 209.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 103

There was a certain Mr. Nicholas Towse, how-
ever, living in BIshopsgate Without, London, to
whom the aged knight appeared in the spirit,
during the year 1627, making choice of that indi-
vidual as the depositary of secrets beyond the
grave, because he had known him whilst he was a
boy at school in Leicestershire, near Brookesby.
As a mark of friendship, therefore, the apparition
of Sir George favoured Mr. Towse with his reve-
lations, and stood one night at the foot of his
bed, dressed in the costume of the time of Eliza-
beth. There was a candle in the room, and ^ir.
Towse was perfectly wakeful. On beholding Sir
George, he uttered, according to his own account,
the natural inquiry, " What he was, and whether
he was a man ? '* To which the apparition an-
swered, "No." Then Towse, in considerable
emotion, asked, " Was he a devil ? " To which
the apparition still answered, " No." Then Mr.
Towse, with increasing agitation, said, " In the
name of God, tell me w^hat you are ? "

" I am," replied the spectre, in doublet and
hose, " the spectre of Sir George Yilliers, the
father of the Duke of Buckingham ; " adding, that
because he believed Mr. Towse loved him, and
was sensible of the former kindness that he had
shown him, he had selected him as the bearer of a
message to the Duke of Buckingham, warning

104 LIFE AND TIMES OF

him in such a manner as to prevent much mis-
chief and present ruin to the Duke.

Whilst the apparition was speaking, Towse be-
came more and more convinced of his identity, and
more fully conscious that the long defunct master of
a noble house stood before him ; nevertheless, he
refused to do Sir George's bidding, saying that it
would bring ridicule on him to carry to the Duke
such a message. But the ghost earnestly entreated
him to comply, assuring him, after the manner of
ghosts, that there were certain passages in the
Duke's life known only to himself and his son,
and that the revelation of these would plainly
show the Duke it was no " distempered fancy,
but a reality, that he wished to disclose."

That night was one of irresolution, if not of in-
credulity ; but, on the next, the unhappy Towse,
thus picked out for so ghostly a service, promised
to go to the Duke. He went, indeed, and found out
Sir Thomas Freeman and Sir Ralph Bladden,
the Duke's chamberlains, by whom he was pre-
sented to the Duke. Then followed some pri-
vate and agitated interviews between Bucking-
ham and Towse, and the cautions of the ghost
were fully and forcibly communicated : they re-
lated chiefly to Buckingham's patronage of Laud,
and suggested some popular acts which the Duke
was to perform in Parliament — and, in short, con-

GEORGE VILLIEKS. 105

tained advice tliat any reasonable man might
have offered. But nothing that was said by Mr.
Towse made the slightest impression on the
Duke, except, when certain passages of his life
were referred to, with which the ghost had
primed Mr. Towse, he owned he had believed
" that no living creature knew of them but him-
self, and that it must be either God or the devil
that had revealed them." The Duke then offered
to get Mr. Towse knighted, and to have him
made a burgess in the forthcoming Parliament.
But Mr. Towse, finding that the obstinate
favourite was deaf to his advice, left him, prog-
nosticating that the Duke's death would happen
at a certain time — which prognostic was fulfilled.
Mr. Towse then returned to Bishopsgate Vf ith-
out ; and, there is much reason to believe, laboured
under mental malady ; for the visits of the appa-
rition were now so frequent that he grew familiar
with him, " as if it had been a friend or acquaint-
ance that had come to visit him." And from
this very unpleasant guest Towse learned to see
in perspective many events that had not then
dawned on England ; more especially the troubles
of Prynne, who was Towse's father-in-law — which
was contrary to all rule, as a ghost should keep to
one subject. On the day of Buckingham's death,
also, Mr. Towse and his wife being at Windsor

106 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Castle, where Towse had an office, they were
sitting in company, when he started up, exclaim-
ing, " The Duke of Buckingham is slain ! " At
the very moment that these words were uttered
the blow had been given. Towse dying soon
after, also foretold his own death.

This narrative, thought worthy of insertion by
Clarendon, and therefore not to be completely
disregarded in any biography of Buckingham,
is taken, however, from a letter penned at
Boulogne, by one Edmund Wyndham, in 1672,
twenty years after the event.*^ According to
Lord Clarendon, Buckingham, after hearing
Towse's revelation, was observed ever afterwards
to be very melancholy. That he had misgivings
as to his return, we have seen ; but there are few
men so insensible, at such a moment, as to be
quite free from presentiment of evil — more es-
pecially one on whom the eyes of the country
were directed in resentment, and regarding
whom the Commons was then preparing a Remon-
strance.!

Felton, meantime, was intent on pursuing his

* The letter from Edmund Wyndham, of Kattisford,
county Somerset, was addressed to Dr. Robert Plot, who
wished to have the story correctly stated, in order to correct
the false representations of William Lilly.

1 " Biographia Britannica," Art. " Villiers," Note.

t See Appendix A.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 107

scheme. The frank and kindly manner of the
Duke towards his officers and soldiers at Rhe,
his personal courage, and his participation in the
hardships aU had undergone in that expedition, had
failed to propitiate the assassin, who was, in fact,
stimulated by the fiercest of all incentives —
political hatred, justified by the plea of religion.
He set ofi", therefore, to Portsmouth, and, partly
on horseback, and partly on foot, accomplished
that journey ; and perhaps the desperate state of
his fortunes added to his gloomy views and
reckless designs, into which one thought of self-
preservation never entered. At a few miles from
Portsmouth he was seen sharpening the fatal knife
on a stone ; he arrived at that city with the deter-
mination that, should his scheme of assassination
fail for want of opportunity, he would enlist as
a volunteer, in order to accomplish it eventually.

There was, of course, considerable bustle in the
town; and on entering it, when the ghastly
murderer stood unobserved amongst the crowd,
there was too numerous a train about the Duke
for Felton to reach him. Fearful of observation, he
kept himself indoors one morning after his arrival ;
but, on the ensuing day, repaired to the house
where Buckingham was staying. The Duke was
at that time at breakfast, and little attention was
paid by a number of suitors and applicants who

108 LIFE AND TIMES OF

were waiting for him in the antechamber, to the
diminutive being who was watching, with his
dark purpose, among the unconscious crowd.
As there were several military men, amongst
whom was the Due de Soubise, with Buckingham,
as well as Sir Thomas Fryer, much animation
pervaded the conversation, in consequence of
a report having reached Portsmouth that La
Rochelle had been relieved. Soubise and his fol-
lowers believed that this report was set on foot by
some agents of the French, in order to induce the
English to relax in their preparations, until the
mole, which it was Richelieu's plan to form at the
mouth of the harbour, should be completed. He
and the other foreigners spoke with vehemence,
and in tones which the English, who were listen-
ing, deemed to be those of anger. The Duke, it
appeared, was inclined to believe the report, and
the eagerness of Soubise was not, therefore, to be
matter of surprise, since his interests, and those
of his adherents, were irrevocably engaged in the
approaching expedition. At length, however, the
conference ended; Soubise took his leave, and
Buckingham rose to quit the chamber where he
had breakfasted.

It was, probably, with a pre-occupied mind that
he thus prepared to go out ; and it is very possi-
ble that he scarcely observed a small figure, which

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 109

he may not even have recognized, which was lifting
up, as he passed on, the hangings between the room
and the antechamber. This was Felton. Bucking-
ham, on his way, stopped an instant to speak to Sir
Thomas Fryer, one of his Colonels, who was a
short man — so that, in order to hear his reply, the
Duke bent down his head somewhat. Fryer
then drew back, and, at that moment, Felton,
striking across the Colonel's arm, stabbed Buck-
ingham a little above the heart. The knife was
left in the body ; the Duke, with a sudden effort,
drew it out, and exclaiming, "The villain has
killed me," pursued the assassin out of the
parlour into the hall or antechamber, where he
sank down, and, falling under a table, drew a deep
breath, and expired.

Then the utmost confusion ensued. The English,
misled by what had passed at breakfast, accused
Soubise and his followers of the murder; and they
would have been instantly sacrificed to the fury of
the populace, had not some persons of cooler
feelings interposed in their behalf. No one had
seen the murderer; he had come in unnoticed,
and had withdrawn in like manner. At this
moment, a hat, into which a paper was sewn, was
found near the door ; it was eagerly examined,
and some writing on the paper read with avidity,
and these words were deciphered : —

110 LIFE AND TIMES OF

"That man is cowardly, base, and deserves
neither the name of a gentleman nor soldier,
who will not sacrifice his life for the honour of
God, and safety of his prince and country. Let
no man commend me for doing it, but rather
discommend themselves ; for if God had not
taken away our hearts for our sins, he could
not have gone so long unpunished.

" Jno. Felton."*

Whilst the bystanders were reading these words,
the body of the Duke had been conveyed to the
inner apartment, from which he had issued, hav-
ino^ been first laid on the table of the ante-
chamber, or hall ; and in this inner chamber it was
left, without a single person, even a domestic, to
watch over his remains, or to give him that tribute
of sorrowing respect which is due to the poorest.
And this singular neglect has been regarded as
a proof of indifiference in those who, but a few
minutes previously, were crowding round the
powerful Minister and General. But it was, in
fact, one of those accidents which often bear a very
different construction, when they are considered
relatively to the circumstances of the hour, to that

* The original letter was in possession of the late ISIr.
Upcott, by whom the author of this Memoir was presented
with a fac-simile. It is, however, given in all the histories
of this period.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 1 1 1

placed on them. Sir Henry Wotton, to whom the
fact was mentioned by one of the Duke's friends,
speaks of it as "beyond all wonder;" but ac-
counts for it by the horror which the murder had
excited, added to the astonishment at the sudden
disappearance of the murderer, who had glided
from the terrible scene like an actor who has
done his part, and makes his exit. For a time,
however, whilst high words were heard between
the Frenchmen and their accusers, whilst mur-
murs from the street below, of the eager and
infuriated crowd, were changed into yells of ven-
geance, that cold corpse lay unheeded ; " thus,
upon the withdrawing of the sun, does the
shadow depart from the painted dial."^ All
were, indeed, in the house, occupied in asking
again and again the question. Where could the
owner of the hat be? — for he, doubtless, was
the assassin. Whilst they were thus talking, a
man w^ithout a hat was seen walking with perfect
composure up and down before the door. " Here,"
cried one of the crowd, " is the man who killed
the Duke , " upon which Felton calmly said, " I
am he, let no person suffer that is innocent.'*
Then the populace rushed upon him with drawn
swords, to which Felton offered no defence, pre-
ferring rather to die at once, than to abide the issue
2 Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs, p. 35.

112 LIFE AND TIMES OF

of justice. He was, however, rescued by others less
violent — a circumstance which was thought very-
fortunate for the popular party, on whom a stigma
might have rested had the murderer been killed ;
and Felton being secured, was conveyed to a
small sentry-box; he was instantly loaded with
heavy irons, which prevented his either standing
upright or lying down in that narrow prison,
where he remained sometime, whilst the mob
were raging without in the streets.^

The Duchess of Buckingham was in an upper
room of that house in which the husband whom
she had " loved," to use her own words^ ^' as never
woman loved man," was murdered. She had
not, when it happened, risen from her bed.'^

The following very graphic account, written by
a very devoted friend of Buckingham, Sir
Dudley Carleton, presents, in several details, a
somewhat different delineation of this scene of
murder, to that which has been related, collected
from various sources, although, in various in-
stances, it is confirmatory of the statements
usually received.^

" S'' — If y* ill newes we have heard (doe not as

3 See Brodie — Wotton — Hume.
* Reliq. Wotton., p. 234.

5 It shows iu what maimer the Duchess was informed of
her husband's death.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 1 13

their use is) out flye these Ires,* they will bring you
y^ worst of y® strangest I think you ever re-
ceived : sure I am, whatever passed my pen. Our
noble Duke in y^ midst of his army he had ready
at Portsmouth as well shipping as land forces,
in y^ height of his favour with our Gracious
Master, who was herd by at this place and in the
greatest joy and alacrity I ever saw him in my
life at y^ newes he had received about of y^ clock
in y^ morning on Saturday last of y^ relief of
Rochell, in that fort, that y* place might well
attend his coming, wherewith he was hasten-
ing to y" King, who that morning had sent for
him by me upon other occasions ; — at his going out
of a lower parlour where he usually sat, and had
then broken his fast in presence of many standers
by (Frenchmen with Monsieur de Soubise,
officers of his army and those of his own Trayns)
was stabbed unto y^ heart a little above y*
breast with a knife by one Felton, an Englishman,
being a Keformed Lieutenant, who hastening out
of y'^ doore and y"* duke having pulled out y^ knife
which was left in y^ wound and following him
out of y* parlour into y® hall, with his hand
putt to his sword, there fell down dead with much
effusion of bloud at his mouth and nostrils.

* Letters.
VOL. III. I

114 LIFE AND TIMES OF

V

The Lady Anglesea,* then looking down into
y hall out of an open Gallery, which crossed
y^ end of it, and being spectator of this tragical
fight, went immediately with a cry into y*
Duchesses Chamber, who was in bed, and then
fell down on y^ floor, so surprized y^ poor
Duchesse with this sad .... matin . . . . f
The murderer in y^ midst of y^ noise and tumult,
every man drawing his sword and no man know-
ing whom to strike, nor from whom to defend
himself, slipt out into y* kitchen and there stood
with some others unespyed, when a voyce being
currant in the court to w''^ y^ window and
doore of y® kitchen answered (a Frenchman, a
Frenchman), and his guilty conscience making
him believe it was " Felton, Felton " (who being
otherwise unknown and undiscovered might well
have escaped) he came out of y^ kitchen with his
sword drawn, and presenting himselfe, said, I
am the man : some offering to assayle him and
one running at him vnth a spit, he flung down
his sword and rendered himselfe to y^ company,
who being ready to handle him as he deserved by
tearing him in pieces I took hiui from them, and

• Lady Anglesea, the sister-in-law of Buckingham's
mother, being the wife of his brother, Christopher, Earl
of Anglesea.

t There is an hiatus here in the MS.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 115

having committed him to y^ custody of some
officers, when 1 had taken y^ best order I could
for other affairs in so great confusion, jointly with
Secretary Cooke I examined y^ man and found he
had no particular offence against y^ Duke, more
than all others for want of some small entertay-
ments were owing him : but he grounded his
practise upon y^ Parliament's Remonstrance as to
make himselfe a Martyr for his Country, which
he confessed to have resolved to execute y^ Mon-
day before, he being then at London, and came
from thence expressly by the Wednesday morn-
ing, arriving at Portsmouth y^ very morning, not
above half an hour before he committed it. We
could not then discover any complices, neither
did we take more than his free and willing con-
fession : but now His Majestie hath ordayned by
Commission y*" Lord Treaesurer, Lord Steward,
Earl of Dorset, Secretary Cooke and myselfe to
proceed with him as y* nature of y® fact requires,
and wee shall begin this afternoon : meane while
I would not but give you this relation to y^ end
you may know y* truth of this bloudy act,
which will flye about the world diversly reported
to you, and you should not find it strange such a
blowe to be struck in y midst of y^ Duke's
friends and followers : you must know y^ mur-
derer took his time and place at y^ presse near

I 2

116 LIFE AND TIMES OF

y" issue of y^ room, and many of us were stept out
to our horses, as I my selfe was to go to Court
with the Duke. The murderer glory ed in his
acte y^ first day ; but when I told him he was
y* first assassin of an Englishman, a gentleman, a
soldier, and a protestant, he shrunk at it, and is
now grown penitent. It seems this man and
Ravillac were of no other Religion (though he
professeth other) than assassanisme ; they have
the same maxims as you wiU see by two writings
were found sowed in bis hat, we*" goe here-
with.

"From Lord Viscount Dorchester to" [not addressed.] «

In another letter, addressed to the King of
Bohemia by Sir Charles Morgan, it was also shown
in what sanguine spirits the Duke was, and how
he was forming good resolutions, when he re-
ceived the fatal blow which cut him ofiP from all
hope of retrieving the errors he so candidly con-
fessed, or of completing the work of reforma-
tion, in various departments, which he hoped to
accomplish. Although we may feel assured that
the blow was suffered to fall for some purpose
of mercy, yet never did any sudden death seem
more untimely.

The King was only about six miles from Ports-

« Domestic State Papers, August 27, 1628. No. 21.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 1 1 7

moutb, whence he intended doubtless to witness
the departure of a friend whom he never ceased
to lament. He was at prayers when Sir John
Hippesley came suddenly into the Presence Cham-
ber, where service was that day performed, and
whispered the news into his Majesty's ear.
Charles did not permit a single feature of his
face to express either astonishment or distress ;
and, when a deep pause ensued, the appalled
chaplain thinking to spare his Majesty the dis~
tress of remaining during the service, he calmly
ordered him to proceed with the prayers — and,
until those were concluded, preserved the same
undisturbed demeanour. Some there were who
argued, from this perfect mastery over his feel-
ings, that the King did not regret the death of
one who had rendered him so unpopular, and
from whom he could not unloose the bonds which
early habit and youthful friendship had drawn so
closely as to convert them into shackles. But the
deep sorrow which Charles felt was shown in
his affectionate care of those whom his favourite
loved; nor was it, as some supposed, without a
stern effort that he controlled his emotions
whilst he remained amid those assembled in
prayer. No sooner was the service over, than
he suddenly departed to his chamber, and, throw-
ing himself on his bed, gave full vent to a pas-

118 LIFE AND TIMES OF

sion of grief, and, weeping long and bitterly,
paid to the poor Duke the tribute of his anguish,
— lamenting not only the loss of an excellent
friend and servant, but " the terrible manner of
the Duke's death." And he continued for many-
days in the deepest melancholy.'

Of course, in. those days, this fearful event
was said to have been foretold, not only by a
ghost, but in dreams, and by presentiments.
Sir James Bagg, one of the Duke's most trusted
servants, has left the following proof of his belief
in dreams : —

" Right Honoeable — Hand in hand came
to my unfortunate hand yo Expps.* and my
noble friend Mr. Secretarie Cooke's, and yo'
Honors leynes could not be but welcome although
they brought vnto mee tbe sadd and heavy
newes of that damnable act of that accursed
ffelton, wc*" hath so seated itself in my heart as
it will hould memorie there, of the untymilie
losse of my deere and gracious Lord to my un-
pacified sorrow untill my Death; for as I par-
took wt^ him of his comforts living, I will have
a share of his sorrowes after him. Oh my Lord !
his end was upon Satterdau morning The dale
of his dissolving tould mee by a dreame, discribed
in all. It wanted but the damned name of Felton.
^ Clarendon. * Expresses.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 1 1 9

But that fiende unworthy of it was entltuled by
the name of Souldier. This Dreame tould my
Wife and dearest friends, did not a little trou-
ble mee, but now the trueth thereof torments me.

" Yo leynes my only comforte brought wt^
them his Mat* commands. In all I doe obey
them," &c., &c.

The letter is addressed thus from Sir James
Bagg — '^ For his Lordship," and dated, " Augt.
28th, 1628." 8

Amongst the Duke's relations the Countess
of Denbigh was most beloved by him, and his
affection was warmly returned. On the very
day of his death he wrote to her. Whilst she was
penning her answer, her paper was moistened
with her tears, in a passion of grief so poignant
and so despairing, that she could only account
for it by believing those transports of sorrow to
have been prophetic. She wrote to him these
words : —

" I will pray for your happy return, which I
look to with a great cloud over my head, too
heavy for my poor heart to bear without torment.
But I hope the great God of Heaven will bless
you."^

* Majesty's.

8 Domestic State Papers, Aug. 1628, No. 26.

' Biog. Brit.

120 LIFE AND TIMES OF

On the day after the Duke's death, the Bishop
of Ely, who was the devoted friend of Lady
Denbigh, being considered the fittest person to
break the intelligence to her, went to visit her,
but hearing that she was asleep, waited until she
awoke, which she did in all the perturbation
produced by a terrible dream. Her brother, she
said, had seemed to pass with her through a field,
when, hearing a sudden shout from the people,
she had asked what it meant, and was told that it
was for joy that the Duke of Buckingham w^as
ill. She was relating this dream to one of her
gentlewomen when the Bishop entered her
chamber. The scene that followed may be easily
conceived. Whatever were the ill-starred Duke's
failings, he died beloved by those most dear to
him.

His sister's apprehensions were, indeed, per-
fectly justifiable, and they might w^ell intrude
into those hours of silence in which thoughts of
the absent or unhappy most frequently trouble
our minds. Had the Duke again been saved
from the chances of war, what might have been
his fate at home in case of his return unsuccessful?
Already had he hardly escaped from the indigna-
tion of the people : even then, in the remote
county of Carmarthen, they were raising reports
that the King had been poisoned by the Duke —

GEORGE VILLIERS. 121

reports that had been believed by the simple
inhabitants of Wales. The fury of party had
much to answer for in the excitement of bad
passions, the end and- mischief of which can never
be foreseen.

The greatest obscurity hung over the motives
which prompted the act, unless it be explained by the
practical aberration of a mind which, still bearing
the outward semblance of reason, has evil
thoughts, fostered by strong passions. The con-
nections of Felton were not only poor — his
mother appears to have been illiterate. To them,
probably, his designs were never imparted,
although they lived in the metropolis ; yet it is
evident, from several circumstances, that they
knew of his animosity to the Duke, and were, to
a certain extent — without any complicity — pre-
pared to hear of some fearful act on the part of
their unhappy relative.

Whilst the Duke's family were overwhelmed
with anguish, another humble mourner almost
sank under the blow. This was Elianore
Felton, the mother of the assassin. She was a
native of Durham, of which city her father had
once been mayor, but she was then residing
in London. On the 24th of August, in the
church in St. Dunstan's, in the Strand, an aged
woman and her daughter attended afternoon

122 LIFE AND TIMES OF

service. These poor women were Elianore
Felton and Elizabeth Hone, the mother and sister
of Felton.

During the singing of the psalms, whilst the
congregation were standing up, some disturbance
took place in the church. Elianore Felton, turn-
ing to a gentleman near her, inquired what was
the cause ? She was told that the Duke of Buck-
ingham was killed ; upon which, although the name
of the assassin was not then mentioned to her,
the unhappy woman fainted.

It is probable that, knowing her son's sentiments
towards the Duke, and being aware of Felton's
fanatical opinions and moody temper, a panic,
causing that sudden fainting, seized her. Her
daughter, also, as the poor mother confessed
in her subsequent examination, swooned also.
These facts are very remarkable, and seem to
show that she and her mother were aware of
Felton's intentions. No further information was
gathered from these gentlewomen by those
around them, until, in about half-an-hour, up-
on the church becoming fuller, there ran another
whisper through it, purporting that a certain
Lieutenant Felton, or Fenton, had killed the
Duke. Then, as Elizabeth Hone confessed, she
did much weep and lament, supposing that it
was her brother that had done the deed. She

GEORGE TILLIERS. 123

had, however, the presence of mind to conduct
her mother home, before she told her that it
was her son who had committed murder, and
plunged the nation into consternation, and his
family into ruin.

No proof whatsoever of any conspiracy was
to be elucidated from the unfortunate relations
of the culprit. Debt and disappointment had,
according to their evidence, driven Felton to
desperation. How many of the evil accidents
of life issue, as far as one can see, humanly
speaking, from pecuniary mismanagement. Felton,
on the Wednesday before the Duke was killed,
had gone to his mother's lodging, and told her
of his intention to get the money due to him
for pay from the Duke; adding, that "he was
too deeply in debt to stay longer in town."
Eighty pounds, it appeared, was then owing to
him. This, and the loss of his Captaincy, were
all that he had alleged to his own family against
the Duke ; he owned to no other grievance.
The mother and sister, and brothers, were, how-
ever, committed to prison, although Edmund
Felton, the brother of the delinquent, affirmed
that he had not seen him for ten weeks previously
to the murder; that John Felton had been
estranged from him, and did not let him know
where he lodged. There was no attempt in

124 LIFE AND TIMES OF

the examination, which took place before Thomas
Richardson and Henry Finch, to screen the
culprit by a plea of insanity; all his brother
said was, that his disposition was " melancholic,
sad, and heavy, and of few words." ^° Alone had
he conceived, planned, and put into execution the
deed of guilt ; yet such was the hard disposition
of the times, that it was proposed to extract
a confession from John Felton by torture ; but
Charles interposed, and forbade the application
of that horrible test,^' and it was never again
attempted in this country.

The nation was paralyzed by the death of
the Minister, Admiral, and General. " During
Buckingham's presence at Court," as Mr. Bruce,
in the preface to the " Calendar of State Papers,"
remarks, '' he reigned there as the King's absolute
and single Minister. Every act of the Govern-
ment passed by or through his will. The
King was little seen or heard of on State
affairs. He seldom ever attended a sitting of
the Privy Council, except to carry out some
object of his favourite." The void, the loss, may
easily be conceived, after the death of the Duke.
Charles, however, not only entered warmly into
public affairs, but into the care and concerns of

" Domestic State Papers, August, 1628, No. 31.
" Brodie.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 1 25

those children whom his friend had solemnly be-
queathed to his charge.

Plis first office, however, was to honour the
remains of one so suddenly cut oiF, whilst in the
prime of life. The process of embalming was
then deemed indispensable ; the Duke's body,
therefore, was submitted to that, happily, now
disused operation; his bowels were interred at
Portsmouth, where Lady Denbioh erected over
them a memorial. Thus the place of his death
was marked.

The corpse was then conveyed to York House,
where all that could be viewed of that once
noble form was exhibited underneath a hearse.
Eventually it was entombed under a splendid
monument in Westminster Abbey, on the north
side of Henry VH.'s Chapel ; and his Duchess,
notwithstanding her second marriage, and his
two sons, were buried in the vault beneath the
tomb with their father.

The Duchess of Buckingham was near her
confinement when this tragedy occurred. When
Charles first visited the young widow, he pro-
mised her that he would be a '^ husband to her,
and a father to her children." One son alone
was living at the time of the Duke's decease.
This was George, the second Duke of Bucking-
ham of the house of Villiers. The character

126 LIFE AND TIMES OF

of this young nobleman, to whom Horace Wal-
pole imputed "the figure and genius of Alci-
biades," has been " drawn by four masterly hands.
Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chisel.
Count Hamilton touched it with slight delicacy,
that finishes while it seems to sketch. Dryden
catched the living likeness. Pope completed the
historical resemblance." Lastly, Sir Walter Scott,
in our time, has depicted this singular being with
admirable skill, if not with perfect fidelity. He
was scarcely a year and seven months old at his
father's death.

One daughter. Lady Mary Villiers, survived the
Duke. In the third year of the reign of Charles I.,
Buckingham having then no male heir, caused a
patent to be made, limiting to her the title of
Duchess of Buckingham, in default of male issue,
his infant eldest son, Charles, having died in
1626, and George not being then born.

Lady Mary's life, so happy, seemingly, in her
infancy, when, as " little Moll," she was King
James's plaything, was not, in one respect, felici-
tous. Her first marriage, to Charles Lord
Herbert, son and heir of Philip, Earl of Pem-
broke, was hastened, and performed privately
in the chapel at Whitehall, because the young
bride had formed an attachment to Philip
Herbert, a younger son, who " did more apply

GEORGE VILLIERS. 127

himself to her," as she stated, than the elder
suitor.

But her mother chided her out of this fancy,
and the wedding took place — the bridegroom
dying of small-pox a few weeks afterwards.
Lady Mary married, secondly, James, Duke of
Richmond and Lennox, by whom she had a son,
Esme Stuart, who died in infancy ; and thirdly,
Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of Carlisle.
She left no children, so that her father's desire to
perpetuate in her his title was not realized. If
we may believe the praise of an epitaph which
was undisguisedly paid for, we must suppose
Lady Mary to have been endowed with all the
virtues.*

Some months after the Duke's death, his
widow gave birth to a son, named Francis after
his grandfather, who provided for him in a for-

* EPITAPH ON THE LA.DY MARY VILLIERS.

" The Lady Mary ViUiers lies
Under this stone : with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her breath
And their sad friends laid her in earth.
If any of them, reader, were
Known unto thee, shed a tear ;
Or if thyself possess a gem,
As dear to thee as this to them.
Though a stranger to this place,

128 LIFE AND TIMES OF

tune of IjOOOZ. a-year. When he grew up, how-
ever, Francis shared with his brother the mis-
fortune that overshadowed the family, from the un-
expected second marriage of their mother to Ran-
dolph Macdonald, first Earl and afterwards Mar-
quis of Antrim. It is painful to find the widowed
Duchess separated from her children, having

Bewail in theirs thine own hard case :
For thou perhaps at thy return
May'st find thy darling in an urn."

ANOTHER.

" The purest soul that e'er was sent
Into a clayey tenement
informed this dust ; but the weak mould
Could the great guest no longer hold :
The substance was too pure — ^the flame
Too glorious that thither came :
Ten thousand Cupids brought along
A grace on each wing that did throng
For place there — till they all opprest
The seat on which they sought to rest.
So the fair model broke for want
Of room to lodge th' inhabitant.
When in the brazen leaves of Fame
The life, the death of Buckingham
Shall be recorded, if truth's hand
Incise the story o'er our land,
Posterity shall see a fair
Structure by the studious care
Of two kings raised, that no less
Their wisdom than their power express ;
By blinded zeal (whose doubtful light

GEORGE VILLIERS. 129

become a Roman Catholic ; and having incurred in
this, and on account of the conduct of her husband
in Ireland, under Sir Thomas Wentworth, the
King's displeasure. Charles so greatly disap-
proved of her marriage, that he refused, for
several years, to see her, and, when reconciled,
took away her children lest they should be im-
bued with her religious opinions. The young
Duke and his brother Francis were educated,
unhappily for themselves, with the Princes,

Made murder's scarlet robe seem white —
Whose vain deluding phantoms charmed
A clouded sullen soul, and arm'd
A desperate hand, tliirsty of blood)
Torn from the fair earth where it stood !
So the majestic fabric feU,
His actions let our annals teU ;
We write no chronicle ; this pile
Wears only sorrow's face and style ;
Which e'en the envy that did wait
Upon his flourishing estate.
Turned to soft pity of his death,
Now pays his hearse ; but that cheap breath
Shall not blow here, nor th' impure brine
Puddle the streams that bathe this shrine.
These are the pious obsequies
Dropped from his chaste wife's pregnant eyes,
In frequent showers, and were alone
By her congeahng sighs made stone,
On which the carver did bestow
These forms and characters of woe :
So he the fashion only lent,
Whilst she wept all this monument."
VOL. III. K

130 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Charles II. and his brothers; and Ladj Mary
was received in the house of the Earl of Pem-
broke, her father-in-law. Such are the changes
and chances of life, that in 1639 we find Katharine,
(still signing herself " Katharine Buckingham ")
interceding with Strafford for her husband, Lord
Antrim. ^' Ajotj misfortune," she writes, "to my
lord must be mine."*

For him she had sacrificed indeed the favour
of the King, and the guardianship of her children.

In 1648, Lord Francis, who, vdth his brother,
had taken the field against the Parliament, was
killed, at about two miles distance from Kingston-

**'My Lord, — I was in hope, tiU very lately, that aU
your displeasure taken against my lord had been past ; but,
in letters sent me out of England, I was assuredly informed
your lordship was much disgusted still with him, which
news hath very much troubled me. I cannot be satisfied
without sending these expressly to you. And I beseech
you that, whatever you do conceive, you will deal clearly
with me, and let me know it, and withal direct me
how I may remove it. I must necessarily be in-
cluded in your lordship's anger to him, for any misfortune
to my lord must be mine, and it will prove a great mis-
fortune to me to hve under your frowns. Out of your
goodness you will not, I hope, make me a sufferer, who
have never deserved from you but as
" Your Lordship's

" Katharine Buckingham.

"Dunbere, this 2nd of September, 1639." »2

»2 Strafford Letters, vol. ii., p. 386.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 131

on-Thames: standing with his back planted against
an oak-tree on the road-side; and, scorning to ask
quarter, he met his death gallantly, having nine
wounds on his face and body. He is said to have
been a most beautiful youth, and was only nine-
teen when he thus fell. His body was brought
by water to York House, then sad and desolate,
and was taken thence to be deposited in his father's
vault, with a Latin inscription on the coffin, pre-
served by Brian Fairfax, a faithful adherent, who
thought it a pity that the epitaph should be buried
with him ; and who has therefore given it in his life
of George, the second Duke of Buckingham. The
elder brother of Lord Francis, after a life of extra-
ordinary adventure, vicissitude, study, and dissipa-
tion, died, in 1688, quietly in his bed — " the fate of
few of his predecessors of the title of Buckingham."
His body also lies entombed near his father. " The
life of pleasure and the soul of whim," as Pope
describes him, his career furnishes a wide field for
reflection and investigation, to those who may dare
to dive into a biography so characterized by all
the worst parts of the age in which he existed,
as that of this profligate man.

Mary, Countess of Buckingham, survived the
Duke, her son, four years — when, with her life,
her dignity expired.

John YilHers, Lord Purbeck, died in 1657,

k2

132 LIFE AND TIMES OF

when tlie titles which he bore became extinct.
He lived, however, to recover his powers of mind,
and to act as a friend and guardian to his ne-
phews. Lady Purbeck, his first wife, took the
name of Wright, and her son, by Lord Howard,
bore that surname. The once flattered heiress,
whose follies and misconduct were forgiven, as
we have seen, by her father, died in 1645, in the
King's Garrison, at Oxford, and she is buried in
the Church of St. Mary's, in that city.^^ Notwith-
standing the misery of his first union. Lord Pur-
beck married again ; but had no issue by his
second wife, who was a daughter of Sir William
Thugsby, of Kippen, in Yorkshire.

Robert Wright, the illegitimate son of Lady
Purbeck, took his wife's name of Danvers, in
order to abandon that of Villiers, so distasteful
to the Commonwealth, with which he sided.

His descendants, nevertheless, laid claim to the
honours of the first Lord Purbeck — and, although
their claim was refused by Parliament, assumed
them, until, in 1774, the death of the last pre-
tender to the title, George Villiers, died without
issue.

Christopher Villiers, the youngest brother of
the Duke, pre-deceased him, dying in 1624. His
title became extinct in 1659.

" Burke's Extinct Peerage.

GEORGE VTLLIERS. 133

SirWilliam VillierSjthe eldest half-brother of the
Duke, had never emerged from his original ob-
scurity ; but Sir Edward, his other half-brother,
whom Buckingham constituted President of
Munster, was highly esteemed for his justice and
hospitality, and lamented by the whole province.^'^
From him, through his son, who had succeeded his
maternal uncle in the title of Viscount Grandison,
was descended the famous (or infamous) Barbara
Villiers, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, the
mistress of Charles II. Her beauty appears to
have been one of the few traits of the Villiers
family that she possessed.

It is remarkable that not one of the titles con-
ferred on the family of Villiers by James I. re-
mains to distinguish the descendants of old Sir
George of Brookesby . The Earldoms of Clarendon
and of Jersey are subsequent creations.^^

" "In the Earl of Cork's chapel at Youghal, where he
was buried, there still remains the following hexastich to his
memory ; —

" Munster may curse the time that Villiers came
To make us worse, by leaving such a name
Of noble parts as none can imitate,
But those whose hearts are married to the State ;
But if they press to imitate his fame,
Munster may bless the time that Villiers came."
Biographia Britannica^ vol. vi.

15 Burke's Extinct Peerage.

134 LIFE AND TIMES OF

The Duchess of Buckingham, as she still styled
herself, appears to have lived occasionally at
Newhall, for after her daughter's marriage she
was very desirous of having her with her — but
the King would not hear of it ; and the sound-
ness of his judgment was proved by the con-
duct of the Duchess. Her life was hence-
forth occupied in bringing over converts to the
faith she professed; amongst others she suc-
ceeded in making a proselyte of the Countess
of Newburgh. After the death of her father,
in 1632, she inherited the title of Baroness de
Ros. It is remarkable that even in her person
the honours her first husband had procured for
his family did not abide. She, indeed, by cour-
tesy, bore still his title, but was actually Mar-
chioness of Antrim and Baroness de Ros. So
extraordinary an acquisition of honours, and so
rapid an extinction, are not known in any other
family of England, but are peculiar to the House
of Yilliers.

Few things disappoint the reader more than
the unaccountable change in the character of
Katharine, Duchess of Buckingham, after she
ceased, except by courtesy, to bear that name. She
seems to have hastened, not only to plunge into a
second marriage, but to have at last avowed,
what she had during the whole of her life de-

GEORGE VILLIERS. 135

nied, the tenets of the Church of Rome. Hence-
foith she was opposed to the monarch by whom
her husband, the Duke, had been overwhehned
witl benefits. This painful alteration in one
so gentle, so forgiving, so affectionate in her
earlier life, is one of those anomalies in life that
om cannot cease to regret, without being able
to explain.

CHAPTEE IV.

CHAEACTER OF THE DUKE OP BUCKINGHAM — HIS PATRON-
AGE OF ART — HIS COLLECTION — THE SPANISH COURT

DESCRIBED COLLECTION BY CHARLES I, FATE OF

THESE PICTURES.

139

CHAPTEE IV.

Whatever may have been the failings of the
Duke of Buckingham as a husband, he marked his
confidence in his wife by his will. That last act of
his life gave the Duchess power over all his per-
sonal property, as well as a life possession of
all his mansion-houses, with a fourth of his lands
in jointure. That his debts were considerable,
has been amply shewn during the course of the
preceding narrative. Previous to his expedition
to Rhe, he had wisely put his revenues into the
hands of commissioners, and placed it out of
his own power to manage or mismanage his
own affairs. His occupations, as a courtier, as a
minister, as an ambassador, and, lastly, as a
general, sufficiently excuse his want of leisure
for the control of his expenses, and the system

140 LIFE AND TIMES OF

of retrenchment requisite to relieve him from
harassing liabilities.

He left, however, an immense amount of capi-
tal locked up in pictures; and that famous col-
lection which places him, as Dr. Waagen affirms,
in the third rank as " a collector of paintings
in this country," came into the possession of his
son. It was chiefly deposited in York House —
that stately structure, so complete and so princely,
that in 1663, when it had become the, residence
of the Eussian embassy, Pepys was still amazed
at its splendour, although thirty-five eventful
years had shaken many a grand fabric to its
fall. '^ That," he says, " which did please me
best, was the remains of the noble soul of the
late Duke of Buckingham appearing in his
house, in every place, in the door-cases, and the
windows."

It was in the Court of Madrid that Bucking-
ham had learned to love art, to favour artists,
and to become a judge of their works. Philip
IV., of Spain, inert and inefficient as a monarch,
and governed by Olivares, was a man of consi-
derable intellectual powers, and of great taste.
**The denizens of his palace breathed," as a
modern writer expressed it, "an atmosphere of
letters." ^^ At that time the CastiHan stage was
" Dr. Waagen — Life of Velasquez, p. 48.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 141

in Its perfection; the scenery was inimitable,
and the greatest expense was bestowed in re-
presenting the pieces of Lope de Vega, and of
Calderon; in the same manner as the masques
of Ben Jonson were aided in effect by the talents
of Inigo Jones. Nor was Philip IV. a mere
patron of genius; he was himself an actor and
author, writing with purity and elegance : a
musician, a poet, or, as he delighted to style
himself, Ingenio de esto corte. He wrote a tragedy
on the death of Essex, Elizabeth's favourite ;
and he often acted with other literary men of
his Court, delighting to vie with them in the
display of fancy and humour in the Comedias de
repente, representations resembling those of cha-
rades in the present day, in which a certain
plot was worked out, with extempore speeches.

Several of this monarch's drawings, both of
figures and landscapes, long remained as proofs
of that skill' which had distinguished both his
fathers and grandfathers. He was an incompar-
able judge of painting; for at Valencia he de-
lighted the citizens : on being shewn the great
silver altar of the cathedral, he remarked promptly,
that '^ the altar was of silver, but the doors were
gold" — alluding to the pictures painted by Aregio
and Neapoli, which adorned the doors.

It may easily be imagined how the example of

142 LIFE AND TIMES OE

this young Prince, only in his nineteenth year
when Buckingham visited Spain, must have
awakened in him, as in Charles, a new sense;
fresh conceptions of the beautiful, cravings
hitherto unfelt, an honourable emulation. And
the example of Philip had its effect on both : the
reception given to Rubens, who, as an artist, was
treated with far greater distinction than he
would have been as a mere diplomatist, in which
capacity he came ; the efforts of Philip to form
an academy of fine arts; the honours bestowed
on Velasquez; and the enthusiasm which he
shewed in the collection of fine pictures for the
galleries, which he so wonderfully enriched, must
have proved to Charles and Buckingham how far
behind was their own country in taste and libe-
rality. They saw that the gold of Mexico and
Peru was freely given for the treasures of art,
whilst royalty at home was lavish only on
pageants, horse-racing, hunting, and feasting.
They saw the elevating effects of art and letters,
and staid not in Spain long enough to witness the
results of that life-long mistake made by Philip IV.,
in resigning the reins of government to the hands
of a minister who lost for his sovereign great pos-
sessions, far exceeding those that many conquerors
have acquired.

These refined tastes, which shone forth in

GEORGE VILLIERS. 143

Philip, were participated by his young and beau-
tiful queen, Isabella of Bourbon, his first wife, and
the sister of Henrietta Maria. She was the
loveliest subject of the pencil of Velasquez. At
Broom-HaU, in Fifeshire, there is a picture by
him representing the exchange of this Princess,
when a girl, with Anne of Austria, the sister of
Philip IV.

Isabella was destined to be the bride of Philip,
then Prince of the Asturias — Anne to become
the wife of Louis XIII. of France.

This production of Velasquez was only one of
many portraits of this lovely princess ; for she was
by all acknowledged to be the very star of the Court.
She shared the taste of her husband, whilst his
young brothers, both early instructed in drawing,
warmly joined in the King's pursuits, not only in
the arts, but in literature. The elder, Don
Carlos, beloved, as has been stated, by the
Spaniards for his dark complexion, was supposed
to have excited the jealousy of Olivares by his
talents — he died in 1626 : the second, the Boy-
Cardinal, who assumed the Roman purple and the
mitre of an archbishop, was the able pupil in
painting of Vincencio Carducho, and became the
most intellectual of the Spanish Princes that had
appeared since Charles V. He set the fashion of
those half-dramatic, half-musical pieces, which were

144 LIFE AND TIMES OF

called in Spain, Zarzuelas.^"^ The boy — whom we
have seen joining heart and soul, in his purple robe,
and beneath his mitre, in court revels, given in
honour of Charles I., was, at that very time, a
student in philosophy and mathematics ; and when
at the age of twenty-two he was sent to govern
Flanders, and henceforth to spend the brief span
of life allotted to him in camps and councils —
was still, to the last, the patron of Velasquez
and Kubens.^^

Olivares the Magnificent, as he was often
called, cultivated the fine arts as a means of
diverting the young monarch from his own abuse
of power, and the consequent discontents which
marked his administration. He possessed the
most magnificent library in Europe, abounding in
rare manuscripts, and, domesticated in this house
as chaplain, Lope de Vega passed his old age.
Quevedo, Pachecho, and many others, owed much
to the patronage of Olivares — a protection which
they paid back in compliments, and, like Lord
Halifax, he was '^ fed with dedications." Olivares
was one of the first sitters to Velasquez; he was
the patron of Murillo, and, in the downfall of this
minister, these two painters did not desert their

1^ From the name of his coimtiy-seat.
" The infant Cardinal, the conqueror of Nordlingen, died
in 1641.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 145

early friend, but alone clung to him in his misfor-
tunes.

The King, his Queen, the two royal brothers,
and Olivares, had all a passion for having portraits
taken of themselves. Philip was born for a sitter.
His face, as Dr. Waagen remarks, "is better
known than his history." His pale Flemish com-
plexion, Austrian features, and fair hair have
been many times depicted by Kubens and
Velasquez. He was sometimes painted on his
Andalusian courser, sometimes in black velvet, as
he was going to the council — even at his prayers.
There was an hereditary gift of silence and com-
posure in his race : in Philip the attribute was so
signal, that he could witness a whole comedy
without stirring hand or foot, and conduct an
audience without a muscle moving, except those in
his lips and tongue.^^ Even after slaying the bull of
Xarama, famed for strength and fierceness, not
for a moment did he change countenance. To
this incomparable staidness and dignity was added
the advantage of a tall figure, which Philip knew
well how to set off by a perfect mastery in com-
bination of colours. Black he mixed almost
uniformly with white, and gold and silver. This
stately monarch was never known to smile more

" Waagen, p. 62, From "Voyage en Espagne" —
Cologne, 1662.

VOL. III. L

146 LIFE AND TIMES OF

than three times in his life — that is, publicly,
for in private he was ever "full of merry dis-
courses.'*

Thus, taste, letters in every branch, the noblest
vrorks of architecture and sculpture, were the
themes of a court where those who had left behind
them the pedantry and vulgarity of King James
arrived in the vigour of youth and intellect.
Velasquez was painting a portrait of the King,
and one also of the Infant, Don Fernando, when
Charles and Buckingham arrived at Madrid, and
interrupted, by their presence and the ceremonials
of their reception, the completion of these
pictures. The astonished Prince and his favourite
found themselves transformed into a region
hitherto scarcely dreamed of, yet which they were,
by natural refinement of taste, well calculated to
enter. They had left King James hunting in a
ruff and bombasted garments ; that King hated
novelties. "It was as well," Horace Walpole
remarks, " that he had no disposition to the arts,
but let them take their own course, for he might
have introduced as bad a taste into them as he
did into literature."

Walpole attributes, likewise, the absence of
pictures in the houses of the English nobility at
this period to the great size and height of the
rooms which they erected in the sixteenth and seven-

GEORGE VILLIERS. 147

teentli centuries, when vastness seems to have
constituted the idea of grandeur. Pictures
would have been lost in rooms of such height,
which were better calculated for tapestry ; and he
offers, as an instance, Hardwicke — which was fur-
nished for the reception and imprisonment of
Mary Queen of Scots — and Audley-End, as proofs
of the prodigious space covered by a modern
gentleman's house in the days of James I., and
observes how impossible it would have been to
place pictures in such structures.

One may readily conceive, therefore, the
enchantment that was felt in visiting the Escurial,
the palace of Buen-retiro, and the noble churches
and famous convents of Madrid. Charles and
Buckingham beheld that capital in the height of
its splendour, and witnessed its most brilliant
displays ; they attended the grand, picturesque
services and processions ; they became acquainted
with the works of Titian, of Velasquez, and
Carducho. That Charles cherished the remem-
brance of the scenes in which he had once played
so romantic a part, is evident from his employing
a young painter, Miquel de la Cruz, even when
England was threatened with the great Rebellion,
to paint for him copies of a number of pictures
from those in the Alcazar of Madrid.^^ The painter
2« Waagen ; Life of Velasquez, p. 82.

l2

148 LIFE AND TIMES OF

was cut off by an early death, and the project was
never carried out.

After visiting the halls of the Escurial and of
the Pardo, Charles resolved to form a gallery of
art at Whitehall ; and Buckingham, at the same
time, determined to decorate York House with
Spanish paintings. The nucleus of the gallery of
art at Whitehall was bought from the collection
of the Conde de Yillame. Charles, also, endea-
voured to purchase a small picture, on copper, of
Correggio's, from Don Andres Velasquez, for a
thousand crowns, but was unsuccessful ; he failed,
also, in obtaining the valuable volumes of Da
Vinci's drawings, which Don Juan de Espina
refused to sell, saying that he intended to bequeath
these treasures of art to his master, the King.
The nobles in the Spanish Court were in the
habit of gratifying their young sovereign with
presents of pictures and statues ; and a similar
attention was paid both to the Duke of Buckingham
and to Charles. Philip gave the Prince the famous
" Antiope," by Titian; as well as "Diana Bathing,"
"Earopa," and '^Danae," by the same master.
Buckingham had several presents of value given
him ; but though they were packed up, these
paintings were left behind, in the hurry of
departure, and were never forwarded to Eng-
land.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 149

A great portion of the large sums spent by
Buckingham in Spain was expended in forming
that famous collection which fell, unhappily, into
the hands of his son. It would appear that James
I. somewhat curtailed Charles's expenditure on this
head; for we find, by an entry in the State Paper
Office, that Buckingham lent the Prince twelve
thousand pounds during their sojourn in Spain.
Nevertheless, no specimen of Spanish art was
ever conveyed to England by Charles.^^ A sketch
was, indeed, begun of the Prince, by Velasquez,
but it is doubtful if it were ever completed.
Pachecho, the father-in-law of Velasquez, states
that Charles was so delighted with this portrait
in its unfinished state, that he presented the great
painter with a hundre^l thousand crowns.^'-^ One
may readily account for its never being com-
pleted, because Velasquez, when Charles and
Buckingham left Madrid, could scarcely have
finished the portraits and other pictures on which
he was engaged by Philip IV.

In 1847, a picture belonging to Mr. Saare, of
"Reading, and supposed to have been a relic of
the gallery of Whitehall, was exhibited in Lon-
don as this lost portrait by Velasquez. It por-
trays Prince Charles in a more robust form, and

'' State Papers : Calendar, by Mr. Bruce.
" Waagen.

150 LIFE AND TIMES OF

With a greater breadth of countenance than any-
other known resemblance ; and was stated to have
been painted in 1623, and to have been mentioned
in a privately printed catalogue of the gallery of the
Earl of Fife, who died in 1809, in which it was stated
that it had once belonged to the Duke of Buck-
ingham. Unfortunately, the surname of the
Duke of Buckingham was not specified ; and
since the title has been owned, so late as 1 735, by
the Sheffield family, the evidence was incom-
plete. A very curious controversy ensued, but
facts remain much in the same state as before ;
and the authenticity of the portrait has been
strongly disputed, if not denied, by Dr. Waagen,
and others. It is singular that there was no
work of Velasquez among the pictures left by
Buckingham.

Whilst the great enlargement of ideas and im-
provement in taste, resulting from the journey
into Spain, is acknowledged, it must be remem-
bered that Charles and his favourite went, pre-
pared in knowledge, and in an honourable emula-
tion, to profit by all they might behold and hear.
In painting, Perichief tells us, Charles " had so
excellent a fancy, th^t he would supply the defect
of art in the workman, and suddenly draw those
lines, give those airs and lights, which experience
and practice had taught the painters." In every

GEORGE VILLIERS. 151

point he met the accomplished Philip TV. od
equal grounds ; in some he exceeded him. A
good antiquary, a judge of medals, a capital me-
chanist— cognizant of the art of printing — there
existed not a gentleman of the three kingdoms
that could compete with him in universality of
knowledge.^^ He was as ready for war as for
peace ; could put a watch together, yet compre-
hend a fortification ; understood guns, and the
art of ship-building ; but the dearest occupation of
his leisure was the collection of sculptures and
paintings.

The Crown was already in possession of some
good pictures, when Charles commenced his un-
dertaking. Prince Henry had begun the work,
and the nobility, perceiving the King's love of art,
imitated the Spanish nobles, and sent him presents
of great value. But the great act of Charles's
life as a connoisseur, was the purchase of the col-
lection of the Duke of Mantua, which was con-
sidered to be the richest in Europe."^'*

Philip TV. constantly employed his ambassadors
and viceroys to buy up fine pictures for his
gallery; and Charles and Buckingham likewise,
on their return, adopted a similar plan on a smaller
scale, by instructing Sir Henry Wotton and Bal-

" Perichief.

^ Walpole, p. 183, vol. v.

152 LIFE AND TIMES OE

thazar Gerbier to negociate for them in works of
art. It is obvious how much the royal collection
at Whitehall must have been prized ; since, upon
its being sold during the Protectorate, the prin-
cipal purchaser was Don Alonzo de Cardenas, the
agent of the Spanish King, and his purchases re-
quired eighteen mules to carry them from the
coast to Madrid, whence Lord Clarendon, ambas-
sador of the exiled Charles II. was dismissed,
that he might not see the treasures of his unfor-
tunate master thus brought into a far and foreign
country.^^

The collection of the Duke of Mantua cost
Charles eighty thousand pounds — Buckingham
being the agent, and probably the instigator of
this purchase. The family of Gonzaga had been,
in 1627, a hundred years in forming this noble
gallery. Little inferior to the Medici in their libe-
rality to artists, they were the patrons of Andrew
Mantegna, of Guido Romano, of Raphael, of
Correggio, and of Titian, successively. The
** Education of Cupid," by Correggio, was among
King Charles's purchases, as well as the "Entomb-
ment," now in the Louvre, and the "Twelve Caesars"
by Titian. Rubens purchased for him the Cartoons
of Raphael, which had been sent by Leo X. to
Flanders, to be worked in tapestry, and left there.
'^ Clarendon's History of the Rebellion.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 153

Then Charles received various presents ; that espe-
cially commonly styled the ^' Venus del Pardo," or
more properly "Jupiter and Antiope;" the figures
being set off by one of the grandest landscapes by
Titian, known. This gem was given by Charles
to the Duke of Buckingham.^^ It is now in the
Louvre, as is also the " Baptist," by Leonardo da
Vinci, a present originally from Louis XIII. to
Charles.27

It was during the residence of Buckingham in
Paris that he became acquainted with Rubens.
Eventually he bought the whole of the collection
of statues, paintings, and other valuable works of
art, which that master had formed at a cost of
about a thousand pounds, and which he sold to
the Duke for ten thousand. But it was not often
that Buckingham increased his stores so easily ;
so early as the year 1613, he had in his house-
hold Balthazar Gerbier d'Ouvilly, of Antwerp, a
sort of amanuensis, or, as Sanderson styles him, a
" common penman," whose transcribing the deca-
logue for the Dutch Church was one of his first
steps to preferment. Gerbier became a miniature
painter, and in that ostensible capacity went into

^^ Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters ; Art. " Charles I."
'^ In the work styled " Art and Artists," by Dr. Waagen,

there is a fuU and most interesting account of all Charles's

collection.

154 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Spain with the Duke ; he painted, amongst other
portraits of the family, a fine oval miniature of his
patron on horseback, which, in Walpole's time, be-
longed to the Duchess of Northumberland; the
figure, dressed in scarlet and gold, is finished with
great care — and the horse, dark grey, with a white
mane, is very animated ; underneath the horse is
a landscape with figures, and over the Duke's head
is suspended his motto, '^ Fidei curricula cruxP It
was in allusion to the well-known talents of Ger-
bier that the Duchess of Buckingham wrote to
the Duke, when in Spain, begging him, ^'if he
had leisure to sit to Gerbier for his portrait, that
she might have it well done in little."

Gerbier seems at that time to have been a
special favourite with the King and Queen, who
supped once at his house — the entertainment, it
is said, costing the painter a thousand pounds.^*
Gerbier, like Rubens, was employed in delicate
diplomatic missions ; he was also an architect
and an author, and the founder of an Academy
for foreign languages, and '^ for all noble sciences
and exercises," as he expressed it. As a diplo-
matist, Gerbier negociated in Flanders a private
treaty with Spain : — as an architect, his fame
rested, in the reign of Charles, chiefly on a
large room built near the Water Gate, at York
» Note in Walpole, p. 189, vol. iii.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 155

t

Stairs, in the Strand, which was commended by
Charles I. almost as much as the Banqueting
House. Encouraged by this encomium, Gerbier
wrote a small work on magnificent buildings,
proposing to level Fleet Street and Cheapside,
and to erect a fine gate at Temple Bar ; a plan
of which was presented to Charles II., in whose
reign Gerbier died. He was the rival, or believed
himself to be so, of Inigo Jones. Hempstead-
Marshal, the seat of Lord Craven, long since
burned down, was Gerbier's last effort : he died
before it was completed, and was buried in the
chancel of the church at that place.

His literary works seem to have been very singu-
lar compounds of falsehood, invective, and flattery.
Horace Walpole believes him to have been the
author of a tract printed by authority, in 1651,
three years after the execution of Charles I., en-
titled " The Nonsuch Charles, his character," and
considers it one of the basest libels ever pub-
lished. " The style, the folly, the wretched rea-
soning, are," he observes, ^^ consistent with Ger-
bier's usual works ; he must, at all events," he
decides, ^Miave furnished materials." Neverthe-
less, two years afterwards, Gerbier published a piece
styled " Les Effets Pernicieux," written in French,
and to this he affixed his name ; it was printed
at the " Stag," and composed apparently as a pre-

156 LIFE AND TIMES OF

cautionary palliative to the other work, in case of
the restoration of the Stuarts; and the notion
seems to have succeeded, since Gerbier returned
to England with Charles II., and the triumphal
arches, erected on the Restoration, were designed
by this singularly versatile man.^^ He had, how-
ever, the merit, as we have seen, of endeavouring to
form an Academy, somewhat on the plan of the
Royal Institution in Albemarle Street. Sir Francis
Keynaston at that time resided in Covent Garden,
and at his house the Academy was held. None
but gentlemen were admitted. Arts were taught
by professors, in lectures, Gerbier being one of
the lecturers. The academy was afterwards re-
moved to Whitefriars ; then to Bethnal Green,
whence he dedicated one of his lectures on Mili-
tary Architecture to General Skippon, whom he
loaded with the most fulsome, and from one who
had, like himself, been overwhelmed by kindnesses
from Charles I. — the most treacherous flattery.

It is unsatisfactory to refer to any state-
ment of Gerbier's as reliable; in a work on
" Royal Favourites," written in French, he stated
that Dr. Egglisham had applied to him, through
Sir William Chaloner, to procure his pardon, on
condition of his confessing that he had been in-
stigated by others to publish his libel on Bucking-
29 Walpole, p. 192.

GEORGE VILLIERS. • IT) 7

ham. Gerbier stated that he had applied to the
Secretary of State, but received no answer. It
is unfortunate that no one could believe Gerbier,
either when he calumniated or when he excused
any individual.

It was by this able, scurrilous sycophant that
the catalogue of Buckingham's pictures was
drawn up. In it were enumerated thirteen pic-
tures by Rubens, whom the Duke had seen when
he was at Antwerp, shortly before the Ex-
pedition to Rhe. When, in 1630, the great
painter came to England as a diplomatist, the
Duke was dead, but the sovereign who had so
greatly encouraged his tastes, did not, as Walpole
remarks, " overlook in the ambassador the
talents of the painter." Rubens painted, for
three thousand pounds, the ceiling of the
Banqueting House built by Inigo Jones — and
depicting the " Apotheosis of King James ; " a
subject highly inconsistent for the purpose for
which it is now most strangely appropriated as a
chapel. Yandyck was to have adorned the sides
with the history of the Garter; so that three
great masters would have combined to form that
noblest room in the world ; but so grand a posses-
sion was not destined to be the work of former
times, or the pride of our own.

After Buckingham's death, some of his pictures

158 LIFE AND TIMES OF

were bought by the King, some by the Earl of
Northumberland, and some by Abbot Montague.*
In the collection there were nineteen pictures by
Titian, seventeen by Tintoret, thirteen by Paul
Veronese, twenty-one by Bassano, two by Julio
Romano, two by Georgione, eight by Palina, three
by Guido, thirteen by Rubens, three by Leonardo
da Vinci, two by Correggio, and three by Raphael,
besides several by inferior masters whose produc-
tions are scarce. The great prize of the collec-
tion was the *' Ecce Homo," of Titian, eight feet
in leno-th and twelve in breadth. For this maor-
nificent work of art, in which portraits of the
Pope, the Emperors Charles V. and Solyman
the Magnificent are introduced, the Earl of
Arundel had offered Buckingham seven thousand
pounds in land or money. The proposal was
refused, and the "Ecce Homo" shared the
fate of many of the other pictures in the year
1648.

George, the second Duke of Buckingham,
among whose few good qualities was a
loyal adherence to that family to whom
his father owed all, after being allowed by
the Parliament a period of fifty days to choose

♦ Dr. Waagen says they were sequestrated ; but it appears
only a portion of them were sold by the Parliament — the
rest fell into the hands of the second Duke of Buckingham.

GEOKGE VILLIEKS. ' 159

between desertion of the Stuarts and outlawry,
chose the latter. His estates were seized, but his
father's pictures, many of which still hung on the
now gloomy walls of York House, were sent to him
in his exile at Antwerp, by an old servant, John
Traylinan, who had been left to guard the pro-
perty. These were now sold for bread. Duart,
of Antwerp, purchased some of them, but the
greater number became the possession of the
Archduke Leopold, and were removed to the
Castle of Prague. Amongst them was the "Ecce
Homo ; " which has been described as embody-
ing the greatest merits of its incomparable
painter.^°

Buckingham's collection contained two hundred
and thirty pictures. One may conceive how
grandly they must have adorned York House,
where in every chamber were emblazoned the
arms of the two families, lions and peacocks, the
houses of Villiers and Manners, who were for a
few brief years united by one common bond
under that roof.^^ Neither pains nor money were
ever spared by Charles, or by Buckingham, to
enrich their collections. Charles, with his own
hands, wrote a letter inviting Albano to England.

'» Biographia, Art. " George Villiers," the second note.
^* See Biographia Britannica.

160 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Buckingham endeavoured to attract Carlo MarattI,
who had painted for him portraits of a Prince and
Princess of Brunswick, to the English Court ; but
Maratti excused himself on the plea that he was
not yet perfect in his art.^^ Little could the King
have foretold that his treasures at Whitehall
would have been sold, as Horace Walpole ex-
presses it, by " inch of candle ; " or the Duke
that his son and heir should have parted with
his father's collection to save himself from star-
vation in a foreign country. Such events seem
to confirm Sydney Smith's counsel to a friend,
not to look forward more than to a futurity of
two hours' duration.

Charles I., less happy than Buckingham, had
the chagrin to hear that his favourite's beloved
collection was partially sold, three years before
his own death. It seems, as Walpole expresses
it, ^*to have become part of the religion of the
time to war on the arts, because they had been
countenanced at Court." In 1 645 the Parliament
ordered the two collections to be sold ; but, lest
the public exigencies should not be thought to
afford sufficient cause for this step, they passed
the following acts to colour their proceedings : —

'^Ordered, (July 23, 1635,) that all such pictures

^'^ Walpole.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 161

and statues there (at York House) as are without
any superstition, shall be forthwith sold." ^*

" Ordered, that all such pictures as shall have
the representation of the second person in the
Trinity upon them shall be forthwith burnt."

" Ordered, that all such pictures there, as have
the representation of the Virgin Mary upon them,
shall be forthwith burnt."^^

This, Walpole remarks, was a worthy contrast
to Archbishop Laud, who made a Star Chamber
business of a man's breaking some painted glass
in the cathedral at Salisbury. Times were
changed; Laud, however, looked on the offence
as an indication of a spirit of destruction and
irreverence ; — unhappily, he was right.

Such was the fate of Buckingham's pictures : a
brief notice of the proceedings which dispersed
the far more valuable collection of the King must
not be omitted. Immediately after Charles's
death, votes were passed for the sale of his
pictures, statues, jewels, and " hangings." It
was then ordered that inventories should be
made, and commissioners be appointed to
appraise, secure, and inventory the said goods.

3* Dr. Waagen says that some of the Duke's pictures were
not genuine, and many of little worth ; but this is not the
opinion of Horace Walpole.

" Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, vol. iii., p. 297 — from
the Journals of the House of Commons.

VOL. III. M

162 LIFE AXD TIMES OF

Cromwell, to his honour, attempted to stop the
dispersion of these valuables ; but he had mat-
ters of even greater importance to engage his
attention, and the sale, about the year 1650,
appears, as far as the paintings were concerned,
to have been completed. From that time no
further mention of them is to be found in the
Journals of the House of Commons.^^

All the furniture from the ill-fated King's
different palaces was brought up, and exposed for
sale; and, as far as relates to the jewels, plate,
and furniture, the affair was not concluded until
1653. It must, indeed, have been a melancholy
sight. Cromwell, through his agent, was one of
the principal purchasers. The price of each
article was fixed, but, if any one offered a higher
sum, preference was given. Cromwell, who re-
sided alternately at Whitehall and Hampton
Court, bought the Cartoons for SOOl. The order
against " superstitious " pieces was not, it seems,
strictly observed ; for a painting of Vandyck's,
" Mary, our Lord, and Angels," sold for 40/.^^ The
celebrated portrait of George, the second Duke
of Buckingham, and his mother, by Vandyck,
one of the finest productions of that master, was
valued at 30Z., and sold for 501. Many of the

^ Walpole's Anecdotes of Pamting, vol. iii., p. 200,
•'Ibid, p. 204.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 163

finest pictures were bought by Mons. Jabach, a
native of Cologne, settled in Paris, who sold his
collection afterwards to Louis XIV. " The En-
tombment," by Titian, which he secured, and
"Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus," are in the
Louvre. Amongst the pictures in the Mantua
collection, was the large " Holy Trinity ; " it was
bought by De Cardenas, the Spanish Ambassador ;
and on its arrival Philip TV. exclaimed, " That is
my pearl " — and the picture has, ever since, been
known by that name.

There were, also, valuable allegorical sketches
by Correggio, which are among the valuable col-
lection of drawings and designs in the Louvre.

The Imperial Gallery of the Palace Belvedere,
in Vienna, contains several fine pictures from
the Whitehall collection. They were bought
at the sale by the Archduke Leopold William,
Governor of the Netherlands, and afterwards
Emperor of Austria. Eeynst, an eminent Dutch
connoisseur, Christina, Queen of Sweden, and
Cardinal Mazarin, were amongst the purchasers —
but bought still more largely of the jewels, medals,
tapestry, carpets, embroidery — many of which
went to adorn Mazarln's palace in Paris. Bathazar
Gerbier, and other painters, also purchased
pictures — and thus, by their aid, and that of
some few Englishmen, the wreck of this noble

M 2

164 LIFE AND TIMES OF

collection may still be traced in this country, but
the greater portion was lost to it for ever. Some
miniatures were restored ; — the States-General,
during the reign of Charles II., bought back the
pictures formerly sold to Keynst, and presented
them to Charles II.

By the exertions of that monarch, seventy of
the best paintings that his father had possessed
again adorned his various Palaces. St. James's,
Hampton Court, and Windsor were enriched with
the works of those masters in whose productions
Charles I. had so greatly delighted. But in White-
hall, the gallery of which was hung with the
works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian,
Correggio, Vandyck, Holbein, Rubens, and many
others, had been deposited the finest specimens of
their works. England seems fated never to contain
a collection suitable to her wealth, her intelli-
gence, and her wishes — for in 1697 that ancient
palace, so often partially burnt, was destroyed
by fire ; and within its old walls and many cham-
bers perished the various collections of Charles II.,
both of pictures, medals, and sculpture.^^

Charles I., like all good judges of art, was

extremely careful of his pictures. Hitherto the

Court revels had been held in that famous

gallery which Charles II. afterwards debased

" Dr. Waagen.

GEORGE N^ILLIEES. 165

into a resort for gamblers and infamous women of
rank ; and the Banqueting-house was next appro-
priated to them. But during the Christmas of
1637, when two masques were to be performed,
the King being one of the chief dancers, a building^
the mere boarding of which cost two thousand
five hundred pounds, was erected in the main
court at Whitehall, because the King would not
have " his pictures in the Banqueting-house
burnt with lights." ^9

The noble portrait by Vandyck, of Charles on
horseback, was reclaimed from Seemput, a
painter, who had bought it at the sale ; and some
few paintings which Catherine of Braganza had
coolly shipped off to Lisbon, were stopped by
the Lord Chamberlain in their embarkation.

When the convulsions under which the
country groaned had ceased, and on the ar-
rival of the Restoration, the nobility, though not
encouraged by the reigning monarch, introduced
the custom of adorning their country seats with
paintings. *' But the pure and elevated taste," as
Dr. Waagen expresses it, "of Charles I. had
degenerated ; the names of famous masters were
indeed to be found, but not their works." '^^

Architecture aud sculpture were also arts

'» Dr. Waagen.
*» Walpole, p. 188.

166 LIFE AND TIMES OF

which owe infinitely to the judicious patronage of
Charles, assisted by Buckingham. Among the
Mantua collection was a whole army " of old
foreign emperors, captains, and senators," whom
Charles I., as Walpole tells us, " caused to land on
his coasts, to come and do him homage, and
attend him in his palace of St. James's and
Somerset House." ^^ But the King also discerned
and rewarded native genius ; and when he
planned the noblest palace in the world at White-
hall, sent for no foreign architect, but summoned
Inigo Jones to his service.

" England," says Walpole, " adopted Holbein
and Yandyck ; she borrowed Rubens ; she pro-
duced Inigo Jones." Originally a joiner, Jones
was brought out of obscurity, according to many
accounts, by the patron who first extended a
hand to assist Georo^e Yilliers in his struo^orles
in life. William Earl of Pembroke was the
friend alike of the young courtier and of the son
of the clothworker — the immortal Inigo. Either
by the Earl of Arundel or by Pembroke —
it is not certain which — Inigo was sent to Italy
to learn landscape-painting ; but at Rome he soon
discovered the inclination and bent of his genius.
It is of no use to stop the pure and flowing
stream, and thus to make it turbid. Inigo " laid
*' Walpole, p. 203.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 167

down his pencil, and conceived Whitehall."
Nature had not, he felt, destined him to decorate
cabinets ; his vocation was to build palaces. He
was, however, still in danger of living in remote
splendour. Christian III. enticed him to Copen-
hagen, whence James I. sent for him, and whence
he was brought to be the Queen's architect in
Scotland. Patronized by Prince Henry, he was
in despair at the death of that royal youth, and
went again to Italy. It was in the interval
between his two journeys to Rome that he per-
petrated some buildings in bad taste ; to which
the appellation of "King James's Gothic" was
affixed.

His first task, as Surveyor of the Works, to
which office James appointed him, was to build,
for twenty pounds, a scaffolding, when the Earl
and Countess of Somerset were arraigned ; his
next, to discover, by King James's pedantic man-
date, who were the founders of Stonehenge.
In 1619, he was entrusted with the direction of
the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, which was
finished in two years, and ordered to draw up a
plan for the whole structure.

Horace Walpole, who was a true royalist when-
ever the arts were concerned, if not slyly in every
other respect, thus speaks of that great but vain
effort to build in London a palace worthy of the

168 LIFE AND TIMES OF

country. " The whole fabric,*' he says, referring
to Jones's designs for Whitehall, " was so glo-
rious an idea, that one forgets in a moment, in the
regret for its not being executed, the confirma-
tion of our liberties obtained by a melancholy
scene that passed before the windows of that
very Banqueting-house." ^^ The misfortunes of
this eminent man now began. Inigo Jones was a
Roman Catholic, and, as such, was peculiarly
obnoxious to the Parliament party. His very
name, too, was mingled with associations of those
arts and that magnificence, which, from being the
cause of envy, were now the objects of detestation
to certain of the people. " Painting had now,"
says Walpole, " become idolatry ; monuments
were deemed carnal pride, and a venerable cathe-
dral seemed equally contradictory to Magna
Charta and the Bible." Even the statue of
Charles at Charing Cross was regarded as of ill-
omen, and taken away lest it should bring back
unpleasant recollections.

"The Parliament did vote it down.
And thought it very fitting,
Lest it should faU and kill them aU,
In the house where they were sitting."

It had become a matter of wonder that society
could ever have tolerated those masques patro-

« Walpole, p. 270.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 169

nized by James, by Charles, and by Bucking-
ham, in which the masks, costumes, and scenes
were designed by Jones, and the poetry written
by Jonson. These representations had been
indeed interrupted by the quarrel between Inigo
Jones and Ben Jonson; and in the civil war
they ceased entirely. With the royal family
and their followers literature and the arts were
banished ; they were restored with the monarchy,
but good taste was not revived. " The history of
destruction " superseded that reign of elegance and
learning which had a brief duration under Charles,
and which, whilst Buckingham was at the head
of affairs, was the main-spring of every impulse.
" Kuin was the harvest of the Puritans, and they
gleaned after the reformers." Of course ven-
geance fell on the unfortunate royal architect and
stage manager, Inigo Jones. His face had been
seen at every gorgeous revel; his hand was
traceable in many a country seat, even in the
picturesque college of St. John's at Oxford ; he
had designed the chapel of Henrietta Maria at
St. James's ; he had erected the arcade and
church of Covent Garden : every familiar scene
was haunted with his presence.

The party that condemned him felt neither
gratitude nor pity ; two years before the King's
death, he was fined 500^. for malignancy. Afraid

170 LIFE AND TIMES OF

of a sequestration of all his revenues, he is stated to
have buried his money, as did Stone, the painter,
in Scotland Yard ; and to have removed it, when
fearful of discovery, to Lambeth Marsh. He
lived to see Cromwell occupy Whitehall, which
he had hoped to renovate; and to hear that
Charles had suffered beneath the very windows of
that fine and perfect fragment of a palace which
was still, in spite of all the terrors of that execu-
tion, called the Banqueting-house ; he lived to be
called " Iniquity Jones," by the successor of that
Earl of Pembroke who had once been his generous
patron; he lived to learn that the wit, the
poetry, the scenery that had combined to render
the masques at Burleigh a feast not only for the
senses, but for the intellect, were construed into
heathenism. All gallantry and romance were
gone — and gone for ever ; wit, indeed, flourished
after the Restoration, but it was wit without
decency or feeling. The old man must have felt
that he had lived too long. Somerset House had
been with great difficulty saved from the destruc-
tion of the Parliamentary decree; it gave poor
Inigo, who still appears to have nominally held his
former office, a refuge wherein he could lay down
his head and die. He was buried in the church of
St. Bennet, at Paul's Wharf; a monument
erected there to his memory was destroyed in the

GEORGE VILLIEES. 171

Fire of London, and the great architect of the
Banqueting-house remains without any memorial,
save the works of his genius.

Vandyck was not settled in England, under the
patronage of Charles I., until after the death of
Buckingham. Mytens, whose position as the
King's principal painter was, as he believed,
encroached on by the celebrity of Vandyck, was
patronized by Buckingham, for whom he painted
a portrait of Sir Jeffrey Hudson.

This little wonder of the seventeenth century
was nine years old only at theDuke's death. He had
been domesticated at Burleigh on account of his
diminutive stature, which did not, at that time,
exceed seven or eight inches. Jeffrey was the
plaything of the Court : at the marriage-feast of
Charles I., the Duchess of Buckingham had him
inserted in a cold pie, and served up at table to
the Queen, by way of presenting him to the
royal bride, who took him in her lap, and kept
him. Until the age of thirty, this litfle personage
never grew. He then suddenly shot up three
feet nine inches, which he carried off with
infinite dignity, and remained at that height. He
was still the butt of all the idlers at Whitehall,
and the theme of a poem, by Davenant, called
" Jeffresdos," the subject being a battle between
the dwarf and a turkey-cock.

172 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Henceforth he became important — went over
to France on a mission of great confidence,
to fetch an experienced sage-femme for the
Queen — was taken by the Pirates off Dunkirk on
his return — was rescued, only to encounter the
incessant raillery of the courtiers, which, to a man
of his present size and importance, became ex-
asperating. Faithful and trusty, he went with
Henrietta Maria into France, and there, being
goaded on by renewed insults from a Mr. Crofts,
sent a challenge. Crofts came to fight him pro-
vided only with a squirt ; the duel was to be on
horseback, and with pistols, that Jeffrey, or, as he
had now become. Sir Jeffrey, might be more on a
level with his antagonist. By the first shot. Crofts
was struck dead. The next event in this adven-
turous life was the capture of Jeffrey by a
Turkish rover, during one of his voyages ; he was
sold as a slave, and taken into Barbary ; he was,
however, ransomed, or set free, so as to resume
his attendance on the Queen. After the Resto-
ration, he was suspected of being concerned in the
Popish plot, and confined in the Gate House at
Westminster. Here, a life that had been ren-
dered worthy of record even by his very littleness
was closed, |in 1682; his old enemy, a gigantic
porter at Whitehall in Charles's time, with whom
the little creature was in incessant strife, having

GEORGE VILLIERS. 173

long since been displaced — and another giant,
Oliver Cromwell's porter, established in his stead.

On My tens the office of his Majesty's " picture-
drawer in ordinary, with a fee of 201. per annum,
was conferred in 1625, procured by the agency
of Endymion Porter, who was the servant and
relative of Buckingham, from the Duke." ^^

Incited by the example of the Earl of Arundel,
who employed a Mr. Petty to coUect antiquities
in Greece, Buckingham despatched for the same
purpose Sir Thomas Roe, telling him, in explain-
ing his wishes, that " he was not so fond of
antiquity as to court it in a deformed or unshapen
stone."'''' Lord Arundel had begun to " transplant
old Greece into England." His agent. Petty,
was indefatigable, " eating with Greeks on their
work days, and lying with fishermen with planks,"
so that he might obtain his ends. This valiant
antiquary lost all his curiosities on returning from
Samos, and was imprisoned as a spy, but, regain-
ing his liberty, set forth again to his researches
with the energy of a Layard.*

« Walpole, p. 151, 152.

** Walpole, p. 206. Note. From Peacliam's " Complete
Gentleman."

* The fate of the Arundelian marbles is stated by Walpole
to have been as foUows : — They came into the elder branch of
the family, the Dukes of Norfolk, and were sold by the
Duchess, who was divorced in the time of George II., to the

174 LIFE AXD TIMES OF

The principal medallist in the time of Charles I.
was Andrew Vanderdort, a Dutchman, also
patronized by Prince Henry. Upon the acces-
sion of Charles, Vanderdort was made keeper of
the King's cabinet of medals, with a salary of
40^. This cabinet or museum was contained in a
room in Whitehall, running across from the
Thames towards the Banqueting-house, and
fronting the gardens westward. By Vanderdort
the coins of the realm were designed ; and to the
commission to perform that work was added an
injunction that he should superintend the
engravers. To Vanderdort was once confided the
preparing of the catalogue of the Royal col-
lection, written in bad English, and pre-
gerved in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford.
It is related of him, that, being entrusted
with a miniature by Gibson, the "Parable of
the Lost Sheep," he laid it up so carefully, that,
when asked for it by the King, he could not find
it, and hung himself from grief .'*^

It was owing to the suggestions of Buckingham
that the great portrait-painter, Grerard Honthorst,
was invited by Charles I. to England. Honthorst

Earl of Pomfret for 300Z. The Countess of Pomfret, great-
grandmother to the present Earl, gave them to the University
of Oxford.
« Walpole.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 175

was a native of Utrecht, but had completed his
education at Rome. He had many pupils in
painting of high rank, and amongst them were
Elizabeth of Bohemia and her daughters, the
Princess Sophia, mother of George I., and the
Princess Louisa, afterwards Abbess of Maubis-
sen, being the most apt scholars of that family.
It was owing to the early culture of the arts which
both the sons of James I. had enjoyed, that it
became an easy task for Buckingham to incite
Charles to the patronage of great masters in after-
life. Solomon de Caus, a Gascon, was the in-
structor of Prince Henry, and probably of Charles,
who inherited the pictures and statues which his
brother had collected. Honthorst probably im-
proved by his lessons the taste that had been
already so well cultivated. At Hampton Court,
a large picture on the staircase sometimes rivets
attention, without conferring pleasure — for the
taste for allegorical paintings has long since been
extinct. It delineates Charles and his Queen as
Apollo and Diana in the clouds; the Duke of
Buckingham, as Mercury, is introducing them to
the Arts and Sciences, whilst genii are driving
away Envy and Malice. This, and other paint-
ings, were completed by Honthorst in six months ;
the King giving him three thousand florins, a
service of silver plate for twelve persons, and a

176 LIFE AND TIMES OF

horse. He also painted portraits of the Duke
and Duchess of Buckingham, sitting with their
two children; and it was likewise the Duke's
fancy to have a large picture by him, represent-
ing a tooth-drawer, with many figures introduced
around the operation.

Horatio Gentileschi, a native of Pisa, was one
of those who contributed alike to the collection
of Charles and to the glories of York House, which,
long before Buckingham's death, had, we are
told, become the admiration of the world.

Gentileschi was treated with a degree of libe-
rality that was quite congenial to the feelings of
Buckingham : he was invited to England, and
rooms were provided for his use, and a consider-
able salary advanced to him. Some of the painted
ceilings in Greenwich Palace were his work ; and
he ornamented York House in a similar manner.
When it was dismantled, one of the ceilings
was transplanted to Buckingham House, in St.
James's Park, the seat of Sheffield, Duke of Buck-
ingham. He also painted the Villiers family, and,
by the Duke's order, a Magdalen, lying in a
grotto, contemplating a skull — a strange subject
for the worldly and high-spirited Buckingham to
select. But the delight of Charles and of his
favourite was Nicholas Laniere, meritorious as a
painter, engraver, and musician. It was Laniere

GEORGE VILLIERS. 177

who composed the music for some of Ben Jonson's
masques, in recitative. Laniere, after the death
of Charles, set to music a funeral hymn written
by Thomas Pierce. As a composer, he was
salaried by Charles with two hundred a-year.
He had, however, also painted pictures for King
James ; and it is stated that Buckingham, not
being able to induce that monarch to reward
him adequately, gave Laniere three hundred
pounds at one time, and five hundred at another,
from his own means.'^^ Laniere had been instru-
mental in the negociation for the Mantua collec-
tion. After the death of Charles he was one of
those painters who viewed with deep concern the
dispersion of the Whitehall collection ; and
bought several pictures at the sale of what he had
contributed to enrich.

Whilst ceilings were painted, pictures distri-
buted on richly-carved panels, and in spacious
galleries, there was even an attempt in those
days to decorate with frescoes the exterior of
houses, as in Bavaria, where even the dwellings
of superior farmers are sometimes adorned in that
manner. Francis Cleyn, a Dane, was called to
England in the reign of James I., in order to im-
prove also the manufacture of tapestry at Mortlake,
to which James had contributed two thousand
*^ Biograph. Brit., Art. " Villiers;' Note.

VOL. III. N

178 LIFE AND TIMES OF

pounds. Hitherto, Sir Francis Crane, the pro-
prietor, had worked only on old patterns ; Cleyn
brought new and original designs to the aid of
the tapestry-workers. Five of the cartoons were
sent by Charles to be copied. Cleyn also painted
the outside of Wimbledon House in fresco ; he
designed one of the chimney-pieces in Holland
House, and gave the drawings for two chairs,
carved and gilt, with shells for backs, still there.
In every possible department art was called
into play. Drawings for the great seals were made
by Cleyn. He published books for " carvers and
goldsmiths." Nothing was to be tasteless, clumsy,
or inappropriate ; and, with this spirit abroad, it
is not surprising that the little that the Rebellion
spared should be models for our own conservative
generation.

Whilst Villlers employed portrait-painters on
himself and on his family, he did not forget the
old man at Brookesby, long since gone to the
grave. Cornelius Jan sen, by his order, painted a
portrait of his father ; probably from some family
picture. It was in the possession of Horace Wal-
pole, " less handsome," he says, '' but extremely
like his son."

The patronage extended by Charles I. to archi-
tects'*' was often directed by Buckingham ; for the
*'' Walpole, p. 149, passim.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 179

King and the favourite had but one soul between
them. To exalt and improve the art of painting,
they summoned foreign architects as well as painters
to England, remunerated them liberally, and treated
them with the courtesy due to one of the noblest of
professions. Charles delighted to dabble with his
brush on the canvas, his hand directed by the master,
with whom he sat for hours. Buckinsjham's few
leisure days were devoted to his buildings and
paintings. Amongst the English builders who
worked at the Banqueting-house, under Inigo
Jones, was Nicholas Stone, who was in 1619 ap-
pointed master-mason to the King, at the usual
salary, of twelve pence a-day ; but the extra work
he executed for Charles was amply paid ; and his
salary during the two years he worked at White-
hall amounted to four shillings and tenpence the
day.*^^ Nicholas Stone designed four of the dials
at St. James's and Whitehall.* He rebuilt the
fountains at Theobald's and Nonsuch ; his draw-
ings are, it is to be feared, lost. He was the statuary
employed by the Countess of Dorset to set up at
Westminster the monument of Spenser the poet,

*' Walpole, p. 166.

* There were five dials at IVliiteliall; a Mr. Gunter drew
the lines, and wrote a pamphlet on the use of them, in
1624. "One, too," says Horace Walpole, "may still be
extant." Vertue saw them at Buckingham House, from
whence they were sold.

n2

180 LIFE AND TIMES OF

for which he was paid forty pounds. His great
talent lay in tombs ; amongst others, he erected
one for the Countess of Buckingham, the Duke's
mother, three years after her son's death, in 1631,
in Westminster Abbey, for which he received 560/.
Doubtless, therefore, he was continually employed
by Buckingham, and Stone's various performances
must have been just what the Duke required. He
was the modest architect, who did not disdain to
form and chisel t'le piers for gates — Inigo Jones
designing them, — at Holland House. He built the
great gate of St. Mary's Church at Oxford, and
the stone gates for the Physic Garden in that
city, — also designed by Inigo. The figure of the
Nile at Somerset House was by Stone ; his skill,
like that of Inigo, is familiar to us, though we may
almost have forgotten the hand that had so much
" cunning." At York House, at Wanstead, New
Hall and Burleigh, his fine face, with his love-
locks, his plain collar, and tight doublet, were, we
may be sure, often to be seen before ruin and
desertion darkened those once splendid homes of
Villiers.

Few men, it must be acknowledged, in so
brief a space, have done more for the arts
in this country than George Yilliers. By
Charles, his friend and sovereign, who
survived him twenty years, much more was

GEORGE VILLIERS. 181

effected. Without their unceasing efforts, without
even the almost pardonable extravagance that
was directed to purposes so refined, England
would almost have been devoid of paintings by
the greatest masters, and, what would be almost
worse, destitute of the love and reverence for
high art which has come down to us from the time
of Charles I., and which is now cherished, though
unconsciously, in the breast of the poor artisan, as
in that of the richest peer or commoner. The
crowds who not only throng, but enjoy, the
galleries of Hampton Court — and, still more, the
humble visitors from the Faubourg St. Antoine
and the Marais to the Louvre, on Sundays, in
Paris — prove that a love of what is true and holy,
and even sublime, in pictures, exists intuitively
in the uncultivated mind, as well as in the highest
intelligence of the soul. Those who called from
its latent recesses this love of art in the seven-
teenth century are greatly entitled to the grati-
tude of that age to which the luxuries of music
and painting are become necessities.

CHAPTER V.

PATRONAGE OF THE DRAMA BY CHARLES AND THE DUKE
OF BUCKINGHAM — MASSINGER — BEN JONSON — THEIR
CONNECTION WITH THE COURT, AND WITH THE DUKE.

185

CHAPTER V.

After considering the benefits conferred by
Charles I. and his favourite on art, and de-
tailing their patronage of eminent masters, one
turns, naturally, to the literature of the day, and
more especially — as subsidiary to music and
painting — to the drama.

The accession of James I. opened fairer pros-
pects to dramatists than they had enjoyed in the
days of Elizabeth, who paid as grudgingly for
her amusements as for the services of her states-
men. To her "Master of the bears and dogs"
she assigned a salary of a farthing a day only.^^
Yet the office was sometimes held by a Knight;
and, during the " princely pleasures of Kenil-
worth,'* of which bear-baiting formed a pro-
minent feature, by no less opulent a person

*^ Note in Hartley Coleridge's Introduction to Mas-
singer's Plays, p. 32.

186 LIFE AND TIMES OF

than Edward Alleyn, the actor, and founder of
Dulwich College. Little but honour, therefore,
had accrued, in the time of Elizabeth, to poets and
play-writers; and the struggling authors were
obHged to have recourse to a more liberal patron-
age than that of the Court — until James I., some-
what " of a poet, but more of a scholar," promoted,
with an extravagant zeal, the diversions which his
taste disposed him to enjoy. Plays, which his pre-
decessor had deemed likely to draw her younger
subjects from the manlier recreations of bear-
baiting and hunting, were patronized in high
quarters, and were henceforth the fashionable di-
versions notwithstanding the invectives of the
Puritans, both of the Court, and in the provincial
castles of the nobility at a distance from London.

Independently of the delights of the masque,
which comprised both music, dancing, and poetry,
there w^ere pleasures to be found in the drama
which accorded with the tendencies and failings
of that period.

It was an age of personality, a disposition
to which existed as strongly in the unrefined
court of James, and even among his northern
retainers, as in the brilliant galleries of Versailles,
encouraged by Louis XIV., and led by the dan-
gerous and witty St. Simon. " The great eye of
the world," says an able writer, " was not then,

GEORGE VILLIERS. 187

any more than now, so intent on things and
principles as not to have a corner for the infirmi-
ties of individuals." ^° Wilson, Weldon, Winwood,
Osborne, Peyton, Sanderson, circulated what
were in many instances fabrications about the
higher classes ; whilst the crimes and absurdities
of the lower orders were celebrated by the ballad-
mongers, or dramatized for the stage. Many of
those ballads transmitted to us, which were
exempted from the fate of " damn'd ditties," were
founded on authentic domestic tragedies, the
actors in which have long since passed into
oblivion. The ballad, which afforded the multi-
tude a pleasing insight into the fact that their
superiors were no better than themselves, was the
most popular literature of the day. Sung to
doleful tunes, with a nasal twang, they called
forth the satire of the dramatist, who aimed at a
higher species of personality, and who deprecated
these, often scurrilous, productions ; which were,
at length, checked in the time of Swift by the
imposition of a penny stamp on every loose sheet.
The ballad was a source of dread to the tavern
bully, who:?e iniquities it exposed.

*' If I have not ballads made of you all, and
sung to filthy tunes, may this cup of sack be my
poison," says Falstaff.

5« Hartley Coleridge, p. 9.

188 LIFE A^D TIMES OF

" Now shall have we damnable ballads out against us,
Most wicked madrigals."

Humorous Lieutenant.

Whilst the attention of society was not altogether
fixed on exalted members only, it was found dif-
ficult to restrain satire, and even calumny, from
introducing living characters on the stage, and
from depicting them with hateful qualities, and in
invidious situations.

In vain did the Master of the Kevels, who was
under the peculiar influence of the Court,
endeavour to control the disposition to person-
ality which characterized even many of the plays
acted before James I. and his son. In these
compositions the public acquired that insight into
conduct and peculiarities which is now derived
from periodical papers, or from diaries, letters,
and autobiographies, in which our age is especially
fertile.

Amono^st the dramatists of James and Charles's
reigns, we may take, as the most remarkable,
Philip Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, and John Ford, the greater part of
whose works were produced during the life of
King James and of Charles I. and II.

The biography of each of these celebrated men
elucidates much of the manners and temper of the
times, and their history comprises that of thia

GEORGE VILLIERS. 189

species of literature during the commencement
and middle of the seventeenth century.

Philip Massinger was the son of Arthur
Massinger, a retainer in the household of the
Earl of Pembroke. A retainer was often a
gentleman of good birth but small means, and
this was probably the condition of Arthur Mas-
singer, who, from his carrying letters from his
master, the Earl, to Queen Elizabeth, could
not have been a man of low origin, else he
would not have been admitted to the honour
of conveying any dispatch to one who placed so
much importance on lineage in those who entered
her presence. That custom was still in force,
which surrounded a nobleman, not with menials,
but with a middle-class of bondmen, who thought
service no degradation. It was esteemed a turn
of fortune when a youth of gentle birth could be
introduced into some noble house, to learn therein
politeness, chivalrous attention to ladies, and to
imbibe, from example and precept, that loyalty
which was then considered a sort of virtue. The
education and training of a page is now confined
to royal courts ; but there were, in England, in
those days of the Tudors and Stuarts, many
minor courts, which exacted, in miniature, the
duties and service that existed in the palaces
of the monarch. And of those stately and

190 LIFE AND TIMES OF

wealthy patrons, none were more respected than
the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, to whom
Arthur ^lassinger wrote himself " Bondman."

That wholesome discipline which it is difficult
in our own time for a parent to preserve over his
family was maintained to the advantao;e of a
page who rose from a lowly to a confidential
situation. Massinger's lines in the " New Way
to Pay Old Debts" refer to the subjection under
which the youth groaned, but to which the ma-
tured actors on this world's stage looked back
with gratitude : —

" Art thou scarce manumised from the porter's lodge,
And now sworn servant to the pantofle,
And darest thou dream of marriage ? "

New Way to Pay Old Belts.

Yet in this servitude the father of Philip Mas-
singer lived and died. These grand establish-
ments, in which the noble head saw around him
none but persons of gentle blood and breeding,
would long since have ceased to be congenial, even
if they still existed, to the English notions of in-
dependence, by which servitude is confounded with
slavery. But they had this advantage — the son of
a retainer was supposed to have a claim on the il-
lustrious noble, who estimated his father's fidelity
and offices ; and that this was the case with Philip
Massinger, might seem probable from the advan-

GEORGE VILLIERS. 191

tages of education which he was enabled to derive ;
and the value of which he had learned to appre-
ciate, in the proximity to the really noble and in-
tellectual family of Herbert. It appears from
Philip Massinger's dedication of the "Bondman,"
that he never had any personal communication
with Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery ;
but that is no proof that he may not have been in-
debted for the advantage of a university educa-
tion to the far more intellectual and estimable
Henry, Earl of Pembroke, his father's patron, as
appears from the following passage in the dedica-
tion of the "Bondman" to the Earl of Mont-
gomery : —

" However, I could never arrive at the hap-
piness to be made known to your lordship ; yet a
desire born with me, to make a tender of all
duties and service to the noble family of the
Herberts, descended to me as an inheritance
from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many
years he happily spent in the service of your
honourable house, and died a servant in it, leaving
his to be ever most glad and ready to be at the
command of all such as derive themselves from
his most honoured master, your lordship's most
honoured father." ^^

It would be agreeable to reflect that Mas-
*»' Massinger's Works, edited by Hartley Coleridge, p. 74.

192 LIFE AND TIMES OF

singer had passed his childhood and youth,
partly at all events, in the classical region of
Wilton Castle, which Sir Philip Sidney had
almost sanctified to the Muses by his presence,
and whence he had issued forth on that expedi-
tion in which he died a hero's death. But
those were not the days in which the child-
hood and youth of celebrated men were re-
corded, and of Massinger's not a trace remained.
We only guess at the early influences which
formed his imaginative, yet vigorous mind. We
only conjecture that his taste was directed to
poetry by the taste of those whom he must have
learned first to respect. We are not sure, yet
we are glad to believe, that whilst his mind took
on afterwards the impressions of the age in which
he lived, it was in earliest youth incited by the
author of the '^ Arcadia," and by the acquirements
of her to whom that poem was dedicated, to
culture and exercise, until circumstances brought
its powers into full activity.

The dedication of the ^'Bondman" was written in
1624 ; and whilst it shews that the poet had never
seen Philip, Earl of Montgomery, it does not fol-
low, as has been stated, that he was not reared at
Wilton during the life-time of Henry, Earl of
Pembroke, the '' noble father " of Philip, who, as
a younger son, was created Earl of Montgomery,

GEORGE VILLIERS. 193

and long known by that title only. Henry, who
was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Earl of
Pembroke, died in 1600; and since Mas singer
was born in 1584, it is extremely probable that
he passed his childhood at Wilton, although, in
compliance with the custom of the age, he was
probably sent out to nurse. Even the name of
his mother is unknown. Few authors of so much
merit as Massinger have been, as Hartley Coleridge
observes, " so little noticed by contemporaries ; "
and none so soon forgotten by succeeding times.

There can, however, be but little doubt that
Philip Massinger imbibed at Wilton that value
for letters which is so soon caught by children
from the society of the intellectual ; and that a
gentler influence than that of Earl Henry stimu-
lated the natural inclinations of his mind. A
learned education for women of rank was in
vogue for nearly a century after the Reformation :
with Protestantism came in the notion that the
female understanding was worthy of high cul-
tivation ; and our earliest and most superior
women, in those times, were prepared for their
important part in life by a sound and almost
masculine training. Witness the learning of Lady
Jane Grey, of Queen Elizabeth, of Joanna,
Lady Abergavenny, whom Walpole believes to
have been the " foundress of that noble school of

VOL. III. O

194 LIFE AND TIMES OF

female learning, of which (mth herself) there were,"
he says, " no less than four authoresses in the three
descents."* Among the learned and the virtuous
none was more esteemed in her time than Mary, the
sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and the third wife of
Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the son of Arthur Mas-
singer's patron. She was one of those ornaments of
her age who added lustre to her station without for-
feiting one feminine attribute. What was then
called a " polite education " comprised not only the
acquisition of light literature, but that also of classi-
cal learning. From her mother, Lady Mary Dudley,
this admirable woman inherited a noble and con-
genial spirit; from her father, Sir Henry Sidney, sur-
passing abilities, moral excellencies, enlarged views,
generous motives. That father, superior to the
venal courtiers of his time, spent his whole fortune
in his endeavours to benefit Ireland and Wales,
of the affairs of which he held the administration.
In her brother. Sir Philip Sidney, the Countess of
Pembroke found a companion in all her pursuits,
as well as in affection. Hence, as Spenser wrote,
their minds grew in unison : —

" The gentlest shepherdess that liv'd that day,

And most resembling, both in shape and spirit,

Her brother dear."

* Joanna, Lady Abergavenny, Mary Arundel, Catherine
Grey, Mary Duchess of JSTorfolk. See " Eoyal and Xoble
Authors."

GEORGE VILLIERS. 195

In conjunction with him, this gifted woman is
said to have translated the Psalms ; ^^ of which
effort Daniel says : —

" Those hymns which tliou dost consecrate to Heaven,
Which Israel's singer to his God did frame,
Unto thy voyage eternity hath given.
And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came."

Several of these are extant ; one of them was
published in the Guardian ;^^ and it corresponds
with a Psalm printed in the ''Nugw Antiquce^^ as
the Countess of Pembroke's.'''^ It has been re-
gretted that these productions are not authorized
to be sung in churches ; for the present version,
Mr. Hartley Coleridge remarks, " is a disgrace
and a mischief to the establishment." These
translations are preserved in the library at
Wilton.

The Countess was residing there when the
" Discourse of Life and Death," by Mornay, which
she translated from the French, was printed.
This was in 1590, when Philip Massinger was
six years of age. She survived until 1621 ; and,
since she extended her patronage both to arts
and letters, it is probable that she not only
befriended Ben Jonson, but that she encouraged

" Horace Walpole's "Royal and Noble Authors," vol. ii.,
p. 308.

" No. 7. ** Ibid.

o 2

196 LIFE AND TIMES OF

and assisted the struggling dramatist, whose
father had been so favoured or retained in her
husband's house. Ben Jonson's well-known lines
on her tomb have challenged various criticisms.
Whilst by some they are deemed a tribute " which
have never been exceeded in the records of
monumental praise,"^^ by another critic they
are considered ^' too hyperbolical, too clever, and
too conceited to be inscribed on a Christian's
tomb."^^

" Underneath this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all verse —
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ;
Death, ere thou canst find another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she.
Time shall throw a dart at thee."

At all events, Massinger imbibed from his
father's connection with the Herbert family, one
taste — that for theatricals. Amongst the retinue of
the great peer, was a company of itinerant per-
formers, '^ the Earl of Pembroke's players ; " and
though the childhood of Massino^er is indeed a
blank, it maybe inferred that the attractions of the
theatre, or rather of the hall, in which that portion
of the Earl's household must have been frequently
occupied, were such as to fascinate a boy of an
imaginative turn of mind. He is stated to have

«* Note in Parke's edition of " Royal and Noble Authors."
*^ Hartley Coleridge.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 197

been shy, melancholy, retiring, and studious;
that he received a classical education, as a
boy, is also stated ; but when that education
was received, who directed that thoughtful and
dreamy mind to poetry, or how he, who was
evidently designed for a scholastic career, should
have devoted himself to the profession of a play-
writer, does not appear to have been ascertained,
even by the indefatigable GifFord.

But it was an age of great mental energy, and
there was sufficient in the rich harvest won by
Shakspeare, or in the rare delights afforded by
his works, to account for the direction of young
Massinger's genius.

It has been conjectured, also, that he acted occa-
sionally in those plays the parts of which were
then usually sustained by boys ; of this there
remains not a single proof, and nothing is certain^
in so far as the events of his youth are concerned,
except that he was entered at St. Alban's Hall,
Oxford, in 1601-2.

It must not be supposed that this fact at all im-
plied what in the present day it might appear to
indicate. It did not foUow that Massinger was
to enter one of the learned professions, because
he became a commoner in that small, ancient
society of St. Alban's Hall ; nor was it a proof
that the young man had parents who were in

198 LIFE AND TIMES OF

affluent circumstances, as a University career now
seems to imply. Oxford was then a place for
cheap education, and many of the "poor scholars"
at the various colleges underwent, as Strype
shews us, great hardships. On the other hand, it
was not uncommon for the profession of letters
to be in those days a man's only calling ; and an
academical training was his best commencement
in that arduous course, since a certain display of
erudition was undoubtedly one of the character-
istics of the period.

The exhibition to college was, according to
Anthony Wood, given to Massinger by the Earl
of Pembroke; but others allege that Massinger
derived the means of subsistence at Oxford from
his father.

In those schools, where a man for the first,
and perhaps for the only, time in his existence,
frames his own success, independently of the pa-
tronage of others — in those schools, famed for
strict impartiality, and where the battle is really
to the strong — Massinger, nevertheless, did not
appear. He left Oxford without taking his de-
gree; for he had made the mistake, fatal to a
poor man, who has to rest upon the endowments
of that grand old university for his support, of
not adopting the studies which the university pre-
scribes to the exclusion of others. It was, in-

GEORGE VILLIERS. 199

deed, a sin in the eyes of that zealous antiquary,
whose tomb, in a corner of the anti-chapel of
Merton College, is so often overlooked, save by
those who honour his labours, and who view his
merits, thus enshrined, with regretful reverence —
that he gave his mind, as Anthony Wood tells
us, '^ more to poetry or romance, for about four
years or more, than to logic and philosophy, which
he ought to have done, as he was patronized to
that endy

He adds, without further comment than this,
" that, being sufficiently famed for several speci-
mens of wit, he betook himself to writing plays."
Massinger left Oxford in 1606 — he was then
twenty-two years of age.

For some time his history is again a blank, and
his exertions and struggles, whatever they may
have been, fell upon a serious, religious, thought-
ful temperament, devoid of the elasticity with
which Shakespeare fought and conquered the
trials of fate. Play-writing was, at that time, al-
most the only means by which ready money
could be obtained, and had the patronage of the
Court in full activity, when Massinger cast him-
self into his future and only career. James I.,
soon after his accession, licensed the company of
players who had hitherto been styled the " Lord
Chamberlain's," but who were henceforth to be

200 LIFE AND TIMES OF

called ^' the King's servants " — amongst whom
were Shakspeare, Burbage, Heminge, and others.
Queen Anne adopted the " Earl of Worcester's
company," and Prince Henry that of the Earl of
Nottingham, the hero of the "Armada." The
Court, and even provincial nobles and gentry,
although Protestantized, kept, with as scrupulous
attention as ever, the great feasts of the Church ;
and on these, as in former times a mystery or
morality was given, so now a play was often per-
formed. "The stage," says Hartley Coleridge,
" was evoking and realizing the finest imagina-
tions of the strongest intellects."

Whether Massinger ever acted or not, is as
doubtful as every other incident of his early life.
It was not until 1614 that a glimmering of his
actual condition in life is seen through the dark-
ness, and the disclosure is melancholy and dis-
couraging. There is something touching, as well as
dreary, in the gloom that one can only diversify
with scenes of penury and imprisonment for debt.
At last the light breaks out ; and, in the words of
the following appeal, the history of some years of
disappointment is disclosed : — *

* This letter was discovered by Malone, in Dulwich
College. There is no date on it, but ]Mr. Payne Collier
dates it in 1614, eight years before the pubUcation of the
"Virgin Martyr."

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 20l

'^ To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow,
Esquire, these, —
" Mr. Hinchlow — You understand our unfor-
tunate extremitye, and I doe not thinke you so
void of cristianitee but that you would throw
so much money into the Thames as wee request
now of you, rather than endanger so many inno-
cent lives. You know there is X^. more at least
to be receaved of you for the play. We desire
you to lend us YL of that ; which shall be allowed
to you, without which we cannot be bayled nor I
play any more till this be dispatch'd. It will lose
you XXZ. ere the end of the next weeke, besides
the hindrance of the next new play. Pray, sir,
consider our cases with humanity, and now give
us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in
time of neede. Wee have entreated Mr. Davison
to deliver this note, as well as witness your love
as our promises and always acknowledgement to
be ever your most thankful and loving friends,^^

"Philip Massinger.

"R. Davison.

"Nat. Field."

This letter is the only one with the signature of

Philip Massinger extant. It was addressed to a

pawnbroker — such was Philip Hinchlow, who,

besides exercising that ancient profession, was

" Introduction to Massinger's Works, p. xxxiii.

202 LIFE AND TIMES OF

also engaged in theatrical speculations, his ad-
vances being chiefly made upon the wearing
apparel and properties, of which he acquired a
large portion in this way. " A comfortable sort
of person," remarks Hartley Coleridge, "for
three poets to be obliged to." Especially when
they, as it were, pledged to him the labour of
their brains ; and that when they were either
akeady in prison, or afraid of that crisis in their
miserable destiny. Nathaniel Field, the writer
of this letter, was Massinger's partner in the pro-
duction of the " Fatal Dowry ; " he had a share
in the Globe and Blackfriar's Theatres, in con-
junction with Burbage, the original Pdcliard III.,
Hamlet, and Othello ; and with Lowin, the
original Fahtaff. Field was also an actor,
and he performed in Ben Jonson's masque,
"Cynthia's Revels," in 1600, when he appeared
as one of the children of the Queen's chapel.
Robert Daborne was a man of good descent, a
scholar and a clergyman, although the author of
several plays ; nor was he the only clerical dra-
matist in an age which was, indeed, ^^ not an
innocent one" — for Cartwright, also a play-
writer, was a divine, and, as Fuller states, "a
florid and seraphical preacher." ^^

It has been remarked that the " Fatal Dowry "
" Introduction to Massinger's Works, p. xxxv.

GEORGE YILLIERS. 203

was like the production of a man in debt. Mas-
singer might refer to his own case when he
wrote : —

" I will not take
One single piece of tliis great heap. Why should I
Borrow that I have no means to pay ; nay, am
A very bankrupt, even in flattering hope,
Of ever raising any."

In addition to his poverty, to hard work, and the
degradation of debt, Massinger was fully con-
scious that he had not, in giving up the certainty
of a profession, attained a position in society.
The dramatist's occupation was scarcely, in those
times, considered a creditable employment.^^ By
the Puritans it was deemed sinful — by learned
men, idle and trifling; and although lawyers and
academicians, courtiers and ladies, and even the
Queen and Princes of the blood, took the con-
spicuous parts, there was still a certain disrepute
attached to the very instruments by means of
which the stage was brought into what is justly
called its " palmiest state."

There were perhaps various reasons for the
slow success of Massinger as a dramatist, and for
that adverse fate the bitterness of which breaks
forth in all his works. The age was Puritan ;
and he was supposed to have exchanged the

*^ Introduction to Massinger's Works, p. xiv ; from Dr.
Farmer's "Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.'*

204 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Protestant principles with which he had entered
Oxford for Romanist opinions — or rather, what
we should now term Tractarian. That he may-
have been, as Mr. GifFord infers, from his leaving
Oxford without a degree, a Roman Catholic, is
borne out by no fact, although seemingly at-
tested by the subjects of his plays — the " Virgin
Martyr," the "Renegade," and the "Maid of
Honour," and from some passages in his other
dramas. The bare suspicion was enough to make
an author unfashionable at the time when the
religion of the poet's ancestors was the object of
hatred and terror, and the laws against recusants
were in all their hateful force. The plots of
Massinger's plays were, however, almost in-
variably taken from French or Italian novels, or
from old legends, which embodied Romanism,
and must, if Protestantized, have assumed the
form of satire. Another drawback to Mas-
singer's popularity was the strong AVhiggism
which manifested itself in his plays, and which
was so greatly at variance with the tone of the
Court and of the higher classes during the early
part of the reign of James I. He had not the
reverence for constituted authority which marked
the sentiments of Shakspeare, whilst his devotion
to birth (not to rank alone) savoured of the son
of the retainer in a great house, where the ser-

GEORGE VILLIERS. 205

vant generally is a far greater worshipper of the
old descent than the real possessor of the ancient
pedigree.^*^ Thus, whilst this ill-fated man, full of
genius, full of virtue, and of a deep sense of
religion, was always tempting the slings and
arrows of fortune, he was distrusted by the Pu-
ritans as a favourer of the Romish faith ; he was
avoided by the loyal as an enemy to passive
obedience ; and he must have been regarded with
disgust by the rich city merchants and traders,
for his contempt for newly-acquired wealth, and
his merciless exposition of their assumption, in his
dramas.

Massinger, therefore, lived and died in po-
verty. The language of complaint became
habitual to him ; he spoke of his despised state
with agony — yet his patrons were many and
honourable; but he addressed each successively
in dedications which were masterpieces of pure
English, as his last hope — his dependence on
whom " ate into his very soul." To Sir Robert
Wiseman, of Thorrell's Hall, in Essex, he " freely,
and with a zealous thankfulness, acknowledges
that for many years he had but faintly subsisted,
had he not often tasted of his great bounty." ^^

^° Introduction to Massinger's Works, p. xxxvii.
«^ Massinger's Works, p. 167 ; in his Dedication of " The
Great Duke of Florence " to Sir Robert Wiseman.

206 LIFE AND TIMES OF

In his dedication of " The Picture " to the noble
Society of the Inner Temple, he thanks them,
"his honoured and selected friends," for their
" frequent bounties." He lived upon presents ;
and of the comforts of a certain income he had not,
probably, even one year's experience. It is im-
possible to think of such a career without pain —
starving one day, repulsed with condescension
from the halls of the rich, another. He has depicted
feelingly, indeed, the gentleman reduced to
penury, in the " New Way to Pay Old Debts/'
and the insults heaped on him by over-fed
sycophants.

" Overreach (to Wellborn) —

Avaunt, thou beggar !
If ever thou presume to own me more,
I'll have thee caged and whipp'd.
" Arrible (to Wellborn)—

Cannot you stay, to be serv'd among your fellows
From the basket, but you must press into the hall? "

The "basket" contained broken meat, which
was placed in the porter's lodge of great houses,
to be distributed to the poor.

So, in the " Fatal Dowry," Pontalier says to
Liladum : —

" Go to the basket, and repent."

It is with true feeling that Massinger put
into the mouth of Wellborn these pleading
lines : —

GEOKGE VILLIERS 207

" Scorn me not, good lady !
But, as in form you are angelical.
Imitate the heavenly natures, and vouchsafe
At the least awhile to hear me. You will grant
The blood that runs in this arm is as noble
As that which fills your veins ; those costly jewels
And those rich clothes you wear, your men's observance
And women's flattery, are in you no virtues ;
Nor these rags, with my poverty, in me vices."

His life, however, was not without its solace.
Happily for the literary men of the age, Ralegh
had comprehended what is most essential both to
mind and body, and in founding the meetings at
the Mermaid had provided for the dramatist,
poet, and philosopher, suitable relaxation. The
place of meeting was at the Mermaid, in Bread
Street, Cheapside. Here Shakspeare, Ben Jon-
son, Beaumont, Fletcher, and many others, enjoyed
the rare companionship of Ralegh, during the
brief intervals in which he was not either eno-aoced
at the Court, or in distant expeditions. Here
wit was the current coin of the company; toil was
cast aside ; " away with melancholy," was the
burden of the guests, who had probably many a
care hidden in the core of their hearts. To
Shakspeare's joyous nature, and to the sanguine
and then unbroken spirit of Ralegh, the sorrows
of the past, the terrors of the future, might easily
be forgotten, or suspended over a cup of rich

208 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Canary; or, as night drew on, after a beaker of
sack-posset. But one may picture to oneself the
diffident, yet proud Philip Massinger, in his black
doublet and plain white linen collar, with shabby
tassels hanging from it, feasting, perhaps, at an-
other man's expense — trying to shine in these
" wit-combats" — trying to forget " the basket,"
and to seem prosperous ; but, with the remem-
brance of the five pounds borrowed upon the
security of his capital of brains, with a heavy
sigh, as the delightful bard of Avon talked of re-
tiring, on his fortune of two hundred a-year, to the
quaint old town, his birth-place.

It must, however, have been a delicious oppor-
tunity of looking into minds as various as they
were original. Beaumoat has described the sur-
face : —

" What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid ! — ^heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to hve a fool the rest

Of his duU life

and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise."

A modern writer has compared these meetings

GEORGE VILLIERS. 209

to the ^' Nodes Ambro stance. ^^ Happier far the wits
of modern days, than the gifted men who, in the
time of the Stuarts, were fain to cringe to patrons
for their subsistence. None but unsuccessful
authors will rail at modern publishers, when they
remember the infinite miseries, with few signal
exceptions, of those who were unhappy enough to
depend on individuals and not on the public,
whose will and taste the publisher alone studies.

Intemperance was, in those days, not only the
sin of the middle-classes, but that of the Court;
and both James and his Queen are said to have
indulged in it. Massinger seems to have held
what were rare opinions in his time, and to have
been an advocate for total abstinence ; —

" O take care of wine !
Cold water is far better for your healths,
Of which I am very tender," — The Picture.

He wrote rapidly, and his pen was never idle ;
yet he lived in miserable poverty. There is no
record either that he was married — no indication
that, like every other poet, he had an unfortunate
or unrequited attachment. His pilgrimage had
one solace, that of a fervent religion; which had,
probably, much of the superstitions which were
mingled, in those early days of Protestantism,
with the reformed faith. The Church of Enor-
land was then "an untrimmed vessel, lurching

VOL. III. P

210 LIFE AND TIMES OF

now towards Rome, and now towards Geneva ; "
it is therefore no wonder if many of the young,
the impassioned, the imaginative, inclined to that
form of faith and of worship which wore at least
the semblance of venerable seniority .^^

There is not a line in Massinger's works that can
either convict him of Romanism, or stamp him as
a Protestant. Like many of his contemporaries,
his romantic fancy was captivated by the pictur-
esque ceremonial, the saintly observances, the
dramatic services of the Romish Church ; and to
this was probably added a disgust to that puri-
tanic fervour by which not only the drama — to
which there were, in fact, many just exceptions to
be made — but all that was enchanting in life,
poetry, secular music, revelry (not necessarily
corrupting), was condemned as sinful, and all
intellectual luxury prohibited and anathematized.

The Herbert family continued to be friends to
Massinger — at all events, to lend him the support of
their name. He dedicated " The New Way to Pay
Old Debts," the most celebrated of his plays, to
Robert, Earl of Carnarvon. " I was born," he
says, " a most devoted servant to the thrice noble
family of your incomparable lady, and am most
ambitious, though at a proper distance, to be
known to your lordship." Robert, Earl of Car-
narvon, who had married the Lady Katherine
•' Haxtley Coleridge's " Introduction," p. xxv.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 211

Herbert, although a friend and favourer of the
Muses, and also Grand Falconer of England, is
long since forgotten — whilst the poet, who ad-
dressed him " at a proper distance," is remembered
with pride and interest.

There was so close an intimacy at one time
between the Earl of Pembroke's family and that
of the Duke of Buckingham, that it seems strange
that no trace of Massinger's having been pa-
tronized by him are to be discovered. In fact,
the annals of Massinger's life present little except
the dates of his works. The eldest son of the un-
worthy Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgo-
mery, the poet's chief patron, was married in 1634
to Lady Mary Villiers, then a mere girl. It is
true that this alliance was formed six years after
Buckingham's death ; but it was probably con-
certed before that event, after the fashion of the
day, in which the infant in the cradle was often
affianced by ambitious parents, and the nuptials
solemnized at ten or twelve years of age. Charles,
Lord Herbert set out on his travels directly
after he had married his young wife, and died of
small-pox at Florence in 1636. Massinger wrote
a poem on his loss, among others, to his little

bride : —

" True sorrow feU
With showers of tears — stiU bathe the widowed bed
Of his dear spouse."

p2

212 LIFE AND TIMES OF

The elegy, as it has been observed, had better
not have been written ; and his " dear spouse "
very likely at that time preferred balls and
revelries to her husband.

It was, however, not impossible that Villiers,
to please the Herbert family, may have been the
means of introducing Massinger to Charles I.,
who justly estimated his great merits, and proved
a more generous as well as a worthier patron than
the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.

The political tenets of Massinger brought him
on one occasion into considerable danger. They
were, nevertheless, such as we should now term
moderate ; but they were irrelevantly introduced
into his dramas, at a time when liberalism was
almost regarded as next to treason. In 1631,
feir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, re-
fused to receive a play of Massinger's because it
contained what that functionary called " danger-
ous matters," as to the deposing of Sebastian,
King of Portugal, and ^^ thereby reflected upon
Spain." Even the name of that piece is unknown,
although the Master of the Revels took care that
the fee of twenty shillings for reading it over was
paid to him. In 1638, when the question of the
Ship-money was dividing the nation from the
Court, Massinger, unable to control his indigna-
tion at the oppressive measures of Charles L, pro-

GEORGE VILLIERS. 213

duced another play, called " The King and the
Subject," founded on the history of Don Pedro
the Cruel. It contained, amongst other free and
bold passages, these lines : —

" Monies ? We'll raise supplies wMcli way we please,
And force you to subscribe to blanks, in wbich
We'll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Caesars
In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws
But what their swords did ratify — the wives
And daughters of the senators bowing to
Their will as deities "

It was evident to all who had occasion to
peruse the play in manuscript, that Don Pedro
was intended for the King. It was submitted,
however, to Charles, who was at Newmarket ; he
read it, and then, in his own hand, marked the
objectionable passage, and wrote underneath these
words, " This is too insolent ; note that the poet
make it the speech of a King, Don Pedro, to his
subjects." This is one instance of the kind nature
of the often mistaken King, who avoided condemn-
ing the pl^y to oblivion.* That he encouraged Mas-
singer — that he perceived, beneath the bitterness
of a struggling man, a noble independence of
character, is evident from Massinger's plays being,
in the commencement of that reign, the fashion-
able representations at Court. A bespeak at

* The play was acted, but not printed, and has never
been discovered. — See Coleridge, from Malone.

214 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Court was the most signal proof of success, and
was all that could be desired by an author ; and
Charles took an opportunity of conferring this
benefit on Massinger, when the poet's feelings
had been grievously wounded by the opposition
made to ^' The Emperor of the East," on its first
performance by bespeaking that play.

Massinger recorded his gratitude for the be-
speak in a prologue, in which he affirms his chief
aim had been to please the King, and the fair
Henrietta Maria, in this production : —

" What we now present,
When first conceived in his vote and intent,
Was sacred to your pleasure ; in each part
With his best of fancy, judgment, language, art,
Fashioned and formed so as might well, and may,
Deserve a welcome, and no vulgar way.
He durst not, sir, at such a solemn feast,
Lard his grave matter with one scurrilous jest,
But laboured that no passage might appear
But what the Queen, without a blush, might hear."

In 1633, just after the appearance of Prynne's
^' Histriomastix," Charles ordered the representa-
tion of Massinger's " Guardian " at Whitehall, on
Sunday — an unwise act, in the eyes of all; a
wrong one in those of most persons, who, without
undue prejudice, view the Sabbath not only as a
day of holy rest, but as one in which the thoughts
and actions should be eminently pure, serene, and

GEORGE VILLIERS. 215

devout. We cannot but allow that the Puritans
had much reason on their side in condemning this
profanation, which was, one can scarcely doubt,
instigated by Queen Henrietta, or intended to
please her. The plays of Massinger were peculi-
arly unsuited to the Sabbath, from their
grossness.

It is not easy to say what amount of indeli-
cacy the ladies of that period could listen
to "without a blush." Their confusion was,
indeed, hidden beneath a black velvet mask.
Even eighty or ninety years afterwards, the
incomparable Queen Mary, the consort of Wil-
liam III., and her maids of honour, listened, under
that protection, to the comedies of an age, per-
haps, if possible, still more licentious in its plays
than that in which Massinger wrote. Nor was it
until the mask was abolished by law that the
presence of women was recognized as controlling
impropriety. In the reign of Anne, influenced by
the correctness of the Court, as well as by
the presence of ladies, unexceptionable plays, of
loftier tone, by Steele and Addison, were placed
on the stage. It is to be hoped that Queen
Henrietta scarcely comprehended what she heard
in a lano;uao;e of which she knew but little before
her arrival in England; or perhaps, with the
French notions, that a married woman, however

216 LIFE AND TIMES OF

young, may go everywhere and hear eveiything,
even if only just emancipated from a convent or
the nursery, she may not have thought herself
and her attendants degraded by what they
heard.

The Queen's partiality for Massinger was soon
known by another demonstration on her part.
On the site of the old Monastery of Blackfriars,
which had been signalized by the sitting of the
Black Parliament, in the reign of Henry YIII.,
by the trial of Katharine of Arragon in its haU,
and by the condemnation of Wolsey, James
Burbage, and his company, known as the Earl of
Leicester's players, had erected a theatre. It was
within the precincts, but not the jurisdiction, of
the City; and the Lord Mayor, after ejecting
Burbage from the City, tried in vain to di'ive
them out of Blackfriars. The Puritan inhabitants
of the precincts were also inimical to the play-
house, and petitioned the Lords and Council
against its continuance there.^^ Nevertheless,
Queen Henrietta bespoke " Cleander," a lost
play of ]SJassinger's, and went to see it acted
at Blackfriars. She was justly censured
for this imprudence — not, indeed, for her incon-
sistent patronage of dramas unfit for women to
hear or read — a sin which that age perceived
*' Cunningliam's "London."

GEOPwGE VILLIERS. 217

iiot — but for a public attendance at a theatre, on
the stage of which the young gallants of the
time chose to sit, perched on stools, with tobacco
pipes in their mouths — or congregated in two-
penny refreshment-rooms, where ale and tobacco
were sold.

It does not appear that the patronage of the
Court gave permanent independence to Mas-
singer. After the production of his last drama,
'' The Fair Anchoress of Pausilippo/' his career
was over. He latterly lived at the Bank-
side, a residence probably chosen by him
from its vicinity to various theatres — to
Blackfriars, from its proximity to Blackfriars
Road ; to the Globe Theatre, in which Shaks-
speare had a share ; to Paris Garden, to the Kose,
to the Hope, and the Swan. The Chirk, near
the Church of St. Saviour's, even in the time of
Charles I., was the seat of all manner of low dis-
sipation— bear-baiting, among the rest — and con-
sequently of misery and vice. The district was
not sanctified even by the holy edifice of St.
Saviour's ; that noble church, the finest specimen
of the early English style in London, the crypt of
which is one of the un-seen sights of the metro-
polis, having, happily, escaped the restoring hand
of some reprehensible churchwardens, who have
done their best to spoil the nave, and to reduce it

218 LIFE AND TIMES OF

to the level of their own ideas. To his obscure
home, near St. Saviour's, Philip Massinger retired
on the evening of the 16th of March, 1639-40,
to rest, in his usual health. He was found dead
in the morning in his bed. No friendly hand
closed his eyes — no kind voice whispered into his
ear words of hope and peace in Heaven, of which
he had known so little on earth : no record of the
mortal disease which thus struck him down —
what would be called, in our time, prematurely —
has been found. His death was, like his life, a
blank. The parish register tells us all that can be
told: "March 16, 1639-40.— Buried Philip Mas-
singer, a stranger^ He was followed to the
grave by actors, and buried in the churchyard of
St. Saviour's, then called St. Mary Overie, from
an old suppressed priory. No stone marked his
grave. His funeral was too poor for his re-
mains to be interred within the church, where
Lancelot Andrews and Henry Sacheverell
preached, and where their bones repose ; and
where the poet Grower founded a chantry, and
erected a tomb. Massinger was interred among
the poor and the humble ; perhaps his old com-
panions of the playhouse, in after-days, slept,
also, near his nameless grave.

His burial cost 2Z.— a sum large enough, in
those days, to ensure it, in Mr. Gifford's eyes, a

GEORGE VILLIERS. 219

considerable amount of state and ceremony;
and the word "stranger," which grates so
painfully on the feelings of those who rever-
ence genius, is said by that authority to be
usually affixed to the name of any one not belong-
ing to the parish of St. Saviour. Yet, that his
contemporaries put no epitaph on his tomb, that
there was nothing but the sod over the cold
clay, that no tradition even exists to show where
he once lay, seems to prove that the Puritans
were in the ascendancy on that sad day when the
" stranger " was conveyed to his last home ; and
that they were meet ancestors of those who have
since " restored " the old church, and have cleverly
concealed the beauties of its interior.

Massinger had great qualities. He was re-
ligious, and of rare honesty and independence ;
yet his religion did not purify his thoughts, nor
tend, consequently, to chasten his productions —
and his circumstances wore away his real in-
dependence, as his dedic^^tions testify. His
conceptions of what was noble, of what was
virtuous, are beautifully expressed in those
plciys, which are yet so full of coarseness
as to be unpresentable; and whilst he never
loses any opportunity of exalting virtue, he
seizes every occasion of depraving the taste, if
not the mind. In this respect he is far more

220 LIFE AND TIMES OF

culpable than Shakspeare; the age had deteri-
orated : James I. was coarse, and liked coarseness
in others; his Court and his amusements allpartook
of that characteristic, which increased after the old
chivalric style had declined. The elegance and
purity in the works of Sir Philip Sidney and Spenser
were succeeded by coarseness in those of Massinger,
Ford, and Ben Jonson. When Massinger ceased
to write freely — and, in so doing, to indulge every
fancy, fair or foul — he wrote feebly. Of this '^ The
Roman Actor," to play which he ^^held to be the
most perfect birth of his Minerva," affords an ex-
ample. It is free from indelicacy, but presents few
of Massinger's striking excellencies. The plot is
bad ; the scene in which the character of Paris
might have been so powerfully developed, when
tempted by Domitian^ is poor. The tortures of
the senators on the stage, and the appearance of
their ghosts afterwards, savours of the love which
Massinger had for the horrible — with the deline-
ation of which he seems to have consoled himself
for his forbearance in other points. Neverthe-
less, whilst the secondary characters in "The
Roman Actor" are poor and indistinct — whilst
those of the primary actors are striking and
truthful — the timid tyranny of Domitian, and
the ambition of Donitia, are admirably worked
out.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 221

The inordinate taste for revolting incidents on
the stage was a great feature of the times ; the
contemporaries of Somerset and his wife were
habituated to the excitement of fearful mysteries,
of crimes, and sins half -disclosed, yet awful in the
dimness of partial discovery. The frequent occur-
rence of murders, sometimes designedly, "but
more often in hasty broils," in that day, presented
subjects which, to us, seem extravagant, but
which were highly acceptable to the bravadoes,
who, smoking on the stage, brandished their
rapiers, and were ready to avenge a quarrel at the
sword's point. In nothing is the difference
of manners so marked between those days and
these as in the matter of honour. In those
times, honour was perpetually in every man's
mouth — personal courage was prominently brought
forward ; and hence, every play had its braggart
or its coward; and, as we see in the works of
Beaumont and Fletcher,^'' honour had its code, its
professional counsel, and its practical paid sup-
porters. But, with this code, this practice, moral
courage had little to do ; the code of honour
drew the main limit of caste, and the burgher
and the tradesman were beneath it. So important
was it, however, to observe the new code atix
25, that a manual or grammar of its rules was

«* See " Maid's Tragedy."

222 LIFE AND TIMES OF

applied to satisfy the captious on nice points.
Thus, when Adorio, in Massinger's "Maid of
Honour," laments that his honour and reputa-
tion should suffer from having taken a blow in
public from Caldoro, accompanied with the in-
famous "mark of coward," he is referred by
Camillo, to whom he pours forth his vexation, to
Caranza's '* Grammar " for directions, in much the
same manner as a lawyer would quote Lord St.
Leonards on a point of law — or travellers call on
Murray as their authority.

^\Tien Adorio talks of what he " would do " in
the matter, Camillo answers : —

" Never think on't,

Till fitter time and place invite you to it.

I have read Caranza, and find not in his Grammar

Of quarrels that the injured man be bound

To seek for reparation at an hour ;

But may, and without loss, till he hath settl'd

More serious occasions that import him.

For a day or two defer it.
Adorio. — You'll subscribe

Your hand to this ?
Camillo. — And justify't with my life.

Presume upon't.
Adorio. — On then ; you shall o'errule me."

Women were not let off so easily ; happily for
them, more was expected from them than from
men. Without referring to Caranza, their
honour consisted not only in chastity, but in

GEORGE VILLIERS. 223

constancy to vows, and resistance to the tempta-
tions of wealth ; and these attributes were suf-
ficiently rare to make the '^ Maid of Honour" an
exceptional character.^^ Massinger, however,
assures us that Englishwomen, even in those days,
asserted a superiority in intellect and character :
it is true, they had no opportunity of travel-
ling, and stayed at home ; but they learned
from their lovers and brothers the customs of those
foreign countries which it was then dangerous to
traverse.

Most men of rank or fortune, nevertheless,
made the " grand tour " before marrying ; or left
their young betrothed mistresses in their native
counties. In the *^ Guardian," Calipso says : —

"Why, sir, do gallants travel ?
Answer that question ; but at their return
With wonder to the hearers to discourse of
The garb and difference in foreign females —
As the lusty girl of France, the sober German,
The plump Dutch frow, the stately dame of Spain."

It has been asked whether Massinger and
Shakspeare ever met? — whether, as Hartley
Coleridge inquires, they ever " took a cup of sack
together at the Mitre or the Mermaid;" and
whether Massinger was ever umpire or bottle-
holder in the '' wit-combats " described by
«^ "The Guardian." See Massinger's Works, p. 351.

224 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Fuller ? But upon this, as well as on many other
points, there is no light. We know not whom
Massinger loved, nor whom he hated ; we would
fain believe, with Coleridge, that his life was not
passed without some true affection — a link be-
tween passion and virtue ; we would willingly
believe that, like Tasso, he loved one above
him in rank — or one below him — rather
than that he had never loved at all. But his
works repel the surmise. True love is vehement —
but it is delicate ; and it would have elevated his
thoughts, and purified his expressions. Mas-
singer may have done justice to the intellect and
companionship of his countrywomen, but he had
no reverence for the most beautiful part of their
nature ; and in this, as in other respects, is far
below Shakspeare.

The obscurity which overshadowed all Mas-
singer's career has rendered any communication,
as we have seen, between him and Buckingham,
doubtful ; but it was far otherwise in respect to
Ben Jonson — whose works are so replete with
allusions to the Villiers family, and to their
attributes, amusements, and bounties, that no
biography of George Villiers can be complete
without a more copious reference to the works of
this dramatist than can be conveyed in the
passing notices which have been given of his

GEORGE VILLIERS. 225

masques, in the course of the preceding narra-
tive.* Ben Jonson was ten years older than Mas-
singer ; and was born in 1574. Whether from his
surname, or his Christian name, or from his after-
life, it is not easy to say, but one generally looks
upon Ben Jonson as a man of low birth. But
such was not the fact. His grandfather, a man
of some family and fortune, was a gentleman in
the service of Henry VIII. ; his father was in
holy orders, " a grave minister of the Gospel." ^^

The family had originally settled at Annan-
dale, in Scotland ; but Ben Jonson was born in
Westminster. He had the misfortune to come
into the world a month after his father's death.
It was, perhaps, a less adverse circumstance that
his mother, two years afterwards, married again.
Her views were not exalted, and she took for her
second husband — tired, it might seem, of the
genteel poverty of the cloth — a master-brick-
layer. Not even has Fuller, not even has
GifFord, been able to ascertain in what part of
the suburb of Westminster " Ben " was born.
Fuller, however, consoles us ; he could not trace

* From the State Papers, a new volume of which has
lately been pubhshed, it appears that Jonson was accused of
writing certain hnes on Buckingham's assassination. — See
Appendix.

«« Gifford's " Life of Ben Jonson," p. 2 ; from Anthony
Wood.

VOL. III. O.

226 LIFE AND TIMES OF

the poet in his cradle, but he could " fetch him,"
as he observes, in his '^ short coats." About two
years old, Ben was discovered — that is to say, the
haunts of his infancy were — " a little child in
Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross."

This neighbourhood was as poor as that of
Westminster Abbey ; and the parish of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields, which then extended to
Whitehall on the south, to Marylebone on the
north, to the Savoy on the east, and to Chelsea and
Kensington on the west, when first rated to the
poor in Queen Elizabeth's reign, contained only
two hundred persons sufficiently wealthy to pay
those rates.^^ It afterwards became the greatest
cure in England, until several of its parishes
were separated from the patron saint, St. Martin's.

Here, however, Ben Jonson was brought up —
getting such education as he might from a school
in the church of St Martin's. It is stated, how-
ever, by Gifford, to have been a " private school."
He might possibly have been one of the private
pupils on a foundation school. Some unknown
benefactor, however, removed the future poet
from St Martin's, and placed him at St. Peter's
College, Westminster, which was founded by
Queen Elizabeth, in 1660 — "a public school for
grammar, rhetorick, — poetry (which the maiden
«' Cunningliaiii's London.

GEORGE YILLIERS. 227

Queen was too wise to despise) and for the Latin
and Greek languages."

This removal was the visible cause of all Ben
Jonson's eminence. Camden, the historian, was
then one of the masters of that school, from
whose ranks issued Cowley, George Herbert,
Dryden, Churchill, Cowper, Southey, and many
others less celebrated. Ben Jonson always re-
tained an affectionate remembrance of Camden's
instructions : —

" Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe
All that in wits I am, and all I know."

He dedicated his best play, "Every Man in
his Humour," to Master Camden, " Clarencieux,"
ending his dedication thus : —

" Now, I pray you to accept this ; such
wherein neither the confession of my manners
shall make you blush — nor of my studies repent
you to have been the instructor; and for the
profession of any thankfulness, I am sure it will,
with good men, find either praise or excuse,
from your true lover, Ben Jonson." ^^

From Westminster, Jonson went to Cambridge,
probably to St. John's ; but even of this import-
ant fact no certainty exists, for the university
register is imperfect, and from 1600 to 1602

«8 Ben Johnson's Works, p, i.

Q2

228 LIFE AND TIMES OF

there is an hiatus. It is merely conjectured, from
there being several books containing the name of
Ben Jonson in the library of St. John's, that
he entered that College. Here, however, he
only stayed, according to Fuller, some weeks ;
funds were wanting for his support — a circum-
stance which seems to shew that he was not
sent up to Trinity College on the foundation,
as otherwise he would have had an exhibition
at Westminster. His parents were unable to
supply means ; and the young student, thirsting
for distinction, was obliged to return and follow
his step-father's calling. Never was there a situ-
ation so pitiable, and the condition of this aspiring
scholar was compassionated by other scholars of
happier fortunes than himself. Camden gene-
rously relieved him ; Thomas Sutton, who, having
bought the Charter House from Lord Suffolk,
nobly devoted it to an hospital and school, " the
master-piece of Protestant charity," as Lord
Bacon styled it, — also, according to some accounts,
consoled, and compassionated, and assisted Jon-
son. It has even been said that " Ben" was
engaged to attend the eldest son of Sir Walter
Halegh, as a tutor ; but of this no certainty
exists. All that is absolutely known is, that he
was sick of the trowel and the hod, whilst his
mind was running on Horace and Virgil ; and

GEOEGE VILLIERS 229

that to escape what he deemed degradation, he
enlisted, went off to the Low Countries, and
served a campaign in that scene of war, which
was a sort of school to the young English soldier.

His heart went, to a certain extent, along with
this new profession. ^' Let not those blush that
have, but those that have not, a lawful calling,"
says Fuller, — and Jonson seems to have thought
eo likewise. He returned, however, at nineteen,
poor as ever, with the same scholastic tastes ; and
the master-bricklayer being dead, he repaired to
his mother's house.

He next tried the stage. It has been, in all
times, the refuge of the unthrifty. But Jonson's
appearance was unfavourable to that attempt.
His very ugliness, one would have thought, might
have been an advantage. Mr. GifFord repels with
fury the imputation on Jonson, that his hero was
frightful ; yet the description he gives himself of
Ben Jonson is by no means attractive. His com-
plexion, which had been clear and smooth in boy-
hood, was disfigured by a scorbutic humour, and
ultimately by scars, from what the Germans are
pleaded to call the " Englische Krankheit." His
features are said not to have been irregular or
unpleasing, but appear in his portraits to be large
and coarse. One eye looked askance ; his fore-
head was, however, noble ; his person was broad

230 LIFE AND TIMES OF

and corpulent — after forty it became unwieldy;
and his gait, he himself owned, " ungracious."
In early youth his worst points were not, pro-
bably, prominent ; he had a delightful voice and
emphasis. " I never," said the Duchess of New-
castle, " heard any man read well but my hus-
band ; and I have heard him say, ' he never heard
any man read well but Ben Jonson, and yet he
hath heard many in his time.' " ^^

Nevertheless, "Ben" was not a good actor.
Critics differ as to the nature and duration of his
theatrical employ. And Gifford, who takes every
question relative to his hero as a personal matter,
is indignant at the statement that he was a stroll-
ing player, or ambled by the side of a waggon,
and took mad Jeronymo^s part; but, as most com-
panies were then itinerant, and, as even now, first-
rate actors and actresses make provincial tours,
there seems little call for the venom and wrath
poured out by the indefatigable biographer, who
points, with satisfaction, to the bulky figure of
Jonson, and asks how he could possibly act " little
Jeronymoy^ that " inch of Spain " ? *

Whatever was his position — whether, as Anthony
Wood says, " he did recede to a nursery or ob-
scure playhouse, called the Green Curtaiiiy' in

^^ Gifford, from the Duchess of Newcastle's Letters.
* From the First Part of " Jeronymo," a popular play.

GEORGE YILLIERS. 231

Shoreditcli ; or whether, as GifFord declares, that
statement is a mere fable, and that his aims were
higher — seemed now of little moment, perhaps, to
Jonson himself; for his efforts were interrupted
by a duel. His antagonist is supposed to have
been a brother-player, who brought to the field a
sword ten inches longer than poor Ben's. They
fought, and Ben killed the gentleman with the
long sword, but was himself severely wounded in
the arm ; he was sent to prison, and brought, as
he described it, " near to the gallows."

Poor Ben was now, probably, fain to cry out
with Antonio in the " Maid of Honour" : —

" But redeem me
From tills captivity, and I'll vow
Never to draw a sword, or cut my meat hereafter
With, a knife that has an edge or point ; I'll starve first." '"

This imprisonment had a signal effect on Jonson's
destiny ; he fell into melancholy, and was visited
in his despondency by a Romanist priest, who
applied himself to his consolation first, and to his
conversion afterwards. Jonson had been reli-
giously brought up, and it was not from indiffer-
ence that he renounced the faith of his parents
and entered the Romish Church. Such conver-
sions were frequent in the early days of the Refor-
mation. Jonson was no controversialist ; wiser
'" Massinger's Works, p. 200.

232 LIFE AND TIMES OF

men than he fell into the same error, and, like
such, atoned for it. The great light of our Church,
Jeremy Taylor, became for some time a Roman-
ist, but returned to the Anglican faith ; Chilling-
worth and others wandered also, and also returned.
The readiest converts are often those of deep and
earnest feelings, which act on excitable minds,
only superficially informed on the great doctrines
of Scripture J^ Jonson's imprisonment was aggra-
vated in its misery by a system of espionage
which the necessities of the times induced. The
plots against Elizabeth's life usually originated in
the seminaries of the priests. Jonson was warned
by his gaoler that he was watched.

He was eventually released, but by what agency
does not appear.

He quitted prison, and married a young woman
of his new persuasion ; and there appears to have
been no great reason to repent his choice. His
wife was shrewish, but respectable ; and the
poet's prosperity commenced with his marriage.

From this time until the period when the Court
festivities brought him into frequent collision with
Villiers, Jonson's productions were successive
occasions of triumph. Nevertheless, money did
not flow into his coffers ; and he was continually
obliged to pledge, as Massinger did, the labour of
" Gifford, p. 7, note.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 233

his brain — two sums of four pounds, and twenty
shillings, being advanced to him by Henslowe, the
father-in-law of AUeyn, the player, upon the plots
of two plays being presented and approved.
Still poor Jonson had his enemies and traducers.
The scene of " Every Man in his Humour " was
originally laid in Thrace ; the names were Italian,
but wishing still further to ensure its success,
Jonson changed them, and brought the scenes
to London. Nevertheless, he was still attacked
about his Italian story. There seems, then, to
have been as great an objection to works of
imagination based on foreign plots as in the pre-
sent day. In " Volpone," Jonson carefully avoided
introducing any material not purely English.

He was still a struggling author, wdth few friends
except players and playwrights, and with many
enemies, owing to his vehemence of temper and
imprudence of speech. But of his animosity to
Shakspeare, and of the poet's alienation from him,
there seems no proof; and indeed Shakspeare is
reported to have stood godfather to one of his
children — although the improbable anecdote con-
nected with that act is discredited by GifFord.

Jonson's acquaintance with Shakspeare is stated
by Rowe to have begun with ^' a remarkable piece
of humanity and good-nature on the part of the im-
mortal bard." Jonson, who was then, as Rowe ob-

234 LIFE AND TIMES OF

serves, "entirely unknown to the world," had offered
" Every Man in his Humour " for representation ;
it was carelessly looked over, and returned in a
supercilious manner by the person who had read
it, with the uncourteous answer "that it would
be of no use to the company." Happily, how-
ever, Shakspeare chanced to cast his eyes on the
manuscript, and found in the play something that
powerfully engaged his attention. Generous, as
well as gifted, he recommended both Jonson and
his drama to the attention of the actors, and to
that of the public also."^^

The old play, with the Italian names, the scene
laid at Florence, had been first brought out at
the Rose Theatre ; and it was, apparently, the
amended drama, which, from the numerous altera^
tions, had become again Jonson's property, ac-
cording to the custom of the time, that attracted
the notice of Shakspeare.''^ Be that as it may,
"Every Man in his Humour" was acted at Black-
friars in 1598, and Shakspeare's name appears at
the head of it as one of the performers. This was
about sixteen years before the Bard of Avon
sought for repose on the banks of his beloved
river, and in his native tow^n.

Henceforth the literary world was divided by

« Rowe's " Life of Shakspeare," p. xxxiii.
" GiflFord, p. 2.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 235

the factions which penetrate even into the studies
of the lettered ; and a sort of rivalship was set
up, in which, it appears, the partisans of the two
great dramatists were far more rife than the
parties concerned.

The contending critics endeavoured to exalt the
one at the expense of the other. Pope observes,
" It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes ;
and nothing is so probable as that, because Ben
Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on
the one hand that Shakspeare had none at all ; and
because Shakspeare had much the most wit and
fancy, it was retorted on the other that Jonson
wanted both ; because Shakspeare borrowed
nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed
everything; because Jonson did not write ex-
tempore, he was reproached with being a year
about every piece ; and because Shakspeare wrote
with ease and facility, they cry'd he never once
made a blot." "^^

Yet, without attempting to enter into a
controversy long since passed away, and doubt-
ful in origin and extent, it is satisfactory to find
Jonson' s vindication from unworthy motives in
his famous lines, " To the Memory of my Be-
loved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespere, and

"» Pope's "Essay on Shakespere," prefixed to the Oxford
edition, p. xix., 1745.

236 LIFE AND TIMES OF

what he hath left us :" in which he truly calls him
the " Soul of the Age."

Jonson's " Every Man in his Humour " was
honoured, after it had been played several
times, by the presence of Queen Elizabeth,
who was one of Jonson's earliest patrons. Never-
theless, in " Cynthia's Revels," which was brought
out during the following year, the poet satirized
the formal and affected manners of the Court.

Whitehall was never gay after the execution of
Mary Queen of Scots ; the joyousness of Eliza-
beth's nature, which she had inherited from her
father, was gone.

When mirth went out, pedantry came in.
Euphuism was for a time in vogue ; the Queen,
pensive one hour, fretful the next, looked pas-
sively on the change ; but to her courtiers —
among: whom Jonson now beo^an to mix — the
satire in " Cynthia's Revels " was, probably,
highly acceptable. Among the most reprehensi-
ble usages of the day was that of bringing up
children to perform on the public stage, as well
as in the Court. In 1609 authority was given to
"William Shakespeare, Robert Daborne, Nathaniel
Field, and Robert Kirkham," to provide and in-
struct a certain number of children to perform
in tragedies, comedies, or masques, within the
Blackfriars, or in "the realm of England."

GEOKGE YILLIERS. 237

Shakspeare, who soon withdrew from the superin-
tendence of this juvenile company, has referred to
them in " Hamlet," thus marking his disapproba-
tion of the system.'^

"But there is, sir, an aviary of children, little eyases
that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyranni-
cally clapp'd for it. These are now the fashion, and so be-
sottle the common stages (so they call them) that many wear
ing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and scarce dare come
thither."

These children were, in some respects, well
cared for. They were selected from the young
choristers in the Eoyal Chapel, and, by an
order, so early as the reign of Edward IV., they
were to be sent to Oxford or Cambridge, on the
King's foundation, at the age of eighteen, should
their voices be changed, or the number of choris-
ters be over-full. "Many good people," observes
Hartley Coleridge,'^*' " who are scandalized at the
Latin plays of Westminster, will be surprised
that in the pious days of England, in the glorious
morning of the Reformation, in ^ great Eliza's
golden time,' under Kings and Queens that
were the nursing fathers and nursing mothers,
the public acting of plays should be, not the
permitted recreation, but the compulsory em-
ployment of children devoted to sing the praises

'^ Introduction to Massinger's Works, p. xxxiv.
"^ Page xxxvi.

238 LIFE AND TIMES OF

of God — of plays too, the best of which children
may now only read in a * family ' edition of some,
whose very titles a modern father would scruple
to pronounce before a woman or a child."

These children were first impressed from the
cathedrals by Richard III. ; and even Queen
Elizabeth issued a warrant, under the sign-
manual, "authorizing Thomas Gyles, the master
of the children of Paul's, " to bring up any
boys in cathedrals or collegiate churches, in order
to be instructed for the entertainment of the
Court." The children of the Queen's Chapel
must, therefore, henceforth form a principal
feature in the representations of Ben Jonson's
masques, as we picture them to our minds, either
in Whitehall — consumed by fire long since —
or at Althorpe, or at Burleigh-on-the-Hill, or in
the stately Castle of Belvoir. Under those
vaulted roofs their young voices warbled the
exquisite poetry of Jonson to the music of
Lawes, or — be it not recorded without shame,
nevertheless — were obliged to utter words of rail-
lery, bitterness, and indelicacy, which were usually,
as Heywood in his apology for actors confesses,
allotted to the unconscious children to deliver.

Greatly as Ben Jonson hailed the accession
of James I., he had soon reason to regret the
wise though parsimonious Queen Elizabeth. In

GEORGE VILLIEES. 239

conjunction with Chapman and Marston, he had
written a play called " Eastward Hoe." It was
well received ; but there was a passage in it
reflecting: on the Scotch. The two authors were
arrested; Jonson had not any share in writing the
piece, but, being accessory to its production, he
honourably and ''voluntarily" accompanied 'his
two friends to prison, thus surrendering himself
to justice. No very severe punishment was ever
contemplated, but a report prevailed that the
three delinquents were to have their ears and
noses cut. Jonson is said to have been released
owing to the intercession of Camden and Selden ;
and they are declared to have been present when,
after his liberation, he gave an entertainment- On
that occasion his mother " drank to him, and
showed him a paper which she designed, if the
sentence had taken effect, to have been mixed
with his drink, and it was a strong and hasty
poison." To show "that she was no churl,"
Jonson, in relating this story, added, " she de-
signed to have first drank of it herself"

He escaped from some other personal attack
which, in common with Chapman, he made
on some individual, with only a second and
also temporary imprisonment;^^ and from this
time was in such constant requisition by the
" Gifford, p. 23. See note by Mr. Dyce, p. 23.

240 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Court, that his imprudence went unnoticed. The
" Masque of Darkness " was composed by the ex-
press command of Anne of Denmark, who appeared
in it as a negress, surrounded with the dark
beauties of her supposed African Court. The
Queen, and the *' Daughters of Night," as the
noble dames who acted in that pageant were
called, were placed in a concave shell, seated one
above another in tiers ; from the top of the shell,
which represented mother-of-pearl, hung a cheveron
of light, which cast a bright beam on these ladies ;
the shell was moving up and down upon the
sea, and in the billows appeared varied forms
of sea-monsters, twelve in number, each bearing
a torch on his back. The Queen was attired in
azure and silver, with a curious head-dress of
feathers, fastened with ropes of pearl, which
showed well as the loops fell on the blackened
throats of the masquers, who also wore ropes of
pearl on their arms and wrists. Inigo Jones is
conjectured to have written the directions for the
costume of this masque.'^^ Jonson now received
periodical sums, not only from the Court, but
from public bodies and private patrons. A year
seldom passed without a Royal progress ; and we
have seen how essential the poet had become to
the often impromptu revelries in which James I.
'« Introduction to Massinger, p. xv.

GEORGE VILLIEES, 241

continually indulged. Yet Jonson wrote his plays
and masques slowly. The "Fox" took him a
year to complete. His notion was that " a good
poet's made as well as born." ^^ He worked out
his own success, and his labours were incessant.
He had a practice of committing to his common- .
place book remarkable passages that struck him.
Lord Falkland, one of the most accomplished of
the cavaliers, expressed his astonishment at the
variety and extreme copiousness of Jonson's
knowledge. If a pedantic display of learning be
imputed to Jonson, it must be remembered that
it was, probably, in compliance with the taste of
his royal patron, James, who delighted in ex-
hibiting his classical proficiency ; and who, even
on his death-bed, as we have seen, answered the
learned Prelate near him in Latin. It was during
the first years of King James's reign that Jonson
justified these classic allusions in his " Masque
and Barriers," at the nuptials of the Earl of
Essex to the faithless bride, also married after-
wards to Somerset. " Some," he says, " may
squeamishly cry out, that all endeavours of learn-
ing and sharpness in these transitory devises,
where it steps beyond their little (or let me not
wrong them) no brain at all, is superfluous.
I am contented these fastidious stomachs should

^9 " Lines on Shakespere," p. 552 ; Ben Jonson's Works.
VOL. III. R

242 LIFE AND TIMES OF

leave my full tables, and enjoy at home their clean
empty trenchers, fitted for such airy tastes, where
perhaps a few Italian herbs, picked up, and made
into a sallad, may find sweeter acceptance than
all the sound meat of the world."

These beautiful masques had the great advan-
tage of being set to music by Henry Lawes, the
composer who secured immortality to his name
by the music of " Comus," composed by him.
Lawes was beginning his career of fame when
Buckingham first entered the Court. The son of
a vicar choral in Salisbury Cathedral, he rose to
be first a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and
afterwards Clerk of the Chapel, and conductor of
the private music of Charles I. Henry Lawes
sometimes took a part in the masques which he
composed ; and acted the attendant spirit in
"Comus." His " ayres" and dialogues have disap-
pointed posterity. Yet he appears to have been
almost the father of English vocal music ; and, as
Milton declares —

" Taught our English music how to space
Word with just note and accent."'

Music, like all the other delights of peace, lan-
guished during the troublous times of the Eebel-
lion, or flourished only on the battle-field.
Lawes was obliged to teach singing during that

GEORGE VILLIEES. 243

period ; but he lived to compose the coronation
anthem for Charles II., and to have a place of
interment assigned to him in Westminster
Abbey. His brother, less happy, though a
skilful musician also, and often employed in con-
junction with Henry Lawes, took up arms for
Charles I., in whose service he also lived, and to
whom he was devoted, and fell, fighting for his
sovereign, at the siege of Chester.

It was then the custom for certain great
families to receive musicians, as well as men of
letters, in their houses, and to employ them in
their especial line — sometimes in hymeneal festi-
vities, sometimes in composing requiems. Thus the
arts and sciences, poetry, music, painting, and scenic
decoration, were united, during the life-time of
George Villiers, in a degree never before or since
known in this country. Massinger, Ben Jonson,
Lawes, Inigo Jones, were at the service of the
rich and noble, and awaited their bidding.
Shakspeare died just after George Villiers had
received the first public proof of Royal favour —
the honour of knighthood ; * and the era of
masques and revels began. Still, ^' a craving for
mental enjoyment," ^^ as well as that derived from
the senses, was diffused.

* In 1615. Shakspeare died in 1616.

80 Hartley Coleridge's " Life of Massinger."

r2

244 LIFE AND TIMES OF

The religious changes and controversies in the
preceding reigns had improved the intellect of
the higher orders in England, by making some
portion of learning necessary to those either
engaged in polemical disputes, or who, con-
scientious, though unassuming, wished to form
their own opinions. There was an earnest-
ness in the awakened minds of that period.
"It was a time of much vice, much folly,
much trouble — but it was an age of much
energy ."^^ When, after the middle of Elizabeth's
reign, the thirst for controversy abated, the
desire for cultivation, the love of poetry, and the
taste for art remained, took another direction,
and tended to the improvement and enlighten-
ment of social life. The higher classes did much
to exalt these dawning predilections, until the
rebellion came ; after that fearful convul-
sion, the diversions of the great were hence-
forth debased in character, and their minds in
taste.

Mary Countess of Pembroke was one of the
earliest and most admired of Ben Jonson's friends.
To her son William, the early adviser of the
Duke of Buckingham, Ben Jonson dedicated his
^' Book of Epigrams." It is therefore almost cer-
tain that, before Jonson had appeared in public,
" Gifford's " Life of Ben Jouson," p. 59.

GEOEGE VILLIERS. 245

as the composer of masques for the express enter-
tainment of the great favourite at Burleigh, he
had met ViUiers at Wilton, in the society of their
common friend. Lord Pembroke — " a man,"
Lord Clarendon writes, " very well-bred, and of
excellent parts, and a graceful speaker upon any
subject, having a good proportion of learning,
and a ready wit to apply and enlarge upon it."
When we add to this that the Earl was no cold,
haughty, and pompous host, but facetious,
affable, generous, magnificent, as disinterested
and independent with the rich and great as he
was unaffected and courteous to the humble ;
when we remember what Wilton even then was
— the pride of the nation ; when we reflect what
and who were the men who were welcomed to its
hospitality — men, as Clarendon observes, " of the
most pregnant parts and understanding ; " when
we think of Ben Jonson there — probably received
as a guest — whilst Massinger was still only the
son of a retainer ; v/hen we picture Inigo Jones
with his pencil — the sketches which he drew,
praised by Vandyck ; or hear the voices of the
two brothers Henry and William Lawes, singing
to soft airs the verses of Ben Jonson — we must
believe that George Villiers had in such scenes,
before he lost the friendship of Pembroke, many
delights greater than the wearisome partiality of

246 LIFE AND TIMES OF

James, or even a communion with the then un-
formed mind of Charles.

A Platonic admiration for Christian, Countess
of Devonshire, called forth in verses the romantic
gallantry of the Earl of Pembroke. One cannot
help rejoicing that Lawes set to music what Pem-
broke wrote : —

'' Wrong not, dear Empress of my heart,
The merits of true passion.
With thinking that he feels no smart
Who sues for no compassion.

SUence in love betrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty.
The beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity." *2

From the society of Wilton, Villiers went
forth imbued with those tastes which never
yielded wholly to the grosser diversions in which
his Royal patron indulged. Whilst he retained the
friendship of Lord Pembroke, Yilliers was, in all
probability, learning to estimate the conversation
and works of Ben Jonson ; and henceforth, the
efforts of the dramatist must, to a certain degree,
be associated with the influence and protection of
the favourite.

London, in spite of the repeated proclamations of
King James, tending to restrain its extent, and to
keep the provincial gentry in their homes, was now
«» '' Royal and Noble Authors," vol. ii., p. 268.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 247

generally crowded at certain seasons. A number
of small theatres were erected in various parts of
the city, in order to supply entertainments to
those who would have turned with disgust, since a
finer taste had been introduced by the Reformation,
from the old moralities. Shakspeare, happily,
formed an engagement to produce his pieces at
one theatre, but Jonson was obliged to carry his
productions to various minor houses, until the
success of his masques enabled him to form a
higher estimate of the value of his powers. His
lighter pieces are marked by grace and sweetness ;
but these characteristics he " laid aside," says Mr.
GifFord, '^ whenever he approached the stage, and
put on the censor with the sock."^^ The excel-
lence of the masque in Ben Jonson's time, the
great and gifted actors by whom it was performed,
the fancy which was suffered to expand itself in
these pieces, the scenic effect to which so vast an
expense was devoted, incline us to think, with
Gifford, " that all our ' most splendid shows are
at best but beggarly parodies,' in comparison with
those in which the Cliffords and Arundels, the
Stanleys, the Russells, the Veres, and the Wrothsj
^ danced in the fairy rings, in the gay and gallant
circles of those enchanting devices.'"®'^

" " Life of Ben Jonson," p. 63.
" Ibid., p. 67.

248 LIFE AND TIMES OF

After the death of Shakspeare, Jonson received,
by patent, a pension of a hundred marks a-year
from James. It is supposed that the honour
of the laureateship chiefly or solely belonged
to him. Hitherto the title seems to have
been merely honorary, adopted at pleasure by any
poet who was appointed to write for the Court.
It had been borne by Daniel in the time of Eliza-
beth. It was on this occasion that Jonson applied
to Selden for information concerning the origin of
the title of laureate ; and that Selden drew up
expressly, and introduced into the second part of
his " Titles of Honours," a long chapter on the
custom of giving crowns of laurel to poets ; at the
conclusion of which he says, " Thus have I, by
no unseasonable digression, performed a promise
to you, my beloved Ben Jonson — your curious
learning and judgment may correct where I have
erred ; " and adds, " where my notes and memory
have left me short." A graceful and enviable com-
pliment from such a man.

The triumphs of Jonson's genius were inter-
rupted by his journey to Edinburgh in 1618 — a
journey which he performed on foot. Here he
was the guest of Drummond, the poet of Haw-
\homden — under whose roof he passed the April
of 1619. This journey was regarded as the
greatest misfortune of Jonson's life ; not only

GEORGE VILLIERS. 249

because during his stay in Scotland his wife died,
but because Drummond, amongst other injuries,
gave the following character of Ben Jonson to the
world : — ^^

" For," he says, " Ben Jonson was a great
lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and
scorn er of others, given rather to lose a friend
than a jest, jealous of every word and action of
those about him, especially after drink, which is
one of the elements in which he lived ; a dissem-
bler of the parts which reigned in him, a bragger
of some good that he wanted, thinketh nothing
well done but what either he himself or some of
his friends have said or done. He is passionately
kind or angry, careless either to gain or keep;
vindictive, if he be well answered as himself; in-
terprets best sayings and deeds often to the worst.
He was for any religion, as being versed in
both."

The conduct of Drummond, styled by Mr.
Gifford, '' a cankered hypocrite,"^^ has been jus-
tified by others ; his very hospitality to Jonson is
termed by the infuriated biographer, " decoying
him into his house." Drummond acted, in a very
slight degree, in the same capacity to Jonson as

85 Gifford's " Ben Jonson," p. 37.
*« In Laing's Preface to notes of Ben Jonson's Conversa-
tion.

250 LIFE AND TIMES OF

that which Boswell, a century and a half after-
wards, undertook in regard to the more fortunate
Samuel Johnson, who found in his listener an ad-
mirer, and not a foe. Both these great men had
the calamity of having every idle expression set
down for the curiosity of an after-age ; and " old
Ben," as his contemporaries called him in their
jovial meetings at the Mermaid, did not stand
the test so well as ^' Old Samuel." We cannot,
however, regard the visit to Scotland as the great
misfortune of Ben Jonson's life, as the impas-
sioned GiiFord pronounces it.^^

Jonson, however, returned to London, un-
conscious of all that after his death so agi-
tated the literary world in the eighteenth cen-
tury on his account. He met, as he wrote to
Drummond, with a " most Catholic welcome from
King James," who was then, like Jonson, a not
disconsolate widower. The poet was writing a
poem for the funeral of Queen Anne, who had
just died, but was unburied. He was very keenly
engaged in beginning the *^ Discovery," which
was to contain a description of Scotland ; and he
signed himself Drummond's "true friend and
lover." He received, in return, two letters full of
kindness and compliment from Drummond, whom

" Note by Dyce ; Gifford, p. 38.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 251

Gifford himself, incapable of an act of insincerity,
styles thereupon, " hypocrite to the last."

Ben Jonson was now invited by Bishop Corbet
to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was created
Master of Arts. Thence he passed to Burleigh-
on-the-Hill and to Windsor, to see the perform-
ance of his *' Gypsies Metamorphosed " — and to
introduce little compliments in each piece, as the
dramatis personnce were varied or augmented by
the accession of fresh actors and actresses. About
this time he wrote his poem on the " Ladies of
England." It was lost — a mischance which, in
the weakness of one's nature, one is apt to regret
more than the destruction of a vast body of philo-
logical notes, the fruit of twenty years' labour, for
which Mr. Gifford calls for especial sympathy.

Jonson was now made " Master of the Revells,'^
and was nearly being knighted. He passed his
time in going from one country seat to another ;
every Twelfth-day he was ordered to produce, or
to repeat a masque. Charles I. was now rising
to maturity, and, like his deceased brother, Henry,
he loved the poetry of Jonson, and the fancy of
Inigo Jones. The match-making propensities of
King James were as yet undeveloped, and had
neither troubled his repose nor maddened the
nation into a dread of his mistakes. Villiers was
young, gay, and unmarried; and the world was

252 LIFE AND TIMES OF

at peace. Those were happy and busy days for
Jonson — yet, amid all his labours, he found time to
collect an excellent library. He was not only a col-
lector, but a lender of his books — an unusual com-
bination ; a man must be generous, indeed, to
unite the two characters; nay, he gave them also,
liberally, to those qualified to value the rare
editions which he bought. "I am fully war-
ranted in saying," Mr. GifFord writes, " that more
valuable books given to individuals by Jonson are
yet to be met with than by any person of that
age. Scores of them have fallen under my own
observation, and I have heard of abundance of
others."^* This is rare praise. Nevertheless, since
brilliant success always has its alloy, it was the
lot of Jonson to suffer from the ingratitude of his
coadjutor, Inigo Jones ; and the excuse, perhaps,
of Inigo was, that he was tried and tempted by
the temper and irony of Jonson. Their quarrel
was inconvenient, and must have caused some
trouble in the representation of those masques
and revels over which Jonson presided.

" Whoever was the aggressor," says Horace
Walpole, " the turbulence and brutality of Jonson
was sure to place him most in the wrong." This
is a hard judgment. Let it be remembered that
the circumstances of the two men were different.
«8 ufe, p. 49.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 253

Jonson was poor, diseased, and in that miserable
plight when a generous temper is continually
checked by pecuniary difficulties. Inigo Jones
had realized a handsome fortune, and was then
in the full enjoyment of wealth and reputation.
Unfortunately he was a poet ; some of the masques
printed had their joint names as the composers.
Jealousies arose, which ought to have soon sub-
sided, had either of these celebrated men known
how to curb his wrath. In Jonson's case, his
temper was his worst enemy ; but for this defect
he had an excuse which might have pleaded for
him even with Inigo. In 1625, Jonson composed
for King James " Pan's Anniversary," the last
piece that he presented to that monarch ; towards
the end of that year he was attacked with palsy,
and a threatening of dropsy added to his accumu-
lated trials. Poverty and ill-health are pleas for
indulgence. For the first evil, Jonson's improvi-
dence, his hospitality, his utter want of prudence
in his affairs, may justly be blamed. The last was
also partially his own fault, for his habits were
intemperate — and partly ascribable to an here-
ditarily diseased constitution. Nature, which had
endowed him with that wonderful intellect, that
indomitable energy, had modified her gift by the
infliction of a cruel malady, which, being in the
blood, was aggravated by the weakness of ap-

254 LIFE AND TIMES OF

proaching age. The suppers at the Mermaid
were now finally abandoned ; and the club at the
Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, was no longer
enlivened by his wit. His intellect was affected
to some extent, but he recovered sufficiently to
write the anti-masque of " Jophiel" for the Court ;
after which, none of his productions were com-
manded by the King during the space of three
years. In his necessities, unable to leave his
room, or to move without assistance, the poor
invalid turned to the theatre as a source of re-
venue, and produced *^The New Inn." It was
hissed from the stage ; and, notwithstanding the
dramatist's plea in his epilogue that he was " sick
and sad," he was persecuted with contemptuous
verses, and pursued with remorseless cruelty by
the many enemies that his rough manners had
excited — among them, Inigo was the most inve-
terate.

There was, however, one kind heart that pitied
him — that of Charles I. The monarch was touched
by the lines which the hard critics in the theatre
could hear without compassion : —

" K you expect more than you had to-night,
The INIaker is sick and sad ; he sent things fit
In all the numbers both of verse and wit,
If they have not miscarried : if they have,
All that his faint and faltering tongue doth crave

GEORGE VILLIERS. 255

Is, that you not impute it to iiis brain —
That's yet unhurt, although set round with pain.
It cannot long hold out : all strength must yield ;
Yet judgment would the last be in the field
With the true poet."

Charles sent him a hundred pounds : the poet,
in the fulness of gratitude, wrote *' A petition
from poor Ben to the best of monarchs, masters, and
men " — full of gaiety and good-humour, yet touch-
ing, even in its sparkling wit. The petition
prayed that His Majesty would make his Other's
'^ hundred marks a hundred pounds," alluding to
the pension granted by King James. The peti-
tion was granted, and in the patent by which the
annuity was confirmed, it was said, ^'especially
to encourage Jonson to proceed in those services
of his wit and penn, which we have enjoined unto
him."

A tierce of Canary accompanied this act of
bounty. It was Jonson's favourite wine, and the
King, from his private bounty, sent it to the
sick poet. It was to be a yearly gift, not only to
Jonson, but to his successors ; and the wine —
Spanish Canary — was to be taken from his
Majesty's cellars at Whitehall, out of the stores of
wine " remaining therein." Charles little antici-
pated that even his love of the drama should be
made a cause of reproach to him at his trial.
*^ Had the King but studied Scripture half as

256 LIFE AJ^D TIMES OF

much as he studied Ben Jonson or Shakspeare ! "
was the cry of the Puritaas.

Jonson might now have been tolerably happy,
had not his former coadjutor, Inigo, still borne
him enmity for having, during the preceding
year, placed his own name before that of the
royal architect. The conduct of Jones in this
respect has been placed in its true light by a letter
from a Mr. Perry to Sir Thomas Pickering.*
In that letter it is stated that Inigo used his
"predominant power" at Court to injure Jonson,
then bed-ridden and impoverished, as the poet
was. Henceforth, Aurelian Townshend, a poet
scarcely known, was employed to invent the
masques represented at Court, in conjunction
with Inigo Jones.

The same year that was marked by the death
of Buckingham witnessed poor Jonson's "fatal
stroke," as he termed it, of palsy. He never
recovered this attack of 1628, and his days
were overclouded by successive mortifications.
Hitherto the city of London had given him a
pension for his services. At the very time when
it was most needed by the forlorn dramatist, it
was withdrawn, but restored three years after-
wards. The ofl&ce for which he received this

* This was communicated to Gijfford by the late INIr.
D'Israeh, to whom historical hterature owes indeed much.

GEOEGE VILLIERS. 257

annuity was that of City Chronologer. The plea
made for its cessation was that there had been
"no fruits of his labours in that his place,"
which place was to commemorate signal events ;
other sources of emolument were also withheld,
on the plea that the fruits of that now exhausted
brain were no longer forthcoming.

But bright instances of compassion and gene-
rosity stood forth amid all this gloom. Amongst
the great patrons of the drama was William
Cavendish, the first Earl of Newcastle, declared
by Cibber to be " one of the most finished gentle-
men and distinguished patriots of his time."
He had been constituted governor to Prince
Charles, for whom he ever retained the most
loyal affection. Of this nobleman it was said
that he understood horsemanship, music, and
poetry ; but that he was a better horseman than
a musician, a better musician than a poet. His
wife, the eccentric Margaret Lucas, wrote of him
that " his mind was above his fortune, his gene-
rosity above his purse, his courage above danger,
his justice above bribers, his friendship above
self-interest, his truth too firm for falsehood, his
temperance beyond temptation."

It was by no means prejudicial to the popu-
larity of this fine specimen of an English noble-
man that " he was fitter to break Pegasus for a

VOL. III. S

258 LIFE AND TIMES OF

manege than to mount him on the steps of
Parnassus." He wrote a work entitled, " A new
Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress
Horses and Work them according to Nature, as also
to Perfect Nature by the Subtlety of Art." The
work, a folio, was succeeded by various comedies,
several of them written when Lord Newcastle was
in banishment, and acted, after his return to Eng-
land, at Blackfriars. He wrote, it is said, in the man-
ner of Ben Jonson, to whom he was a kind patron.
The Earl was a singular compound of military
skill and ardour with literary tastes ; by him Sir
William Davenant, poet-laureate after Jonson's
death, was made Lieutenant-General of the
Ordnance.^^

His wife, who at the time Ben Jonson knew
her was Countess of Newcastle, and afterwards
Duchess, is one of the most voluminous of writers
among the (now) long catalogue of literary ladies
in this country. She was at once ridiculous and
estimable — a combination of qualities painful to
friends, but never acknowledged by her husband,
who revered her talents, and tried to defend
what was incomprehensible to the learned — her
philosophy. In private life she was reserved,
living almost entirely among her books, or in
contemplation, or writing indefatigably. Even
*^ Grainger, Biog. Hist., vol. i., p. 194.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 259

during the night, one of the Duke's secretaries is
said to have slept on a truckle bed in a closet in
her bedroom, in order to be ready to answer any
sudden bursts of inspiration that might occur ;
and the summonses to John, " to get up and write
down her Grace's suggestions," were frequent and
wearisome. Kind, pious, charitable, generous,
and really gifted, though romantic and visionary,
this excellent lady's peculiarities might have fur-
nished Moliere with a model for his " Precieuses
Eidicules ; " but, to Ben Jonson, they were
lessened by the vast amount of amiability that
welcomed the poet to her stately abode, or, better
still, relieved him in his poverty and want.

When the Earl and Countess of Newcastle
heard of the poet's play being condemned — when
they learned that various copies of complimentary
verses had been addressed to hiai by admirers,
pitying his humiliation — the Earl, worthy of the
name of Cavendish (so dear to England), sent
request a transcript of them. The reply is very
touching : — ^^

"My Noblest Lord, and my Patron by
Excellence — I have here obeyed your commands,
and sent you a packet of my own praises, which
I should not have done if I had any stock of
modesty in store ; but ' obedience is better than
80 Gifford, p. 48.

S2

260 LIFE AND TIMES OF

sacrifice,' and you command it. I am now like
an old bankrupt in wit, that am driven to pay
debts on my friends' credit; and, for want of
satisfying letters, to subscribe bills of exchange.
" Your devoted

"Ben Jonson.

" 4tb February, 1632.
"To the Right Hon. the Earl of Newcastle."

Also note, same page : —

"My Noblest Lord and best Patron — I
send no borrowing epistle to provoke your lord-
ship, for I have neither fortune to repay, nor
security to engage, that will be taken ; but I
make a most humble petition to your lordship's
bounty to succour my present necessities this
good time of Easter; and it shall conclude a
begging request hereafter on behalf of

" Your truest bondsman and

" Most thankful servant,

"B.J."

One of these complimentary poems was written
by Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland — a patriot, a
soldier, and a poet, the very model of that refined
spirit of chivalry which never recovered itself
after the Rebellion. There must have been con-
solation in such a strain, from such a man ; but
poor " old Ben," as he was now called, was almost

GEORGE VILLIERS. 261

past consolation. He was engaged on another
play, " The Majestic Lady." The world, who
had then deemed the old man dead,^* received it
as the injudicious effort of a mind enfeebled.
Dryden, even, who should have forborne from the
poor triumph over him whom he wrongly con-
sidered a " driveller and a show," called these last
plays ^' Ben's dotages ; " but, though feebler than
his former dramas, they exhibit no traces of
dotage — that invidious and almost cruel expres-
sion.*

Sustained by the Earl of Newcastle, praised by
the noble Falkland, pensioned by the King, one
might have supposed that Jonson's last days
would have been peaceful, though no longer
cheerful. But he had debts ; and he was forced —
bed-ridden, shaken in body and mind — to write on
to the very last. His latest effort was an interlude
welcome of King Charles to Welbeck, on his way
to Scotland ; for which a tribute from Jonson's
muse was commanded by the ever-friendly and
munificent Newcastle.

The timely gratuity sent to the poet, when the
interlude was ordered, " fell," he wrote, ^^ like the

" Gifford, p. 49.

* With a gentler feeling, Charles Lamb made numerous
extracts from " The New Inn," to show that the mind that
produced the "Fox" was still there.— Ibid.

262 LIFE AND TIMES OF

dew of Heaven on his necessities." He wrote to
his patron in terras of gratitude, warm and ex-
pressive, and creditable to himself and that
benefactor.

He continued at his desk ; and a fragment of
the ^' Last Shepherd," one of his last efforts
which is preserved, proves that his fancy was un-
clouded. Hitherto it has been painful to trace
his decay — to record his distress ; but now light
came to his death-bed, and came from on liigh.
Penitence, prayer, conviction of the true faith in
our Holy Apostolic Church, confession of sins,
hope, and rest — these were the Heavenly lights
that broke over the gloom of his latter hours.

Happily — and let the fact be impressively
recorded — his parents had carefully impressed on
his infancy deep religious convictions.

As he lay, neglected by his former associates,
and even believed by the worldly to be dead —
and dead, indeed, was he to them — the impres-
sions of his duty to his Maker grew more fre-
quent and stronger in his affection.^^

To the Bishop of Winchester, who visited him
during his long illness, he expressed the deepest
contrition for having profaned the sacred name of
his Creator in his ].4ays. His " remorse was
poignant;" and doubtless this sense of the respon-
w GiflFord, p. 48.

GEOKGE VILLIEES. 263

sibility whicli is devolved on great talents, which
comes to many too late, was the foundation of his
heartfelt penitence and sorrow. He died on the
5th of April, 1637 — and on the 9th his remains
were entombed in Westminster Abbey, on the
north side, just opposite the escutcheon of
Eobertus de Eos. A common pavement stone
was placed over his grave ; but Sir John Young,
of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, passing through
the Abbey, noticed that the stone was without
any inscription to mark where the great poet lay.
Sir John, or, as Aubrey calls him, "Jack"
Young, gave one of the workmen eighteen-pence
to cut an inscription ; and the words, " O rare
Ben Jonson!" were carved as a temporary distinc-
tion. Meantime, the admirers of the deceased
poet were collecting a subscription to defray the
expense of a suitable ^^ monument to "poor Ben;"
but the Rebellion breaking out, the project was
abandoned, and the money returned to the
subscribers.

No fewer than thirty-four elegies on Ben
Jonson were collected by Dr. Duppa, the Bishop
of Winchester, and published under the title of
" Jonson's Verbius ; " and amongst the authors
were Lord Falkland, Ford, Waller, George
Donne, Lord Buckhurst, and other illustrious
w Gifford.

264 LIFE AND TIMES OF

names. But perhaps there 13 no tribute more
gratifying to the admirers of Ben Jonson than
that of Taylor, the water-poet, who had met him
at Leith. Jonson, be it remembered, had walked
to Edinburgh, yet he could not see the humble
poet without giving him what he could ill afford
to bestow.

" At Leith," says Taylor, " I found my long-
approved and assured good friend, Master Ben-
jamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart's house.
I thank him for his great kindness ; for at my taking
leave of him, he give me a piece of gold, of
two-and-twenty shillings value, to drink his health
in England ; and withall willed me to remember
his kind commendations to all his friends. So,
with a friendly farewell, I left him as well as I
hope never to see him in a worse state ; for he is
among noblemen and gentlemen that know his
true worth, and their own honours, where with
much respective love he is entertained."

The sum, as Gifford remarks, was not, in those
days, an inconsiderable one ; and there was some-
thing graceful and touching in the kindness of
one placed so high, as Jonson was in literary fame,
to the humbler poet.

This sketch of Ben Jonson's life and writinora

o

may serve to illustrate the manners of those
times, and the nature of that society in which

GEORGE VILLIERS. 265

George YilHers lived. In every revel Buckingham
was the most distinguished courtier. In every
masque, during King James's life, he played a
part. He knew the poet at Wilton ; there can
be little doubt that the friends of Villierswere the
patrons of poor Ben. The panegyrist of the
Duke, Lord Clarendon, lived, as he has himself
declared, "many years on terms of the most
friendly intercourse with Jonson." In that con-
versation, praised by this historian " as very good,
with men of most note," Villiers must have
borne a part ; whilst Camden and Selden mingled
with poor Ben, with the Sackvilles, the Sidneys,
the Herberts, and the numerous family of
Villiers.

CHAPTER VI.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEK — THEIR ORIGIN — THEIR JOINT
PRODUCTIONS — CHARACTER OF BISHOP FLETCHER —
ANECDOTES ABOUT THE USE OF TOBACCO— FORD, THE

DRAMATIST — HOWELL SIR HENRY WOTTON THE

CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM CON-
SIDERED.

269

CHAPTER VI.

Among the young Templars who devoted them-
selves to the drama during the times of George
Villiers, was Francis Beaumont. Born in the
same county as that in which Buckingham's
family were settled, and bearing the same name
as the Duke's mother, there is every probability
of there being some tie of consanguinity between
the poet and the peer.

Beaumont, like his colleague Fletcher, was one
of ancient and honourable family ; and, as such,
entitled to be called to the Bar. It might be
satisfactory to some of the lovers of literature to
find that its pursuit, in the days of the Stuart
Kings, was most frequently the choice of men
of high connections, and by them considered
as equal in position to the calling of the Bar, and
far superior to that of the Church, or of medicine.
The personal tastes of James, the passionate love

270 LIFE AND TIMES OF

of the drama evinced by Charles, by Henrietta
Maria, and by Villiers, encouraged aspiring men
to a display of genius which might have long
been hidden in a lawyer's wig, or extinguished
for ever beneath the coif. Men were less shackled
then by conventionalities than in the present day.
The father of Francis Beaumont was one of
the judges of the Court of Common Pleas during
the reign of Elizabeth, and the family seat was
Grace-Dieu, in Leicestershire. Two gifted sons
emerged from this ancient Manor-house to the
universities — John Beaumont,* who became a
Gentleman Commoner at Broad-gate Hall, Ox-
ford; and Francis, who was educated at Cam-
bridge. Both were entered at the Inns of Court :
Francis at the Inner Temple, the popular resort
of Cambridge men ; John, however, retired to
Grace-DIeu, married into the family of Fortescue,
and devoted his peaceful days to translations of
the classics, and to religious poems, which even
Ben Jonson eulogized. Amongst them is the
" Crown of Thorns," a poem in eight books.
Whether from Buckingham's influence, or from
his own merit, or from both conjoined, is not
known, but he was knighted by Charles in 1626.
He survived that honour only two years, dying
in the same year in which Buckingham was killed.
* For some particulars of Sir Jolm Beaumont, see Appendix.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 271

His brother, Francis Beaumont, born in 1586,
had a less peaceful career. Endowed with no
ordinary abilities, he became acquainted with
those whose example was not calculated to pro-
mote the due attention to legal studies. Ben
Jonson and John Fletcher were then in favour
with the public. Jonson in the decline of life,
Fletcher almost in the dawn of his celebrity.

The Fletchers, like the Beaumonts,were a family
of talent ; and the famous friendship, or partnership,
which produced so much, and to which we owe some
of the most beautiful passages of poetry, linked to
the most unreadable, was the result of that com-
munity of tastes and studies which is promoted
by the education at an English university.

Fletcher, as well as Beaumont, had been at
Cambridge ; and his father. Dr. Richard Fletcher,
Bishop of London, having been a benefactor to
Benet College, that society was chosen for his
matriculation. He came to London, and meeting,
at some one or other of the clubs, with Francis
Beaumont, they wrote plays in concert. Fletcher,
who was ten years younger than his partner, had
the most wit, the greatest luxuriance of fancy, the
most extended conception, and lavish prodigality
of improprieties. Beaumont had the soundest
judgment, and employed it in cutting down young
Fletcher's daring flights of fancy. Both assisted

272 LIFE AND TIMES OF

in forming the plots ; since Beaumont happened
to be the elder of the two, his name appears first
in the literary firm, but it ought, in strict pro-
priety, to be Fletcher and Beaumont, instead
of Beaumont and Fletcher.

They worked out the plots together ; and one
night, as they sat in a tavern, concocting a play,
Fletcher undertook " To kill the King." He was
overheard by a waiter, who gave information of
their traitorous designs ; instantly the two young
men were apprehended, and all the terrors of the
law were before them — until they succeeded in jus-
tifying themselves, when the affair ended in mirth.

Beaumont, meantime, was gaining the con-
fidence even of the formidable Ben Jonson, who
submitted some of his works to his criticism before
publication. The young lawyer had that skill in
forming plots which seems like a natural gift,
and which even good writers are unable to ac-
quire ; and he is said to have concocted some of
those on which Jonson's plays are founded.

Meantime, he wrote a little drama called " A
Mask of Gray's Inn Gentleman," and a poem en-
titled " The Inner Temple." Jonson, grateful
for his aid, and admiring his talents, poured forth
his delight in these lines : —

" How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse,
That unto me do'st such religion use
How I do fear myself that am not worth

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 273

The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth ;
At once thou mak'st me happy, and umnak'st ;
And giving largely to me more than tak'st.
What fate is mine that so itself bereaves ?
What fate is thine, that so thy friend deceives ?
When, even there when most thou praisest me,
For writing better I must envy thee."

But, unhappily, Beaumont's career was ended
before he had attained the age of thirty. He was
buried in St. Benedict's within St. Peter's, West-
minster. No inscription on his tomb recalls the
merits so soon closed in death ; but Bishop Corbet,
the author of the " Grave Poem," and Sir John
Beaumont, commemorated them in epitaphs
which are to be found in their works. Frances
Beaumont, the poet's only daughter, survived
him many years; but lost some of her father's
manuscript poems as she went to Ireland by sea.
Beaumont died in 1615, just at the crisis of
Yilliers' early career, when he became first the
subject of King James's notice. Notwithstanding
his premature death, his plays attained an almost
unrivalled popularity. Dryden tells us that they
were the most popular entertainments of the
time — two of them being acted through the year
for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's ; there
being, he adds, a certain gaiety in the comedies
of Beaumont and Fletcher, and a pathos in
their serious plays, which accorded with the taste

VOL. III. T

274 LIFE AIsT) TIMES OF

or humour of all men. Posterity, however, does
not admit of the comparison ; but it is impossible
to say whether, if the lives of these two dramatists
had been spared, theirpowers might not have enabled
them far to exceed even the fanciful and poetical
works which they found time to accomplish.

Fletcher died of the plague, in 1625, at the
age of forty-five, and his remains were carried to the
church of St. Mary Overie, where those of Mas-
singer were deposited — and it has been said that
they were both interred in the same tomb ; but
of this there is no certainty.

It is, perhaps, the greatest compliment we
can pay to the present state of society to say
that the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher can
never be listened to by an English audience, as
long as Englishwomen have one principle of deli-
cacy, or Englishmen any respect for virtue, re-
maining. Those, however, who desire to judge
of the poetical power of Fletcher will delight in
his poem of the " Faithful Shepherdess," which
Milton thought worthy of imitation in his mask
of " Comus." Little is known of John Fletcher
personally ; but he lived in times when every
nerve was touched by stirring events, and when
many of the old memories which clung to men's
minds were dramatic and tragical. His father,
when Dean of Peterborough, had attended Mary,

I

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 275

Queen of Scots, to her execution. The good
man, looking, perhaps, for that preferment which
followed, and forgetting the peril, the misery of
sudden conversions, had urged the heroic Queen
to change her religion, even at that solemn hour
when the heart clings the most closely to the im-
pressions of youth. He repeated his arguments ;
then she begged him three or four times to de-
sist. " I was born," she said, " in this religion —
I have lived in this religion — and am resolved to
die in this religion."

In spite of his vehement Protestantism, the
Bishop had some small and great failings ; he was
an inveterate taker of tobacco, which was then
not only imported, but reared in Ireland and
England. The Bishop probably considered to-
bacco to be, as Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melan-
choly," describes it, "a vertuous herbe, if it be well
qualified, opportunely taken, and medecinally
used ; " but he did not follow the advice of that
admirable writer in the moderation with which
the snuff-box and the pipe should be indulged in.
The prelate fell into an excess in the use of to-
bacco, to which Camden, in his History of Eng-
land, imputed his death. The narcotic weed was
indeed one of those luxuries of the age, which was
most abused in the time of Buckingham. Burton
anathematizes it — " as it is commonly used by

t2

276 LIFE AND TIMES OF

most men, who take it as tinkers do ale ; 'tis a
plague, a mischiefe, a violent purger of goods,
lands, healthe, hellish, devilish, damned tobacco,
the ruin and overthrow of bodye and soule." ^*

But no considerations of this nature could
either restrain Bishop Fletcher, or convince the
gallants of the day that they were ruining either
body or soul in their love of tobacco. It was very
generally employed in the form of snuff by both
sexes in the seventeenth century, and was allowed
even in the royal presence.^^ " Before the meat
came smoking to the board," says Dekker, " our
gallant must draw out his tobacco-box, and the
ladle for the cold snuff into the nostril, all which
artillery may be of gold or silver, if he can reach
his several tricks in taking it, as the whiff, the
ring, &c., for these are complements that gain
gentlemen no mean respect." ^^ It was the custom
to raise the snuff with a spoon to the nose ; the
snuff or pouncet-box having been long in vogue,
charged, before the discovery of Ralegh, with
cephalic powder, known since the time of Hero-
dotus : —

" He was perfumed like a milliner,
And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held

** Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," vol i., p. 235.

»5 Stowe's "Annals."

98 Gull's " Horn-book," pp. 119, 120.

GEORGE VILLIERS. 27 t

A pouncet-box, whicli ever and anon
He gave his nose." *'

It was in vain that every power was combined
to crush the practice of smoking, of the inveteracy
of which Bishop Fletcher affords a memorable ex-
ample. Monarchs united to oppose it, and it was
even condemned on religious grounds; but that plea
made no impression on Bishop Fletcher. Ehzabeth
had published an edict against it, assigning as a rea-
son that her subjects, by employing the same
luxuries as barbarians, would become barbarous.
James I. published his famous counterblast to
tobacco, comparing it to the "horrible Stygian
smoake of the pit that is bottomless ;" and im-
posed on it a prohibitory duty of six shillings and
eight-pence per pound on its importation — an im-
post which Charles continued, making tobacco a
royal monopoly, as it still is in France and the
Netherlands — the duty having been only two-
pence a pound in the reign of Elizabeth. Still
smoking prevailed; Ralegh had introduced it after
the return of Sir Francis Drake from America,
and all fashionable men practised it. Villlers,
more es[)ecially, was probably among the most
inveterate, after his residence in Spain ; a pipe,
a mug of ale, and a nutmeg were the right style
at the Mitre and the Mermaid; and probably
»^ Henry IV.

278 LIFE AND TIMES OF

found toleration even in the hall of Burleigh, or
at New-hall.

It seems hard to challenge the self-indulgence
of Bishop Fletcher, or to grudge him a luxury
which assisted Sir Isaac Newton in his contem-
plative mood, and soothed Hooker when a shrew-
ish wife nearly drove him mad with vexation.
Nevertheless, smoking, or taking snufF, is said
to have ended Dr. Fletcher's days. He had also
trials of another kind to his health. He was the
bishop who offended Elizabeth by taking a second
wife, and that wife a handsome widow. Lady
Baker, of Kent. The Queen, thinking that one
wife was enough for a bishop, forbade him her
presence, and ordered Archbishop Whitgift to
suspend him, and whether from her Majesty's
displeasure, or from the eifects of tobacco, he died
suddenly in his chair; being well, sick, and dead
in one quarter of an hour."

The family of Fletcher were largely imbued
with poetic fervour. Giles, the bishop's brother,
was a man of great learning ; and his two
sons, John and Phineas, were conspicuous
during the reign of James I. for their learning
and poetry. Phineas, whose name occurs in the
biography of Villiers, wrote " The Purple Island,"
anallegorlcal description of man — a much extended
version of " Spenser's Allegory" in his second

GEOKGE VILLIEKS. 279

book. He also composed "Piscatory Eclogues
and Miscellanies;" and his time was divided be-
tween the duties of his calling (for he was a
clergyman) and the delight of composition. His
brother Giles was, says Anthony Wood, equally
" beloved of the muses and the graces." The
Fletchers were, indeed, remarkable for their gifts.
Benlowes, in his verses to Phineas, thus expresses
his sense of their family attributes : —

" For 'twere a stain, Nature's, not thy own ;
For thou art poet born ; who know thee know it ;
Thy brother, sire —thy very name's a poet."

The fame of Giles Fletcher rests chiefly on his
poem called " Christ's Victory," which is printed
with the " Purple Island " by his brother Phineas.

Another of the young lawyers whose genius
irradiated the drama in the time of Yilliers — was
John Ford, a great genius, and a prudent man,
as far as we can judge by the close of his career.
Like Fletcher and Beaumont, Ford was well-
born, and had a great advantage in being de-
scended, on, his mother's side, from the Chief
Justice Popham. He came to London and en-
tered at Gray's Inn, then, as Stowe tells us, " a
goodly house," now the very acme of dismal and
decaying dinginess. It was illumined by the
presence of Lord Bacon, as it had recently been
by that of Lord Burleigh ; and when Ford took

280 LIFE AND TIMES OF

chambers In the Tnn, there were pleasant gardens
for the gay young students, in which they could
walk and ruminate at their leisure ; whilst Gray's
Inn Lane, furnished with fair buildings and many
tenements, as Stowe also tells us, opened on the
north with a view of the fields leading to High-
gate and Hampstead ; and there, too, dwelt
Hampden and Pym, the vicinity of whom must
have stirred up the spirits of the young disputants,
whose ardour for liberty was excited during the
days of the Remonstrance — the time of Bucking-
ham's impeachment — and in those when the first
tax for the navy was levied.

Ford, however, cared little, it appears, for those
stormy questions, but much for the drama, and
more for the law, to which he was brought up,
and in the practice of which he was wise enough
to continue. A young man of a dramatic turn had
many temptations, in those days, to sacrifice the
hopes of a slow advancement for the brilliant
success of a poet's career. Ford, however, had
a staid cousin at Gray's Inn, at the time when he
became a member of the Middle Temple, in 1602.
This relative, also a John Ford, persuaded him " to
stick to the law ; " and Ford, in after-life, recorded
the obligation with gratitude.

Ford's first production was not dramatic.
When only seventeen years of age, he wrote

GEORGE VILLIERS. 281

" Fame's Memorial," a tribute to one of the most
popular, and at the same time one of the most
unfortunate, noblemen of the day. The fate of
the ill-starred Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy —
afterwards Earl of Devonshire — impressed the
young poet so forcibly as to impel him, without
any personal knowledge of this hero, to write
this In Memoriam. "The life of Lord Mountjoy,"
remarks Hartley Coleridge, "is the finest subject
of biography unoccupied." He was the generous
rival of Essex, with whom, nevertheless, he had
in early life fought a duel. Blount being "a
very comely man," attracted the attention of
Queen Elizabeth. He distinguished himself at a
tilt, and she sent him a chess-queen of gold,
enamelled, which he tied on his arm with a
crimson ribbon. Essex, on seeing this, laughed
scornfully, and said, " Now I perceive every fool
must have a favour ! " Blount challenged him,
and they fought at Marylebone, where the Earl
was disarmed and wounded. Nevertheless, the
combatants became firm friends even in early life,
and, in their later days, generous rivals.

Unhappily, an attachment was formed between
the handsome Charles Blount and the Lady
Penelope, the sister of Essex. She was, how-
ever, under the guardianship of what was then
called the Court of Wards. She was, therefore,

282 LIFE AND TIMES OF

forced to marry Lord Rich. The result was
melancholy ; and she became henceforth the
mistress of the brave, but unhappy, Blount, now
Lord Mountjoy, and their connection was well
kno^vn. On the death of Rich, the guilty pair were
married by Laud, then Bishop of London.
King James, on that occasion, said to Mountjoy,
'' You have married a fair woman with a foul
heart." Perhaps he was too severe in his judg-
ment, yet the gallant Mountjoy felt the oppro-
brium. His worldly prospects were marred by
the union ; so long as the attachment with Lady
Penelope had been merely understood, the world
had received her, and honoured him ; but, when
they were married, the guilty pair were slighted
and contemned. " However bitter the cup of
duty may be, duty commands us to drink it even
to the dregs." ^^ The sentiment is just, and Mount-
joy felt it so. His error was redeemed by suffer-
ing. He died, it is said, of a broken heart, having
long pined away under neglect and mortification.^^
To the Lady Penelope, the survivor of this
sad romance. Ford addressed his '^ Fame's Me-
morial." Mountjoy's great valour in Ireland — of
which he was the true conqueror — had won him
undying renown. His domestic life touched the
young poet's feelings ; and upon it he wrote his
»=• Hartley Coleridge. »» Ibid— Note.

GEORGE VTLLIEES. 283

tragedy of the " Broken Heart." Pentheds lamenta-
tion for her " enforced marriage " recalls, in that
exquisite play, poor Lady Penelope's story : —

" Pentliea. — How, Orgilus, by promise I was thine
The heavens do witness !

How I do love thee

Yet, Orgilus, and yet, must best appear
In tendering thy freedom.

i . . Live, live happy —
Happy in thy next choice.
And oh ! when thou art married, think on me
"^^'ith mercy, not contempt ! I hope thy wife,
HeariKg my story, will not scorn my fall.
Now let us part."

For some time Ford merely assisted other
dramatists in their compositions ; it was not until
1628 that he produced "The Lover's Melan-
choly," which he dedicated to the " Noble Society
of Gray's Inn." This play was suggested by
Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," from which
Ford, as well as Sterne, freely borrowed. After
describing the rapidity, the impelling necessity
with which the works of Massinger and Jonson
were produced, it is agreeable to think of an
author who was able '^ to write up to his own
ideal." Ford not only disdained all pandering to
the public taste, but even regarded the emolument
arising from his plays as a secondary consideration,
after he was once fairly established in his pro-
fession. Nor was it then thought incompatible

284 LIFE AND TIMES OF

to unite the character of a play-writer with that
of a lawyer. The Templars, and other learned
societies, were the great patrons of the drama.
Often were the quaint halls of the Temple and
of Gray's Inn formed into temporary theatres for
some favourite piece ; and the talk of the young
Templar was always of Blackfriars, the Curtain,
or the Rose — of Will Shakespeare, and Ben
Jonson, and Ford.

Ford conceived that his powers lay in the
delineation of dark and horrible crimes ; in
the exhibition of a mysterious and hopeless
melancholy. The moral of his dramas, whatever
aspect it may bear in our days, was intended to
be good ; but the grossness of the times marred
that intention, and his works show how impossible
it is to be at once moral and indelicate. Even
Pentliea in the "Broken Heart," exquisitely as
her character is drawn, lessens our sympathy by
expressions which no woman of the present day
would utter in the presence of a lover, and that
lover for ever severed from her by her indissoluble
bonds with another man.^

But Ford wrote in the spirit and language of
his time, with a high purpose, and a coarse taste.
" His genius," it has been well remarked, " is as
a telescope, ill-adapted for neighbouring objects,
but powerful to bring within the sphere of vision

GEORGE VILLIERS. 285

what nature has wisely placed at an unsociable
distance." ^

He chose for the subject of his historical play
the story of " Perkin Warbeck." With great
skill he made this hero believe in his own royalty ;
and he has left in this play, according to the
opinion of good judges, the best specimen of an
historical tragedy after Shakspeare.

Ford resembled Shakspeare in some particulars
of his fate. Happier in that than his associates,
he was able to retire, at an early age, to his
native Devonshire, where, tradition says, he lived
to old age. It is stated that he married, and had
children ; but even of this there is no certainty.
One thing alone is clsarly shown, even in Ford's
dim history, that he regarded literature as the re-
laxation, and not the labour of his life ; that he
steadily pursued the profession in which untiring
work, honourable conduct, and fair talents gene-
rally find an ultimate reward ; that he was inde-
pendent of patronage ; that he could treat those
to whom he addressed his dedications as men
whom he was complimenting, not benefactors
whom he was suing ; and lastly, that he was able
to leave the world of law and letters before that
world's enjoyments had been exhausted, or its
disappointments had soured and wearied his spirit.
* Hartley Coleridge.

286 LIFE AND TIMES OF

His last play was the '^ Lady's Trial ; " but his
fame chiefly rests on " Perkin Warbeck" and the
" Broken Heart." It is a proof of the great es-
teem entertained for genius by the Earl of New-
castle, "poor Ben's" patron, that he was also
friendly to Ford, who dedicated " Perkin War-
beck " to that nobleman.

It was not only by necessitous men of obscure ex-
traction that poetry was cultivated in those times ;
on the contrary, some acquaintance with the Muses,
although not thought essential in those who would
fain rise to distinction as courtiers, was, at all
events, deemed ornamental and advantageous.
The name of Thomas Carew was distinguished in
the reign of Charles I., as one of the most in-
tellectual of his young courtiers.

He was a man of an ancient Gloucestershire
family ; a branch of that race settled in Devon-
shire, and his education was that usually assigned
to youths of good birth and expectations. He
was entered at Corpus Christi College, in Oxford,
and his academical career was succeeded, as was
customary in those times, by travelling. From
the grand tour, Carew returned replete with
wit, fancy, and with a high reputation for accom-
plishments.

He was, therefore, almost instantly noticed by
Charles I., and, it is evident, enjoyed the favour

GEORGE VILLIERS. 287

of Buckinghamj to whom he addressed " Lines
on the Lord Admh^al's recovery from sickness."
Charles made him one of his gentlemen of the
Bedchamber, and Sewer in ordinary — appoint-
ments which brought the poet into an immediate
contact with the principal characters of the Court ;
and he became the intimate associate of Lord
Clarendon, the eulogist of Villiers, and the friend of
Ben Jonson. As a writer of love sonnets, Carew has
had few equals ; and he may be termed, in that
respect, the Moore of his age. His charming
qualities as a companion, and the elegance of his
verses, are praised by Clarendon ; whilst his con-
temporaries— even those less happy than himself
— saw in him, whom they declared to be one of a
" mob of gentlemen," who aspired to be eminent
in polite literature, one whose career added lustre
to the pursuits of literature. Strange to say,
Carew was beloved and extolled by his less fortu-
nate contemporaries ; and even Ben Jonson gave
him his meed of praise, which Carew returned
with sympathy and admiration.

After Jonson's unlucky play, " The New Inn,"
had been hissed off the stage, and Jonson had vented
his rage in an ode, Carew addressed the angry
poet in lines full of good sense, wit, and good
feeling ; and yet, he hints, with a sincerity
as rare as it is fearless, that his powers were

288 LIFE AND TIMES OF

somewhat weakened since poor Ben had brought
out the " Alchemist."

' ' And yet 'tis true
Thy cousin muse from the exalted line,
Touched by the alchemist, doth since decline
From that her zenith, and foretells a red
And blushing evening when she goes to bed ;
Yet such as shall outshine the ghmmering light
With which all stars shall gUd the following night."

Again he adds": —

" Let others glut on the extorted praise
Of vulgar breath, trust thou to after-days :
Thy laboured works shall Hve when Time devours
The abortive offering of their hasty hours.
Thou art not of their rank — the quarrel lies
Within thine own verge ; then let this suffice
The wiser world doth greater thee confess
Than all men else, than thyself only less."

Carew, notwithstanding the highly virtuous
tone of the Court in which he lived, led an irre-
gular life ; and lived to mourn, in deep repentance,
for that more than wasted portion of his exist-
ence, in which he gave way to the worst parts of
his otherwise fine nature^ When Ben Jonson
had ceased to write, Carew was selected as the
poet most calculated to supply the place of that
great genius in providing masques for the Court.
Only one, however, produced by him, remains.
It is called " Coelum Britannicum."

Inigo Jones was again summoned to be one of

GEORGE VILLIERS, 289

the "Inventors," to place the masque on the stage,
and Henry Lawes composed the airs, and superin-
tended the musical performance; but those to
whose splendour and genius the perfection of this
species of entertainment was owing, were no
longer there. Villiers was gone ; Ben Jonson had
virtually quitted " the detracting world," which
he had once defied from his proud pre-eminence.
The country was even then split up into factions.
Happily for himself, Carew escaped their out-
break. He died in 1639, expressing heartfelt re-
ligious convictions and penitence.

Amongst the gentlemen writers, as they were
styled, was Edmund Waller, who, at the time of
Buckingham's death, was a young man of twenty-
three years of age. The lines addressed by him to
Charles I., on the extraordinary composure which
the King showed on hearing of that event, are
well known. Even then Waller had been a mem-
ber of Parliament, and had been elected to sit in that
assembly whilst he was in his seventeenth year.
Waller's circumstances, his destiny, his views of
life, his genius, his disposition, were as opposite to
those of Massinger and Ben Jonson as can possi-
bly be conceived. He seemed born a courtier ;
and every effort he made was to advance himself
at first in that career, and afterwards as a politi-
cian. His first appearance as a poet, in his

VOL. III. U

290 LIFE AND TIMES OF

eighteenth year, was to congratulate King James
on the escape of Prince Charles at St. Audera,
when returning from Spain ; and in this poem his
polished verses, perfected, he alleged, by the study
of Fairfax's " Tasso," were so turned as to excite
the admiration of the literary world, by whom he
was deemed the model of English versifiers. But,
in spite of his alleged devotion to Charles, and
notwithstanding his continuing to sit in Parlia-
ment, Waller sheltered himself during the storm
that ensued, and went to study chemistry under
the guidance of his kinsman. Bishop Morley —
emerging only from his retreat at Beaconsfield to
mino-le in the delightful circle of wits and inci-
pient heroes of whom the noble Falkland was the
centre.

He married early; having,with a fortune of nearly
four thousand a-year, espoused a city heiress,
who died and left him a widower at the age of
twenty-five. Then this accomplished man of the
world looked out for rank, and paid his addresses,
poetically at all events, to the lovely Dorothy Sid-
ney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Sidney. He
apostrophized her as Saccharissa. She was, or he
made her out to be, a proud and scornful beauty,
and he turned to his " Amoret " — Lady Sophia
Murray; but, though well-born, rich, favoured
by Charles, and nephew of John Hampden by

GEORGE VILLIERS. 291

his mother's side^ so that he seemed secure of
rising under any faction, Waller's loves did not
prosper in the direction to which he at first guided
them ; for he was wise in his generation, and could
control his fancies by views of interest.

He married, therefore, a second time, "• loving,
doubtless, wisely and not too well ; " but neither
the name, condition, nor fortune of his second
wife is mentioned by his biographers.

From this time Edmund Waller's career was de-
spicable. In his heart a Koyalist, he absented him-
self from the House of Commons whenever there
was a chance of his being of service to the King,
or of his committing himself. Yet he sent Charles
a thousand gold pieces when the Royal standard
at Nottingham was set up — and concocted, with
a conspirator named Tomkyns, a plot for deli-
vering the City and the Parliament into the hands
of the Royalists. Nevertheless, he had been se-
conding "my Uncle Hampden" in the House, in
his censure of Ship-money. When his plot —
still called in history Waller's plot, for he had
the chief blame — when this base conspiracy, un-
worthy of any cause, was discovered. Waller con-
fessed everything, and criminated everybody.
Confounded with fear, he had yet the consum-
mate hypocrisy to talk of his "remorse of con-
science," adding one to the long list of crimes

u2

292 LIFE AXD TIMES OF

which that abused word is called to sanction or
excuse. It is a satisfaction to know that he was
nearly being hanged — that he was expelled the
House — fined ten thousand pounds — and then
"contemptuously suffered to go into exile." Never
was that party more fortunate than in getting rid
of such a man.

He took refuge at Rouen, and lived there
and in Paris until all his wife's jewels were sold
— for on them he lived. He was, however, at
last allowed to return home, and again he sullied
Beaconsfield with his presence. He hastened to
flatter CromweU, and even to propose, in his
smooth and flattering verses, the substitution of a
crown of gold for bays : — ■

"His conquering head has no more room for bays,
Then let it be as the glad nation prays ;
Let the rich ore be melted down,
And the State fix'd by making him a crown :
With ermine clad and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre made of Spanish gold ! ' '

Cromwell, however, was far too wise to take
the bait. The sycophant thought it expedient to
write an ode on his death — for he was not certain
that the great man's power might not be per-
petuated by his son. The instant, however, that
the Restoration placed Charles H. on the throne.
Waller was ready with his congratulatory ode.

I

GEOEGE VILLIERS. 293

He dwelt on the guilt of the Kebellion ; and, ex-
cept that the flavour of spicy flattery was so
poor as to provoke a hon mot from Charles II.
he might have succeeded. "Poets," said the
witty monarch, " succeed better in fiction than in
truth." But with Waller it was all fiction.

He was soon a favourite at that easy, merry
court ; his poetry caused his unconquerable
duplicity to be forgotten — or, if not forgotten,
looked on even complacently by courtiers who
held all virtue to be hypocrisy. He managed to
please everybody; though a water-drinker, he
was the life of Bacchanalian parties. It is owing
to Clarendon that the renegade was not made
Provost of Eton — a post for which he had actually
the audacity to ask. He thence became the
friend and ally of George Villiers, the second
Duke of Buckingham, to whose age and time,
rather than that of the subject of this memoir,
one would gladly consign the apostate poet.

One of his worst acts was to vote for the im-
peachment of Lord Clarendon; and here one would
gladly end the record of the misdeeds of an able and
accomplished man, distinguished almost as much
for his eloquence as for his poetic productions.
But Waller lived on ; he was favoured by
James II., who seems to have been cajoled by
the flatteries which his royal brother had detected.

294 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Waller again in parliament, and now eighty years
old, was permitted to speak jocularly with the
monarch. One day he called Queen Elizabeth,
in James's presence, the " greatest woman in the
world." "I wonder," answered his Majesty,
" you should think so ; but it must be allowed
she had a wise council."

"And when, sire," cried Waller, "did you ever
hear of a fool choosing a wise one ? "

When it was kno"\vn that the veteran courtier
was going to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch, a
clergyman, James sent a French gentleman to
ask him how he could think of marrying his
daughter to a falling church.

" The King does me great honour," was the
reply, " to concern himself about my aflPairs ; but I
have lived long enough to observe that this
falling church has got a trick of rising again."

He foresaw the coming crisis, but lived not to
have an opportunity of writing odes to William
III. and his Queen. He now composed " Divine
Poems," and began to think, at the age of eight y-
thi'ce, that possibly this world, and the courts of
the Charles's and James's, were not everything
that there was to value in life. When he found
himself sinking, he said, " Take me to Coleshill "
(his native place) ; "I should be glad to die, like
the stag, where I was roused."

GEORGE VILLIERS. 295

He was, however, too near death to be removed ;
and he expired at Beaconsfield, in October, 1678,
and thus escaped being the witness of another
revolution.

Such were some of the eminent contemporaries
of George Villiers, in an age so rich in intellectual
force as to constitute it, in that respect alone, one
of the most remarkable periods of English history.

But there were, among the literati of that day,
two men whose observations were peculiarly
directed towards the career of Villiers — these
were James Howell, the letter-writer, and Sir
Henry Wotton.

Howell's well-known name is mixed up repeat-
edly in the various passages of the Duke of Buck-
ingham's foreign life. HoweU was the son of a
clergyman, at Abernant, in Carmarthenshire ; was
accordingly entered at Jesus College, Oxford, the
great emporium of the Jones's, Williams's, Morgans,
and Ho wells.

He was, like many of his countrymen, " a true
cosmopolite," born, says Anthony Wood, neither
to " house, land, lease, or office." He had not the
misfortune of having a position in life to lose, so
he went to London, and became, through the
interest of Sir Robert Mansel, steward to a glass-
house in Bond Street, glass being a monopoly ;
whilst his elder brother rose to be Bishop of Bristol.

296 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Glass being by no means in its perfection, the
proprietors of the work sent James Howell
abroad, in order to hire foreign workmen, and to
buy the best materials for a manufacture which
they wished to improve ; and James Howell
joyfully accepted the mission. He travelled
into France, Holland, Flanders, Spain, and
Italy; and, setting off in 1619, encountered
George Yilliers in his French tour, came across
him in Spain, and heard of him all the good
and bad that he has detailed in his letters to
England.

He gave up his stewardship, and posted again
into Spain, in 1623, and was in that country
when Charles I. and Buckingham were at Madrid,
Like persons in the pit of a great theatre, Howell,
in his half-commercial, half-diplomatic capacity,
saw a great deal which the actors in that brilliant
scene overlooked.

Hia ostensible reason for going to Spain was to
reclaim a rich English ship which had been
seized by the Viceroy of Sardinia; his real occupa-
tion was that of watching the Royal " wooer," and
his scarcely less conspicuous companion, Bucking-
ham. Meantime, Howell was made a Fellow of
Jesus College ; and, in accepting this honour, he
said he " should reserve his Fellowship, and lay it
by as a warm garment against rough weather,

GEORGE yiLLIERS. 297

should any fall on him." And certainly he was
destined to experience the changes and chances of
fortune in no ordinary degree. He returned to
London, and was appointed secretary to Lord
Scrope, who was made Lord-President of the
North. Howell, therefore, was transplanted to
York; and, whilst there, was chosen member for
Richmond, an honour for which he had not can-
vassed. He sat, therefore, in the parliament which
opened in 1627 — a ^session so important to Buck
ingham, and so fraught with consequences to the
country.

Still, the apparently fortunate man was without
any fixed employment. He had, however, talents
which were then rare in this country; he spoke
seven modern languages — and, without recording
his own remark, which borders on levity, on that
score, it must be admitted that few Englishmen
either in that age or this can do the same.
His merits were, in this respect, estimated by
Charles L, who sent him in the quality of secre-
tary to Robert, Earl of Leicester, to Denmark,
when it became necessary to condole with the
King of that State on the death of his consort,
Charles's Danish grandmother. Next, Howell
was despatched to France, and subsequently to
Ireland, where the Earl of Strafford appreciated
his wonderful industry, and welcomed him kindly;

298 LIFE AND TIMES OF

he was intrusted by that ill-fated nobleman with
business, first in Edinburgh and then in London ;
but his hopes of rising were crushed by the ruin
of Strafford, and by the crash which ensued.

Charles, however, again despatched him to
France, and made him, on his return, Clerk of
the Council.

Poor Howell now believed that he had secured
a permanent post, a fixed income, and a most
agreeable residence, an apartment being allotted
to him in Whitehall. The greater part of the
old Tudor palace was then still standing ; the
noble gates built by Henry YIII. remained ; the
Banqueting-house was partially finished; all but
the paintings by Vandyck, who was to have
adorned the sides of that room, now used as a
chapel, with paintings of all the history and pro-
cession of the Order of the Garter, were com-
pleted— that symmetrical fragment stood then as
it now stands. Charles I. could as little have
anticipated that George of Hanover would have
made the room he destined for Ben Jonson's
masques into a chapel, with the apotheosis of
James I. upon the ceiling, as he could have
foreseen that one day he should be led out from
one of the windows of the Banqueting-house to
Whitehall-gate, where " cords to tie him down to
the block had been prepared, had he made

GEORGE VILLIERS. 299

any resistance to that cruel and bloody stroke."^
Equally unconscious of his royal patron's doom
as of his own fate, Howell established himself in
that palace, the only danger of which seemed to
be the frequent inundations of the Thames, by
which Whitehall was often half submerged. But
shortly afterwards the King left that palace to
which he never returned but as a captive ; and
Howell also departed. But, coming back to
London on private business, he was, in 1643,
thrown into prison, his papers were seized, and he
was committed in close custody to the Fleet.

This ancient prison had been, until that time, a
place of durance for persons sentenced by the
Council Table, then called the Court of the Star
Chamber — so that Howell had the additional vexa-
tion of being apprehended by one of the warrants
which he would himself have issued had the trou-
bles of the Rebellion never commenced; — had
things remained as they were when Lord Surrey
suffered from its pestilent atmosphere, and when
the importunate Lady Dorset was silenced in what
was truly called by Surrey, " that noisome place."
The Star Chamber was, however, it appears,
abolished before the time when James Howell,
descending Whitehall stairs, was rowed up the

2 See Cunningham's "London," Art. " Wliitehall," from
Dugdale's "Troubles in England."

300 LIFE AND TIMES OF

river Fleet, to a gate as portentous in its aspect
and associations as the Traitor's-gate at the
Tower ; and thence conducted to what was after-
wards called the Common side of the prison.^
When the letter-writer entered its miserable
courts, the Fleet had lost the dignity of a state
prison for minor political offences, and was a place
for debtors, and divided into two sides, the Mas-
ter's side and the Common side. In the Common
side, to complete the horrors, was a strong-room,
or vault, which has been described "to be like
those in which the dead are interred, and wherein
the bodies of persons dying are usually deposited
till the coroner's inquest has passed them."

Howell, as he entered the Common side, pro-
bably thought that he might live to be one of the
mute inhabitants of that ghastly chamber — for he
was not only suspected by the Parliament, but in
debt. Wood, indeed, ascribes his captivity
wholly to the curse of debt, brought on by his
own extravagance ; and since Howell, like many
public men of the day, had no ^' income but such
as he scrambled for," and since it was an age of
careless expenditure. Wood is, perhaps, in this
statement, as he generally is, correct.

The character of the man of desultory life rose

3 See Cunningham, vol. i., p. 311. The Author cannot
avoid expressing obligations to this excellent work.

GEORGE YILLIERS. 301

under the trial. During five years the once free
and happy James Howell lay in that den of
misery — rendered more miserable by all that was
going on in the world, of which he heard enough
in his durance, perhaps too much. During that
period Charles was beheaded; the gay precincts
of Whitehall were stained with the blood of one
whom Howell had reverenced as a royalist, but
whose advisers, Buckingham, Laud, and Straf-
ford, he had censured, as a man of the world, of
sense and candour, could not fail to do. Whilst
he lay in the place where Falkland had been sent
for sending a challenge — where Prynne had paid
the penalty for his " Histriomastix," Howell's
thoughts no doubt reverted to the pleasant days of
Charles's youth, in the fields near Madrid, where
plumed knights ran a course — or to the arena of
the bull-fight. He dreamed, perhaps, of the in-
comparable Infanta, or of the stately Philip,
and his gallant, flattered, sanguine English
guests.

But he did better. Howell is not the only
writer who has tried to bind up the wounds of a
broken heart by authorship ; or has succeeded in
dissipating the hours of a long imprisonment by
communicating not only with the world of letters,
which was nearly extinct in general literature
during the first year of the Protectorate, but

302 LIFE AND TIMES OF

with those among the free, the sympathetic, and
the celebrated who remembered the poor debtor
in his cell. One of his most notable efforts was
his own epitaph, beginning —

" Here lies entomb'd a walking thing,
Whom Fortune with the Fates did fling
Between these walls."

He wrote now his " Familiar Letters, Domestic
and Foreign," wisely putting no date on the
epistles as to place. He composed also " Casual
Discourses and Interlocutions between Patricius
and Peregrin, touching the Distractions of the
Times " — this work was the result of the Battle of
Edge Hill — " Parables reflecting on the Times ; "
'^England's Tears for the Present War;" "Vin-
dications of some Passages reflecting upon him-
self in Mr. Prynne's book called the ^Popish Royal
Favourite,' " a work which coupled his name with
that of Buckingham; andhis "Epistolae-Hoelianse."
These works came out year after year. It is said
by Wood that most of Howell's letters were written
in the Fleet, though some of them purported to
have been sent from Madrid and other places.
The fact is, he wrote for subsistence ; and his
works were popular and productive. His state-
ments may, indeed, have been made so long after
the events they relate occurred, as to render them
doubtful ; yet it is acknowledged that they con-

GEOEGE VILLIERS. 303

tain a good view of the actors in those stirring
times — whilst they are almost the only letters that
still preserve the memory of the writer among
us.

Most of his other writings were political ; one of
his imaginative flights recalls, in the idea that ori-
ginated it, the title of the pleasant brochure,
" Voyage autour de ma chamhre^^ in our own times.
Howell's composition is styled, '' A Nocturnal
Progress ; or, a perambulation of such Countries
in Christendom performed in one night by
strength of imagination." All the titles of his
works are striking: '^Winter Dream," "A Trance,
or News from Hell, brought first to town by
Mercurius Acheronticus ; " — this was published in
1649, after the King's death. He still, Roy-
alist as he was, bore his misfortunes cheerfully;
yet his loyalty sank at last beneath the pressure
of starvation, and he yielded to expediency. It
was not, however, until 1653 that his constancy
broke down, and that he addressed to Oliver
Cromwell his "Sober's Inspections made into the
carriage and consult of the late Long Parliament."
One may know the views he took from the title ;
but when he compliments the Lord Protector,
compares him to Charles M artel, and descends to
flattery, Howell loses our respect. Neither does
he regain it by his "Cordial for the Cavaliers,"

304 LIFE AIsTD TIMES OF

published iu 1660, and answered by the "Caveat
for the Cavaliers" of Sir Rosier L'Estrano-e.

Payne Fisher, who had been poet-laureate to
Cromwell, edited " Howell's Works," in w^hich he
calls the author the " prodigy of the age for the
variety of his writings." These were forty in
number, and in " them all," says Fisher, '^ there is
something still new, either in the matter, method,
or fancy, and in an untrodden tract."

For the change of politics in the famous letter-
writer his friends were prepared, when, after the
King's death, he wrote with what some call pru-
dence, others pusillanimity, these words: — "I will
attend with patience how England will thrive,
now that she is let blood in the Basilican vein,
and cured, as they say, of the King's evil."
Nevertheless, Howell was made Historiographer-
Royal in England by Charles H., who was so
lenient to his enemies, so ungrateful to his
friends. The place was even created for him;
but death soon caused him to vacate it. He
ended his chequered life in 1660, and was buried
in the Temple Church.

Among the few who remembered George
Villiers with gratitude, or w^ho endeavom'ed to
rescue his memory from opprobrium, Henry
y^otton, his biographer, appears in a conspicuous
and favourable lio^ht. Most of the eminent men

GEORGE VILLIERS. 305

of the time had been reared, and even trained, to
public service, during the reign of Elizabeth,
when strength of purpose, honesty, ability, and
learning were the grounds of promotion in all the
minor, as well as in the superior departments of
the State. Henry Wotton, born in 1568, at
Bocton Hall,* in Kent, and descended from an
ancient family, was a thoroughly-educated
English gentleman. After some years' instruc-
tion at Winchester School, he was entered at
New College, Oxford. Close to that grand old
college was Hart Hall, a sort of subsidiary
establishment ; and Wotton, perhaps from
being a freshman, had his rooms in Hart
Hall Lane. Here his chamber-fellow, as he
was then called, was Richard Baker, the his-
torian, who was entered at the same time,
and born the same year, and whose predilections
for letters resembled those of young Henry
Wotton. The inestimable advantage of a com-
panionship of such a nature cannot be too highly
appreciated by those who watch the dawning
mind of youth, and who desire them to have
recourse to the only sure preventive of dissipa-
tion— employment. Baker, well known for his

• Otherwise Bougton Place (or Palace). See Izaak
Walton's " Life of Sir H. Wotton."

VOL. III. X

306 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Chronicle, was also a writer on theological sub-
jects, and a young man of sincere piety. His
friend Wotton was then less distinguished for
historical studies than for his wit and learning.
For some reason, not explained, he left New
College, and established himself in the then old-
fashioned tenement of Queen's College, in the High
Street, where he was soon complimented by
being selected to write a play for the inmates of
that house to perform. He produced a tragedy
called " Tancredo," which was declared to mani-
fest, in a very striking manner, his abilities for
composition, his wit, and knowledge. Thus,
like the gay Templar, or the student of Gray's
Inn, did the young Oxonian delight in the
drama — which formed, to borrow a French ex-
pression, a sort of debut for wits ; nor did Baker,
though serious and plodding, despise the drama ;
and even when, in after life, he had been knighted
at Theobald's by King James, and Baker's reputa-
tion stood high, he vindicated the stage against
Prynne, in a work entitled " Theatrum Redi-
vivum."

Wotton, after proceeding Master of Arts in his
twentieth year, left Oxford, and passed a year in
France ; and then going on to Geneva, formed
there the friendship of Casaubon and of Beza.
He remained nine years in Germany and Italy,

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 307

and returned to England an accomplished and en-
lightened, as well as a learned man ; being, says his
biographer, " a dear lover of painting, sculpture,
chemistry, and architecture." He was soon appre-
ciated by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, then
high in favour with Elizabeth ; and became one
of that nobleman's secretaries, and the most de-
voted of his friends. The parallel which he has
left the world between Essex and Buckingham,
and which Lord Clarendon answered, is written
with an enthusiasm for the character of Wotton's
first patron, which can only have sprung from
intimate acquaintance, and from that true affection
which generous, impulsive natures, such as that
of Essex, are likely to inspire.

With Essex, Wotton remained until his patron
was apprehended and attainted of treason ; then
he fled to France, and scarcely had he landed
there when he heard that the Earl had been be-
headed. He took refuge from solitude, and per-
haps peril, in Florence, where the Grand Duke*
of Tuscany received him cordially. James I.
was then reigning over Scotland ; a plot threat-
ened his life, and the Grrand Duke having be-
come aware of this, by some intercepted letters,
sent Wotton, in disguise, to warn James of his

* Ferdinand I., of tlie House of Medici, who, in 1589,
succeeded liis brother Francis.

x2

308 LIFE AND TIMES OF

danger. Wotton spoke Italian perfectly; he,
therefore, assumed the name and dress of an
Italian, and, thus disguised, set off on his hazardous
journey. Having been so deeply concerned in the
affairs of Essex, he did not venture to pass into
England. He travelled, therefore, into Norway,
and, by that route, reached Scotland. He found
the King at Stirling, and was introduced into his
presence under the name of Octavio Baldi. He
soon found an opportunity of disclosing himself
to the King, and, after remaining three months
in Scotland, he returned to Florence.

Queen Elizabeth's death brought him back to
England, where his favour with the new King
was ensured. When James I. saw Sir Edward
Wotton, he inquired if "he knew not Henry
Wotton f

" I know him well," was the reply, " for he is
my brother."

The King then asked where he was, and
ordered him to be sent for. When Wotton first
saw his Majesty, James took him into his arms, and
saluted him by the name of Octavio Baldi ; then
he knighted him, and nominated him Ambassador
to Venice. But it was not easy, in those days,
to avoid giving offence. The new Ambassador,
passing through Augsburg, met there, amongst
other learned men, his old friend, one Christopher

GEORGE VILLIERS. 309

Flecamore, who requested him to write some-
thing in his Album, a book which even then
Germans usually carried about with them; Sir
Henry, complying, wrote a definition of an Am-
bassador in the Album. The sentence was given
in Latin, as being a language common to all that
erudite company, but the definition was, in
English, this — "An Ambassador is an honest
man sent to lie abroad for the good of his
country."

This sentence was imparted, eight years after-
wards, to one of King James's literary opponents?
a jealous Romanist priest, named Scioppius, who
printed it in a work directed against the royal
polemic, and which pretended to show upon what
a degraded principle a Protestant acted. The
book reached King James, who had the mortifi-
cation of hearing that this definition of an am-
bassador, which happened to be then the correct
one, whatever may now be the case, was exhibited
in glass windows at Venice. For some time James
was displeased, but on receiving Sir Henry's
explanation, he forgave him, saying that the
delinquent '^ had commuted suflficiently for a
greater offence."

The various embassies in which Sir Henry
Wotton was engaged detained him abroad until
1623, when he came home finally. A great

310 LIFE AXD TIMES OF

piece of preferment was then vacant; and, by
the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, it was
bestowed on Wotton. This w^as the post of
Provost of Eton; but one great obstacle pre-
sented itself — Wotton had been everything that
was useful and important, but he was not in
orders ; nevertheless, anything could be accom-
plished in those days — he was made a deacon, and
held the Provostship from 1623 to 1639, when
he died. The appointment did no discredit to
him who procured it, for Wotton was an able,
honest man, singularly liberal in his religious
tenets for his time. He ordered that upon his
grave, in the Chapel of Eton College, there
should be a sentence, in Latin, decrying the
itch for disputation as the real disease of the
Church. He was a great enemy to disputation.
On being asked, "Do you believe that a Papist
can be saved?" he answered, " You may be
saved without knowing that; look to yourself."
When he heard some one railing at the Ro-
manists with stupid rancour, he said : — " Pray,
sir, forbear, till you have studied these points
better. There is an Italian proverb which says,
*he that understands amiss concludes worse;'
forbear of thinking that the farther you go from
the Church of Rome the nearer you are to
God."

GEOEGE VILLIERS. 311

Nevertheless, he was, like most lenient judges of
the faith of others, a staunch adherent to his own.
"Where was your reliction to be found before
Luther?" wrote a jocose Priest at Eome, seeing
Sir Henry in an obscure corner of a church,
listening to the beautiful service of the Vespers,
and enjoying the exquisite music of a faith which
appeals so much to the senses. " Where yours
is not to be found — in the written Word of
God," was the answer, scribbled on a piece of
paper underneath the interrogation.

Another evening Sir Henry sent one of the
choir boys to his priestly friend with this ques-
tion : — " Do you believe those many thousands
of poor Austrians damned who were excommu-/
nicated because the Pope and the Duke of
Venice could not agree about their tempo-
ralities % " To which inquiry the priest wrote
in French underneath — " Excusez moi, Mon-
sieur^

Such was the man whom Buckingham favoured;
and who afterwards repaid the obligation by a
beautiful, somewhat florid, but authentic bio-
graphical account of the Duke's origin, his rise,
his dangers, his services, and his death. Quaint
but expressive language, genuine enthusiasm,
and personal acquaintance, render this sketch one
of the most delightful compositions of Sir

312 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Henry's pen. In comparing him, in prosperity
and in adversity, to Essex, the master whom
he loved, Wotton pays the Duke of Buck-
ino^ham what he conceived to be the hio^hest
compliment. He was commencing a life of
Martin Luther, and intending to interweave
in it a history of the Reformation in Germany,
when Charles I. prevailed on him to lay it
aside, and to begin a history of England. That
undertakinsr has something unfortunate asso-
ciated with it. Hapin and Hume never lived to
complete their works. Mackintosh died after
leavinor a noble fraorment to increase our sorrow
for his loss. Macaulay has expired before half
his glorious task has been given to the world.
Sir Henry Wotton had sketched out some short
characters as materials, when his intentions and
Charles's commands were frustrated by death.
His "Reliquias Wottonianae, or a collection of
Lives, Letters, and Poems, with characters of
sundry personages, and other incomparable
pieces of Language and Art, by the ever-memo-
rable Sir Henry Wotton,"* is a small octavo
volume ; yet large enough to create regret that
one of such rare powers and opportunities had
not written, with the candour of his nature, a

* Collected and edited bv Izaak Walton, in 1G72.

GEOKGE VILLIERS. 313

history of the times in which he flourished. His
" State of Christendom, or a most exact and
curious discovery of many secret passages and
hidden mysteries of the times," supplies in some
measure that deficiency.

Successful in life, Wotton was, in his death,
fortunate in being the subject of an elegy from
the pen of Cowley, then a young man of twenty-
one, at Trinity College, Cambridge.*

If we except the encouragement given by the
Duke of Buckingham to the masque, and the
preference evinced by him for literature as one of
the essential ingredients of civilized society, the
progress of letters, it must be avowed, has owed
little to his direct intervention.

Clarendon, though at the time of the Duke's
death patronized by Laud, was then a young
lawyer, little more than twenty years of age.f
Being brought into contact with Archbishop
Laud, during the course of a cause in which he
was even then retained by some London mer-
chants. Clarendon, at that time Edward Hyde,
must not only have heard much of Buckingham,
but have known him personally ; but the public

* Cowley was born in 1618.

t He was born in 1608, and was only seventeen when he
began the study of the law under his uncle, Sir Nicholas
Hyde.

314 LIFE AND TIMES OF

career of the future historian did not commence
till 1640. As, however, Hyde then affected the
fine gentleman and the man of letters rather than
the lawyer, he probably, in those characters, had
opportunities of seeing Buckingham on the same
footing as that on which he became acquainted
with Falkland, Selden, Waller, Carew, and
others ; but he owed nothing, as far as we can
trace, to the friendship of ViUiers.

Ralegh and Bacon were above the patronage of
the favourite ; the one was suffered to die in
prison, the other was long alienated from his
early admirer and sometime pupil, the Duke.
Nevertheless, there were not a few persons, as it
has been seen, eminent as writers, who were
indirectly assisted and protected by Bucking-
ham, and who paid him the tribute of their gra-
titude or admiration. Still the aid he gave to
art was far more liberal than any that he afforded
to letters.

Such is the view taken of the redeeming ser-
vices performed to society by a man who had
much in his public career to be forgiven. With re-
spect to the acts to which he prompted Charles, to
screen himself, no defence can be offered : but for
the general bearing of that King's conduct towards
his Parliament, he must be deemed irresponsible,

GEORGE VILLIERS. 315

since his death neither changed his Sovereign's
line of principle, nor moderated his actions.
Buckingham was less a man of evil intentions
than of expediency; to get out of a difficulty,
he imperiled the freedom of the people, and the
safety of the Crown, w^hen he might bravely have
courted inquiry, and profited by counsel. It was
one of his great misfortunes that he never made
a true and worthy friendship with any man so
nearly his equal as to be able frankly to advise
him against what Clarendon calls the " current,
or rather the torrent, of his passions." He was
surrounded by needy brothers, and influenced by
an ambitious, unscrupulous mother. One faith-
ful friend would not only have saved him from
many perils, but might have prompted him to
do "as transcendant worthy actions" as any man
in his sphere. In spite of prosperity, he was of a
persuadable nature ; he was naturally candid, just,
and generous ; no record remains of the tempta-
tion of money leading him to do any unkind
action. "If," says Lord Clarendon, "he had an
immoderate ambition, it doth not appear that it
was in his nature, or that he brought it to the
Court, but rather found it there. He needed no
ambition, who was so seated in the hearts of two
such masters."

No man was more vilified in his private life than

316 LIFE AND TIMES OF

Buckingham. Like all persons of weak principles
and impulsive nature, he was at once engaging
and disappointing ; warm-hearted one instant,
selfish the next ; the idol of his family, whom he
befriended unceasingly; the object, during his
life, of his young wife's most devoted affection,
which he often forgot or betrayed. Nevertheless,
whilst his moral character was sullied by many
blemishes, it was free from the unblushing pro-
fligacy of some of his predecessors, and superior
to the hypocritical sensuality of his contem-
porary, Eichelieu. Happily for the age, the almost
blameless early career of Charles enforced that
virtue should be respected, and that vice, where
it existed, should remain concealed. Buckingham
probably owed to this necessity much of what, at
all events, may be endowed with the praise of
decorum.

The '^popular error of many historians, who
depict him as an arrogant favourite, a remorse-
less extortioner, a reckless invader of liberty,
the minion of his own King^, and the instrument
of foreign Courts, yields before the more inti-
mate view of Buckingham's character which
has been unfolded in the collections now laid
open to all readers of history. That he was im-
petuous, but kind in nature — careless of forms,
but courteous in spirit — ^led widely astray by mad

GEORGE VILLIERS. 317

passions, yet returning in love and penitence
to his home — is now confessed. No instances
have been found to substantiate against him
charges of corruption, such as that which was
commonly practised in those days; he was
loaded with presents of land, of money — he spent
freely what had been thus bestowed — and the
affection borne to him by his dependents is the
best earnest of his many good qualities as a
master and a patron.

In his liberality to all around him, he is said by
Wotton, who thoroughly understood the noble
nature which he compared to that of Essex, to
have been " cheerfully magnificent," whilst he con-
ferred his favours with such a grace, that the
manner was as gratifying as the gift, " and men's
understandings were as much puzzled as their
wits."

His disposition was full of tenderness and
compassion. The man who fell by the assassin's
hand had a horror of capital punishment^
" Those," Lord Clarendon observes, " who think
the laws dead if they are not severely executed, cen-
sured him for being too merciful ; and he believed,
doubtless, hanging the worst use a man could be
put to." Consistent with this sweetness of
character were his affability and gentleness to
men younger than himself, as well as his ready for-

318 LIFE AND TIMES OF

glveness of injuries, an " easiness to reconcile-
ment," which caused him even too soon to for-
get the circumstances of affronts and evil deeds,
and, therefore, exposed him to a repetition.

Of all the imputations which were fixed on
Buckingham, that of a desire to enrich himself,
from motives of avarice, is the most completely
refuted by facts. During the four years that he
enjoyed the unbounded confidence of Charles I.
he became every day poorer. His affairs were in-
vestigated, and the result was proved. It is,
indeed, a question, and a very serious one, —
how far any man is justified in spending, even
on noble purposes, and certainly not in mere
show, largely beyond his income, as Buckingham
did; but his conduct is, at all events, more
pardonable than the mere desire to collect a
great fortune, from sources which he seems to
have considered should be expended either in
doing honour to his Sovereign abroad in his
embassies — a notion paramount in those days,
though out of date in ours — or by the encourage-
ment of arts and sciences, and the duties of
hospitality at home.

When we recapitulate the errors of this cele-
brated man — his omissions, his sins, his want of
good faith, his overlooking the benefits he might
have conferred on his country, until it was almost

GEORGE VILLIEKS. 319

too late for repentance, his sacrifice of his Sove-
reign's best interests to his own will — we must, at
the same time, admit great extenuation. No mercy
was shown to his faults by the historians of his time,
nor of the age succeeding; they wrote under a sense
of the deep injuries from which the Rebellion re-
ceived its first impulse. We must not look for
fairness in such a ferment. Even after the tomb
had long been closed over his remains, it was
scarcely safe, certainly scarcely prudent, to palliate
the faults, or to place the virtues of Buckingham
in a fair light. We have now, however, the satis-
factory assurance that Buckingham was conscious
of his faults ; contrite for his misdeeds ; and
earnest in his resolution to repair them, had his
life been spared.'^

Lord Clarendon closes his " Disparity " between
the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Buckingham
in these words : —

"He that shall continue this argument further
may haply begin his parallel after their deaths,
and not unfitly. He may say that they were
both as mighty in obligations as any subjects;
and both their memories and families as unrecom-
pensed by such as they had raised. He may tell
you of the clients that buried the pictures of

* State Papers, vol. cxiv.
Calendar, edited by Mr. Bruce.

320 LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE VILLIERS.

the one, and defaced the arms of the other, lest
they might be too long suspected for their de-
pendants, and find disadvantage by being honest
to their memories. He may tell you of some that
drew strangers to their houses, lest they might
find the track of their own footsteps, that might
upbraid them with their former attendance. He
may say that both their memories shall have a
reverend fervour with all posterity, and all
nations. He may tell you many more particulars,
which I dare not do."

APPENDIX.

VOL. III.

APPENDIX.

In the Calendar edited by Mr. Bruce (1859),
there are the following details, amongst other
curious particulars, of the state of affairs after the
Duke of Buckinghani's unfortunate expedition
to Rhe:—

" Lionel Sharp to Buckingham, reports his
sermon preached (at St Margaret's, Westmin-
ster), in which he had alluded to the censure
thrown upon the Duke for his late failure at Rhe,
and had declared that he who had ventured aU
that was dearest in the world for a foreign church,
would, if he ^ had as many lives as hairs,' venture
them all for his own, with other laudatory per-
sonal allusions to the Duke. Is ready to ^ do the

y2

324 APPENDIX.

rest' within two days, ^if he may have the place
in Westminster, or on Sunday next.' " — Vol. cii.,
Domestic, No. 76, April, 1623.

This is a singular letter, not only as showing
the alarm which led the Duke to have recourse
to the Elizabeth plan of ^' tuning the pulpits," but
also as an instance of the almost impious mixture
of political and worldly affairs with sacred sub-
jects.

Second attempt on La Rochelle.

Sir Henry Palmer to Secretary Nicholas, from
on hoard the " Garland^^ before La Rochelle,
under the Earl of Denbigh : — " In this letter Sir
Henry states that what was here given out to
be feasible they find directly impossible. On the
approach of the English Fleet, the French re-
treated under their ordnance. The palisadoes
across the river described. The Council of War
determined that they should put out to sea, and
spend their victual abroad. Lord Denbigh cruis-
ing between Ushant and Scilly. The writer
between Portsmouth and Cape La Hogue. No
man but looked back upon the poor town but
with eyes of pity, though not able to help
them."— Vol. ciii., No. 50, May 8, 1628.

Letter from the Earl of Denbigh to the same. —
" Men have ever been the censure of the

APPENDIX. 325

world who are unsuccessful from public employ-
ments. Misinformation has been the cause of
this misfortune. They found Eochelle so blocked
up, that in eight days' stay they never heard from
them. The palisado is so strengthened with two
floats of ships, both within and without, moored
and fastened together from their ports to half-
mast high, that, lying in shoal water, it is impos-
sible to be forced." — Vol. ciii., No. 57, dated
May 9, at sea.

Various letters seem to clear Lord Denbigh of
cowardice in turning back. See letters from Row-
land Woodward to Francis Windebank. " The
report is, that Lord Denbigh was overruled by
Ned Clarke, that would not hazard the Fleet.
The King was never seen to be so much moved,
saying, ' if the ships had been lost, he had timber
enough to build more.' " — Vol. civ., No. 47.

In a letter from Sir Henry Hungate to Wil-
liam, Earl of Denbigh, it is stated, " the King's
pleasure is that not a single man t^hould go
ashore." — Vol. civ., No. 69.

Respecting the " Remonstrance."

" Message on Wednesday from the King, that
he would not yield to any alteration in his an-
swer, bulj ^would close the Session on the 11th
inst. The house proceeded with the Remon-

326 APPENDIX.

strance, until another message, which absolutely
forbade them to do so. Scene which ensued : —
Most part of the house fell a-weeping. Sir Robert
Philips could not speak for weeping. Others
blamed those that wept, and said they had swords
to cut the throats of the King's enemies.

" That afternoon the King and the Lords were
in council from two to eight on the question
whether the Parliament should be dissolved.
The negative was resolved on. On the following
morning the Speaker explained away his message,
and the house proceeded wdth the Remonstrance.
The King agreed thereunto, and came that after-
noon, gave the customary royal assent, adding
other observations which are repeated. It is
impossible to express with what joy this was
heard, nor what joy it causes in the city, where
they are making bonfires at every door, such as
was never seen but upon his Majesty's return from
Spain." — Letter from Sir Francis Nether sote to the
Queen of Bohemia, vol. cvi.. No. 55, dated June
5. The Strand.

'^ Sends a copy of the Remonstrance of the
Commons. It was presented to the King on Tues-
day last. The Duke was present in the Ban-
queting-house at the time, and on his Majesty
rising from his chair, kneeled down, with a pur-
pose, it was conceived, to have besought his

APPENDIX. 327

Majesty to say something. But the King, say-
ing only ' No,' took him up with his hand, which
the Duke kissed, and so his Majesty retired. This
was all that passed at the time, and all that is
like to come of the Remonstrance. His Majesty's
favour to the Duke is no way diminished, but
the ill-will of the people is like to be much in-
creased."— Tlie same to the same, voL cvii.. No 78,
June 19. The Strand.

Death of Buckingham.

Some further particulars of this event and its
effects are related in a letter from Sir Francis
Nethersole to James Earl of Carlisle.

" The King took the Duke's death very heavily,
keeping his chamber that day, as is well to be
believed. But the base multitude in the town
drink healths to Felton, and these are infinitely
more cheerful than sad faces of better degrees."

Felton.

Examination of Richard Harward : — " George
Willoughby taught him to write. Saw Felton
at Willoughby's within a month; Felton com-
plained of the Duke as a cause why he lost a
captain's place, and the obstacle why he could
not get his pay, being four score and odd pounds.
Went together to the Windmill, where examinant

328 APPENDIX.

read the Remonstrance to him, and Felton took
it and carried it away." — Vol. cxiv., A'^o, 128.

" Sir Robert Savage committed to the Tower
for saying that if Felton had not killed the Duke
he would have done it." — Vol, cxvi.. No. 95, Sept.
10, 1628.

Report by Dr. Brian Duppa of an interview
held by himself and others with John Felton in
the Tower. (Dr. Duppa was afterwards tutor
to Charles II.) : —

"On statino: to him that thouojh he had no
mercy on the Duke, the King had so much com-
passion on his soul as to give directions to send
divines to draw him to a feeling of the horror of
his sin, he fell on his knees with humble acknow-
ledgment of so great grace to him. Throughout
he confessed his offence to be a fearful and
crying sin ; attributed it, " upon his soul, to
nothino^ but the Remonstrance." Beinoj asked
whether some dangerous propositions, found in his
handwriting, had not stimulated him, he denied,
saying they were gathered long ago out a book
called the " Soldier's Epistles." He denied that
any creature knew of his resolution but himself, and
requested that he might do some public penance
before his death, in sackcloth, with ashes on his
head, and ropes about his neck." — Vol. cxvi., No,
101, Sept. 2, 1628.

APPENDIX. 329

Pel ton, it appears, had two letters found in Ms
bag, perhaps duplicates. The knife was sewed
into his dress. It appears that Felton was, at
one time, puffed up by the popular applause.
The state of rabid enmity to the Duke existing
in the country, was exhibited in inhuman verses
on his death, such as these : —

" Make haste, I pray thee ; launch out your ships with

Our noble Duke had never greater need
Of sudden succour, and these vessels must
Be his main help, for there's his only trust."

Satire upon the Duke, beginning —

"And art thou dead, who whilom thought'st thy state
To be exempted from the power of Fate ?
Thou that but yesterday, illustrious, bright.
And like the sun, did'st with thy pregnant light
Illuminate other orbs ? "

One of the poems of the day excited more
than ordinary attention. It was addressed by
the writer to "his confined friend, Mr. John
Felton!" Suspicion fell on Ben Jonson ; and
even in the house of his friend. Sir Robert Cotton,
the belief that he had written the poem found
credence. Jonson was then paralytic, and his
mind may have been somewhat embittered, per-
haps enfeebled, but he was guiltless of this act of
ingratitude to his deceased patron, and to his

330 APPENDIX.

living sovereign, King Charles. His examina-
tion upon this charge is, as Mr. Bruce remarks
in his preface, p. 8, ix., a new incident in
Jonson's life. The original examination before
the Attorney-General is to be found in the
Calendar before referred to, vol. cxix., No. 33.
See Preface by !Mr. Bruce, p. 9.

" The examination of Benjamin Jonson, of
Westminster, gentleman, taken this 26th day of
October, 1628, by me, Sir Kobert Heath, his
Majesty's Attorney-General : —

"The said examinant being asked whether
he had ever seen certain verses beginning thus —
' Enjoy thy bondage,' and ending thus — ' Eng-
land's ransom here doth lie/ and entitled thus —
' To his confined friend,' &c., and the papers of
these verses being showed unto him, he an-
swereth that he hath seen the like verses to
these. And being asked where he saw them, he
saith, at Sir Robert Cotton's house, as he often
doth, the papers of these verses lying there
upon the table after dinner. This examinant was
asked concerning these verses as if himself had
been the author thereof; thereupon this exami-
nant read them, and condemned them, and with
deep protestations affirmed that they were not
made by him, nor did he know who made them,
or had ever seen or heard them before. And the

APPENDIX. 331

like protestations he now maketh upon his Chris-
tianity and hope of salvation. He saith he took
no copy of them, nor ever had copy of them.
He saith he hath heard of them since, but ever
v^ith detestation. He being further asked whe-
ther he doth know who made or hath heard who
made them, he answereth he doth not know,
but he hath heard by common fame that one Mr.
Townley should make them, but he confesseth
truly that he cannot name any one singular person
who hath reported it. Being asked of what
quality that Mr. Townley is, he saith his name is
Zouch Townley; he is a scholar, and a divine
by profession, and a preacher, but where he
liveth or abideth he knoweth not, but he is a
student of Christ Church in Oxford.

"Being further asked whether he gave a
dagger to the said Mr. Townley, and upon what
occasion, and when, he answereth, that on a
Sunday after this examinant had heard the
said Mr. Townley preach at St. Margaret's Church
in Westminster, Mr. Townley, taking a liking to
a dagger with a white haft which this examinant
ordinarily wore at his girdle, and was given to
this examinant, this examinant gave it to him
two nights after, being invited by Mr. Townley
to supper, but without any circumstance and
without any relation to those or any other verses ;

332 APPENDIX.

for this examinant is well assured this was so
done before he saw those verses, or had heard of
them; and this examinant doth not remember
that since he hath seen Mr. Townley.

" Ben Jonson."

Zouch Townley, to whom the verses were
ascribed, was one of the Townleys of Cheshire.
He escaped a prosecution, with which he was
threatened in the Star-chamber, by taking refuge
at the Hague. He was evidently on terms of in-
timacy with Jonson, to whom he addressed com-
mendatory verses, beginning —

"Ben,
The world is much in debt, and though it may
Some petty reckonings to small poets pay,
Pardon if at thy glorious sum they stick,
Being too large for their arithmetic."

It is agreeable to find that Ben Jonson stands
wholly acquitted of the charge of being the writer
of the offensive and discreditable verses in question.

The following letter from Edmund Windham
to Dr. Plot, author of the history of Staffordshire,
relative to the ghost story related by Clarendon,
is taken from the " Biographia Britannica " : —

APPENDIX. 333

" Sir — According to your desire and my pro-
mise, I have written downe what I remember
(divers things being slipt out of my memory) of
the relation made me by Mr. Nicholas Towse, con-
cerning the apparition which visited him about
1627.

" I and my wife, upon occasion being in Lon-
don, lay at my brother's, Pym's, house, without
Bishopsgate, which was next house unto Mr.
Nicholas Towse's, who was his kinsman and fami-
liar acquaintance — in consideration of whose
society and friendship he took a house in that
place;' the said Towse being a very fine musician
and very good company — for aught I ever saw or
heard, a virtuous, religious, and well-disposed
gentleman. About that time, the said Mr Towse
told me that, one night being in bed and perfectly
waking, and a candle burning by him (as he
usually had), there came into his chamber, and
stood by his bed-side, an old gentleman, in such
a habit as was in use in Queen Elizabeth's time ;
at whose first appearance Mr. Towse was very much
troubled; but after a little while, recollecting him-
self, he demanded of him in the name of God, What
he ivas? — whether he were a man? And the Appari-
tion replied, Noe. Then he asked him if he were a
devil? And the Apparition answered, Noe. Then
said Mr. Towse, In the name of God, what art thou

334 APPENDIX.

then ? And, as I remember, Mr. Towse told me
that the Apparition answered him that he was the
ghost of Sir George VilUers, father to the then Duke
of Buckingham, whom he might very well remember,
since he ivent to schole at such a place in Leicester-
shire— naming the place, which I have forgotten.
And Mr. Towse told me that the Apparition had
perfectly the resemblance of the said Sir George
Villiers in all respects, and in the same habit that
he had often seen him wear in his lifetime. The
said Apparition also told him that he could not
but remember the much kindness that he, the
said Sir George Villiers, had expressed to him
whilst he was a scholar in Leicestershire, as
aforesaid ; and that, out of that consideration, he
believed that he loved him, and that therefore he
made choice of him, the said Mr. Towse, to
deliver a message to his son, the Duke of Buck-
ingham, thereby to prevent such mischief as
would otherwise befall the said Duke, whereby he
would be inevitably ruined. And then, as I
remember Mr. Towse told me, that the Appari-
tion instructed him what message he should
deliver to the Duke ; unto which Mr. Towse re-
plied that he should be very unwilling to go to the
Duke of Bucks upon such an errand, whereby he
should gaine nothing but reproach and contempt,
and be esteemed a madman, and therefore

APPENDIX. 335

desired to be excused from the employment. But
the Apparition prest him with much earnestness
to undertake it, telling him that the circumstances
and secret discoveries (which he should be able
to make to the Duke of such passages in the
course of his life which were known to none
but himselfe) would make it appeare that his
message was not the fancy of a distempered
braine, but a reality. And so the Aj)parition
tooke his leave of him for that night, telling him
that he would give him leave to consider until
the next night, and then he would come to
receive his answer, whether he would undertake
his message to the Duke of Buckingham or noe.
Mr. Towse passed the next day with much
trouble and perplexity, debateing and reasoning
with himselfe whether he should deliver this
message to the Duke of Buckingham or not ; but
in the conclusion he resolved to doe it. And the
next night, when the Apparition came, he gave
his answer accordingly, and then received full
instructions.

" After which Mr. Towse went and found out
Sir Thomas Bludder and Sir Ralph Freeman, by
whom he was brought to the Duke of Bucking-
ham, and had several private and long audiences
of him. I myselfe, by the favour of a friend,
was once admitted to see him in private confer-

336 APPENDIX.

ence with the Duke, where (although I heard
not their discourse) I observed much earnestness
in their actions and gestures. After which con-
ference Mr. Towse told me that the Duke would
not follow the advice that was given him, which
was (as I remember) that he inthnated the
casting off and rejection of some men who had
great interest in him — and, as I take it, he named
Bishop Laud ; and that he, the Duke, was to do
some popular acts in the ensueing parliament, of
which the Duke would have had Mr. Towse to
have been a Burgess, but he refused it, alledging
that, unless the Duke had followed his directions,
he must doe him hurt if he were of the parlia-
ment. Mr. Towse also then told me that the
Duke confessed that he had told him those things
that no creature knew but himselfe, and that none
but God or the Divell could reveale to him. The
Duke offered Mr. Towse to have the Kins
knighte him, and to have given him preferment
(as he told me), but that he refused it, saying
that, unless he would follow his advice, he should
receive nothing from him. Mr. Towse, when he
made this relation, told me the Duke would in-
evitably be destroyed before such a time (which
he then named), and accordingly the Duke's death
happened before that time. He likewise told me
that he had written downe all the discourses he

APPENDIX. 337

had had with the Apparition ; and that at last his
comeing to him was so familiar, that he was as little
troubled with it as if it had been a frietid or ac-
quaintance that had come to visit him, Mr. Towse
told me further, that the Archbishop (then
Bishop of London) Dr. Laud, should, by his
counsels, be the author of a very great trouble to
the kingdome, by which it should be reduced to
that extremity of disorder and confusion that it
should seem to be past all hope of recovery with-
out a miracle ; but yet, when all people were in
despaire of happy days againe, the kingdome
should suddenly be reduced and resettled again
in a most happy condition.

" At this time my father Pym was in trouble,
and committed to the Gatehouse by the Lords of
the Councill, about a quarrel between him and
the Lord Pawlett, upon which one night I sayd
unto my cousin Towse, by way of jest, I pray you
ask your Apparition what shall become of my father
Pywis business'^ — which he promised to doe; and
the next day told me that my father Pym's ene-
mies were ashamed of their malicious prosecu-
tion, and that he would be at liberty within a
weeke, or some few days, which happened accord-
ingly.

" Mr. Towse's wife (since his death) told me
that her husband and she, living in Windsor

VOL. III. z

338 APPENDIX.

Castle, where he had an office, that summer the
Duke of Buckingham was killed, told her the very-
day that the Duke was set upon by the mutinous

mariners in Portsmouth, saying the

would be his death, which accordingly fell out
— and that at the very instant the Duke was
killed (as upon strict enquiry they found after-
wards) Mr. Towse, sitting amongst some company,
suddenly started up and said. The JDuke of Buck-
ingham is slain. Mr. Towse lived not long after ;
which is as much as I can remember of this
Apparition, which, according to your desire, is

written by,

" Sir, yours, &c.,

" Edmund Windham.

"Boulogne, Aug. 5, 1652."

The following letter has been adduced as a
proof that Villiers owed his favour with Charles
to an incident in the Monarch's early life — his
sole dereliction from propriety, as it is said.
Buckingham, it is said, was Charles's confidant,
and mediator between him and King James : —

" Steenie, I have nothing now to wryte to you,
but to give you thankes bothe for the good counsell
ye gave me, and for the event of it. The King
gave mee a good sharpe potion, but you took

APPENDIX. 339

away the working of it by the well-relished
comfites ye sent after. I have met with the
partie that must not be named, once alreddie, and
the cuUor of wryting this letter shall make mee
meete with her on Saturday, although it is
written the day being Thursday. So assuring
you that this business goes safelie on, I rest
" Your constant loving friend,

" Charles." *

" I hope ye will not shew the King this letter,
but put it in the safe custodie of Mister Vulcan."

* " Historia et vitae et regni Ricardi 11.," p. 104, by Mr. T.
Hearne, who tells us the letter is said to have once be-
longed to Archbishop Sancroft, and observes it is the only
intrigue he had ever heard this Prince was concerned in.

THE END,

R. BORN, PRINTER, GLOUCESTER STREET, REGENT'S PARK.

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