Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

His early _History_ had been left behind in England on his sudden flight. For about four years he was debarred from all intercourse with his family, but in 1671 the royal displeasure so far relaxed that his second son, Laurence, was granted a pass to visit him, and he brought the manuscript that had been left untouched for twenty years. They met in June at Moulins, which was to be Clarendon's home till April 1674. Once the old and the new work were both in his hands, he cast his great _History of the Rebellion_ in its final form, and thus 'finished the work which his heart was most set upon'. In June 1672 he turned to the 'Continuation of his Life', which deals with his Chancellorship and his fall, and was not intended 'ever for a public view, or for more than the information of his children'. As its conclusion shows, it was his last work to be completed, but while engaged on it he found time to write much else, including his reply to Hobbes's _Leviathan_. 'In all this retirement', he could well say, in a passage which reads like his obituary, 'he was very seldom vacant, and then only when he was under some sharp visitation of the gout, from reading excellent books, or writing some animadversions and exercitations of his own, as appears by the papers and notes which he left.' The activity of these years of banishment is remarkable in a man who had turned sixty and had passed through about thirty years of continuous storm. His intellectual vitality was unimpaired. The old English jollity that Evelyn had remarked in him in happier if more difficult days had gone, but the even temper from which it had sprung still remained. He was at his best as a writer then; writing was never an effort to him, but in his exile it was an exercise and recreation. He could have said with Dryden that 'what judgment I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject'.

He was still in hopes that he would be allowed to return to England, to die in his own country and among his children. 'Seven years', he said, 'was a time prescribed and limited by God himself for the expiration of some of his greatest judgements.'[10] In the seventh year of his banishment he left Moulins for Rouen, so as to be nearer home. His hopes were vain. He died at Rouen on December 9, 1674.[11] His body was brought to England for burial in Westminster.

* * * * *

Clarendon had been interested in the study of character all his life. His earliest work was 'The Difference and Disparity between the Estates and Conditions of George Duke of Buckingham and Robert Earl of Essex'. Sir Henry Wotton had written observations on these statesmen 'by way of parallel', and Clarendon pointed out as a sequel wherein they differed. It is a somewhat laboured composition in comparison with his later work, a young man's careful essay that lacks the confidence that comes with experience, but it shows at an early stage the talents which knowledge and practice were to develop into mastery. The school in which he learned most was the circle of his friends. Few men can have owed more to their friends than he did, or have been more generous in acknowledging the debt. He tells us he was often heard to say that 'next the immediate blessing and providence of God Almighty, which had preserved him throughout the whole course of his life (less strict than it ought to have been) from many dangers and disadvantages, in which many other young men were lost, he owed all the little he knew, and the little good that was in him, to the friendships and conversation he had still been used to, of the most excellent men in their several kinds that lived in that age; by whose learning, and information, and instruction, he formed his studies, and mended his understanding, and by whose gentleness and sweetness of behaviour, and justice, and virtue, and example, he formed his manners, subdued that pride and suppressed that heat and passion he was naturally inclined to be transported with.' He used often to say, he continues, that 'he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst man in the company'. He cultivated his friendships, it is true, with an eye to his advancement; but it is equally true that he had a nature which invited friendships. He enjoyed to the full the pleasure of living and seeing others live, and a great part of his pleasure consisted in observing how men differed in their habits and foibles. He tells how Ben Jonson did not understand why young Mr. Hyde should neglect the delights of his company at the call of business; how Selden, with all his stupendous learning, was never more studious of anything than his ease; how Earle gave a wrong impression by the negligence of his dress and mien, whereas no man was more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse; how Chillingworth argued for the pleasure of arguing and thereby irritated his friends and at last grew confident of nothing; how Hales, great in scholarship but diminutive in stature, liked to be by himself but had a very open and pleasant conversation in congenial company; how Waller nursed his reputation for ready wit by seeming to speak on the sudden what he had thoroughly considered. In all his accounts of the friends of his youth Clarendon is in the background, but we picture him moving among them at ease, conscious of his inferiority in learning and brilliance and the gentler virtues, yet trusting to his own judgement, and convinced that every man worth knowing has a pronounced individuality. In these happy and irresponsible days, when he numbered poets among his friends, he himself wrote poetry. Little of it is preserved. He contributed introductory verses to Davenant's _Albovine_, and composed verses on the death of Donne. His poetry was well enough known for Dryden to allude to it during his Lord Chancellorship, in the address presented to him at the height of his power in 1662:

The _Muses_, who your early Courtship boast,
Though now your Flames are with their Beauty lost,
Yet watch their Time, that if you have forgot
They were your Mistresses, the world may not.

But first the law claimed him, and then politics, and then came the Civil War. As Privy Councillor and Chancellor of the Exchequer he was in the thick of the conflict. The men whom he had now to study were men of affairs. He had the clear and unimpassioned vision which often goes with a warm temperament, and could scrutinize his friends without endangering his affection for them. However deeply his feelings might be engaged, he had taken a pleasure in trying to see them exactly as they were. When he came to judge his political enemies he continued the same attitude of detachment, and studiously cultivated it. 'I am careful', he said in a private letter,[12] 'to do justice to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever.' 'I know myself', he said in the _History_,[13] 'to be very free from any of those passions which naturally transport men with prejudice towards the persons whom they are obliged to mention, and whose actions they are at liberty to censure.' It was beyond human nature for a man who had lived through what he did to be completely unprejudiced. He did not always scrupulously weigh what he knew would be to the discredit of the Parliamentary leaders, nor did he ignore mere Royalist rumour, as in the character of Pym. But his characters of them are often more favourable than might have been expected. He may show his personal dislike, or even his sense of their crime, but behind this he permits us to see the qualities which contributed to their success. There can be no reasonable objection to his characters of Hampden and Cromwell. Political partisans find them disappointing, and they are certainly not the final verdict. The worst that can be said of them is that they are drawn from a wrong point of view; but from that point of view their honesty is unquestionable. He does not distinguish men by their party. The folly of his own side is exhibited as relentlessly as the knavery of his opponents. Of no one did he write a more unfavourable character than the Earl of Arundel. He explains the failure of Laud, and he does not conceal the weakness of Charles.

There is a broad distinction between his earlier and later characters. While he was still in the midst of the conflict and hoped to influence it by stating what he knew, he depicted the individual in relation to events. When the conflict was over and he was at leisure to draw on his recollections, he made the individual to a greater degree the representative of the type. But the distinction is not clearly marked, and Clarendon may not have suspected it. His habitual detachment was assisted by his exile. The displeasure of his ungrateful master, from whom he had never been separated during seventeen difficult years, had proved the vanity of the little things of life. He looked at men from a distance that obscures what is insignificant, and shows only the essential.

All his characters are clearly defined. We never confound them; we never have any doubt of how he understood them. He sees men as a whole before he begins to describe them, and then his only difficulty, as his manuscripts show, is to make his pen move fast enough. He does not build up his characters. He does not, as many others do, start with the external features in the hope of arriving at the central facts. He starts from the centre and works outwards. This is the reason of the convincingness of his characters, their dramatic truth. The dramatic sense in him is stronger than the pictorial.

He troubles little about personal appearance, or any of the traits which would enable us to visualize his men. We understand them rather than see them. Hampden, he tells us, was 'of a most civil and affable deportment' and had 'a flowing courtesy to all men', a 'rare temper and modesty'; it is Sir Philip Warwick who speaks of the 'scurf commonly on his face'.[14] He says that the younger Vane 'had an unusual aspect', and leaves us wondering what was unusual. His Falkland is an exception, but he adopted a different scale when describing his greatest friend and only hero. Each of his two accounts of Falkland is in fact a brief biography rather than a character; the earliest of them, written shortly after Falkland's death, he once thought of making into a volume by itself. In his characters proper he confines himself more strictly than any other writer to matters of character. They are characters rather than portraits.

But portraiture was one of his passions, though he left its practice to the painters. He adorned his houses with the likenesses of his friends. It was fitting that our greatest character writer should have formed one of the great collections of pictures of 'wits, poets, philosophers, famous and learned Englishmen'.[15] To describe them on paper, and to contrive that they should look down on him from his walls, were different ways of indulging the same keen and tireless interest in the life amid which he moved.

[Footnote 1: For a detailed examination of the composition and value of Clarendon's _History_ see the three articles by Professor C.H. Firth in _The English Historical Review_ for 1904. No student of Clarendon can ever afford to neglect them.]

[Footnote 2: See No. 33, introductory note.]

[Footnote 3: See No. 6, introductory note, and No. 36, p. 140, II. 17-22 note.]

[Footnote 4: Contractions have been expanded. The punctuation of the original is slight, and it has been found desirable occasionally to insert commas, where seventeenth century printers would have inserted them; but the run of the sentences has not been disturbed. In modernized versions Clarendon's long sentences are sometimes needlessly subdivided.]

[Footnote 5: _State Papers_, 1773, vol. ii, pp. 288-9.]

[Footnote 6: Letter of March 16, 1647; _infra_ p. 275.]

[Footnote 7: Letter of January 8, 1647; T.H. Lister, _Life of Clarendon_, 1837, vol. iii, p. 43.]

[Footnote 8: Ed. 1857, part 1, § 85; omitted in the edition of 1759.]

[Footnote 9: Of the thirty-seven characters by Clarendon in this volume, twenty-seven are from the 'Manuscript Life'.]

[Footnote 10: _State Papers_, 1786, vol. iii, supp., p. xlv.]

[Footnote 11: Clarendon's lifetime coincided almost exactly with Milton's. He was two months younger than Milton, and died one month later.]

[Footnote 12: December 14, 1647; _infra_ p. 275.]

[Footnote 13: Book ix, _ad init._; ed. Macray, vol. iv, p. 3.]

[Footnote 14: See note, p. 129, ll. 22 ff.]

[Footnote 15: Evelyn's _Diary_, December 20, 1668. See the account of 'The Clarendon Gallery' in Lady Theresa Lewis's _Lives of the friends of Clarendon_, 1852, vol. i, pp. 15* ff., and vol. iii, pp. 241 ff.]

IV. Other Character Writers.

When Clarendon's _History_ was at last made public, no part of it was more frequently discussed, or more highly praised, than its characters--'so just', said Evelyn, 'and tempered without the least ingredient of passion or tincture of revenge, yet with such natural and lively touches as show his lordship well knew not only the persons' outsides, but their very interiors.'[1] About the same time, and probably as a consequence of the publication of Clarendon's work, Bishop Burnet proceeded to put into its final form the _History_ on which he had been engaged since 1683. He gave special attention to his characters, some of which he entirely rewrote. They at once invited comparison with Clarendon's, and first impressions, then as now, were not in their favour. 'His characters are miserably wrought,' said Swift.[2]

Burnet was in close touch with the political movements of his time. 'For above thirty years,' he wrote, 'I have lived in such intimacy with all who have had the chief conduct of affairs, and have been so much trusted, and on so many important occasions employed by them, that I have been able to penetrate far into the true secrets of counsels and designs.'[3] He had a retentive memory, and a full share of worldly wisdom. But he was not an artist like Clarendon. His style has none of the sustained dignity, the leisurely evolution, which in Clarendon is so strangely at variance with the speed of composition. All is stated, nothing suggested. There is a succession of short sentences, each perfectly clear in itself, often unlinked to what precedes or follows, and always without any of the finer shades of meaning. It is rough work, and on the face of it hasty, and so it would have remained, no matter how often it had been revised. Again, Burnet does not always have perfect control of the impression he wishes to convey. It is as if he did not have the whole character in his mind before he began to write, but collected his thoughts from the stores of his memory in the process of composition. We are often uncertain how to understand a character before we have read it all. In some cases he seems to be content to present us with the material from which, once we have pieced it together ourselves, we can form our own judgement. But what he tells us has been vividly felt by him, and is vividly presented. The great merit of his characters lies in their realism. Of the Earl of Lauderdale he says that 'He made a very ill appearance: He was very big: His hair red, hanging oddly about him: His tongue was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew all that he talked to.' There is no hint of this in Clarendon's character of Lauderdale, nor could Clarendon have spoken with the same directness. Burnet has no circumlocutions, just as in private life he was not known to indulge in them. When he reports what was said in conversation he gives the very words. Lauderdale 'was a man, as the Duke of Buckingham called him to me, of a blundering understanding'. Halifax 'hoped that God would not lay it to his charge, if he could not digest iron, as an ostrich did, nor take into his belief things that must burst him'. It is the directness and actuality of such things as these, and above all his habit of describing men in relation to himself, that make his best characters so vivid. Burnet is seldom in the background. He allows us to suspect that it is not the man himself whom he presents to us but the man as he knew him, though he would not have admitted the distinction. He could not imitate the detachment of Clarendon, who is always deliberately impersonal, and writes as if he were pronouncing the impartial judgement of history from which there can be no appeal. Burnet views his men from a much nearer distance. His perspective may sometimes be at fault, but he gets the detail.

With all his shrewd observation, it must be admitted that his range of comprehension was limited. There were no types of character too subtle for Clarendon to understand. There were some which eluded Burnet's grasp. He is at his best in describing such a man as Lauderdale, where the roughness of the style is in perfect keeping with the subject. His character of Shaftesbury, whom he says he knew for many years in a very particular manner, is a valuable study and a remarkable companion piece to Dryden's _Achitophel_. But he did not understand Halifax. The surface levity misled him. He tells us unsuspectingly as much about himself as about Halifax. He tells us that the Trimmer could never be quite serious in the good bishop's company.

We learn more about Halifax from his own elaborate study of Charles II. It is a prolonged analysis by a man of clear vision, and perfect balance of judgement, and no prepossessions; who was, moreover, master of the easy pellucid style that tends to maxim and epigram. A more impartial and convincing estimate of any king need never be expected. In method and purpose, it stands by itself. It is indeed not so much a character in the accepted sense of the word as a scientific investigation of a personality. Others try to make us see and understand their men; Halifax anatomizes. Yet he occasionally permits us to discover his own feelings. Nothing disappointed him more in the merry monarch than the company he kept, and his comprehensive taste in wit. 'Of all men that ever _liked_ those who _had wit_, he could the best _endure_ those who had _none_': there is more here than is on the surface; we see at once Charles, and his court, and Halifax himself.

As a class, the statesmen and politicians more than hold their own with the other character writers of the seventeenth century. Shaftesbury's picture of Henry Hastings, a country gentleman of the old school, who carried well into the Stuart period the habits and life of Tudor times, shows a side of his varied accomplishments which has not won the general recognition that it deserves. It is a sketch exactly in the style of the eighteenth century essayists. It makes us regret that the fragmentary autobiography in which it is found did not come down to a time when it could have included sketches of his famous contemporaries. The literary skill of his grandson, the author of the _Characteristicks_, was evidently inherited.

Sir Philip Warwick has the misfortune to be overshadowed by Clarendon. As secretary to Charles I in the year before his execution, and as a minor government official under Charles II, he was well acquainted with men and affairs. Burnet describes him as 'an honest but a weak man', and adds that 'though he pretended to wit and politics, he was not cut out for that, and least of all for writing of history'. He could at least write characters. They do not bear the impress of a strong personality, but they have the fairmindedness and the calm outlook that spring from a gentle and unassertive nature. His Cromwell and his Laud are alike greatly to his credit; and the private view that he gives us of Charles has unmistakable value. His _Mémoires_ remained in manuscript till 1701, the year before the publication of Clarendon's _History_. It was the first book to appear with notable characters of the men of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate.

The Histories and Memoirs of the seventeenth century contain by far the greatest number of its characters; but they are to be found also in scattered Lives, and in the collections of material that mark the rise of modern English biography. There are disappointingly few by Fuller. In his _Worthies of England_ he is mainly concerned with the facts of a man's life, and though, in his own word, he fleshes the bare skeleton of time, place, and person with pleasant passages, and interlaces many delightful stories by way of illustrations, and everywhere holds us by the quaint turns of his fertile fancy, yet the scheme of the book did not involve the depicting of character, nor did it allow him to deal with many contemporaries whom he had known. In the present volume it has therefore been found best to represent him by the studies of Bacon and Laud in his _Church-History_. Bacon he must have described largely from hearsay, but what he says of Laud is an admirable specimen of his manner, and leaves us wishing that he had devoted himself in larger measure to the worthies of his own time.

There are no characters in Aubrey's _Brief Lives_, which are only a series of rough jottings by a prince of gossips, who collected what he could and put it all on paper 'tumultuarily'. But the extracts from what he says of Hobbes and Milton may be considered as notes for a character, details that awaited a greater artist than Aubrey was to work them into a picture; and if Hobbes and Milton are to be given a place, as somehow or other they must be, in a collection of the kind that this volume offers, there is no option but to be content with such notes, for there is no set character of either of them. The value of the facts which Aubrey has preserved is shown by the use made of them by all subsequent biographers, and notably by Anthony à Wood, whose _Athenæ Oxonienses_ is our first great biographical dictionary.

Lives of English men of letters begin in the seventeenth century, and from Rawley's _Life of Bacon_, Sprat's _Life of Cowley_, and the anonymous _Life of Fuller_ it is possible to extract passages which are in effect characters. But Walton's _Lives_, the best of all seventeenth century Lives, refuse to yield any section, for each of them is all of a piece; they are from beginning to end continuous character studies, revealing qualities of head and heart in their affectionate record of fact and circumstance. There is therefore nothing in this volume from his _Life of Donne_ or his _Life of Herbert_. As a rule the characters that can be extracted from Lives are much inferior to the clearly defined characters that are inserted in Histories. The focus is not the same. When an author after dealing with a man's career sums up his mental and moral qualities in a section by itself, he does not trust to it alone to convey the total impression. He is too liable also to panegyric, like Rawley, who could see no fault in his master Bacon, or Sprat who, in Johnson's words, produced a funeral oration on Cowley. There are no characters of scholars or poets so good as Clarendon's Hales, or Earle, or Chillingworth, or Waller; and for this reason, that Clarendon envisages them, not as scholars or poets but as men, and gains a definite and complete effect within small compass.

Roger North made his life of his brother Lord Keeper Guilford an account of the bench and bar under Charles II and James II. Of its many sketches of lawyers whom he or his brother had known, none is so perfect in every way as the character of Chief Justice Saunders, a remarkable man in real life who still lives in North's pages with all his eccentricities. North writes at length about his brother, yet nowhere do we see and understand him so clearly as we see and understand Saunders. The truth is that a life and a character have different objects and methods and do not readily combine. It is only a small admixture of biography that a character will endure. And with the steady development of biography the character declined.

A character must be short; and it must be entire, the complete expression of a clear judgement. The perfect model is provided by Clarendon. He has more than formal excellence. 'Motives', said Johnson, 'are generally unknown. We cannot trust to the characters we find in history, unless when they are drawn by those who knew the persons; as those, for instance, by Sallust and by Lord Clarendon.'[4]

[Footnote 1: Letter to Pepys, January 20, 1703; Pepys's _Diary_, ed. Braybrooke, 1825, vol. ii, p. 290.]

[Footnote 2: 'Short Remarks on Bishop Burnet's _History_,' _ad init._]

[Footnote 3: _History_, preface]

[Footnote 4: Boswell, 1769, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. ii, p. 79.]

* * * * *

Sooner or later every one who deals with the history or literature of the seventeenth century has to own his obligations to Professor C.H. Firth. My debt is not confined to his writings, references to which will be found continually in the notes. At every stage of the preparation of this volume I have had the advantage of his most generous interest. And with his name it is a pleasure to associate in one compendious acknowledgement the names of Dr. Henry Bradley and Mr. Percy Simpson.

Oxford, September 16, 1918. D.N.S.

1.

JAMES I.

_James VI of Scotland 1567. James I 1603._

_Born 1566. Died 1625._

By ARTHUR WILSON.

He was born a King, and from that height, the less fitted to look into inferiour things; yet few escaped his knowledge, being, as it were, a _Magazine_ to retain them. His _Stature_ was of the _Middle Size_; rather tall than low, well set and somewhat plump, of a ruddy Complexion, his hair of a light brown, in his full perfection, had at last a Tincture of white. If he had any predominant _Humor_ to Ballance his _Choler_, it was Sanguine, which made his _Mirth Witty_. His Beard was scattering on the Chin, and very thin; and though his Clothes were seldome fashioned to the _Vulgar_ garb, yet in the whole man he was not uncomely. He was a King in understanding, and was content to have his Subjects ignorant in many things; As in curing the _Kings Evil_, which he knew a _Device_, to ingrandize the _Vertue_ of Kings, when _Miracles_ were in fashion; but he let the World believe it, though he smiled at it, in his own _Reason_, finding the strength of the _Imagination_ a more powerfull _Agent_ in the _Cure_, than the _Plaisters his Chirurgions_ prescribed for the _Sore_. It was a hard _Question_, whether his Wisedome, and knowledge, exceeded his _Choler_, and _Fear_; certainly the last couple drew him with most violence, because they were not acquisititious, but _Naturall_; If he had not had that _Allay_, his high touring, and mastering _Reason_, had been of a _Rare_, and sublimed _Excellency_; but these earthy _Dregs_ kept it down, making his _Passions_ extend him as farre as _Prophaness_, that I may not say _Blasphemy_, and _Policy_ superintendent of all his _Actions_; which will not last long (like the _Violence_ of that _Humor_) for it often makes those that know well, to do ill, and not be able to prevent it.

He had pure _Notions_ in _Conception_, but could bring few of them into _Action_, though they tended to his own _Preservation_: For this was one of his _Apothegms_, which he made no timely use of. _Let that Prince, that would beware of Conspiracies, be rather jealous of such, whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his displeasure hath discontented. These want means to execute their Pleasures, but they have means at pleasure to execute their desires_. Ambition to rule is more vehement than Malice to revenge. Though the last part of this _Aphorism_, he was thought to practice too soon, where there was no cause for prevention, and neglect too late, when time was full ripe to produce the effect.

Some _Parallel'd_ him to _Tiberius_ for _Dissimulation_, yet _Peace_ was maintained by him as in the Time of _Augustus_; And _Peace_ begot _Plenty_, and _Plenty_ begot _Ease_ and _Wantonness_, and _Ease_ and _Wantonnesse_ begot _Poetry_, and _Poetry_ swelled to that _bulk_ in his time, that it begot strange _Monstrous Satyrs_, against the King[s] own person, that haunted both _Court_, and _Country_, which exprest would be too bitter to leave a sweet perfume behind him. And though bitter ingredients are good to imbalm and preserve dead _bodies_, yet these were such as might indanger to kill a living name, if _Malice_ be not brought in with an _Antidote_. And the tongues of those times, more fluent than my _Pen_, made every little _miscarriage_ (being not able to discover their true operations, like smal _seeds_ hid in earthy _Darknesse_) grow up, and spread into such exuberant _branches_, that evil _Report_ did often pearch upon them. So dangerous it is for _Princes_, by a _Remisse Comportment_, to give growth to the least _Error_; for it often proves as _fruitful_ as _Malice_ can make it.

2.

By SIR ANTHONY WELDON.

This Kings Character is much easier to take then his Picture, for he could never be brought to sit for the taking of that, which is the reason of so few good peeces of him; but his Character was obvious to every eye.

He was of a middle stature, more corpulent through his cloathes then in his body, yet fat enough, his cloathes ever being made large and easie, the Doublets quilted for steletto proofe, his Breeches in great pleites and full stuffed: Hee was naturally of a timorous disposition, which was the reason of his quilted Doublets: His eyes large, ever rowling after any stranger came in his presence, insomuch, as many for shame have left the roome, as being out of countenance: His Beard was very thin: His Tongue too large for his mouth, which ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup of each side of his mouth: His skin was as soft as Taffeta Sarsnet, which felt so, because hee never washt his hands, onely rubb'd his fingers ends slightly with the wet end of a Naptkin: His Legs were very weake, having had (as was thought) some foul play in his youth, or rather before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years of age, that weaknesse made him ever leaning on other mens shoulders, his walke was ever circular ... He was very temperate in his exercises, and in his dyet, and not intemperate in his drinking; however in his old age, and _Buckinghams_ joviall Suppers, when he had any turne to doe with him, made him sometimes overtaken, which he would the very next day remember, and repent with teares; it is true, he dranke very often, which was rather out of a custom then any delight, and his drinks were of that kind for strength, as Frontiniack, Canary, High Country wine, Tent Wine, and Scottish Ale, that had he not had a very strong brain, might have daily been overtaken, although he seldom drank at any one time above four spoonfulls, many times not above one or two; He was very constant in all things, his Favourites excepted, in which he loved change, yet never cast down any (he once raised) from the height of greatnesse, though from their wonted nearnesse, and privacy; unlesse by their own default, by opposing his change, as in _Somersets_ case: yet had he not been in that foul poysoning busines, and so cast down himself, I do verily beleeve not him neither; for al his other Favorites he left great in Honour, great in Fortune; and did much love _Mountgomery_, and trusted him more at the very last gaspe, then at the first minute of his Favoriteship: In his Dyet, Apparrell, and Journeys, he was very constant; in his Apparrell so constant, as by his good wil he would never change his cloathes untill worn out to very ragges: His Fashion never: Insomuch as one bringing to him a Hat of a _Spanish_ Block, he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions. Another time, bringing him Roses on his Shooes, he asked, if they would make him a ruffe-footed-Dove? one yard of six penny Ribbond served that turne: His Dyet and Journies were so constant, that the best observing Courtier of our time was wont to say, were he asleep seven yeares, and then awakened, he would tell where the King every day had been, and every dish he had had at his Table.

Hee was not very uxorious, (though he had a very brave Queen that never crossed his designes, nor intermedled with State affaires, but ever complyed with him (even against the nature of any, but of a milde spirit) in the change of Favourites;) for he was ever best, when furthest from the Queene, and that was thought to be the first grounds of his often removes, which afterwards proved habituall. He was unfortunate in the marriage of his Daughter, and so was all Christendome besides; but sure the Daughter was more unfortunate in a Father, then he in a Daughter: He naturally loved not the sight of a Souldier, nor of any Valiant man; and it was an observation that Sir _Robert Mansell_ was the only valiant man he ever loved, and him he loved so intirely, that for all _Buckinghams_ greatnesse with the King, and his hatred of Sir _Robert Mansell_, yet could not that alienate the Kings affections from him; insomuch as when by the instigation of _Cottington_ (then Embassadour in _Spaine_) by _Buckinghams_ procurement, the _Spanish_ Embassadour came with a great complaint against _Sir Robert Mansell_, then at _Argiers_, to suppresse the Pirats, That he did support them; having never a friend there, (though many) that durst speake in his defence, the King himselfe defended him in these words: _My Lord Embassadour, I cannot beleeve this, for I made choyce my selfe of him, out of these reasons; I know him to be valiant, honest, and Nobly descended as most in my Kingdome, and will never beleeve a man thus qualified will doe so base an act_. He naturally loved honest men, that were not over active, yet never loved any man heartily untill he had bound him unto him by giving him some suite, which he thought bound the others love to him againe; but that argued a poore disposition in him, to beleeve that any thing but a Noble minde, seasoned with vertue, could make any firme love or union, for mercinary mindes are carried away with a greater prize, but Noble mindes, alienated with nothing but publick disgraces.

He was very witty, and had as many ready witty jests as any man living, at which he would not smile himselfe, but deliver them in a grave and serious manner: He was very liberall, of what he had not in his owne gripe, and would rather part with 100._li._ hee never had in his keeping, then one twenty shillings peece within his owne custody: He spent much, and had much use of his Subjects purses, which bred some clashings with them in Parliament, yet would alwayes come off, and end with a sweet and plausible close; and truly his bounty was not discommendable, for his raising Favourites was the worst: Rewarding old servants, and releiving his Native Country-men, was infinitely more to be commended in him, then condemned. His sending Embassadours, were no lesse chargeable then dishonourable and unprofitable to him and his whole Kingdome; for he was ever abused in all Negotiations, yet hee had rather spend 100000._li._ on Embassies, to keep or procure peace with dishonour, then 10000._li._ on an Army that would have forced peace with honour: He loved good Lawes, and had many made in his time, and in his last Parliament, for the good of his Subjects, and suppressing Promoters, and progging fellowes, gave way to that _Nullum tempus, &c._ to be confined to 60. yeares, which was more beneficiall to the Subjects in respect of their quiets, then all the Parliaments had given him during his whole Reign. By his frequenting Sermons he appeared Religious; yet his Tuesday Sermons (if you will beleeve his owne Country men, that lived in those times when they were erected, and well understood the cause of erecting them) were dedicated for a strange peece of devotion.

He would make a great deale too bold with God in his passion, both in cursing and swearing, and one straine higher vergeing on blasphemie; But would in his better temper say, he hoped God would not impute them as sins, and lay them to his charge, seeing they proceeded from passion: He had need of great assurance, rather then hopes, that would make daily so bold with God.

He was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man, the change of a Favourite, &c. insomuch as a very wise man was wont to say, he beleeved him the wisest foole in Christendome, meaning him wise in small things, but a foole in weighty affaires.

He ever desired to prefer meane men in great places, that when he turned them out again, they should have no friend to bandy with them: And besides, they were so hated by being raised from a meane estate, to over-top all men, that every one held it a pretty recreation to have them often turned out: There were living in this Kings time, at one instant, two Treasurers, three Secretaries, two Lord Keepers, two Admiralls, three Lord chief Justices, yet but one in play, therefore this King had a pretty faculty in putting out and in: By this you may perceive in what his wisdome consisted, but in great and weighty affaires even at his wits end.

He had a trick to cousen himselfe with bargains under hand, by taking 1000._li._ or 10000._li._ as a bribe, when his Counsell was treating with his Customers to raise them to so much more yearly, this went into his Privy purse, wherein hee thought hee had over-reached the Lords, but cousened himselfe; but would as easily breake the bargaine upon the next offer, saying, he was mistaken and deceived, and therefore no reason he should keep the bargaine; this was often the case with the Farmers of the Customes; He was infinitely inclined to peace, but more out of feare then conscience, and this was the greatest blemish this King had through all his Reign, otherwise might have been ranked with the very best of our Kings, yet sometimes would hee shew pretty flashes of valour which might easily be discerned to be forced, not naturall; and being forced, could have wished, rather, it would have recoiled backe into himselfe, then carryed to that King it had concerned, least he might have been put to the tryall, to maintaine his seeming valour.

In a word, he was (take him altogether and not in peeces) such a King, I wish this Kingdom have never any worse, on the condition, not any better; for he lived in peace, dyed in peace, and left all his Kingdomes in a peaceable condition, with his owne Motto:

_Beati Pacifici_.

3.

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

_George Villiers, created Viscount Villiers 1616, Earl of Buckingham 1617, Marquis 1618, and Duke 1623. Born 1592. Assassinated 1628_.

By CLARENDON.

The Duke was indeede a very extraordinary person, and never any man in any age, nor I believe in any country or nation, rose in so shorte a tyme to so much greatenesse of honour fame and fortune upon no other advantage or recommendation, then of the beauty and gracefulnesse and becommingnesse of his person; and I have not the least purpose of undervale[w]inge his good partes and qualityes (of which ther will be occasion shortly to give some testimony) when I say, that his first introduction into favour was purely from the handsomnesse of his person: He was the younger Sunn of S'r George Villyers of Brookesby in the County of Leicester, a family of an auncient extraction, even from the tyme of the conquest, and transported then with the conqueror out of Normandy, wher the family hath still remayned and still continues with lustre: After S'r Georges first marriage, in which he had 2 or 3 Sunnes and some daughters, who shared an ample inheritance from him, by a secounde marriage with a younge lady of the family of the Beaumonts, he had this gentleman, and two other Sunns, and a daughter, who all came afterwards to be raysed to greate titles and dignityes. George, the eldest Sunn of this secounde bedd, was after the death of his father, by the singular affection and care of his Mother, who injoyed a good joynture in the accounte of that age, well brought up, and for the improvment of his education, and givinge an ornament to his hopefull person, he was by her sent into France, wher he spent 2. or 3. yeeres in attayninge the language, and in learninge the exercises of rydinge and dauncinge, in the last of which he excelled most men; and returned into Englande by the tyme he was 21. yeeres old.

Kinge James raingned at that tyme, and though he was a Prince of more learninge and knowledge then any other of that age, and really delighted more in bookes, and in the conversation of learned men, yett of all wise men livinge, he was the most delighted and taken with handsome persons, and with fyne clothes; He begann to be weary of his Favorite the Earle of Somersett, who was the only Favorite who kept that post so longe without any publique reproch from the people, and by the instigation and wickednesse of his wife, he became at least privy to a horrible murther, that exposed him to the utmost severity of the law (the poysoninge of S'r Thomas Overbury) upon which both he and his wife were condemned to dy, after a tryall by ther Peeres, and many persons of quality were executed for the same: Whilst this was in agitation, and before the utmost discovery was made, Mr. Villiers appeared in Courte, and drew the Kings eyes upon him: Ther were enough in the Courte enough angry and incensed against Somersett, for beinge what themselves desyred to be, and especially for beinge a Scotchman, and ascendinge in so shorte a tyme from beinge a page, to the height he was then at, to contribute all they coulde, to promote the one, that they might throw out the other; which beinge easily brought to passe, by the proceedinge of the law upon his cryme aforesayd, the other founde very little difficulty in rendringe himselfe gracious to the Kinge, whose nature and disposition was very flowinge in affection towards persons so adorned, insomuch that in few dayes after his first appearance in Courte he was made Cup-bearer to the Kinge, by which he was naturally to be much in his presence, and so admitted to that conversation and discource, with which that Prince alwayes abounded at his meales; and his inclination to his new Cuppbearer disposed him to administer frequent occasions of discourcinge of the Courte of France, and the transactions ther, with which he had bene so lately acquainted, that he could pertinently inlarge upon that subjecte, to the Kings greate delight, and to the reconcilinge the esteeme and valew of all the Standers by likewise to him, which was a thinge the Kinge was well pleased with: He acted very few weekes upon this Stage, when he mounted higher, and beinge knighted, without any other qualification he was at the same tyme made Gentleman of the Bedd chamber, and Knight of the Order of the Gartar; and in a shorte tyme (very shorte for such a prodigious ascent,) he was made a Barron, a Viscount, an Earle, a Marquisse, and became L'd High Admirall of Englande, L'd Warden of the Cinque Ports, Master of the Horse, and intirely disposed of all the graces of the Kinge, in conferringe all the Honours and all the Offices of the three kingdomes without a ryvall; in dispencinge wherof, he was guyded more by the rules of appetite then of judgement, and so exalted almost all of his owne numerous family and dependants, who had no other virtue or meritt then ther allyance to him, which æqually offended the auncient nobility and the people of all conditions, who saw the Flowres of the Crowne every day fadinge and withered, whilst the Demeasnes and revennue therof was sacrificed to the inrichinge a private family (how well soever originally extracted) not heard of before ever to the nation, and the exspences of the Courte so vast, unlimited by the old good rules of Oeconomy, that they had a sadd prospecte of that poverty and necessity, which afterwards befell the Crowne, almost to the ruine of it.

Many were of opinion, that Kinge James before his death, grew weary of his Favorite, and that if he had lyved, he would have deprived him at least of his large and unlimited power; and this imagination prævayled with some men, as the L'd Keeper Lincolne, the Earle of Middlesex, L'd High Treasurer of England, and other gentlemen of name, though not in so high stations, that they had the courage, to withdraw from ther absolute dependance upon the Duke, and to make some other assayes, which prooved to the ruine of every on of them, ther appearinge no markes or evidence, that the Kinge did really lessen his affection to him, to the houre of his death; on the contrary, as he created him Duke of Buckingham, in his absence, whilst he was with the Prince in Spayne, so after his returne, he exequted the same authority in conferringe all favours and graces, and revenginge himselfe upon those who had manifested any unkindnesse towards him: And yett notwithstandinge all this, if that Kings nature had æqually disposed him, to pull downe, as to builde and erecte, and if his courage and severity in punishinge and reforminge had bene as greate, as his generosity and inclination was to obliege, it is not to be doubted, but that he would have withdrawne his affection from the Duke intirely before his death, which those persons who were admitted to any privacy with [him], and were not in the confidence of the other (for before those he knew well how to dissemble) had reason enough to exspecte....

* * * * *

This greate man was a person of a noble nature and generous disposition, and of such other indowments, as made him very capable of beinge a greate favorite to a greate Kinge; he understoode the Arts and artifices of a Courte, and all the learninge that is professed ther, exactly well; by longe practice in businesse, under a Master that discourced excellently, and surely knew all things wounderfully, and tooke much delight in indoctrinatinge his younge unexsperienced Favorite, who he knew would be alwayes looked upon as the workemanshipp of his owne handes, he had obtayned a quicke conception and apprehension of businesse, and had the habitt of speakinge very gracefully, and pertinently. He was of a most flowinge courtesy and affability to all men, who made any addresse to him, and so desyrous to obliege them, that he did not enough consider the valew of the obligation, or the meritt of the person he chose to obliege, from which much of his misfortune resulted. He was of a courage not to be daunted, which was manifested in all his actions, and his contests with particular persons of the greatest reputation, and especially in his whole demeanour at the Isle of Rees, both at the landinge and upon the retriete, in both which no man was more fearelesse, or more ready to expose himselfe to the brightest daungers. His kindnesse and affection to his frends was so vehement, that it was so many marriages, for better and worse, and so many leagues offensive and defensive, as if he thought himselfe oblieged to love all his frends, and to make warr upon all they were angry with, let the cause be what it would. And it cannot be denyed, that he was an enimy in the same excesse, and prosequted those he looked upon as his enimyes, with the utmost rigour and animosity, and was not easily induced to a reconciliation; and yett ther were some examples of his receadinge in that particular; and in highest passyon, he was so farr from stoopinge to any dissimulation, wherby his displeasure might be concealed and covered, till he had attayned his revenge, the low methode of Courts, that he never indeavoured to do any man an ill office, before he first told him what he was to exspecte from him, and reproched him with the injures he had done, with so much generosity, that the person found it in his pouer, to receave farther satisfaction in the way he would chuse for himselfe....