Chapter II: Part 2

George Villiers was recalled to England by the troubles which drove the king to Oxford, and which converted that academical city into a garrison, its under-graduates into soldiers, its ancient halls into barrack-rooms. Villiers was on this occasion entered at Christ Church: the youth's best feelings were aroused, and his loyalty was engaged to one to whom his father owed so much. He was now a young man of twenty-one years of age--able to act for himself; and he went heart and soul into the cause of his sovereign. Never was there a gayer, a more prepossessing Cavalier. He could charm even a Roundhead. The harsh and Presbyterian-minded Bishop Burnet, has told us that 'he was a man of a noble presence; had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning everything into ridicule, with bold figures and natural descriptions.' How invaluable he must have been in the Common-rooms at Oxford, then turned into guard-rooms, his eye upon some unlucky volunteer Don, who had put off his clerkly costume for a buff jacket, and could not manage his drill. Irresistible as his exterior is declared to have been, the original mind of Villiers was even far more influential. De Grammont tells us, 'he was extremely handsome, but still thought himself much more so than he really was; although he had a great deal of discernment, yet his vanities made him mistake some civilities as intended for his person which were only bestowed on his wit and drollery.'

But this very vanity, so unpleasant in an old man, is only amusing in a younger wit. Whilst thus a gallant of the court and camp, the young nobleman proved himself to be no less brave than witty. Juvenile as he was, with a brother still younger, they fought on the royalist side at Lichfield, in the storming of the Cathedral Close. For thus allowing their lives to be endangered, their mother blamed Lord Gerard, one of the Duke's guardians; whilst the Parliament seized the pretext of confiscating their estates, which were afterwards returned to them, on account of their being under age at the time of confiscation. The youths were then placed under the care of the Earl of Northumberland, by whose permission they travelled in France and Italy, where they appeared--their estates having been restored--with princely magnificence. Nevertheless, on hearing of the imprisonment of Charles I. in the Isle of Wight, the gallant youths returned to England and joined the army under the Earl of Holland, who was defeated near Nonsuch, in Surrey.

A sad episode in the annals of these eventful times is presented in the fate of the handsome, brave Francis Villiers. His murder, for one can call it by no other name, shows how keenly the personal feelings of the Roundheads were engaged in this national quarrel. Under most circumstances, Englishmen would have spared the youth, and respected the gallantry of the free young soldier, who, planting himself against an oak-tree which grew in the road, refused to ask for quarter, but defended himself against several assailants. But the name of Villiers was hateful in Puritan ears. 'Hew them down, root and branch!' was the sentiment that actuated the soldiery. His very loveliness exasperated their vengeance. At last, 'with nine wounds on his beautiful face and body,' says Fairfax, 'he was slain.' 'The oak-tree,' writes the devoted servant, 'is his monument,' and the letters of F. V. were cut in it in his day. His body was conveyed by water to York House, and was entombed with that of his father, in the Chapel of Henry VII.

His brother fled towards St. Neot's, where he encountered a strange kind of peril. Tobias Rustat attended him; and was with him in the rising in Kent for King Charles I., wherein the Duke was engaged; and they, being put to the flight, the Duke's helmet, by a brush under a tree, was turned upon his back, and tied so fast with a string under his throat, 'that without the present help of T. R.,' writes Fairfax, 'it had undoubtedly choked him, as I have credibly heard.'[2]

Whilst at St. Neot's, the house in which Villiers had taken refuge was surrounded with soldiers. He had a stout heart, and a dexterous hand; he took his resolution; rushed out upon his foes, killed the officer in command, galloped off and joined the Prince in the Downs.

The sad story of Charles I. was played out; but Villiers remained stanch, and was permitted to return and to accompany Prince Charles into Scotland. Then came the battle of Worcester in 1651: there Charles II. showed himself a worthy descendant of James IV. of Scotland. He resolved to conquer or die: with desperate gallantry the English Cavaliers and the Scotch Highlanders seconded the monarch's valiant onslaught on Cromwell's horse, and the invincible Life Guards were almost driven back by the shock. But they were not seconded; Charles II. had his horse twice shot under him, but, nothing daunted, he was the last to tear himself away from the field, and then only upon the solicitations of his friends.

Charles retired to Kidderminster that evening. The Duke of Buckingham, the gallant Lord Derby, Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Rochester, and some others, rode near him. They were followed by a small body of horse. Disconsolately they rode on northwards, a faithful band of sixty being resolved to escort his Majesty to Scotland. At length they halted on Kinver Heath, near Kidderminster: their guide having lost the way. In this extremity Lord Derby said that he had been received kindly at an old house in a secluded woody country, between Tong Castle and Brewood, on the borders of Staffordshire. It was named 'Boscobel,' he said; and that word has henceforth conjured up to the mind's eye the remembrance of a band of tired heroes, riding through woody glades to an ancient house, where shelter was given to the worn-out horses and scarcely less harassed riders.

But not so rapidly did they in reality proceed. A Catholic family, named Giffard, were living at White-Ladies, about twenty six miles from Worcester. This was only about half a mile from Boscobel: it had been a convent of Cistercian nuns, whose long white cloaks of old had once been seen, ghost-like, amid forest glades or on hillock green. The White-Ladies had other memories to grace it besides those of holy vestals, or of unholy Cavaliers. From the time of the Tudors, a respectable family named Somers had owned the White-Ladies, and inhabited it since its white-garbed tenants had been turned out, and the place secularized. 'Somers's House,' as it was called, (though more happily, the old name has been restored,) had received Queen Elizabeth on her progress. The richly cultivated old conventual gardens had supplied the Queen with some famous pears, and, in the fulness of her approval of the fruit, she had added them to the City arms. At that time one of these vaunted pear-trees stood securely in the market-place of Worcester.

At the White-Ladies, Charles rested for half an hour; and here he left his garters, waistcoat, and other garments, to avoid discovery, ere he proceeded. They were long kept as relics.

The mother of Lord Somers had been placed in this old house for security, for she was on the eve of giving birth to the future statesman, who was born in that sanctuary just at this time. His father at that very moment commanded a troop of horse in Cromwell's army, so that the risk the Cavaliers ran was imminent. The King's horse was led into the hall. Day was dawning; and the Cavaliers, as they entered the old conventual tenement, and saw the sunbeams on its walls, perceived their peril. A family of servants named Penderell held various offices there, and at Boscobel. William took care of Boscobel, George was a servant at White-Ladies; Humphrey was the miller to that house, Richard lived close by, at Hebbal Grange. He and William were called into the royal presence. Lord Derby then said to them, 'This is the King; have a care of him, and preserve him as thou didst me.'

Then the attendant courtiers began undressing the King. They took off his buff-coat, and put on him a 'noggon coarse shirt,' and a green suit and another doublet--Richard Penderell's woodman's dress. Lord Wilmot cut his sovereign's hair with a knife, but Richard Penderell took up his shears and finished the work. 'Burn it,' said the king; but Richard kept the sacred locks. Then Charles covered his dark face with soot. Could anything have taken away the expression of his half-sleepy, half-merry eyes?

They departed, and half an hour afterwards Colonel Ashenhurst, with a troop of Roundhead horse, rode up to the White-Ladies. The King, meantime, had been conducted by Richard Penderell into a coppice-wood, with a bill-hook in his hands for defence and disguise. But his followers were overtaken near Newport; and here Buckingham, with Lords Talbot and Leviston, escaped; and henceforth, until Charles's wanderings were transferred from England to France, George Villiers was separated from the Prince. Accompanied by the Earls of Derby and Lauderdale, and by Lord Talbot, he proceeded northwards, in hopes of joining General Leslie and the Scotch horse. But their hopes were soon dashed: attacked by a body of Roundheads, Buckingham and Lord Leviston were compelled to leave the high road, to alight from their horses, and to make their way to Bloore Park, near Newport, where Villiers found a shelter. He was soon, however, necessitated to depart: he put on a labourer's dress; he deposited his George, a gift from Henrietta Maria, with a companion, and set off for Billstrop, in Nottinghamshire, one Matthews, a carpenter, acting as his guide; at Billstrop he was welcomed by Mr. Hawley, a Cavalier; and from that place he went to Brookesby, in Leicestershire, the original seat of the Villiers family, and the birthplace of his father. Here he was received by Lady Villiers--the widow, probably, of his father's brother, Sir William Villiers, one of those contented country squires who not only sought no distinction, but scarcely thanked James I. when he made him a baronet. Here might the hunted refugee see, on the open battlements of the church, the shields on which were exhibited united quarterings of his father's family with those of his mother; here, listen to old tales about his grandfather, good Sir George, who married a serving-woman in his deceased wife's kitchen;[3] and that serving-woman became the leader of fashions in the court of James. Here he might ponder on the vicissitudes which marked the destiny of the house of Villiers, and wonder what should come next.

That the spirit of adventure was strong within him, is shown by his daring to go up to London, and disguising himself as a mountebank. He had a coat made, called a 'Jack Pudding Coat:' a little hat was stuck on his head, with a fox's tail in it, and cocks' feathers here and there. A wizard's mask one day, a daubing of flour another, completed the disguise it was then so usual to assume: witness the long traffic held at Exeter Change by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, Francis Jennings, in a white mask, selling laces, and French gew-gaws, a trader to all appearance, but really carrying on political intrigues; every one went to chat with the 'White Milliner,' as she was called, during the reign of William and Mary. The Duke next erected a stage at Charing Cross--in the very face of the stern Rumpers, who, with long faces, rode past the sinful man each day as they came ambling up from the Parliament House. A band of puppet-players and violins set up their shows; and music covers a multitude of incongruities. The ballad was then the great vehicle of personal attack, and Villiers's dawning taste for poetry was shown in the ditties which he now composed, and in which he sometimes assisted vocally. Whilst all the other Cavaliers were forced to fly, he thus bearded his enemies in their very homes: sometimes he talked to them face to face, and kept the sanctimonious citizens in talk, till they found themselves sinfully disposed to laugh. But this vagrant life had serious evils: it broke down all the restraints which civilised society naturally, and beneficially, imposes. The Duke of Buckingham, Butler, the author of Hudibras, writes, 'rises, eats, goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with owls and the Antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartar customs, and never eats till the great cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that walks all night, to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways in the dark: and as blind men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things that come and go; but like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpetually drilling with a fiddlestick, and endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.'

The more effectually to support his character as a mountebank, Villiers sold mithridate and galbanum plasters: thousands of spectators and customers thronged every day to see and hear him. Possibly many guessed that beneath all the fantastic exterior some ulterior project was concealed; yet he remained untouched by the City Guards. Well did Dryden describe him:--

'Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy.'

His elder sister, Lady Mary Villiers, had married the Duke of Richmond, one of the loyal adherents of Charles I. The duke was, therefore, in durance at Windsor, whilst the duchess was to be placed under strict surveillance at Whitehall.

Villiers resolved to see her. Hearing that she was to pass into Whitehall on a certain day, he set up his stage where she could not fail to perceive him. He had something important to say to her. As she drew near, he cried out to the mob that he would give them a song on the Duchess of Richmond and the Duke of Buckingham: nothing could be more acceptable. 'The mob,' it is related, 'stopped the coach and the duchess ... Nay, so outrageous were the mob, that they forced the duchess, who was then the handsomest woman in England, to sit in the boot of the coach, and to hear him sing all his impertinent songs. Having left off singing, he told them it was no more than reason that he should present the duchess with some of the songs. So he alighted from his stage, covered all over with papers and ridiculous little pictures. Having come to the coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he always wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered immediately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as not to give the least sign of mistrust; nay, she gave him some very opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching the papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a good way out of the town.'

A still more daring adventure was contemplated also by this young, irresistible duke. Bridget Cromwell, the eldest daughter of Oliver, was, at that time, a bride of twenty-six years of age; having married, in 1647, the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Bridget was the pattern heroine of the '_unco guid_,' the quintessence of all propriety; the impersonation of sanctity; an ultra republican, who scarcely accorded to her father the modest title of Protector. She was esteemed by her party a 'personage of sublime growth:' 'humbled, not exalted,' according to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her elevation: 'nevertheless,' says that excellent lady, 'as my Lady Ireton was walking in the St. James's Park, the Lady Lambert, as proud as her husband, came by where she was, and as the present princess always hath precedency of the relict of the dead, so she put by my Lady Ireton, who, notwithstanding her piety and humility, was a little grieved at the affront.'

After this anecdote one cannot give much credence to this lady's humility: Bridget was, however, a woman of powerful intellect, weakened by her extreme, and, to use a now common term, _crochety_ opinions. Like most _esprits forts_, she was easily imposed upon. One day this paragon saw a mountebank dancing on a stage in the most exquisite style. His fine shape, too, caught the attention of one who assumed to be above all folly. It is sometimes fatal to one's peace to look out of a window; no one knows what sights may rivet or displease. Mistress Ireton was sitting at her window unconscious that any one with the hated and malignant name of 'Villiers' was before her. After some unholy admiration, she sent to speak to the mummer. The duke scarcely knew whether to trust himself in the power of the bloodthirsty Ireton's bride or not--yet his courage--his love of sport--prevailed. He visited her that evening: no longer, however, in his jack-pudding coat, but in a rich suit, disguised with a cloak over it. He wore still a plaster over one eye, and was much disposed to take it off, but prudence forbade; and thus he stood in the presence of the prim and saintly Bridget Ireton. The particulars of the interview rest on his statement, and they must not, therefore, be accepted implicitly. Mistress Ireton is said to have made advances to the handsome incognito. What a triumph to a man like Villiers, to have intrigued with my Lord Protector's sanctified daughter! But she inspired him with disgust. He saw in her the presumption and hypocrisy of her father; he hated her as Cromwell's daughter and Ireton's wife. He told her, therefore, that he was a Jew, and could not by his laws become the paramour of a Christian woman. The saintly Bridget stood amazed; she had imprudently let him into some of the most important secrets of her party. A Jew! It was dreadful! But how could a person of that persuasion be so strict, so strait-laced? She probably entertained all the horror of Jews which the Puritanical party cherished as a virtue; forgetting the lessons of toleration and liberality inculcated by Holy Writ. She sent, however, for a certain Jewish Rabbi to converse with the stranger. What was the Duke of Buckingham's surprise, on visiting her one evening, to see the learned doctor armed at all points with the Talmud, and thirsting for dispute, by the side of the saintly Bridget. He could noways meet such a body of controversy; but thought it best forthwith to set off for the Downs. Before he departed he wrote, however, to Mistress Ireton, on the plea that she might wish to know to what tribe of Jews he belonged. So he sent her a note written with all his native wit and point.[4]

Buckingham now experienced all the miseries that a man of expensive pleasures with a sequestrated estate is likely to endure. One friend remained to watch over his interests in England. This was John Traylman, a servant of his late father's, who was left to guard the collection of pictures made by the late duke, and deposited in York House. That collection was, in the opinion of competent judges, the third in point of value in England, being only inferior to those of Charles I. and the Earl of Arundel.

It had been bought, with immense expense, partly by the duke's agents in Italy, the Mantua Gallery supplying a great portion--partly in France--partly in Flanders; and to Flanders a great portion was destined now to return. Secretly and laboriously did old Traylman pack up and send off these treasures to Antwerp, where now the gay youth whom the aged domestic had known from a child was in want and exile. The pictures were eagerly bought by a foreign collector named Duart. The proceeds gave poor Villiers bread; but the noble works of Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, and others, were lost for ever to England.

It must have been very irritating to Villiers to know that whilst he just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old properties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken by the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a line of buildings, that the Parliamentarians could not hold it without leaving in it a great garrison and stores of ammunition. It was therefore burnt, and the stables alone occupied; and those even were formed into a house of unusual size. York House was doubtless marked out for the next destructive decree. There was something in the very history of this house which might be supposed to excite the wrath of the Roundheads. Queen Mary (whom we must not, after Miss Strickland's admirable life of her, call Bloody Queen Mary, but who will always be best known by that unpleasant title) had bestowed York House on the See of York, as a compensation for York House, at Whitehall, which Henry VIII. had taken from Wolsey. It had afterwards come into possession of the Keepers of the Great Seal. Lord Bacon was born in York House, his father having lived there; and the

'Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,'

built here an aviary which cost £300. When the Duke of Lennox wished to buy York House, Bacon thus wrote to him:--'For this you will pardon me: York House is the house where my father died, and where I first breathed; and there will I yield my last breath, if it so please God and the King.' It did not, however, please the King that he should; the house was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the Archbishop of York, and then exchanged for another seat, on the plea that the duke would want it for the reception of foreign potentates, and for entertainments given to royalty.

The duke pulled it down: and the house, which was erected as a temporary structure, was so superb that even Pepys, twenty years after it had been left to bats and cobwebs, speaks of it in raptures, as of a place in which the great duke's soul was seen in every chamber. On the walls were shields on which the arms of Manners and of Villiers--peacocks and lions--were quartered. York House was never, however, finished; but as the lover of old haunts enters Buckingham Street in the Strand, he will perceive an ancient water-gate, beautifully proportioned, built by Inigo Jones--smoky, isolated, impaired--but still speaking volumes of remembrance of the glories of the assassinated duke, who had purposed to build the whole house in that style.

'_Yorschaux_,' as he called it--York House--the French ambassador had written word to his friends at home, 'is the most richly fitted up of any that I saw.' The galleries and state rooms were graced by the display of the Roman marbles, both busts and statues, which the first duke had bought from Rubens; whilst in the gardens the Cain and Abel of John of Bologna, given by Philip IV. of Spain to King Charles, and by him bestowed on the elder George Villiers, made that fair _pleasaunce_ famous. It was doomed--as were what were called the 'superstitious' pictures in the house--to destruction: henceforth all was in decay and neglect. 'I went to see York House and gardens,' Evelyn writes in 1655, 'belonging to the former greate Buckingham, but now much ruined through neglect.'

Traylman, doubtless, kept George Villiers the younger in full possession of all that was to happen to that deserted tenement in which the old man mourned for the departed, and thought of the absent.

The intelligence which he had soon to communicate was all-important. York House was to be occupied again; and Cromwell and his coadjutors had bestowed it on Fairfax. The blow was perhaps softened by the reflection that Fairfax was a man of generous temper; and that he had an only daughter, Mary Fairfax, young, and an heiress. Though the daughter of a Puritan, a sort of interest was attached, even by Cavaliers, to Mary Fairfax, from her having, at five years of age, followed her father through the civil wars on horseback, seated before a maid-servant; and having, on her journey, frequently fainted, she was so ill as to have been left in a house by the roadside, her father never expecting to see her again.

In reference to this young girl, then about eighteen years of age, Buckingham now formed a plan. He resolved to return to England disguised, to offer his hand to Mary Fairfax, and so recover his property through the influence of Fairfax. He was confident of his own attractions; and, indeed, from every account, he appears to have been one of those reckless, handsome, speculative characters that often take the fancy of better men than themselves. 'He had,' says Burnet, 'no sort of literature, only he was drawn into chymistry; and for some years he thought he was very near the finding of the philosopher's stone, which had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in, to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship; pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion, was all he laid to heart. He was true to nothing; for he was not true to himself. He had no steadiness nor conduct; he could keep no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it; he could never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, though then the greatest in England. He was bred about the king, and for many years he had a great ascendant over him; but he spoke of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a lasting disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body and mind, fortune and reputation, equally.'

This was a sad prospect for poor Mary Fairfax, but certainly if in their choice

----'Weak women go astray,
Their stars are more in fault than they,'

and she was less to blame in her choice than her father, who ought to have advised her against the marriage. Where and how they met is not known. Mary was not attractive in person: she was in her youth little, brown, and thin, but became a 'short fat body,' as De Grammont tells us, in her early married life; in the later period of her existence she was described by the Vicomtesse de Longueville as a 'little round crumpled woman, very fond of finery;' and she adds that, on visiting the duchess one day, she found her, though in mourning, in a kind of loose robe over her, all edged and laced with gold. So much for a Puritan's daughter!

To this insipid personage the duke presented himself. She soon liked him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, continued to like him after their marriage.

He carried his point: Mary Fairfax became his wife on the 6th of September, 1675, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his estate, or, at all events, a portion of the revenues, about £4,000 a year, it is said, were restored to him. Nevertheless, it is mortifying to find that in 1682, he sold York House, in which his father had taken such pride, for £30,000. The house was pulled down; streets were erected on the gardens: George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street, Buckingham Street, Off Alley recall the name of the ill-starred George, first duke, and of his needy, profligate son; but the only trace of the real greatness of the family importance thus swept away is in the motto inscribed on the point of old Inigo's water-gate, towards the street: '_Fidei coticula crux_.' It is sad for all good royalists to reflect that it was not the rabid Roundhead, but a degenerate Cavalier, who sold and thus destroyed York House.

The marriage with Mary Fairfax, though one of interest solely, was not a _mésalliance_: her father was connected by the female side with the Earls of Rutland; he was also a man of a generous spirit, as he had shown, in handing over to the Countess of Derby the rents of the Isle of Man, which had been granted to him by the Parliament. In a similar spirit he was not sorry to restore York House to the Duke of Buckingham.

Cromwell, however, was highly exasperated by the nuptials between Mary Fairfax and Villiers, which took place at Nun-Appleton, near York, one of Fairfax's estates. The Protector had, it is said, intended Villiers for one of his own daughters. Upon what plea he acted it is not stated: he committed Villiers to the Tower, where he remained until the death of Oliver, and the accession of Richard Cromwell.

In vain did Fairfax solicit his release: Cromwell refused it, and Villiers remained in durance until the abdication of Richard Cromwell, when he was set at liberty, but not without the following conditions, dated February 21st, 1658-9:--

'The humble petition of George Duke of Buckingham was this day read. Resolved that George Duke of Buckingham, now prisoner at Windsor Castle, upon his engagement upon his honour at the bar of this House, and upon the engagement of Lord Fairfax in £20,000 that the said duke shall peaceably demain himself for the future, and shall not join with, or abet, or have any correspondence with, any of the enemies of the Lord Protector, and of this Commonwealth, in any of the parts beyond the sea, or within this Commonwealth, shall be discharged of his imprisonment and restraint; and that the Governor of Windsor Castle be required to bring the Duke of Buckingham to the bar of this House on Wednesday next, to engage his honour accordingly. Ordered, that the security of £20,000 to be given by the Lord Fairfax, on the behalf of the Duke of Buckingham, be taken in the name of His Highness the Lord Protector.'

During his incarceration at Windsor, Buckingham had a companion, of whom many a better man might have been envious: this was Abraham Cowley, an old college friend of the duke's. Cowley was the son of a grocer, and owed his entrance into academic life to having been a King's Scholar at Westminster. One day he happened to take up from his mother's parlour window a copy of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.' He eagerly perused the delightful volume, though he was then only twelve years old: and this impulse being given to his mind, became at fifteen a reciter of verses. His 'Poetical Blossoms,' published whilst he was still at school, gave, however, no foretaste of his future eminence. He proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his friendship with Villiers was formed; and where, perhaps, from that circumstance, Cowley's predilections for the cause of the Stuarts was ripened into loyalty.

No two characters could be more dissimilar than those of Abraham Cowley and George Villiers. Cowley was quiet, modest, sober, of a thoughtful, philosophical turn, and of an affectionate nature; neither boasting of his own merits nor depreciating others. He was the friend of Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland; and yet he loved, though he must have condemned, George Villiers. It is not unlikely that, whilst Cowley imparted his love of poetry to Villiers, Villiers may have inspired the pensive and blameless poet with a love of that display of wit then in vogue, and heightened that sense of humour which speaks forth in some of Cowley's productions. Few authors suggest so many new thoughts, really his own, as Cowley. 'His works,' it has been said, 'are a flower-garden run to weeds, but the flowers are numerous and brilliant, and a search after them will repay the pains of a collector who is not too indolent or fastidious.'

As Cowley and his friend passed the weary hours in durance, many an old tale could the poet tell the peer of stirring times; for Cowley had accompanied Charles I. in many a perilous journey, and had protected Queen Henrietta Maria in her escape to France: through Cowley had the correspondence of the royal pair, when separated, been carried on. The poet had before suffered imprisonment for his loyalty; and, to disguise his actual occupation, had obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and assumed the character of a physician, on the strength of knowing the virtues of a few plants.

Many a laugh, doubtless, had Buckingham at the expense of _Dr._ Cowley: however, in later days, the duke proved a true friend to the poet, in helping to procure for him the lease of a farm at Chertsey from the queen, and here Cowley, rich upon £300 a year, ended his days.

For some time after Buckingham's release, he lived quietly and respectably at Nun-Appleton, with General Fairfax and the vapid Mary. But the Restoration--the first dawnings of which have been referred to in the commencement of this biography--ruined him, body and mind.

He was made a Lord of the Bedchamber, a Member of the Privy Council, and afterwards Master of the Horse,[5] and Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire. He lived in great magnificence at Wallingford House; a tenement next to York House, intended to be the habitable and useful appendage to that palace.

He was henceforth, until he proved treacherous to his sovereign, the brightest ornament of Whitehall. Beauty of person was hereditary: his father was styled the 'handsomest-bodied man in England,' and George Villiers the younger equalled George Villiers the elder in all personal accomplishments. When he entered the Presence-Chamber all eyes followed him; every movement was graceful and stately. Sir John Reresby pronounced him 'to be the finest gentleman he ever saw.' 'He was born,' Madame Dunois declared, 'for gallantry and magnificence.' His wit was faultless, but his manners engaging; yet his sallies often descended into buffoonery, and he spared no one in his merry moods. One evening a play of Dryden's was represented. An actress had to spout forth this line--

'My wound is great because it is so small!'

She gave it out with pathos, paused, and was theatrically distressed. Buckingham was seated in one of the boxes. He rose, all eyes were fixed upon a face well known in all gay assemblies, in a tone of burlesque he answered--

'Then 'twould be greater were it none at all.'

Instantly the audience laughed at the Duke's tone of ridicule, and the poor woman was hissed off the stage.

The king himself did not escape Buckingham's shafts; whilst Lord Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule: nothing could withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gallery at Whitehall, but in the king's privy chambers, Villiers might be seen, in all the radiance of his matured beauty. His face was long and oval, with sleepy, yet glistening eyes, over which large arched eyebrows seemed to contract a brow on which the curls of a massive wig (which fell almost to his shoulders) hung low. His nose was long, well formed, and flexible; his lips thin and compressed, and defined, as the custom was, by two very short, fine, black patches of hair, looking more like strips of sticking-plaster than a moustache. As he made his reverence, his rich robes fell over a faultless form. He was a beau to the very fold of the cambric band round his throat; with long ends of the richest, closest point that was ever rummaged out from a foreign nunnery to be placed on the person of this sacrilegious sinner.

Behold, now, how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. He is Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber: a pair of bellows is hanging before him for the purse; Colonel Titus is walking with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace; the king, himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter; the courtiers are fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king with his descriptions! 'Ipswich, for instance,' he said, 'was a town without inhabitants--a river it had without water--streets without names; and it was a place where asses wore boots:' alluding to the asses, when employed in rolling Lord Hereford's bowling-green, having boots on their feet to prevent their injuring the turf.

Flecknoe, the poet, describes the duke at this period, in 'Euterpe Revived'--

The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde,
In all the world his prince could ever finde,
Or to participate his private cares,
Or bear the public weight of his affairs,
Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight,
And well-built minds, the steadier with their height;
Such was the composition and frame
O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham.'

The praise, however, even in the duke's best days, was overcharged. Villiers was no 'well-built arch,' nor could Charles trust to the fidelity of one so versatile for an hour. Besides, the moral character of Villiers must have prevented him, even in those days, from bearing 'the public weight of affairs.'

A scandalous intrigue soon proved the unsoundness of Flecknoe's tribute. Amongst the most licentious beauties of the court was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Robert Brudenel, Earl of Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury: amongst many shameless women she was the most shameless, and her face seems to have well expressed her mind. In the round, fair visage, with its languishing eyes, and full, pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and bold. The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, with its tendril curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, falling into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to designate an inelegant amount of _embonpoint_. There is nothing elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely has painted her, and her history is a disgrace to her age and time.

She had numerous lovers (not in the refined sense of the word), and, at last, took up with Thomas Killigrew. He had been, like Villiers, a royalist: first a page to Charles I., next a companion of Charles II., in exile. He married the fair Cecilia Croft; yet his morals were so vicious that even in the Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in order to borrow money from the merchants of that city, he was too profligate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, though without any regular appointment, during his life: the butt, at once, and the satirist of Whitehall.

It was Killigrew's wit and descriptive powers which, when heightened by wine, were inconceivably great, that induced Villiers to select Lady Shrewsbury for the object of his admiration. When Killigrew perceived that he was supplanted by Villiers, he became frantic with rage, and poured out the bitterest invectives against the countess. The result was that, one night, returning from the Duke of York's apartments at St. James's, three passes with a sword were made at him through his chair, and one of them pierced his arm. This, and other occurrences, at last aroused the attention of Lord Shrewsbury, who had hitherto never doubted his wife: he challenged the Duke of Buckingham; and his infamous wife, it is said, held her paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord Shrewsbury was killed,[6] and the scandalous intimacy went on as before. No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Buckingham, appeared shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded their remarks, or joined in their indignation: all moral sense was suspended, or wholly stifled; and Villiers gloried in his depravity, more witty, more amusing, more fashionable than ever; and yet he seems, by the best-known and most extolled of his poems, to have had some conception of what a real and worthy attachment might be.

The following verses are to his 'Mistress':--

'What a dull fool was I
To think so gross a lie,
As that I ever was in love before!
I have, perhaps, known one or two,
With whom I was content to be
At that which they call keeping company.
But after all that they could do,
I still could be with more.
Their absence never made me shed a tear;
And I can truly swear,
That, till my eyes first gazed on you,
I ne'er beheld the thing I could adore.

'A world of things must curiously be sought:
A world of things must be together brought
To make up charms which have the power to make,
Through a discerning eye, true love;
That is a master-piece above
What only looks and shape can do;
There must be wit and judgment too,
Greatness of thought, and worth, which draw,
From the whole world, respect and awe.

'She that would raise a noble love must find
Ways to beget a passion for her mind;
She must be that which she to be would seem,
For all true love is grounded on esteem:
Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart
Than all the crooked subtleties of art.
She must be--what said I?--she must be _you_:
None but yourself that miracle can do.
At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see,
None but yourself e'er did it upon me.
'Tis you alone that can my heart subdue,
To you alone it always shall be true.'

The next lines are also remarkable for the delicacy and happy turn of the expressions--

'Though Phillis, from prevailing charms,
Have forc'd my Delia from my arms,
Think not your conquest to maintain
By rigour or unjust disdain.
In vain, fair nymph, in vain you strive,
For Love doth seldom Hope survive.
My heart may languish for a time,
As all beauties in their prime
Have justified such cruelty,
By the same fate that conquered me.
When age shall come, at whose command
Those troops of beauty must disband--
A rival's strength once took away,
What slave's so dull as to obey?
But if you'll learn a noble way
To keep his empire from decay,
And there for ever fix your throne,
Be kind, but kind to me alone.'

Like his father, who ruined himself by building, Villiers had a monomania for bricks and mortar, yet he found time to write 'The Rehearsal,' a play on which Mr. Reed in his 'Dramatic Biography' makes the following observation: 'It is so perfect a masterpiece in its way, and so truly original, that notwithstanding its prodigious success, even the task of imitation, which most kinds of excellence have invited inferior geniuses to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be attempted with regard to this, which through a whole century stands alone, notwithstanding that the very plays it was written expressly to ridicule are forgotten, and the taste it was meant to expose totally exploded.'

The reverses of fortune which brought George Villiers to abject misery were therefore, in a very great measure, due to his own misconduct, his depravity, his waste of life, his perversion of noble mental powers: yet in many respects he was in advance of his age. He advocated, in the House of Lords, toleration to Dissenters. He wrote a 'Short Discourse on the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of God;' yet, such was his inconsistency, that in spite of these works, and of one styled a 'Demonstration of the Deity,' written a short time before his death, he assisted Lord Rochester in his atheistic poem upon 'Nothing.'

Butler, the author of Hudibras, too truly said of Villiers 'that he had studied _the whole body of vice_;' a most fearful censure--a most significant description of a bad man. 'His parts,' he adds, 'are disproportionate to the whole, and like a monster, he has more of some, and less of others, than he should have. He has pulled down all that nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backward by turning day into night, and night into day.'

The satiety and consequent misery produced by this terrible life are ably described by Butler. And it was perhaps partly this wearied, worn-out spirit that caused Villiers to rush madly into politics for excitement. In 1666 he asked for the office of Lord President of the North; it was refused: he became disaffected, raised mutinies, and, at last, excited the indignation of his too-indulgent sovereign. Charles dismissed him from his office, after keeping him for some time in confinement. After this epoch little is heard of Buckingham but what is disgraceful. He was again restored to Whitehall, and, according to Pepys, even closeted with Charles, whilst the Duke of York was excluded. A certain acquaintance of the duke's remonstrated with him upon the course which Charles now took in Parliament. 'How often have you said to me,' this person remarked, 'that the king was a weak man, unable to govern, but to be governed, and that you could command him as you liked? Why do you suffer him to do these things?'

'Why,' answered the duke, 'I do suffer him to do these things, that I may hereafter the better command him.' A reply which betrays the most depraved principle of action, whether towards a sovereign or a friend, that can be expressed. His influence was for some time supreme, yet he became the leader of the opposition, and invited to his table the discontented peers, to whom he satirized the court, and condemned the king's want of attention to business. Whilst the theatre was ringing with laughter at the inimitable character of Bayes in the 'Rehearsal,' the House of Lords was listening with profound attention to the eloquence that entranced their faculties, making wrong seem right, for Buckingham was ever heard with attention.

Taking into account his mode of existence, 'which,' says Clarendon, 'was a life by night more than by day, in all the liberties that nature could desire and wit invent,' it was astonishing how extensive an influence he had in both Houses of Parliament. 'His rank and condescension, the pleasantness of his humours and conversation, and the extravagance and keenness of his wit, unrestrained by modesty or religion, caused persons of all opinions and dispositions to be fond of his company, and to imagine that these levities and vanities would wear off with age, and that there would be enough of good left to make him useful to his country, for which he pretended a wonderful affection.'

But this brilliant career was soon checked. The varnish over the hollow character of this extraordinary man was eventually rubbed off. We find the first hint of that famous coalition styled the _Cabal_ in Pepys's Diary, and henceforth the duke must be regarded as a ruined man.

'He' (Sir H. Cholmly) 'tells me that the Duke of Buckingham his crimes, as far as he knows, are his being of a cabal with some discontented persons of the late House of Commons, and opposing the desires of the king in all his matters in that House; and endeavouring to become popular, and advising how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he would order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring to have the king's nativity calculated; which was done, and the fellow now in the Tower about it.... This silly lord hath provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most likely will die.'

One day, in the House of Lords, during a conference between the two Houses, Buckingham leaned rudely over the shoulder of Henry Pierrepont Marquis of Dorchester. Lord Dorchester merely removed his elbow. Then the duke asked him if he was uneasy. 'Yes,' the marquis replied, adding, 'the duke dared not do this if he were anywhere else.' Buckingham retorted, 'Yes, he would: and he was a better man than my lord marquis:' on which Dorchester told him that he lied. On this Buckingham struck off Dorchester's hat, seized him by the periwig, pulled it aside, and held him. The Lord Chamberlain and others interposed and sent them both to the Tower. Nevertheless, not a month afterwards, Pepys speaks of seeing the duke's play of 'The Chances' acted at Whitehall. 'A good play,' he condescends to say, 'I find it, and the actors most good in it; and pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very properly "All night I weepe," and sung it admirably. The whole play pleases me well: and most of all, the sight of many fine ladies, amongst others, my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Middleton.'

The whole management of public affairs was, at this period, intrusted to five persons, and hence the famous combination, the united letters of which formed the word 'Cabal:'--Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Their reprehensible schemes, their desperate characters, rendered them the opprobrium of their age, and the objects of censure to all posterity. Whilst matters were in this state a daring outrage, which spoke fearfully of the lawless state of the times, was ascribed, though wrongly, to Buckingham. The Duke of Ormond, the object of his inveterate hatred, was at that time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Colonel Blood,--a disaffected disbanded officer of the Commonwealth, who had been attainted for a conspiracy in Ireland, but had escaped punishment,--came to England, and acted as a spy for the 'Cabal,' who did not hesitate to countenance this daring scoundrel.

His first exploit was to attack the Duke of Ormond's coach one night in St. James's Street: to secure his person, bind him, put him on horseback after one of his accomplices, and carry him to Tyburn, where he meant to hang his grace. On their way, however, Ormond, by a violent effort, threw himself on the ground; a scuffle ensued: the duke's servants came up, and after receiving the fire of Blood's pistols, the duke escaped. Lord Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son, on going afterward to court, met Buckingham, and addressed him in these words:--

'My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt on my father; but I give you warning, if he by any means come to a violent end, I shall not be at a loss to know the author. I shall consider you as an assassin, and shall treat you as such; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's chair; and I tell it you in his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall not fail of performance.'

Blood's next feat was to carry off from the Tower the crown jewels. He was overtaken and arrested: and was then asked to name his accomplices. 'No,' he replied, 'the fear of danger shall never tempt me to deny guilt or to betray a friend.' Charles II., with undignified curiosity, wished to see the culprit. On inquiring of Blood how he dared to make so bold an attempt on the crown, the bravo answered, 'My father lost a good estate fighting for the crown, and I considered it no harm to recover it by the crown.' He then told his majesty how he had resolved to assassinate him: how he had stood among the reeds in Battersea-fields with this design; how then, a sudden awe had come over him: and Charles was weak enough to admire Blood's fearless bearing and to pardon his attempt. Well might the Earl of Rochester write of Charles--

'Here lies my sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.'

Notwithstanding Blood's outrages--the slightest penalty for which in our days would have been penal servitude for life--Evelyn met him, not long afterwards, at Lord Clifford's, at dinner, when De Grammont and other French noblemen were entertained. 'The man,' says Evelyn, 'had not only a daring, but a villanous, unmerciful look, a false countenance; but very well-spoken, and dangerously insinuating.'