# A Short View of the Life and Death of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham

London, Printed for William Shewes, 1642. Quarto, containing thirty pages.
I DETERMINE to write the life, and the end, the nature, and the fortunes of George Villiers, late Duke of Buckingham, which yet I have not undertaken out of any wanton pleasure in mine own pen; nor, truly, without often pondering with myself before-hand what censures I might incur; for I would not be ignorant, by long observation, both; abroad and at home, that every where all greatnessof power and favour is circumvested with much prejudice. And that it is not easy for writers to research with due distinction, as they ought, in the actions of eminent personages, both how much many have been blemished by the envy of others, and what was corrupted by their own felicity, unless, after the period of their splendor, which must needs dazzle their beholders, and, perhaps, oftentimes themselves, we could, as in some scenes of the fabulous age, excite them again, and confer a while with their naked ghosts. However, for my part, I have no servile or ignoble end in my present labour, which may, on either side, restrain or embase the freedom of my poor judgment; J will, therefore steer as evenly as I can, and deduce him from his cradle through the deep and lubrick ways of state and court, till he was swallowed in the gulf of fatality. I find him born in the year of our Saviour, l592, on the 28th of August, at Brooksby in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had chiefly continued about the space of four-hundred years, rather without obscurity, than with any great lustre, after they had long before been seated in Kinalton in the county of Nottingham; he was the third son of George Villiers, knight, and Mary, late Countess of Buckingham, and daughter to Anthony Beaumont, of Coleorton, Esq; names on either side well known of ancient extmction. And yet I remember there was one, who, in a wild pamphlet which he published, besides other pitiful malignities, would scarce allow him to be a gentleman. He was nurtured, where he had been born, in his first rudiments, till the years of ten; and, from thence, sent to Billisden school in the same county, where he was taught the principles of musick, and other slight literature, till the thirteenth of his age, at which time his father died. Then his beautiful and provident mother, for those attributes will not be denied her, took him home to her house at Goodby, where she had him in especial care; so as he was first, as we may say, domestick favourite: But finding him, as it should seem, by nature, little studious and contemplative, she chose rather to endue him with conversative qualities and ornaments of youth, as dancing, fencing, and the like; not, without perchance, even then, though far off, at a courtier's life: To which lessons he had such a dexterous proclivity, as his teachers were fain to restrain his forwardness, to the end that his brothers, who were under the same training, might hold pace with him. About the age of eighteen he travelled into France, where he improved himself well in the language, for one that had so little grammatical foundation, but more in the exercises of that nobility, for the space of three years; and yet came home in his natural plight, without affected forms, the ordinary disease of travellers. After his return, he passed again one whole year, as before, at Goodby, under the wing and counsels of his mother ; and then was forward to become a suitor, at London, to Sir Roger Ashton's daughter, a gentleman of the bedchamber to King James, and master of his robes; about which time, he falls into intrinsical society with Sir John Graham, then one of the gentlemen of his Majesty's privy-chamber; who, I know not upon what luminaries he espied in his face, dissuaded him from marriage, and gave him rather encouragement to wooe fortune in court, which advice sunk well into his fancy; for, within a while, the King had taken, by certain glances (whereof the first was at Apthorpe in a progress) such liking of his person, that he resolved to make him a master-piece, and to mould him, as it were, platonically to his own idea. Neither was his Majesty content only to be the architect of his fortune, without putting his gracious hand likewise to some part of the work itself: Insomuch as it pleased him to descend and to veil his goodness, even to the giving of his aforesaid friend, Sir John Graham, secret directions how, and by what degrees, he should bring him into favour. But this was quickly discovered by him, who was then, as yet, in some possession of the King's heart. For there is nothing more vigilant, nothing more jealous, than a favourite, especially towards the waining-time and suspicion of satiety, so as many arts were used to discuss the beginnings of new affliction (which lie out of my road, being a part of another man's story.) All which notwithstanding, for I omit things intervenient, there is conveyed to Mr. Villiers an intimation of the King's pleasure to wait, and to be sworn his servant: And, shortly after, his cup-bearer at large; and, the summer following, he was admitted in ordinary. After which time favours came thick upon him (liker main showers, than sprinkling drops or dews) for, the next St. George's Day, he was knighted, and made gentleman of the King's bed-chamber; and, the very same day, had an annual pension given him, for his better support, of one-thousand pounds out of the Court of wards. At New Year's-tide following, the King chose him master of the horse. After this, he was installed of the most noble order. And, in the next August, he created him Baron of Whaddon, and Viscount Villiers. In January of the same year, he was advanced Earl of Buckingham, and sworn here of his Majesty's privy-council, as if a favourite was not so before; the March ensuing, he attended the King into Scotland, and was likewise sworn a counsellor in that kingdom, where (as I have been instructed by unpassionate men) he did carry himself with singular sweetness and temper, which I held very credible, for it behoved him, being new in favour, and succeeding one of their own, to study a moderate stile amongst those generous spirits. About New-year's-tide, after his return from thence (for those beginnings of years were very propitious unto him, as if Kings did choose remarkable days to inaugurate their favours, that they may appear acts as well of the times, as of the will) he was created Marquis of Buckingham, and made lord admiral of England, chief justice in Eyre of all the parks and forests on the south-side of Trent, master of the King's Bench office (none of the unprofitablest places), head steward of Westminster, and constable of Windsor castle.
Here I must breathe a while, to satisfy some that, perhaps, might otherwise wonder at such an accumulation of benefits, like a kind of embroidering, or listing of one favour upon another. Certainly the hearts of great princes, if they be considered, as it were, in abstract, without the necessity of states and circumstances of time, being betides their natural extent; moreover, once opened and dilated with affection, can take no full and proportionate pleasure in the exercise of any narrow bounty. And, altho' at first they give only upon choice and love of the person, yet, within a while, themselves likewise begin to love their givings, and to foment their deeds, no less than parents do their children; but let us go on.
For these offices and dignities already rehearsed, and these of ithe like nature, which I shall after set down in their place, were, as I am ready to say, but the facings or fringes of his greatness, in comparison of that trust, which his last most gracious master did cast upon him, in the one and twentieth year of his reign, when he made him the chief concomitant of his heir apparent, and only son, our dear sovereign : Now being in a journey of much adventure, and. which, to shew the strength of his privacy, had been before not communicated with any other of his Majesty's most reserved counsellors at home, being carried with great closeness, liker a business of love than state; as it was in the first intendment. Now, because the whole kingdom stood in a zealous trepidation of the absence of such a prince, I have been the more desirous to research, with some diligence, the several passages of the said journey, and the particular accidents of any moment in their way. They began their motion in the year 1623, on Tuesday, the eighteenth of February, from the Marquis's house of late purchase, at Newhall in Essex; setting out with disguised beards, and with borrowed names of Thomas and John Smith; and then attended with none, but Sir Richard Graham, master of the horse to the Marquis, and of inward trust about him. When they passed the river against Gravesend, for lack of silver they were fain to give the ferry-man a piece of two and twenty shillings, which struck the poor fellow into such a melting tenderness, that so good gentlemen should be going, for so he suspected, about some quarrel beyond sea, as he could not forbear to acquaint the officers of the town, with what had befallen him, who sent presently post for their stay at Rochester, through which they were passed before any intelligence could arrive. On the brow of the hill beyond that city, they were somewhat perplexed, by espying the French ambassador, with the King's coach and others attending him; which made them baulk the beaten road, and teach post-hacknies to leap hedges. At Canterbury, whether some voice, as it should seem, was run on before, the Mayor of the town came himself to seize on them, as they were taking fresh horses, in a blunt manner, alledging first a warrant to stop them from the council, next from Sir Lewis Lewkner, master of the ceremonies, and lastly, from Sir Henry Manwaring, then lieutenant of Dover castle. At all which confused fiction, the Marquis had no leisure to laugh, but thought best to dismark his beard, and so told him, that he was going covertly with, such slight company, to take a secret view (being admiral) of the forwardness of his Majesty's fleet, which was then in preparation on the narrow seas: This, with much a-do, did somewhat handsomely heal the disguisement. On the way afterwards, the baggage postboy, who had been at court, got, I know not how, a glimmering who they were; but his mouth was easily shut. To Dover, through bad horses, and those pretty impediments, they came not before six at night; where they found Sir Francis Cottington, then secretary to the prince, now Baron of Hanwart, aad Mr. Endimion Porter, who had been sent before, to provide a vessel for their transportation. The foresaid Knight was enjoined, for the nearness of his place, on the prince's affairs, and for his long residence in the court of Spain, where he had gotten singular credit, even with that cautious nation, by the temper of his carriage. Mr. Porter was taken in, not only as a bed-chamber servant of confidence to his highness, but likewise as a necessary and useful instrument for his natural skill in the Spanish tougue. And these five were, at the first, the whole parade of this journey. The next morning, for the night was tempestuous, on the sixteenth of the foresaid month, taking ship at Dover, about six o'clock, they landed the same day at Boulogne in France, near two hours after noon; reaching Monstreuel that night, like men of dispatch ; and Paris the second day after, being Friday the twenty-first; but about three posts before, they had met with two German gentlemen, that came newly from England, where they had seen at Newmarket the prince and the marquis taking coach together with the King, and retained such a strong impression of them, that they now bewrayed some knowledge of their persons; but were out-faced by Sir Richard Graham, who would needs persuade them they were mistaken, which in truth is no very hard matter; for the very strangeness of the thing itself, and almost the impossibility to conceive so great a prince, and favourite, so suddenly metamorphosed into travellers, with no greater train, was enough to make any man living unbelieve his five senses. And this I suppose, next the assurance of their own well resolved carriage, against any new accident, to have been their best anchor, in all such incounters. At Paris the prince spent one whole day, to grve his mind some contentment, in viewing of a famous city and court, which was a neighbour to his future estates; but for the better veiling of their visages, his highness, and the marquiss, bought each of them a perriwig, somewhat to overshadow their foreheads. Of the King they had got sight , after dinner, in a gallery where he was solacing himself with familiar pleasures. And of the queen's mother, as she was at her own table; in neither place descried, no not by Mons. Cadinet, who saw them in both, one that hath been lately ambassador in England. Towards evening, by a mere chance, in appearance, though underlined with a providence, they had a full sight of the Queen Infanta, and of the Princess Henrietta Maria, with Bother great ladies, at the practice of a masquing dance, which Whs then in preparation ; having over-heard two gentlemen, who were tending towards that sight, after whom they pressed, and were let in by the Duke de Mont Bason, the Queen's lord chamberlain, out of humanity to strangers, when divers of the French went by. Npte tere, even with a point of a diamond, by whatobliquesteps and imaginable preparatives, the high disposer of princes affections sometimes contrives the secrets of his will; for by this casual curiosity it fell out, that when afterwards the marriage came in motion, between our sovereign lord and the aforesaid most amiable princess, it must needs be, howsoever unknown, no small spur to the treaty, that she hath not before been altogether a stranger to his eye.
From the next day, when they departed at three o'clock in the morning, from Paris, being the twenty-third of February, were spent six days to Bayonne, the last town of France, having before, at Bourdeaux, bought them five riding-coats, all of one colour and fashion in a kind of noble simplicity, where Sir Francis Cottington was employed, in a fair manner, to keep them from being entertained by the Duke de Espernon, telling him they were gentlemen of mean degree, and formed yet to little courtship, who, perchance, might otherwise, being himself no superficial man in the practices of the world, have pierced somewhat deeper than their outside.
They were now entered into the deep time of Lent, and could get no flesh in their inns. Whereupon fell out a pleasant passage, if I may insert it by the way among more serious: There was near Bayonne a herd of goats with their young ones, upon which sight, he said Sir Richard Graham tells the Marquis, he would snap one of the kids, and make some shift to carry him close to their lodging ; which the prince over-hearing, Why, Richard, says he, do you think you may practise here your old tricks again upon the borders ? Upon which words they first gave the goat-herd gdod contentment; and then while the marquis and his servant, being both on foot, were chacing the kid about the stack, the prince from horseback killed him in the head, with a Scottish pistol; let this serve for a journal parenthesis, which yet may shew how his highness, even in such slight and sportful damage, had a noble sense of just dealing.
At Bayonne, the Count de Gramont, governor of that jealous Kay, took an exquisite notice of their persons and behaviour, and opened himself to some of his train, that he thought them to be gentlemen of much more worth, than their habits bewrayed, yet he let them courteously pass. And, four days after, they arrived at Madrid, being Wednesday, the fifth of March. Thus have I briefly run over transcursions, as if my pen had been posting with them; which-done, I shall not need to relate the affluence of our nobles and others from hence into Spain, after the voice of our prince's being there had been quickly noised, and at length believed; neither wiil I stay to consider the arts of Rome, where now all engines were whetted, though by the divine blessing very vainly, when they had gotten a prince of Great Britain, upon Catholick ground, as they use to call it.
This, and the whole matter of negotiation there, the open entertainments, the secret working, the apprehensions on both sides, the appearence on neither; and, in sum, all the circumstances and respect of religion and state, intermixed together in that commixture, will better become a royal history, or a council-table, than a single life. Yet I cannot omit some things which intervened, at the meeting of two Pleiades, methinks, not unlike that, which astrologers call, a conjunction of planets, of no very benign aspect, the one to the other; I mean the Marquis of Buckingham, and the Conde d'Olivers: They had some sharper, and some milder differences, which might easily happen, in such an intervention of grandees; both vehement on the parts which they swayed. But the most remarkable was upon a supposition of the Condee's, as fancies are cheap, that the marquis had intimated unto her some hopes of the prince's conversion ; which coming into debate, the marquis so roundly disavowed this gilded dream, as Olivers alledged he had given him la Mentida, and thereupon forms a compliment to the prince himself; which Buckingham denying, and ye Olivers persisting in the said compliment, the marquis, though now in strange hands, yet seeing both his honour and the truth at stake, was not tender likewise to engage his life, but replied with some heat, that the Condee's asseveration, would force him to do that which he had not done before, for now he held himself tied, in terms of a gentleman, to maintain the contrary to his affirmative, in any sort whatsoever. This was the highest and the harshest point that occurred between them; which that it went so far, was not the Duke's fault, nor his fault, neither, as it should seem, that it went no farther.
There was another memorable passage one day of gentler quality, and yet eager enough: The Conde d'Olivers tells the marquis of a certain flying noise, that the prince did plot to be secretly gone. To which the marquis gave a well-tempered answer: That, though love had made his highness steal out of his own country, yet fear would never make him run out of Spain, in other manner than should become a prince of his royal and generous virtues. In Spain they staid near eight intire months; during all which time, who but Buckingham lay at home under millions of maledictions? Which yet, at the prince's safe arrival in the west, did die and vanish here and there into praises and eulogies, according to the contrary motion of popular waves. And now, to sum up the fruit of the journey, discourses ran thus among the clearest observers: It was said, that the prince himself, without any imaginable stain of his religion, had, by the sight of foreign courts, and observations of the different natures of people, and rules of government, much excited and awaked his spirit, and corroborated his judgment. And, as for the marquis, there was notice taken of two great additions which he had gained: First, he was returned with increase of title, having there been made Duke, by patent sent him, which was the highest degree whereof an English subject could be capable. But the other was far greater, though closer; for, by so long, and so private, and so various consociation with a prince of such excellent nature, he had now gotten, as it were, two lives in his own fortune and greatness, whereas, otherwise, the state of a favourite is at the best but a tenant at will, and rarely transmitted. But, concerning the Spanish commission, which in publick conceit was the main scope of the journey, that was left in great suspense, and, after some time, utterly laid aside; which threw the Duke amongst free wits (whereof we have a rank soil) under divers censures. The most part were apt to believe, that he had brought down some deep distaste from Spain, which exasperated his counsels; neither were there wanting some others, that thought him not altogether void of a little ambition to shew his power, either to knit, or dissolve. Howsoever, the whole scene of affairs was changed from Spain to France; there now lay the prospective; which alteration being generally liked, and all alterations of state being ever attributed to the powerfullest under princes (as the manner is, where the eminency of one obscureth the rest) the duke became suddenly and strangely gracious among the multitude, and was even in parliament highly exalted ; so that he did seem, for a time, to have overcome that natural incompatibility, which, in the experience of all ages, hath been noted between the vulgar and sovereign favour: But this was no more than a mere bubble or blast, and like an ephemeral fit of applause, as shortly will appear in the sequel and train of his life. I had almost forgotten, that, after his return from Spain, he was made lord-warden of the Cinque-Ports (which is, as it were, a second admiralty) and steward likewise of the manor of Hampton-Court, dignities and offices still growing, of trust or profit, and the king now giving, not only out of a beneficent disposition, but a very habitual and confirmed custom. One year, six months, and two days after the joyful recep* tion of the prince his son from Spain, King James, of immortal memory among all the lovers and admirers of divine and human sapience, accomplished at Theobalds his own days upon earth; under whom the duke had run a long course of calm and smooth prosperity; I mean long for the ordinary life of favour, and the more notable, because it had been without any risible eclipse or wane in himself, amidst divers variations in others.
The most important and pressing care of a new and vigorous King was his marriage, for mediate establishment of the royal line; wherein the Duke having had an especial hand, he was sent to conduct hither the most lovely and virtuous princess Henrietta Maria, youngest daughter to the great Henry of Bourbon, of whom his Majesty, as hath been said, had an ambulatory view in his travels, like a stolen taste of something that provoketh appetite. He was accompanied with none of our peers, but the Earl of Montgomery, now lord chamberlain, a noble gentleman, of trusty, free, and open nature, and truly no unsuitable associate, for that he himself likewise, at the beginning of King James's reign, had run his circle in the wheeling vicissitude of favour.
And here I must crave leave, in such of high quality, or others of particular note, as shall fall under my pen (whereof this is the first) riot to let them pass, without their due character, being part of my professed ingenuity.
Now this ambassy, though it had a private shew, being charged with more formality than matter (for all the essential conditions were before concluded) could, howsoever, want no ornaments or bravery to adorn it: among which, I am near thinking it worthy of a little remembrance, that the Duke, one solemn day, gorgeously clad in a suit all over-spread with diamonds, and having lost one of good value, perchance as he might be dancing after his manner with lofty motion, it was strangely recovered again tha next morning, in a court full of pages: Such a diligent attendant was fortune every-whefe, both abroad and at home.
After this fair discharge, all civil honours having showered on him before, there now fell out great occasions to draw forth his spirits into action, a breach first with Spain, and not long after with France itself, notwithstanding so straight an affinity so lately treated with the one, and actually accomplished with the other; as if indeed, according to that pleasant maxim of state, kingdoms were never married. This must of necessity involve the duke in business enough to have overset a lesser vessel, being the next commander, under the crown, of ports and ships.
But he was noted willingly to embrace those overtures of publick employment; for at the parliament at Oxford, his youth and want of experience, in maritime service, had been somewhat shrewdly touched, even before the sluices and flood-gates of popular liberty were yet set open; so as, to wipe out that objection, he did now mainly attend his charge, by his majesty's untroubled and serene commands, even in a tempestuous time. Now the men fell a rubbing of armour, which a great while had lain oiled; the magazines of ammunition are viewed; the officers of remains called to account, frequent councils of war, as many private conferences with expert seamen, a fleet in preparation for some attempt upon Spain.
The duke himself personally employed to the states-general: And with him joined in full commission the Earl of Holland, a peer both of singular grace and solidity, and of all sweet and serviceable vertue for publick use.
These two nobles, after a dangerous passage from Harwich, wherein three of their ships were foundered, arrived the fifth day at the Hague in Holland; here they were to enter a treaty, both with the states themselves, and with the ministers of divers allied and confederate princes, about a common diversion, for the recovery of the Palatinate, where the king's only sister's dowry had been ravished by the German eagle, mixed with Spanish feathers; a princess resplendent in darkness, and whose virtues were borne within the chance, but without the power of fortune. Here, it were injurious to overslip a noble act in the duke, during this employment, which I must, for my part, celebrate above all his expences; there was a collection of certain rare manuscripts, exquisitely written in Arabick, and sought in the most remote parts, by the diligence of Erpenius, the most excellent linguist; these had been left to the widow of the said Erpenius, and were upon sale to the Jesuits at Antwerp, licorish chapmen of such ware. Whereof the duke getting knowledge, by his worthy and learned secretary, Dr. Mason, interverted the bargain, and gave the poor widow for them five hundred pounds, a sum above their weight in silver, and a mixed act, both of bounty and charity, the more laudable, being much out of his natural element. These were they, which, after his death, were as nobly presented, as they had been bought, to the university of Cambridge, by the Duchess Dowager, as soon as she understood, by the aforesaid Dr. Mason, her husband's intention, who had a purpose likewise, as I am well instructed, to raise in the said university, whereof he was chancellor, a fair case for such monuments, and to furnish it with other choice collections from all parts of his own charge, perchance in some emulation of that famous treasury of knowledge at Oxford, without parallel in the christian world. But let me resume the file of my relation, which this object of books, best agreeable to my course of life, hath a little interrupted: The aforesaid negotiation, though prosecuted with heat and probable appearance of great effects, took up a month before the duke's return from his excentricity, for so I account favourites abroad, and then at home he met with no good news of the Cadiz attempt: In the preparation thereof, though he had spent much sollicitude, ex qfficio, yet it principally failed, as was thought, by late setting out, and by some contrariety of weather at sea; whereby the particular design took vent before-hand, a point hardly avoidable in actions of noise, especially where the great India key to all cabinets is working. Not long after this, the king, pondering in his wisdom the weight of his foreign affairs, found it fit to call a parliament at Westminster ; this was that assembly, where there appeared a sudden and marvellous conversion in the duke's case, from the most exalted, as he had , been, both in another parliament, and in common voice before, to the most depressed now, as if his condition had been capable of no mediocrities. And it could not but trouble him the more, by happening when he was so freshly returned out of the Low Countries, out of a meritorious employment, in his inward conceit and hope; which being the single example, that our annals have yielded, from the time of William de la Pool, Duke of Suffolk, under Henry the Sixth, of such a concurrence of two extremes, within so short time, by most of the same eommenders and disprovers, like the natural breath of man, that can both heat and cool, would require no slight memorial of the particular motives of so great a change, but that the whole case was dispersed by the knights of shires, and burgesses of towns, through all the veins of the land, and may be taken by any at pleasure, out of the parliament registers: Besides that, I observe it not usual amongst the best patterns, to stuff the report of particular lives, with matters of publick record, but rather to dive, as I shall endeavour, before I wipe my pen, into secret and proper afflictions; howsoever somewhat I must note in this strange phenomenon : It began from a travelled doctor of physick, of bold spirit, and of able elocution ; who, being returned one of the burgesses, which was not ordinary in any of his coat, fell by a metaphorical allusion, translated from his own faculty, to propound the duke as a main cause of divers infirmities in the state, or near that purpose; being sure enough of seconds, after the first on-set, in the lower house. As for any close intelligence, that they had before-hand, with some in the higher, though that likewise was said, I want ground to affirm or believe it more than a general conceit, which perhaps might run of (he working of envy amongst those that were nearest the object, which we see so familiar, both in natural and moral causes; the duke's answers to his impeachments, in number thirteen, 1 find very diligently and civilly couched; and though his heart was big, yet they all savour of an humble spirit one way, equitable consideration, which could not possess every vulgar conceit, and somewhat allay the whole matter, that in the bolting and sifting of near fourteen years of such power and favour, all trmt came out could not be expected to be pure and white, and fine meal, but must needs have withal among it a certain mixture of padar and bran, in this lower age of human fragility; howsoever this tempest did only, shake, and not rend his sails; for his majesty considering that almost all his impeachments were without the compass of1 his own reign ; and moreover, that nothing alledged against him had, or could be proved by oath, according to the constitution of the house of commons, which the duke himself did not forget in the preface of his answers: And lastly, having had such experience of his fidelity and observance abroad, where he was chief in trust, and in the participation of all hazards, found himself engaged in honour, and in the sense of his own natural goodness, to support him at home, from any further inquietude, and too dear buy his highest testimony of divers important imputations, whereof the truth is best known to his majesty while he was prince. The summer following this parliament, after an embark of our trading ships, in the river of Bourdeaux, and other points of sovereign affront, there did succeed the action of Rhee, wherein the duke was personally employed on either element, both as admiral and general, with hope, in that service, to recover the publick good-will, which he saw, by his own example, might quickly be won and lost. This action, as I hear, hath been delivered by a noble gentleman of much learning and active spirits, himself the fitter to do it right, which, in truth, he greatly wanted, having found more honourable censure even from some of the French writers, than it had generally amongst ourselves at home. Now, because the said work is not yet flowing into the light, I will but sweep the way with a few notes, and there only touching the duke's own, deportment in that island, the proper subject of my quill; for, in the general survey of this action, there was matter of glory and grief so equally distributed on both- sides, as if fortune had meaned we should be quickly friends again, wherein let their names, that were bravely lost, be rather memorised in the full table of time; for my part, I love no ambitious pains in an eloquent description of miseries. The duke's carriage was surely noble throughout to the gentlemen of fair respect, bountiful to the soldier, according to any special value which he espied in any, tender and careful of those that were hurt, of unquestionable courage in himself, and rather fearful of fame, than danger. In his countenance, which is the part that all eyes interpret, no open alteration, even after the succours, which he expected, did fail him; but, the less he shewed without, the more it wrought intrinsically, according to the nature of suppressed passions: For certain it is, that to his often-mentioned secretary, Dr. Mason, whom he laid in a pallet near him, for natural ventilation of his thoughts, he would, in the absence of all other ears and eyes, break out into bitter and passionate eruptions, protesting, That never his dispatches to divers princes, nor the great business of a fleet, of an army, of a siege, of a treaty, of war, of peace, both on foot together, and all of them in his head at a time, did not so much break his repose, as a conceit, that some at home, under his majesty, of whom he had well deserved, were now content to forget him; but, whom he meant, I know not, and am loth to rove at conjectures. Of their two forts, he could not take the one, and he would not take the other; but, in the general town, he maintained a seizure and possession of the whole, three full months and eighteen days; and, at the first descent on shore, he was not immured within a wooden vessel, but he did countenance the landing in his long-boat, where succeeded such a defeat of near two-hundred horse, and these not, by his guess, mount-. ed in haste, but the most part gentlemen of family, and great resolution, seconded with two thousand foot, as, all circumstances well balanced on either side, may surely endure a comparison with any of the bravest impressions in ancient time. In the issue of the whole business, he seems charged in opinion with a kind of improvident conscience, having brought off that with him to camp, perchance, too much from a court, where fortune had never deceived him. Besides, we must consider him yet but rude in the profession of arms, though greedy of honour, and. zealous in the cause. At his return to Plymouth, a strange accident befel him, perchance not so worthy of memory for itself, as for that it seemeth to have been a kind of a prelude to his final period.
The now Lord Goring, a gentleman of true honour, and of vigilant affections for his friend, sends to the duke, in all expedition, an express messenger, with advisement to assure his own person, by declining the ordinary road to London, for that he had credible intelligence of a plot against his life to be put in execution upon him in his said journey towards the court. The duke, meeting the messenger on the way, read the letter, and, smothering it in his pocket without the least imaginable apprehension, rides forwards; his company being about that time not above seven or eight in number, and those no otherwise provided for their defence than with ordinary swords. After this, the duke had not advanced three miles before he met with an old woman near a town in the road, who demanded, Whether the duke was in the company? And, bewraying some especial occasion to be brought to him, was led to his horse's side, where she told him, That, in the very next town where he was to pass, she had heard some desperate men vow his death; and, thereupon, would have directed him about by a surer way: This old woman's casual access, joined with that deliberate advertisement which he had before from his noble friend, moved him to participate both the tenor of the said letter and all the circumstances, with his company, who were jointly upon consent, that the woman had advised him well: Notwithstanding all which importunity, he resolved to wave his way upon this reason, perhaps more generous than provident, that, if, as he said, he should but once by such a diversion make his enemy believe he was afraid of danger, he should never live without. Hereupon his young nephew, Lord Viscount Fielding, being then in his company, out of a noble spirit, besought him, that he would, at least, honour him with his coat and blew ribband through the town; pleading, that his uncle's life, whereon lay the property of h;s whole family, was, of all things under heaven, the most precious unto him; and, undertaking so to gesture and muffle up himself in his hood, as the duke's manner was to ride in cold weather, that none should discern him from him, and so he should be at the more liberty for his own defence: At which sweet proposition, the duke caught him in his arms and kissed him; yet would not, as he said, accept of such an offer in that case from a nephew, whose life he tendered as much as himself; and so liberally rewarded the poor creature for her good-will. After some short directions to his company how they should carry themselves, he rode on without perturbation of his mind. He was no sooner entered into the town, but a scambling soldier clapped hold of his bridle, who thought it was in a begging, or, perchance, somewhat worse, in a drunken fashion; yet, a gentleman of his train, that rode a pretty distance behind him, conceiving, by the premisses, it might be a beginning of some mischievous intent, spurred up his horse, and, with a Violent rush, severed him from the duke; who, with the rest, went on quickly through the town ; neither, for aught I can hear, was there any further inquiry into that practice; the duke, per adventure, thinking it wisdom not to reserve discontentments too deep. As his return to the court, he found no change in fates, but smothered murmurings for the loss of so many gallant gentlemen; against which his friends did oppose, in their discourses, the chance of war, together with a gentle expectation for want of supply in time. After the complaints in parliament, and the unfortunate issue at Rhee, the duke's fame did still remain more and more in obloquy amongst the mass of people, whose judgments are only reconciled with good successes ; so, as he saw plainly, that he must go abroad again to rectify, with his best endeavours under the publick service, his own reputation: whereupon, new preparatives were in hand, and, partly, reparatives of the former beaten at sea. And, in the mean while, he was not unmindful, in his civil course, to cast an eye upon the ways to win unto him such as have been of principal credit in the lower house of parliament, applying lenitives, or subducting from that part where he knew the humours were sharpest; amidst which thoughts, he was surprised with a fatal stroke, written in the black book of necessity.
There was a younger brother, of mean fortunes, born in the county of Suffolk, by name John Felton, by nature of a deep melancholy, silent, and gloomy constitution, but bred in the active way of a soldier, and, thereby, raised to the place of lieutenant to a foot company in the regiment of Sir James Ramsey; this was the man that, closely within himself, had conceived the duke's death. But what may have been the immediate, or greatest motive of that felonious conception, is even yet in the clouds.
It was said at first, that he had been stung with a denial of his captain's place, who died in England; whereof thus much indeed is true: That the duke, before he would invest him in the said place, advising first, as his manner was, with his colonel, he found him to intercede for one Powel his own lieutenant, a gentleman of extraordinary valour; and, according to military custom, the place was good, that the lieutenant of the colonel's company might well pretend to the next vacant captainship under the same regiment, which Felton acknowledged to be in itself very usual and equitable, besides the especial merit of the person ; so that the aforesaid conceit of some rancour harboured, upon this denial, had no true ground. There was another imagination, that, between a knight of the same county, whom the duke had lately taken into some good degree of favour, and the said Felton, there had been ancient quarrels not yet well healed, which might, perhaps, lie festering in his breast, and, by a certain inflammation, produce this effect; but it carries small probability that Felton would so deface his own act, as to make the duke no more than an oblique sacrifice, to the fumes of his private revenge upon a third person; therefore, the truth is, that, either to honest a deed after it was done, or to slumber his conscience in the doing, he studied other incentives, alledging, not three hours before his execution, to Sir Richard Gresham, Iwo only inducements thereof: The first, as he made it in order, was a certain libellous book, written by one Eggleston, a Scottish physician, which made the duke one of the foulest monsters upon the earth, and, indeed, unworthy not only of life in a christian court, and under so virtuous a king, but of any room within the bounds of all humanity, if his prodigious predictions had the least semblance of truth.
The second was the remonstrance itself of the lower house of parliament against him, which, perchance, he thought the fairest cover; so he put in the second place, whatsoever were the true motive, which, I think, none can determine, but the prince of darkness itself; he did thus prosecute the effect: In a bye cutler's shop on Tower-hill, he bought a tenpenny knife (so cheap was the instrument of this great attempt, and the sheath thereof he sewed to the lining of his pocket) that he might at any moment draw forth the blade alone with one hand, for he had maimed the other : This done, he made shift, partly, as it is said, on horseback, and partly on foot, to get to Portsmouth, for he was indigent and low in money, which, perhaps, might have a little edged his desperation. At Portsmouth, on Saturday, being the twenty-third of August, of that current year, he pressed, without any suspicion, in such a time of so many pretenders to employment, into an inward chamber, where the duke was at breakfast (the last of his repasts in this world) accompanied with men of quality and action, with Monsieur de Soubes, and Sir Thomas Fryer, and there, a little before the duke's rising from the table, he went and stood expecting till he should pass through a kind of lobby between that room and the next, where were divers attending him; towards which passage, as I conceive somewhat darker than the chamber, which he avoided, while the duke came with Sir Thomas Fryer close at his ear, in the very moment as the said knight withdrew himself from the duke, the assassin gave him with a back blow a deep wound into his left side, leaving the knife in his body, which the duke himself pulling out, ou a sudden effusion of spirits, he sunk down under the table in the next room, and immediately expired.' Certain it is, that, a good while before, Sir Clement Throckmorton, a gentleman then living, of grave judgment, had, in a private conference, advised him to wear a privy coat; whose counsel the duke received very kindly, but gave him this answer, That, against any popular fray, a shirt *if mail would be but a silly defence, and, as for a single man's assault, he took himself to be in no danger: So dark is destiny.
One thing in this enormous accident is, I must confess, to me beyond all wonder (as I received it from a gentleman of judicious and diligent observation, and one whom the duke well favoured), That, within the space of not many minutes after the fall of the body, and removal thereof into the first room, there was not a living creature in either of the chambers, no more than if it had lain in the sands of Ethiopia; whereas commonly, in such cases, you shall note every where a great and sudden conflux of people unto the place, to hearken and to see: But it should seem the very horror of the fact had stupified all curiosity, and so dispersed the multitude, that it is thought even the murderer himself might have escaped, for who gave the blow none could affirm, if he had not lingered about the house below, not by any confused arrest of conscience, as hath been seen in like examples, but by very pride in his own deed, as if, in effect, there were little difference between being remembered by a virtuous fame, or an illustrious infamy.
Thus died this great peer, in the thirty-sixth year of his age complete, and three days over; in a time of great recourse unto him, and dependence upon him; the house and town full of seVvants and suitors; his duchess in an upper room, scarce yet out of her bed; and the court, at that time, not above six or nine miles from him, which had been the stage of his greatness.
I have spent some inquiry, whether he had any ominous presagement before his end; wherein, though both ancient and modern stories have been infected with much vanity, yet, oftentimes, things fall out of that kind, which may bear a sober construction; whereof I will glean two or three in the duke's case.
Being to take his leave of my Lord's Grace of Canterbury, then Bishop of London, whom he knew well planted in the king's unchangeable affection, by his own great abilities, after courtesies of courage had passed between them: My Lord (says the duke) I know your lordship hath very worthily good accesses unto the King our Sovereign; let me pray you to put his Majesty in mind to be good, as I no way distrust, to my poor wife and children. At which words, or at his countenance "in the delivery, or at both, my Lord Bishop, being somewhat troubled, took the freedom to ask him, Whether he had never any secret bodements in his mind? No (replied the duke), but I think some adventure may kill me, as well as another man.
The very day before he was slain, feeling some indisposition of body, the King was pleased to give him the honour of a visit, and found him in his bed; where, after much serious and private discourse, the duke, at his majesty's departing, embraced him in a very unusual and passionate manner, and did in like sort to his friend the Earl of Holland, as if his soul had divined he should see them no more: Which infusions towards fatal ends had been observed by some authors of no light authority.
On the very day of his death, the Countess of Denbigh received a letter from him; whereunto all the while she was writing her answer, she bedewed the paper with her tears; and, after a most bitter passion (whereof she could yield no reason, but, That her dearest brother was to be gone), she fell down in a swoon. Her said letter endeth thus:
'I will pray for your happy return, which I look at with a great cloud over my head, too heavy for my poor heart to bear without torment ; but I hope the great God of heaven will bless you.'
The day following, the Bishop of Ely, her devoted friend, who was thought the fittest preparer of her mind to receive such a doleful accident, came to visit her; but, hearing she was at rest, he attended till she should awake of herself; which she did with the affrightment of a dream: 'Her brother seeming to pass through a field with her in her coach; where, hearing a sudden shout of the people, and asking the reason, it was answered to be for joy that the Duke of Buckingham was sick.' Which natural impression she scarce had related unto her gentlewoman, before the bishop was entered into her bed-chamber for a chosen messenger of the duke's death.
This is all that I dare present of that nature to any of judgment, not unwillingly omitting certain prognostick anagrams and such strains of fancy.
He took to wife, eight years and two months before his death, the Lady Catharine Manners, heir-general to the noble house of Rutland, who, besides a solid addition to his estate, brought him three sons, and a daughter, called the Lady Mary, his first-born. His eldest son died at nurse before his journey to Knee, and his third, the Lord Francis, was born after his father's death; so that neither his first, nor his last, were participant of any sense of his misfortunes, or felicities. His second son, now Duke of Buckingham, was born to chearhim after his return from that unlucky voyage.
For these sweet pledges, and no less for the unquestionable virtues of her person and mind, he loved her dearly, and well expressed his love in an act and time of no simulation, towards his end, bequeathing herall his mansion-houses during her natural life, and a power to dispose of his whole personal estate, together with a fourth part of his lands in jointure. He left his elder brother of the same womb a viscount, and his younger an earl. Sir Edward Villiers, his half-brother on the father's side, he either preferred, or removed (call it how you will) from his stepmother's eye to the presidentship, where he lived in singular estimation for his justice and hospitality, and died with as much grief of the whole province, as ever any governor did before, his religious lady, of sweet and noble direction, adding much to his honour. The eldest of the brethren, and heir of the name, was made a baronet, but abstained from court, enjoying, perhaps, the greater greatness of self-fruition.
He left his mother a countess by patent in her own person, which was a new leading example, grown before somewhat rare since the days of Queen Mary. His sister of Denbigh (that right character of a good lady) he most humbly recommended to the Queen, who, after a discharge of some French in her court, that were to return, took her into three several places of honour and trust.
In short, not to insist upon every particular branch of those private preferments, he left all his female kindred, of theintire or half blood, descending of the name of Villiers, or Beaumont, within any near degree, either matched with peers of the realm actually, or hopefully, with earls sons and heirs, or at least with knights, or doctors of divinity, and of plentiful condition. He did not much strengthen his own substance in court, but stood there on his own-feet; for the truth is, the most of his allies rather leaned upon him, than sheared him up.
His familiar servants, either about his person in ordinary attendance, or about his affairs of state, as his secretaries; or of office, as his steward; or of law, as that worthy knight whom he long used'to sollicit his causes, he left all both in good fortune, and, which is more, in good fame: Things very seldom consociated in the instruments of great personages.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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