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I. H. BAKER, SC.
GEORGE VILLIERS,
Duke of Buckingham.
London: Hurst and Blackett.

THE LIFE AND TIMES
OF
GEORGE VILLIERS
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

FROM ORIGINAL AND AUTHENTIC SOURCES.

BY MRS. THOMSON,

AUTHOR OF

“MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF HENRY THE EIGHTH,”

“LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH,”

“MEMOIRS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH,”

&c., &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,

SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1860.

The right of Translation is reserved.

PREFACE.

No complete life of this favourite of James I. and Charles I. has hitherto appeared, except the biographical sketch by Sir Henry Wotton.

That interesting account deserves all credit, from the character of its author; yet coming from one who owed Buckingham great obligations, it is more of a eulogy than a memoir; and is evidently written with a view to silence those slanderous attacks which not only pursued the Duke during his life, but continued after his death.

The “Disparity between the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Buckingham,” by Clarendon, printed, as well as Sir Henry Wotton’s Memoir in the “Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,” bears, likewise, the impress of enthusiastic admiration. It is the tribute of a partisan rather than the memorial of an historian.

The opinions expressed, nevertheless, in both these works, have been confirmed, in many points, by the letters in the State Paper Office, to which historical writers have not only now free access, but which have lately been arranged, whilst valuable Calendars have been published, so as to facilitate investigations which were formerly most laborious. In all that relates personally to George Villiers, the State Papers are especially important.

The great Rebellion, amongst mightier devastations, swept away most of that domestic correspondence which might otherwise have been found in the three noble families who are collaterally descended from Buckingham; those of the Earls of Jersey and Clarendon, and of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, none of whom possess any letters of their unfortunate ancestor. Nor is this fact to be wondered at, when we consider not only the stormy period that succeeded Buckingham’s death, but the extreme youth of his children at the time of his assassination, the second marriage of his widow, and the long years of exile which his heir, George, the second Duke of Buckingham of the house of Villiers, passed in wandering and indigence.

The documents in the State Paper Office become, therefore, doubly valuable, and every possible advantage has been taken of a mine so rich in the present Memoir. It was, indeed, in 1849, some time before the Calendars by Mrs. Everett Green, and Mr. Bruce, were published, that this work was begun. The letters in the State Paper Office were then merely arranged in chronological order, and divided into foreign and domestic. But the valuable advice, the very great courtesy, and kind assistance of Mr. Lechmere and Mr. Lemon, enabled the authoress still to derive great benefit from her researches even at that time. Her work having been laid aside, though nearly completed, during a residence of several years on the Continent, the publication of the Calendars of State Papers had, meantime, taken place, and they enabled her, in resuming her task, to revise such parts of the memoir as had been written, and to finish the whole with greater accuracy and fulness of information than could otherwise have been done, and although the revision has caused considerable delay and labour, it has been of incalculable advantage to the work.

Of the Calendar for 1628-1629, which recently appeared, edited by Mr. Bruce, the authoress has not been able to avail herself to the same extent as of the four former volumes, since her work was nearly printed before it was published. She has, therefore, been obliged to insert in her Appendix the examination of Ben Jonson, and one or two other papers which could not be interwoven with the narrative, although of great interest. It is satisfactory to her to find that the contents of this, the latest volume of the State Paper Calendars, confirm, in some important points, the views which she has taken of Buckingham’s motives and intentions. They also exhibit distinctly the great difficulties of his course; and more especially in regard to the fatal expedition to La Rochelle.

The authoress believes that she has discharged her task as a biographer with impartiality: she confesses, nevertheless, to a strong interest in the faulty but attractive character which she has attempted to delineate. When stating, in her summary of the Duke’s qualities, that time and trouble were rendering him a wiser and a better man, she was ignorant of the following tribute to Buckingham, written, when all patronage was closed by his death, by Dudley, Viscount Dorchester, to the Queen of Bohemia, and printed in the last volume of the Calendar.

“The Duke declared a purpose to Dorchester on his (the Viscount’s) last return from the Queen of Bohemia, which he has since often reiterated, of making him, by his favour with the King his master, an instrument of better days than they have seen of late, he having a firm resolution (which he manifested to some other persons) to walk new ways, but upon old grounds and maxims, both of religion and policy, finding his own judgment to have been misled by errors of truth and persuasions of persons he began better to know; so as knowing otherwise the nobleness of his nature, and great parts and vigour, Dorchester had full satisfaction in him himself, and made no doubt but the world would have, notwithstanding the public hatred to which he was exposed. This testimony Dorchester owes him after his death.”[^[1]]

Of the restoration of the Navy by the strenuous efforts of the Duke the State Papers present almost a chronicle. The authoress regrets that she is not competent to do the subject justice; and hopes that some abler hand may employ with more effect the copious materials which will be found in those documents, of which she has touched merely on the leading points. Her aim has been chiefly to shew the energy, the sometime lofty purposes, of one who has been portrayed as a merely rapacious, vain, remorseless oppressor.

The state of the times, the Impeachment, the Remonstrance, the Petition of Right, all bear so strongly on the circumstances of the Duke’s life, that it would be impossible, in a Memoir of him, to escape the difficult office of explaining to some extent the intricate politics of the day. In this attempt she also has derived her chief materials from the State Papers. Personal incidents, trusts, manners, character, literature, the arts, are subjects in regard to which the annals of this period are calculated to afford a great amount of instruction and interest.

The authoress has already expressed her obligations to Mr. Lechmere and Mr. Lemon; to Mr. Bruce she also begs to offer her thanks for a suggestion by which she is enabled to insert an interesting account of the murder of Buckingham, in a letter from Lord Dorchester. (See page 112, vol. iii.)

She begs also to express her sense of the valuable aid afforded her by her friend, Mr. Amos, Professor of Law, Downing College, Cambridge, to whose kindness and great historical knowledge she is indebted for much that has facilitated her efforts.

March 1, 1860.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER I.

STATE OF ENGLAND ON THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. COMPARED WITH THAT WHEN ELIZABETH BEGAN TO REIGN—THE GREAT REBELLION ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE MISRULE OF JAMES—ALLUSION OF LORD CLARENDON TO THIS SUBJECT—THE LUXURY OF A FAVOURITE ESSENTIAL TO JAMES SINCE THE AGE OF FOURTEEN—BIRTH AND ORIGIN OF GEORGE VILLIERS—HIS FAMILY LITTLE KNOWN TO FAME UNTIL HIS ELEVATION—THE SNEERS THROWN UPON IT BY SIR SYMONDS D’EWES; AND ITS CLAIMS TO HONOURABLE DESCENT CONSIDERED—SIR HENRY WOTTON’S TESTIMONY—THE FAMILY OF VILLIERS LONG KNOWN IN THE COUNTY OF LEICESTER—THE DIFFERENT SPELLINGS OF THE NAME—THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY IN FRANCE—REMARK OF LORD CLARENDON UPON THE CONDITION OF THE VILLIERS FAMILY IN ENGLAND—ALSO OF THE HISTORIAN SANDERSON—BROOKESBY[BROOKESBY], THE NATIVE PLACE OF GEORGE VILLIERS—HIS MOTHER, MARY BEAUMONT—HER MENIAL CONDITION IN THE FAMILY OF SIR GEORGE VILLIERS—HIS MARRIAGE—THE FAMILY BY A FORMER UNION—SIR WILLIAM VILLIERS—JOHN, VISCOUNT PURBECK—THE CHILDREN OF THE SECOND MARRIAGE: MARY, COUNTESS OF DENBIGH, CHRISTOPHER, GEORGE—LADY VILLIERS RETIRES TO GOADBY—HER EFFORTS FOR HER SON’S BENEFIT—HIS EDUCATION, DISPOSITION, AND ACQUIREMENTS—THE SLENDER MEANS OF HIS MOTHER—HER SECOND MARRIAGE, TO SIR THOMAS COMPTON—GEORGE VILLIERS SENT TO PARIS TO COMPLETE HIS EDUCATION—STATE OF THAT CAPITAL IN THE 17th CENTURY—VILLIERS RETURNS FROM PARIS, IMPROVED, AND REPAIRS TO HIS MOTHER’S HOUSE AT GOADBY.

LIFE AND TIMES OF

GEORGE VILLIERS.

CHAPTER I.

The historians who attribute the calamities of the Great Rebellion to the misrule of James the First, under the pernicious influence of his favourites, draw a lively parallel between the condition of England at the accession of that monarch and the state of peril and embarrassment with which his great predecessor had to contend. Elizabeth, whose inauguration, long celebrated, after her death, as a day of jubilee, was regarded as the commencement of national prosperity, came to the throne under very adverse circumstances. The functions of Government were clogged with debt. The miserable state of the navy required a constant vigilance to repel the chance of invasion, and to drive away pirates by whom the narrow seas were infested. The revenues of the Crown were insufficient to maintain its power and dignity; the country, moreover, was embroiled in religious dissensions; whilst the authority of the Queen was lessened by a disputed succession, and her mind harassed and embittered by the pretensions of the Dauphin of France to the Crown of England, in right of his wife, Mary Stuart.

James, on the contrary, began his reign with every exterior advantage. His claim to the sovereignty was undoubted; and various causes had concurred to give great influence to the Crown. The subservient tributes of respect paid to its dignity were such as even to astonish the envoys of despotic France. Elizabeth had been served and addressed by her subjects on the knee; James, at all events for a time, continued that abject custom, which was a type of the prevailing national sentiment towards royalty. Commerce, in spite of monopolies, and of the injudicious interference of the Legislature with wages, was advancing; leases granted of large tracts of land had increased the opulence of the country; the improved prospects of the landholders acted on the prosperity of the manufacturing classes: whilst the general welfare was increased by emigration; the religious persecutions on the Continent, driving from foreign towns ingenious workmen, sent them into England, where they introduced arts hitherto unknown in this country. The Constitution, too, had been maintained; and, with the exception of the court of the Star Chamber, over which James presided in person, the principles of liberty had not been materially invaded. There was no standing army; the tenets of Protestantism were established; and the Presbyterian education of the King afforded a hope that certain traces of the faith which had been renounced would die away, and that ceremonials which were objectionable to many would be speedily discontinued. Thus, the first of the Stuart Kings enjoyed blessings not possessed by any of his predecessors; and, ascending the throne, opened a new era in the history of the country.[^[2]]

James, nevertheless, was not long in showing how fallacious were all expectations founded on his good sense, and on the supposed liberal views which a people, now intelligent and prosperous, fondly anticipated in their ruler. Educated by Buchanan as if he had been destined for the Tutor of a College rather than for a King; his memory crammed; his capacity clogged with ill-digested learning; prejudiced as a Scotchman, yet prejudiced against the established church of his native country, James well merited the sneering appellation of Henry IV. of France, who called him “Captain of Wits and Clerk of Arms,”[^[3]] and proved, too lamentably, how easy it is by wrong-headedness to embroil and debase a country.

The blunders which James committed in his civil government began before the subject of this memoir was introduced to royal notice; yet, since George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, figured prominently in that period which is supposed to have been the commencement of decay, the origin of the Great Rebellion has been attributed to his maladministration, nor has the grave responsibility been absolutely disavowed, even by Lord Clarendon, the apologist and admirer of the Duke of Buckingham.

“I am not,” writes Lord Clarendon, “so sharp-sighted as those who have discerned the Rebellion contriving from (if not before) the death of Queen Elizabeth, and fomented by several Princes and great Ministers of State in Christendom to the time it broke out; neither do I look back so far, because I believe the design to have been so long since formed, but that, by viewing the tempers, dispositions, and habits at that time of the Court and country, we may discern the minds of men prepared, of some to act, and of others to suffer all that has since happened.”[^[4]]

Whatsoever may have been the faults of James the First, it is probable that they would not essentially have affected the well-being of his son, had not the system of favouritism, which was one of James’s greatest weaknesses, acted upon the character of the young Prince, whose earliest associations were stamped with devotion to Buckingham. At once minister, minion, and master, the power behind the throne, to whose dictation, during the years of his brief and bright career, even the High Court of Parliament submitted—the distinction of being the last royal favourite in England is due to this ill-fated man. By him the “sluice of honour,” as an old writer expresses it, “was opened and closed at pleasure.” He was to King James a sort of “Parhelion,”[^[5]] at whose course foreign Courts wondered, whilst the sagacious and prophetic at home trembled as they beheld at once its eccentricity and its splendour. At his death the experiment, which had been tried once too often, was abandoned, never to be renewed; and no acknowledged successor in the meteoric career of Buckingham ever appeared before the dazzled gaze of our countrymen. The minutest circumstances relative to his origin are interesting, not only as they concern one whose noble bearing and powers of fascination almost effaced, during his life, the remembrance of his errors, but as they unfold the foundation of a great family which still influences our national councils.

Until the elevation of George Villiers from low estate to an unparalleled career of success, the race from which he sprang, though ancient and honourable, was but partially known to fame, and his ancestors, how valiant and loyal soever they had proved, had held the tenor of their way with little variation, and with only an occasional gleam of celebrity on one or other of its lineage; a course of moderate prosperity maintaining, without altering, its condition—rather, as Sir Henry Wotton has well expressed it, “without obscurity than with any great lustre.”[^[6]] “I will, however,” adds the same quaint writer, after referring to the difficulty of making a proper estimate of all public characters, “show, therefore, as evenly as I can, and deduce him from his cradle through the deep and lubrick waves of State and Court till he be swallowed in the Gulf of Fatality.”[^[7]]

It was the fashion of those who were opposed to the Duke of Buckingham in his political career to speak with contempt of his origin, and thus attack one who was endowed with every possible advantage of natural gifts—and upon whom honours were lavished—on what was erroneously supposed to be his vulnerable point. Sir Symonds D’Ewes, as might be expected, was not backward in his strictures against a courtier so favoured and envied. He compares Villiers, indeed, to a man of the highest rank, but draws the parallel in these offensive terms:—“He was likest to Henry Loraine, Duke of Guise, in the most of the later passages of his life and death, that possible could be, onelie in this they differed, that Guise was a prince born, but Buckingham was but a younger son of an ordinarie familie of gentrie, of which the coat armoure was so meane as either in this age or of late years, without any ground, right, or authoritie, that I could see, they deferred their owne coate armoure, and bare the arms of Weyland, a Suffolke family, being argent on a cross gules, five escalops, &c.”[^[8]] And again, when speaking of Felton, the assassin of the Duke, Sir Simond cannot forbear remarking:—“His familie was, doubtless, more noble and ancient than the Duke of Buckingham’s, and his ende much blesseder.”[^[9]] To similar strictures does Wotton probably refer, when he remarks that, in “a wilde pamphlet” published about the Duke of Buckingham, the writers, “beside other pityfule malignities, would scant allow him to be a gentleman.”

It is far easier to make a charge of this nature than to maintain it, for the family of Villiers had long been known in the County of Leicester, where it removed from Kinalton, in Nottinghamshire, the first place of migration from Normandy; where, writes Sir Henry Wotton, “it had been long seated.” It does not appear that Leicestershire was the only place of residence which the ancestors of George Villiers possessed; as the same authority expresses it, they “chiefly continued” in that county for the space of four hundred years before the birth of the first Duke of Buckingham;[^[10]] a time long enough, one might suppose, to satisfy a reasonable genealogist.

The name of Villiers, conformably to the arbitrary spelling of ancient times, was written differently, sometimes Villiers, at others Villers, Villeres, and Vyleres; nor did those who bore this famous surname finally adopt the spelling “Villiers” until the reign of James I.

The founder of the family, Philip de Villers, of Lisle Adam, was a Norman Seigneur; he was also Grand Master of the Island of Rhodes, and signalized himself in the defence of that island against the Turks. After the conquest, certain lands in Leicestershire were granted by William the Conqueror to a Norman Knight hearing the appellation De Villers; but another branch of the same race remained in France, and its various members have been distinguished in courts, in arms, and as legislators. Argiver de Villers was sewer[^[11]] to Philip the First; Pierre de Villers held the office of Grand Master in his native country, under Charles the Sixth.[^[12]]

Invention was therefore not requisite to dignify the long unbroken line of respectable progenitors to whom George Villiers owed his origin. “Heraldry,” remarks a certain writer, when referring to this celebrated man, “might blazon as large fields of his pedigree as might concern any subject to prove.”[^[13]] Without bringing that assertion to the test, it is sufficient to add that successive generations flourished and passed away, sometimes emerging from their seclusion to follow the reigning monarch to the wars, as in the instances of Sir Alexander de Villers, and Sir Nicholas his son, the former assisting Edward the First in the Crusades, and adding to his name the designation of “Brookesby[Brookesby];” and the latter, after sundry exploits in the Holy Land, augmenting his armorial bearings by the Cross of St. George and five escalop shells, ancient badges of the Crusaders; so that the “coat armour,” esteemed so mean by Sir Symonds D’Ewes, and said to have been borrowed, was not without its distinctions, even at an early period.

But it is singular that from a personage of lowly fortunes, if not of humble family, sprang the generation which was so noted in its time.

At Brookesby[Brookesby], the manorial residence of the race, there had dwelt, for several centuries, successive proprietors, little remarkable, since the time of the valiant Crusaders, either for their career in arms, or for their ambition to rise in the State. A stream, dignified by the name of the River Wreke, flows near the house, which is said to have been the residence of the Villiers family; a gentleman’s seat, a plain and somewhat insignificant building, having a central division, and two projecting wings, now owns the name of Brookesby[Brookesby].[^[14]]

The town of Brookesby[Brookesby] has, of late years, been returned as a decayed town; but its church is worthy of note in a county which, as Fuller remarks, “affordeth no cathedrals, and as for the parish churches, they may take the eye, but not ravish the admiration of the beholder.” This structure, dedicated to St. Michael, boasts a handsome tower, above which rises a small spire, well crocheted; the battlements of the tower are remarkably beautiful, being open worked, and embellished with a row of shields, of which the most conspicuous is that of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, and of his Duchess, and on it there is an honorary augmentation, showing the descent which he claimed from the blood royal of Edward the Fourth.[^[15]] It seems as if, amid the decay which surrounds it, this church has remained as a witness of the former greatness of that now extinct branch of the Villiers family, whose glories emblazon its battlements and windows. The direct line of the favourite of James the First ceased in two generations after his proud and brief career.

From the retirement of Brookesby[Brookesby], one of its owners was summoned, during a royal progress, to the presence of Queen Elizabeth. This was Sir George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, who was consequently knighted, when High Sheriff for Leicestershire,[^[16]] by the Queen. Sir George married the daughter of William Sanders, of Harrington, in the County of Northampton, and had by that marriage two sons, William, who inherited Brokesby and became a baronet; and Edward, afterwards President of Munster, and the ancestor of the present Earl of Jersey.

Three daughters were also the issue of this marriage; Elizabeth, who married Lord Butler, of Bramfield; Anne, who married William Washington, of Pakington, County of Leicester; and Frances, unmarried.[^[17]] Their mother died, and Sir George, perhaps imprudently, for his estate was not considerable, formed a second union.

Some circumstances rendered this step, indeed, peculiarly indiscreet; and nothing could account for so rash an act in a man of grave years, but an infatuation produced by extraordinary personal gifts, and probably by some ability and management on the part of his second wife.

It is evident that the Knight had never contemplated the probability of such an event, for he settled the greater portion of his estates upon his first wife and her children; and a mere pittance remained for the issue of any second marriage. Yet, in spite of these considerations, Sir George Villiers was captivated by a handsome person, the attractions of which appear not to have been wholly lost upon him even during the lifetime of the first Lady Villiers.

It happened that among the inferior servants of his household, there lived a young woman, named Mary Beaumont, the indigent member of an ancient family,[^[18]] by some asserted to have been that of the Beaumonts of Cole-Orton, in Leicestershire, by others, to have been settled at Glenfield, in the same county.

The occupation of Mary Beaumont is stated to have been that of a “kitchen-maid” in the house of Sir George Villiers, but this assertion may possibly be traced to the desire of a certain class of writers to debase as much as possible the family of Villiers.

That she was, however, in a menial capacity of some kind, appears from common report to have been understood.[^[19]] “Her ragged habit,” observes a contemporary historian, “could not shade the beautiful and excellent frame of her person, which Sir George, taking notice of, prevailed with his lady to remove her out of the kitchen into her chamber, which, with much importunity on Sir George’s part, and unwillingness of my lady, at last was done.”

After the death of his wife, the sentiments of the widower were expressed without reserve. He was observed “to look very sweet upon my lady’s woman;” he was known to bestow upon her twenty pounds, to purchase as good a dress as that sum would procure; and when he saw her attired in a manner suitable to her age and loveliness, he was transported with admiration. The result may easily be conceived; the knight married the serving-maid, and as ambitious a spirit as ever stimulated the energies of woman thus received its first gratification. Endowed by nature with such profuse outward gifts, Mary Beaumont possessed, no less, the advantages of a shrewd sense; she was fond, as her subsequent career showed, of state and profusion; she became, from her influence and her attractions, the leader of the highest circles; whilst she retained over the mind of her son that sway which she deservedly acquired by her care of his infancy and childhood.

In after times, it is curious to find Mary Beaumont, then Lady Villiers Compton, inviting her country kindred to Court, and providing a place for them to learn to carry themselves in a “Court-like manner.” It was the lowly serving-maid who first introduced what were called Country Dances instead of French dances, which her provincial relations could not learn soon enough for their deportment to assimilate with the costly garments with which their prodigal kinswoman supplied them, in order that they might do her credit in the gay spheres to which they were introduced.[^[20]]

Three sons and a daughter were the offspring of this marriage; the eldest, John, afterwards created Baron Villiers, of Stoke, and Viscount Purbeek, was singularly infelicitous in his domestic life, but is said, by an historian adverse to the family, to have “exceeded them all in wit and honesty, and, by his influence, to have kept his brother George in some bounds of modesty, whilst he lived with him, by speaking plain English to him.”[^[21]]

The next child of the second marriage was George Villiers, who was born at Brookesby, on the 20th of August in the year 1592.[^[22]] Another son, Christopher, became eventually Baron Daventry, and Earl of Anglesea; a daughter, Mary, afterwards Countess of Denbigh, was also born, to encumber, as it seemed, the limited means with which the parents of this younger race were scarcely able to endow them.

On the fourth of January, 1605-6[1605-6], Sir George Villiers died. His landed property consisted at that time of the Manors of Brookesby, Howby, Godby Marward, and the Grange of Goadby. These were all settled on the children of his first marriage. He was also lay improprietor of the tithes of herbage and hay, in the parishes of Cadewell and Wikeham, and these, he settled on the three sons of Mary Beaumont, John, George and Christopher;[^[23]] his daughter appears to have been left wholly portionless. When it is remembered that this family were all raised to rank and opulence, and that they were, in various instances, the sources from which the ancestry of several great houses is derived, the early privation and difficulties of their career form a strong contrast to their subsequent elevation.

It was not alone poverty that seemed likely to keep the younger children of Sir George Villiers in obscurity; there were wanting in his father’s heir those qualities which bring the humble forward, and enrich more than even prudence and frugality. Sir William, who now took possession of Brookesby, was contented with his country lot; and so much did he despise honours and titles, that when he was created a Baronet in 1619,[^[24]] the dignity was almost forced upon him. “He was,” says a contemporary author, “so careless of honour in courting that compliment, as that the King (James First) said, ‘Sir William would scarce give him thanks for it, and doubted whether he would accept of it.’” Thus, little assistance in the career of life could be expected from one who would scarcely deem the prizes most sought for by men, worth the trouble of a little personal exertion.

Upon the death of her husband, Lady Villiers retired to Godby Marward, which was appropriated to her as a dower house. Her son, George, was then ten years old; the loss which he had sustained in the death of his father, great as it seemed, was fully compensated by the care of her whom Sir Henry Wotton entitles “his beautiful and provident mother.” The promising boy had already received some education at Billesdon, in Leicestershire, where he was sent to school, and instructed in music and in some “slight literature;” but to no common hands would Lady Villiers, as the dawning personal charms of her son unfolded, entrust the culture of this, her favourite child; she had him, henceforth, as his biographer expresses it, “in her especial care.”[^[25]] Possibly, in her widowed seclusion, when she looked upon the face which afterwards captivated all beholders, she anticipated the day when her son should appear at Court, and attract some marks of that royal favour which had been shewn to Leicester, to Raleigh, and to Essex for no better reason than that they were handsomer and more graceful than their compeers, and that their manly beauty was set off by the gallant bearing of well-trained “carpet knights.” Queen Elizabeth had taught her subjects to value those attributes which had sunk so low in fashion and estimation in the troublous reign of Mary, or during the short and saintly career of Edward.

Lady Villiers had the discernment to perceive the deficiencies of her son’s mind and character, and resolved to avail herself of those advantages with which he was endowed, without forcing his attention to pursuits that were ungenial to him. She soon discovered that he was neither inclined to reflection, nor disposed to study; nor did he ever alter in those respects, but continued, through life, illiterate, a defect which his readiness in some measure supplied, but which prevented his becoming a great statesman, in spite of the fairest opportunities that ever man enjoyed. In after life he learned, when at Court, “to sift and question well,”[^[26]] and to supply his own shallow stock of information by “drawing or flowing unto him” the best sources of experience and knowledge in others. His manner, says Sir Henry Wotton, was so sweet and attractive, “in seeking what might be for the public or his own proper use, that if the Muses favoured him not, the Graces were his friends;” and Lord Clarendon remarks of Villiers, that “concerning the traits and endowments of his mind, if the consideration of learning extend itself not further than drudgery in books, the Duke’s employment forbids us to suspect him of being any great scholar; but if a nimble and fluent expression and delivery of his mind (and his discourse was of all subjects) in a natural and proper dialect be considered, he was well lettered.”[^[27]]

Lady Villiers seems both to have foreseen all these defects, and to have prognosticated the atoning graces in her son. She acted as a needy and ambitious woman was likely to act. Instead of supplying the deficiencies of her son’s character and intellect by a sound education, she directed his attention to dancing, fencing, and the other exercises, styled by Lord Clarendon “the conservative qualities and ornaments of youth.”[youth.”][^[28]] And in these pursuits so rapid a progress was made, that the tutors of all the three brothers were obliged to restrain the progress of George Villiers in order that their other pupils should not be disheartened by his proficiency. Meantime, his expanding beauty of form and face seemed to his proud mother to render her son worthy of a higher culture than that which she could bestow upon him at Godby. Her jointure was very small, and although Godby, where she resided, was a suitable abode for the widow of Sir George Villiers, the Manor House being large enough to receive James the First and his retinue during a royal progress, yet her poverty obliged her to live in great retirement. A rigid economy must have been necessary to regulate its household. Lady Villiers had only two hundred a-year, both for herself and her family, and that income was to cease at her death, when her orphan children would have but a pittance besides their beauty and their talents.[^[29]] Impelled, as it is hinted by several historians, by a desire to benefit her children, the widowed lady, still young and fair, resolved to marry again. Sir Thomas Marquin was first the object of her choice, and after his death, she bestowed her hand upon Sir Thomas Compton, Knight of the Bath, and brother of Lord Compton, First Earl of Northampton, whose marriage with the daughter of Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor of London, and commonly called “rich Spencer,” had brought an increase of honour and influence to his family. This union was the more important to Lady Villiers and her children, because their half-brothers and sisters looked upon them with no good will, and were little disposed to further their interests.

It was at that time the custom to send our young nobility, and even their inferiors, to France to complete their education. Lady Villiers resolved to afford her son George this advantage. She selected him from her other children partly from partiality, for it is expressly stated that “he who was debarred from his father’s estate was happy in his mother’s love;”[^[30]] and partly on account of his singular beauty of person. He is said, indeed, to have had, when he reached man’s estate, “no blemish from head to foot,” save that his eyebrows are stated to have been somewhat over pendulous, a defect which some of his admirers thought to be redeemed by the uncommon brilliancy of the eyes which flashed beneath them.[^[31]] The Earl of Essex, to whom Villiers is compared, was taller, and of an “abler body” than the favourite of James I. But Villiers had the “neater limbs and freer delivery, he carried his well-proportioned body well, and every movement was graceful.” Nor does Lord Clarendon, who thus describes him, think it beneath the dignity of his subject to remark that Villiers “exceeded in the daintiness of his leg and foot,” whilst Essex was celebrated for his hands, which, says his panegyrist, though it be but feminine praise, “he took from his father.”[^[32]] The complexion of George Villiers was singularly clear and beautiful, his forehead high and smooth, his eyes dark and full of intelligence and sweetness, whilst the perfect oval of his face, and delicate turn of features, fine, yet noble, and the air of refinement which characterised both his countenance and his bearing, rendered him one of the most attractive of human beings. As he attained to maturity, a peculiar courtesy of manner, a frankness and merriment which diverged at times into a total forgetfulness of forms, a power of throwing off the appearance of all oppressing business and secret cares, although of these he had his share, and of assuming “a very pleasant and vacant face,” a love of social life, and certain traits of character, half folly, half romance, won upon everyone that approached him before prosperity had changed courtesy into arrogance, or political intrigues marred the open expression of a physiognomy on which none could look without admiration.

The youth, whose promise, even at a very early age, augured the results which I have anticipated, reached Paris after the death of Henry IV.[^[33]]

It was probably in the autumn that Villiers repaired to the Continent, since it is expressly stated that he was eighteen when he undertook that journey, and he had not attained that age until August, 1610. It seems, therefore, likely that Villiers beheld France under a strange aspect, that of a universal state of despair. Protestants and Catholics were alike overwhelmed by the recent calamity; the former might well dread a fresh massacre, but the grief of their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen dispelled that apprehension. The excess of lamentation, expressed somewhat theatrically—the cries of widows and orphans in the streets—the sight of women rushing through the mourners at the funeral, screaming—the orations, interrupted by sobs, in which the virtues of the deceased monarch were panegyrized—these must have ceased before Villiers visited Paris; but the Huguenots still sheltered themselves in the Arsenal, where the great Sully mourned his royal master and friend.[^[34]]

In Paris, Villiers remained three years, prosecuting his studies, which consisted of French, and the practice of polite and martial exercises. His education tended, indeed, to increase his failings, to heighten his taste for display and love of pleasure, and to weaken his reasoning faculties. He had, according to the acknowledgment of his great partisan, Sir Henry Wotton, “little grammatical foundation;” and French appears to have been the only foreign language that he ever acquired; nevertheless, it is remarkable what application to business he evinced during the last few years of his life; his punctuality in correspondence, and the clear and simple style of his letters, prove how easily his mind might have been trained to higher pursuits than those on which his mother, worldly, but not wise, based her expectations of his future fortunes.

Paris, which Villiers was destined twice to revisit under circumstances very dissimilar to those of his first residence there, was then the resort of foreigners. The youth, who had emerged from the quiet haunts of Goadby Grange, took his first lessons in life in the city which Howell, in his familiar letters, styles, the “huge magazine of men.” “Its buildings,” says that writer, “were indifferently fair; its streets as foul during all the four seasons of the year; a perpetual current of coaches, carts, and horses encumbering them, narrow and dirty as they were, and were sometimes so entangled that it was an hour or more before they could proceed. In such a stop,” as Howell terms it, “was Ravaillac‘s[Ravaillac‘s] fatal opportunity afforded, and the great Henry slain.”[^[35]] The plague[^[36]] settled perpetually in one corner or another of Paris, but Villiers escaped that risk; he returned, apparently exempt from foreign vices, unscathed by a more fearful contagion than the plague; at least, thus may we infer from the assertion of Sir Henry Wotton. “He came home,” says that writer, “in his natural plight, without affected forms, the ordinary disease of travellers.”[^[37]] It may reasonably be presumed that the young man who retains his simplicity of deportment, still possesses a corresponding integrity of character.

Villiers was now twenty-one years old; his accomplishments may shortly be summed up: he was an excellent fencer, an incomparable dancer, he understood the arrangement of costume and the art of dressing well, but those valuable acquirements lay dormant in one who possessed no wardrobe, for he went to France poor, and his family had not been enriched during his absence. Villiers was, in addition to these graces, a perfectly well-bred man. Lord Clarendon describes him to have been “a fair-spoken gentleman, of a sweet and accostable nature.” At present, his constitution, which afterwards gave way beneath the pressure of business, or in consequence of the excitements of his dazzling career, was in full vigour. Such was the youth who now returned to gratify his mother’s ambitious hopes, by that career to which the efforts of the young aristocracy of England were then chiefly directed. It may be here remarked as singular, that Villiers was trained to no specific profession; he had not been initiated into those elements of learning necessary to qualify him for the church or the bar; he had not served in the army; but was, in fact, literally brought up to follow his fortunes at the Court of James the First. It appears to those in modern times a bold speculation, but the character of the monarch upon whose peculiarities it was based accounts for the scheme, apparently so chimerical, of qualifying a son for nothing better than to depend merely upon the chances of an hour, for, had opportunity been wanting, the graces and accomplishments of George Villiers might have been for ever concealed, or disregarded.

But it is not improbable that Lady Villiers, especially after her second marriage, had certain dependence upon the exertions of personal friends, through whose agency she trusted to advance her son’s interests at Court. From them, too, she probably learned that the disgrace of Somerset was at hand.

When Villiers returned to England, he found no better prospect before him than to pass some time at Goadby, under the “wing and counsel of his mother.”[^[38]] In this retreat, he had leisure to study the temper of the times, and to view from afar the characteristics of that sphere for which he was destined.

It appears to have been the fashion of the day to rush to London, and to desert those country seats to which James the First and his son Charles endeavoured by proclamations and harangues to restrain the gentry. The innovation was severely reproved by James in the summer of 1616, when he made that memorable speech in the Star Chamber, in which he censured the custom, attributing it, of course, to the wives and daughters of the offenders. “Thus,” remarked James, “do they neglect the country hospitality, and cumber the city.” He next complained of the new and sumptuous buildings in the metropolis, of the coaches, lacqueys, and fine clothes in which the higher classes indulged, comparing them to “Frenchmen,” or, as if that were not harsh enough, declaring that they “lived miserably in their houses, like Italians, becoming apes to other nations.” Finally, he proposed to remedy these evils by an edict of the Star Chamber.

CHAPTER II.

JAMES I., HIS DISAPPROVAL OF THE GENTRY CROWDING INTO LONDON—DISGUST ENTERTAINED BY THE OLD FAMILIES TO HIM AND HIS COURT—THE CLINTONS, BLOUNTS, VERES, AND WILLOUGHBY D’ERESBYS SHOW IT—CHARACTER OF SIR THOMAS LAKE—WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE, THE EARLY PATRON OF VILLIERS—ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF VILLIERS TO JAMES—AMBITIOUS VIEWS WHICH IT SUGGESTED—HIS ATTACHMENT TO THE DAUGHTER OF SIR ROGER ASHTON—THEIR ENGAGEMENT BROKEN OFF—ACCOUNT OF THE KING’S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE IN 1614-15—SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE COURTLY LADIES WHO WERE PRESENT THERE—THE QUEEN’S ABSENCE—COUNTESS OF ARUNDEL—COUNTESS OF SOMERSET—COUNTESS OF SALISBURY—LADY HOWARD OF WALDEN—PERFORMANCE OF THE PLAY OF “IGNORAMUS” IN CLARE HALL—THE DESIGN OF THIS COMEDY TO RIDICULE THE COMMON LAW—ADMIRATION EXPRESSED BY THE KING, DURING THE PERFORMANCE, OF THE PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF VILLIERS, WHO WAS PRESENT—THE SUBSEQUENT REPRESENTATIONS REFERRED TO.

CHAPTER II.

It might be presumed, from this harangue, that never had the Court of James been so magnificent, nor such a throng of the high-born and the opulent clustered in the metropolis as at that time. But the fact was that whilst obscure country gentlemen brought thither their families, the old nobility fled from a court which cherished Somerset and proscribed Raleigh, and where all the real business of the King’s life consisted in expedients to raise money in order to support an expenditure from which he derived no dignity. The great and gallant representatives of the Houses of Clinton, Blount, and Willoughby D’Eresby sought in continental countries the meed of honour which was denied them in the service of their own country by the pacific temper of the King.[^[39]] The Tower entombed some of the noblest spirits. There still languished the Earl of Northumberland and the Earl of Wilton; the one beloved, nevertheless, by Henry Prince of Wales, though suspected of being concerned with his kinsman Percy in the Gunpowder Plot; the other a “very hopeful gentleman blasted in the bud,” who had been imprisoned since the Raleigh plot. Others prosecuted schemes of discovery; West, Earl of Delawarr, in Virginia, attempted to second Raleigh, and contenting himself with that return and inward satisfaction which a good mind feels in its own consciousness of virtue, died in the undertaking. Others, such as the Earl of Arundel, could not tolerate the vulgar revels, the tasteless prodigality of the Court of James; that nobleman confined himself, therefore, to the splendours of his stately home, for his soul was not that of a patriot, nor had he, says Lord Clarendon, “any other affection for the nation or kingdom than as he has a home in it, in which, like the great Leviathan, he might disport himself.”[^[40]]

Room and opportunity there were, therefore, for fresh aspirants to compete for royal favour; nevertheless the Earl of Somerset still reigned pre-eminent, and had then been recently promoted to the highest office about the King’s person, that of Lord Chamberlain. The reason assigned for this new display of partiality was also such as to prove that Somerset was firmly planted in his sovereign’s favour. He succeeded in the high office the Earl of Salisbury, who, as James expressed it, was wont to entertain his royal master with “epigrams, discourses, and learned epistles, and other such nicks and devices.” These, the King observed, would pay no debts, and he therefore selected in Somerset, he said, a “plain and honest gentleman, who, if he committed a fault, had not rhetoric enough to excuse it.”[^[41]] It seemed therefore very improbable that Villiers should ever hope to rival one who was so rooted in the King’s regard as the Earl of Somerset, but events which no human foresight could have anticipated worked for him in the dark secrecy of a woman’s guilty career.

Mature years, precipitated into old age by disease and infirmities, had brought no increase to James of that practical wisdom which regulates a Court as well as a family. His imputed wisdom, which was so over panegyrized in his own time, and which has been too much depreciated in ours, consisted in shrewd and sensible general notions, which he never seems to have applied to his private benefit.

So that, though the favour of Somerset, when George Villiers returned from France, was in its decline, the King could not be deterred from seeking a new object for his partiality. He might indeed have learned a lesson which should have taught him that he had disgusted the nation and lowered himself by his system of favouritism, yet, after recovering from the perils and vexations of the infamous business which ruined Carr, he had not a notion that it would be wise to profit by experience, and was ready to commence a new career of folly, and to sacrifice all the slender portion of dignity that remained to him—a dignity which consisted chiefly in the general confidence of his subjects towards him—by adopting any new object that might chance to cross his path.

It was during the year of inaction which Villiers passed at Goadby, that he became acquainted with the family of Sir Roger Aston. This knight was the father of four daughters, for one of whom Villiers, in the quiet hours of his country life, conceived an attachment. One might, on a first view of this incident, wonder at the want of caution in Lady Villiers, in detaining her son at Goadby, there to shackle his future course by an early, and, apparently, unprofitable engagement; but she was not acting, it appears, inconsistently with her schemes of future advancement, when she permitted the intimacy which produced this result. Sir Roger Aston was, it is true, only the base-born son of John Aston, of Aston, in Cheshire;[^[42]] he could, therefore, derive no lustre from that ancient family; he had held formerly the office of barber to King James when in Scotland, where Sir Roger was chiefly educated.[^[43]] He was, in time, made a groom of the royal chamber, and further promoted to be master of the wardrobe, and, however humble his birth and education may have been, became a person of no inconsiderable influence at Court. During the last twenty years of Elizabeth’s reign, he was the continual correspondent of Cecil, whom he supplied with details of all that transpired in Scotland. The powerful minister was not, it appears, ashamed to owe much important information to the former barber, and, fortunately for those who rested upon the good offices of Aston, he is reported to have been a “very honest, plain-dealing man, no dissembler, neither did he do any ill office to any man.”[^[44]]

In addition to these acquired advantages, Sir Roger was enabled to provide his daughters with portions. It may, therefore, be inferred that Lady Villiers—who could never have foreseen that her son would have claimed the hand of an heiress of ducal line, nor have anticipated that those attractions, of which she could but partially calculate the value, should captivate in after times even a royal mistress—approved of the growing affection which sprang up amid the rural scenes of Goadby. It was permitted, indeed, at first, by both the parents, whose interests were concerned in it, and it seems, on the part of the lady, to have been a fervent and disinterested sentiment. But the question of a settlement intervened: Villiers, in consideration of a handsome dower, to which the young damsel was entitled, was required to settle upon her the moderate sum of eighty pounds a-year. The arrangement was impracticable, for all his fortune at that time, and even after he had appeared for some time at Court, amounted to only fifty or sixty pounds annually.[^[45]]

Some opposition to the engagement originated, therefore, with the friends of the young lady, though she, passionately enamoured, was at first fixed in her choice, and firm to her professions of affection. “The gentlewoman,” says Sir Anthony Weldon, “loved him so well as, could all his friends have made for her great fortune but a hundred marks jointure, she had married him presently, in despite of all her friends, and, no question, would have had him without any fortune at all.” But whilst the affair was under consideration, or probably when it was partially concluded, but was still cherished in the minds of the parties most concerned in it, a circumstance occurred which diverted the hopes of Villiers into another direction; a new stimulus was given to the energies of his nature, and ambition, as it is known to have done before, proved mightier than love.

It was at a horse-race in Cambridgeshire that Villiers first attracted the attention of the King. The poverty of the young man was then such that even on this notable occasion, when the sovereign, on his annual progress, was expected, and at a time when the costliness, or, as it was well styled, the “bravery” of dress was at its height, he could not afford any new attire. An “old black suit, broken out in divers places,” was, as Sir Symonds D’Ewes asserts,[^[46]] the garment in which his narrow means constrained him to appear amid the gay courtiers who composed the royal train.

As if this were not a sufficient mortification, other inconveniences arose. The race had taken place near Linton, and most of the company slept at that town. There was no room in the lodgings of the inn for the ill-dressed youth in the old black suit, “and he was obliged,” adds the same writer, “and even glad, to lie on a truckle bed in a gentleman’s chamber, of mean quality, also, at that time, from whose own mouth I heard this relation, who was himself an eye-witness of it.”[^[47]]

According to another account, it was at Apthorpe, whither King James, in the month of August, 1614, had sent his dogs, that the monarch was so struck by the appearance and deportment of Villiers, that he resolved to mould him, as it were “platonically, to his own idea.”[^[48]] The impression produced upon the King was publicly observed by attendants and courtiers, and the success of Villiers was decided. About this time, indeed, Villiers formed an acquaintance upon whose counsels he acted, so as to take the tide of fortune at its height.

Villiers into the English Court,[^[49]] and there was, perhaps, not one of the subordinate personages better calculated to guide, in that sphere, the first steps of an inexperienced youth than Lake. Patronized originally by Sir Francis Walsingham, and by him recommended to the service of Queen Elizabeth, he had acted as Secretary for the French and Latin tongue to his Royal mistress, and acquired, from his accurate and rapid writing, the name of “Swiftsure.” In the Court of Elizabeth, where none but men of ability flourished, he had received his political education. He had enjoyed the Queen’s confidence, and was reading to her in French and Latin at the very moment when the Countess of Warwick told him that the Queen had expired. James made him a Privy Counsellor, and afterwards appointed him one of his Secretaries of State.[^[50]] Lake eventually fell into disgrace, not from his own fault, but owing to the unfortunate marriage of his eldest daughter to the Lord de Roos[Roos], son of the Earl of Exeter, and to the subsequent enmity of the Cecils. But at the time when Villiers owed his first introduction to him, Lake was in the height of his influence, and James, even after his downfall, accorded to him the praise that “he was a Minister of State fit to serve any greater prince in Europe.”[^[51]]

Under such auspices, Villiers secured the best introduction to the world that can be obtained—that afforded by individuals whose high rank was upheld in public estimation by their personal influence; and it augurs well of the views which were at that time entertained of his character, and of the terms on which it was desired to place him with the King, that those who were real lovers of their country, and patrons of its best interests, should have presented him to their sovereign.

Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, “led him,” says Fuller, “by the one hand, and William, Earl of Pembroke, by the other.”

Few women shone in the giddy revels of the Court with a purer lustre than the Countess of Bedford; her virtues and accomplishments may have been exaggerated by grateful poets and dependants, but they were such as to confer a certain dignity on all whom she countenanced. Hence we must admire the discrimination of Lake in obtaining for the youthful Villiers the friendship of one whom society estimated so highly. The sister of Sir John Harrington, the Countess of Bedford, resembled her brother in his love of letters, and fortune favoured the full indulgence of her inclinations. By the death of that accomplished brother, she succeeded to two-thirds of his possessions. She had then been married six months to Edward, Earl of Bedford; and, at his decease, which happened in 1627, she was left in the uncontrolled possession of all that nobleman’s estates. This proof of her husband’s confidence and attachment was not misapplied. The widowed Countess, resembling somewhat the Mrs. Montagu of later times, aimed to be the patroness of poets. Of course her motives have been satirised, and her mode of dispensing her patronage impugned, for there seems to be, in most biographers, a love of decrying lettered women of rank. Grainger, for instance, declares that the Countess of Bedford bought the praise of poets by money, and that they, in return, were lavish of incense.[^[52]] Her taste for gardening has, however, met with more indulgence. Sir William Temple, in his “Gardens of Epicurus,” praises her “most perfect picture of a garden” at Moor Park, in Surrey, for she was, in truth, the first improver of the English flower-garden—an honourable distinction. Her education was in conformity with the practice of the day; she was well read in classics, and had a knowledge of ancient medals. Such was the lady-patroness of Villiers. To her Ben Jonson inscribed three of his epigrams:[^[53]] to her Dr. Donne addressed several poems, whilst Daniel celebrated her in verse.

It is singular that no relics have been discovered of this far-famed lady’s writings, though numerous allusions are made to them in the works of others. A marvellous degree of uncertainty even attends many points of her career; the place of her death is unknown; and she left behind her no will; the abode on which she spent large sums is long since levelled to the ground; this was Burleigh-on-the-Hill[Burleigh-on-the-Hill], which she sold, eventually, to Villiers, when in the height of his fortunes; he erected a noble mansion upon it, but it was destroyed in the time of the Rebellion. Thus, as Mr. Lodge observes, “she has left, by a singular fatality, as it should seem, a splendid reputation, which can neither be supported nor depreciated by the evidence of historical facts.”[^[54]]

Less exclusive, more patriotic, and far more popular even than the great Earl of Arundel, William, Earl of Pembroke, stood, on that day, on the same vantage ground with that lofty nobleman, the pre-eminence of character. Pembroke, however, was beloved as well as respected; he was pious, liberal, honourable; a lover of literature and the arts: he encouraged the ingenious and the learned, not only because he delighted in their society, but from a higher motive, a sense of duty to the community. He inherited, indeed, that generous spirit which ennobles the noble, for he was the nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, and the son of that Countess of Pembroke whom Ben Jonson has termed “the subject of all verse.” He was brave and honourable; his abilities were excellent; his character above all suspicion of the ordinary insincerity of courtiers. His immense fortune was employed worthily, not lavished, for his expenses were limited only by his “great mind,” and occasions, to use it nobly. His personal qualities were such as to make even the Court itself respectable, and “better esteemed in the country,” and he had the happiness, in spite of envy, to have more friends than any public character of his time No man dared to avow himself the enemy of one who was beloved equally at the Court of James and in the retirement of a home circle at Wilton; who sought for neither office nor honours, and yet was lenient to the faults from which his noble nature was exempt.

Such was the nobleman who took by the hand a poor youth, whose present integrity and innocence might, he perhaps believed, vanquish the degrading influence of Somerset and his wife, to whose fame report already attached the darkest rumours. In the patron who was moved to second by his well-earned influence the fortunes of an obscure country youth, Villiers was thus no less fortunate than in the favour of Lucy Harrington. Happy had it been for him had he modelled his own conduct and rectified his notions by the standards now placed before his view; for there was nothing in the bearing of Pembroke to lower the dignity of virtue. That nobleman had been termed “the very picture and viva effigies of nobility.”[^[55]] In person, majestic, in his manners, full of stately gravity, which characterised him, whether in repose or when animated, his easy wit, free from every taint of malice, his habitual, unconscious good-breeding, might have assisted that young and unformed mind in the formation of good taste, a property which rarely flourishes without the aid of refined associates. Some defects there were, and those of a vital nature, which, in looking closely into any character of that time, cannot but be discovered. These were materially owing to the bartering marriages of the middle and early modern times—the selling one’s dearest hopes and interests in this life for an estate, or an honour, or a reversion. The standard of morality was, of course, lowered, as it still is in France, by the excuse that fidelity to a wife could hardly be expected under the circumstances of enforced unions, sometimes contracted while the parties were children. William, Earl of Pembroke, was one of the many who exhibited this doctrine in his practice. United to an heiress, for whose fortune even the grave Lord Clarendon observes, he paid “too dear by taking her person into the bargain,”[^[56]] he devoted himself publicly to Christian, the daughter of Lord Bruce, afterwards Countess of Devonshire. To her he addressed those beautiful lines which were, with other poems, edited by Dr. Donne, prefixed with a fulsome dedication to the Countess.[^[57]]

To Pembroke, Buckingham was, perhaps, indebted for that love of the arts and taste for building and embellishments which afterwards distinguished the lordly proprietor of York House and Burleigh. It is, however, painful to reflect that not three years after the good offices performed by Lord Pembroke to Villiers, a coolness took place upon some matters of little moment compared with the debt of gratitude due to the Earl by the favourite.[^[58]]

Notwithstanding the countenance of the Countess of Bedford, and of the Earl of Pembroke, those who detailed the smallest incidents of the Court observed that the favour of Villiers appeared to be stationary; even his appointment as a Groom of the Bedchamber was deferred in favour of one Carr, a baseborn kinsman of the Earl of Somerset; and it began to be thought that the King’s preference for Villiers was declining.[^[59]] But the game was begun—the hopes of future power, of wealth, perhaps of rank, cherished by maternal counsels, were now working upon the mind of the young adventurer, and he resolved upon one sacrifice to obtain the objects at which he grasped—the sacrifice was, his youthful attachment to old Sir Roger Aston’s daughter.[^[60]]

As it often happens, the relinquishment of fondly-cherished hopes was owing, in part, to the advice of a friend: the disposition of Villiers was naturally so generous, that, to abandon all his pretensions to one who was willing to forego the gifts of fortune for his sake, would, probably, not otherwise have occurred to his mind. It happened, however, that whilst he was lingering about the Court, a young companion, Sir Robert Graham, one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, professed himself to be greatly interested in his advancement. Villiers soon constituted Graham his “familiar friend,” and, being brought into what Sir Henry Wotton terms “intrinsical society” with him, was naturally led to speak of his hopes and fears, and to unfold to the young courtier, who could boast more experience than he might pretend to possess, his projected marriage. That bond was disapproved of by Graham. “I know not,” remarks Wotton, “what luminaries he spied in his face;” but they were, at all events, sufficient to indicate success at Court. Impressed with this conviction, Graham dissuaded Villiers from his love-match, and encouraged him rather to “woo fortune,” by still further improving the King’s favourable sentiments towards him. It is not improbable that Graham was the tool of that party who earnestly desired Somerset’s downfall, and who gladly availed themselves of the attractions of young Villiers to accomplish their desires. The advice given by Graham “sank,” it is said, into the young man’s “fancy.” He may have remembered the auspicious meeting at Abthorpe, when, in his old black suit, he had charmed even the regard of a Monarch who rarely dispensed with the display of costly garments in others, how slovenly soever he might, in his royal pleasure, be in his own attire. A love-suit to a country damsel, richly endowed, even if fond and faithful, seemed but a poor exchange for a courtly career. Villiers, therefore, wavered; and perhaps the obstacles thrown in his way by the Aston family added to his irresolution. It is probable, too, that the prospect of aiding hereafter his many relations and connections may have had an influence over his decision. How great the struggle may have been, must be left to the imagination, for no documents are at hand to reveal it. The step was momentous; for it threw upon the world, to buffet with all the turmoils of a conspicuous station, a man who, otherwise, would probably have lived and died in respectable obscurity, existing upon his wife’s fortune.

Villiers, however, in time, adopted the advice of Sir Robert Graham. He abjured the thoughts of an early marriage, and devoted himself to ambition.[^[61]]

An opportunity was soon found of bringing him again before the King, under a more advantageous aspect than in his black suit, and those who sought his advancement henceforth supplied him with the means of appearing conformably to the fashion of the day, by affording him a present income far above his poor patrimonial inheritance.[^[62]] Thus assisted, the young man prepared to meet the King at Cambridge, where, in the month of March, 1614-15, the honour of a royal visit was conferred upon that University.

The influence of the Somerset family had, in a great measure, procured this distinction to Cambridge, in preference to Oxford; for the Earl of Suffolk, the father of the Countess of Somerset, had been chosen Chancellor of Cambridge during the preceding year;[^[63]] and to honour this nobleman,—who had also been recently constituted Lord Treasurer, an office from which he was eventually degraded—James announced that he purposed to fulfil an intention which he had held for some years, but had deferred, as the good fortune of Villiers decreed, until this critical period. For a powerful cabal was now concentrated against the hateful sway of this branch of the Howard family, and Villiers was the anchor on which the hopes of the adverse party rested.

On the seventh day of the month, King James made his entry into Cambridge with as much solemnity and as great a concourse of “gallants and great men as the hard weather and extremely foul ways would permit.” He was accompanied by Prince Charles, who had previously visited the University; and these royal personages were met at the boundaries of the town by the Corporation, and welcomed by the Recorder with an address setting forth the loyalty of the Mayor and Burgesses of Cambridge, and insisting upon the antiquity of the town, which “was builded ‘as historians testifie, and as these worthy personages now certified,’ before Christ’s Incarnation, with a castle, tower, and walls of defence, by Duke Cantaber.” “The Muses,” pursued the Recorder, “did branch from Athens to Cambridge, and were lovinglie lodged in the houses of citizens until ostles and halls were erected for them without endowments.” Two cups were then presented, one to the King, the other to Prince Charles, who was addressed as “a peerless and most noble Prince, our morning starre,” and the procession moved onwards.[^[64]] Among the gallants who followed through the “foul ways” of the outskirts of the town was George Villiers, no longer in his black and worn suit, but decked out with all the advantages which the pride and ambition of his mother could command. It is worthy of remark that at that time a plan for forming a public library at Cambridge, similar to that at Oxford, was entertained by the Heads of the College. The scheme was abandoned until many years afterwards, when it was adopted by the very youth who passed along amid a throng of others far more wealthy and important than himself, when he was himself Chancellor of the University.[^[65]]

The whole body of the collegians was drawn out in their appropriate costume, in order to receive the King. From some of the regulations for this occasion, it appears that the habits of the University were not at that time the most refined, nor their taste in attire the most modest. It was found necessary not only to forbid the graduates, scholars, and students of the University to frequent ale-houses and taverns during His Majesty’s sojourn, but also not to presume to take tobacco in St. Marie’s Church, or in Trinity College Hall “upon pain of expulsion.” These young gentlemen, too, were prone to indulge themselves in strange “pekadivelas, vast bands, huge cuffs, shoe-roses, tufts, locks, and topps of hair,” unbecoming that modesty and carriage suitable to the students of so renowned a University, and it was therefore determined to enforce the dress fixed by Statute, upon a penalty of 6s. 8d. for every default; and in case of contempt of this warning, of a month’s imprisonment.[^[66]] Thus restricted, the undergraduates and their superiors appeared in all the advantage of academic attire, and the King and his youthful son, passing through their well-disciplined ranks, proceeded to Trinity College, where they were domiciled.

One or two circumstances were wanting, nevertheless, to complete the magnificence of this reception:—the first was the presence of the Queen, who was not invited—an omission for which the Chancellor, and not the University, was blamed—another, the scarcity of ladies, there being only seven present, and those entirely of the Howard family. Such was the pride or policy of that haughty and rapacious faction.

The Countess of Arundel, wife of Philip, Earl of Arundel, the half-brother of the Chancellor, was one of the seven present on that occasion. She was scarcely less exalted as the wife of the great Earl of Arundel, than as the daughter of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl Marshal of England, whose co-heiress she was. Not only were her possessions large, but her virtues great; she was beloved for her excellence of character and conjugal virtues. Upon this lady’s brow, as she passed along, a cloud of sadness may perhaps have been traced for the loss of her son, James, Lord Maltravers, a young nobleman of great promise, whose death, happening a few years previously, she had incessantly deplored. By her side came the Lady Elizabeth Grey, her sister.

The Countess of Suffolk was, of course, an object of considerable attention. This lady was the second wife of the Chancellor, and was equally celebrated for her beauty and her rapacity. At the time of her marriage with the Earl of Suffolk she was a widow, having been united to the eldest son of Lord Rich. Her birth was not noble, but she had inherited a portion of the estate of her father, Sir Henry Knevit, a Wiltshire Knight. The Countess acquired a great ascendancy over her husband, and there is too much reason to suppose that he succumbed to the influence of her talents and her beauty, and, although he did not share in the fruits of her peculation, permitted her to indulge her avarice. So notorious were the bribes of which this lady accepted, that Lord Bacon compared her to an exchange woman who kept a shop, in which Sir John Bingley exclaimed “What do ye lack?” At length the small-pox destroyed the beauty which had been so fatal to the Countess’s peace and honour, and which had wrought much misery and disgrace to all who yielded to its influence.

But if the career of this busy female courtier were reprehensible, that of her young and beautiful daughter, the Countess of Somerset, who accompanied her mother that day, was tinged with guilt of a far deeper dye. It is difficult, in modern times, to realise to one’s mind two such women—the one availing herself of her high station and her personal attractions to enrich her family at the expense of every delicate sentiment and lofty principle; the other infuriated by a mad passion, until every womanly attribute departed, and the vengeance of a fiend alone characterised her dark career. The Countess of Somerset was, at this time, still in the bloom of her youth, being about twenty-four years of age, and the crimes which afterwards brought infamy and retribution on her, were then known only to her corrupt and remorseless heart. The Court, to use the expression of a contemporary historian, “was her nest, and she was hatched up by her mother, whom the sour breath of the age had already tainted, from whom the young lady might take such a tincture, that ease, greatness, and Court glories would more disdain and impress on her, than any way wear out and diminish.” Such was the loveliness of this guilty woman, that those who saw her face might, it has been said, “challenge nature for harbouring so wicked a heart under so sweet and bewitching a countenance:”[^[67]] nor were the arts fashionable at the time forgotten; they heightened the attractions of the Countess of Somerset. “All outward adornments,” we are told, “to present beauty in her full glory, were not wanting;” among the rest, yellow starch, “the invention and foyl of jaundiced complexions, with great cut-work bands and piccadillies,” were adopted by the unhappy Lady Somerset, and were, doubtless, produced on this, as upon other festive occasions.

The Countess of Suffolk and her retinue proceeded to Magdalen College, which had been founded by Lord Chancellor Audley, the grandfather of the Earl of Suffolk.[^[68]]

The youngest daughter of the Earl of Suffolk accompanied her sister and mother. This was Catherine, married to William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury. By this union long enmities between the two families of Howard and of Percy were partially reconciled; a daughter of the house of Cecil marrying eventually Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland, “whose blood,” it had been said by the Earl of Salisbury, “would not mingle in a basin,” so inborn was the hereditary hatred between the two races. This union had been one of policy alone; for the Earl of Salisbury inherited no traits of his ancestry but their titles; and his weak and abject nature revived the remembrance of only the worst parts of his father’s character; “a man,” adds Clarendon, who sums up the whole, “of no words, except in hunting and hawking.”

Lady Howard of Walden, the daughter of George Hume, Earl of Dunbar, and wife of the eldest son of the Earl of Suffolk, and Lady Howard, the wife of Thomas, Lord Howard of Charlton, his second son, completed the family array. The latter of these two ladies was a Cecil, but her claims to celebrity rest chiefly upon her being the mother of Lady Elisabeth Howard, who married the great Dryden; her two sons, Sir Robert and Edward Howard, enjoyed some portion of literary fame in their day.[^[69]]

The first night’s entertainment at Cambridge was a comedy, acted by the gownsmen of St. John’s College. This was a sort of burlesque, ridiculing Sir Edward Radcliffe, the King’s physician; it proved, according to public opinion, but “a lean argument, and though it was larded with pretty shows at the beginning and end, and with somewhat too broad speech for such a presence, still it was dry.”

On the following evening there was performed in Clare Hall the famous play of “Ignoramus” a burlesque. This production was attributed to George Buggle, a Fellow of Clare Hall. It was written and spoken in Latin, nor was it even printed at the time when it agitated the polite and learned society by which its points and satire were so keenly enjoyed. The manuscript was, it appears, destroyed; and it was not until ten years after the death of its reputed author that it was thought prudent to print it, having been taken down from the mouth of the author. The design of this popular comedy was to ridicule the Common Law, and no one enjoyed the satire more than the august individual whose office it was to uphold the laws. Never, it has been said, did anything fascinate the King’s attention or suit his taste so much as this representation, and he commanded several repetitions by the same performers. “Ignoramus” was not, however, readily forgiven or forgotten by that body whom it attacked; and, whilst the King and his Court derived the most lively pleasure from its mingled invective and burlesque, the lawyers were greatly offended by its pungent satire. Successive publications afterwards appeared, taxing the justice of this attack upon the legal profession, and written with much bitterness.

During the performance of this play, the King’s attention was not, however, wholly riveted upon “Ignoramus” and his associates; among the audience in Clare Hall, George Villiers, decorated with all the care that his mother’s pride and affection could suggest, appeared, resplendent in beauty. “The King,” to use the expression of a contemporary writer, “fell into admiration of him,” so that he became confounded between his delight at the appearance of Villiers and the pleasure of the play. To both of these contending emotions, James, with his usual absence of dignity, gave a free expression. “This,” says Roger Coke, “set the heads of the courtiers at work how to get Somerset out of favour, and to bring Villiers in.”[in.”][^[70]]

Ample time was permitted during the tedious performance for the King to observe the young adventurer who sought his favour, and for busy politicians to build upon the absurd partiality of the weak old King. The representation of “Ignoramus,” with its dull pedantic jests, and its personalities, long since passed away and forgotten, lasted eight hours; the second time it commenced at eight in the evening, and was not concluded until one in the morning.

The performers were chiefly Fellows of Clare Hall and of Queen’s College, and their efforts met with the greatest applause. Thus, in Bishop Corbet’s “Grave Poem,” written in 1614, to celebrate the occasion, it is said:—

Nothing did win more praise of mine,

Than did these actors, most divine.

And, alluding to the clerical character of these much-approved individuals, he adds:—

Their play had sundry wise factors,

A perfect diocess of actors

Upon the stage, for I am sure that

There was both bishop, pastor, curate,

Nor was their labour light and small,

The charge of some was pastoral.[^[71]]

Several of the younger men who figured on the stage of Clare Hall were associated in their subsequent career with some of the most important events of the period in which they lived. At the last hour, a boy of thirteen was called upon to act the part of Surda, in which it was necessary to assume female attire. This youth was, even at that early age, an undergraduate; and he was thus summoned hastily to learn a new part in addition to that of Venica, which had been allotted to him, from the scruples of his tutor, the Rev. Mr. Fairclough, who had been selected to undertake the character of Surda on account of his low stature; but Mr. Fairclough was a Puritan, and, deeming it a species of deception to wear women’s clothes, abjured the degrading task. The boy who now supplied his place was Spencer Compton, afterwards Lord Compton, an early favourite and attendant of Charles I., whom he accompanied into Spain. His loyal exertions in the cause of his unfortunate master shed, in after life, honour upon his name. Mr. Fairclough was not the only person who objected to lower the dignity of man’s estate by the assumption of a woman’s gown. The Head of Emmanuel College, then esteemed a Puritanical house, objected also to one of its undergraduates accepting the part of a girl; but these scruples were overruled by the guardian of the youth.[^[72]]

In the “Grave Poem” of Bishop Corbet, Emmanuel College is thus satirised:—

But th’ poor house of Emmanuel

Would not be like proud Jesabel,

Nor shew herself before the King,

An hypocrite, or painted thing;

[And images she would have none,

For fear of superstition, or]

But that the ways might seem more fair,

Conceived a tedious mile of prayer.[^[73]]

The plot of “Ignoramus” was borrowed from the Trappolaria of Giamballista Porta, an Italian dramatist, but the characters were taken from life. “Ignoramus” was designed to personify Mr. Francis Brakyn, the Recorder of Cambridge, who had rendered himself obnoxious to the University in a dispute about precedence between the Mayor of the town and the Vice-Chancellor. Mr. Brakyn was a barrister, and the ridicule cast upon him was as much enjoyed by the dignified heads of houses as by noisy undergraduates.[^[74]]

Amongst the performers was John Cole, afterwards Earl of Clare, distinguished for his moderation in the Civil Wars. The youth who was nearly being precluded from acting by the tutors of Emmanuel College, was the Rev. John Towers, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, one of the twelve loyal Prelates imprisoned by Parliament. Fuller says of him, “He was a great actor when young, and a great sufferer when old, dying rich only in children and patience.” “Ignoramus” was translated into English in the year 1678, and a mutilated version of it was produced at the Royal Theatre in the same year, called the “English Lawyer.” This was written by Edward Ravenscroft.[^[75]]

Another play, entitled “Albumazar,” followed the successful representation of “Ignoramus;” this, and a Latin pastoral, were the “action or invention of Trinity College, and met with a gracious approval from the King, who, even at his repasts, was now heard loudly to extol Cambridge above Oxford; and yet an awkward incident occurred during the royal visit. During the acts and disputations, in which James delighted, the University orator addressed Prince Charles, who stood beside his father, as Prince Jacobissime Carole;” it was also said that he called him Jacobule, too, which, observed an eye-witness, “neither pleased the King nor anybody else.”[^[76]] Buckingham, who possibly understood no Latin, must have found the dramas, the pastoral, the acts and disputations insufferably tedious; but he was now the tool of a party, and therefore, doubtless, remained to witness all these various exhibitions, little dreaming that one day he was to be installed Chancellor of that very University. Dark and contemptuous looks were discerned on the faces of sundry jealous Oxonians, who had gone to see and to ridicule their rivals, the Cambridge men, who were continually, as a contemporary relates, “applauding themselves, and the Oxford men as fast condemning and detracting all that was done.”[^[77]] The best comment upon the exploits of the boastful collegians was that returned by Mr. Corbet, afterwards Bishop Corbet, who, “being seriously dealt withal by some friends to say what he thought, answered that he had left his malice and judgment at home, and came thither only to commend.”[^[78]]

King James, however, expressed such unqualified admiration of what he saw, that fears were entertained by those who had had to entertain him that he would have repeated his visit privately; apprehensions were felt also lest he should order the performers of the “Ignoramus,” a band chiefly composed of ghostly preachers and learned bachelors of divinity, to repair to London; but the panic was groundless, and neither of these dreaded events took place. Great, indeed, was the expense of the reception and provision considered suitable to the grandeur of the occasion. Nor was it long before events still more ruinous to the Earl of Suffolk and his family than their enormous expenditure to grace the King’s visit at Cambridge scandalized the public mind. The jealousy of the Earl of Somerset was now aroused by the favour shown at Court to his young rival. Slight occurrences warned the sinking favourite of his own unpopularity. An entertainment was given at Baynard’s Castle by three great families—those of Herbert, Hertford, and Bedford; as the company were repairing to the appointed place, they discerned Somerset’s portrait hanging out of a limner’s shop. Sanderson, the historian, who happened to be a bystander, took occasion to inquire “on what score that was done?” The reply was, “that this meeting at Baynard’s Castle was to discover;” for there it appears the scheme to elevate Villiers was concocted by those who viewed with disgust the ascendancy of Somerset.

CHAPTER III.

THE FASCINATION OF VILLIER’S CHARACTER AS OPPOSED TO THE VENALITY OF SOMERSET—LORD CLARENDON’S OPINION—THE FRIENDSHIP OF ARCHBISHOP ABBOT—CHARACTER OF THE PRIMATE—HIS AFFECTION FOR VILLIERS—ANECDOTE OF VILLIERS WHEN CUP-BEARER—HE IS BEFRIENDED BY ANNE OF DENMARK—BY HER MEANS KNIGHTED—SINGULAR SCENE IN THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER—JEALOUSY OF SOMERSET—INGRATITUDE AFTERWARDS SHEWN BY VILLIERS TO ABBOT—ABBOT COMMITS MANSLAUGHTER—IS PARDONED BY THE KING—THE INCESSANT PLEASURES OF THE COURT—HORSE-RACING—BEN JONSON’S “GOLDEN AGE RESTORED”—ALLUSION IN IT TO SOMERSET, AND TO OVERBURY—AN ANGRY INTERVIEW BETWEEN VILLIERS AND SOMERSET—VILLIERS SUPPLANTS THE FAVOURITE—HE USES NO UNFAIR MEANS TO DO SO—DISCOVERY OF SOMERSET’S GUILT BY WINWOOD, WHO FINDS PROOFS OF IT IN AN OLD TRUNK—SOMERSET’S DOWNFALL—BACON’S LETTER TO VILLIERS—VILLIERS CONTINUES TO PROFIT BY THE DELINQUENCIES AND DISGRACE OF SOMERSET.

CHAPTER III.

Introduced, as he now found himself, into the atmosphere of a Court, Buckingham retained the free and joyous spirit, the boyish impetuosity, the incapability of dissimulation which characterised him during the whole of his life. The combination of “English familiarity and French vivacity” have in his deportment been happily expressed by Hume. The carelessness of consequences, which was a part of his variable and fascinating character, was soon perceived by his friends, soon made the theme of comment on the part of his enemies.

To those who had long deplored the rapacity of Somerset, and who viewed, in the depravity of the Court, the degradation of the nation, the very imprudence of Villiers, coupled, as it was, with great courage, quick perceptions, energy, and a capability of being aroused to high designs and “lofty aspirations,”[^[79]] must have been refreshing. “As yet,” says Lord Clarendon, “he was the most rarely accomplished the Court had ever beheld; while some that found inconvenience in his nearness, intending by some affront to discountenance him, perceived he had masked under the gentleness of a terrible courage as could safely protect all his sweetness.” The rise of this gifted and fascinating adventurer, rapid as it undoubtedly was, was obstructed by various obstacles, the details of which are not to be found in the ordinary narratives of his career.

Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, held at this time a supreme influence both in Church and in State affairs. His great learning, his eloquence, his moderation, and his indefatigable exertions for the public welfare procured him at once the confidence of the country and the goodwill of his sovereign. By his conciliatory deportment, Abbot, when he held the appointment of chaplain to the Earl of Dunbar, Treasurer of Scotland, effected such an understanding, as to ensure the establishment of the Episcopal order in that country. He was also one of the eight divines at Oxford to whom the charge of translating the New Testament, with the exception of the Epistles, was entrusted.[^[80]] Thus qualified for the highest station in his sacred profession, Abbot had attained the rare art of satisfying all parties. His zeal for the Protestant faith secured the esteem of the Calvinist, and his devotion to the order to which he belonged satisfied even the disciples of Laud.

This prelate now became the patron of George Villiers. Perhaps the fearless, open disposition of the youth interested the Archbishop, who was by no means an austere churchman, but who mingled to a great extent in secular affairs, and united a love of popular diversions with his saintly zeal and real piety of character;—enjoyed a day’s hunting, and regulated alternately the concerns of foreign nations and the disputes of controversialists. Archbishop Abbot appears to have fostered Villiers as a son. A circumstance shortly occurred which showed how necessary to the well-being of the rash youth such a protector and counsellor must have proved.

Villiers now held the office of cup-bearer, and, since it was purchased, as most offices in that reign were, it is probable that those who promoted his rise, from a hatred of the Earl of Somerset, supplied him with the means of thus drawing near to his sovereign at the social board; nor was the office in those days, when James was frequently in a state of inebriation, a sinecure.

One day, Villiers happened to take by mistake the upper end of the board instead of another attendant. The person whom he had thus superseded was a creature of Somerset’s; Villiers was told of his error in an offensive manner, and removed from his post. Incensed afterwards by a second instance of incivility, he lost his self-control, and gave his brother cup-bearer a blow. By the custom of the Court, Villiers thus made himself liable to have his hand cut off; and Somerset, who was Lord Chamberlain, was bound by his office to see that penalty inflicted. It may readily be conceived with what alacrity Somerset would have fulfilled this part of his duty, but the King interposed, and pardoned Villiers, “who henceforth,” remarks an historian, “was regarded as a budding favourite, and appeared like a proper palm beside the discerning spirit of the King, who first cherished him, through his innate virtue, that surprised all men.”[^[81]]

It was however necessary that the merits of Villiers should be unfolded to the Queen. Anne of Denmark, although apparently slighted by her royal husband, exercised so considerable a control over his actions that he never, according to the testimony of Archbishop Abbot, “would admit anyone to nearness about himself but such a one as the Queen should commend unto him, and had made some suit on his behalf.” Nor did this wholly proceed from a reverence for Her Majesty’s judgment. It was the result of the mingled weakness of conduct and duplicity which characterised James, forming a strong contrast with his real ability and acquirements; the absence of good sense and good taste were equally conspicuous in all he did in private life; but he was cunning enough to desire that if he made a false step the blame should rest upon his Queen. His motive in desiring her approval was that, if she were ill treated by the favourite, he might have the power of saying to her, “You were the party that commended him to me.” “Our old master,” remarks Archbishop Abbot, “took delight in things of this nature.”[^[82]]

Queen Anne had previously been solicited in behalf of Villiers, but in vain; Abbot was, however, successful in his application. For some time, indeed, the Queen answered him in these terms: “My lord, you and your friends know not what you ask, for if this young man be brought in, the first persons that he will plague will be you that labour for him. Yea, I shall have my part also; the King,” added the wary Queen, “will teach him to despise and hardly entreat us, that he may seem to be beholden to no one but himself.”

“Noble Queen,” exclaimed Abbot, when, after experiencing the hollowness of Court favour and the ingratitude of Buckingham, he wrote the narrative of these incidents, “how like a prophetess did you speak!” Upon the compliance of the Queen, it was resolved to introduce Villiers to the King, for the double honour of being appointed one of His Majesty’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, and of receiving knighthood. The day was approaching, when Villiers fell ill, not without suspicion of having taken the small-pox. This happened when all his friends were “casting about” how to make him a great man. On the twenty-third of April[^[83]] he was, however, sufficiently recovered for the good offices of his party to take effect.

The event was accomplished in the following manner:—The Queen and Prince being in the King’s bedchamber, it was contrived that Villiers,[^[84]] who was near, should be summoned on some pretext, and when the “Queen saw her own time, he was asked in.” “Then,” says an historian, “did the Queen speak to the Prince to draw out the sword and to give it her; and immediately, with the sword drawn, she kneeled to the King, and humbly beseeched His Majesty to do her that especial favour as to knight this noble gentleman, whose name was George, for the honour of St. George, whose feast was now kept. The King at first seemed to be afraid that the Queen should come too near him with a naked sword, but then he did it very joyfully, and it might very well be that it was his own contriving, for he did much please himself with such inventions.”[^[85]]

It must have been a strange scene, for Somerset, who was at hand, entreated of the King that his rival might only be made a Groom of the Chamber; but Abbot, and others whom the Archbishop does not name, stood at the door and plied the Queen with messages that she would “perfect her work, and cause him to be made a gentleman,” and Her Majesty, as we have seen, prevailed. Nor were these honours, in the case of Villiers, attended with the expense which usually lessened their value; on the contrary, a pension of a thousand pounds was added to maintain the dignity of knighthood.[^[86]]

The termination of this incident, so important in the life of Villiers, is related by Archbishop Abbot; Villiers at this time called him “father.” The professions which he made to his reverend patron were then doubtless sincere; but gratitude was not the only good seed which political feuds and evil counsels stifled in the breast of Villiers.

“George,” relates the prelate, “went in with the King, but no sooner he got loose but he came forth unto me into the Privy Gallery, and there embraced me. He professed that he was so infinitely bound unto me, that all his life long he must honour me as his father; and now he did beseech me, that I would give him some lessons how he should carry himself.” These lessons were three in number:—first, to pray daily to God to bless the King his master, and to give him grace studiously to serve and please him. The second was, that he should do all good offices between the King and the Queen, the King and the Prince. The third, that he should fill his master’s ears with nothing but the truth. These excellent instructions were afterwards repeated to James, who observed that they were “instructions worthy of an archbishop to give to a young man.”

For some time, an affection, on the one hand expressed in parental terms, and gratitude on the other, continued. “And now, my George,” wrote the Archbishop, “because, out of your kind affection to me, you style me your father, I will from this day forward repute and esteem you for my son, and so hereafter you know yourself to be; and in token thereof I do now give you my blessing again, and charge you, as my son, daily to serve God, to be diligent and pleasing to your master, and to be wary that at no man’s instance you press him with many suits, because they are not your friends who urge those things upon you, but have private ends of their own, which are not fit for you. So praying God to bless you,

“I rest, your very loving father,

“G. Cant.”[^[87]]

The conduct of Villiers on a subsequent occasion made a deep impression on the mind of the excellent prelate who thus befriended the youth. “The Roman historian, Tacitus,” he bitterly remarks, “hath somewhere a note, that benefits while they may be requited, seem courtesies, but when they are so high that they cannot be repaid, they prove matters of hatred.”[^[88]] This was a severe reflection on one who ought never to have forgotten the greatest of all obligations, those bestowed on the unfriended by one in the height of favour. Villiers may henceforth be regarded as fairly launched in his career; it was perhaps his misfortune that so few important obstacles occurred in his progress, and that it was achieved by an apparent concurrence of lucky events, and not by patient merit, nor by any of the legitimate sources of success. “The genius of the man,” observes a modern writer, “was daring and magnificent, and his elocution was graceful as his manners; but these were natural talents; he possessed no acquired ones.”[^[89]]

A true, free-spoken, conscientious friend might have guarded his youth from peril, and given to his aspiring mind a laudable bias. Abbot would have been that friend, but Abbot was soon discarded, and an incident occurred some years afterwards which clouded this excellent prelate’s days, and produced a temporary, though unmerited, disgrace.

The archbishop, like many churchmen of his time, was an ardent lover of the chace. In this respect he resembled Cranmer, who was so great a horseman as to be called the “rough rider,” since no steed came amiss to his fearless and practised guidance.

Abbot was hunting, in the summer of 1621, in Lord Zouch’s park of Bramsell, in Hampshire. He aimed at a deer, which, leaping up, evaded the shot, but a gamekeeper who had hidden himself behind the herd, was killed by the discharge from the lively primate’s gun. An inquest was held, and a verdict of death by “misfortune and the keeper’s own fault” was returned. It appeared that the man had been that very morning warned not to go in that direction. King James, on first hearing of this occurrence, declared that none “but a fool or knave would think the worse of Abbot for that accident, the like of which had once nearly happened to himself.”

Abbot, it seemed, had gone into Hampshire with the intention of consecrating a chapel as Lord Zouch’s, and not merely for the purposes of amusement.[^[90]] On considering the matter, nevertheless, his legal advisers did not consider the verdict to have been legally drawn up. Abbot therefore wrote to Lord Zouch, requesting him to have the coroner and jury re-summoned, and the verdict re-considered, the credit of his profession being involved, and his enemies ready to slander him.[^[91]] In a subsequent letter he recalled this request, declaring that it was unnecessary; that he had a clear conscience, and was anxious to do everything to give his enemies no advantages over him. In a few days, nevertheless, he went again to Lord Zouch, declaring that his unhappy accident had been a bitter potion to him, on account of the conflict with his conscience, complaining that he was the talk of men, the cause of rejoicing to the Papist and insult to the Puritan.[^[92]] The King was still gracious to him, but the primate remained in seclusion, and misfortune seemed at hand.[^[93]] These letters were written in August. In the October of the same year, the King appointed an inquiry into the accidental killing of the keeper in Bramsell Park, and desired three bishops and others to examine whether there had been scandal brought upon the Church or not.[^[94]] The commissioners were divided, strange to say, upon the question of the archbishop’s guilt or innocence, but their decision, influenced by the strong advocacy of the Bishop of Winchester, was ultimately in his favour. The King, as the head of the Church, then absolved him, but all the new bishops were so unwilling to receive consecration at his hand, that Abbot was obliged to appoint three prelates to consecrate for him. All forfeitures and penalties for this offence were remitted, and the archbishop restored to the King’s presence. There is, however, no proof of what one looks for with solicitude, the mediation of Buckingham in favour of his friend and patron, although there is no reason, from the result, to suppose that it may not have been exerted.

This attempt to make the archbishop’s mishap a “culpable homicide,” originated in the Lord Keeper Williams, who had formed a plot for depriving Abbot. The accusation was based upon the ground that the primate had been employed in an unlawful act when the accident occurred, but Coke decreed that “by the laws of the realm, a bishop may lawfully hunt in a park; hunt he may, because a bishop, when dying, is to leave his pack of hounds to the King’s free will and disposal.”[^[95]]

Such were the incidents which deprived Villiers, for a time, of the valuable counsels of Abbot. It must, however, be also remembered, when the real ignorance of Villiers is considered, and when his deficiencies and his errors are lamented as constituting in his case a national misfortune, that in his career as a courtier he wanted the needful element in all improvement, leisure. The daily existence of James was made up of toilsome pleasures,—the chase, the drama, the mask,—at which Villiers, weary, doubtless, at times, of the incessant pageant, sometimes assisted. He soon imbibed a still greater taste for display than even his crafty mother had implanted in him for ambitious purposes, and became, like most persons suddenly raised from poverty and obscurity, inordinately ostentatious and prodigal.

It is amusing, however, to find him, in the early days of his greatness, learning horsemanship. James was passionately fond of seeing others exhibit on horseback. One of his favourite places of resort was Newmarket. The King generally joined in all country amusements, drawn in a litter, a mortal inward disease even then making that gentle movement necessary; whilst the young and noble thronged around him on their steeds, set off in all the bravery of costly caparisons. Prince Henry had, during his brief career, set the fashion of a fondness for horse-racing, and James, who suffered so many of his accomplished son’s higher objects to become extinct in his grave, maintained in all its prosperity that diversion. Newmarket, henceforth, was a favourite place of resort. Amongst the late Prince’s equerries was a Frenchman named St. Antoine, whose feats are frequently the subject of comment in the newsletters of the day.

It was in the depth of the winter when James, attended by twenty earls and barons, repaired to Newmarket. There was little accommodation for them in that place, and the gay company were obliged to bestow themselves in the poor villages around. Every morning, whilst at this resort, Villiers was mounted on horseback, and taught to ride;[^[96]] and his progress in the King’s favour seemed to be commensurate with his prowess. This was in the December of the year 1615. On the fourth of January, 1615-16, Villiers was appointed Master of the Horse, instead of the Earl of Worcester, who resigned all his posts into the King’s hands, and was made Lord Privy Seal.[^[97]]

This mark of royal preference gave a fresh impetus to the decline of Somerset’s fortunes. In a masque written by Ben Johnson, and performed at court, a bold allusion was made to the sinking prosperity of the Earl, and a hint thrown out of his suspected crime. The play was entitled, “The Golden Age Restored,” and these lines excited considerable attention and speculation—

“Jove can endure no longer

Your great ones should your less invade:

Or that your weak, though bad, be made,

A prey unto the stronger.”

The “weak” was conjectured to be Overbury, and the delicacy of the allusion has been pronounced by a modern critic[^[98]] “to be above all praise.” The masque was followed by a banquet, at which the new Master of the Horse doubtless assisted, attired in all the splendours which his now adequate means enabled him to assume.

Those who viewed, merely as spectators, these various incidents, were curious to know on what terms Somerset and his young rival stood together. It was impossible, they knew, for James, always involved, as he was, in the labyrinths of some crooked policy, not to temporise with one whose influence over him was fast waning away, not to unite, if possible, amity to Somerset with partiality to Villiers. Accordingly, whilst honours were thus showered upon the new favourite, “like main showers, then sprinkling drops on dews,”[^[99]] it was still thought necessary to conciliate Somerset, and to make it appear, at all events to the public, that Villiers owed his elevation to the goodwill of that offended and resentful nobleman.

It was deemed, therefore, expedient to take the very first opportunity that could be available for propitiating Somerset, and, accordingly, after the completion of the ceremonial of knighting, Sir Humphrey May was despatched to inform Somerset that “Sir George Villiers, newly knighted, would desire his protection.” Half an hour afterwards, Sir George visited the Lord Chamberlain, and paid him this compliment:—

“My lord, I desire to be your servant and creature, and to take my court preferment under your favour, assuring your lordship that you shall find me as faithful a servant as ever did serve you.”

He spoke, however, to the inflamed mind of a jealous foe. The Earl is said to have turned fiercely upon him, and answered impetuously in these words:—[^[100]]

“I will have none of your service, and you shall have none of my favour. I will, if I can, break your neck, and of that be confident.” This rash conduct is declared to have hastened the fall of Somerset, by proving to the friends of Villiers that one of the two rivals in the royal favour must retire, and that Somerset would brook no equal in the court.

But there were other circumstances palpably concurring to close the shameless career of Somerset, and abundantly accounting for his fall, without attributing much importance to the adventitious appearance of George Villiers at Court. The discovery of his guilt by Secretary Winwood[^[101]] was preceded by such a long course of public and private profligacy, that it is no wonder that Somerset should see, in the prosperity of a young man whose reputation was unstained by a single crime, an earnest of his own downfall, and that he should employ the greater precaution to avert the coming storm. His efforts were, however, unavailing. His sending away the apothecary who administered the poison to Overbury to France; his disgracing all who spoke of the death of that unfortunate man, hoping by such arbitrary acts to smother the remembrance of that crime; his tyrannical investigation, by his warrant as a privy counsellor, of all trunks, chests, and libraries in which he suspected that any letters relative to that dark business might be concealed; all were proofs confirmatory of that dark and foul plot the recollection of which permitted to the terror-stricken Somerset not one moment of comfort. He now began to act as a friendless and desperate man, who, feeling that the ground is slipping from beneath his feet, tries to hoard up wealth as a resource. He undertook no intercession with the King without large bribes; and every new occurrence brought him what is termed by the authors of the tract entitled “The First Fourteen Years of King James’s Reign,” a fleece of money.[^[102]] Offices about the Court were all for the highest bidder, and even the King’s letters were bought and sold; no plunder was obtained without purchase, so that Somerset was soon known to be as notorious a bribe-taker as his mother-in-law, the Countess of Suffolk. The high-born and the highly-principled saw with disgust, now ill-concealed, the minion leaning on the King’s cushion even in public, and treating their haughty and influential class with rash scorn, disdaining even that respect which was imperatively due to the Primate, Abbot[Abbot], whose popularity was at that time in its zenith. Many suspected that beneath this arrogant bearing, stimulating an impolitic cupidity of gain, there lurked secret fears and a stricken heart, a horror of the past and a dread of the future; and conjectured, as well they might, that Somerset was never more to know repose of mind—nor, perhaps, long to enjoy personal security.[^[103]]

By all these circumstances Villiers wisely profited during his early days of favour; and happy had it been for him had he never forgotten the lesson thus afforded him in the awful tragedy of Somerset’s career; more awful, perhaps, than if the secret sins of the wretched Earl had been visited with a signal retribution from the hand of power. There is something in this miscreant’s forlorn and protracted existence, after all that in life is valuable—honour, peace of mind, influence—were gone, that is more desolate and appalling to the fancy than if the Tower had for ever enclosed him, or the executioner claimed his life as a penalty for his sins. The unpunished murderer walking abroad, shunned by all, is a sort of moral leper; desolate in his freedom, and chastised even by the silence and avoidance of his fellow men.

That Villiers took any active part in the measures which ensued, his bitterest foes have not ventured to allege. Young, devoted to pleasure, indifferent, at this time, to gain, ambitious, but not grasping, he enjoyed at this period that general esteem, the absence of which he bitterly felt in after life. Those who hated Somerset turned to Villiers, and found him full of courtesy and of generous impulses. Those who were on the point of offering bribes to Somerset discovering that Villiers had the ear of the King, applied to him, and obtained gratuitously what they sought. The country, as well as the Court, was ringing with complaints of the Lord Chamberlain’s extortions, when the accidental illness and remorse of an apothecary’s boy decided his fate. That individual, employed by his master to administer the dose to Overbury, fell ill at Flushing, and the whole mystery, with all its concomitants, was revealed. “A small breach thus being made, Somerset’s enemies, like the rush of many waters, rise up against him, following the stream.” Thus does Arthur Wilson well express the ruin of one who, for two years, had succeeded in defying curiosity and keeping the secret of his crime unrevealed.

With the inconsistent conduct of the King during the proceedings against his rival, Villiers appears to have had no concern, except such as his situation of private secretary to King James, an office which appears to have devolved upon him upon the disgrace of Somerset, necessarily entailed. The alienation of James’s regard from Somerset, and the rising influence of Villiers, are nevertheless, according to a high authority, “very necessary to be borne in mind” through the legal proceedings against the fallen favourite.[^[104]] That Villiers desired the entire exclusion of Somerset from royal favour is more than probable; that he took any undue or direct means to ensure it is doubtful, unless we take as evidence of an under-current of intrigue, the secret negociations which went on between him and Sir Francis Bacon, to whom the conduct of the prosecution was consigned before the 15th of February, 1615. Whilst

Somerset was awaiting his trial, Bacon addressed to Villiers the following letter. It is commonly remarked that a postscript is the most important portion of a letter; but, in this case, the endorsement gives the greatest insight into the motives of the writer. On the back of the epistle are these words: “A letter to Sir G. Villiers, touching a message brought to me by Mr. Shute, of a promise of the chancellor’s place.” To this the following letter is the reply:—

“In the message I received from you by Mr. Shute, hath bred in me such belief and confidence, as I will now wholly rely on your excellent and happy self. When persons of greatness and quality begin speech with me of the matter, and offer me their good offices, I can but answer them civilly. But these things are but toys. I am yours, surer to you than my own life. For, as they speak of a torquoise-stone in a ring, I will break into twenty pieces before you fall. God keep you for ever.

“Your truest servant,

“Francis Bacon.”

“P. S.—My Lord Chancellor is prettily amended. I was with him yesterday for half an hour; we both wept, which I do not do very often.”[^[105]]

That the fortunes of Villiers were ensured by the awful disclosures of guilt which ensued, there can be no doubt. It is worthy of remark, how vitiated must have been the state of that society, the highest in rank, the foremost in fashion, in which crimes so fearful, compassed and aided by associates of the lowest and most infamous description, could be ascribed to individuals, and yet those individuals continue to hold their position in society. It is true that, during that interval which must have been to the guilty Earl and Countess of Somerset a season of incessant fear and anguish, reports had been “buzzing about Somerset’s ears, like a rising storm upon a well-spread oak;” but he had considered himself to be too firmly planted in the King’s regard ever to be up-rooted. And perhaps, had Villiers not come forward opportunely to redeem the national credit, and to save a remnant of the King’s character from utter reprobation and contempt, England might have been still enslaved, until the close of James’s reign, by the extortionate Earl and his haughty and murderous Countess.

Meantime, Villiers continued to profit by the delinquencies of his rival. He profited in the way most gratifying to an honourable mind.[way most gratifying to an honourable mind.] No intrigues to supplant, no efforts to hasten the ruin of the Earl, are recorded to his discredit. He set, at this period of his career, a bright, though unhappily a transient, example of what a royal favorite might prove. He repudiated, not only the avarice, but the over-bearing of Somerset.

He was courteous and affable to all, and seemed to “court men as they courted him.” Free from all assumption, he still delighted to associate with the gentlemen in waiting, and to join in their amusements, which consisted, after supper, in leaping and exercises, in which none was so active as the young favorite.[^[106]] He thus preserved in health and agility that noble form which excited the admiration of his country. Such was his popularity, even with the old and haughty nobility, that they were proud if they might aid in decking the “handsomest bodied man of England.”[^[107]] His taste for gorgeous apparel now displaying itself, he was complimented by the nobles of James’s Court in the following manner:—one of them would send to “his tailor and his mercer to put good clothes upon the newly-made knight; another to his sempstress for curious linen; others took upon them to be his bravos, and all hands helped to piece up the new minion.”[^[108]] So winning was the deportment of Villiers, that even his enemies were propitiated to acknowledge “that he was as inwardly beautiful, as he was outwardly, and that the world had not a more ingenious gentleman.”[^[109]] He incurred, however, some risk in his ardour for amusement; and on one occasion over-strained himself in running, which greatly distressed the King.[^[110]] So rapid was the rise of Villiers, that Lord Clarendon describes it by the term “germination.” “Surely had he been a plant,” says that great historian, “he would have been reckoned among the stoute nascentes, for he sprang without any help, by a sort of ingenious composure (as we may term it) to the likeness of our late sovereign and master, of blessed memory, who, taking him into his regard, taught him more and more to please himself, and moulded him, as it were, platonically, to his own idea, delighting first in the choice of his materials, because he found him susceptible of good form, and afterwards by degrees, as great architects used to do, in the workmanship of his regal hand.”[^[111]] This flattering tribute to King James might have been spared, for the monarch, whose blind and almost wicked partiality emboldened, and perhaps corrupted, Somerset, can hardly be conceived to have formed the character of Villiers.

The testimony of Lord Clarendon that Villiers, like his supposed prototype, the Earl of Essex, was a “fair-spoken gentleman,” not prone and eager to detract openly from any man, “is a greater eulogy,” and to this, the noble historian adds another, which, he affirms, “the malignant eye could not refuse to Villiers;” “that certainly never man in his place or power did entertain greatness more familiarly,” an expression singularly felicitous, as conveying a sense of that innate greatness which exalts its possessor above conventional distinctions. His looks were “untainted by his felicity.”[^[112]] No conscious importance, no haughty contempt, none of the littleness of pride, disgusted his equals or depressed his inferiors. “This, in my judgment,” remarks Clarendon, “was one of his greatest virtues and victories of himself.”

The elevation of Villiers appears, however, not to have been so spontaneous as Lord Clarendon supposes. “Once commenced, it ran,” says Sir Henry Wotton, “as smoothly as numerous verses, till it met with certain rubs in Parliament.”

Thus, to borrow still from the same author, “the course of royal favour being uninterrupted, the Duke’s thoughts were free.”[^[113]]

Meanwhile, the most fearful disclosures were shocking the public ear, and rendering more secure than ever the prosperity of Villiers.

In the month of March, 1616, Lady Somerset was committed to the Tower. So promptly were the measures now resolved upon executed, that she had “scant leisure,” as a contemporary relates, “to shed a few tears over her little daughter at the parting.”[^[114]] This was the single touch of natural affection which is latent in every heart, and was not wholly extinguished even in the heart of the unhappy woman. Having given way to that burst of emotion, she bore herself, as the same report states, “constantly enough,” until she was carried into the enclosure of the Tower. Then, affrighted and conscience-stricken, she did, according to the same account, “passionately deprecate, and entreat the Lieutenant, that she might not be lodged in Sir Thomas Overbury’s lodging, so that he was fain to remove himself out of his own chamber for two or three nights, till Sir Walter Raleigh’s lodging might be furnished and made fit for her.”

To this gloomy apartment, the wretched countess was consigned; her trial was fixed for the fifteenth of May. But when that day drew near, when the stage in the middle of Westminster Hall was completed, the scaffolding around it finished, and when seats had been purchased at the rate of four or five pieces each—that being an ordinary price—and when even a lawyer and his wife, as Mr. Chamberlain, the writer of the letter from whom these details are collected, states, agreed to give two pounds for himself and his wife for ten days, and fifty pounds was given for a corner that “would scarcely contain a dozen,” the eager public was disappointed. The trial was put off till the twenty-second of the same month.[^[115]]

Lady Somerset’s sudden illness was assigned as the cause of this delay. Upon warning being given her that her trial was to come on on Wednesday, “she fell to casting and scouring, and so continued the next day very sick,” her illness being ascribed partly to trepidation, partly to the suspicion of her having taken poison. But she recovered to make, as the same eye-witness remarks, shorter work of it, by confessing the indictment; and “to win pity by her sober demeanour,” “more curious and confident than was fit for a lady in such distress; and yet she shed, or made shew of, some tears divers times.” Contrary to the usual practice in criminal trials, no invectives were urged against her, it being the King’s pleasure that no “odious nor uncivil speeches” should be given. The general opinion was, that in spite of her manifest guilt, this miserable culprit would not suffer the penalty of the law. It must have been a singular sight to have beheld the Earl of Essex, her former husband, a spectator among the titled crowd at the arraignment; the first day, privately—the second “full in Somerset’s face.”

Lady Somerset was sentenced “to be hanged by the neck till she was stark dead.” When the fatal cap was assumed, and the decree uttered, she bore herself with more calmness than her husband; who, upon sentence of death being passed upon him, was so appalled that, when asked what he should say to avert that decree, he would “stand still upon his own innocence,” and could hardly be brought to refer himself to the King’s mercy. He was afterwards induced to rest upon that point; to write to the King, entreating that the judgment of “hanging should be changed to that of heading;” “and that his daughter might have such lands as the King did not resume.”[^[116]]

Villiers, no doubt, witnessed this memorable trial, and beheld the utter degradation of his rival. The contrast which his own brilliant fortunes presented to the disgrace and ruin of others, is shewn by the rapid succession of honours which were conferred upon him.

The spectacle, which must have harrowed a mind not corrupted by the ambition of a court, was diversified by a grand ceremonial, and a new honour. This was the election of Villiers into the order of the Garter, which took place on the 24th of April, on St. George’s day, whilst Somerset and his wife lay trembling in the Tower.

Francis, Earl of Rutland, was admitted to a similar honour on the same day. The world cavilled at this nobleman’s good fortune; for his wife was an open and known recusant, and the Earl himself was thought to have many disaffected persons about him. It was soon, however, discovered that there was a design to improve the fortunes of Villiers by marrying him to the young heiress of the house of Rutland. Meantime, to enable his favourite to maintain the honours thus lavished upon him, and more especially to support the dignities required by the express articles of the Order in which he was installed, James bestowed upon Villiers “lands and means;” and it was reported that estates, then belonging to the Earl of Somerset, were to be added to those gifts, should that delinquent “sink under his present trial.”[^[117]]

Hitherto, Sir George Villiers appears to have figured alone amid the gay and envying crowds of Whitehall, or among the equestrians at Newmarket. But one of the greater proofs of his extending influence was the favour shewn at this time to his mother.

The condition of Lady Villiers was wholly changed since her son had left her a widow in the seclusion of Goadby. Having allied herself, by a second marriage, to a rich and potent family—the Comptons—she had shared in their prosperity. Compton had married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir John Spencer, Mayor of London, who had died some years previously,[^[118]] first leaving a fortune of three hundred thousand pounds, according to some authors; to others, of eight hundred thousand pounds. The bequest of this money to his wife completely upset Lord Compton’s reason; and it seems to have benefited his family more than himself. For though he appears to have recovered his intellect, he did not live long to enjoy his great wealth, which went to enrich his brother.

Lady Villiers, or as she was henceforth called, Lady Villiers Compton, was now admitted into the circles of the exclusive and lordly inmates of one of the King’s favourite resorts, Hatfield, and in June, 1616, she met His Majesty there.

Some awkwardness attended this visit to the Earl and Countess of Salisbury. The Countess of Suffolk, the mother of Lady Somerset, was there; and fears might be entertained in what manner King James would meet the mother of so great a culprit; but the imperturbable insensibility of the monarch, or perhaps his lingering regard for Somerset, obviated all difficulties. He kissed the Countess of Suffolk twice; and performed the office of sponsor conjointly with her husband, with whom, relates an eye witness, “the King is grown as great and as far in grace as ever he was, which sudden invitations, without any intermedience, made the Spanish Ambassador cry out, ‘Volo a dios que la Corte d’Inglatiérra es com uno libró di Cavalleros andantes.’“ Upon this stately occasion, the Countess of Suffolk “kept a table alone, save that the Lady Villiers Compton only was admitted, and all the entertainment was chiefly intended and directed to her and her children and followers.” Nor was it only empty civility that marked the royal favour: shortly afterwards the elder brother of George Villiers, John, was knighted at Oatlands, in Surrey, that ceremonial being a prelude to the titles of Baron Villiers of Stoke and Viscount Purbeck, which were conferred upon him three years afterwards. On the sixth of July, the instalment of the new Knights of the Garter, the Earl of Rutland and Sir George Villiers, and of Robert Sydney, Viscount Lisle, took place; the ceremonial was performed on a Sunday, and on the same afternoon, a chapter was held to consider the point whether the Earl of Somerset’s arms were to be taken away or left as they were. So closely did the elevation of Villiers follow on the downfall of his rival.[^[119]]

Somerset, however, still displayed, even in his prison in the Tower, his Garter and his George; whilst the public were scandalized by repeated messages carried by Lord Hay, between the King and the condemned Earl; and the result of these was soon perceived. Somerset had the liberty of the Tower granted to him; he was seen walking about, and talking to the Earl of Northumberland, who was still in prison on account of the Gunpowder Plot; and at other times saluting his lady at the window. “It is much spoken of,” writes Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, “how Princes of that Order, to let our own pass, can digest to be coupled with a man civilly dead, and corrupt in blood, and so no gentleman, should continue a Knight of the Garter.” Lady Somerset’s pardon had been signed the foregoing week, and, as matters now stood, Villiers might still tremble lest his advancement should be delayed, and the noble miscreants be restored to favour[favour].

His success, nevertheless, continued, for Anne of Denmark was in the interests of the young favourite. During the month of August the Queen addressed a letter to Villiers, who was then attending on the King, couched in these familiar terms:—

“My kind dog,

“Your letter hath been acceptable to me. I rest allreadie assured of your carefulnesse. You may tell your maister that the King of Dennemark hath sent me twelf faire mares, and, as the drivers of them assures, all great with foles, which I intend to put into Byefield[^[120]] Parke, where being the other day a-hunting, I could finde but vere few deare, but great store of other cattle, as I shall tell your maister myself when I see him. I hope to meet you all at Woodstock at the time appointed, till when I wish you all happiness and contentment,

“Anna R.

“I thank you for your paines taken In remembering the King for the pailing of me parke. I will doe you any service I can.”

This characteristic letter was the prelude to the elevation of Villiers to the peerage. At first, it was determined that he should be created Viscount Beaumont, in compliment to his mother’s family; and the coronet and robes were sent down to Woodstock; but that decision was changed for an obvious reason, and the title of Baron Whaddon was conferred upon Villiers, Whaddon being the estate of the unfortunate Lord Grey, who had expired in the Tower in 1614, being implicated in the supposed attempt to place Arabella Stuart on the throne.

On the twenty-seventh of August, 1616, the ceremony of this double creation took place.

On this occasion, the preface to the patent was composed by Lord Bacon, who, on sending it to the King, observed that he had not used in it “glaring terms,” but drawn it according to His Majesty’s instructions. It was determined that the two creations, those of Baron Whaddon and Viscount Villiers, should take place at the same time, the former being intended to secure the estates of Whaddon, the latter, to preserve the name of Villiers in the appellation of the favourite. This appears to have been the especial will of James. “For the name,” writes Bacon to Villiers, on sending him his patent for the title of Viscount, “His Majesty’s will is law in these things; and to speak truth, it is a well-sounding name both here and abroad, and being even a proper name, I will take it for a good sign that you shall give honour to your dignity, and not your dignity to you. Therefore, I have made it ‘Viscount Villiers;’ and as for your Barony, I will keep it for an Earldom, for though the latter had been more orderly, yet that is as usual, and both alike good in law.”

The patent, however, was again altered. It is possible that Bacon may have imagined that the associations connected with Whaddon, and relating to a nobleman generally compassionated,[^[121]] might have rendered Villiers unpopular: at all events he changed it to Blechly; and Villiers received the patent of Lord Blechly, of Blechly.[^[122]]

“I have sent you,” Bacon thus wrote, “now, your patent of creation of Lord Blechly of Blechly, and of Viscount Villiers. Blechly is your own, and I like the sound of the name better than Whaddon; but the name will be laid aside, for you wish to be called Viscount Villiers. I have put them both in a patent, after the manner of the patent of arms where baronies are joined; but the chief reason was, because I would avoid double prefaces, which had not been fit; nevertheless, the ceremony of robing, and otherwise, must be double.”[^[123]]

Sir George Villiers was introduced to the royal presence, on this occasion, by his relative, Lord Compton, and by Lord Norris, the Lord Carew carrying the robe of state before him, when his new honour of Baron Blechly of Blechly was conferred. He was afterwards created Viscount Villiers, when he appeared in a surcoat of scarlet velvet, and was brought in by the Earl of Suffolk and Viscount Lisle, Lord Norris carrying the robe of state of the same coloured velvet, and Lord Compton the crown. The King was seated on his throne, and the Queen, and Charles, Prince of Wales, were present, and all the company “seemed jolly, and well afraid.”

The advice which Bacon proffered to Villiers, upon his elevation to the peerage, is couched in noble terms, and wants nothing but the indefinable charm of supposed sincerity to perfect it:—

“And after that the King shall have watered your new dignities with his bounty of the lands which he intends you, and that some other things concerning your means, which are now likewise in intention, shall be settled upon you, I do not see but you may think your private fortunes established; and, therefore, it is now time that you should refer your actions chiefly to the good of your sovereign and your country. It is the life of an ox or a beast, always to eat and never to exercise; but men are born, especially Christian men, not to cram in their fortunes, but to exercise their virtues; and yet the others have been the unworthy, and sometimes the humour of great persons in our time; neither will your further fortune be the farther off; for assure yourself that fortune is of a woman’s nature, that will sooner follow you by slighting than by too much moving.”[^[124]]

He recommends the young peer, in this “dedication of himself to the public, to countenance, encourage, and advance able and virtuous men, in all degrees, kinds, and professions.” And in places of moment, “rather,” he says, “make able and honest men yours, than advance those that are otherwise because they are yours.”

“The time is,” he adds, in conclusion, “that you think goodness the best part of greatness: and that you remember whence your rising comes, and make return accordingly, God ever keep you.”

Some time afterwards, another characteristic epistle from the Queen denoted the secret terms upon which Anne of Denmark stood with the young favourite:—

“My kind dog,

“I have received your letter, which is verie welcom to me; you doe verie well in lugging the sowes (the King’s) ears, and I thank you for it, and whould have you do so still, upon condition that you continue a watchful dog to him, and be alwayes true to him. So wishing you all happines.

“Anna R.”[^[125]]

It is not a matter of surprise that, thus caressed by both the King and Queen, marks of favour should have followed in continual succession. According to Lord Clarendon, the rapid rise of Villiers might be imputed to a certain innate “wisdom and virtue that was in him, with which he surprised, and even fascinated, all the faculties of his incomparable master.”

And this was no matter of surprise, if we may believe in the truth of the following remarks:—“That Villiers was no sooner admitted to stand there in his own right, but the eyes of all such as look’d out of judgement, or gazed out of curiosity, were quickly directed towards him; as a man, in the delicacy and beauty of his colour, decency and grace of his motion, the most rarely accomplished they had ever beheld.”

The emotions experienced by Villiers, as he gradually ascended higher and higher towards the eminence of worldly grandeur, are well described by Lord Clarendon, in the following words:—

“His swiftness and nimbleness in rising, may be with less injury ascribed to a vivacity than any ambition in his nature; since, it is certain the King’s eagerness to advance him, so surprised his youth, that he seemed only to be held up by the violent inclinations of the King, than to climb up by any art or industry of his own.”[^[126]] It is not to be marvelled at, that the character of Villiers should suffer in this ordeal, fiercer than that of the most depressing vicissitude and adversity; and soon, therefore, indications are to be found, in the annals of the day, of a dawning selfishness and imperiousness, foreign to the simple and courteous nature of Villiers.[^[127]] Still there were noble traits of a lingering greatness of spirit, which justify the partiality which every one who analyses his character must necessarily entertain for it; sometimes at variance with his better judgment. Whilst by watchful bystanders it was remarked that Villiers, the new made Viscount, “will hardly suffer any one to leap over his head,” nor would he allow the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere to be made an Earl; by others, a sacrifice of interest, proceeding from a generous scruple, is recorded.

It will be remembered by historical readers, that Sherborne Castle, the forfeited estate of Sir Walter Ralegh, had been bestowed by James upon the Earl of Somerset. When supplicated by Lady Ralegh to restore that property to her children, the monarch’s answer was, “I mean to have it for Carr;” a reply, which, as Mr. Amos justly observes, “cannot be read in the present day without indignation;” “what impressions,” he adds, “must it have produced on the contemporaries of Ralegh and Carr?”[^[128]] At the trial of Somerset, this luckless possession, upon which a curse has been supposed to rest, was highly prejudicial to him; and many there were, who regarded his calamities as a judgment for this detested acquisition.

When the Earl of Somerset’s lands were given away, after his forfeiture, the estate of Sherborne was offered to Villiers; he might, perhaps, have accepted it without odium, for upon Prince Charles had been bestowed all Somerset’s estates in the north. But he refused the offer of Sherborne, according to a passage in Birch’s MSS., “in a most noble fashion; praying the King that the building of his fortunes might not be founded on the ruin of another.”[^[129]] Sherborne, the value of which was at this time about eight hundred pounds yearly, but was expected to be shortly double that sum, was given to Sir John Digby, upon the payment of ten thousand pounds, and has remained ever since in the same family. The respect of Villiers towards the memory of an unfortunate man was much appreciated; already had public opinion visited with its bitterest curse, the traitor, Sir Lewis Stukeley, who was afterwards a prisoner in that very “chamber in the Tower, in which Ralegh, whom he had betrayed, had spent twelve years of misery.”[^[130]]

Sir Henry Wotton compares the repetition of benefits conferred upon Villiers, to a kind of embroidering, or listing of one favour upon another. But all these preferments were, he adds, but the “faceings or fringeings of his greatness,” compared with that trust which the King shortly reposed in his favourite, when he made him “the chief concomitant of his heir apparent.”[^[131]]

This important mark of respect and confidence had never been extended to the ill-fated predecessor in James’s favour, the Earl of Somerset. If Villiers were at that period of his life unworthy of the trust, James, endowed as he was with all the experience which his own vicious Court could bestow, was criminal beyond measure to place his only son, on whom the hopes of the nation rested, in contaminated society. James must, in that case, have been either grossly deceived, or immeasurably culpable. The friendship, thus commenced between the prince and the favourite, in youth, was fraught with consequences so important to this country, that few points of historical biography can offer greater domestic interest than the early intimacy between Charles and Villiers.

Charles, Prince of Wales, was eight years younger than the man whom he afterwards admitted to an intimacy such as has been rarely permitted between a monarch and a subject, and which ceased only when Villiers expired. The superstitious, when they remembered, in aftertimes, the perils of the young prince’s infancy, saw in them a type of his fate. “He was born,” says the historian Kennet, “and baptized, in somewhat of surprise and confusion, as it were beginning the world in a sort of presage how he was to end it.”[^[132]] So feeble was he, that even afterwards, although in process of time there were many great ladies suitors for the keeping of the infant Prince, yet when they saw how sickly and fragile he was, their hearts failed, and none of them consented to undertake so important a charge.[^[133]] Little, indeed, could it have been anticipated that the delicate boy was fated, not only to outlive his energetic and robust brother, Henry, but even to become, in times of danger, one of the hardiest and healthiest of those who fought on Edgehill, and at Naseby. The constitution of Charles was invigorated in his vicissitudes, and perfected by the toils of a soldier’s life.

That he should reign over this country was foretold by second sight. When James the First was preparing to remove from Scotland, there came to the Court an aged Highland chief, to take a solemn leave of his sovereign. The Queen and her children were present. The old man, after addressing a great deal of affectionate and sage advice to the King, turned to the children, and passing by Henry, he kissed with great ardour and deep respect the hands of his younger brother, the Duke Charles, as then he was called.

The King strove to correct what he fancied was a mistake on the part of the chief, and to direct his attention to the heir apparent, the fit object of such homage. But the Highlander heeded not those hints; he continued to gaze upon and to address the infant Charles; saying that he knew to whom he addressed himself. “This child,” he exclaimed, “will be greater than his elder brother, and will convey his father’s name and title to succeeding generations.” “This,” said Dr. Pernichief, Charles’s tutor, “was conceived to be dotage; but the event gave it the credit of a prophecy, and confirmed that some long experienced souls in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the height of prophetical spirits.”[^[134]] A long period of fragility seemed to throw doubt upon the gratuitous prophecy of the aged chief. Fortunately, Sir Robert Carey, to whom the charge of the drooping child was entrusted, was an estimable person, incapable of anything deceitful, or unjust—a “plain, honest gentleman.”[^[135]] Those who wished ill to him and to his wife rejoiced at this selection, for they were certain that the prince would never be reared.

The weakly Charles was four years of age when consigned to the care of Sir Robert Carey. He could not, at this age even, stand alone; his ancles appeared to be out of joint. The King, with his characteristic conceit and want of gentle feeling, was disposed to use the most violent remedies and measures to cure the defects at which his pride was offended. The nostrums which he recommended were worthy of Martinus Scriblerus. But he found a champion of the helpless child in Lady Carey. “Many a battle my wife had with the King, but she still prevailed,” writes Sir Robert Carey.[^[136]] The King, nevertheless, wished that the string under the young prince’s tongue might be cut; for the child, it was thought, would never speak. Then he proposed wire boots for his sinews and feet, but Lady Carey stood firm, and the Monarch was obliged to yield to a woman’s arguments.

The boy grew daily stronger, and repaying Lady Carey’s good care, gained health under her mild auspices, “both in body and mind.”[^[137]] Still the impediment in his voice continued; his countenance exhibited that mournful expression which was doubtless the natural consequence of a weakly childhood, and of the consciousness of bodily defects, which is the most likely of any circumstances to depress the buoyancy of the young.

To the inevitable solitude of ill-health, Charles probably owed his prudence, his early piety, and his taste for elegant pursuits. Villiers, in after life, found his love of pictures and medals one road to Charles’s affections, by producing a sympathy between himself and the young prince. Charles was also, for his age, an accomplished theologian, and notwithstanding the impediment in his utterance, he could discourse to the admiration of all who heard him, on topics of general interest. With the traveller, the mechanic, and the scholar, he was equally fluent, meeting them on their own subjects, and imparting knowledge to the learned. He improved, too, in those diversions, and exercises which were then considered indispensable to the character of a gentleman. “He rid,” says his tutor, Dr. Pernichief, “the great horse very well; and on the little saddle he was not only adroit, but a laborious hunter or fieldman.”[^[138]]

The temper of Charles is said to have been tinctured with obstinacy; and his old Scottish nurse reported him to have been of a very evil nature, even in his infancy; whilst another attendant taxes him with being, “beyond measure, wilful and unthankful.”[^[139]] How far, in these uncured qualities, “springing like rank weeds in the heart,” we may trace some of the fatal errors in Charles’s career—his pertinacious adherence, especially when King, to Villiers, whether his favourite was right or wrong, is a matter of curious speculation.

But Dr. Pernichief, who knew Charles well, only allows that his “childhood was blemished with supposed obstinacy, for the weakness of his body inclining him to retirement, and the imperfections of his speech rendering discourse tedious and unpleasant, he was suspected to be somewhat perverse,” a construction often put upon the deportment of a bashful, sad child. Such were his defects; and, as far as his royal father was concerned, they were more offensive to the pride of the king, than painful to the tenderness of a parent. All, however, acknowledged that the youth of the accomplished Charles had hitherto been irreproachable, and that, if he manifested not the powerful intellect and extended views of his late brother, he resembled him in his love of virtue, his sense of honour, and in the difficult task of being dutiful and respectful to parents who were frequently at variance.

He now came, at the age of sixteen, before his future subjects, with this singular disadvantage, that the death of his elder brother was still a subject of lamentation. The clergy, especially, could not forget one whose staunch Protestantism gave them the assurance of a steady friend.

“Henry, Prince of Wales, was still,” says a contemporary writer, “so much in men’s minds, that Andrews, Bishop of Ely, preaching at court, prayed solemnly for him, without recalling himself.”[^[140]] The Queen, too, refused to be comforted, and upon the first public occasion on which Charles appeared, declined being present, lest the ceremonial should revive her grief.

Many could remember that at his installation into the Order of the Bath, at four years of age, Charles, unable to walk, was carried in the arms of the Lord High Admiral to the rites which, referring to chivalric observances and martial deeds, seemed a sort of mockery to the infant Prince. Those who recalled that hour, now beheld in the royal youth, who at his creation as Prince of Wales appeared before them, a graceful and manly figure set off to advantage by dress, and other circumstances.

In an old print, engraved by Renold Estraake, he is represented, as Prince of Wales, in a slouched hat with a long falling feather; his juvenile, and very slender form clad in a tight vest; a sash over the right shoulder is tied with a large bow under the left arm, and the ends are fringed with jewels. Around his waist is a scarf, also edged with a fringe of pearls and jewels. A stuffed skirt, richly embroidered and adorned, descends almost to the knee. His boots are apparently of some soft material, being creased; the tops richly decorated with jewels. Thus attired, and mounted on a superb horse, the head of which was adorned with a Phœnix in flames, emblematically complimentary, Charles presented himself to the people. Such was his costume before he visited Spain, and imbibed a love of the graceful cloak, the Spanish hat, and Vandyke collar.

His manners, serious though courteous, were highly acceptable to the majority of those who gazed upon him, when, on the eve of All Saints’ day, October 31st, 1616, Charles was created Prince of Wales. His very stammering began to be approved as a mark of wisdom; and “obloquy, it was said, never played the fool so much as in imputing folly to the heir apparent.”

Buckingham, although twenty-four years of age, seems by the earliest portrait that there is of him—the engraving by Simon Pass, in 1617—to have had a most youthful appearance. In that picture, taken when he was made an Earl, and therefore during the ensuing year, he is depicted in a tight doublet, with a small white collar edged with Vandyke lace, and closed with one row of rich pearls down the centre. A cloak hangs over one shoulder, but the other displays a short sleeve, or epaulet, opening above the elbow, and having underneath a richly-worked sleeve, confined at the wrist by a deep cuff, fringed, and turned back; his doublet is richly guarded with lace. At this period, a very slight moustache is seen upon his upper lip, and the pointed beard, which is afterwards to be found in all his portraits, is not observable.

The ceremonials performed on this occasion were such as the people of this country have ever dearly loved; and, without considering that they emptied the royal coffers, and compelled James to resort to expedients for raising money which rendered him a continual debtor to the bounty and loyalty of his subjects, eventually taxing too far their liberality, they loudly extolled them on this occasion. It must, however, have been a cheering sight when the young Prince came in state from Barn Elms to Whitehall, accompanied by a retinue of lords and gentlemen of honourable rank. At Chelsea he was met by the Lord Mayor and citizens, in separate barges; and the sounds of martial music, or, as the chronicler of the day terms it, “the royal sound of drum and trumpet,” the sight of a crowd of people on the shore and in boats, the rich banners and streamers,[streamers,] with many trophies and ingenious devices which met him on the water, must have presented as festive a scene as ever was enacted on the bosom of the river Thames.

The speeches addressed were, of course, in verse. They were proffered by a female figure, representing London, seated upon a sea unicorn, with six Tritons supporting her, accompanied by Neptune and the two rivers, Thames and Dee. This personage addressed the young prince in the following terms:—

Treasures of hope and jewel of mankind,

Richer no kingdome’s head did ever see;

Adorn’d in titles, but much more in mind,

The love of many thousands speake in thee;

The ode went on to enumerate the blessings to be anticipated from the promising virtues of Charles, and concluded:—

Welcome, oh, welcome—all faire joyes attend thee,

Glorie of life, to safety we commend thee.

After this address, the young Prince was wafted down to Whitehall Stairs, where he landed. Passing on to the palace, he saluted the King, who stood on the palace stairs. The ceremony of creation, which took place on the following Monday, was performed in the hall of Whitehall Palace; and at night, “to crown it with more heroical honour, fortie worthy gentlemen of the ten noble societies of Innes of Court, and every way qualified by birth to break three staves, three swords, and exchange ten blows a-piece,” encountered each other. The delicate health of the Prince, and the late season of the year, prevented any great procession at the creation, but it was commemorated by tilting at the ring, to give great lustre and honour to the occasion, and among fourteen names of high degree, is found, among the challengers, that of Viscount Villiers, his first appearance in the tilt yard. Among the gallants who flaunted it out with the greatest bravery, are to be found many famous in successive times.[^[141]]

Notwithstanding the sanction which James gave to a growing intimacy between the heir apparent and his favourite, there had been various early disagreements between them, which delayed the reciprocal affection which the King strove to promote between Charles and Buckingham. Their confidence was, in truth, the growth of years, and was impeded by several incidents, which those who were adverse to Villiers were eager to notice and to record. It was generally expected that a jealousy between them would defeat the King’s wishes, and divide the court into two parties; and the following letter imparts one of those incidents upon which such anticipations were founded:—

Letter of Edward Sherburn to Lord Holland.

“March 14, 1615.

“There is a speech in court of the distaste Sir George Villiers hath given the Prince about a ring. The manner, as I have heard it, is thus: The Prince coming one afternoon into the Presence at Newmarket, with Sir George Villiers, and discoursing with him, fixed his eyes upon a ring which Sir George Villiers had upon his finger, which, taking from him, put it upon one of his own; and having occasion to pull out his pocket-handkerchief, the ring, being too large for the Prince’s finger, fell into his pocket. The Prince parting from him, not thinking of the ring, the next morning, Sir George Villiers, meeting the Prince in His Majesty’s presence again, and finding the Prince to take no notice of his ring, asked His Highness for it; to which he answered, that in good faith he knew not what he had done with it; whereat Sir George Villiers flew into such a passion, whether it was in regard of the value, or of the piece, as he left the Prince, and went immediately to the King, exceedingly disconcerted. The King, observing some distemper in him, demanded the occasion. Expressing the same with some earnestness, Sir George told the King that the Prince had lost a ring of his, which did much trouble him. The King, moved thereat, sent for the Prince, and used such bitter language to him, as forced His Highness to shed tears, telling him also not to return to His Majesty until he had found it, and restored the ring to Sir George Villiers. The Prince, after he came from the King, gave commandment to Sir Robert Carey to search in the pockets of his breeches which he wore that day, when by good fortune the ring was found, and by Sir Robert Carey delivered to Sir George Villiers. By this a man may see the force of the King’s affection, which is boundless, and so likewise may be seen how far beyond reason presumption may transport a man. What the consequence of this and the like will be, time must produce. Only this much is conceived, that the favour of the King on this particular cannot continue, because there wants a sound foundation to uphold so great a building. Thus much I adventure to write unto your lordship, whom I beseech to keep this in your own custody, or else to commit it to the fire.”[^[142]]

Another occurrence, trivial under other circumstances, seemed to indicate that no harmony was likely to exist between Charles and Villiers. One day, as they were walking in the gardens of Greenwich Palace, they approached a fountain, near which was a statue of Bacchus: this figure was so constructed, after the fashion of ancient waterworks, that, by touching a spring, the water was emitted. The Prince, grave as he usually appeared, was that day in high spirits. He touched the spring, the water spouted forth, and suffused the face of the favourite. Villiers was greatly offended. The King took his part, not only reproving severely his son, but adding the father’s correction of two boxes on the ears. Those who stood by were certain that this boyish frolic and its termination would ruin Villiers with the Prince. That it did not, is a proof of the good disposition of Charles, who, perhaps, did not the less admire Villiers because he had resented an act of impertinence even from an heir apparent.[^[143]]

The partiality which James now openly manifested for Villiers drew down upon him the animadversions of the world; and when he trusted him as the associate of his son, invectives were loud and frequent. Although it was the fashion of the day to impute to the sovereign the wisdom of Solomon, lamentations were poured forth upon the unworthiness of those in whom he confided. “Is it not prodigious,” writes one historian, “that a Prince, who was as wise as the beloved son of David, should commit the reins of government to a callow youth, of no more capacity than is enough to qualify a modern beau?”[^[144]] “For an old king,” observes Roger Coke, “he having reigned in England and Scotland fifty-one years, to doat upon a young favourite scarce of age, yet younger in understanding, though old in vice as any of his time, and to commit the whole ship of the commonwealth by sea and land to such a Phaeton, is a precedent without any example.”[^[145]] Not only Villiers, it is added, but even his mother, began now to influence all matters of public concern; no places were disposed of without her consent, and as much court was paid to her as to her son.[^[146]]

Many of the animadversions thus thrown upon Villiers proceeded from the laxity of his moral code. On this point, the accusations brought forward are vague, and therefore difficult to be repelled. They were, in some instances, the effect of a general impression that Villiers was a friend of Laud and a favourer of Armenianism; and originated with the Puritans.

No instance of great dereliction from propriety being recorded, it may be safely inferred that at this time public decorum was, at all events, not outraged by Villiers, whatever the private course of his existence may have been; and however humiliating it is to reflect that a character so noble, so incapable of baseness, of such fair promise, may yet have been tinged with vices that infallibly brush away much of the finest attributes of virtuous youth, it must, at the same time, be allowed, that to remain incorrupt in the reign of James, would have argued almost super-human strength of character.

“Nothing,” relates Arthur Wilson, “but bravery and feasting, the parents of debauchery and rioting, flourished among us. There is no theme for history where men spill more drink than blood.” And he justly remarks that the boasted Halcyon days of peace cease to be a blessing when they “bring a curse” with them; the curse of licentious pleasures and disgraceful idleness; and that thus war is more happy in its effects than peace, “if it takes the distemper that grows by long surfeit without destroying the body.”[^[147]]

In spite, however, of the animadversions of foes, and the still more injurious temptations proffered by unworthy friends, the public character of Buckingham maintained for some time its integrity. His errors, real or imputed, were not at first such as to lower him in the eyes of society. He appeared, as Lord Clarendon observes, “the most glorious star that ever shined in any court; insomuch that all nations persecuted him with love and wonder, as fast as the King with fancy; and to his last he never lost any of his lustre.”[^[148]]

His mother assisted in the aggrandizement of her favourite son. It was her office to teach his kindred, as fast as they came up to the metropolis, “to put on a court dress and air.” The King, who had hitherto hated women, soon began to have his palace crowded with the female relations of Villiers; “little children did run up and down the royal apartments like rabbit-starters about their burrows.” And the monarch, who could never endure his queen or his own family near him, made no remonstrance at this inconvenience, whilst the censorious, who decided that the favourite had no merit except that “he looked well, dressed well, and danced well,” were outrageous in their wrath. So well, indeed, did he “look,” that James, more and more enchanted with that open and beaming countenance, gave him the name of “Steenie,” in allusion to one of the pictures in Whitehall, by an Italian master, representing the first martyr, Stephen.

Villiers now enjoyed the different dignities and offices of Viscount Villiers, Baron of Whaddon, Justice in Oire of all the forests and parks beyond Trent, Master of the Horse, and Knight of the Garter. But these were not sufficient in the sight of James. On the seventh of January, the favourite was created Earl of Buckingham, upon such short notice, that the drums and trumpets which should have been in the Chamber of Presence, at Whitehall (but not have sounded), were not in attendance. Villiers, in his surcote and hood, in an ordinary hat, and with his rapier, passed from the Council Chamber, over the terrace, through the great gateway, into the Chamber of Presence. He was assisted by the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Treasurer, and the Earl of Worcester, afterwards the gallant defender of Raglan Castle, all in robes and coronets. The Lord Chamberlain met them at the door of the Presence Chamber, where Villiers was duly presented to the King and Queen. The ceremonial, at which he figured alone, no other peer being created, was not followed by a supper, and therefore, adds Camden, “no style with largess proclaimed.”[^[149]]

This new honour enabled its object to appear

with still greater splendour and importance, at the performance of the new masque of Christmas, by Ben Jonson; it was represented on Twelfth night, and amongst the performers were Richard Barbadge, an original performer in several of Shakespeare’s plays, and John Heminge, who signed the “address to the reader” of Shakespeare’s folio works. In the course of the masque, the Earl of Buckingham danced with the Queen; and soon afterwards the society of the Middle Temple strove to conciliate him by entertaining him with a supper and a masque.[^[150]] At the end of the month Buckingham was made a Privy Councillor, the youngest man that had ever received that honour. He also contrived to get his brother Christopher made either one of the Grooms or one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, upon which creation the following rhyme was circulated:—

“Above the skies shall Gemini rise,

And twins the Court shall pester;

George shall back his brother Jack,

And Jack his brother Kester.”[^[151]]

It was about this time, probably, that Buckingham was first beheld drawn about in that coach with six horses, which was not only wondered at as a novelty, but “imputed to him as a mastering pride.” He had already excited the indignation of the English public by his appearance in a sedan chair; and when seen carried upon men’s shoulders, the populace raised an outcry against him in the streets, “loathing,” says Arthur Wilson, “that men should be brought to as servile a condition as horses.” The chair was, however, forgiven, and soon sedans came into general use. But the coach was the theme of every tongue; it was not that the vehicle was strange to the people, for it had been introduced in the late reign, but then only two horses were used; and when Buckingham, in all his bravery of attire, was beheld drawn by six prancing steeds, acclamations were general. The old Earl of Northumberland heard those murmurs in his prison in the Tower, and resolved that, should he ever recover his liberty, he would outvie the favourite. Accordingly, when in 1621 he was set at liberty, he appeared in the city of London, and at Bath, with eight horses; as much to the amusement, probably, of him whom he strove to outvie, as to the amazement of the admiring public.[^[152]] It required, indeed, no ordinary fortune to keep up this state; and the King so much disapproved of expensive equipages in any but the great, that he subsequently entertained a notion of imposing a tax of 40l. per annum, on all who, below a certain degree, kept a coach, and of bestowing the proceeds of the tax on decayed captains.[^[153]]

No clamours affected Buckingham long during this period of his life; for, although there were occasionally some boisterous demonstrations of disapproval, the affections of the majority of the people returned to him shortly after a temporary unpopularity. And here, observes Lord Clarendon, in his parallel between the Earl of Essex and Buckingham, “the fortunes of our great personages met when they were both the favourites of the princes, and of the people. But their affections to the Duke of Buckingham were very short lived.”[^[154]]

CHAPTER IV.

THE KING’S PROJECTS—A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND—OBSTACLES TO THAT INTENTION—WANT OF MONEY—£100,000 RAISED IN THE CITY—DISLIKE OF THE PEOPLE TO THIS JOURNEY, ON ACCOUNT OF EXPENSE—JAMES SETS OUT, MARCH 13TH, 1616-1617—HIS ATTENDANT COURTIERS, SIR JOHN ZOUCH, SIR GEORGE GORING, SIR JOHN FINETT—CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH—SURPASSING QUALITIES OF BUCKINGHAM—OBJECTS OF JAMES’S JOURNEY TO EDINBURGH—ANECDOTE OF LORD HOWARD OF WALDEN—DISPUTATIONS AT ST. ANDREWS—THE KING KNIGHTS MANY OF THE YOUNG COURTIERS—OFFENCE GIVEN AT EDINBURGH BY LAUD—A PROJECT TO ASSASSINATE BUCKINGHAM SUSPECTED—JAMES’S PROGRESS CONCLUDED—HIS VISIT TO WARWICK—AFFAIRS RELATING TO SIR EDWARD COKE AND HIS FAMILY—BASE CONDUCT OF ALL THE PARTIES CONCERNED—MEANNESS OF BACON—HIS LETTERS—FRANCES HATTON—CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND THE EARL OF OXFORD BROUGHT FORWARD BY LADY HATTON—COKE RESTORED TO FAVOUR—MARRIAGE OF FRANCES HATTON TO LORD PURBECK.

CHAPTER IV.

Early in the year 1616-17, James determined to visit Scotland—a resolution which was opposed, somewhat to the displeasure of the King, by Buckingham. But the King was soon pacified, and the journey was decided upon. Some obstacles existed; for instance, the want of money, which was to be borrowed from rich citizens before the monarch’s project could take place; then it was expected to prove a “hard journey,” for it was thought the Court would reach the North before there would be grass for their horses; and even the Scots expressed a wish that the visitation might be deferred.[^[155]]

The entertainment given to Monsieur de la Tour, the Ambassador Extraordinary from the French King, delayed somewhat this freezing expedition. At length, it was decided that James should set out on the twenty-second of February; though money came in slowly; and it was found extremely difficult to raise the sum of 100,000l. in the metropolis. “Yet,” observes a contemporary, “there is much urging, and in the end it must be done, though men be never so much discouraged.” To propitiate the presiding Lord Mayor, he was knighted, and received, with his companions, the King’s thanks for the 100,000l. in prospect, which was, however, to be raised, nolens volens, whilst men of low condition were called in to bear the burden.

It was not until the thirteenth of March that the King and Queen, with Prince Charles, removed to Theobalds, preparatory to the progress of James northwards. Never was undertaking so much disliked by the generality of the people, chiefly on account of the immense expense which it involved. It was now fourteen years since his Majesty had visited his Scottish dominions. “He began the journey,” says Wilson, “with the spring, warming the country, as he went, with the glories of the Court;” and carrying with him those boon companions who best could shorten the way, and consume the nights by their pranks and buffoonery. These were Sir George Goring, Sir Edward Zouch, and Sir John Finett—men “who could fit and obtemperate the King’s humour;” and it may, therefore, be readily supposed what description of gentlemen they were. Sir George Goring was a native of Hurst-per-point, in Sussex, in which county his descendants still flourish. He had been brought up in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, his father being one of the gentlemen pensioners; and had been gentleman in ordinary to Prince Henry. He now went as lieutenant of the gentlemen pensioners, and accordingly was despatched with others of that hand by sea.[^[156]] Goring had attracted the regard of James by his sound sense and vein of jocular humour; like Sir Edward Zouch and Sir John Finett, he was the “chief and master fool” of the Court—sometimes “presenting David Dromore and Archie Armstrong, the King’s fools, on the back of other fools, till they fell together by the ears, and fell one over another.” Goring, like his colleagues in his respectable employment, is said to have got more by his fooling than other people did by their wisdom; he was, indeed, regarded as a sort of minor favourite, yet Buckingham evinced no jealousy of him, and procured him, in 1629, the title of Baron Goring, of Hurst-pierre-point.[^[157]] Finett and Zouch were equally expert with Goring in “antick” dances, disguises in masqueradoes, and extemporary foolery; but in this last accomplishment Sir John Millicent, whose name is not among the King’s retinue in Scotland, excelled them all; and was the “most commended for notable fooling.”[fooling.”][^[158]] It was found, however, impossible to surpass Buckingham in the accomplishment of dancing. His grace, and the fondness he showed for the pastime, brought it into fashion. “No man,” writes an historian, “dances better; no man runs or jumps better; and, indeed, he jumps higher than ever Englishman did in so short a time—from a private gentleman to a dukedom.”[^[159]] He now reigned sole monarch in the King’s favour; and everything he did was admired “for the doer’s sake.” The king was never contented, except when near him; nor could the Court grandees be well out of his presence; all petitions, therefore, “whether for place or office, for Court or Commonwealth, were addressed to him.”

The King proceeded by easy journeys of ten, twelve, and seventeen miles a day northwards. It is curious to find him resting a day and a night at the home of Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, near Huntingdon.[^[160]] At Lincoln, he healed fifty persons of the Evil, a gracious act which was succeeded by an attendance upon a cock-fighting, at which His Majesty was very merry. This diversion was varied by horse-racing.

On his arrival near Edinburgh, the King took up his arrival at Seton House, the seat of the Earl of Wintoun, whose family continued to be faithful to the descendants of James during the calamitous contest between the modern Stuarts and the Hanoverians. James remained in Scotland until the fifth of July, when he returned by the west coast of Scotland to Carlisle.

The three great objects of his Majesty’s journey to Scotland, were the extension of episcopal authority; the establishment of some ceremonials in religion; and the elevation of the civil above the ecclesiastic authority.[^[161]] It does not, however, appear that Buckingham took any active part in these designs, or that he was at this period regarded in any other light than as one of the ministering agents to the amusement of James’s vacant hours. It is possible that he may have viewed Scotland with that prejudice with which the English at that time regarded that nation. The revenues of that country being then insufficient to maintain the Government, Buckingham probably deemed it, as others did, nothing but a drain upon the resources of England—a barren ground from which “a beggarly rabble (like a fluent spring),” to use the words of Osborne, “was for ever to be found crossing the River Tweed.”[^[162]] The national prejudice was likewise considerably strengthened by the King’s favourite, but abortive scheme of union between the two crowns; thus dividing the kingdom into halves, so that he, “a Christian king under the gospel, should no longer be a polygamist to two wives, under which discreditable imputation he conceived that the partition of the kingdom placed him.”[him.”][^[163]] Whether Buckingham may have been propitiated by the hospitality of the Scots or not, or whether he thought with Sir Anthony Weldon that “the country was too good for them that possess it, and too bad for others to be at the charge to conquer it,” does not appear. In some passages of the Royal Progress it is most likely that the young courtier found but little delight. At St. Andrews, disputations in divinity, and at Stirling in philosophy, were honoured by the King’s presence. They were delivered by some members of the University of Edinburgh, and were to have been held in the college there, had not public business interfered.”[interfered.”][^[164]]