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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. III.

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,

SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1860.

The right of Translation is reserved.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STREET,

REGENT’S PARK.

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER I.

DEATH OF THE EARL OF SUFFOLK--HIS ADDRESS TO THE HEADS OF HOUSES--THE OPPORTUNITY SEIZED UPON BY THE KING TO MAKE BUCKINGHAM CHANCELLOR--INDIGNATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS--INJUDICIOUS CONDUCT OF THE KING, VEHEMENT DEBATES--SIR DUDLEY DIGGES AND ELIOT SENT TO PRISON--BUCKINGHAM’S MOTIVES FOR ENGAGING IN A WAR WITH FRANCE--HE ENDEAVOURS TO SEND AWAY THE QUEEN’S SERVANTS--HIS FEAR OF LOSING HIS INFLUENCE--ARRIVAL OF SOUBISE AND ROHAN--THE DUKE GOES TO DOVER--TO PORTSMOUTH--LETTERS FROM THE DUCHESS--FROM HIS MOTHER--HE SETS SAIL FOR ROCHELLE--HIS FIRST OPERATIONS SUCCESSFUL--CARE TAKEN BY HIM OF HIS TROOPS--1626-1627.

LIFE AND TIMES OF

GEORGE VILLIERS.

CHAPTER I.

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

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

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

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

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

That dignity was considered then, as it now is, one of the highest tributes to personal character, as well as to political eminence, that the nation could offer. It happened that Doctor Mew, the Master of Trinity College, was the King’s Chaplain. No fewer than forty-three votes were obtained by his means; nevertheless, there was a powerful opponent in Lord Thomas Howard, son of the late Chancellor; a hundred and three votes against the Duke were secured by him, and with more exertion, it is supposed, that he might have defeated the Duke’s partisans.[^[1]]

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

His doom was, however, at hand. Whatsoever he may have intended to do for Cambridge was cut short by the hands of destiny. There remains, however, a very characteristic memorial of Buckingham in that University. The silver maces still in use, carried by the Esquire Bedells, were a present from the ill-fated Duke,[^[2]] whose presiding office was of so short continuance.

It was to be expected that the House of Commons would receive with great anger this fresh proof of the King’s contempt for their body. Regarding this election as a reflection upon them, a resolution was passed to send to the University a remonstrance against their choice. Charles, however, considering--and with some justice--that this remonstrance would be an invasion of the privileges of the University, despatched a message to the House, by Sir Richard Weston, desiring them not to interfere; inditing, at the same time, a letter to the University, expressing his approbation of their election of the Duke.[^[3]]

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

Had the King yielded to a prayer so reasonable and equitable, the fury of the public might have been appeased. But he viewed the most important question of this early period of his reign, as between man and man, not as between a monarch and his subject. Buckingham’s great fault, he considered, was being his favourite. No criminality could be proved in any department of his conduct as minister.[^[4]] Nor could Charles, who had hung over the death-bed of his father, treat with anything but contempt the accusation of poison. The King believed that all the other articles of the impeachment were prompted by a resolution, after attacking his minister, to assail his own prerogative. He had been reared in the greatest jealousy on that one point, and with the strongest and most conservative value for the sovereign authority. Charles, accomplished as a man, was profoundly ignorant and prejudiced as a king: his views were narrow, and his knowledge of the constitution of his country limited. His notions had been warped by a residence at the courts of France and Spain. The immediate effects of a despotic rule are to a superficial observer imposing. It is only to those who look into the interior circumstances of a people, and who well consider the tendencies of an arbitrary government to blight honest ambition, to cramp and weaken the national character, that its real misery and degradation are apparent.

In Spain, with Buckingham ever at his side; in a court full of picturesque splendour; in youth, with hope and love before him, Charles had probably forgotten the aching hearts in the prisons of the Inquisition. In France, the irresistible fascinations of Richelieu had not, it is reasonable to suppose, been wanting to bias the mind of one likely to be so nearly allied to the royal family of France. Most of all those influences that betrayed Charles to his ruin must, however, be ascribed to the dogmatic fallacies of his father. James had educated according to his own contracted opinions not only his son, but the favourite who was hereafter, as it is expressed by Sir Henry Wotton, to be “the chief concomitant” of the future sovereign of England.[^[5]]

Of late years, before the quarrel with the Commons, the popularity of Buckingham had increased. The whole scene of affairs had been changed from Spain to France; the alteration was satisfactory to many, and was ascribed to the Duke--and he had not only become suddenly a favourite with the public, but had been extolled in Parliament.[^[6]] This was, indeed, says Wotton, “but a mere bubble or blast, and like an ephemeral fit of applause, as eftsoon will appear in the sequel and train of his life.” The contrast, therefore, between a success so recent and the present odium into which he had fallen, was no doubt the cause of much chagrin to the harassed favourite, who seems, like most men of sensitive natures, to have valued popularity, and to have been fully aware that his political life depended upon it. He knew that no man could long resist the force of public opinion in this country. Even in those days, suppressed as it was by a fettered press, and by the gaunt spectre of injustice in Star-chambers, it had exploded into one burst of forcible indignation in the House of Commons. Somewhere the dauntless spirit of an Englishman must speak out, and it then began to make itself heard in that great assembly which had hitherto been almost as subservient to Court influence as the French Chamber of the present day.

The answer of the Duke to the Impeachment was drawn out with much skill by Sir Nicholas Hyde,[^[7]] the uncle of Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon. Sir Nicholas was considered to be a sound lawyer, and a man of honourable character. He was a “staunch stickler,” says Lord Campbell, “for prerogative; but this was supposed to arise rather from the sincere opinion he formed of what the English constitution was or ought to be, than from a desire to recommend himself for promotion.”[^[8]] He succeeded Sir Randolf Crewe, who was suddenly removed from his seat to make room for one who had no objection to the arbitrary acts by which Charles endeavoured to support Buckingham, and who was ready to conduct the war with France without the aid of parliament.

The debates which were now carried on with vehemence seemed to produce little impression on the counsels which incited Charles and Buckingham to acts of insanity. The chief orators on the side of the parliament were Selden, Noy, and Thomas Wentworth, member for Oxford, and, before their commitment, Sir Dudley Digges, and Sir John Eliot. To this list several others must be added; amongst the most notable were those of Burton and Prynne. Burton had been one of the clerks of the closet to King Charles when Prince of Wales, and had been offended by not accompanying his royal master to Spain, but grew still more indignant at the preferment of Laud; and by being himself regarded as an “underling.” He was afterwards dismissed the court for various acts of insolence, and became, as a matter of course, the bitterest enemy of his late patron.[^[9]]

There were now, to use the language of Sir Edward Coke, “two leaks in the ship,” or State. “Two leaks,” he declared, “would drown any ship;”[^[10]] yet Lord Campbell, as well as other historians, is of opinion that had it not been for the attempt to force episcopacy on Scotland, Charles, and even his descendants, might have continued to rule by absolute power, until, in the course of centuries, the public voice might have forced a revolution upon the country.

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

In order to challenge reprisals, since there was no pretence to warrant a proclamation of war with France, Buckingham encouraged the capture of French vessels by English ships and privateers, taking the vanquished vessels as prizes. He began, also, to make his great influence available by his efforts to lower the French nation in the eyes of the King, fearing lest the young and beautiful queen should oppose the war. He endeavoured, it is alleged, to alienate the affections of the King from the bride of his choice, and to shew her personally every species of insolence and rudeness. Once, when she did not call upon his mother, as she had promised to do by appointment, Buckingham entered her Majesty’s room in a rage; the Queen answered him harshly: upon which he told her that there had been Queens in England who had lost their heads.[^[11]]

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

His scheme for sending back the Queen’s French servants had been, however, agreeable in the extreme to Charles--and it may even have been suggested by the King, who, in answer to a letter from the Duke, writes to him thus:--“Steenie, I have received your letters by Dic Graeme. This is my answer: I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of town; if you can, by fair means, but stick not long in dispatching, otherwise force them away like so many wyld beasts, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil go with them. Let me hear no more answer, but of the performance of my command; so trust your faithful and constant friend, Charles R. Dated Oaking, 7 Aug. 1626.”[^[12]]

His former loan of ships to the French implies a more friendly footing with that nation than these later passages of the Duke’s life may seem to indicate.[^[13]] It was in fact his dread of any influence stronger than his own that caused Buckingham to induce Charles to break off the treaty with Spain; and had instigated his animosity to France. Haunted by the dread of being superseded in Charles’s favour, there were moments when his overburdened mind was opened to some humble friends, and the apprehensions of the King’s regard being alienated were imparted in agony to a confidant.

Buckingham was also aware of that intriguing and uncertain disposition in Henrietta Maria, which, in spite of a certain heroism of character which she possessed, shewed itself in mournful colours in later periods of her chequered life. The patronage which she wished to divide among her French followers was also a source of jealousy to the Duke, who had hitherto disposed of all Court offices to people who would support him in his state of power, or aid him if he fell. Henrietta was attended on her arrival in this country by many younger sons of good families in France, who looked to England as the field where golden honours were plentifully to be reaped. “They devoured so much,” we are told, “that all the thrift of Bishop Juxom, who had amassed much, was gulped down by these insatiable sharks.”[^[14]] Patronage and influence being withdrawn, the Duke’s ruin must, he knew, be complete. He had nothing to expect from his country, for he had never considered the interests of his native land as identified with his own. There were in his mind some motives of a higher class and a more general nature, although we must not look for lofty principles of action in those days.

The intrigues of Richelieu, who was now Buckingham’s rival and foe, worked in England through the Queen. The Duke had been overreached by the Cardinal, and thirsted for open revenge. By denying the troops of Count Mansfeldt a passage through France, the army of that celebrated general had perished. There was no doubt of Richelieu’s determination to extirpate the Protestants, and all promises of befriending them had long since proved faithless; the Duke, therefore, saw that he had been compromised, and he resented that superiority in trickery, which it is difficult for a mind like his to bear. Whilst he had thus been deceived by France, Buckingham was suffering by the popular cry against recusants; and the Romish priests, adding to that cry, were enjoining on Henrietta Maria, as a penance, that she should walk bare-footed to Tyburn, as a tribute to the memory of the Jesuits, who had been executed at that spot of sad remembrances. Thus, the cause of the suffering Protestants in France had become the cause of the people, and Buckingham hoped to regain his popularity by espousing it--whilst, at the same time, by sending away the French attendants of the Queen, he should banish the emissaries of Richelieu. Much of his conduct has been attributed to the influence of a French Abbot, who was related to the Duke of Orleans, who was also a violent enemy to the Cardinal.[^[15]]

Fortunately for Buckingham’s endeavours to regain popularity, the Duc de Soubise, who, together with the Duc de Rohan, his brother, were the great leaders of the Protestant party in France, arrived during the summer, after the dissolution of Parliament in England. The Abbot, it seems, who had incited Buckingham against Richelieu, had at the same time acquainted the Duc de Soubise with the state of affairs in England. The alliance of these two great noblemen was eagerly accepted by Buckingham. The Duc de Rohan engaged to supply 4000 foot and 200 horse, to assist the English on landing in France; which was an enterprize eagerly coveted by Buckingham.[^[16]]

M. de Soubise had at his command a fleet of twenty-three sail, which was to proceed at once to La Rochelle, then closely besieged by Richelieu, and to throw provisions into the town. The English Government engaged to fit these ships up, to victual them, and to store them with provisions for La Rochelle. Private information disclosed, however, that these “ships were miserable rotten things, of little or no force.” Their crews amounted to 1,261 wretched French sailors, who had neither bread nor drink till the Duke’s vice-admiral went down to Plymouth.[^[17]] Soubise had, afterwards, a supply of beef and pork allowed for two days a week; of fish, for the other four; some small store of butter and cheese, and some eighteen or twenty tons of cider. This seems to have been all the provisions for all the ships; and Admiral Pennington, writing to the Duke, said:--“I wish the Frenchmen had all the rest, for our people will never eat it, only the best of it.” So like the English now were the English then. A hundred tons of beer were to be supplied out of the town.[^[18]]

But other unforeseen difficulties occurred, and the greatest was the want of men. The miserable provisions, or, perhaps, the lingering presence of the plague, now produced sickness and death among the seamen; “so that few of the captains,” writes Pennington, “have sufficient men to bring their ships about.” He begs to have a strict command for the “press” sent him;[^[19]] but even that was of no avail, as the strongest men fled up the country and hid themselves in the woods.

Then certain merchants, to whom the Lord-Admiral looked for a supply of ships in war, were unwilling to lend their vessels. They even disabled their vessels to prevent their being used; and it became necessary for Pennington, as he stated, to send his carpenters to repair them--and after all he was obliged to wait for a reinforcement from Ireland.[^[20]] The poor Vice-Admiral wrote anxious letters, praying that the useless merchant-ships might be sent away; whilst the others, French and all, might be well provisioned at once. He entreated that a ship-load of cordage, cables, anchors, and sails for the furnishing of other ships, might come forthwith. This was a miserable beginning of an aggressive war, and Charles must now have seen his folly in having quarrelled with Parliament. Eventually, Pennington informed the Duke that he was obliged to discharge all the merchant ships, except a few from Ireland, which were in good condition.[^[21]]

The situation of the Duke seems, at this moment, to have been truly pitiable. It has been already stated that he received and answered all letters himself; and the applications made to him, in his capacity of High Admiral, seem to have been of the most minute character. Sometimes among his correspondence we find a letter from Admiral Burgh, wanting to know what he was to do with some Newfoundland fish which had come into his possession as Vice-Admiral.[^[22]] Then follow numerous complaints of the dilapidated state of the forts and castles which ought to have guarded the coasts. In 1625, however, they were reported to be in a perfect state for defence.

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

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

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

In the beginning of the year 1626, Buckingham had commenced his naval operations by sending to impress twenty of the best merchant-ships in the Thames or elsewhere; “such,” were his instructions, “as shall be most ready to go to sea, and most able to do his Majesty’s service in his present employments.”[^[24]]

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

Great, meantime, were Buckingham’s endeavours to clear the seas of pirates, as well as to recover that dominion over the narrow seas upon which encroachments had been made. The Duke now began to be assisted by Sir Edward Nicholas, whose name appears at this period as the writer of the Duke’s answers to suitors, and who was evidently regarded with much confidence by Buckingham.[^[25]]

Although a fleet of twenty sail, of the king’s ships, and others had been prepared so early as the 6th of January, 1625-6, for a service of six months,[^[26]] yet it was not until June that the Duke suddenly left the court, and, with all the haste of his impetuous nature, went on board the fleet at Dover so unexpectedly that his secretary Nicholas could not join him before he set out, but was a few hours too late. Neither had due preparations been made; shoes, shirts, and stockings were wanting for three thousand men; the surgeons’ chests were not supplied with medicines; many of the soldiers’ arms were wanting; the colonels and captains begged to have new colours; the soldiers to have hammocks; and it was represented to the Duke that their food ought not to be so inferior as it then was to that of the sailors.[^[27]]

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

His haste and secrecy had, perhaps, another object. It precluded those farewells which are the most touching to those who encounter the chances of war. In Buckingham’s case, the parting with his wife, whom he might never see again, must have been mingled with self-reproach as well as sorrow. He evaded it therefore by flight, notwithstanding a promise that he should see her again, nay even by an assurance that he should not go with the expedition to Rhé.[^[28]] This conduct wounded the poor Duchess to the heart, and it was perhaps these traits of conduct that alienated her affections, and made her less reluctant to a second marriage than might have been expected from one of her gentle nature. Buckingham’s apparent neglect would have been inexplicable were it not remembered how completely an unhallowed passion for another severs and rends all domestic ties; and that, long before the links are broken, they are loosened by the first deviation from duty, even in thought. The following letters were probably found among the Duke’s papers at the time of his death, and so conveyed to the State-Paper Office, where they have remained buried--the words of reproach and sorrow, unheeded and unknown. They are evidently strictly confidential; but they explain and excuse, if anything can excuse, the after-conduct of the Duchess. Much that followed the Duke’s decease is accounted for in this epistle:--

"My Lord,--Now as I do to plainly se you have deceved me, and if I judge you according to y^r one[^[29]] words I must condemn you not only in this hut in your accation[^[30]] you so much forswore. I confese I deed ever fere you wood be catched, for there was no other likelyhoode after all that showe but you must needs go--for my part, but I have bine a very miserable woman hitherto that never could have you keepe at home, but now I will ever looke to be so till some blessed ocasion comes to draw you quite from the Cort, for ther is non more miserable than I am, and till you leve this life of a cortyer w^ch you have bine ever since I knewe you, I shall ever thynke myself unhappye. I am the unfortunate of all outher, that ever when I am w^th child I must have so much cause of sorrow as to have you go from me, but I never had so great a cause of greeve as now. I hope God of his mercie give me patience, and if I were sure my soule wood be well I could wish myself to be out of this miserable world, for till then I shall not be happye: now I will no more right to hope you do not goe, but must betake myself to my prayers for your safe and prosperous jorney w^ch I will not fayle to do, and for your quicke returne: but never, whilst I live, will I trust you agane, nor never will put you to your oathe for any thinge agane. I wonder why you sent me word by crowe[^[31]] that you wood se me shortly, to put me in hopes: I pray God never woman may love a man as I have done you that non may fele that w^ch I have done for you: sence ther is no remedy but that you must go, I pray God to send you gon quickly, that you may be quickly at home again, and whosoever that wisht you to this jorney by side yourselfe, that they may be punished for it, because of a greete dele of greeve to me; but that is no mater now ther is no remedy but patience w^ch God send me. I pray God to send me wise, and not to hurt myself w^th greeving now. I am very well, I thanke God, and so is Mall and so I bid farewell.--Your poor greeved and obedient wife,

"K. Buckingham.

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

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

"You have forgoten poore Dicke Turpin for all y^r promis to me.[^[32]]

“26th June, 1627. To the Duke of Buckingham.”[^[33]]

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

"My dere Lord,--I was very much joy’d at the receiving y^r leter last night, and I will assure you I do not only right cheerfully, but am so in my hart, and outwardly every on may see it, and so they do, for they tell me they ar glad to see me so cheerfull, and I hop sences. I will assure you I will not fayle to keep my promis w^th you; I hope you will not deseve me in breaking yours, for I protest if you should, it woold half kill me: and I give you humble thanks for saying you will likewise keepe your word with me in the outher mane bisnes,[^[34]] as you call it. I am very glad you cam so well to y^r jorneys end, but sorey it was so latt, for Mr. Murey told me it was nine a clocke before you gott thether. I pray lett me here as often from you as you can, and send me word when I shall be so hapye as to se you, for I shall think it very longe, my lord: I thanke God I am very well, so farwelle, my dere Lord, your true loving, and obedient wife,

"K. Buckingham.[^[35]]

"My Lord, for God sake lett some of that money w^ch you in tended to have at Portsmouth to be left w^th Dick Oliver, if it be but five hundred pound to pay Mr. Ward for a ringe and for a cross w^h you gave to my Lady Exeter: for Jesus sake do this, for I am so hanted with them for it, that I do not know what to do; if you will but send me 400l. I will dispatch them myself, for I cannot ster for them.[^[36]]

"I beseech you remember my cusin Turpine.

“To the Duke of Buckingham, my dere husband.”[^[37]]

This epistle was soon followed by another letter, expressive of great affection--the poor Duchess begging of the Duke not to deceive her, and to love no one but herself. “It was impossible,” she writes, “for woman to love a man more than she did him.” Again she writes:--“beginning to fear” that some hints in which he had encouraged a hope of their meeting again before he sailed were but deceptions, and that she should not see him again, “she was grieved,” she added, “that he had not told her the truth.”[^[38]]

The Duke’s example and presence, however, after all these delays, had so great an effect both on officers and men, that, on the second of June, Sir Fulke Greville had to write word from Cowes Castle, that he could, with a “perspective,” see a part of the fleet in Stokes Bay.[^[39]] The Duke, meantime, was harassed with difficulties; affairs were far from being in a satisfactory condition; there was continual difficulty in getting seamen, and supplies of money were wanting to leave the coast guarded, to repair the navy, to furnish stores, and to pay the sailors on their return from Rhé.[^[40]]

Meantime the town of Portsmouth was gladdened by the presence of the King, who walked round the fortifications; and, judging for himself of the ruinous state of the bulwarks, promised that they should be repaired. It was Buckingham’s intention at this time to build a new dock at Portsmouth, in order to supersede that at Chatham, and thus to benefit the naval service incredibly.[^[41]] Charles entered into this admirable plan. Accompanied by Monsieur de Soubise, the Earls of Rutland and Denbigh, Lord Carlisle and the Lord Chamberlain, he went aboard several of the ships, and dined at last in the “Triumph.” At table his conversation ran all day on the armament, and he asked Sir John Watts, in his own language, whether “she” (the “Triumph”) “could yar or not?” The repast went off with great hilarity: the Duke’s musicians playing merrily, and Archie the fool, and Sir Robert Deale, adding to the general jollity. Well might the Duchess, nevertheless, mourn at the departure of her husband. The plague was raging in the fort of La Rochelle with as much fury as in England.

At length, on the 27th of June, the Duke sailed from Portsmouth. If we could accept as sincere the good wishes which attended his departure, no man ever left England with greater assurances of devotion. “Secretary Conway was ready,” he declared, “to carry his hand all the world cries for the Duke’s service.” “The Duke’s good works,” he said, “came forth with a better grace than he ever observed in the acts of any other man. Besides his own duty, affection, and humble endeavour and thorough hope,” he “joyed” to consign to the Duke the duty, thankfulness, faith, and affection of his posterity.[^[42]]

Secretary Cope sent a message of good wishes in these terms: “God direct his ways and his ends, and make them acceptable to himself and all good men.”[men.”][^[43]] Even the Queen, between whom and the Duke there had been so great a coolness, sent him a letter, with best wishes. Sir[Sir] George Goring, writing to his “ever and above all most honoured Lord,” the Duke of Buckingham, engaged to “keep the Duke safe with the Queen.” The Duchess could not, however, he said, reconcile herself to his departure, without one word of farewell; and the Duke’s mother thought a “word or two in” excuse would revive her much.[^[44]]

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

His mother’s blessing was given in these few, but very expressive words:--

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

M. Buckingham.[^[45]]

“To the Duke of Buckingham.”

The first letter, written according to the Duke’s orders, by Sir James Bagg, who accompanied him, to Secretary Nicholas, shewed how unabated was the impetuous and arbitrary spirit of the favourite. “The Duke,” Bagg wrote, “is very desirous to have the refusers of the loan sent for to the council, which will make the western people sensible that Eliot and Coryten do not only lie by the heels for my Lord’s sake.”[^[46]]

He set out, however, in high spirits, excited by the change of scene, and full of confidence in his projected movements. It is agreeable to find a concern for the comfort and health of the troops, which amounted in all to between six and seven thousand, under his command. On the twelfth of July, the “Triumph,” with nineteen great ships of the fleet, was seen near St. Martin’s, at Rochelle; King Charles’s colours, the white flag, and the St. Andrew’s cross, in the main tops, being visible to the dismayed French over in the port; and firing from our ships was instantly commenced. Whilst these operations were going on, we find Buckingham writing to Secretary Nicholas, desiring that victuals may be sent after them with all possible speed; and, above all, to take care that the fleet be furnished out of hand with London beer; “the beer from Portsmouth,” adds the Lord-Admiral, “proves naught, and the soldier is better satisfied with his beer, if it is good, than with his victuals.”[victuals.”][^[47]] At first the Duke’s expedition was attended with success; a landing at St. Martin’s point, opposite to Rochelle roads, was effected, and the French, who attacked the invaders, were driven back with considerable slaughter. On the 14th of July the troops advanced inland, and took the small fort of St. Marie, and the town of La Flotte; on the eighteenth they gained possession of the town of St. Martin’s. Great praises of the Duke’s valour were transmitted to England, by a writer who penned his epistle on a drum’s head, near St. Martin’s. The forces then beleaguered the fort, erecting a battery of twenty-one pieces of “ordnance.” “The Lord-General,” wrote Sir Allen Apsley, “is the most industrious, and in all business one of the first in person in dangers. Last night the enemy’s ordnance played upon his lodging, and one shot lighted upon his bed, but did him no harm.”[^[48]] “Unluckily,” adds the same writer, “there was no bread and beer thought of for the soldiers--wheat instead of bread, and wine instead of beer.”

There appeared every prospect of a long siege, unless reinforcements from England should arrive to strengthen the Duke’s efficiency. Whilst the fort held out, the citizens of La Rochelle knew not which side to take. The Duke, every writer from St. Martin’s agreed, behaved in the most admirable manner, shewing qualities which no one suspected him of possessing. “His care is infinite, his courage undauntable, his patience and continual labours beyond what could have been expected.” Such was the language of one of Secretary Conway’s correspondents. “Himself,” continues this writer, “views the grounds, goes to the trenches, visits the batteries, observes where the shell doth light, and what effects it works.”[^[49]] The greatest vigilance was indeed necessary, owing to the carelessness of some of the officers; there was no one of any great capacity except the Duke and Sir John Burgh--a brave but rough soldier, whose plain speaking was often offensive to Buckingham. His chief adviser in military affairs was Monsieur Dulbier, a man of great experience, but devoid of any striking talents.[^[50]]

Meantime the poverty of the Treasury at home impeded the speedy supplies for which Buckingham incessantly wrote. It was his urgent necessity that stimulated the unjust and extortionate collection of the loan--in default of contributions to which imprisonment was the instant punishment. Several Frenchmen, also, were about this time committed for trying to allure Sir Sackville Crowe’s workmen into France to cast ordnance.[^[51]]

Disheartened by the delay of the supplies, Buckingham wrote word that he was making trenches, but, owing to the stony nature of the ground, they went on slowly, whilst the Fleet was dispersed round the Island of Rhé; so that unless some speedy succour came, the expedition could scarcely be benefited by anything that might be sent. The citadel, he considered, would be impregnable, if once the fortifications were perfected; in its present unfurnished state, the only way would be to take it by famine. Already thirty musketeers who had been sent out to get water had been captured. Toiras, the Governor, was likely “to make the place his death-bed.” The enemy were strong, and the siege would doubtless be a long one, but he was confident that the King would not let him want aid. By the advice of the Duc de Soubise, he had issued a proclamation, setting forth that the King’s intention was only to assist the Protestants.[^[52]]

But the Protestants in La Rochelle unhappily refused the aid[^[53]] of the ever-hated English. Louis XII. was ill; the court was divided into factions: and favourable terms were even offered the Huguenots, provided that they did not admit the English into the city.[^[54]]

The Duke, during all this time of deep anxiety, attended religious service daily, and was, it is possible, the more inclined to have recourse to the One Source of help and safety, an attempt to assassinate him having been made whilst he was beleaguering Fort St. Martin. No impression was made upon the enemy, who were three thousand strong in garrison. Mines were resorted to; two water-pipes were cut off, and the besieged were driven out of their outworks; but Buckingham wrote word from the camp that his army, without a supply, would soon not only be disabled from continuing the siege, but would lose what they had gained.[^[55]] His anxiety on this point was expressed in every letter, and in the most earnest terms, and it was fully responded to by Charles I., but still a reinforcement of two thousand men which had been promised did not arrive. Money could not be raised, and the King was obliged to wait the issue of “three bargains” offered to him before he could send out either provisions or men.

Nothing could be more vexatious than the position of the Duke. He was within a distance of what was then three or four days’ sail from England--his credit, his honour, perhaps his life, were staked on the relief of the Huguenot citizens of La Rochelle. Forty days, nevertheless, elapsed without even a message by fisher-boat reaching the famishing troops, “who were well supplied with wheat, but had neither means to grind, or ovens to bake it.”[^[56]]

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

“Send us men,” was the burden of every letter from the camp; and a small contribution from a quarter little suspected of patriotism was the answer to this appeal--Lady Hatton furnishing six stalwart volunteers from Purbeck, clothed and armed from head to foot.[^[57]]

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

"My deerly beloved sonne--I am very sorrie you have entered into so great busines, and so little care to supply your wants as you see by the little hast that is mad to you. I hop your eys wil be oppened to se what a greate goulfe of businesses you have put your selfe into, and so little regarded at home, wher all is mery and well plesed, though the shepes be not vitiled as yet, nor mariners to go with them: as for monyis the kingdom will not supply your expences, and every man grones under the burden of the tymes. At your departuer from me, you tould me you went to make pece, but it was not from your hart: this is not the way for you to imbroule the hole christian world in warrs, and then to declare it for religion, and make God a partie to this wofull affare so far from God as light and darknes; and the high way to make all christian Princes to bend ther forces against us, that other ways in policie would have taken our parts. You knew the worthy King your master[^[58]] never liked that way, and as far as I can perseve ther is non that crise not out of it. You that acknowleg the infinite mercy and providence of all mightie god in preserving your life amongest so many that false doune ded on every side you, and spares you for more honor to himself, if you would not be wilfully blind and overthro your selfe, body and soule, for he hath not I hope made y^u so great and gevin you so many exsellent parts as to suffer you to die in a dich,--let me that is your mother intreat you to spend some of your ouers in prayers, and meditating what is fitting and plesing in His sight that has done so much for you, and that honor you so much strive for: bend it for his honor and glorie, and you will sone find a chang so great that you would not for all the kinddomes in world for goe, if you might have them at your disposing: and do not think it out of fere and timberousnes of a woman I perswad you to this;--no, no, it is that I scorne. I would have you leve this bluddy way in which you are exept into, I am sure contray to your natuer and disposition. God hath blessed you with a vartuis wife and swet daughter, with an other sonne, I hope, if you do not distroy it by this way you take: she can not beleve a word you speke, you have so much deseved herselfe: she works carefully for you in sending monies with the supply that is now in coming, though slowly: it would have bene worse but for her. But now let me come to my selfe. If I had a world you should command it, and whatsoever I have ore shall have it: it is all yours by right, but, alas, I have layd out that mony I had, and mor by a thousand ponds, by your consent in bying of Gouldsmise Grang which I am very sory for now. I never dremed you should have neded any of my helpe, for if I had ther should have wanted all and my selfe before you. I hop this servant will bring us better newes of your resolutions then yett we here of; which I pray hartily for and give almass for you that it will pleas Allmighty God to deret your hart the best way to his honor and glorie. I am ever

“your most loving affectionat sad Mother,

“M. Buckingham.

“To the Duke of Buckingham.”[^[59]]

Very different was the style in which the affectionate-hearted Duchess thus addressed him. The characters of these two women are singularly contrasted in these letters:--

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

"K. Buckingham.

"Pray remember my duty to my Father.

“To the Duke of Buckingham.”[^[60]]

CHAPTER II.

THE DELAY IN SENDING PROVISIONS--THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF REDUCING THE CITADEL BY FAMINE--THE DUKE’S OWN MEANS WERE EMBARKED IN THE CAUSE--SIR JOHN BURGH--HIS DEATH--LETTER OF SIR EDWARD CONWAY TO HIS FATHER--BUCKINGHAM’S SANGUINE NATURE--EFFORTS OF SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS.

CHAPTER II.

In spite of incessant appeals to the authorities at home, the end of August arrived, and no provisions were received at the camp. The Duke then addressed Sir William Becher, enclosing a letter to be shewn to the King, stating that, if provisions did not arrive within twenty days, it would be impossible to detain the mariners at Rhé. Provisions, the Duke said, were getting low; and the cannon did little harm to the citadel, which would only be subdued by famine.[^[61]] All seemed of no avail. “Everything,” as Sir William Becher complained to Nicholas, “seemed to go backwards.” Even the Duke’s own money, which he had wished to advance to the victuallers, was still kept back by his stewards; and six hundred quarters of wheat belonging to him, which he had left at Portsmouth as a supply, were still in that seaport. One cannot help echoing the exclamation of Sir Edward Conway, in writing to his father, General Conway--“If we lose this island it shall be your faults in England!” Every letter, meantime, spoke of the carelessness of life shown by the Duke, of the sanguine nature that encouraged others, and of his great affection to the King, and to the cause he had undertaken.[^[62]] The difficulties which were encountered in getting provisions together are almost inconceivable at the present day: the merchants refused to supply anything that would not yield them fifteen per cent; but at last, Sir Edward Nicholas prevailed with some Bristol speculators, his friends, to send provisions, on condition that their men should not be pressed into the service, and that the vessels should be laden with salt.[^[63]] This aid was, indeed, timely, for the troops were beginning to consider themselves neglected and forgotten by their country.[^[64]] And a great loss contributed to the general dejection. Sir John Burgh, the brave though uncourtly officer who had quarrelled with the Duke, was shot through the body in the trenches, and killed. Sir Edward Conway, writing to his father, thus simply, and as a true soldier, remarks, that “the sorrow of the Duke, and the honours he doth in his burial, are sufficient encouragements to dying.” “There was some difference” he adds, “between Burgh and the Duke, through some inconsiderate words, on the part of former, which were by the Duke so freely forgiven,”[forgiven,”] and through these Conway thought “an honest man and the Duke could not be enemies.” By Buckingham’s orders the old general’s remains were sent home, to be interred in Westminster Abbey. “The army,” the same writer relates, “grows daily weaker--purses are empty, ammunition consumes, winter grows, their enemies increase in number and power, and they hear nothing from England.”[^[65]] At length, on the twenty-first of September a letter[^[66]] came from one of Buckingham’s friends, Sir Robert Pye, who, whilst declaring that the reinforcements were in great forwardness, begged of the Duke to “consider the end,” and to reflect on the exhausted state of the revenue, which was forestalled, he states, for three years; much land had been sold, all credit lost, and Government was at the utmost shift with the commonwealth. “Would that I did not know so much as I do,” added the courtier. Deputy-Lieutenants were supine, and Justices of the Peace of the better sort willing to be put out of the commission:--every man “doubting and providing for the worst,” so that all were in a sort of panic. All these discomforts were ascribed to the loan, and the loan was the consequence of the projected war with France and Spain. Too late did Charles, who had hitherto left everything to the Duke, “knit his soul unto business,” and endeavour to provide for the fruitless contest.

The month of October proved even more disastrous to the English than September. Hopes were entertained of a surrender. Two gentlemen from the citadel came to treat of surrendering; and, after trying to make conditions, asked leave till the next day to consider them. The night was dark and stormy; notice was given of the approach of an enemy; the Duke put out to sea himself, but the barques took a wrong direction, and the enemy’s fleet of thirty-five barques broke through that of the English, and the Admiral of the Fleet was taken prisoner. Fourteen or fifteen of the enemy’s barques, however, furnished with a month’s provisions, got through to the citadel, which was thus relieved. On account of the sickness produced by the immoderate eating of grapes, and also considering the uncertainty of supplies from England, there were many of the Colonels who now recommended retiring from before Rhé; and so discouraged was the Duke at this failure, that he was on the point of going back to England, when an offer from the citizens of La Rochelle to take a thousand sick into their town, and to send to the camp five hundred men with provisions, encouraged him to wait for reinforcements.

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

"My Lord--I ded the last night here very good nwse that you had taken the ships w^ch cam to releve the fort, which I hope will so much discurage them as now they will be out of all hope, and quickly yeelde it upe, and then I hope you will remember your promise in making hast home, for I will assure you both for the publicke, and our private good here in cort, ther is great neede of you, for your great Lady,[^[67]] that you believe is so much your frend, uses your frends something worse then when you were here, and your favour has made her so great as now shee cares for nobody: and poore Gordon is the basist used that ever any creature was, for now you ar not here to take his part they do flie most fercly uppon him, but when you com I hope all things will be mended. I pray say nothing of this, and be sure to burne this leter when you have rede it. I thanke God I am very well. Mall is very well, I thanke God. I thanke you for the orange water you sent me, but yett I dare not us it coming from the Governor,[^[68]] thus praying for your health, in hast, I rest

“your trewe loving and obedent wife,

“K. Buckingham.

“10th Octr.”

1627(?)--(on the back of the original letter in pencil.)

Whilst money was thus called for in vain, to carry on the war, the defences at home were daily becoming more and more ruinous. The castles in the Downs were in danger of being swallowed by the sea: and water got into the moat of Deal Castle; the Lanthorn of that fort was wholly destroyed, the loss of which, being a sea-mark, was a source of bitter complaint; Walmer Castle was in ruins.[^[69]] Friends there were who wrote to Buckingham to urge strongly on his attention all that was threatening the country, and to suggest his return; amongst these the Viscount Wilmot[^[70]] was one whose expressions were modified by great kindness, and evident partiality for the Duke; whilst advice came less graciously from Viscount Wimbledon, whose recent failure must have rendered his comments on the affair far from palatable.

Before his letter of suggestion and advice could have arrived, Buckingham had, however, consented to a retreat. The state of despair into which his troops had been thrown by the reinforcement of the citadel, and their discovery of the false representations of the amount of provisions on which the besieged could count, induced him to take this fatal step. Presently, however, better information was obtained; and though the sick had been sent into La Rochelle, and the ordnance embarked, the vacillating Duke again determined to “stay and bide it out.”

In the midst of this perplexity, on the fifteenth of October, a valuable auxiliary was sent in the person of Charles, Viscount Wilmot.[^[71]] Lord Holland also set sail, but the Duke now found it difficult to persuade the men to await the long promised assistance. “Pity our misery!” was their cry. The people were “looking themselves and their perspectives” (as telescopes were then styled) “blind in watching for Lord Holland from the tops of houses;” yet that nobleman lingered at Portsmouth, pretending to believe that Buckingham, who, he said, he knew “would stay till the last bite,” might be supplied with victuals from the west. Then he feared also, as he stated, that the Duke might have sailed towards home; that he was ill supplied with provisions; and that he might be obliged to put back into France or Spain. The King, meantime, was wondering and asking why Holland lingered first at Portsmouth and then in the Downs? Charles’s impatience was expressed with a force unusual to his gentle character. Until the eighteenth of October, no one in England, it appears, knew of the great distress into which Buckingham and the forces were plunged by the failure of the supplies.[^[72]]

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

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

“20th Octr. 1627.

“your loving sister,
Su. Denbigh.” [^[73]]

“To the Duke of Buckingham.”

“Moust deere brother--I hope you will be sure of supplyes before you undertake to go to Rocchell, for ether ther hath beene some grate mistake or neglicte: that you [should have beene] in any distrecs, it doth grefe my very hart and sole. I heare you have beene in great wantes, but I hope before this you are released. I pray be not to venterus, and I hope you well not forgit the booke I gave you, to looke over it often, at the leaste morning and evening, so with my best love, I take my leave.

“26th Octr. 1627.

“your loveing sister,
Su. Denbigh.”

“To the Duke of Buckingham, my deere Brother.”[^[74]]

It must have been peculiarly aggravating, amidst the anxieties of the Duchess and Lady Denbigh, to find that all the Duke’s perplexities, privations, and sufferings had not in the slightest degree mitigated his unpopularity at home. It must have been still more irritating to know that, whilst the troops before St. Martin’s Fort were in a state of starvation, there was the greatest disorder and carelessness in sending the supplies. “There is,” Lord Wilmot wrote to Conway, “neither commissary of victuals, nor any one to give account of arms. They find one thousand muskets, but no pikes nor armour.” Meantime the Duke’s army were in want of clothes, and mostly went barefoot.[^[75]] Then Lord Holland, when at last on board the fleet, complained that there was no one officer or creature who could tell what there was aboard the provision ships, five of which were Dutch, and might steal away at any moment. There seems to have been neither patriotism at home, in regard to this expedition, nor honour in allies, nor even common honesty in the commanders of hired vessels.

For several days the wind continued contrary to Lord Holland’s departure from Plymouth. The twenty-sixth of October had arrived, and the Duke, as it appeared from private letters, had "stayed it out till the last bit of bread:"--such is the expression of John Ashburnham, a devoted partisan of Buckingham’s: fears were even entertained that the fleet and army were lost; then “such a rotten, miserable fleet set out to sea as no man ever saw;” “our enemies,” Ashburnham adds, “seeing it, may scoff at our nation.” Lord Holland, who had been expected by the Duke on the fifteenth, was still waiting for a fair wind at Plymouth on the twenty-seventh,[^[76]] employing himself there in trying to expedite recruits, and to send out a Scottish regiment. “In his responsibility” (as he wrote to the King) "he had provided two or three hundred live sheep, to go out for the sick men, who die for want of fresh meat;"--“three thousand pairs of stockings for the men in the trenches; physic also, and an apothecary.” Despair, however, possessed all minds; and a report now began to disquiet even the sanguine, stating that the French were landing an army on the Island of Rhé. The report was true; one fatal mistake had been made by Buckingham--he had left the fort of St. Pré unmolested.

This castle, seated, as its name bespeaks, in a meadow, had appeared too paltry a conquest to the sanguine and impetuous Buckingham, when he had first landed at Rhé. He had passed it untouched, but it was now well garrisoned with French troops from the mainland; still its importance was not fully comprehended until the fatal moment came for a retreat from before Fort St. Martin. It is evident that the Duke had overlooked that which should have been a preliminary step in his march; and that his attention had been distracted by an undertaking too arduous for a man whose life had been passed in a very different battle-field from that on which he now ventured his fortunes. Hitherto, he had been a mere civilian, knowing nothing of war, but in the Tourney--nothing of nautical matters, but in gala-vessels, or some favourite ship; and little of the sea, but on maps. Well might his mother caution him not to engage in too “great business;” it was not, in his case, an idle warning, but desperation had impelled him to make the fatal experiment of being at once General and Admiral in a contest with warriors so perfect as the French. Had he been reinforced in good time,--had the measures at home been directed by energy, or even by good faith merely---the events which so overclouded his later actions with a shade of shame might not have happened. From the moment when the French occupied the Fort St. Pré, the game was, however, virtually lost.

Meantime, Charles I., it is manifest from his letters to Lord Holland, was beginning to be seriously displeased with the negligence of the Commissariat Department. He was also desirous of impressing Lord Holland, not only with the great importance of the result of the expedition, but likewise of his anxiety for the safety of the Duke, “to whom,” the King writes, “whosoever does the best service is the most happy, be it for life or death.”[^[77]]

So late as the latter end of October, Buckingham was resolved either to stay in the island if supplies came,--or, if they did not arrive, to put himself and the army into La Rochelle, and “run their fortune.”[^[78]] This was his last resolution. At one time he had fully determined on leaving, for some of his soldiers were barefooted: others were sick of the siege, and had neither bread, meat, nor beer; but the Duc de Soubise had re-assured him, and, promising eight hundred men from La Rochelle, had encouraged Buckingham to decide on scaling the Fort St. Martin.[^[79]] Meantime, Lord Holland did not appear: he was still at Plymouth. Contrary to the advice of the mariners, he had forced the whole fleet out of the Catwaters into Plymouth Sound; but it was driven back by the “cruellest storms” of twenty hours’ duration that had ever been known. Great damage was done: it was now necessary to stay to repair the crazy ships--the wind, as Lord Wilmot expressed it, “did so overblow.” The violence of the elements, and the knavery or indifference of man, seemed combined to keep back aid from the hungry soldiers in the Island of Rhé, and to ruin their general.

Perhaps the best, or, as many persons think, the only excuse for Buckingham in the step he eventually took, is contained in a touching letter from Sir Allen Apsley to “Honest Nicholas.” Apsley, described in one of the letters from the camp as “very sick and melancholy,” dates his letter “from his sick and lately senseless bed on board the Nonsuch.”[^[80]] “No man,” he begins by saying, “has he more cause more faithfully and more affectionately to love than Nicholas.” “His soul melts with tears to think that a State should send so many men, and no provision at all for them. But for Nicholas’s provision, through merchants, they had been miserably starved long since.” He then goes on to relate that “there were about five thousand seamen and four thousand landsmen in great distress for meat and drink. The army had already lost four thousand men, and all their commanders.”

A sort of responsive testimony to the Duke’s sufferings, and to the cruel neglect of the authorities at home, is conveyed in a letter from William, Earl of Exeter, to Buckingham. “What cannot be obtained by your courage,” writes the descendant of the great Burleigh, “must in the end be submitted to your patience.” If the Duke “sowed onions, he would be sure of onions; if he sowed men, they are in danger, for the most part, to come up ingrates.” “The indolence,” he adds, “which his highness has cause to resent, is as great infidelity as is that of commission.” Then he cites examples of great generals, who, without loss of honour, abandoned enterprizes which could not be accomplished; what the Duke had already done was, he said, “miraculous.”[^[81]]

Neither did the Duke receive any encouragement to remain, even from one of his best friends, Sir George Goring, the faithful adherent in the great rebellion of Charles I.[^[82]] Goring had, in a former letter, represented to the Duke how futile would be any dependence on supplies; for the “City,” he wrote, “whence all present money must now be raised, is so infected by the malignant part of this kingdom, that no man will lend any money upon any security, if they think it will go the way of the Court, which is now made diverse from the State--such is the present distemper.” The King, it was said, might choose to break all his bonds, “and[“and] then, when should they be paid?” Under these circumstances, Goring strongly advised the Duke to return home, and “to curb the insolence of the French some other way.”[^[83]]

On the very day on which this letter was written, a newsletter, dated on board the Triumph, in the Road of Rhé, announced that the embarkation of the troops had already taken place. La Rochelle had by that time been completely blockaded by the French--too late it had declared for the English. For the safety of that city it was essential that Buckingham should remain; but, although he has been almost universally condemned for retiring, it is evident that the want of provisions, and the delay of reinforcements from England, extenuate, if they do not wholly justify, that step. He had now been expecting Lord Holland’s arrival for nearly a fortnight, and Lord Holland was still at Teignmouth--having been again driven back by contrary winds.[^[84]]

During all this time, no words could describe all the distress of mind suffered by Buckingham better than those of his biographer and attached adherent, Sir Henry Wotton. “In his countenance, which is the part that all eyes interpret, no open alteration,” even after his reverses, could be detected, but the suppressed feelings were the more poignant for that disguise.

“For certain it is,” adds Sir Henry, “that to his often-mentioned secretary, Dr. Mason, whom he had in pallet near him, for natural ventilation of all his thoughts, he broke out into passionate expressions of anguish, declaring, in the absence of all other ears and eyes, ‘that never his dispatches to divers princes, nor the great business of a fleet, of an army, of a siege, of a treaty, of war, of peace, both on foot together, and all of them in his head at a time, did not so much trouble his repose as a conceit that some at home, under His Majesty, of whom he had well deserved, were now content to forget him.’”[him.’”][^[85]]

Wotton partly ascribes the Duke’s failure to one cause--an improvident confidence, brought with him from a Court where fortune had never deceived him. Besides, he adds, “We must consider him yet but rude in the profession of arms, though greatly of honour, and zealous in the cause.”

By others he is considered to have committed an error in not having first attacked the Isle of Oléron, which was not only weakly garrisoned, but well supplied with wine and oil, and other provisions. But his great mistakes arose from his impulsive nature--a disposition often the concomitant of energy. Without waiting for the advice of Soubise, he had invested St. Martin’s; in marching to St. Martin’s, he had overlooked the Meadow Castle, as St. Pré was called by his soldiers; and that fort was now the chief impediment to his retreat.

Having been urged in vain by Soubise to remain, Buckingham aimed one last blow. He attempted to storm Fort St. Martin. He was perhaps incited to this rash and fruitless act by the taunting conduct of the besieged, who, knowing that he intended to starve them into submission, hung provisions on the walls. No breach was made, and the assault had no other result than the loss of soldiers. A retreat was then decided on. The forces could not now return by St. Pré, and a new route was to be taken. A causeway amid deep salt-marches was their only choice; and this causeway, or mound, was terminated by a bridge that joined to Rhé the second island of Vié. Here no fort to protect the bridge had been erected, and there was therefore no passage over to Vié. The French had all this time been close in pursuit. Buckingham was in the rear, and, as a contemporary observed, “had like to have been snapped,”[^[86]] if he had not ridden through the troops on the narrow causeway, where more than eight or ten could not ride abreast. It was not until the English had reached the Island of Vié that the French chose to attack them; then the delay of forming a bridge gave the pursuers time to make their onset with an advantage they could not have had on the causeway, where a handful of men might have set at defiance a host. The French drove the English horse on Sir Charles Birch’s regiment of foot, and both he and Sir John Radcliffe were killed. A hot skirmish ensued. “Our men,” says a newsletter, “spoiled one another, and more were drowned than slain. The Duke was the last man in the rear, and carried himself beyond expression bravely.”[^[87]] Ultimately the bridge was made good, and on the following day the embarkation of the crest-fallen English was safely effected. Buckingham was of course blamed by one faction, and excused by the other, for this failure. Denzil, afterwards Lord Holles, the great leader of the Presbyterian party, a man who, during his whole life, never changed sides, censured him in forcible terms, quoting the words of one whom he styles “a prophet of their own sides,” in saying that the enterprize was “ill begun, badly carried on, and the result accordingly most lamentable.” “It was a thousand to one,” Holles adds, “that all our ships had not been lost.” Ten days’ provision alone remained; when that was exhausted the Duke must have submitted to the enemy.[^[88]] No one disputed Buckingham’s courage; he brought back, as Hume expresses it, “the vulgar praise of courage and personal bravery.” He was justly, nevertheless, condemned for the risk he ran in the retreat; for, it was said, had the General been lost, what would have become of the troops, who had retreated in disorder?

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

The confusion in the retreat was stated to be such that “no man,” Denzil Holles wrote, “can tell what was done, nor no account can be given how any man was lost--not the lieutenant-colonel how his colonel, nor lieutenant how his captain, which was a sign that things were ill carried.” “This every man alone knows--that since England was England, it received not so dishonourable a blow.”

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

On the tenth of November the fleet left Rhé, and on the twelfth it was seen in Portsmouth Roads, Buckingham’s ship, the Triumph, being distinguished. The Duke, however, who was returning home under such painful circumstances, was not in that vessel. As the fleet neared Plymouth, he quitted his ship, and, getting into a ketch, went into the port, in order to gather some account why the succours so long expected at St. Martin’s had never arrived. He had also another step to take--that of sending off an immediate despatch to the King, in order that His Majesty might be apprized by himself alone of the great loss and failure incurred in the attempt on Rhé. The messenger was sworn, on forfeiture of his head, to secrecy.[^[89]]

“Charles received the news,” Conway wrote, in reply, “with the wisdom, courage, and constancy of a great king, and has declared so much kingly justice and goodness, with affection, to the Duke, as renders his grace, in the king’s judgment, and in the opinion of all those who heard him, clear from all imputation, and honoured by his actions: all guiltiness remaining upon this State for whatsoever fault or misconduct is come to that army.” Considering the delay in sending succour, the event was thought to have been better than could have been expected.[^[90]]

A letter soon followed from Sir Edward Nicholas, informing the Duke that, six weeks ago, the state of provisions at Rhé was mentioned to the King and the Lords, “but was not credited.” He recommended his patron to do nothing until after his arrival in London: all things were at a stand, he says, until the Duke should give them “life and direction.” Secretary Conway, in a letter to his son, even “joyed” to find so few had been killed, and so little, “in point of honour,” lost, taking the greatest loss to be in the quality of some half dozen persons.[^[91]]

Three days after the Duke had landed at Plymouth, the Duchess wrote to him:--

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

“true loving and obedent wife,

“K. Buckingham.

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

“To the Duke of Buckingham.”[^[92]]

Many were the welcomes offered to the Duke on his return. Henry, Earl of Manchester, “hoped that God had preserved him to add to his honour;” and begged him not to be discouraged, for no captain nor general could play his part better; Sir James Bagge declared that the Duke was “dearer to him than children, wife, or life;” and Mr. Mohun and Sir Bernard Granville “will put down their lives and fortunes,” they wrote, “at the Duke’s feet.”[^[93]]

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

"My dere Lord--I was in great hope by on of your leters that I should a hade the happynes to a sene you this weeke, but sences I have not had it confirmed by any more, and in this I received by my lady’s mane I was in hope wood a tould me sartanly when I should a had the happnes to a sene you, but your leter not saying on worde makes me begine now to fere that you have but deceived me all this whill in giving me assurances that you deed not, and now I begine to be much greeved that you wood not a tould me the truth; but yet I cannot absolutly dispare, because I hope you will yett be as good as your word, for I confese, if you should go, I should not have a stout hart. My Lord, these too cusens of yours desires you to accept of there servis, and lett them go w^th you, for thay had rather venter ther lives w^th you than stay behind, but I hope you will put them in some way for ther advancement, for thay deserve very well, and I hope will till the last. I am very well, I thanke God, and ever

“your trewe loving and obedent wife,

“K. Buckingham.[^[94]]

“To the Duke of Buckingham.”

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

Upon arriving in Plymouth, Buckingham, however, experienced a greater act of friendship than any mere welcome in words. The warmest and most estimable of his friends was Sir George Goring, one of those true-hearted Cavaliers of whom Englishmen of every party may be truly proud. To Goring the Duke left, in some measure, the care of his mother, when he sailed for La Rochelle. Goring’s blessings had followed the Duke on his voyage. “My dearest Lord,” are the terms in which Goring addressed him; and he showed that he was, as he himself wrote, faithful in every point to him for whom he professed friendship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scarcely had he entered the town, when a half-drunken soldier caught hold of his bridle, as if he wanted to beg; instantly a gentleman of the Duke’s train, though at some distance, rode up, and, with a violent thrust, severed the man from the Duke, who, with the others, galloped quickly through the streets. Either from his usual indifference to danger, or fearing, as Sir Henry Wotton says, to “resent discontentments too deep” to be allayed, no notice was taken of this incident of Buckingham’s journey to London,[^[95]] nor any inquiries made as to the projected assassination.

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

“The effects of this overthrow,” Lord Clarendon observes, “did not at first appear in whispers, murmurs, and invectives, as the retreat from Cadiz had done; but produced such a general consternation over the face of the whole nation, as if all the armies of France and Spain were united together, and had covered the land.”[^[96]]

Charles was, however, resolved to see no fault in his favourite, to acknowledge no disgrace; with a confidence in the Duke that would have done honour to a private friendship, he wrote to him, saying, that with “whatever ill success he came, he should ever be welcome--one of his greatest griefs being that he was not with him in that time of trial, as they might have much eased each other’s griefs.” Adding, that the Duke “had gained, in his mind, as much reputation as if he had performed all his desires.”[^[97]] The terms on which they stood towards each other were those of one young man towards another--his companion in pleasures and pursuits, his fellow-traveller, his confidant--not those existing between a sovereign and a trusted subject, amenable to public opinion.

The step which Buckingham took, on his arrival in London, was to ask immediately for a public audience with the King and Lords in Council. Then he plunged at once into the subject about which the country was in a ferment. He “delivered a clear account of the passages, descending even to the good and bold actions of private soldiers.” He extolled the patience of the army, and “the fair opportunity offered of turning their sufferings into glory, if their virtue had been seconded with the power and succours designed for it.” He named every officer in terms of great praise; and if both officers and men were sensible of “the honours and obligations done them by the Duke, they would,” Conway wrote, “live with their swords, or die with them in their hand, to pay him that duty.” The King, also, put the “right interpretation on the Duke’s actions.” This open way of forestalling criticism, and, perhaps, impeachment, was certainly as sagacious as it was fearless.

The Duke, before leaving the coast, had provided carefully for the soldiers who were sick and wounded, and amongst whom a fearful infectious disease prevailed, so that those in whose houses men were billeted died of the same malady. A storm soon damaged fifteen or sixteen of those fated ships which had returned from Rhé: and such was the poverty of the State, that, so late as the fifth of January, 1620, we find the sailors, who had deserved so much from their country, ill from want of clothes.[^[98]] There was no money for their pay, which was in arrears; there arose, of course, a mutinous spirit among them. The sailors were so destitute of clothing, that they would not do their duty in their ships, and many fell dead into the harbours. Still money could not be raised, although every possible expedient to obtain it was employed by the King. Among others who supplied him was Sir Francis Crane, Garter King-at-Arms, to whom Charles gave certain royal manors for security, to the extent of seven thousand five hundred pounds.

The Court was now both dull and partially deserted; the beautiful masques of Ben Jonson were no longer called into requisition: they had been discontinued since 1626, and were not resumed until two years after Buckingham had ceased to exist; and the only diversion specified for the Christmas festivity of this, his last Christmas, was “a running masque,” to be performed on a Sunday, hastily got up, and of no particular note.[^[99]]

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

During all these troubles, and whilst a storm hovered over him, an heir was granted to the parents, who were anxious for the boon--and George, the second Duke of Buckingham, of the house of Villiers, was born. Owing to the death of his elder brother, Charles, when an infant, his birth was a source of great delight to the Duke and Duchess.[^[100]] And great need was there for all that could solace the days that were now numbered. All that had been brilliant in the career of Buckingham had faded into gloom; the country was justly irritated by the measures which he had recommended--the war, the impressment of seamen, the scheme for granting to the King the tonnage and poundage for the Customs during Charles’s life--were subjects which kept all classes--some from anger, some from fear--in continual agitation. The impressment of seamen had formerly been applied only to the lower classes; but they had been taught by the higher orders, who had felt the burden of oppression themselves, to understand their condition and their rights, and a determined spirit of resistance ensued; yet it must, in justice, before we draw our conclusions, be remembered, that the Government was only indirectly responsible for the present shattered condition of the navy, and for the depth of misery into which the brave sailors had sunk. Generally, the great business of setting out ships had been charged on the port towns and neighbouring shires, but it was now too heavy a burden on them to bear. The Privy Council, therefore, cast up the whole charge of the fleet, which was prepared in February, 1628, and divided it among all the counties.[^[101]]

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

Whilst at Rochelle, he had placed the affairs of the navy in the hands of commissioners. On the 28th of February (1681) the Council called for these commissioners, and gave them “the King’s thanks for past services, letting them know that it was his pleasure in these stirring times to use again the ancient offices of the Admiralty.”[^[102]] The commissioners, on retiring, gave in their certificates, signed by the Duke as Lord Admiral, of the expenses of the navy, both ordinary and extraordinary, in harbours, and the ordinary at sea, containing six ships and four pinnaces, for the year 1628. It amounted to forty thousand, eight hundred, and seventy-six pounds, fourteen shillings and fourpence[^[103]]--the rest of the fleet being supplied by merchants, and paid by local contributions. But the country was little disposed to view any point with leniency. Their grievances were, indeed, almost daily increasing; and whilst the landholders were impoverished, the loss of all commerce between England and France completely alienated the mercantile community from the Court.

A Parliament was summoned. During the preceding year the Duchess of Buckingham had apprehended great danger to the Duke in allowing the commission of inquiry into the affairs of the navy to drop; and had expressed her fears that the abuses brought to light, and unremedied, might hereafter be laid on the Duke.[^[104]] There had been no time then, in the hurry of the ill-starred expedition to Rochelle, to complete that inquiry; but the Duchess’s fears were indeed realized, when, after the Petition of Right had been passed by both Houses, the King went to the House of Lords, sent for the Commons, and then, in his chair of state, and when the Petition had been read to him, instead of giving his consent to the bill in the concise form in which the monarch, in Norman French, declares that “Le Roy le veult,” delivered an evasive answer, promising much, but signifying nothing.

The indignation of the House of Commons first descended on the head of Mainwaring, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, who had preached, by the King’s order, a sermon containing doctrines subversive of liberty. Mainwaring, although he had acted under royal authority, had been fined a thousand pounds, imprisoned, and suspended during three years.[^[105]] After he had been sentenced, the House proceeded to pass “strong condemnation on Buckingham,” whose name had hitherto not been mentioned. It must have been a singular scene, when, on the fifth of June, the House being assembled, a message was delivered to them from the King, announcing that, as he meant to prorogue Parliament in six days, he desired that no new business, which might consume time, nor lay any aspersion on His Majesty’s ministers, should be commenced. A deep dejection was observed on all faces; but when Sir John Eliot, the most impassioned speaker of that period of earnest and eloquent men, rose, and was about to denounce Buckingham as the author of all the national misfortunes, he was stopped by Sir John Finch, the speaker, who, rising from his chair, his eyes full of tears, told the House that he had been commanded to interrupt every member who laid aspersions on any minister of state.[state.] A profound and melancholy silence succeeded; then, after several members had broken it, by resuming the debate, it was strange again to hear that voice which had never deceived his fellow-subjects, and to behold Sir Edward Coke rise, and remind them of former parliamentary impeachments, and tell them that it was their province to regulate prerogative and correct abuses; and he added, “If they flattered man, God would never prosper them.” Then the name fell from his lips that none since the King’s message had dared to utter: he denounced Buckingham; he called him the grievance of grievances; and, setting at nought the royal mandate, declared, that till the King were informed of that truth, the Commons could neither continue together, “nor depart with honour.”

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

The consternation at the Court must have been extreme; for Charles now retraced his former steps; again went to the House, and, giving his consent to the Petition of Right, in the usual form since the Norman Conquest, “Soit droit fait comme il est desiré,” was received with loud acclamations. His popularity did not, however, last very long. He took this opportunity to commit an act which was both dangerous to himself and to his friend. When, by the dissolution of a former parliament, the impeachment of the Duke had been stopped, Charles, to save appearances, ordered an information against him to be filed in the Star Chamber. He now ordered this information to be taken off the file; thus insulting the Commons, who had named Buckingham as the “grievance of grievances.”[^[106]]

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

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

“They have taken from us,” he exclaimed--“what shall I say?--indeed, what have they left us? They have taken from us all means of supplying the King, and ingratiating ourselves with them, by tearing up the roots of all property.”[^[107]]

In the midst of this declaration the Presidentship of the County of York was deemed likely to be vacated, owing to the illness of Lord Scrope, who then held it; and Wentworth had not scrupled to solicit the promise of it in the following terms of abject flattery to Buckingham. The letter is addressed to Lord Conway:--

“Wentworth, this 20th of January, 1625.

“My much honored Lord,--The duties of the place I now hold not admitting my absence out of these parts, I shall be bold to trouble your lordship with a few lines, whereas otherwise I would have attended you in person. There is a strong and general beleaf with us here that my Lord Scrope purposeth to leave the Presidentshippe of York; whereupon many of my friends have earnestly moved me to use some means to procure it, and I have at last yielded to take it a little into consideration, more to comply with them than out of any violent inordinate desire thereunto in myself. Yett, as on the one side I have never thought of it unless it might be effected, w^th the good liking of my Lord Scrope, soe will I never move further in it till I know also how this may please my Lord of Buckingham, seeing, indeed, such a seale of his gracious good opinion would comfort me much, make the place more acceptable; and that I am fully resolved not to ascende one steppe in this kind except I may take along with me by the way a special obligation to my Lord Duke, from whose bountye and goodness I doe not only acknowledge much allready, but, justified in the truth of my own hartte, doe still repose and rest under the shadow and protection of his favour. I beseach y’r Lorp., therefore, be pleased to take some good opportunity fully to acquaint his Grace hearunto, and then to vouchsafe, with y’r accustomed freedom and nobleness, to give me your counsel and direction, wh. I am prepared strictly to observe, as one albeit chearfully embracing better means to doe his Majesty humble and faithful service in the parttes whear I live, yet can w^th as well contented a mind, rest wher I am, if by reason of my manie imperfections I shall not be judged capable of neuer appointment or trust. There is nothing more to add for the present save that I must rest much bounden unto y’r Lorp. for the light I shall borrow from y’r judgement and affection hearin and soe borrow it too, as may better enable me more effectually to express myself hereafter.--Y’r Lorp. most humble and affec^ate kinsman to be commanded,

T. Wentworth.

To the Right Honble. my much honored Lord the Lorde Conway, Principall Secretary to his Majestie.”[^[108]]

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

The most unjust aspersions were now circulated throughout all society. It was Buckingham’s custom to cast away, as unworthy of consideration, all reports that were brought to him. On one occasion, hearing that two Colonels, when before St. Martin’s Fort, had said to a third that they observed the Duke often go in his barge to the fleet, and that they believed he would steal away to England some day; and that if he did, they swore they would hand out the white flag, and deliver up the town and island to Tonar, the Governor; the Duke called a council of war, the accused being absent, and charged these gentlemen with their words. They flatly denied them on their swords. The Duke, without further inquiry, believed them, and dismissed the court. Nor did he ever pay any attention to things said about him, either in the Commons or in the camp.

In the same way he appears to have treated James Howell, who, presuming on having been in his service, and on the affabilities of the Duke, and a facility of character which had its advantages as well as disadvantages, wrote an impertinent letter, saying, that in his “shallow apprehension” it might be well for the Duke to part with some of his places, and so to avoid opprobrium. “Your Grace,” he remarked, “might stand more firm without an anchor.” Then he next threw out some suggestions as to the better regulation of the Duke’s family and private affairs; and ended by saying that he knew the Duke did not, nor need not, affect popularity. “The people’s love,” he added, “is the strongest citadel of a sovereign prince, but wrath often proved fatal to a subject, for he who pulleth off his hat to the people giveth his head to the prince.” And he ends by referring to “a late unfortunate Earl,” who, a little before Queen Elizabeth’s death, had drawn the axe across his own neck; he had become so unpopular, that he was considered dangerous to the State. This very unpleasant reference was taken, at all events, amicably by Buckingham. The fate of Essex was often supposed to shadow forth his own; and the rapid rise, the more rapid fall, the generous, careless nature, the very early doom of both, to have suggested that parallel between the Earl of Essex and Buckingham, in which Lord Clarendon has placed the characters of both before the reader in delicate touches.

In one respect they were very different. Essex, when attacked, even before going to Ireland, wrote an apology, which he dispersed with his own hands. Buckingham left his fame to his contemporaries, and to posterity, just as they choose to view it. On an offer once being made to him to write a justification of his actions, he refused it, says Lord Clarendon[Clarendon], “with a pretty kind of thankful scorn, saying that he would trust to his own good intentions, which God knew, and trust to Him for the pardon of his errors;”[errors;”] that he saw no “fruit of apologies but the multiplying of discourse, which, surely,” even Lord Clarendon[Clarendon] observes, “was a well-settled matter.”[^[109]]

But there were dangers lurking in his path which no defence could avert. Personal danger did not appal him. Slander did not affect him. Yet a forgotten, morbid, disappointed man was the instrument of destiny; and even in this crisis Buckingham seems never to have shrunk from the assassins, even in imagination: he knew that he had already escaped great perils--and that consciousness gave him security.

CHAPTER III.

FELTON--HIS CHARACTER--UNCERTAINTY OF HIS MOTIVES--CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH HE WAS BROUGHT INTO CONTACT WITH BUCKINGHAM--MOTIVES OF HIS CRIME DISCUSSED--THE REMONSTRANCE--THE FATE OF LA ROCHELLE--BUCKINGHAM’S UNPOPULARITY--RETURNS TO RHE--MISGIVINGS OF HIS FRIENDS--INTERVIEW WITH LAUD--WITH CHARLES I.--HIS FAREWELL--HE ENTERS PORTSMOUTH--FELTON--THE ASSASSINATION--ORIGINAL LETTERS FROM SIR D. CARLETON AND SIR CHARLES MORGAN--THE KING’S GRIEF.

CHAPTER III.

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

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

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

To this day, indeed, there has been found no adequate motive for the deed, which Felton long contemplated in the depths of a soul that never gave utterance to its joys or sorrows, and exchanged no sympathies with others. Whatever “may have been the immediate or greatest motive of that felonious conception,” Sir Henry Wotton declares, “is even yet in the clouds.”[^[110]] The origin of that dark design has, nevertheless, been referred to a disappointment in Felton’s military career. This he subsequently denied, by saying that the Duke had always shown him respect. Whilst at Rhé, Felton’s captain having died in England, he naturally applied to Buckingham for promotion. The Duke, however, consulted the colonel of the regiment, and, by his suggestion, gave the company to an officer named Powell, who happened to be lieutenant of the colonel’s company, and a man of great bravery; and Felton himself acknowledged the justice and expediency of this preference of Powell to himself. So that, to follow the same authority, the idea of any rancour being harboured, owing to this arrangement, can have no foundation.[^[111]] But the notion has been taken up by historians adverse to Buckingham--and such are in the majority--rather to heighten the impression that he suffered for an act of injustice, for which his death was, more or less, a retribution, than from any certain conviction on the point.

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

Three hours before his execution, however, Felton, either as a palliation to others, or to excuse the deed to himself, alleged that the book written by Dr. Egglisham, King James’s Scottish physician, in which the Duke was portrayed as one of the foulest monsters upon earth, unfit to live in a Christian court, or even within the pale of humanity, had a great effect upon his mind, in inciting him to what he deemed an act of heroic virtue. The fact, indeed, it is plain, was, that his religious convictions had an all-powerful influence upon his judgment, which was warped by the gloomy bigotry which casts a shadow over the noblest and most encouraging hopes of the Christian. The tenor of this unhappy man’s life had been marked by seriousness and religious observances; but it was the religion which condemned all who differed--the religion, not of love, but self-righteousness and hatred.

During the leisure of peace--if peace that can be called in which all the elements of civil war were being engendered--the Petition of Right--that great measure, which even Clarendon allows, "was of no prejudice to the Crown"--received the King’s assent. Not contented with what they found might prove a bare declaration of the law, the Commons drew up a Remonstrance, addressed to the King, in order that the too great power of Buckingham might be diminished. The promotion of Papists, the protection of Arminians, under the patronage of Neal and Laud, were the chief subjects, and were calculated to arouse and inflame the passions of a fanatic, like Felton, and to have suggested the reasoning that was soon warped, by prejudice and hatred, into the form and conception of guilt. There were other subjects of complaint in that celebrated Remonstrance, which touched him also--the standing commission of general continued to Buckingham in time of peace, the dismissal of faithful officers from various places of trust, the failures at Cadiz and at Rhé--these were but a small part of that important document, but they were the portion most likely to excite such a mind as that of Felton. He stated, indeed, that the idea of assassination, which he had repelled by stern efforts of conscience--for he was a man misled and mistaken, but not devoid of certain principles, and he dared to make use of that solemn and misguiding word, conscience--was revived, with irresistible force, by the Remonstrance. Never, hitherto, had the members most distinguished for oratory in parliament reasoned with so much force, and so much research, and so great a depth of legal argument, as on the Petition of Right, and its successor, the Remonstrance. It was the era of good taste and profound argument in that great assembly.[^[112]] All tended to strengthen Felton in the conviction that the Duke was a traitor and oppressor, whom any patriot would do well to assassinate.

Then he read works which maintained the lawfulness of ridding a nation of an oppressor; and the voice of conscience was heard no more--a false heroism was thenceforth the spectre that lured him onwards. Never was there a more striking instance of the influence of one mind over another than that which the books of the day had over the mind of Felton; never was there a more prominent exemplification of the responsibilities of a writer, even if his words chance to have only an ephemeral reputation, than this man’s crime.

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

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

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

Meantime, Buckingham was mingling, in the full confidence of his fearless nature, in the affairs of that world which he was so soon to quit for ever. His unpopularity was at its acmé, and if he feared not for himself, there were friends who trembled for his safety. Sir Clement Throgmorton, a man of great consideration and judgment, one day asked a private conference, and advised the Duke to wear a coat of mail underneath his his outer garment. The Duke received the suggestion very kindly, but gave this reply, “Against popular fury a coat of mail would be but a weak defence, and with regard to an attack from any single man, he conceived there was no danger.” "So dark," says Wotton, “is destiny.”

This consciousness of being the object of universal hatred probably increased the keen desire which now possessed the Duke’s mind of retrieving the discredit into which his failure had plunged him. During the whole of the spring, preparations for a fresh descent on La Rochelle had been in contemplation. As good a squadron as that which Admiral Pennington had previously commanded was ready at Plymouth by the end of February, ten ships having been pressed into the service. Several new vessels were built, notwithstanding that the workmen of the navy at Chatham complained that they had not received any pay for seven months. Buckingham was, at one time, on the point of visiting Plymouth, but went to Newmarket instead.[^[113]] During the session of Parliament his brother-in-law, the Earl of Denbigh, was dispatched with a fleet to the relief of La Rochelle, which was blockaded by the French, but he returned without even attempting to effect anything; and the unfortunate town was left to its fate. Richelieu, besieging it by circumvallations, constructed a mole across the mouth of the harbour, leaving room only for the ebb and flow of the sea; and destruction seemed inevitable. It was, therefore, a very probable means of recovering his credit at home, for the Duke again to attempt the relief of those who, as Protestants, represented a cause dear to English hearts. Independently of this, it is not unlikely that old rivalship with the sagacious Cardinal may have influenced Buckingham to undertake a second expedition to La Rochelle.[^[114]] It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that Buckingham’s name should be covered with so much opprobrium after his death, when the fate of the heroes who defended La Rochelle is remembered. In the October of the year in which the Duke perished, La Rochelle, long refusing to yield, was forced to submit. The inhabitants surrendered at discretion--even with an English fleet, commanded by Lord Sidney, in sight. Of fifteen thousand men who had been enclosed in the town, only four thousand survived famine and fatigue, to lay down their arms before the generals sent by Richelieu.

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

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

Sir Henry Wotton, who had made some inquiries whether the Duke had had any presentiment of his death, relates a touching scene between the Duke and Laud.

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

At these words, or perhaps rather on looking at the expression of countenance with which they were uttered, the Bishop, with some uneasiness, asked the Duke whether he had any forebodings in his mind which he did not like to betray?

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

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

The twentieth of August was his birthday. He had completed his thirty-sixth year--that period which has been marked by a great writer as the departure of youth[^[115]]--it might have been, perhaps, in Buckingham’s case, the beginning of wisdom extracted from experience.

It was the age of omens and other superstitious weaknesses; and supernatural warnings were not wanting to heighten the effect of the tragedy that was soon to be acted. Neither did they who foreboded evil to the Duke wait until after the event to bring forth their ghostly revelations. One day, some little time before the Duke’s death, he was playing at bowls with the King in Spring Gardens. Buckingham, as he usually did,even in Charles’s presence, kept his hat on, a piece of presumption which irritated a Scotsman named Wilson, who, in his wrath, tossed off the Duke’s hat, and declared he would punish impertinence wherever he met it in the same way. On looking round for this man, he had vanished, and was nowhere to be found. The courtiers marvelled at the incident, and regarded it as ominous of the Duke’s fate; but he laughed at them for their folly, and showed no fear.[^[116]]

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

Old Sir George Villiers had now been dead eighteen years, and perhaps few of his family, and certainly not his wife, who had been twice married, ever wished to see him again. There was a certain Mr. Nicholas Towse, however, living in Bishopsgate Without, London, to whom the aged knight appeared in the spirit, during the year 1627, making choice of that individual as the depositary of secrets beyond the grave, because he had known him whilst he was a boy at school in Leicestershire, near Brookesby. As a mark of friendship, therefore, the apparition of Sir George favoured Mr. Towse with his revelations, and stood one night at the foot of his bed, dressed in the costume of the time of Elizabeth. There was a candle in the room, and Mr. Towse was perfectly wakeful. On beholding Sir George, he uttered, according to his own account, the natural inquiry, “What he was, and whether he was a man?” To which the apparition answered, “No.” Then Towse, in considerable emotion, asked, “Was he a devil?” To which the apparition still answered, “No.” Then Mr. Towse, with increasing agitation, said, “In the name of God, tell me what you are?”

"I am," replied the spectre, in doublet and hose, “the spectre of Sir George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham;” adding, that because he believed Mr. Towse loved him, and was sensible of the former kindness that he had shown him, he had selected him as the bearer of a message to the Duke of Buckingham, warning him in such a manner as to prevent much mischief and present ruin to the Duke.

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

That night was one of irresolution, if not of incredulity; but, on the next, the unhappy Towse, thus picked out for so ghostly a service, promised to go to the Duke. He went, indeed, and found out Sir Thomas Freeman and Sir Ralph Bladden, the Duke’s chamberlains, by whom he was presented to the Duke. Then followed some private and agitated interviews between Buckingham and Towse, and the cautions of the ghost were fully and forcibly communicated: they related chiefly to Buckingham’s patronage of Laud, and suggested some popular acts which the Duke was to perform in Parliament--and, in short, contained advice that any reasonable man might have offered. But nothing that was said by Mr. Towse made the slightest impression on the Duke, except, when certain passages of his life were referred to, with which the ghost had primed Mr. Towse, he owned he had believed “that no living creature knew of them but himself, and that it must be either God or the devil that had revealed them.” The Duke then offered to get Mr. Towse knighted, and to have him made a burgess in the forthcoming Parliament. But Mr. Towse, finding that the obstinate favourite was deaf to his advice, left him, prognosticating that the Duke’s death would happen at a certain time--which prognostic was fulfilled.

Mr. Towse then returned to Bishopsgate Without; and, there is much reason to believe, laboured under mental malady; for the visits of the apparition were now so frequent that he grew familiar with him, “as if it had been a friend or acquaintance that had come to visit him.” And from this very unpleasant guest Towse learned to see in perspective many events that had not then dawned on England; more especially the troubles of Prynne, who was Towse’s father-in-law--which was contrary to all rule, as a ghost should keep to one subject. On the day of Buckingham’s death, also, Mr. Towse and his wife being at Windsor Castle, where Towse had an office, they were sitting in company, when he started up, exclaiming, “The Duke of Buckingham is slain!” At the very moment that these words were uttered the blow had been given. Towse dying soon after, also foretold his own death.

This narrative, thought worthy of insertion by Clarendon, and therefore not to be completely disregarded in any biography of Buckingham, is taken, however, from a letter penned at Boulogne, by one Edmund Wyndham, in 1672, twenty years after the event.[^[117]][^[118]] According to Lord Clarendon, Buckingham, after hearing Towse’s revelation, was observed ever afterwards to be very melancholy. That he had misgivings as to his return, we have seen; but there are few men so insensible, at such a moment, as to be quite free from presentiment of evil--more especially one on whom the eyes of the country were directed in resentment, and regarding whom the Commons was then preparing a Remonstrance.[^[119]]

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

There was, of course, considerable bustle in the town; and on entering it, when the ghastly murderer stood unobserved amongst the crowd, there was too numerous a train about the Duke for Felton to reach him. Fearful of observation, he kept himself indoors one morning after his arrival; but, on the ensuing day, repaired to the house where Buckingham was staying. The Duke was at that time at breakfast, and little attention was paid by a number of suitors and applicants who were waiting for him in the antechamber, to the diminutive being who was watching, with his dark purpose, among the unconscious crowd. As there were several military men, amongst whom was the Duc de Soubise, with Buckingham, as well as Sir Thomas Fryer, much animation pervaded the conversation, in consequence of a report having reached Portsmouth that La Rochelle had been relieved. Soubise and his followers believed that this report was set on foot by some agents of the French, in order to induce the English to relax in their preparations, until the mole, which it was Richelieu’s plan to form at the mouth of the harbour, should be completed. He and the other foreigners spoke with vehemence, and in tones which the English, who were listening, deemed to be those of anger. The Duke, it appeared, was inclined to believe the report, and the eagerness of Soubise was not, therefore, to be matter of surprise, since his interests, and those of his adherents, were irrevocably engaged in the approaching expedition. At length, however, the conference ended; Soubise took his leave, and Buckingham rose to quit the chamber where he had breakfasted.

It was, probably, with a pre-occupied mind that he thus prepared to go out; and it is very possible that he scarcely observed a small figure, which he may not even have recognized, which was lifting up, as he passed on, the hangings between the room and the antechamber. This was Felton. Buckingham, on his way, stopped an instant to speak to Sir Thomas Fryer, one of his Colonels, who was a short man--so that, in order to hear his reply, the Duke bent down his head somewhat. Fryer then drew back, and, at that moment, Felton, striking across the Colonel’s arm, stabbed Buckingham a little above the heart. The knife was left in the body; the Duke, with a sudden effort, drew it out, and exclaiming, “The villain has killed me,” pursued the assassin out of the parlour into the hall or antechamber, where he sank down, and, falling under a table, drew a deep breath, and expired.

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

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

”Jno. Felton."[^[120]]

Whilst the bystanders were reading these words, the body of the Duke had been conveyed to the inner apartment, from which he had issued, having been first laid on the table of the antechamber, or hall; and in this inner chamber it was left, without a single person, even a domestic, to watch over his remains, or to give him that tribute of sorrowing respect which is due to the poorest. And this singular neglect has been regarded as a proof of indifference in those who, but a few minutes previously, were crowding round the powerful Minister and General. But it was, in fact, one of those accidents which often bear a very different construction, when they are considered relatively to the circumstances of the hour, to that placed on them. Sir Henry Wotton, to whom the fact was mentioned by one of the Duke’s friends, speaks of it as “beyond all wonder;” but accounts for it by the horror which the murder had excited, added to the astonishment at the sudden disappearance of the murderer, who had glided from the terrible scene like an actor who has done his part, and makes his exit. For a time, however, whilst high words were heard between the Frenchmen and their accusers, whilst murmurs from the street below, of the eager and infuriated crowd, were changed into yells of vengeance, that cold corpse lay unheeded; “thus, upon the withdrawing of the sun, does the shadow depart from the painted dial.”[^[121]] All were, indeed, in the house, occupied in asking again and again the question, Where could the owner of the hat be?--for he, doubtless, was the assassin. Whilst they were thus talking, a man without a hat was seen walking with perfect composure up and down before the door. “Here,” cried one of the crowd, “is the man who killed the Duke,” upon which Felton calmly said, “I am he, let no person suffer that is innocent.” Then the populace rushed upon him with drawn swords, to which Felton offered no defence, preferring rather to die at once, than to abide the issue of justice. He was, however, rescued by others less violent--a circumstance which was thought very fortunate for the popular party, on whom a stigma might have rested had the murderer been killed; and Felton being secured, was conveyed to a small sentry-box; he was instantly loaded with heavy irons, which prevented his either standing upright or lying down in that narrow prison, where he remained sometime, whilst the mob were raging without in the streets.[^[122]]

The Duchess of Buckingham was in an upper room of that house in which the husband whom she had “loved,” to use her own words, “as never woman loved man,” was murdered. She had not, when it happened, risen from her bed.[^[123]]

The following very graphic account, written by a very devoted friend of Buckingham, Sir Dudley Carleton, presents, in several details, a somewhat different delineation of this scene of murder, to that which has been related, collected from various sources, although, in various instances, it is confirmatory of the statements usually received.[^[124]]

"S^r--If y^e ill newes we have heard (doe not as their use is) out flye these lres,[^[125]] they will bring you y^e worst of y^e strangest I think you ever received: sure I am, whatever passed my pen. Our noble Duke in y^e midst of his army he had ready at Portsmouth as well shipping as land forces, in y^e height of his favour with our Gracious Master, who was herd by at this place and in the greatest joy and alacrity I ever saw him in my life at y^e newes he had received about of y^e clock in y^e morning on Saturday last of y^e relief of Rochell, in that fort, that y^e place might well attend his coming, wherewith he was hastening to y^e King, who that morning had sent for him by me upon other occasions;--at his going out of a lower parlour where he usually sat, and had then broken his fast in presence of many standers by (Frenchmen with Monsieur de Soubise, officers of his army and those of his own Trayns) was stabbed unto y^e heart a little above y^e breast with a knife by one Felton, an Englishman, being a Reformed Lieutenant, who hastening out of y^e doore and y^e duke having pulled out y^e knife which was left in y^e wound and following him out of y^e parlour into y^e hall, with his hand putt to his sword, there fell down dead with much effusion of bloud at his mouth and nostrils. The Lady Anglesea,[^[126]] then looking down into y^e[y^e] hall out of an open Gallery, which crossed y^e end of it, and being spectator of this tragical fight, went immediately with a cry into y^e Duchesses Chamber, who was in bed, and then fell down on y^e floor, so surprized y^e poor Duchesse with this sad ... matin....[^[127]] The murderer in y^e midst of y^e noise and tumult, every man drawing his sword and no man knowing whom to strike, nor from whom to defend himself, slipt out into y^e kitchen and there stood with some others unespyed, when a voyce being currant in the court to w^ch y^e window and doore of y^e kitchen answered (a Frenchman, a Frenchman), and his guilty conscience making him believe it was “Felton, Felton” (who being otherwise unknown and undiscovered might well have escaped) he came out of y^e kitchen with his sword drawn, and presenting himselfe, said, I am the man: some offering to assayle him and one running at him with a spit, he flung down his sword and rendered himselfe to y^e company, who being ready to handle him as he deserved by tearing him in pieces I took him from them, and having committed him to y^e custody of some officers, when I had taken y^e best order I could for other affairs in so great confusion, jointly with Secretary Cooke I examined y^e man and found he had no particular offence against y^e Duke, more than all others for want of some small entertayments were owing him: but he grounded his practise upon y^e Parliament’s Remonstrance as to make himselfe a Martyr for his Country, which he confessed to have resolved to execute y^e Monday before, he being then at London, and came from thence expressly by the Wednesday morning, arriving at Portsmouth y^e very morning, not above half an hour before he committed it. We could not then discover any complices, neither did we take more than his free and willing confession: but now His Majestie hath ordayned by Commission y^e Lord Treassurer, Lord Steward, Earl of Dorset, Secretary Cooke and myselfe to proceed with him as y^e nature of y^e fact requires, and wee shall begin this afternoon: meane while I would not but give you this relation to y^e end you may know y^e truth of this bloudy act, which will flye about the world diversly reported to you, and you should not find it strange such a blowe to be struck in y^e midst of y^e Duke’s friends and followers: you must know y^e murderer took his time and place at y^e presse near y^e issue of y^e room, and many of us were stept out to our horses, as I my selfe was to go to Court with the Duke. The murderer gloryed in his acte y^e first day; but when I told him he was y^e first assassin of an Englishman, a gentleman, a soldier, and a protestant, he shrunk at it, and is now grown penitent. It seems this man and Ravillac were of no other Religion (though he professeth other) than assassanisme; they have the same maxims as you will see by two writings were found sowed in his hat, wc^h goe herewith.

“From Lord Viscount Dorchester to” [not addressed.][^[128]]

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

The King was only about six miles from Portsmouth, whence he intended doubtless to witness the departure of a friend whom he never ceased to lament. He was at prayers when Sir John Hippesley came suddenly into the Presence Chamber, where service was that day performed, and whispered the news into his Majesty’s ear. Charles did not permit a single feature of his face to express either astonishment or distress; and, when a deep pause ensued, the appalled chaplain thinking to spare his Majesty the distress of remaining during the service, he calmly ordered him to proceed with the prayers--and, until those were concluded, preserved the same undisturbed demeanour. Some there were who argued, from this perfect mastery over his feelings, that the King did not regret the death of one who had rendered him so unpopular, and from whom he could not unloose the bonds which early habit and youthful friendship had drawn so closely as to convert them into shackles. But the deep sorrow which Charles felt was shown in his affectionate care of those whom his favourite loved; nor was it, as some supposed, without a stern effort that he controlled his emotions whilst he remained amid those assembled in prayer. No sooner was the service over, than he suddenly departed to his chamber, and, throwing himself on his bed, gave full vent to a passion of grief, and, weeping long and bitterly, paid to the poor Duke the tribute of his anguish,--lamenting not only the loss of an excellent friend and servant, but “the terrible manner of the Duke’s death.” And he continued for many days in the deepest melancholy.[^[129]]

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

"Right Honorable--Hand in hand came to my unfortunate hand yo Expps.[^[130]] and my noble friend Mr. Secretarie Cooke’s, and yo^r Honors leynes could not be but welcome although they brought vnto mee the sadd and heavy newes of that damnable act of that accursed ffelton, wc^h hath so seated itself in my heart as it will hould memorie there, of the untymilie losse of my deere and gracious Lord to my unpacified sorrow untill my Death; for as I partook wt^h him of his comforts living, I will have a share of his sorrowes after him. Oh my Lord! his end was upon Satterdau morning.[morning.] The daie of his dissolving tould mee by a dreame, discribed in all. It wanted but the damned name of Felton. But that fiende unworthy of it was entituled by the name of Souldier. This Dreame tould my Wife and dearest friends, did not a little trouble mee, but now the trueth thereof torments me.

"Yo leynes my only comforte brought wt^h them his Mat[^[131]] commands. In all I doe obey them," &c., &c.

The letter is addressed thus from Sir James Bagg--“For his Lordship,” and dated, “Augt. 28th, 1628.”[^[132]]

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

“I will pray for your happy return, which I look to with a great cloud over my head, too heavy for my poor heart to bear without torment. But I hope the great God of Heaven will bless you.”[^[133]]

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

His sister’s apprehensions were, indeed, perfectly justifiable, and they might well intrude into those hours of silence in which thoughts of the absent or unhappy most frequently trouble our minds. Had the Duke again been saved from the chances of war, what might have been his fate at home in case of his return unsuccessful? Already had he hardly escaped from the indignation of the people: even then, in the remote county of Carmarthen, they were raising reports that the King had been poisoned by the Duke--reports that had been believed by the simple inhabitants of Wales. The fury of party had much to answer for in the excitement of bad passions, the end and mischief of which can never be foreseen.

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

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

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

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

No proof whatsoever of any conspiracy was to be elucidated from the unfortunate relations of the culprit. Debt and disappointment had, according to their evidence, driven Felton to desperation. How many of the evil accidents of life issue, as far as one can see, humanly speaking, from pecuniary mismanagement. Felton, on the Wednesday before the Duke was killed, had gone to his mother’s lodging, and told her of his intention to get the money due to him for pay from the Duke; adding, that “he was too deeply in debt to stay longer in town.” Eighty pounds, it appeared, was then owing to him. This, and the loss of his Captaincy, were all that he had alleged to his own family against the Duke; he owned to no other grievance. The mother and sister, and brothers, were, however, committed to prison, although Edmund Felton, the brother of the delinquent, affirmed that he had not seen him for ten weeks previously to the murder; that John Felton had been estranged from him, and did not let him know where he lodged. There was no attempt in the examination, which took place before Thomas Richardson and Henry Finch, to screen the culprit by a plea of insanity; all his brother said was, that his disposition was “melancholie, sad, and heavy, and of few words.”[^[134]] Alone had he conceived, planned, and put into execution the deed of guilt; yet such was the hard disposition of the times, that it was proposed to extract a confession from John Felton by torture; but Charles interposed, and forbade the application of that horrible test,[^[135]] and it was never again attempted in this country.

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

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

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

The Duchess of Buckingham was near her confinement when this tragedy occurred. When Charles first visited the young widow, he promised her that he would be a “husband to her, and a father to her children.” One son alone was living at the time of the Duke’s decease. This was George, the second Duke of Buckingham of the house of Villiers. The character of this young nobleman, to whom Horace Walpole imputed “the figure and genius of Alcibiades,” has been “drawn by four masterly hands. Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chisel. Count Hamilton touched it with slight delicacy, that finishes while it seems to sketch. Dryden catched the living likeness. Pope completed the historical resemblance.” Lastly, Sir Walter Scott, in our time, has depicted this singular being with admirable skill, if not with perfect fidelity. He was scarcely a year and seven months old at his father’s death.

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

Lady Mary’s life, so happy, seemingly, in her infancy, when, as “little Moll,” she was King James’s plaything, was not, in one respect, felicitous. Her first marriage, to Charles Lord Herbert, son and heir of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, was hastened, and performed privately in the chapel at Whitehall, because the young bride had formed an attachment to Philip Herbert, a younger son, who “did more apply himself to her,” as she stated, than the elder suitor.

But her mother chided her out of this fancy, and the wedding took place--the bridegroom dying of small-pox a few weeks afterwards. Lady Mary married, secondly, James, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, by whom she had a son, Esme Stuart, who died in infancy; and thirdly, Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of Carlisle. She left no children, so that her father’s desire to perpetuate in her his title was not realized. If we may believe the praise of an epitaph which was undisguisedly paid for, we must suppose Lady Mary to have been endowed with all the virtues.[^[136]]

Some months after the Duke’s death, his widow gave birth to a son, named Francis after his grandfather, who provided for him in a fortune of 1,000l. a-year. When he grew up, however, Francis shared with his brother the misfortune that overshadowed the family, from the unexpected second marriage of their mother to Randolph Macdonald, first Earl and afterwards Marquis of Antrim. It is painful to find the widowed Duchess separated from her children, having become a Roman Catholic; and having incurred in this, and on account of the conduct of her husband in Ireland, under Sir Thomas Wentworth, the King’s displeasure. Charles so greatly disapproved of her marriage, that he refused, for several years, to see her, and, when reconciled, took away her children lest they should be imbued with her religious opinions. The young Duke and his brother Francis were educated, unhappily for themselves, with the Princes, Charles II. and his brothers; and Lady Mary was received in the house of the Earl of Pembroke, her father-in-law. Such are the changes and chances of life, that in 1639 we find Katharine, (still signing herself “Katharine Buckingham”) interceding with Strafford for her husband, Lord Antrim. “Any misfortune,” she writes, “to my lord must be mine.”[^[137]]

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

In 1648, Lord Francis, who, with his brother, had taken the field against the Parliament, was killed, at about two miles distance from Kingston-on-Thames: standing with his back planted against an oak-tree on the road-side; and, scorning to ask quarter, he met his death gallantly, having nine wounds on his face and body. He is said to have been a most beautiful youth, and was only nineteen when he thus fell. His body was brought by water to York House, then sad and desolate, and was taken thence to be deposited in his father’s vault, with a Latin inscription on the coffin, preserved by Brian Fairfax, a faithful adherent, who thought it a pity that the epitaph should be buried with him; and who has therefore given it in his life of George, the second Duke of Buckingham. The elder brother of Lord Francis, after a life of extraordinary adventure, vicissitude, study, and dissipation, died, in 1688, quietly in his bed--“the fate of few of his predecessors of the title of Buckingham.” His body also lies entombed near his father. “The life of pleasure and the soul of whim,” as Pope describes him, his career furnishes a wide field for reflection and investigation, to those who may dare to dive into a biography so characterized by all the worst parts of the age in which he existed, as that of this profligate man.

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

John Villiers, Lord Purbeck, died in 1657, when the titles which he bore became extinct. He lived, however, to recover his powers of mind, and to act as a friend and guardian to his nephews. Lady Purbeck, his first wife, took the name of Wright, and her son, by Lord Howard, bore that surname. The once flattered heiress, whose follies and misconduct were forgiven, as we have seen, by her father, died in 1645, in the King’s Garrison, at Oxford, and she is buried in the Church of St. Mary’s, in that city.[^[139]] Notwithstanding the misery of his first union, Lord Purbeck married again; but had no issue by his second wife, who was a daughter of Sir William Thugsby, of Kippen, in Yorkshire.

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

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

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

Sir William Villiers, the eldest half-brother of the Duke, had never emerged from his original obscurity; but Sir Edward, his other half-brother, whom Buckingham constituted President of Munster, was highly esteemed for his justice and hospitality, and lamented by the whole province.[^[140]] From him, through his son, who had succeeded his maternal uncle in the title of Viscount Grandison, was descended the famous (or infamous) Barbara Villiers, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, the mistress of Charles II. Her beauty appears to have been one of the few traits of the Villiers family that she possessed.

It is remarkable that not one of the titles conferred on the family of Villiers by James I. remains to distinguish the descendants of old Sir George of Brookesby. The Earldoms of Clarendon and of Jersey are subsequent creations.[^[141]]

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

Few things disappoint the reader more than the unaccountable change in the character of Katharine, Duchess of Buckingham, after she ceased, except by courtesy, to bear that name. She seems to have hastened, not only to plunge into a second marriage, but to have at last avowed, what she had during the whole of her life denied, the tenets of the Church of Rome. Henceforth she was opposed to the monarch by whom her husband, the Duke, had been overwhelmed with benefits. This painful alteration in one so gentle, so forgiving, so affectionate in her earlier life, is one of those anomalies in life that one cannot cease to regret, without being able to explain.

CHAPTER IV.

CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM--HIS PATRONAGE OF ART--HIS COLLECTION--THE SPANISH COURT DESCRIBED--COLLECTION BY CHARLES I.--FATE OF THESE PICTURES.

CHAPTER IV.

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

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

It was in the Court of Madrid that Buckingham had learned to love art, to favour artists, and to become a judge of their works. Philip IV., of Spain, inert and inefficient as a monarch, and governed by Olivares, was a man of considerable intellectual powers, and of great taste. “The denizens of his palace breathed,” as a modern writer expressed it, “an atmosphere of letters.”[^[142]] At that time the Castilian stage was in its perfection; the scenery was inimitable, and the greatest expense was bestowed in representing the pieces of Lope de Vega, and of Calderon; in the same manner as the masques of Ben Jonson were aided in effect by the talents of Inigo Jones. Nor was Philip IV. a mere patron of genius; he was himself an actor and author, writing with purity and elegance: a musician, a poet, or, as he delighted to style himself, Ingenio de esto corte. He wrote a tragedy on the death of Essex, Elizabeth’s favourite; and he often acted with other literary men of his Court, delighting to vie with them in the display of fancy and humour in the Comedias de repente, representations resembling those of charades in the present day, in which a certain plot was worked out, with extempore speeches.

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

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

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

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

This production of Velasquez was only one of many portraits of this lovely princess; for she was by all acknowledged to be the very star of the Court. She shared the taste of her husband, whilst his young brothers, both early instructed in drawing, warmly joined in the King’s pursuits, not only in the arts, but in literature. The elder, Don Carlos, beloved, as has been stated, by the Spaniards for his dark complexion, was supposed to have excited the jealousy of Olivares by his talents--he died in 1626: the second, the Boy-Cardinal, who assumed the Roman purple and the mitre of an archbishop, was the able pupil in painting of Vincencio Carducho, and became the most intellectual of the Spanish Princes that had appeared since Charles V. He set the fashion of those half-dramatic, half-musical pieces, which were called in Spain, Zarzuelas.[^[143]] The boy--whom we have seen joining heart and soul, in his purple robe, and beneath his mitre, in court revels, given in honour of Charles I., was, at that very time, a student in philosophy and mathematics; and when at the age of twenty-two he was sent to govern Flanders, and henceforth to spend the brief span of life allotted to him in camps and councils--was still, to the last, the patron of Velasquez and Rubens.[^[144]]

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

The King, his Queen, the two royal brothers, and Olivares, had all a passion for having portraits taken of themselves. Philip was born for a sitter. His face, as Dr. Waagen remarks, “is better known than his history.” His pale Flemish complexion, Austrian features, and fair hair have been many times depicted by Rubens and Velasquez. He was sometimes painted on his Andalusian courser, sometimes in black velvet, as he was going to the council--even at his prayers. There was an hereditary gift of silence and composure in his race: in Philip the attribute was so signal, that he could witness a whole comedy without stirring hand or foot, and conduct an audience without a muscle moving, except those in his lips and tongue.[^[145]] Even after slaying the bull of Xarama, famed for strength and fierceness, not for a moment did he change countenance. To this incomparable staidness and dignity was added the advantage of a tall figure, which Philip knew well how to set off by a perfect mastery in combination of colours. Black he mixed almost uniformly with white, and gold and silver. This stately monarch was never known to smile more than three times in his life--that is, publicly, for in private he was ever “full of merry discourses.”

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

Walpole attributes, likewise, the absence of pictures in the houses of the English nobility at this period to the great size and height of the rooms which they erected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when vastness seems to have constituted the idea of grandeur. Pictures would have been lost in rooms of such height, which were better calculated for tapestry; and he offers, as an instance, Hardwicke--which was furnished for the reception and imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots--and Audley-End, as proofs of the prodigious space covered by a modern gentleman’s house in the days of James I., and observes how impossible it would have been to place pictures in such structures.

One may readily conceive, therefore, the enchantment that was felt in visiting the Escurial, the palace of Buen-retiro, and the noble churches and famous convents of Madrid. Charles and Buckingham beheld that capital in the height of its splendour, and witnessed its most brilliant displays; they attended the grand, picturesque services and processions; they became acquainted with the works of Titian, of Velasquez, and Carducho. That Charles cherished the remembrance of the scenes in which he had once played so romantic a part, is evident from his employing a young painter, Miquel de la Cruz, even when England was threatened with the great Rebellion, to paint for him copies of a number of pictures from those in the Alcazar of Madrid.[^[146]] The painter was cut off by an early death, and the project was never carried out.

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