LORD FRANCIS VILLIERS.
On the north side of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, close to King Henry's
tomb, there is a small side chapel, divided off by a low wall of carved
stone, and almost filled up by a magnificent monument. A splendid
personage of the time of Charles the First, remarkably handsome, and
dressed in robes of state, lies on the tomb beside his fair wife.
Allegorical figures stand at the four corners. The recumbent effigies
are in brass, richly gilded. Behind their heads kneel three children, a
boy and two girls, beautifully carved in marble; and above this trio an
exquisite child leans on his elbow, tired out with grief and fallen
gently asleep.
Standing beside this tomb, Dean Stanley says:
We seem to be present in the Court of Charles as we look at
its fantastic ornaments ("Fame even bursting herself, and
trumpets to tell the news of his so sudden fall") and its
pompous inscriptions calling each State in Europe severally
to attest the several virtues of this "Enigma of the
World."[80]
Who, we may well ask, is this man who lies buried among the tombs of the
kings of England, in state far exceeding that accorded to many
sovereigns?
Every one who has read the history of the reigns of James the First and
Charles the First will remember the most famous, and perhaps most
dangerous of all the court favorites who helped to bring ruin upon
England--George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
His story reads like a chapter out of the _Arabian Nights_:
Never any man in any age, nor, I believe, in any country or
nation, rose in so short a time to so much greatness of
honour, fame, and fortune, upon no other advantage or
recommendation than the beauty and gracefulness of his
person.[81]
Young and exceedingly handsome, George Villiers, the son of a
Leicestershire squire, was taken into favor by James the First, on the
disgrace of his first favorite, the Earl of Rochester. In an incredibly
short space of time "Steenie," as his royal masters called him, rose
through every rank of the peerage to a dukedom, and to the actual
direction of English policy. Haughty, reckless, selfish, his only good
quality was his personal bravery.
This was the man whose evil influence made itself felt throughout
England, who plunged the country into disastrous wars and encouraged
King Charles in those fatal measures which at last brought him to the
scaffold. When Charles the First came to the throne in 1625, Buckingham
was at the height of his glory and power. In vain did Parliament
remonstrate with the king. In vain did they petition him again and again
to rid himself of a favorite who was becoming more hated and dreaded by
the country each year. In vain did they impeach Buckingham. Charles, in
his blind affection, took all the blame of the duke's deeds upon
himself--burnt the remonstrance of the Commons--and actually dissolved
Parliament in order to save his favorite.
But what the Commons of England failed to do, came to pass by the hand
of one discontented man.
The Duke of Buckingham, after wasting men, money, and English prestige
in one disastrous expedition to help the French Protestants at La
Rochelle, was on the eve of setting out for a second attempt to relieve
the beleagured town. He was at Portsmouth, and was to embark the very
next day, when he was stabbed by John Felton, a lieutenant in the navy
who had been disappointed of promotion.
All England and the court rejoiced at the death of the favorite. But
King Charles "flung himself upon his bed in a passion of tears when the
news reached him."[82] On his first visit to the widowed Duchess of
Buckingham he promised to be a father to her sons. He ordered the duke
to be buried in the Chapel of Henry the Seventh--which hitherto had been
reserved for anointed kings. And it is George Villiers who lies in state
to this day on the splendid tomb we have been looking at.
Soon after the duke's death, the lovely boy who leans sleeping above his
father's monument was born.
The king stood godfather to the baby at his christening, together with
Francis, Earl of Rutland, the duchess's father. "After some compliments
who should give the name," the king called the baby Francis, and the
grandfather gave him his benediction, which was in the very pleasant
form of seven thousand pounds a year.
King Charles faithfully kept the promise he had made the duchess. Alas!
it had been well for him had he kept all other promises as faithfully.
He was indeed a father to young Francis and to his handsome, headstrong,
worthless elder brother the young Duke of Buckingham.
The boys were brought up with the royal children under the same tutors
and governors. They were sent quite young to Trinity College, Cambridge,
where their names were entered in the college-book in the same year as
that of Prince Charles. And here among other famous and learned men,
they made the acquaintance of Abraham Cowley, the poet, who had lately
published his pastoral comedy "Love's Riddle," which had been performed
by members of the college.
[Illustration: TOMB OF GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.]
From Cambridge the two brothers went to travel under the care of Mr.
William Aylesbury, who was appointed their tutor by the king. But their
sojourn abroad was short.
Public affairs had been growing darker and darker at home. And at last,
in 1642, there was an open breach between the king and the Parliament.
The Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham, August 25, and England was
plunged into civil war, the most horrible of all scourges that can come
on any country.
Francis Villiers was fourteen years old, and his brother, the young
duke, a year older. Boys as they were, they now tried to show their
gratitude to the king for his care of them. Upon the outbreak of the
Civil War they hastened back to England. The king's headquarters were at
Oxford; and his nephew, the famous Prince Rupert, kept the whole country
between Oxford and London in constant alarm with his sudden raids and
fierce skirmishes. To Oxford then the two young brothers came. They
were a beautiful pair, inheriting from both their parents "so graceful a
body, as gave lustre to the ornament of the mind." Full of headstrong
courage, they "laid their lives and their fortunes at the king's feet,"
and chose Prince Rupert and Lord Gerard as their tutors in the art of
War. They soon had their first lesson; for they were present at the
storming of the Close at Lichfield on March 2, 1643. When they returned
to Oxford, happily without harm after their first fight, their mother,
the duchess, was very angry with Lord Gerard for "tempting her sons into
such danger." But he told her it was by the boys' own wish, "and the
more the danger the greater the honor."
Parliament at first seemed to look on this escapade as a serious
offence, for they seized upon the brothers' estates. But they were soon
restored in consideration of the two boys' extreme youth. However, says
Bryan Fairfax, their historian, "the young men kept it (their fortune)
no longer than till they came to be at an age to forfeit it again."[83]
To keep these young fire-eaters out of fresh honorable danger, the king
placed them in the care of the Earl of Northumberland, and sent them
abroad again. They spent the next four or five years in France and
Italy, living chiefly in Florence and Rome, where they kept as great
state as many sovereign princes. It was the fashion of those days to
send young noblemen for a time to foreign countries; and the result in a
good many cases was that they abjured Protestantism and returned to
England either concealed or avowed Roman Catholics. But the Villiers
brothers "brought their religion home again, wherein they had been
educated under the eye of the most devout and best of kings."[84]
The moment at which the young men returned was a critical one. The royal
cause had been going from bad to worse. And at the beginning of 1648
England was in the hands of Cromwell and Fairfax. The king, given up by
the Scots the year before to the Parliamentarians, was a prisoner at
Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. The Royalist forces were
scattered and broken; and it seemed an almost hopeless task to make any
further resistance in the king's behalf. Nevertheless, there were still
a few faithful followers left; and the old English love for the monarchy
still blazed up here and there in fierce outbursts against the
Parliament and its army. But the Parliamentarians despised all these
attempts, until in the spring of 1648 a serious rising took place in
Kent, which was suppressed after a heavy fight at Maidstone. It was just
at this juncture that the young Duke of Buckingham and his brother
Francis returned to England. Strong, active, and courageous, they were
burning with zeal to venture their large estates for the crown on the
first opportunity.
They had not long to wait.
No sooner was the Kentish rising quelled than the Royalists crossed the
Thames into Essex, and collected a large force at Colchester, intending
from thence to march on London. Fairfax invested the town, and beseiged
it for two months until it fell, August 27.
Meanwhile the Earl of Holland had offered his services to the queen,
his late mistress, in Paris, and informed her of his resolution to
adventure everything for the king. The young Villiers threw in their lot
with Lord Holland, and declared themselves ready and willing to
sacrifice their estates and their lives if need be in the royal cause.
The siege of Colchester which engaged the main body of the army under
Fairfax seemed to offer a good opportunity for a rising nearer London.
The young Duke of Buckingham was made General of the Horse. Lord Francis
Villiers and various other young noblemen were given other posts. And
these hot-blooded lads, impatient for action, urged Lord Holland to
begin his perilous undertaking without further delay.
Unhappily for them the whole business was miserably mismanaged. Such a
rising could only hope to succeed if it were kept the most profound
secret. But so far from being a secret, it was, says Clarendon, "the
common discourse of the town." There was a great appearance every
morning at Lord Holland's lodging of officers who were known to have
served the king--.
his commission showed in many hands; and no question being
more commonly asked than--when doth my Lord Holland go out?
and the answer--Such and such a day; and the hour he did
take horse, when he was accompanied by an hundred horse from
his house was publickly talked of two or three days
before.[85]
But these indiscretions were not all. The first rendezvous was to be at
Kingston-on-Thames--the charming old town full of old red brick houses,
and sunny walled gardens full of lilacs and laburnums and cedars of
Lebanon, ten miles southwest of London. Here Lord Holland stayed for two
nights and one whole day, expecting numbers to flock to his standard,
"not only of officers, but of common men who had promised and listed
themselves under several officers."[86] During his stay, some officers
and soldiers, both of foot and horse did come. But the greater number of
those who resorted to Kingston were "many persons of honor and quality,"
who came down from London for the day in their coaches to visit the
little army, and returned to town again, "to provide what was still
wanting and resolved to be with him soon again."
[Illustration: LORD FRANCIS VILLIERS.]
Is it not a pitiable story? Want of plan, of management, of forethought,
of seriousness. The whole thing arranged like a play upon the stage. The
fair ladies, and the gallant cavaliers in their curly wigs and deep
Vandyke collars, driving down on the hot summer day to visit their
friends, and laugh and talk over the great victory that without doubt
they would win--the victory that would restore the king to his throne,
and drive the Parliamentarians into the sea. And beautiful young Francis
Villiers, in the heyday of his youth and strength--his debts all paid
two days before[87]--longing for a chance to strike a blow for the king
who had been a father to him.
How the grim puritan soldiers must have laughed at such a set of
amateurs in the art of War. They were not far-off--those grave fighting
men.
The chief officer with Lord Holland's band was one Dalbeer, a Dutch
malcontent. He seems to have been as incompetent as the rest of the
little army; for he kept no watch at night round the camp.
Early on the morning of July 7, the Parliamentary Colonel Rich, "eminent
for praying but of no fame for fighting," surprised the town with a
troop of horse. There was a general scrimmage. No one was ready to
receive them. Lord Holland and a number of his followers made the best
of their way out of the town, never offering to charge the enemy. Most
of the footsoldiers and some of the officers "made shift to conceal
themselves until they found means to retire to their close mansions in
London."[88]
But Francis Villiers alone seems to have made a stand. At the head of
his troop, his horse having been killed under him, he
got to an oak-tree in the highway about two miles from
Kingston, where he stood with his back against it, defending
himself, scorning to ask quarter, and they barbarously
refusing to give it; till with nine wounds in his beautiful
face and body, he was slain.[89]
So died Francis Villiers, in the twentieth year of his age--"This
noble, valiant and beautiful youth," says Fairfax. "A youth of rare
beauty and comeliness," says Clarendon. And so ended the unhappy fight
of Kingston. Dalbeer defended himself till he was killed. Lord Holland
with a hundred horse, wandered away and was caught at an inn at St.
Neot's in Hertfordshire and thence sent prisoner to Windsor, of which
place he had but lately been constable. The Duke of Buckingham reached
London, and hid until he could escape to Holland "where the prince was;
who received him with great grace and kindness."[90] And in six months
the king for whom young Francis had died, was led out to execution at
Whitehall.
Lord Francis' body was brought by water from Kingston up the Thames to
York House in the Strand; and was then embalmed and laid in his father's
vault in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.
The late duke's magnificent monument, and the position in which it was
placed, gave rise to much comment at the time. No monument had been
erected to King James. And when Charles the First sent for Lord Weston
"to contrive the work of the tomb" for his favorite, Lord Weston,
putting into words the opinion of the greater part of England "told his
Majesty that not only our nation, but others, would talk of it, if he
should make the duke a tomb, and not his father."[91]
The tomb, however, was made. Henry the Seventh's Chapel for the first
time was opened to a person not of royal lineage. And by the irony of
fate, this burial of a royal favorite paved the way for the interments
of many others in the next thirty years who were not of royal blood, and
were bitterly opposed to kings and all that pertained to them, save
power.
Two years after Francis Villiers was killed at Kingston, Ireton,
Cromwell's son-in-law, was buried in a vault at the extreme east of
Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Then came Blake, the first of England's
naval heroes--Colonel Mackworth, one of Cromwell's Council--Sir William
Constable, one of the regicides--Worsley, Oliver's "great and rising
favorite." And Bradshaw, Lord President of the High Court of Justice,
was laid "in a superb tomb among the kings."
Ten years after Francis Villiers' death, Cromwell's favorite
daughter--the sweet Elizabeth Claypole--was buried in a vault close to
the entrance of the Villiers Chapel. She was the "Betty" of Cromwell's
earlier letters, "who belongs to the sect of the seekers rather than the
finders. Happy are they who find--most happy are they who seek."[92]
The great Protector never held up his head after the death of this
lovable woman; and within a month of his daughter's funeral "his most
serene and renowned highness, Oliver, Lord Protector, was taken to his
rest"[93] in the same Chapel in which we have spent so much time of
late.
If we needed any fresh proof that the great Abbey of Westminster is a
sign and symbol of reconciliation, here is one. Within its walls Kings
and Covenanters, Puritan women, and gallant young Cavalier nobles who
fought against those women's husbands and fathers, lie side by side. The
feuds, the hatreds, the heart-burnings, the differences, political and
religious, are all forgotten; and nothing is left but the common
brotherhood of man with man, in the still peaceful atmosphere of the
Abbey Church of St. Peter.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] Stanley. "Memorials of Westminster." p. 237.
[81] Clarendon. Vol. I. p. 16.
[82] "Short History of English People." Green, p. 488.
[83] "Life of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham." Bryan Fairfax.
[84] Fairfax.
[85] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 102.
[86] Ibid. Vol. XI. p. 102.
[87] When he left London he ordered his steward, Mr. John May, to bring
him a list of his debts, and he so charged his estate with them, that
the Parliament, who seized on the estate, payed the debt.--FAIRFAX.
[88] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 104.
[89] Fairfax.
[90] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 105.
[91] "Court and Times of Charles the First." Vol. I. p. 391.
[92] Carlyle's Cromwell. Vol. I. p. 295.
[93] Commonwealth Mercury. Sep. 2-9, 1658.