Signs of the Restoration.--Samuel Pepys in his Glory.--A Royal
Company.--Pepys 'ready to Weep.'--The Playmate of Charles
II.--George Villiers's Inheritance.--Two Gallant Young
Noblemen.--The Brave Francis Villiers.--After the Battle of
Worcester.--Disguising the King.--Villiers in Hiding.--He
appears as a Mountebank.--Buckingham's Habits.--A Daring
Adventure.--Cromwell's Saintly Daughter.--Villiers and the
Rabbi.--The Buckingham Pictures and Estates.--York
House.--Villiers returns to England.--Poor Mary
Fairfax.--Villiers in the Tower.--Abraham Cowley, the
Poet.--The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall.--Buckingham's Wit
and Beauty.--Flecknoe's Opinion of Him.--His Duel with the Earl
of Shrewsbury.--Villiers as a Poet.--As a Dramatist.--A Fearful
Censure!--Villiers's Influence in Parliament.--A Scene in the
Lords.--The Duke of Ormond in Danger.--Colonel Blood's
Outrages.--Wallingford House and Ham House.--'Madame
Ellen.'--The Cabal.--Villiers again in the Tower.--A
Change.--The Duke of York's Theatre.--Buckingham and the
Princess of Orange.--His last Hours.--His Religion.--Death of
Villiers.--The Duchess of Buckingham.
Samuel Pepys, the weather-glass of his time, hails the first glimpse of
the Restoration of Charles II. in his usual quaint terms and vulgar
sycophancy.
'To Westminster Hall,' says he; 'where I heard how the Parliament had
this day dissolved themselves, and did pass very cheerfully through the
Hall, and the Speaker without his mace. The whole Hall was joyful
thereat, as well as themselves; and now they begin to talk loud of the
king.' And the evening was closed, he further tells us, with a large
bonfire in the Exchange, and people called out, 'God bless King
Charles!'
This was in March 1660; and during that spring Pepys was noting down
how he did not think it possible that my 'Lord Protector,' Richard
Cromwell, should come into power again; how there were great hopes of
the king's arrival; how Monk, the Restorer, was feasted at Mercers' Hall
(Pepys's own especial); how it was resolved that a treaty be offered to
the king, privately; how he resolved to go to sea with 'my lord:' and
how, while they lay at Gravesend, the great affair which brought back
Charles Stuart was virtually accomplished. Then, with various
parentheses, inimitable in their way, Pepys carries on his narrative. He
has left his father's 'cutting-room' to take care of itself; and finds
his cabin little, though his bed is convenient, but is certain, as he
rides at anchor with 'my lord,' in the ship, that the king 'must of
necessity come in,' and the vessel sails round and anchors in Lee Roads.
'To the castles about Deal, where _our_ fleet' (_our fleet_, the saucy
son of a tailor!) 'lay and anchored; great was the shoot of guns from
the castles, and ships, and our answers.' Glorious Samuel! in his
element, to be sure.
Then the wind grew high: he began to be 'dizzy, and squeamish;'
nevertheless employed 'Lord's Day' in looking through the lieutenant's
glass at two good merchantmen, and the women in them; 'being pretty
handsome;' then in the afternoon he first saw Calais, and was pleased,
though it was at a great distance. All eyes were looking across the
Channel just then--for the king was at Flushing; and, though the
'Fanatiques' still held their heads up high, and the Cavaliers also
talked high on the other side, the cause that Pepys was bound to, still
gained ground.
Then 'they begin to speak freely of King Charles;' churches in the City,
Samuel declares, were setting up his arms; merchant-ships--more
important in those days--were hanging out his colours. He hears, too,
how the Mercers' Company were making a statue of his gracious Majesty to
set up in the Exchange. Ah! Pepys's heart is merry: he has forty
shillings (some shabby perquisite) given him by Captain Cowes of the
'Paragon;' and 'my lord' in the evening 'falls to singing' a song upon
the Rump to the tune of the 'Blacksmith.'
The hopes of the Cavalier party are hourly increasing, and those of
Pepys we may be sure also; for Pim, the tailor, spends a morning in his
cabin 'putting a great many ribbons to a sail.' And the king is to be
brought over suddenly, 'my lord' tells him: and indeed it looks like it,
for the sailors are drinking Charles's health in the streets of Deal, on
their knees; 'which, methinks,' says Pepys, 'is a little too much;' and
'methinks' so, worthy Master Pepys, also.
Then how the news of the Parliamentary vote of the king's declaration
was received! Pepys becomes eloquent.
'He that can fancy a fleet (like ours) in her pride, with pendants
loose, guns roaring, caps flying, and the loud "_Vive le Roi!_" echoed
from one ship's company to another; he, and he only, can apprehend the
joy this enclosed vote was received with, or the blessing he thought
himself possessed of that bore it.'
Next, orders come for 'my lord' to sail forthwith to the king; and the
painters and tailors set to work, Pepys superintending, 'cutting out
some pieces of yellow cloth in the fashion of a crown and C. R.; and
putting it upon a fine sheet'--and that is to supersede the States'
arms, and is finished and set up. And the next day, on May 14, the Hague
is seen plainly by _us_, 'my lord going up in his night-gown into the
cuddy.'
And then they land at the Hague; some 'nasty Dutchmen' come on board to
offer their boats, and get money, which Pepys does not like; and in time
they find themselves in the Hague, 'a most neat place in all respects:'
salute the Queen of Bohemia and the Prince of Orange--afterwards William
III.--and find at their place of supper nothing but a 'sallet' and two
or three bones of mutton provided for ten of us, 'which was very
strange. Nevertheless, on they sail, having returned to the fleet, to
Schevelling: and, on the 23rd of the month, go to meet the king; who,
'on getting into the boat, did kiss my lord with much affection.' And
'extraordinary press of good company,' and great mirth all day,
announced the Restoration. Nevertheless Charles's clothes had not been,
till this time, Master Pepys is assured, worth forty shillings--and he,
as a connoisseur, was scandalized at the fact.
And now, before we proceed, let us ask who worthy Samuel Pepys was, that
he should pass such stringent comments on men and manners? His origin
was lowly, although his family ancient; his father having followed,
until the Restoration, the calling of a tailor. Pepys, vulgar as he was,
had nevertheless received an university education; first entering
Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar. To our wonder we find him
marrying furtively and independently; and his wife, at fifteen, was glad
with her husband to take up an abode in the house of a relative, Sir
Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, the 'my lord' under whose
shadow Samuel Pepys dwelt in reverence. By this nobleman's influence
Pepys for ever left the 'cutting-room;' he acted first as secretary,
(always as toad-eater, one would fancy), then became a clerk in the
Admiralty; and as such went, after the Restoration, to live in Seething
Lane, in the parish of St. Olave, Hart Street--and in St. Olave his
mortal part was ultimately deposited.
So much for Pepys. See him now, in his full-buttoned wig, and best
cambric neckerchief, looking out for the king and his suit, who are
coming on board the 'Nazeby.'
'Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the linning stockings on,
and wide canons that I bought the other day at the Hague.' So began he
the day. 'All day nothing but lords and persons of honour on board, that
we were exceeding full. Dined in great deal of state, the royalle
company by themselves in the coache, which was a blessed sight to see.'
This royal company consisted of Charles, the Dukes of York and
Gloucester, his brothers, the Queen of Bohemia, the Princess Royal, the
Prince of Orange, afterwards William III.--all of whose hands Pepys
kissed, after dinner. The King and Duke of York changed the names of the
ships. The 'Rumpers,' as Pepys calls the Parliamentarians, had given one
the name of the 'Nazeby;' and that was now christened the 'Charles:'
'Richard' was changed into 'James.' The 'Speaker' into 'Mary,' the
'Lambert,' was 'Henrietta,' and so on. How merry the king must have
been whilst he thus turned the Roundheads, as it were, off the ocean;
and how he walked here and there, up and down, (quite contrary to what
Samuel Pepys 'expected,') and fell into discourse of his escape from
Worcester, and made Samuel 'ready to weep' to hear of his travelling
four days and three nights on foot, up to his knees in dirt, with
'nothing but a green coat and a pair of breeches on,' (worse and worse,
thought Pepys,) and a pair of country shoes that made his feet sore; and
how, at one place he was made to drink by the servants, to show he was
not a Roundhead; and how, at another place--and Charles, the best teller
of a story in his own dominions, may here have softened his tone--the
master of the house, an innkeeper, as the king was standing by the fire,
with his hands on the back of a chair, kneeled down and kissed his hand
'privately,' saying he could not ask him who he was, but bid 'God bless
him, where he was going!'
Then, rallying after this touch of pathos, Charles took his hearers over
to Fecamp, in France--thence to Rouen, where, he said, in his easy,
irresistible way, 'I looked so poor that the people went into the rooms
before I went away, to see if I had not stolen something or other.'
With what reverence and sympathy did our Pepys listen; but he was forced
to hurry off to get Lord Berkeley a bed; and with 'much ado' (as one may
believe) he did get 'him to bed with My Lord Middlesex;' so, after
seeing these two peers of the realm in that dignified predicament--two
in a bed--'to my cabin again,' where the company were still talking of
the king's difficulties, and how his Majesty was fain to eat a piece of
bread and cheese out of a poor body's pocket; and, at a Catholic house,
how he lay a good while 'in the Priest's Hole, for privacy.'
In all these hairbreadth escapes--of which the king spoke with
infinite humour and good feeling--one name was perpetually
introduced:--George--George Villiers, _Villers_, as the royal narrator
called him; for the name was so pronounced formerly. And well he might;
for George Villiers had been his playmate, classfellow, nay, bedfellow
sometimes, in priests' holes; their names, their haunts, their hearts,
were all assimilated; and misfortune had bound them closely to each
other. To George Villiers let us now return; he is waiting for his royal
master on the other side of the Channel--in England. And a strange
character have we to deal with:--
'A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.'[1]
Such was George Villiers: the Alcibiades of that age. Let us trace one
of the most romantic, and brilliant, and unsatisfactory lives that has
ever been written.
George Villiers was born at Wallingford House, in the parish of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, on the 30th January, 1627. The Admiralty now
stands on the site of the mansion in which he first saw the light. His
father was George Villiers, the favourite of James I. and of Charles I.;
his mother, the Lady Katherine Manners, daughter and heiress of Francis,
Earl of Rutland. Scarcely was he a year old, when the assassination of
his father, by Felton, threw the affairs of his family into confusion.
His mother, after the Duke of Buckingham's death, gave birth to a son,
Francis; who was subsequently, savagely killed by the Roundheads, near
Kingston. Then the Duchess of Buckingham very shortly married again, and
uniting herself to Randolph Macdonald, Earl of Antrim, became a rigid
Catholic. She was therefore lost to her children, or rather, they were
lost to her; for King Charles I., who had promised to be a 'husband to
her, and a father to her children,' removed them from her charge, and
educated them with the royal princes.
The youthful peer soon gave indications of genius; and all that a
careful education could do, was directed to improve his natural capacity
under private tutors. He went to Cambridge; and thence, under the care
of a preceptor named Aylesbury, travelled into France. He was
accompanied by his young, handsome, fine-spirited brother, Francis; and
this was the sunshine of his life. His father had indeed left him, as
his biographer Brian Fairfax expresses it, 'the greatest name in
England; his mother, the greatest estate of any subject.' With this
inheritance there had also descended to him the wonderful beauty, the
matchless grace, of his ill-fated father. Great abilities, courage,
fascination of manners, were also his; but he had not been endowed with
firmness of character, and was at once energetic and versatile. Even at
this age, the qualities which became his ruin were clearly discoverable.
George Villiers was recalled to England by the troubles which drove the
king to Oxford, and which converted that academical city into a
garrison, its under-graduates into soldiers, its ancient halls into
barrack-rooms. Villiers was on this occasion entered at Christ Church:
the youth's best feelings were aroused, and his loyalty was engaged to
one to whom his father owed so much. He was now a young man of
twenty-one years of age--able to act for himself; and he went heart and
soul into the cause of his sovereign. Never was there a gayer, a more
prepossessing Cavalier. He could charm even a Roundhead. The harsh and
Presbyterian-minded Bishop Burnet, has told us that 'he was a man of a
noble presence; had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of
turning everything into ridicule, with bold figures and natural
descriptions.' How invaluable he must have been in the Common-rooms at
Oxford, then turned into guard-rooms, his eye upon some unlucky
volunteer Don, who had put off his clerkly costume for a buff jacket,
and could not manage his drill. Irresistible as his exterior is declared
to have been, the original mind of Villiers was even far more
influential. De Grammont tells us, 'he was extremely handsome, but still
thought himself much more so than he really was; although he had a great
deal of discernment, yet his vanities made him mistake some civilities
as intended for his person which were only bestowed on his wit and
drollery.'
But this very vanity, so unpleasant in an old man, is only amusing in a
younger wit. Whilst thus a gallant of the court and camp, the young
nobleman proved himself to be no less brave than witty. Juvenile as he
was, with a brother still younger, they fought on the royalist side at
Lichfield, in the storming of the Cathedral Close. For thus allowing
their lives to be endangered, their mother blamed Lord Gerard, one of
the Duke's guardians; whilst the Parliament seized the pretext of
confiscating their estates, which were afterwards returned to them, on
account of their being under age at the time of confiscation. The youths
were then placed under the care of the Earl of Northumberland, by whose
permission they travelled in France and Italy, where they
appeared--their estates having been restored--with princely
magnificence. Nevertheless, on hearing of the imprisonment of Charles I.
in the Isle of Wight, the gallant youths returned to England and joined
the army under the Earl of Holland, who was defeated near Nonsuch, in
Surrey.
A sad episode in the annals of these eventful times is presented in the
fate of the handsome, brave Francis Villiers. His murder, for one can
call it by no other name, shows how keenly the personal feelings of the
Roundheads were engaged in this national quarrel. Under most
circumstances, Englishmen would have spared the youth, and respected the
gallantry of the free young soldier, who, planting himself against an
oak-tree which grew in the road, refused to ask for quarter, but
defended himself against several assailants. But the name of Villiers
was hateful in Puritan ears. 'Hew them down, root and branch!' was the
sentiment that actuated the soldiery. His very loveliness exasperated
their vengeance. At last, 'with nine wounds on his beautiful face and
body,' says Fairfax, 'he was slain.' 'The oak-tree,' writes the devoted
servant, 'is his monument,' and the letters of F. V. were cut in it in
his day. His body was conveyed by water to York House, and was entombed
with that of his father, in the Chapel of Henry VII.
His brother fled towards St. Neot's, where he encountered a strange kind
of peril. Tobias Rustat attended him; and was with him in the rising in
Kent for King Charles I., wherein the Duke was engaged; and they, being
put to the flight, the Duke's helmet, by a brush under a tree, was
turned upon his back, and tied so fast with a string under his throat,
'that without the present help of T. R.,' writes Fairfax, 'it had
undoubtedly choked him, as I have credibly heard.'[2]
Whilst at St. Neot's, the house in which Villiers had taken refuge was
surrounded with soldiers. He had a stout heart, and a dexterous hand; he
took his resolution; rushed out upon his foes, killed the officer in
command, galloped off and joined the Prince in the Downs.
The sad story of Charles I. was played out; but Villiers remained
stanch, and was permitted to return and to accompany Prince Charles into
Scotland. Then came the battle of Worcester in 1651: there Charles II.
showed himself a worthy descendant of James IV. of Scotland. He resolved
to conquer or die: with desperate gallantry the English Cavaliers and
the Scotch Highlanders seconded the monarch's valiant onslaught on
Cromwell's horse, and the invincible Life Guards were almost driven back
by the shock. But they were not seconded; Charles II. had his horse
twice shot under him, but, nothing daunted, he was the last to tear
himself away from the field, and then only upon the solicitations of his
friends.
Charles retired to Kidderminster that evening. The Duke of Buckingham,
the gallant Lord Derby, Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Rochester, and some
others, rode near him. They were followed by a small body of horse.
Disconsolately they rode on northwards, a faithful band of sixty being
resolved to escort his Majesty to Scotland. At length they halted on
Kinver Heath, near Kidderminster: their guide having lost the way. In
this extremity Lord Derby said that he had been received kindly at an
old house in a secluded woody country, between Tong Castle and Brewood,
on the borders of Staffordshire. It was named 'Boscobel,' he said; and
that word has henceforth conjured up to the mind's eye the remembrance
of a band of tired heroes, riding through woody glades to an ancient
house, where shelter was given to the worn-out horses and scarcely less
harassed riders.
But not so rapidly did they in reality proceed. A Catholic family,
named Giffard, were living at White-Ladies, about twenty six miles from
Worcester. This was only about half a mile from Boscobel: it had been a
convent of Cistercian nuns, whose long white cloaks of old had once been
seen, ghost-like, amid forest glades or on hillock green. The
White-Ladies had other memories to grace it besides those of holy
vestals, or of unholy Cavaliers. From the time of the Tudors, a
respectable family named Somers had owned the White-Ladies, and
inhabited it since its white-garbed tenants had been turned out, and the
place secularized. 'Somers's House,' as it was called, (though more
happily, the old name has been restored,) had received Queen Elizabeth
on her progress. The richly cultivated old conventual gardens had
supplied the Queen with some famous pears, and, in the fulness of her
approval of the fruit, she had added them to the City arms. At that time
one of these vaunted pear-trees stood securely in the market-place of
Worcester.
At the White-Ladies, Charles rested for half an hour; and here he left
his garters, waistcoat, and other garments, to avoid discovery, ere he
proceeded. They were long kept as relics.
The mother of Lord Somers had been placed in this old house for
security, for she was on the eve of giving birth to the future
statesman, who was born in that sanctuary just at this time. His father
at that very moment commanded a troop of horse in Cromwell's army, so
that the risk the Cavaliers ran was imminent. The King's horse was led
into the hall. Day was dawning; and the Cavaliers, as they entered the
old conventual tenement, and saw the sunbeams on its walls, perceived
their peril. A family of servants named Penderell held various offices
there, and at Boscobel. William took care of Boscobel, George was a
servant at White-Ladies; Humphrey was the miller to that house, Richard
lived close by, at Hebbal Grange. He and William were called into the
royal presence. Lord Derby then said to them, 'This is the King; have a
care of him, and preserve him as thou didst me.'
Then the attendant courtiers began undressing the King. They took off
his buff-coat, and put on him a 'noggon coarse shirt,' and a green suit
and another doublet--Richard Penderell's woodman's dress. Lord Wilmot
cut his sovereign's hair with a knife, but Richard Penderell took up his
shears and finished the work. 'Burn it,' said the king; but Richard kept
the sacred locks. Then Charles covered his dark face with soot. Could
anything have taken away the expression of his half-sleepy, half-merry
eyes?
They departed, and half an hour afterwards Colonel Ashenhurst, with a
troop of Roundhead horse, rode up to the White-Ladies. The King,
meantime, had been conducted by Richard Penderell into a coppice-wood,
with a bill-hook in his hands for defence and disguise. But his
followers were overtaken near Newport; and here Buckingham, with Lords
Talbot and Leviston, escaped; and henceforth, until Charles's wanderings
were transferred from England to France, George Villiers was separated
from the Prince. Accompanied by the Earls of Derby and Lauderdale, and
by Lord Talbot, he proceeded northwards, in hopes of joining General
Leslie and the Scotch horse. But their hopes were soon dashed: attacked
by a body of Roundheads, Buckingham and Lord Leviston were compelled to
leave the high road, to alight from their horses, and to make their way
to Bloore Park, near Newport, where Villiers found a shelter. He was
soon, however, necessitated to depart: he put on a labourer's dress; he
deposited his George, a gift from Henrietta Maria, with a companion, and
set off for Billstrop, in Nottinghamshire, one Matthews, a carpenter,
acting as his guide; at Billstrop he was welcomed by Mr. Hawley, a
Cavalier; and from that place he went to Brookesby, in Leicestershire,
the original seat of the Villiers family, and the birthplace of his
father. Here he was received by Lady Villiers--the widow, probably, of
his father's brother, Sir William Villiers, one of those contented
country squires who not only sought no distinction, but scarcely thanked
James I. when he made him a baronet. Here might the hunted refugee see,
on the open battlements of the church, the shields on which were
exhibited united quarterings of his father's family with those of his
mother; here, listen to old tales about his grandfather, good Sir
George, who married a serving-woman in his deceased wife's kitchen;[3]
and that serving-woman became the leader of fashions in the court of
James. Here he might ponder on the vicissitudes which marked the destiny
of the house of Villiers, and wonder what should come next.
That the spirit of adventure was strong within him, is shown by his
daring to go up to London, and disguising himself as a mountebank. He
had a coat made, called a 'Jack Pudding Coat:' a little hat was stuck on
his head, with a fox's tail in it, and cocks' feathers here and there. A
wizard's mask one day, a daubing of flour another, completed the
disguise it was then so usual to assume: witness the long traffic held
at Exeter Change by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, Francis Jennings, in a
white mask, selling laces, and French gew-gaws, a trader to all
appearance, but really carrying on political intrigues; every one went
to chat with the 'White Milliner,' as she was called, during the reign
of William and Mary. The Duke next erected a stage at Charing Cross--in
the very face of the stern Rumpers, who, with long faces, rode past the
sinful man each day as they came ambling up from the Parliament House. A
band of puppet-players and violins set up their shows; and music covers
a multitude of incongruities. The ballad was then the great vehicle of
personal attack, and Villiers's dawning taste for poetry was shown in
the ditties which he now composed, and in which he sometimes assisted
vocally. Whilst all the other Cavaliers were forced to fly, he thus
bearded his enemies in their very homes: sometimes he talked to them
face to face, and kept the sanctimonious citizens in talk, till they
found themselves sinfully disposed to laugh. But this vagrant life had
serious evils: it broke down all the restraints which civilised society
naturally, and beneficially, imposes. The Duke of Buckingham, Butler,
the author of Hudibras, writes, 'rises, eats, goes to bed by the Julian
account, long after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the
same hours with owls and the Antipodes. He is a great observer of the
Tartar customs, and never eats till the great cham, having dined, makes
proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in
his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that walks all night, to
disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually
benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways
in the dark: and as blind men are led by their dogs, so he is governed
by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as
inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does
nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to
himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all
things that come and go; but like guests and strangers, they are not
welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and
impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and
afterwards vanish. He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her,
like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are
perpetually drilling with a fiddlestick, and endures pleasures with less
patience than other men do their pains.'
The more effectually to support his character as a mountebank, Villiers
sold mithridate and galbanum plasters: thousands of spectators and
customers thronged every day to see and hear him. Possibly many guessed
that beneath all the fantastic exterior some ulterior project was
concealed; yet he remained untouched by the City Guards. Well did Dryden
describe him:--
'Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy.'
His elder sister, Lady Mary Villiers, had married the Duke of Richmond,
one of the loyal adherents of Charles I. The duke was, therefore, in
durance at Windsor, whilst the duchess was to be placed under strict
surveillance at Whitehall.
Villiers resolved to see her. Hearing that she was to pass into
Whitehall on a certain day, he set up his stage where she could not fail
to perceive him. He had something important to say to her. As she drew
near, he cried out to the mob that he would give them a song on the
Duchess of Richmond and the Duke of Buckingham: nothing could be more
acceptable. 'The mob,' it is related, 'stopped the coach and the duchess
... Nay, so outrageous were the mob, that they forced the duchess, who
was then the handsomest woman in England, to sit in the boot of the
coach, and to hear him sing all his impertinent songs. Having left off
singing, he told them it was no more than reason that he should present
the duchess with some of the songs. So he alighted from his stage,
covered all over with papers and ridiculous little pictures. Having come
to the coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he always wore
over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered immediately who he was,
yet had so much presence of mind as not to give the least sign of
mistrust; nay, she gave him some very opprobrious language, but was very
eager at snatching the papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a
packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the
duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a good way out
of the town.'
[Illustration: VILLIERS IN DISGUISE--THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTER.]
A still more daring adventure was contemplated also by this young,
irresistible duke. Bridget Cromwell, the eldest daughter of Oliver, was,
at that time, a bride of twenty-six years of age; having married, in
1647, the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Bridget was the
pattern heroine of the '_unco guid_,' the quintessence of all propriety;
the impersonation of sanctity; an ultra republican, who scarcely
accorded to her father the modest title of Protector. She was esteemed
by her party a 'personage of sublime growth:' 'humbled, not exalted,'
according to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her elevation: 'nevertheless,' says
that excellent lady, 'as my Lady Ireton was walking in the St. James's
Park, the Lady Lambert, as proud as her husband, came by where she was,
and as the present princess always hath precedency of the relict of the
dead, so she put by my Lady Ireton, who, notwithstanding her piety and
humility, was a little grieved at the affront.'
After this anecdote one cannot give much credence to this lady's
humility: Bridget was, however, a woman of powerful intellect, weakened
by her extreme, and, to use a now common term, _crochety_ opinions.
Like most _esprits forts_, she was easily imposed upon. One day this
paragon saw a mountebank dancing on a stage in the most exquisite style.
His fine shape, too, caught the attention of one who assumed to be above
all folly. It is sometimes fatal to one's peace to look out of a window;
no one knows what sights may rivet or displease. Mistress Ireton was
sitting at her window unconscious that any one with the hated and
malignant name of 'Villiers' was before her. After some unholy
admiration, she sent to speak to the mummer. The duke scarcely knew
whether to trust himself in the power of the bloodthirsty Ireton's bride
or not--yet his courage--his love of sport--prevailed. He visited her
that evening: no longer, however, in his jack-pudding coat, but in a
rich suit, disguised with a cloak over it. He wore still a plaster over
one eye, and was much disposed to take it off, but prudence forbade; and
thus he stood in the presence of the prim and saintly Bridget Ireton.
The particulars of the interview rest on his statement, and they must
not, therefore, be accepted implicitly. Mistress Ireton is said to have
made advances to the handsome incognito. What a triumph to a man like
Villiers, to have intrigued with my Lord Protector's sanctified
daughter! But she inspired him with disgust. He saw in her the
presumption and hypocrisy of her father; he hated her as Cromwell's
daughter and Ireton's wife. He told her, therefore, that he was a Jew,
and could not by his laws become the paramour of a Christian woman. The
saintly Bridget stood amazed; she had imprudently let him into some of
the most important secrets of her party. A Jew! It was dreadful! But how
could a person of that persuasion be so strict, so strait-laced? She
probably entertained all the horror of Jews which the Puritanical party
cherished as a virtue; forgetting the lessons of toleration and
liberality inculcated by Holy Writ. She sent, however, for a certain
Jewish Rabbi to converse with the stranger. What was the Duke of
Buckingham's surprise, on visiting her one evening, to see the learned
doctor armed at all points with the Talmud, and thirsting for dispute,
by the side of the saintly Bridget. He could noways meet such a body of
controversy; but thought it best forthwith to set off for the Downs.
Before he departed he wrote, however, to Mistress Ireton, on the plea
that she might wish to know to what tribe of Jews he belonged. So he
sent her a note written with all his native wit and point.[4]
Buckingham now experienced all the miseries that a man of expensive
pleasures with a sequestrated estate is likely to endure. One friend
remained to watch over his interests in England. This was John Traylman,
a servant of his late father's, who was left to guard the collection of
pictures made by the late duke, and deposited in York House. That
collection was, in the opinion of competent judges, the third in point
of value in England, being only inferior to those of Charles I. and the
Earl of Arundel.
It had been bought, with immense expense, partly by the duke's agents in
Italy, the Mantua Gallery supplying a great portion--partly in
France--partly in Flanders; and to Flanders a great portion was destined
now to return. Secretly and laboriously did old Traylman pack up and
send off these treasures to Antwerp, where now the gay youth whom the
aged domestic had known from a child was in want and exile. The pictures
were eagerly bought by a foreign collector named Duart. The proceeds
gave poor Villiers bread; but the noble works of Titian and Leonardo da
Vinci, and others, were lost for ever to England.
It must have been very irritating to Villiers to know that whilst he
just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being
subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by
the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate
many of the old properties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately
seat on which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken by
the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a line of
buildings, that the Parliamentarians could not hold it without leaving
in it a great garrison and stores of ammunition. It was therefore burnt,
and the stables alone occupied; and those even were formed into a house
of unusual size. York House was doubtless marked out for the next
destructive decree. There was something in the very history of this
house which might be supposed to excite the wrath of the Roundheads.
Queen Mary (whom we must not, after Miss Strickland's admirable life of
her, call Bloody Queen Mary, but who will always be best known by that
unpleasant title) had bestowed York House on the See of York, as a
compensation for York House, at Whitehall, which Henry VIII. had taken
from Wolsey. It had afterwards come into possession of the Keepers of
the Great Seal. Lord Bacon was born in York House, his father having
lived there; and the
'Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,'
built here an aviary which cost £300. When the Duke of Lennox wished to
buy York House, Bacon thus wrote to him:--'For this you will pardon me:
York House is the house where my father died, and where I first
breathed; and there will I yield my last breath, if it so please God and
the King.' It did not, however, please the King that he should; the
house was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the
Archbishop of York, and then exchanged for another seat, on the plea
that the duke would want it for the reception of foreign potentates, and
for entertainments given to royalty.
The duke pulled it down: and the house, which was erected as a temporary
structure, was so superb that even Pepys, twenty years after it had been
left to bats and cobwebs, speaks of it in raptures, as of a place in
which the great duke's soul was seen in every chamber. On the walls were
shields on which the arms of Manners and of Villiers--peacocks and
lions--were quartered. York House was never, however, finished; but as
the lover of old haunts enters Buckingham Street in the Strand, he will
perceive an ancient water-gate, beautifully proportioned, built by Inigo
Jones--smoky, isolated, impaired--but still speaking volumes of
remembrance of the glories of the assassinated duke, who had purposed to
build the whole house in that style.
'_Yorschaux_,' as he called it--York House--the French ambassador had
written word to his friends at home, 'is the most richly fitted up of
any that I saw.' The galleries and state rooms were graced by the
display of the Roman marbles, both busts and statues, which the first
duke had bought from Rubens; whilst in the gardens the Cain and Abel of
John of Bologna, given by Philip IV. of Spain to King Charles, and by
him bestowed on the elder George Villiers, made that fair _pleasaunce_
famous. It was doomed--as were what were called the 'superstitious'
pictures in the house--to destruction: henceforth all was in decay and
neglect. 'I went to see York House and gardens,' Evelyn writes in 1655,
'belonging to the former greate Buckingham, but now much ruined through
neglect.'
Traylman, doubtless, kept George Villiers the younger in full possession
of all that was to happen to that deserted tenement in which the old man
mourned for the departed, and thought of the absent.
The intelligence which he had soon to communicate was all-important.
York House was to be occupied again; and Cromwell and his coadjutors had
bestowed it on Fairfax. The blow was perhaps softened by the reflection
that Fairfax was a man of generous temper; and that he had an only
daughter, Mary Fairfax, young, and an heiress. Though the daughter of a
Puritan, a sort of interest was attached, even by Cavaliers, to Mary
Fairfax, from her having, at five years of age, followed her father
through the civil wars on horseback, seated before a maid-servant; and
having, on her journey, frequently fainted, she was so ill as to have
been left in a house by the roadside, her father never expecting to see
her again.
In reference to this young girl, then about eighteen years of age,
Buckingham now formed a plan. He resolved to return to England
disguised, to offer his hand to Mary Fairfax, and so recover his
property through the influence of Fairfax. He was confident of his own
attractions; and, indeed, from every account, he appears to have been
one of those reckless, handsome, speculative characters that often take
the fancy of better men than themselves. 'He had,' says Burnet, 'no sort
of literature, only he was drawn into chymistry; and for some years he
thought he was very near the finding of the philosopher's stone, which
had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are
drawn in, to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, virtue,
or friendship; pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion, was all he
laid to heart. He was true to nothing; for he was not true to himself.
He had no steadiness nor conduct; he could keep no secret, nor execute
any design without spoiling it; he could never fix his thoughts, nor
govern his estate, though then the greatest in England. He was bred
about the king, and for many years he had a great ascendant over him;
but he spoke of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he
drew a lasting disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body
and mind, fortune and reputation, equally.'
This was a sad prospect for poor Mary Fairfax, but certainly if in their
choice
----'Weak women go astray,
Their stars are more in fault than they,'
and she was less to blame in her choice than her father, who ought to
have advised her against the marriage. Where and how they met is not
known. Mary was not attractive in person: she was in her youth little,
brown, and thin, but became a 'short fat body,' as De Grammont tells us,
in her early married life; in the later period of her existence she was
described by the Vicomtesse de Longueville as a 'little round crumpled
woman, very fond of finery;' and she adds that, on visiting the duchess
one day, she found her, though in mourning, in a kind of loose robe over
her, all edged and laced with gold. So much for a Puritan's daughter!
To this insipid personage the duke presented himself. She soon liked
him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, continued to like him
after their marriage.
He carried his point: Mary Fairfax became his wife on the 6th of
September, 1675, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his estate, or, at
all events, a portion of the revenues, about £4,000 a year, it is said,
were restored to him. Nevertheless, it is mortifying to find that in
1682, he sold York House, in which his father had taken such pride, for
£30,000. The house was pulled down; streets were erected on the
gardens: George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street, Buckingham Street,
Off Alley recall the name of the ill-starred George, first duke, and of
his needy, profligate son; but the only trace of the real greatness of
the family importance thus swept away is in the motto inscribed on the
point of old Inigo's water-gate, towards the street: '_Fidei coticula
crux_.' It is sad for all good royalists to reflect that it was not the
rabid Roundhead, but a degenerate Cavalier, who sold and thus destroyed
York House.
The marriage with Mary Fairfax, though one of interest solely, was not a
_mésalliance_: her father was connected by the female side with the
Earls of Rutland; he was also a man of a generous spirit, as he had
shown, in handing over to the Countess of Derby the rents of the Isle of
Man, which had been granted to him by the Parliament. In a similar
spirit he was not sorry to restore York House to the Duke of Buckingham.
Cromwell, however, was highly exasperated by the nuptials between Mary
Fairfax and Villiers, which took place at Nun-Appleton, near York, one
of Fairfax's estates. The Protector had, it is said, intended Villiers
for one of his own daughters. Upon what plea he acted it is not stated:
he committed Villiers to the Tower, where he remained until the death of
Oliver, and the accession of Richard Cromwell.
In vain did Fairfax solicit his release: Cromwell refused it, and
Villiers remained in durance until the abdication of Richard Cromwell,
when he was set at liberty, but not without the following conditions,
dated February 21st, 1658-9:--
'The humble petition of George Duke of Buckingham was this day read.
Resolved that George Duke of Buckingham, now prisoner at Windsor Castle,
upon his engagement upon his honour at the bar of this House, and upon
the engagement of Lord Fairfax in £20,000 that the said duke shall
peaceably demain himself for the future, and shall not join with, or
abet, or have any correspondence with, any of the enemies of the Lord
Protector, and of this Commonwealth, in any of the parts beyond the sea,
or within this Commonwealth, shall be discharged of his imprisonment and
restraint; and that the Governor of Windsor Castle be required to bring
the Duke of Buckingham to the bar of this House on Wednesday next, to
engage his honour accordingly. Ordered, that the security of £20,000 to
be given by the Lord Fairfax, on the behalf of the Duke of Buckingham,
be taken in the name of His Highness the Lord Protector.'
During his incarceration at Windsor, Buckingham had a companion, of whom
many a better man might have been envious: this was Abraham Cowley, an
old college friend of the duke's. Cowley was the son of a grocer, and
owed his entrance into academic life to having been a King's Scholar at
Westminster. One day he happened to take up from his mother's parlour
window a copy of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.' He eagerly perused the
delightful volume, though he was then only twelve years old: and this
impulse being given to his mind, became at fifteen a reciter of verses.
His 'Poetical Blossoms,' published whilst he was still at school, gave,
however, no foretaste of his future eminence. He proceeded to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where his friendship with Villiers was formed; and
where, perhaps, from that circumstance, Cowley's predilections for the
cause of the Stuarts was ripened into loyalty.
No two characters could be more dissimilar than those of Abraham Cowley
and George Villiers. Cowley was quiet, modest, sober, of a thoughtful,
philosophical turn, and of an affectionate nature; neither boasting of
his own merits nor depreciating others. He was the friend of Lucius
Cary, Lord Falkland; and yet he loved, though he must have condemned,
George Villiers. It is not unlikely that, whilst Cowley imparted his
love of poetry to Villiers, Villiers may have inspired the pensive and
blameless poet with a love of that display of wit then in vogue, and
heightened that sense of humour which speaks forth in some of Cowley's
productions. Few authors suggest so many new thoughts, really his own,
as Cowley. 'His works,' it has been said, 'are a flower-garden run to
weeds, but the flowers are numerous and brilliant, and a search after
them will repay the pains of a collector who is not too indolent or
fastidious.'
As Cowley and his friend passed the weary hours in durance, many an old
tale could the poet tell the peer of stirring times; for Cowley had
accompanied Charles I. in many a perilous journey, and had protected
Queen Henrietta Maria in her escape to France: through Cowley had the
correspondence of the royal pair, when separated, been carried on. The
poet had before suffered imprisonment for his loyalty; and, to disguise
his actual occupation, had obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine,
and assumed the character of a physician, on the strength of knowing the
virtues of a few plants.
Many a laugh, doubtless, had Buckingham at the expense of _Dr._ Cowley:
however, in later days, the duke proved a true friend to the poet, in
helping to procure for him the lease of a farm at Chertsey from the
queen, and here Cowley, rich upon £300 a year, ended his days.
For some time after Buckingham's release, he lived quietly and
respectably at Nun-Appleton, with General Fairfax and the vapid Mary.
But the Restoration--the first dawnings of which have been referred to
in the commencement of this biography--ruined him, body and mind.
He was made a Lord of the Bedchamber, a Member of the Privy Council, and
afterwards Master of the Horse,[5] and Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire. He
lived in great magnificence at Wallingford House; a tenement next to
York House, intended to be the habitable and useful appendage to that
palace.
He was henceforth, until he proved treacherous to his sovereign, the
brightest ornament of Whitehall. Beauty of person was hereditary: his
father was styled the 'handsomest-bodied man in England,' and George
Villiers the younger equalled George Villiers the elder in all personal
accomplishments. When he entered the Presence-Chamber all eyes followed
him; every movement was graceful and stately. Sir John Reresby
pronounced him 'to be the finest gentleman he ever saw.' 'He was born,'
Madame Dunois declared, 'for gallantry and magnificence.' His wit was
faultless, but his manners engaging; yet his sallies often descended
into buffoonery, and he spared no one in his merry moods. One evening a
play of Dryden's was represented. An actress had to spout forth this
line--
'My wound is great because it is so small!'
She gave it out with pathos, paused, and was theatrically distressed.
Buckingham was seated in one of the boxes. He rose, all eyes were fixed
upon a face well known in all gay assemblies, in a tone of burlesque he
answered--
'Then 'twould be greater were it none at all.'
Instantly the audience laughed at the Duke's tone of ridicule, and the
poor woman was hissed off the stage.
The king himself did not escape Buckingham's shafts; whilst Lord
Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule: nothing could
withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gallery at Whitehall, but in
the king's privy chambers, Villiers might be seen, in all the radiance
of his matured beauty. His face was long and oval, with sleepy, yet
glistening eyes, over which large arched eyebrows seemed to contract a
brow on which the curls of a massive wig (which fell almost to his
shoulders) hung low. His nose was long, well formed, and flexible; his
lips thin and compressed, and defined, as the custom was, by two very
short, fine, black patches of hair, looking more like strips of
sticking-plaster than a moustache. As he made his reverence, his rich
robes fell over a faultless form. He was a beau to the very fold of the
cambric band round his throat; with long ends of the richest, closest
point that was ever rummaged out from a foreign nunnery to be placed on
the person of this sacrilegious sinner.
Behold, now, how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. He is
Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber: a pair of
bellows is hanging before him for the purse; Colonel Titus is walking
with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace; the king,
himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter; the
courtiers are fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king
with his descriptions! 'Ipswich, for instance,' he said, 'was a town
without inhabitants--a river it had without water--streets without
names; and it was a place where asses wore boots:' alluding to the
asses, when employed in rolling Lord Hereford's bowling-green, having
boots on their feet to prevent their injuring the turf.
Flecknoe, the poet, describes the duke at this period, in 'Euterpe
Revived'--
The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde,
In all the world his prince could ever finde,
Or to participate his private cares,
Or bear the public weight of his affairs,
Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight,
And well-built minds, the steadier with their height;
Such was the composition and frame
O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham.'
The praise, however, even in the duke's best days, was overcharged.
Villiers was no 'well-built arch,' nor could Charles trust to the
fidelity of one so versatile for an hour. Besides, the moral character
of Villiers must have prevented him, even in those days, from bearing
'the public weight of affairs.'
A scandalous intrigue soon proved the unsoundness of Flecknoe's tribute.
Amongst the most licentious beauties of the court was Anna Maria,
Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Robert Brudenel, Earl of
Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury: amongst many
shameless women she was the most shameless, and her face seems to have
well expressed her mind. In the round, fair visage, with its languishing
eyes, and full, pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and bold.
The forehead is broad, but low; and the wavy hair, with its tendril
curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, falling
into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to designate an
inelegant amount of _embonpoint_. There is nothing elevated in the whole
countenance, as Lely has painted her, and her history is a disgrace to
her age and time.
She had numerous lovers (not in the refined sense of the word), and, at
last, took up with Thomas Killigrew. He had been, like Villiers, a
royalist: first a page to Charles I., next a companion of Charles II.,
in exile. He married the fair Cecilia Croft; yet his morals were so
vicious that even in the Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in
order to borrow money from the merchants of that city, he was too
profligate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master of
the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, though
without any regular appointment, during his life: the butt, at once, and
the satirist of Whitehall.
It was Killigrew's wit and descriptive powers which, when heightened by
wine, were inconceivably great, that induced Villiers to select Lady
Shrewsbury for the object of his admiration. When Killigrew perceived
that he was supplanted by Villiers, he became frantic with rage, and
poured out the bitterest invectives against the countess. The result was
that, one night, returning from the Duke of York's apartments at St.
James's, three passes with a sword were made at him through his chair,
and one of them pierced his arm. This, and other occurrences, at last
aroused the attention of Lord Shrewsbury, who had hitherto never doubted
his wife: he challenged the Duke of Buckingham; and his infamous wife,
it is said, held her paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord
Shrewsbury was killed,[6] and the scandalous intimacy went on as before.
No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Buckingham, appeared
shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded their remarks, or joined in
their indignation: all moral sense was suspended, or wholly stifled; and
Villiers gloried in his depravity, more witty, more amusing, more
fashionable than ever; and yet he seems, by the best-known and most
extolled of his poems, to have had some conception of what a real and
worthy attachment might be.