'What a dull fool was I
To think so gross a lie,
As that I ever was in love before!
I have, perhaps, known one or two,
With whom I was content to be
At that which they call keeping company.
But after all that they could do,
I still could be with more.
Their absence never made me shed a tear;
And I can truly swear,
That, till my eyes first gazed on you,
I ne'er beheld the thing I could adore.
'A world of things must curiously be sought:
A world of things must be together brought
To make up charms which have the power to make,
Through a discerning eye, true love;
That is a master-piece above
What only looks and shape can do;
There must be wit and judgment too,
Greatness of thought, and worth, which draw,
From the whole world, respect and awe.
'She that would raise a noble love must find
Ways to beget a passion for her mind;
She must be that which she to be would seem,
For all true love is grounded on esteem:
Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart
Than all the crooked subtleties of art.
She must be--what said I?--she must be _you_:
None but yourself that miracle can do.
At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see,
None but yourself e'er did it upon me.
'Tis you alone that can my heart subdue,
To you alone it always shall be true.'
The next lines are also remarkable for the delicacy and happy turn of
the expressions--
'Though Phillis, from prevailing charms,
Have forc'd my Delia from my arms,
Think not your conquest to maintain
By rigour or unjust disdain.
In vain, fair nymph, in vain you strive,
For Love doth seldom Hope survive.
My heart may languish for a time,
As all beauties in their prime
Have justified such cruelty,
By the same fate that conquered me.
When age shall come, at whose command
Those troops of beauty must disband--
A rival's strength once took away,
What slave's so dull as to obey?
But if you'll learn a noble way
To keep his empire from decay,
And there for ever fix your throne,
Be kind, but kind to me alone.'
Like his father, who ruined himself by building, Villiers had a
monomania for bricks and mortar, yet he found time to write 'The
Rehearsal,' a play on which Mr. Reed in his 'Dramatic Biography' makes
the following observation: 'It is so perfect a masterpiece in its way,
and so truly original, that notwithstanding its prodigious success, even
the task of imitation, which most kinds of excellence have invited
inferior geniuses to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be
attempted with regard to this, which through a whole century stands
alone, notwithstanding that the very plays it was written expressly to
ridicule are forgotten, and the taste it was meant to expose totally
exploded.'
The reverses of fortune which brought George Villiers to abject misery
were therefore, in a very great measure, due to his own misconduct, his
depravity, his waste of life, his perversion of noble mental powers: yet
in many respects he was in advance of his age. He advocated, in the
House of Lords, toleration to Dissenters. He wrote a 'Short Discourse on
the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of God;' yet,
such was his inconsistency, that in spite of these works, and of one
styled a 'Demonstration of the Deity,' written a short time before his
death, he assisted Lord Rochester in his atheistic poem upon 'Nothing.'
Butler, the author of Hudibras, too truly said of Villiers 'that he had
studied _the whole body of vice_;' a most fearful censure--a most
significant description of a bad man. 'His parts,' he adds, 'are
disproportionate to the whole, and like a monster, he has more of some,
and less of others, than he should have. He has pulled down all that
nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his
own. He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest
prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loopholes backward
by turning day into night, and night into day.'
The satiety and consequent misery produced by this terrible life are
ably described by Butler. And it was perhaps partly this wearied,
worn-out spirit that caused Villiers to rush madly into politics for
excitement. In 1666 he asked for the office of Lord President of the
North; it was refused: he became disaffected, raised mutinies, and, at
last, excited the indignation of his too-indulgent sovereign. Charles
dismissed him from his office, after keeping him for some time in
confinement. After this epoch little is heard of Buckingham but what is
disgraceful. He was again restored to Whitehall, and, according to
Pepys, even closeted with Charles, whilst the Duke of York was excluded.
A certain acquaintance of the duke's remonstrated with him upon the
course which Charles now took in Parliament. 'How often have you said to
me,' this person remarked, 'that the king was a weak man, unable to
govern, but to be governed, and that you could command him as you liked?
Why do you suffer him to do these things?'
'Why,' answered the duke, 'I do suffer him to do these things, that I
may hereafter the better command him.' A reply which betrays the most
depraved principle of action, whether towards a sovereign or a friend,
that can be expressed. His influence was for some time supreme, yet he
became the leader of the opposition, and invited to his table the
discontented peers, to whom he satirized the court, and condemned the
king's want of attention to business. Whilst the theatre was ringing
with laughter at the inimitable character of Bayes in the 'Rehearsal,'
the House of Lords was listening with profound attention to the
eloquence that entranced their faculties, making wrong seem right, for
Buckingham was ever heard with attention.
Taking into account his mode of existence, 'which,' says Clarendon, 'was
a life by night more than by day, in all the liberties that nature could
desire and wit invent,' it was astonishing how extensive an influence he
had in both Houses of Parliament. 'His rank and condescension, the
pleasantness of his humours and conversation, and the extravagance and
keenness of his wit, unrestrained by modesty or religion, caused persons
of all opinions and dispositions to be fond of his company, and to
imagine that these levities and vanities would wear off with age, and
that there would be enough of good left to make him useful to his
country, for which he pretended a wonderful affection.'
But this brilliant career was soon checked. The varnish over the hollow
character of this extraordinary man was eventually rubbed off. We find
the first hint of that famous coalition styled the _Cabal_ in Pepys's
Diary, and henceforth the duke must be regarded as a ruined man.
'He' (Sir H. Cholmly) 'tells me that the Duke of Buckingham his crimes,
as far as he knows, are his being of a cabal with some discontented
persons of the late House of Commons, and opposing the desires of the
king in all his matters in that House; and endeavouring to become
popular, and advising how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he
would order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring to have
the king's nativity calculated; which was done, and the fellow now in
the Tower about it.... This silly lord hath provoked, by his ill
carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great
persons, and therefore most likely will die.'
One day, in the House of Lords, during a conference between the two
Houses, Buckingham leaned rudely over the shoulder of Henry Pierrepont
Marquis of Dorchester. Lord Dorchester merely removed his elbow. Then
the duke asked him if he was uneasy. 'Yes,' the marquis replied, adding,
'the duke dared not do this if he were anywhere else.' Buckingham
retorted, 'Yes, he would: and he was a better man than my lord marquis:'
on which Dorchester told him that he lied. On this Buckingham struck off
Dorchester's hat, seized him by the periwig, pulled it aside, and held
him. The Lord Chamberlain and others interposed and sent them both to
the Tower. Nevertheless, not a month afterwards, Pepys speaks of seeing
the duke's play of 'The Chances' acted at Whitehall. 'A good play,' he
condescends to say, 'I find it, and the actors most good in it; and
pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very properly "All night I weepe,"
and sung it admirably. The whole play pleases me well: and most of all,
the sight of many fine ladies, amongst others, my Lady Castlemaine and
Mrs. Middleton.'
The whole management of public affairs was, at this period, intrusted to
five persons, and hence the famous combination, the united letters of
which formed the word 'Cabal:'--Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley,
and Lauderdale. Their reprehensible schemes, their desperate characters,
rendered them the opprobrium of their age, and the objects of censure to
all posterity. Whilst matters were in this state a daring outrage, which
spoke fearfully of the lawless state of the times, was ascribed, though
wrongly, to Buckingham. The Duke of Ormond, the object of his inveterate
hatred, was at that time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Colonel Blood,--a
disaffected disbanded officer of the Commonwealth, who had been
attainted for a conspiracy in Ireland, but had escaped punishment,--came
to England, and acted as a spy for the 'Cabal,' who did not hesitate to
countenance this daring scoundrel.
His first exploit was to attack the Duke of Ormond's coach one night in
St. James's Street: to secure his person, bind him, put him on horseback
after one of his accomplices, and carry him to Tyburn, where he meant to
hang his grace. On their way, however, Ormond, by a violent effort,
threw himself on the ground; a scuffle ensued: the duke's servants came
up, and after receiving the fire of Blood's pistols, the duke escaped.
Lord Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son, on going afterward to court, met
Buckingham, and addressed him in these words:--
'My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt on
my father; but I give you warning, if he by any means come to a violent
end, I shall not be at a loss to know the author. I shall consider you
as an assassin, and shall treat you as such; and wherever I meet you I
shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's chair; and I tell
it you in his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall not fail
of performance.'
Blood's next feat was to carry off from the Tower the crown jewels. He
was overtaken and arrested: and was then asked to name his accomplices.
'No,' he replied, 'the fear of danger shall never tempt me to deny guilt
or to betray a friend.' Charles II., with undignified curiosity, wished
to see the culprit. On inquiring of Blood how he dared to make so bold
an attempt on the crown, the bravo answered, 'My father lost a good
estate fighting for the crown, and I considered it no harm to recover it
by the crown.' He then told his majesty how he had resolved to
assassinate him: how he had stood among the reeds in Battersea-fields
with this design; how then, a sudden awe had come over him: and Charles
was weak enough to admire Blood's fearless bearing and to pardon his
attempt. Well might the Earl of Rochester write of Charles--
'Here lies my sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.'
Notwithstanding Blood's outrages--the slightest penalty for which in
our days would have been penal servitude for life--Evelyn met him, not
long afterwards, at Lord Clifford's, at dinner, when De Grammont and
other French noblemen were entertained. 'The man,' says Evelyn, 'had not
only a daring, but a villanous, unmerciful look, a false countenance;
but very well-spoken, and dangerously insinuating.'
Early in 1662, the Duke of Buckingham had been engaged in practices
against the court: he had disguised deep designs by affecting the mere
man of pleasure. Never was there such splendour as at Wallingford
House--such wit and gallantry; such perfect good breeding; such
apparently openhanded hospitality. At those splendid banquets, John
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 'a man whom the Muses were fond to inspire,
but ashamed to avow,' showed his 'beautiful face,' as it was called; and
chimed in with that wit for which the age was famous. The frequenters at
Wallingford House gloried in their indelicacy. 'One is amazed,' Horace
Walpole observes, 'at hearing the age of Charles II. called polite. The
Puritans have affected to call everything by a Scripture' name; the new
comers affected to call everything by its right name;
'As if preposterously they would confess
A forced hypocrisy in wickedness.'
Walpole compares the age of Charles II. to that of Aristophanes--'which
called its own grossness polite.' How bitterly he decries the stale
poems of the time as 'a heap of senseless ribaldry;' how truly he shows
that licentiousness weakens as well as depraves the judgment. 'When
Satyrs are brought to court,' he observes, 'no wonder the Graces would
not trust themselves there.'
The Cabal is said, however, to have been concocted, not at Wallingford
House, but at Ham House, near Kingston-on-Thames.
In this stately old manor-house, the abode of the Tollemache family, the
memory of Charles II. and of his court seems to linger still. Ham House
was intended for the residence of Henry, Prince of Wales, and was built
in 1610. It stands near the river Thames; and is flanked by noble
avenues of elm and of chestnut trees, down which one may almost, as it
were, hear the king's talk with his courtiers; see Arlington approach
with the well-known patch across his nose; or spy out the lovely,
childish Miss Stuart and her future husband, the Duke of Richmond,
slipping behind into the garden, lest the jealous mortified king should
catch a sight of the 'conscious lovers.'
This stately structure was given by Charles II., in 1672, to the Duke
and Duchess of Lauderdale: she, the supposed mistress of Cromwell; he,
the cruel, hateful Lauderdale of the Cabal. This detestable couple,
however, furnished with massive grandeur the apartments of Ham House.
They had the ceilings painted by Verrio; the furniture was rich, and
even now the bellows and brushes in some of the rooms are of silver
filigree. One room is furnished with yellow damask, still rich, though
faded; the very seats on which Charles, looking around him, saw
Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (the infamous Shaftesbury), and
Lauderdale--and knew not, good easy man, that he was looking on a band
of traitors--are still there. Nay, he even sat to Sir Peter Lely for a
portrait for this very place--in which, schemes for the ruin of the
kingdom were concocted. All, probably, was smooth and pleasing to the
monarch as he ranged down the fine gallery, ninety-two feet long; or sat
at dinner amid his foes in that hall, surrounded with an open
balustrade; or disported himself on the river's green brink. Nay, one
may even fancy Nell Gwynn taking a day's pleasure in this then lone and
ever sweet locality. We hear her swearing, as she was wont to do,
perchance at the dim looking-glasses, her own house in Pall Mall, given
her by the king, having been filled up, for the comedian, entirely,
ceiling and all, with looking-glass. How bold and pretty she looked in
her undress! Even Pepys--no very sound moralist, though a vast
hypocrite--tells us: Nelly, 'all unready' was 'very pretty, prettier far
than he thought.' But to see how she was 'painted,' would, he thought,
'make a man mad.'
'Madame Ellen,' as after her _elevation_, as it was termed, she was
called, might, since she held long a great sway over Charles's fancy, be
suffered to scamper about Ham House--where her merry laugh perhaps
scandalised the now Saintly Duchess of Lauderdale,--just to impose on
the world; for Nell was regarded as the Protestant champion of the
court, in opposition to her French rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth.
Let us suppose that she has been at Ham House, and is gone off to Pall
Mall again, where she can see her painted face in every turn. The king
has departed, and Killigrew, who, at all events, is loyal, and the
true-hearted Duke of Richmond, all are away to London. In yon
sanctimonious-looking closet, next to the duchess's bed-chamber, with her
psalter and her prayer-book on her desk, which is fixed to her great
chair, and that very cane which still hangs there serving as her support
when she comes forth from that closet, murmur and wrangle the component
parts of that which was never mentioned without fear--the Cabal. The
conspirators dare not trust themselves in the gallery: there is tapestry
there, and we all know what coverts there are for eaves-droppers and
spiders in tapestried walls: then the great Cardinal spiders do so click
there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately
superstitious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing
galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard,
nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, as far as
their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in our annals, in 'my
Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, ambitious, unscrupulous; but
the craft of Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale--the subtlety of Ashley, seem
hardly conceivable either in a Scot or Southron.
These meetings had their natural consequence. One leaves Lauderdale,
Arlington, Ashley, and Clifford, to their fate. But the career of
Villiers inspires more interest. He seemed born for better things. Like
many men of genius, he was so credulous that the faith he pinned on one
Heydon, an astrologer, at this time, perhaps buoyed him up with false
hopes. Be it as it may, his plots now tended to open insurrection. In
1666, a proclamation had been issued for his apprehension--he having
then absconded. On this occasion he was saved by the act of one whom he
had injured grossly--his wife. She managed to outride the
serjeant-at-arms, and to warn him of his danger. She had borne his
infidelities, after the fashion of the day, as a matter of course:
jealousy was then an impertinence--constancy, a chimera; and her
husband, whatever his conduct, had ever treated her with kindness of
manner; he had that charm, that attribute of his family, in perfection,
and it had fascinated Mary Fairfax.
He fled, and played for a year successfully the pranks of his youth. At
last, worn out, he talked of giving himself up to justice. 'Mr. Fenn, at
the table, says that he hath been taken by the watch two or three times
of late, at unseasonable hours, but so disguised they did not know him;
and when I come home, by and by, Mr. Lowther tells me that the Duke of
Buckingham do dine publickly this day at Wadlow's, at the Sun Tavern;
and is mighty merry, and sent word to the Lieutenant of the Tower, that
he would come to him as soon as he dined.' So Pepys states.
Whilst in the Tower--to which he was again committed--Buckingham's
pardon was solicited by Lady Castlemaine; on which account the king was
very angry with her; called her a meddling 'jade;' she calling him
'fool,' and saying if he was not a fool he never would suffer his best
subjects to be imprisoned--referring to Buckingham. And not only did she
ask his liberty, but the restitution of his places. No wonder there was
discontent when such things were done, and public affairs were in such a
state. We must again quote the graphic, terse language of Pepys:--'It
was computed that the Parliament had given the king for this war only,
besides all prizes, and besides the £200,000 which he was to spend of
his own revenue, to guard the sea, above £5,000,000, and odd £100,000;
which is a most prodigious sum. Sir H. Cholmly, as a true English
gentleman, do decry the king's expenses of his privy purse, which in
King James's time did not rise to above £5,000 a year, and in King
Charles's to £10,000, do now cost us above £100,000, besides the great
charge of the monarchy, as the Duke of York has £100,000 of it, and
other limbs of the royal family.'
In consequence of Lady Castlemaine's intervention, Villiers was restored
to liberty--a strange instance, as Pepys remarks, of the 'fool's play'
of the age. Buckingham was now as presuming as ever: he had a theatre of
his own, and he soon showed his usual arrogance by beating Henry
Killigrew on the stage, and taking away his coat and sword; all very
'innocently' done, according to Pepys. In July he appeared in his place
in the House of Lords, as 'brisk as ever,' and sat in his robes,
'which,' says Pepys, 'is a monstrous thing that a man should be
proclaimed against, and put in the Tower, and released without any
trial, and yet not restored to his places.'
We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, in concert
with Halifax and Arlington. In the year 1680, he was threatened with an
impeachment, in which, with his usual skill, he managed to exculpate
himself by blaming Lord Arlington. The House of Commons passed a vote
for his removal; and he entered the ranks of the opposition.
But this career of public meanness and private profligacy was drawing to
a close. Alcibiades no longer--his frame wasted by vice--his spirits
broken by pecuniary difficulties--Buckingham's importance visibly sank
away. 'He remained, at last,' to borrow the words of Hume, 'as incapable
of doing hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to
mankind.' His fortune had now dwindled down to £300 a year in land; he
sold Wallingford House, and removed into the City.
And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we hope, too late, began to
appear. Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all his immoral works to be
burnt, Buckingham now wished to retrieve the past. In 1685 he wrote the
religious works which form so striking a contrast with his other
productions.
That he had been up to the very time of his ruin perfectly impervious to
remorse, dead also to shame, is amply manifested by his conduct soon
after his duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury.
Sir George Etherege had brought out a new play at the Duke of York's
Theatre. It was called, 'She Would if she Could.' Plays in those days
began at what we now consider our luncheon hour. Though Pepys arrived at
the theatre on this occasion at two o'clock--his wife having gone
before--about a thousand people had then been put back from the pit. At
last, seeing his wife in the eighteen-penny-box, Samuel 'made shift' to
get there and there saw, 'but lord!' (his own words are inimitable) 'how
dull, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in
it, and few people pleased in it. The king was there; but I sat mightily
behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The play being
done, I went into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and
raining, but could not find her; and so staid, going between the two
doors and through the pit an hour and a half, I think, after the play
was done; the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk
to one another. And among the rest, here was the Duke of Buckingham
to-day openly in the pit; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst,
and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet, the last of whom I did hear mightily
find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour, and had not
their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so much
as sing a ketch in it; and so was mightily concerned, while all the rest
did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing,
though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the
play, and end, mighty insipid.'
Buckingham had held out to his Puritan friends the hope of his
conversion for some years; and when they attempted to convert him, he
had appointed a time for them to finish their work. They kept their
promise, and discovered him in the most profligate society. It was
indeed impossible to know in what directions his fancies might take him,
when we find him believing in the predictions of a poor fellow in a
wretched lodging near Tower Hill, who, having cast his nativity, assured
the duke he would be king.
He had continued for years to live with the Countess of Shrewsbury, and
two months after her husband's death, had taken her to his home. Then,
at last, the Duchess of Buckingham indignantly observed, that she and
the countess could not possibly live together. 'So I thought, madam,'
was the reply. 'I have therefore ordered your coach to take you to your
father's.' It has been asserted that Dr. Sprat, the duke's chaplain,
actually married him to Lady Shrewsbury, and that his legal wife was
thenceforth styled 'The Duchess-dowager.'
He retreated with his mistress to Claverdon, near Windsor, situated on
the summit of a hill which is washed by the Thames. It is a noble
building, with a great terrace in front, under which are twenty-six
niches, in which Buckingham had intended to place twenty-six statues as
large as life; and in the middle is an alcove with stairs. Here he lived
with the infamous countess, by whom he had a son, whom he styled Earl of
Coventry, (his second title,) and who died an infant.
One lingers still over the social career of one whom Louis XIV. called
'the only English gentleman he had ever seen.' A capital retort was made
to Buckingham by the Princess of Orange, during an interview, when he
stopped at the Hague, between her and the Duke. He was trying
diplomatically to convince her of the affection of England for the
States. 'We do not,' he said, 'use Holland like a mistress, we love her
as a wife.' '_Vraiment je crois que vous nous aimez comme vous aimez la
vôtre_,' was the sharp and clever answer.
On the death of Charles II., in 1685, Buckingham retired to the small
remnant of his Yorkshire estates. His debts were now set down at the sum
of £140,000. They were liquidated by the sale of his estates. He took
kindly to a country life, to the surprise of his old comrade in
pleasure, Etherege. 'I have heard the news,' that wit cried, alluding to
this change, 'with no less astonishment than if I had been told that the
Pope had begun to wear a periwig and had turned beau in the
seventy-fourth year of his age!'
Father Petre and Father Fitzgerald were sent by James II. to convert the
duke to Popery. The following anecdote is told of their conference with
the dying sinner:--'We deny,' said the Jesuit Petre, 'that any one can
be saved out of our Church. Your grace allows that our people may be
saved.'--'No,' said the duke, 'I make no doubt you will all be damned to
a man!' 'Sir,' said the father, 'I cannot argue with a person so void of
all charity.'--'I did not expect, my reverend father,' said the duke,
'such a reproach from you, whose whole reasoning was founded on the very
same instance of want of charity to yourself.'
Buckingham's death took place at Helmsby, in Yorkshire, and the
immediate cause was an ague and fever, owing to having sat down on the
wet grass after fox-hunting. Pope has given the following forcible, but
inaccurate account of his last hours, and the place in which they were
passed:--
'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung,
The floors of plaster and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,
With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw;
The George and Garter dangling from that bed,
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies:--alas! how changed from him,
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,
Or, just as gay, at council in a ring
Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King.
No wit to flatter left of all his store,
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more,
Then victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'
Far from expiring in the 'worst inn's worst room,' the duke breathed his
last in Kirby Moorside, in a house which had once been the best in the
place. Brian Fairfax, who loved this brilliant reprobate, has left the
only authentic account on record of his last hours.
The night previous to the duke's death Fairfax had received a message
from him desiring him to prepare a bed for him in his house, Bishop
Hill, in York. The next day, however, Fairfax was sent for to his
master, whom he found dying. He was speechless, but gave the afflicted
servant an earnest look of recognition.
The Earl of Arran, son of the Duke of Hamilton, and a gentleman of the
neighbourhood, stood by his bedside. He had then received the Holy
Communion from a neighbouring clergyman of the Established Church. When
the minister came it is said that he inquired of the duke what religion
he professed. 'It is,' replied the dying man, 'an insignificant
question, for I have been a shame and a disgrace to all religions: if
you can do me any good, pray do.' When a Popish priest had been
mentioned to him, he answered vehemently, 'No, no!'
He was in a very low state when Lord Arran had found him. But though
that nobleman saw death in his looks, the duke said he 'felt so well at
heart that he knew he could be in no danger.'
He appeared to have had inflammation in the bowels, which ended in
mortification. He begged of Lord Arran to stay with him. The house seems
to have been in a most miserable condition, for in a letter from Lord
Arran to Dr. Sprat, he says, 'I confess it made my heart bleed to see
the Duke of Buckingham in so pitiful a place, and so bad a condition,
and what made it worse, he was not at all sensible of it, for he thought
in a day or two he should be well; and when we reminded him of his
condition, he said it was not as we apprehended. So I sent for a worthy
gentleman, Mr. Gibson, to be assistant to me in this work; so we jointly
represented his condition to him, who I saw was at first very uneasy;
but I think we should not have discharged the duties of honest men if we
had suffered him to go out of this world without desiring him to prepare
for death.' The duke joined heartily in the beautiful prayers for the
dying, of our Church, and yet there was a sort of selfishness and
indifference to others manifest even at the last.
'Mr. Gibson,' writes Lord Arran, 'asked him if he had made a will, or if
he would declare who was to be his heir? but to the first, he answered
he had made none; and to the last, whoever was named he answered, "No."
First, my lady duchess was named, and then I think almost everybody that
had any relation to him, but his answer always was, "No." I did fully
represent my lady duchess' condition to him, but nothing that was said
to him could make him come to any point.'
In this 'retired corner,' as Lord Arran terms it, did the former wit and
beau, the once brave and fine cavalier, the reckless plotter in
after-life, end his existence. His body was removed to Helmsby Castle,
there to wait the duchess' pleasure, being meantime embalmed. Not one
farthing could his steward produce to defray his burial. His George and
blue ribbon were sent to the King James, with an account of his death.
In Kirby Moorside the following entry in the register of burials
records the event, which is so replete with a singular retributive
justice--so constituted to impress and sadden the mind:--
'Georges Villus Lord dooke of Buckingham.'
He left scarcely a friend to mourn his life; for to no man had he been
true. He died on the 16th of April according to some accounts; according
to others, on the third of that month, 1687, in the sixty-first year of
his age. His body, after being embalmed, was deposited in the family
vault in Henry VII.'s chapel.[7] He left no children, and his title was
therefore extinct. The Duchess of Buckingham, of whom Brian Fairfax
remarks, 'that if she had none of the vanities, she had none of the
vices of the court,' survived him several years. She died in 1705, at
the age of sixty-six, and was buried in the vault of the Villiers'
family, in the chapel of Henry VII.
Such was the extinction of all the magnificence and intellectual
ascendency that at one time centred in the great and gifted family of
Villiers.