Thomas Villiers

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

“ 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. ”

“ How great the struggle may have been, must be left to the imagination, for no documents are at hand to reveal it. The step was momentous; for it threw upon the world, to buffet with all the turmoils of a conspicuous station, a man who, otherwise, would probably have lived and died in respectable obscurity, existing upon his wife’s fortune.
Villiers, however, in time, adopted the advice of Sir Robert Graham. He abjured the thoughts of an early marriage, and devoted himself to ambition. ”

“ At York House, at Wanstead, New Hall and Burleigh, his fine face, with his love-locks, his plain collar, and tight doublet, were, we may be sure, often to be seen before ruin and desertion darkened those once splendid homes of Villiers.
Few men, it must be acknowledged, in so brief a space, have done more for the arts in this country than George Villiers. By Charles, his friend and sovereign, who survived him twenty years, much more was 181effected. ”

“ There is something in this miscreant’s forlorn and protracted existence, after all that in life is 93valuable—honour, peace of mind, influence—were gone, that is more desolate and appalling to the fancy than if the Tower had for ever enclosed him, or the executioner claimed his life as a penalty for his sins. The unpunished murderer walking abroad, shunned by all, is a sort of moral leper; desolate in his freedom, and chastised even by the silence and avoidance of his fellow men.
That Villiers took any active part in the measures which ensued, his bitterest foes have not ventured to allege. ”

“ In every masque, during King James’s life, he played a part. He knew the poet at Wilton; there can be little doubt that the friends of Villiers were the patrons of poor Ben. The panegyrist of the Duke, Lord Clarendon, lived, as he has himself declared, “many years on terms of the most friendly intercourse with Jonson.” In that conversation, praised by this historian “as very good, with men of most note,” Villiers must have borne a part; whilst Camden and Selden mingled with poor Ben, with the Sackvilles, the Sidneys, the Herberts, and the numerous family of Villiers. ”

“ Upon the compliance of the Queen, it was resolved to introduce Villiers to the King, for the double honour of being appointed one of His Majesty’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, and of receiving knighthood. The day was approaching, when Villiers fell ill, not without suspicion of having taken the small-pox. This happened when all his friends were “casting about” how to make him a great man. ”

“ It was at a horse-race in Cambridgeshire that Villiers first attracted the attention of the King. The poverty of the young man was then such that even on this notable occasion, when the sovereign, on his annual progress, was expected, and at a time when the costliness, or, as it was well styled, the “bravery” of dress was at its height, he could not afford any new attire. An “old black suit, broken out in divers places,” was, as Sir Symonds D’Ewes asserts, [46] the garment in which his narrow 42means constrained him to appear amid the gay courtiers who composed the royal train. ”

“ Who that has ever followed, breathless and enraptured, the final fortunes of that gallant quadrilateral of musketeers will forget the part which is played by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in that magnificent prose epic? There is little to be said for the real Villiers; he was a profligate and a scoundrel, and he did not show very heroically in his quarrel with the fiery young Ossory. It was one thing to practically murder Lord Shrewsbury; it was quite another thing to risk the wrath and the determined right hand of the Duke of Ormond's son. ”

“ Thus, little assistance in the career of life could be expected from one who would scarcely deem the prizes most sought for by men, worth the trouble of a little personal exertion.
Upon the death of her husband, Lady Villiers retired to Godby Marward, which was appropriated to her as a dower house. ”

“ He thence became the friend and ally of George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, to whose age and time, rather than that of the subject of this memoir, one would gladly consign the apostate poet.
One of his worst acts was to vote for the impeachment of Lord Clarendon; and here one would gladly end the record of the misdeeds of an able and accomplished man, distinguished almost as much for his eloquence as for his poetic productions. But Waller lived on; he was favoured by James II., who seems to have been cajoled by the flatteries which his royal brother had detected. ”

“ There was not one who did not wear his evening clothes with the ease of custom, and the persistent stream of conversation, now in one language, now in another, never rising above a courteous level, bore the stamp of world travel and cultured acquaintance with every phase of life.
Villiers sat at his host's right hand. From his position he could see straight down the rose-tinted dining room to the open window, beyond which the Mediterranean shimmered in peaceful moonlight. The table was scattered with red roses, and their perfume had grown heavy, almost overpowering, in the dead atmosphere. ”

“ Thus the arts and sciences, poetry, music, painting, and scenic decoration, were united, during the life-time of George Villiers, in a degree never before or since known in this country. Massinger, Ben Jonson, Lawes, Inigo Jones, were at the service of the rich and noble, and awaited their bidding. Shakspeare died just after George Villiers had received the first public proof of Royal favour--the honour of knighthood; [213] and the era of masques and revels began. ”

“ Until the elevation of George Villiers from low estate to an unparalleled career of success, the race from which he sprang, though ancient and honourable, was but partially known to fame, and his ancestors, how valiant and loyal soever they had proved, had held the tenor of their way with little variation, and with only an occasional gleam of celebrity on one or other of its lineage; a course of moderate prosperity maintaining, without altering, its condition—rather, as Sir Henry Wotton has well expressed it, “without obscurity than with any great lustre.” ”

“ Standing by themselves, as when we first saw them, were Lord Ernest Villiers and his friend, Captain Jernyngham, of the Guards.
Handsome, stately, and noble, Lord Villiers always looked; but more so now than ever. What man does not look well when happy, faultless in costume, and about to be married to the woman he loves? ”

“ The 130King, moved thereat, sent for the Prince, and used such bitter language to him, as forced His Highness to shed tears, telling him also not to return to His Majesty until he had found it, and restored the ring to Sir George Villiers. The Prince, after he came from the King, gave commandment to Sir Robert Carey to search in the pockets of his breeches which he wore that day, when by good fortune the ring was found, and by Sir Robert Carey delivered to Sir George Villiers. ”

“ This flattering tribute to King James might have been spared, for the monarch, whose blind and almost wicked partiality emboldened, and perhaps corrupted, Somerset, can hardly be conceived to have formed the character of Villiers.
The testimony of Lord Clarendon that Villiers, like his supposed prototype, the Earl of Essex, was a “fair-spoken gentleman,” not prone and eager to detract openly from any man, “is a greater eulogy,” and to this, the noble historian adds another, which, he affirms, “the malignant eye could not refuse to Villiers;” ”

“ The favorite of two kings, immensely rich, all-powerful in a kingdom which he disordered at his fancy and calmed again at his caprice, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, had lived one of those fabulous existences which survive, in the course of centuries, to astonish posterity. ”

“ Whilst encouraging, on the one hand, a treaty of marriage for his son with a daughter of Spain, and ordering, on the other, musters of troops to be ready to keep down the Papists, who might otherwise be emboldened by that project; he still, throughout the whole of these troublesome and often 192urgent affairs, had one object in view—the gratification and aggrandizement of George Villiers. Sometimes we find the King indulging in poetic flights. After a week or two of hard work in the Star-Chamber, James, in a serious mood, wrote a meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, and dedicated it to Buckingham. ”

“ Young, devoted to pleasure, indifferent, at this time, to gain, ambitious, but not grasping, he enjoyed at this period that general esteem, the absence of which he bitterly felt in after life. Those who hated Somerset turned to Villiers, and found him full of courtesy and of generous impulses. Those who were on the point of offering bribes to Somerset discovering that Villiers had the ear of the King, applied to him, and obtained gratuitously what they sought. ”

“ During the whole of this discreditable transaction, and for a considerable time after it had ceased to amuse the court circles, the extraordinary influence of an imperious woman shows at once 185the weakness of James and the incipient degradation of Buckingham. Whether Lady Hatton’s influence proceeded from the expectations of further prosperity to the Villiers family, she having 3000l. a year in her own power to bequeath, or whether there existed in her any peculiar power to charm, is uncertain. ”

“ Amongst Buckingham’s most confidential 15servants was Endymion Porter, who generally acted as his interpreter. Porter, according to Arthur Wilson, "had been bred up in Spain when he was a boy, and had the language, but found no other fortune there than brought him to be Mr. Edward Villiers’s man in Fleet Street, before either his master or the Marquis was acceptable at Whitehall." “It is not intended,” adds the historian, "to vilify the persons, being men (in this world’s lottery) as capable of advancement as others ”

“ Not precisely dissolute, rather disorganized, the life of Adam could be transformed into an object sermon by the wily educator and moral-monger. But that would be a poor way of viewing it. Born without average will power, except the will to imagine beautiful and strange things, Villiers, as he is generally called, all his years fought the contending impulses of his dual nature; fought bravely sometimes in the open air with the blue sky smiling down on him; fought as if facing an ambuscade at dark, and under the lowering clouds when all the powers of evil were abroad and at his elbow. ”

“ The firm, colored and often original style of Villiers had disappeared to give way to a mixture scraped on the literary bench of the first-comer.
"Heavens! heavens! how few books are really worth re-reading," sighed Des Esseintes, gazing at the servant who left the stool on which he had been perched, to permit Des Esseintes to survey his books with a single glance. ”

“ As I sit looking into the darkness, a memory suddenly springs upon me. Villiers, who came in when dinner was half over, brought a young man with him. Fumbling at his shirt collar, apologising for being late, assuring us that he had dined, he introduced his friend to the company as a young man of genius, of extraordinary genius. Don't I remember Villiers's nervous, hysterical voice! Don't I remember the journalist's voice when he asked Ninon's lover if he sold his pictures, creating at once a bad impression? ”

“ Beneath all these forced reconciliations and specious protestations, a deep-seated disease—unsoundness of principle—was latent, only waiting for time and occasion to give it effect. All, indeed, seemed prosperous; in June, 1619, two years afterwards, Sir John Villiers was raised to the dignity of Baron Stoke, in the county of Buckingham, and created Viscount Purbeck, [206] in the county of Dorset, in spite of much reluctance on the part of Lady Hatton to give him up Purbeck ”

“ Whilst the continental nations were venting their surprise and indignation in sallies of ridicule directed against England, the King, who had nothing to bestow in the aid of a loyal cause in which the welfare of his own child was bound up, resorted at home to the most disgraceful expedients in order to exalt his favourite. During this period, Buckingham held an absolute empire over the actions of Bacon. A system of persecution against Coke had followed the disgraceful affair of Sir John Villiers’ marriage. In an unlucky hour, Bacon interfered between Lady Hatton and her injured husband ”

“ Inigo Jones was again summoned to be one of 289the “Inventors,” to place the masque on the stage, and Henry Lawes composed the airs, and superintended the musical performance; but those to whose splendour and genius the perfection of this species of entertainment was owing, were no longer there. Villiers was gone; Ben Jonson had virtually quitted “the detracting world,” which he had once defied from his proud pre-eminence. The country was even then split up into factions. Happily for himself, Carew escaped their outbreak. ”