CHAPTER X.

LORD FRANCIS VILLIERS.

On the north side of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, close to King Henry's tomb, there is a small side chapel, divided off by a low wall of carved stone, and almost filled up by a magnificent monument. A splendid personage of the time of Charles the First, remarkably handsome, and dressed in robes of state, lies on the tomb beside his fair wife. Allegorical figures stand at the four corners. The recumbent effigies are in brass, richly gilded. Behind their heads kneel three children, a boy and two girls, beautifully carved in marble; and above this trio an exquisite child leans on his elbow, tired out with grief and fallen gently asleep.

Standing beside this tomb, Dean Stanley says:

We seem to be present in the Court of Charles as we look at its fantastic ornaments ("Fame even bursting herself, and trumpets to tell the news of his so sudden fall") and its pompous inscriptions calling each State in Europe severally to attest the several virtues of this "Enigma of the World."[80]

Who, we may well ask, is this man who lies buried among the tombs of the kings of England, in state far exceeding that accorded to many sovereigns?

Every one who has read the history of the reigns of James the First and Charles the First will remember the most famous, and perhaps most dangerous of all the court favorites who helped to bring ruin upon England--George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

His story reads like a chapter out of the _Arabian Nights_:

Never any man in any age, nor, I believe, in any country or nation, rose in so short a time to so much greatness of honour, fame, and fortune, upon no other advantage or recommendation than the beauty and gracefulness of his person.[81]

Young and exceedingly handsome, George Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire squire, was taken into favor by James the First, on the disgrace of his first favorite, the Earl of Rochester. In an incredibly short space of time "Steenie," as his royal masters called him, rose through every rank of the peerage to a dukedom, and to the actual direction of English policy. Haughty, reckless, selfish, his only good quality was his personal bravery.

This was the man whose evil influence made itself felt throughout England, who plunged the country into disastrous wars and encouraged King Charles in those fatal measures which at last brought him to the scaffold. When Charles the First came to the throne in 1625, Buckingham was at the height of his glory and power. In vain did Parliament remonstrate with the king. In vain did they petition him again and again to rid himself of a favorite who was becoming more hated and dreaded by the country each year. In vain did they impeach Buckingham. Charles, in his blind affection, took all the blame of the duke's deeds upon himself--burnt the remonstrance of the Commons--and actually dissolved Parliament in order to save his favorite.

But what the Commons of England failed to do, came to pass by the hand of one discontented man.

The Duke of Buckingham, after wasting men, money, and English prestige in one disastrous expedition to help the French Protestants at La Rochelle, was on the eve of setting out for a second attempt to relieve the beleagured town. He was at Portsmouth, and was to embark the very next day, when he was stabbed by John Felton, a lieutenant in the navy who had been disappointed of promotion.

All England and the court rejoiced at the death of the favorite. But King Charles "flung himself upon his bed in a passion of tears when the news reached him."[82] On his first visit to the widowed Duchess of Buckingham he promised to be a father to her sons. He ordered the duke to be buried in the Chapel of Henry the Seventh--which hitherto had been reserved for anointed kings. And it is George Villiers who lies in state to this day on the splendid tomb we have been looking at.

Soon after the duke's death, the lovely boy who leans sleeping above his father's monument was born.

The king stood godfather to the baby at his christening, together with Francis, Earl of Rutland, the duchess's father. "After some compliments who should give the name," the king called the baby Francis, and the grandfather gave him his benediction, which was in the very pleasant form of seven thousand pounds a year.

King Charles faithfully kept the promise he had made the duchess. Alas! it had been well for him had he kept all other promises as faithfully. He was indeed a father to young Francis and to his handsome, headstrong, worthless elder brother the young Duke of Buckingham.

The boys were brought up with the royal children under the same tutors and governors. They were sent quite young to Trinity College, Cambridge, where their names were entered in the college-book in the same year as that of Prince Charles. And here among other famous and learned men, they made the acquaintance of Abraham Cowley, the poet, who had lately published his pastoral comedy "Love's Riddle," which had been performed by members of the college.

From Cambridge the two brothers went to travel under the care of Mr. William Aylesbury, who was appointed their tutor by the king. But their sojourn abroad was short.

Public affairs had been growing darker and darker at home. And at last, in 1642, there was an open breach between the king and the Parliament. The Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham, August 25, and England was plunged into civil war, the most horrible of all scourges that can come on any country.

Francis Villiers was fourteen years old, and his brother, the young duke, a year older. Boys as they were, they now tried to show their gratitude to the king for his care of them. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War they hastened back to England. The king's headquarters were at Oxford; and his nephew, the famous Prince Rupert, kept the whole country between Oxford and London in constant alarm with his sudden raids and fierce skirmishes. To Oxford then the two young brothers came. They were a beautiful pair, inheriting from both their parents "so graceful a body, as gave lustre to the ornament of the mind." Full of headstrong courage, they "laid their lives and their fortunes at the king's feet," and chose Prince Rupert and Lord Gerard as their tutors in the art of War. They soon had their first lesson; for they were present at the storming of the Close at Lichfield on March 2, 1643. When they returned to Oxford, happily without harm after their first fight, their mother, the duchess, was very angry with Lord Gerard for "tempting her sons into such danger." But he told her it was by the boys' own wish, "and the more the danger the greater the honor."

Parliament at first seemed to look on this escapade as a serious offence, for they seized upon the brothers' estates. But they were soon restored in consideration of the two boys' extreme youth. However, says Bryan Fairfax, their historian, "the young men kept it (their fortune) no longer than till they came to be at an age to forfeit it again."[83]

To keep these young fire-eaters out of fresh honorable danger, the king placed them in the care of the Earl of Northumberland, and sent them abroad again. They spent the next four or five years in France and Italy, living chiefly in Florence and Rome, where they kept as great state as many sovereign princes. It was the fashion of those days to send young noblemen for a time to foreign countries; and the result in a good many cases was that they abjured Protestantism and returned to England either concealed or avowed Roman Catholics. But the Villiers brothers "brought their religion home again, wherein they had been educated under the eye of the most devout and best of kings."[84]

The moment at which the young men returned was a critical one. The royal cause had been going from bad to worse. And at the beginning of 1648 England was in the hands of Cromwell and Fairfax. The king, given up by the Scots the year before to the Parliamentarians, was a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. The Royalist forces were scattered and broken; and it seemed an almost hopeless task to make any further resistance in the king's behalf. Nevertheless, there were still a few faithful followers left; and the old English love for the monarchy still blazed up here and there in fierce outbursts against the Parliament and its army. But the Parliamentarians despised all these attempts, until in the spring of 1648 a serious rising took place in Kent, which was suppressed after a heavy fight at Maidstone. It was just at this juncture that the young Duke of Buckingham and his brother Francis returned to England. Strong, active, and courageous, they were burning with zeal to venture their large estates for the crown on the first opportunity.

They had not long to wait.

No sooner was the Kentish rising quelled than the Royalists crossed the Thames into Essex, and collected a large force at Colchester, intending from thence to march on London. Fairfax invested the town, and beseiged it for two months until it fell, August 27.

Meanwhile the Earl of Holland had offered his services to the queen, his late mistress, in Paris, and informed her of his resolution to adventure everything for the king. The young Villiers threw in their lot with Lord Holland, and declared themselves ready and willing to sacrifice their estates and their lives if need be in the royal cause. The siege of Colchester which engaged the main body of the army under Fairfax seemed to offer a good opportunity for a rising nearer London. The young Duke of Buckingham was made General of the Horse. Lord Francis Villiers and various other young noblemen were given other posts. And these hot-blooded lads, impatient for action, urged Lord Holland to begin his perilous undertaking without further delay.

Unhappily for them the whole business was miserably mismanaged. Such a rising could only hope to succeed if it were kept the most profound secret. But so far from being a secret, it was, says Clarendon, "the common discourse of the town." There was a great appearance every morning at Lord Holland's lodging of officers who were known to have served the king--.

his commission showed in many hands; and no question being more commonly asked than--when doth my Lord Holland go out? and the answer--Such and such a day; and the hour he did take horse, when he was accompanied by an hundred horse from his house was publickly talked of two or three days before.[85]

But these indiscretions were not all. The first rendezvous was to be at Kingston-on-Thames--the charming old town full of old red brick houses, and sunny walled gardens full of lilacs and laburnums and cedars of Lebanon, ten miles southwest of London. Here Lord Holland stayed for two nights and one whole day, expecting numbers to flock to his standard, "not only of officers, but of common men who had promised and listed themselves under several officers."[86] During his stay, some officers and soldiers, both of foot and horse did come. But the greater number of those who resorted to Kingston were "many persons of honor and quality," who came down from London for the day in their coaches to visit the little army, and returned to town again, "to provide what was still wanting and resolved to be with him soon again."

Is it not a pitiable story? Want of plan, of management, of forethought, of seriousness. The whole thing arranged like a play upon the stage. The fair ladies, and the gallant cavaliers in their curly wigs and deep Vandyke collars, driving down on the hot summer day to visit their friends, and laugh and talk over the great victory that without doubt they would win--the victory that would restore the king to his throne, and drive the Parliamentarians into the sea. And beautiful young Francis Villiers, in the heyday of his youth and strength--his debts all paid two days before[87]--longing for a chance to strike a blow for the king who had been a father to him.

How the grim puritan soldiers must have laughed at such a set of amateurs in the art of War. They were not far-off--those grave fighting men.

The chief officer with Lord Holland's band was one Dalbeer, a Dutch malcontent. He seems to have been as incompetent as the rest of the little army; for he kept no watch at night round the camp.

Early on the morning of July 7, the Parliamentary Colonel Rich, "eminent for praying but of no fame for fighting," surprised the town with a troop of horse. There was a general scrimmage. No one was ready to receive them. Lord Holland and a number of his followers made the best of their way out of the town, never offering to charge the enemy. Most of the footsoldiers and some of the officers "made shift to conceal themselves until they found means to retire to their close mansions in London."[88]

But Francis Villiers alone seems to have made a stand. At the head of his troop, his horse having been killed under him, he

got to an oak-tree in the highway about two miles from Kingston, where he stood with his back against it, defending himself, scorning to ask quarter, and they barbarously refusing to give it; till with nine wounds in his beautiful face and body, he was slain.[89]

So died Francis Villiers, in the twentieth year of his age--"This noble, valiant and beautiful youth," says Fairfax. "A youth of rare beauty and comeliness," says Clarendon. And so ended the unhappy fight of Kingston. Dalbeer defended himself till he was killed. Lord Holland with a hundred horse, wandered away and was caught at an inn at St. Neot's in Hertfordshire and thence sent prisoner to Windsor, of which place he had but lately been constable. The Duke of Buckingham reached London, and hid until he could escape to Holland "where the prince was; who received him with great grace and kindness."[90] And in six months the king for whom young Francis had died, was led out to execution at Whitehall.

Lord Francis' body was brought by water from Kingston up the Thames to York House in the Strand; and was then embalmed and laid in his father's vault in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.

The late duke's magnificent monument, and the position in which it was placed, gave rise to much comment at the time. No monument had been erected to King James. And when Charles the First sent for Lord Weston "to contrive the work of the tomb" for his favorite, Lord Weston, putting into words the opinion of the greater part of England "told his Majesty that not only our nation, but others, would talk of it, if he should make the duke a tomb, and not his father."[91]

The tomb, however, was made. Henry the Seventh's Chapel for the first time was opened to a person not of royal lineage. And by the irony of fate, this burial of a royal favorite paved the way for the interments of many others in the next thirty years who were not of royal blood, and were bitterly opposed to kings and all that pertained to them, save power.

Two years after Francis Villiers was killed at Kingston, Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, was buried in a vault at the extreme east of Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Then came Blake, the first of England's naval heroes--Colonel Mackworth, one of Cromwell's Council--Sir William Constable, one of the regicides--Worsley, Oliver's "great and rising favorite." And Bradshaw, Lord President of the High Court of Justice, was laid "in a superb tomb among the kings."

Ten years after Francis Villiers' death, Cromwell's favorite daughter--the sweet Elizabeth Claypole--was buried in a vault close to the entrance of the Villiers Chapel. She was the "Betty" of Cromwell's earlier letters, "who belongs to the sect of the seekers rather than the finders. Happy are they who find--most happy are they who seek."[92]

The great Protector never held up his head after the death of this lovable woman; and within a month of his daughter's funeral "his most serene and renowned highness, Oliver, Lord Protector, was taken to his rest"[93] in the same Chapel in which we have spent so much time of late.

If we needed any fresh proof that the great Abbey of Westminster is a sign and symbol of reconciliation, here is one. Within its walls Kings and Covenanters, Puritan women, and gallant young Cavalier nobles who fought against those women's husbands and fathers, lie side by side. The feuds, the hatreds, the heart-burnings, the differences, political and religious, are all forgotten; and nothing is left but the common brotherhood of man with man, in the still peaceful atmosphere of the Abbey Church of St. Peter.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Stanley. "Memorials of Westminster." p. 237.

[81] Clarendon. Vol. I. p. 16.

[82] "Short History of English People." Green, p. 488.

[83] "Life of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham." Bryan Fairfax.

[84] Fairfax.

[85] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 102.

[86] Ibid. Vol. XI. p. 102.

[87] When he left London he ordered his steward, Mr. John May, to bring him a list of his debts, and he so charged his estate with them, that the Parliament, who seized on the estate, payed the debt.--FAIRFAX.

[88] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 104.

[89] Fairfax.

[90] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 105.

[91] "Court and Times of Charles the First." Vol. I. p. 391.

[92] Carlyle's Cromwell. Vol. I. p. 295.

[93] Commonwealth Mercury. Sep. 2-9, 1658.