30 POOR MARY FAIRFAX. 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, 1657, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his estate, or, at all events, a portion of the revenues, about £4000 a year, it is said, were restored to him. Nevertheless, it is mortifying to find that in 1672, 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, toward 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 NunAppleton, near York, one of Fairfax's estates. The Protector had, it is said, intended Villiers for one of his own daughters. ABRAHAM COWLEY, THE POET. 31 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 honor at the bar of this House, and upon the engagement of Lord Fairfax in £20,000, that the said duke shall peaceably demean 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 his 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 honor 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 parlor 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 while 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, while Cowley impart 32 THE GREATEST ORNAMENT OF WHITEHALL. ed 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 humor 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 well 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 afterward Master of the Horse,* 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 equaled 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 engag *The duke became Master of the Horse in 1668: he paid £20,000 to the Duke of Albemarle for the post. BUCKINGHAM'S WIT AND BEAUTY. 333 ing; 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; while 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 stickingplaster than a mustache. 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 waters-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" 34 ANNA MARIA, COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY. "The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde, Or bear the public weight of his affairs, Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight, 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. Among 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: among 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 des-. ignate 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 |