"that gave me this; and it is through my own fault that he has taken it away." When the instrument was subsequently delivered to James the First, he muttered some words denoting the difficulty he should find in selecting a successor. "As to my

lawyers," he said, "they are all knaves."

Shortly after the disgrace of Lord Bacon (1624), James the First obtained York House in exchange for certain lands, and conferred it on his favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. who had previously leased it of Archbishop Matthew. Under the Duke's auspices, and with his exquisite taste, York House became perhaps the most magnificent private mansion in Europe. The internal decorations are described as gorgeous in the extreme, while his collection of pictures was unrivalled, except by that of his royal master, Charles the First. As regards the famous entertainments which he gave in York House, it would be difficult to do justice either to the refined taste or the unparalleled splendour by which they were characterized. "They combined," says Mr. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, "all the picture of ballet-dances with the voice of music, the charms of the verse of Jonson, the scenic machinery of Inigo Jones, and the variety of fanciful devices of Gerbier." The Marshal de Bassompierre, in his account of his Embassy to England in 1626, has left us more than one interesting notice of his visits to York House, and of his surprise at its extraordinary magnificence. He himself was an admirable

judge in such matters, for not only had he visited every court in Europe, but his taste in furniture and decoration was considered faultless. He had nearly ruined himself in fitting up his famous mansion at Chaillot; and, moreover, the compliments which he pays to Buckingham's refined taste are the more valuable, inasmuch as, being a Frenchman, he was likely to look upon English taste and display with a prejudiced eye. On the 8th of October, the day after his arrival in London, he writes:-"The ambassador Contarini, of Venice, came to visit me; and towards night I went to see the Duke of Buckingham at his residence called York House, which is extremely fine, and more richly fitted up than any other I saw." Again, on Sunday, the 15th of November, he writes, "The Danish ambassador came to visit me; after which I went to the King at Whitehall, who placed me in his barge, and took me to the Duke's at York House, who gave him the most magnificent entertainment I ever saw in my life. The King supped at one table with the Queen and me, which was served by a complete ballet [attendants in fancy costume], at each course, with sundry representations, changes of scenery, tables, and music. The Duke waited on the King at table, the Earl of Carlisle on the Queen, and the Earl of Holland on me. After supper the King and we were led into another room, where the assembly was, and one entered it by a kind of turnstile, as in convents, without any confusion, where there was a magnifi

cent ballet, in which the Duke danced. And afterwards we set to and danced country-dances till four in the morning; thence we were shown into vaulted apartments,*

collations."

where there were five different

This would appear to have been the identical entertainment, the description of which the late Mr. D'Israeli extracted from the Sloane MSS., and published in his Curiosities of Literature:- "Last Sunday at night, the Duke's Grace entertained their Majesties and the French ambassador at York House with great feasting and show, where all things came down in clouds; amongst which, one rare device was a representation of the French King and the two Queens, with their chiefest attendants, and so like to the life that the Queen's Majesty could name them. It was four o'clock in the morning before they parted, and then the King and Queen, together with the French ambassador, lodged there. Some estimate this entertainment at five or six

"The ground on which this palace stood, shelves down from the Strand, where the great entrance was, to the river. The principal floor and state rooms were probably on the level with the entrance on the Strand side, but must have been a story above the ground, on the river side; and this story was probably the vaulted apartments which Bassompierre mentions. It seems odd that he should think the vaulting a peculiarity worth mentioning: as the ground floors of the Tuileries and the Louvre, in which he passed most of his life, were vaulted; but vaulted domestic apartments were probably, then, as now, extremely rare ; and the singular and magnificent effect produced by vaulted rooms, furnished for the purposes of common life, must have struck a person of Bassompierre's taste."-BASSOMPIERRE's Embassy to England, p. 96, note by Mr. Croker.

thousand pounds." Bassompierre writes on the following morning (the 16th):-"The King, who had slept at York House, sent for me to hear the Queen's music. Afterwards, he ordered a ball; after which there was a play, and he retired with the Queen his wife to Whitehall."

After his assassination by Felton, in August 1628, the body of the Duke of Buckingham was brought from Portsmouth to York House, where it lay in state in those gorgeous apartments, which had been the scene of his domestic happiness and splendid hospitality. Hither, too, was conveyed the body of his posthumous son, the young and gallant Lord Francis Villiers, who having hurried from the University of Cambridge to join the standard of the Earl of Holland, in 1648, was killed in an encounter with the troops of the Parliament, about two miles from Kingston-on-Thames. He had only recently attained to his nineteenth year. Having had his horse killed under him, he made his way to an oak tree, near the highway. There, placing his back against the tree, and disdaining, or, as it has been asserted, refusing quarter, he defended himself to the last with surprising gallantry,-" till," says his biographer and contemporary, Fairfax, “with nine wounds in his beautiful face and body, he was slain the oak tree is his monument, and has the first two letters of his name, F. V., cut in it to this day."—" A few days before his death," adds Fairfax, "he ordered his steward, Mr. John May, to bring him in a list of his debts, and so charged

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his estate with them that the Parliament, who seized on the estate, paid his debts." His contemporaries describe him as pre-eminently handsome, even more strikingly so than his elder brother. We have met with more than one single folio sheet, printed at the period, in which, in indifferent verse, is lamented the untimely death of the "beautiful Francis Villiers."

In consequence of his having on two different occasions appeared in arms against the Commonwealth, George Villiers, the second and witty Duke of Buckingham, was deprived of his vast estates. For some time, almost his only means of subsistence was from the sale of the magnificent gallery of pictures which his father had collected at York House. These, a faithful old retainer of his family, one John Traylman, had contrived to secure and to forward to his young master at Antwerp. A considerable portion of his property fell to the share of the Parliamentary general, Lord Fairfax; the rents of which, according to Heath, amounted to no less than 4,000l. a-year. Eager to regain possession of his birth-right, the young Duke, then proscribed and in exile, conceived the project of marrying the only daughter of Lord Fairfax. Accordingly, warmed by the romance and the daring of six and twenty, he paid a secret visit to England, and, by some means or other, contrived not only to elude the spies of Cromwell, but to obtain an introduction to the young lady. It still, however, remained to obtain the consent of the Puritan General; but