of Buckingham and Lady Hervey met at the same time, to advise the Duchess of Albemarle to promote their views." Setting aside his infidelities, Buckingham is said to have been a civil and obliging husband.

De Grammont styles the Duchess of Buckingham a "short, fat body," a description borne out by the account of the old Lady de Longueville, who lived to be near a hundred years old, and who had seen her in her youth. Bishop Percy says in his MS. notes to Langbaine,"The Viscountess de Longueville described her as a little round crumpled woman, very fond of finery. She remembered paying her a visit when the Duchess was in mourning, at which time she found her lying on a sofa, with a kind of loose robe over her, all edged or laced with gold."

The Duchess died in November, 1705, at the age of sixty-six, and was buried in the vault of the Villiers' family, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster. She left her personal property to a kinswoman, one of the five sisters of the Earl of Plymouth.

BARBARA VILLIERS,

DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND.

Lineage of this Lady-Her Marriage-Joins the exiled Court with her Husband-Made a Lady of the Bedchamber-Her Intrigue with Lord Chesterfield-Her Husband is raised to the Peerage-Their Disagreements and final Separation-Notice of her weak Husband -Person of the Duchess-Her Extravagance, and Addiction to Play -Her Imperiousness, and Influence over the King-AnecdotesHer insolence to Lord Clarendon-Her Quarrel with Charles— De Grammont mediates between them-Her Intrigue with Henry Jermyn-With Hart the Actor-With Goodman the Actor-With Jacob Hall, the Rope-dancer-With William Wycherley, the Poet -Notices and Anecdotes of these Persons-The Duchess retires to France-Her Intrigues in the French Capital-Charles remonstrates with her on her Gallantries-Her marriage with Beau Fielding-His harsh Treatment of her-Her Death.

THE story of this imperious beauty, though not without its moral, embraces a melancholy recital of infamy and vice. She was the sole daughter of William, second Viscount Grandison, who died at Oxford, in 1643, at the age of thirty, of wounds received at the siege of Bristol. Lord Clarendon, who dwells on the character of this nobleman with evident pleasure, describes him as faultless in person, romantic in valour, and uncorrupted in morals. He was buried at Christ Church, where, after the Restoration, his too-celebrated daughter erected-out of the wages of her shame-a sumptuous monument to his memory. It was a strange tribute from a shameless child to the virtuous and high-minded dead.

In 1658, at the age of eighteen, Barbara Villiers became the wife of Roger Palmer, Esq., a student of one

of the Inns of Court, and heir to a large fortune. He figures through a long life as an author, a bigot, and a very mean man. The following year they joined the Court of Charles in the Low Countries, where the husband made himself acceptable by his loans, and the lady by her charms. Previous, however, to her becoming the wife of Palmer, Lord Chesterfield is said to have been her successful admirer, and, indeed, was generally considered to be the father of Lady Sussex, her eldest child. Charles was afterwards jealous of this previous attachment, which, says De Grammont, "as neither of them denied it, was the more generally believed." At the Restoration she hastened to England, where, at the age of twenty, she found its sovereign her slave, and her beauty admitted to be the most faultless in the kingdom. The King quitted the general rejoicings, to pass in her society the first evening of his return.

The arrival of a young Queen, which might have been expected to weaken the influence of the Duchess over her royal lover, appears, on the contrary, to have given it additional force. Charles, compelled to take part either with his wife or his mistress, unfortunately preferred her who possessed superior charms, and thus the King and his beautiful concubine were driven to form a closer compact than before.

The manner in which this abandoned woman was forced into the Queen's household has been related elsewhere. To effect this scandalous measure, or rather to confer on the royal mistress so considerable a post as that of a lady of the bedchamber, it was necessary that her husband should be raised to the peerage. Accordingly, after a brief interval of real or affected hesitation, he condescended to reap the reward of his own shame, and, in 1662, accepted the title of Earl of Castlemaine, in

Ireland. Hitherto the weak husband, whether from indifference to public opinion, or from some remaining feelings of attachment for the wife of his choice, had continued to linger in the scene of his disgrace, and in the society of those who were only too well acquainted with his domestic affairs. One of his cold and casual encounters with his beautiful wife is thus graphically described by Pepys:-"That," he says, speaking of one of his visits to the Court, "which pleased me best, was my Lady Castlemaine standing over against us upon a piece of Whitehall. But methought it was strange to see her lord and her upon the same place, walking up and down without taking notice of one another: only, at first entry, he put off his hat, and she made him a very civil salute, but afterwards took no notice one of another: but both of them now and then would take their child, which the nurse held in her arms, and dandle it."

But a misunderstanding shortly afterwards took place, which effected their entire estrangement. Singularly enough, the final separation between the weak lord and his worthless wife was caused, not by any feelings of enraged jealousy on the part of the former, but by a difference on religious subjects! The Earl, who was a Roman Catholic, had insisted that one of his children, or rather one of his wife's, should be baptised in the communion of that faith, to which Lady Castlemaine had originally consented. Some days afterwards, however, she audaciously announced the child to be the King's son, and expressed her intention of having it christened by a Protestant clergyman. Lord Castlemaine was naturally indignant. In spite, however, of his remonstrances, the infant was baptised according to the rites of the Protestant Church, Charles the Second, the Earl of Oxford, and the Countess of Suffolk standing sponsors

for it at the font. The Earl flew enraged to the Continent; Lady Castlemaine having anticipated him by carrying off all his money and jewels which she could collect together, with which she removed to her brother's house at Richmond, where she could be nearer to Hampton Court and to the King. Within a short time she was domesticated in apartments at Whitehall.

We will dismiss the unfortunate husband in a few words. During the raging of the Popish Plot, he was accused by Titus Oates of having conspired against the life of the King. According to this infamous witness, it was jealousy which led him to contemplate the crime, although the whole tenor of his conduct and character renders the circumstance improbable. Nevertheless, he was a bigoted Catholic, and, although acquitted at his trial, the charge of his having been implicated in a treasonable transaction would appear to be not altogether unfounded. Probably he owed his escape to his wife's discreditable connexion with the Court. Many there were who perished on the scaffold during that extraordinary period of excitement, against whom the evidence was less presumptive. On the accession of James, Lord Castlemaine was sent ambassador to the Papal Court. His instructions were "to reconcile the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland to the Holy See, from which, for more than an age, they had fallen off by heresy." Walpole says, " that the Pope received him with as little ceremony as his wife had done." Sanguine as James and his ambassador may have been, his Holiness appears to have been fully alive, not only to the folly, but to the actual danger of the attempt. Castlemaine made himself sufficiently ridiculous, and accordingly his zeal was laughed at even in the hot-bed of Catholicism. Whenever his lordship referred to the object of his