to two kings; who, in the height of his fortune and flower of his age, engaged his estate and exposed his life, in the service of his king and country.

The name of Villiers is ancient and honourable in France and England Philip de Villiers L'isle Adam, was the last great master of Rhodes, and defended it six months against the Turkish emperor, Solyman.

The duke's mother was the Lady Katherine Manners, sole daughter and heir of Francis earl of Rutland.

He was born at Wallingford house in Westminster, Jan. 30, 1627.

His elder brother, Charles, died an infant. His sister Mary was dutchess of Richmond and Lennox. His brother Francis was born at Chelsea, after his father's death.

The duke inherited from his father the greatest title, and from his mother the greatest estate of any subject in England; and from them both so graceful a body, as gave a lustre to the ornaments of his mind, and made him the glory of the English court at home and abroad.

The first visit the king made to the dutchess after her husband's death, he was pleased to say, He would be a husband to her, a father to her children; and he performed his promise.

The dutchess was then great with child, and the king said, He would be godfather: Francis earl of Rutland, the child's grandfather, was the other. They complimented who should give the name. The king named him Francis, and the grandfather gave him his benediction, seven thousand pounds a year. The duke and his brother, Francis, were bred up by king Charles,* *Soin the with his own children, the same tutors and governors.

orig. They were sent to Trinity College in Cambridge, their names entered in the college-book the same year with prince Charles.

Here the duke became acquainted with two excellent men, Mr. Ab. Cowley, and Mr. Martin Clifford, whom he loved ever after, and they as faithfully and affectionately served him. [To these two a third was added afterwards, who had an equal share with them in his affection, his domestic chaplain; and it was a good argument of his own wit and judgment, and good In the orig. rature, that he knew how to value a man who had all these this sentence and other good qualities to recommend him.t]

is interlined.

From hence they went to the king at Oxford, laying their lives and fortunes at his feet, as a testimony of their loyalty and gratitude, worthy to be imprinted in the memory of the royal family. This they did, not in words and compliments; for they lost their estates, and one of them, soon after, his life. At Oxford they chose two good tutors to enter them in the war, prince Rupert and my lord Gerard; and went with them into very sharp service: the storming of the close at Litchfield.

At their return to Oxford, the dutchess, their mother, was very angry with my lord Gerard, for tempting her sons into such danger; but he told her, it was their own inclination, and the more danger the more honour.

For this the parliament seized on their estates, but by a rare example of their compassion, restored it again in consideration of their nonage: but the young men kept it no longer than till they came to be at age to forfeit it again. About this time their mother married the marquis of Antrim, and thereby offended the king, and ruined herself.

They were now committed to the care of the earl of Northumberland, and were sent to travel in France and Italy, where they lived in as great state as some of those sovereign princes. Florence and Rome were the places of their residence, and they brought their religion home again, wherein they had been educated under the eye of the most devout and best of kings. The duke did not, as his predecessor, in the title of Lord Ross, had done before him, who changed his religion at Rome, and left his tutor, Mr. Mole, in the inquisition, for having translated king James's book, his admonition to princes. into latin; and Du Pleffis Morney's book of the mass into english.

Their return into England was in so critical a time, as if they had now chosen the last opportunity, as they had done the first, of venturing all in the king's service.

In the year 1648 the king was a prisoner in the isle of Wight, and his friends in several parts of England designing to renew the war; duke Hamilton in

Scotland, the earl of Holland and others in Surry, Goring in Kent, many in London and Essex, and these were the last efforts of the dying cause.

The duke and brother, my lord Francis, in the heat of their courage, engaged with the earl of Holland; and were the first that took the field about Rygate in Surry.

The parliament, with their old army, knew all these designs, and despised them; till they grew so numerous in Kent, that the general himself was sent to suppress them, who found sharp service in storming of Maidstone, and taking of Colchester.

Some troops of horse were sent, under the command of colonel Gibbons, to suppress them in Surry; and they drove my lord of Holland before them to Kingston, but engaged his party before they got thither, near Nonsuch, and defeated them.

My lord Francis, at the head of his troop having his horse slain under him, got to an oak tree in the high way 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 beau tiful face and body, he was slain. The oak tree is his monument, and has the two first letters of his name F. V. cut in it to this day.

Thus died this noble, valiant, and beautiful youth, in the twentieth year of his age. A few days before his death, when he left London, he ordered his steward, Mr. John May, to bring him in a list of his debts, and he so charged his estate with them, that the parliament, who seized on the estate, payed his debts. His body was brought from Kingston by water to York house in the Strand, and was there embaimed and deposited in his father's vault in Henry VIIth's chapel, at the abbey of Westminster; with this inscription, which it is a pity should be buried with him:

Depositum

Illustrissimi domini Francisci Villiers Ingentis specie juvenis

Filii posthumi Georgii

Ducis Buckinghamii

Qui vicesimo ætatis anno
Pro rege Carolo
Et patria
Fortier pugnando

Novem honestis vulneribus acceptis

Obiit vii° die Julii

Anno Domino 1648.

The body of the illustrious lord Francis Villiers, a most beautiful youth, the posthumous son of George duke of Buckingham, who, in the 20th year of his age, fighting valiantly for king Charles and his country, having nine honourable wounds, died the 7th of July, 1648.

The duke, after the loss of his brother, hardly escaped with his life to St. Neods, whither also came the earl of Holland, who was there taken, and soon after beheaded.

The duke, the next morning finding the house where he lay surrounded, and a troop of horse drawn up before the gate, had time with his servants to get to horse, and then causing the gate to be opened, he charged the enemy, and killed the officer at the head of them, and made his escape to the sea-side, and to prince Charles who was in the Downs with those ships that had deserted the earl of Warwick.

And now again the parliament gave him forty days time to return to England, but he refused, and chose rather to stay with the prince, who was soon after king Charles the Second, and to follow him in his exile.

The parliament seized on his estate, the greatest of any subject in England, having now his brother's estate fallen to him; the yearly value was above £25,000.

It happened that the manor of Helmesly, which was his brother's, was given to my lord Fairfax, with York-house in the Strand, for part of his arrears, and this fortunately came to him by his marrying my lord Fairfax's daughter. All that he had to live on beyond sea was the money he got at Antwerp for his pictures, which were part of that costly and curious collection his father got together from Italy, by the help of Sir Henry Wotton and others, which adorned York-house, to the admiration of all men of judgment in pictures: A note of their names and dimensions is all that is now left of them. The Ecce Homo of Titian was valued at £5000 being the figure of all the

great persons in his time. The arch-duke bought it, and it is now in the castle of Prague. These pictures were secured and sent to him by his old trusty servant, Mr. John Trayleman, who lived in York-house.

The king resolving to go into Scotland, the duke attended him, and now again the parliament offered him to compound for his estate for £20,000, which was less than a year's value; but he chose to run the king's fortune in Scotland, worse than exile, came with him out of Scotland into England; and at Worcester his escape was almost as miraculous as the king's in the royal oak. He escaped again into France, and went a voluntier into the French army, and was much regarded by all the great officers, signalizing his courage at the siege of Arras and Valenciennes.

When he came to the English court, which was but seldom, the king was always glad to see him. He loved his person and his company; but the great men about him desired rather his room than his company.

There now happened a great turn in the course of his life. My lord Fairfax had part of his estate, about £5000 per ann. allotted him by the parliament towards the payment of his arrears due to him as general, and he remitted more than would have purchased a greater estate. They gave him the mannor of Helmesly, the seat of the noble family of Rutland in Yorkshire, as a salve for the wound he received there, being shot through the body. They gave him also York-house in London, which was also the duke's. The duke heard how kind and generous my lord Fairfax was to the countess of Derby, in paying all the rents of the Isle of Man, which the parliament had also assigned to him for his arrears, into her own hands, and she confessed it was more than all her servants before had done.

The duke had reason to hope my lord had the same inclinations as to this estate of his, which he never accounted his own, and the duke wanted it as much as the countess.

He was not deceived in his hopes, for my lord Fairfax wished only for an opportunity of doing it. He lived in York-house, where every chamber was adorned with the arms of Villiers and Manners, lions and peacocks. He was descended from the same ancestors, earls of Rutland. Sir Guy Fairfax his two sons having married two of the daughters of the earl of Rutland; which my lord took frequent occasion to remember.

The duke resolved to try his fortune, which had hitherto been adverse enough, and he had some revenge on her, by his translation of the ode in Horace Fortuna sævis læta negotiis. Over he came into England, to make love to his only daughter, a most virtu us and amiable lady. He found a friend to propose it, and I think it was Mr. Robert Harlow.

The parents consented, and the young lady could not resist his charms, being the most graceful and beautiful person that any court in Europe ever saw, &c. All his trouble in wooing was, He came, saw, and conquered.

When he came into England he was not sure either of life or liberty. He was an outlaw, and had not made his peace with Cromwell, who would have forbid the banns if he had known of his coming over. He had a greater share of his estate, had daughters to marry, and would not have liked such a conjunction of Mars and Mercury, as was in this alliance; knowing my lord's affections to the royal family, which did afterwards produce good effects towards its restoration.

They were married at Nun-Appleton, six miles from York, Sept. 7, 1657, a new and noble house built by my lord Fairfax, and where he kept as nobie hospitality. His friend, Ab. Cowley, wrote an epithalamium, now printed. When Cromwell heard of it, he rested not till he had him in the tower, and would have brought him to Tower-hill had he lived a fortnight longer.

He had liberty given him to be at York-house with his lady; but going to Cobham to see his sister, he was taken, and sent to the tower.

This so angered my lord Fairfax that he went to Whitehall to the protector, and expostulated the case so as it put him into great passion, turning abruptly

from him in the gallery at Whitehall, cocking his hat, and So in the orig.

throwing his cloak under his arm. as he used to do when he

was angry. Thus I saw him take his last leave of his old acquaintance, Cromwell, whose servants expected he would be sent to bear the duke company the tower the next morning, but the protector was wiser in his passion.

I carried the duke the news of the protector's death, and he had then leave to be a prisoner at Windsor castle, where his friend Ab. Cowley was his constant companion. Richard Cromwell scon after abdicated, and then his liberty came of course.

This was the happiest time of all the duke's life, when he went to his fatherin-law's house at Appleton, and there lived orderly and decently with his own wife, where he neither wanted, nor so abounded as to be tempted to any sort of extravagance, as he was after when he came to possess his whole estate. He now understood the meaning of that paradox, Dimidium plus toto, witn which he used to pose young scholars; and found by experience, that the half or third part of his own estate which he now enjoyed, was more than the vole which he had at the king and his restauration.

Now he lived a most regular life, no courtships but to his own wife, not so much as to his after-beloved and costly mistress, the philosopher's stone.

My lord Fairfax was much pleased with his company, and to see him so conformable to the orders and good government of the family. If they had any plots together, they were to the best purposes, the restoration of the royal family.

My lord Fairfax's maxims in politicks was, that the old veteran army which he had commanded, was not to be beaten by any new rais'd force in England; and that the king's friends shewed more affection than discretion in their plots, to restore them while they were united: and that this old army would never be beaten but by itself; as the event shewed, when Lambert and Monk divided them. But the most fatal influence of this opinion in my lord Fairfax was the night before the thirtieth of January, when some of his friends proposed to him to attempt the next day to rescue the king, telling him that twenty thousand men were ready to join with him; he said, he was ready to venture his own life, but not the lives of others against the army now united against them.

The same appeared in the insurrection of sir George Booth, which Lambert, with a brigade of this old army, did so easily suppress; the success whereof inspired him with the ambition of imitating Cromwell, in dissolving the parliament, and making himself protector.

The duke had given sufficient testimony of his loyalty, and my lord Fairfax of his affection and desire to see the royal family restored; and now was the time of doing it.

General Monk in Scotland declared against Lambert, who marched against him with a strong body of horse.

My lord Fairfax, and the duke with him, declared for Monk in Yorkshire; but the duke was obliged to withdraw, because his presence gave a jealousy, that the design was to bring in the king, which was too soon to be owned.

What the event was is well known. I shall only repeat the duke's words in an expostulatory letter to king Charles some years after.

"As to your majesty's return into England, I may justly pretend to soin share; since without my lord Fairfax his engaging in Yorkshire, Lambert's army had never quitted him, nor the duke of Albemarle marched out of Scotland."

The king's restoration, volvenda dies en attulit ultro, restored the duke to his estate, but such a train of expence with it, as brought him acquainted with bankers and scriveners, that infested it with the gangreen of usury, which it never recovered.

At the king's coronation no subject appeared in greater splendor. None kept greater hospitality than he did at Wallingford-house, especially for the French nobility that came over. This engaged him in play, which had he continued, his estate had not lasted so long; but he resolved to give it over, and kept his resolution ever after. He was moderate in all his expences, his table, stable, laboratory. All the king's favours to him were occasions of great expence. His lord lieutenancy in Yorkshire cost him more than it did all that succeeded him. The master of the horses cost him twenty thousand pounds to the duke of Albemarle.

His embassies into France and Holland cost him more than a diamond ring could recompense: that into Holland (setting aside the politick part of it, being a consequence of that into France.

We took barge at Whitehall, June 1673, and lay that night on board the English admiral at the buoy in the Nore, the king and duke being there. The next night we came to anchor in our yacht in the Dutch fleet on the coast of Holland. The next night we were entertained by the states in the Hague. The next night we supp'd with the prince of Orange at his camp at Bodegrave. Next night with the king of France at Utrecht, where we staid two or three days, and then march'd back with him at the head of his army to Arnheim, where we visited the prince de Conde, who lay ill there of a wound in his arm, which he got passing the Rhine at Tolhna, and Marshal Turin. Thence we went with the king to Nimeguen, Grave, Boxtell, and there we parted. The king went to Paris, and we into the Spanish dominions, to Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Dunkirk, and Calais; where our yachts stayed for us, and we came to Dover, Canterbury, London; where we arrived the day month that we left it.

He was sent ambassador into France, where he was highly carressed by the king, and many of the nobility his old acquaintance. This was before the other into Holland. At his return he was chosen chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and entertained them nobly at York-house, where his father had done it on the same occasion forty years before.

He now seemed to be setting up for a favourite, but he wanted his father's diligence, which fitted him to stand before princes.

He fell into a new way of expence in building, in that sort of architecture which Cicero calls, Insane substructiones; and himself, when his friends dissuaded him from it, called it his folly.

The world has been severe in censuring his foibles, but not so just in noting his good qualities.

For his person, he was the glory of the age and any court wherever he came. Of a most graceful and charming mien and behaviour; a strong, tall and active body, all which gave a lustre to the ornaments of his mind; of an admirable wit and excellent judgment; and had all other qualities of a gentleman. He was courteous and affable to all; of a compassionate nature; ready to forgive and forget injuries. What was said of a great man in the court of queen Elizabeth, that he used to vent his discontents at court by writing from company, and writing sonnetts, may be said of him; but when he was provoked by the malice of some and ingratitude of others, he might shew that a good natured man might have an ill natured muse.

He gave a good instance of his readiness to forgive injuries. When a considerable man at court did him an injury, which he was fearful he would resent, he desired a friend to mediate for him, and endeavour a reconciliation, which he undertook. The duke told him that he did not remember he had ever injured him, if he had he freely forgave him.

His charitable disposition he seemed to inherit from his grandfather, Francis earl of Rutland, who used every quarter day at London to send his steward with bags of money to several prisons to relieve prisoners and pay their debts, bidding them thank God, and pray for their benefactor, but not telling them who it was.

He was a man of great courage and presence of mind in danger. One instance of it was when a melancholy-mad servant assaulted him with a drawn sword in his hand when he was at supper, and he with a knife disarmed him. The man was afterwards hanged for saying he would do it to the king.

The character which Sir Henry Wotton gives of his father might be said of him, viz.

"Among all the favourites which mine eyes have beheid in divers courts and times, I never saw before a strong heart and eminent condition sc clearly void of all pride and shocking arrogance either in his face or in his fashion.'

It is to be wished the rest of his father's character had been as true of him; his diligence and application to business, and that he had left his few honest servants in as good fortune as reputation, who never wronged him in his estate, nor flattered him in his faults, and thought they escaped well in aot being oppressed under the ruins of his fortune.

[When he fir began to settle his family he desired his old iends, A[braham] Cowley and M[artin] C[lifford] to recom

In the origin. al this para