departure for Rochelle, when he said to the duke, “George, there are some that wish both these and thou mightest perish together; but care not for them; we will both perish together, if thou doest!"

A few days before the duke went on his last expedition, he gave a farewell masque and supper at York-house to their majesties. In the masque the duke appeared followed by Envy, with many open-mouthed dogs, which were to represent the barkings of the people, while next came Fame and Truth; and the court allegory expressed the king's sentiment and the duke's sanguine hope.

Thus resolutely engaged in the very cause the people had so much at heart, the blood Buckingham would have sealed it with was shed by one of the people themselves; the enterprise, designed to retrieve the national honour, long tarnished, was prevented; and the Protestant cause suffered by one who imagined himself to be, and was blest by nearly the whole nation as, a patriot! Such are the effects of the exaggerations of popular delusion.

I find the following epitaph on Buckingham in a manuscript letter of the times. Its condensed bitterness of spirit gives the popular idea of his unfortunate attempts.

THE DUKE'S EPITAPH.

If idle trav'llers ask who lieth here,

Let the duke's tomb this for inscription bear;

Paint Cales and Rhé, make French and Spanish laugh;
Mix England's shame-and there's his epitaph!

Before his last fatal expedition, among the many libels which abounded, I have discovered a manuscript satire, entitled "Rhodomontados." The thoughtless minister is made to exult in his power over the giddy-headed multitude. Buckingham speaks in his own person; and we have here preserved those false rumours and those aggravated feelings then floating among the people: a curious instance of those

* The correct title is "The copie of his Grace's most excellent Rotomontados, sent by his servant the Lord Grimes, in answer to the Lower House of Parliament, 1628." It is preserved in the Sloane MS. No. 826 (British Museum), and begins thus:

VOL. II.

Avaunt you giddy-headed multitude

And do your worst of spite; I never sued

To gain your votes, though well I know your ends
To ruin me, my fortune, and my friends.

BB

heaped up calumnies which are often so heavily laid on the head of a prime minister, no favourite with the people.

'Tis not your threats shall take me from the king!—

Nor questioning my counsels and commands,
How with the honour of the state it stands;
That I lost Rhé, and with such loss of men,
As scarcely time can e'er repair again;
Shall aught affright me; or the care to see
The narrow seas from Dunkirk clear and free;
Or that you can enforce the king believe,
I from the pirates a third share receive;
Or that I correspond with foreign states
(Whether the king's foes or confederates)
To plot the ruin of the king and state,
As erst you thought of the Palatinate;
Or that five hundred thousand pounds doth lie
In the Venice bank to help Spain's majesty;
Or that three hundred thousand more doth rest
In Dunkirk, for the arch-duchess to contest
With England, whene'er occasion offers;
Or that by rapine I fill up my coffers;
Nor that an office in church, state, or court,
Is freely given, but they must pay me for't.
Nor shall you ever prove I had a hand
In poisoning of the monarch of this land,
Or the like hand by poisoning to intox
Southampton, Oxford, Hamilton, Lennox.
Nor shall you ever prove by magic charms,
I wrought the king's affection or his harms.
Nor fear I if ten Vitrys now were here,
Since I have thrice ten Ravilliacs as near.
My power shall be unbounded in each thing,
If once I use these words, "I and the king."

Seem wise, and cease then to perturb the realm,
Or strive with him that sits and guides the helm.

I know your reading will inform you soon,

What creatures they were, that barkt against the moon.
I'll give you better counsel as a friend :

Cobblers their latchets ought not to transcend;
Meddle with common matters, common wrongs;
To the House of Commons common things belongs.
Leave him the oar that best knows how to row,
And state to him that best the state doth know.
If I by industry, deep reach, or grace,

Am now arriv'd at this or that great place,
Must I, to please your inconsiderate rage,

Throw down mine honours? Will nought else assuage
Your furious wisdoms? True shall the verse be yet-
There's no less wit required to keep, than get.
Though Lambe be dead, I'll stand, and you shall see
I'll smile at them that can but bark at me.

After Buckingham's death, Charles the First cherished his memory as warmly as his life, advanced his friends, and designed to raise a magnificent monument to his memory ;* and if any one accused the duke, the king always imputed the fault to himself. The king said, "Let not the duke's enemies seek to catch at any of his offices, for they will find themselves deceived." Charles called Buckingham "his martyr!" and often said the world was much mistaken in the duke's character; for it was commonly thought the duke ruled his majesty; but it was much the contrary, having been his most faithful and obedient servant in all things, as the king said he would make sensibly appear to the world. Indeed, after the death of Buckingham, Charles showed himself extremely active in business. Lord Dorchester wrote"The death of Buckingham causes no changes; the king holds in his own hands the total direction, leaving the executory part to every man within the compass of his charge."+ This is one proof, among many, that Charles the First was not the puppet-king of Buckingham, as modern historians have imagined.

FELTON, THE POLITICAL ASSASSIN.

FELTON, the assassin of the Duke of Buckingham, by the growing republican party was hailed as a Brutus, rising, in the style of a patriotic bard,

Refulgent from the stroke.-AKENSIDE.

Gibbon has thrown a shade of suspicion even over Brutus's "god-like stroke," as Pope has exalted it. In Felton, a man acting from mixed and confused motives, the political martyr is entirely lost in the contrite penitent; he was, however, considered in his own day as a being almost beyond humanity. Mrs. Macaulay has called him a "lunatic," because the duke had not been assassinated on the right principle. His motives appeared even inconceivable to his contemporaries; for Sir

* The duke was buried among the royal personages in Henry the Seventh's chapel. His heart was placed in a monument erected in Portsmouth church, which, "greatly in contravention of religious decorum, usurped the place of the altar-piece," until a few years since, when it was very properly removed to one of the side aisles.

+ Sloane MSS. 4178, letter 519.

Henry Wotton, who has written a Life of the Duke of Buckingham, observes, that "what may have been the immediate or greatest motive of that felonious conception (the duke's assassination) is even yet in the clouds." After ascertaining that it was not private revenge, he seems to conclude that it was Dr. Eglisham's furious "libel," and the "remonstrance" of the parliament, which, having made the duke "one of the foulest monsters on earth," worked on the dark imagination of Felton.

From Felton's memorable example, and some similar ones, one observation occurs worth the notice of every minister of state who dares the popular odium he has raised. Such a minister will always be in present danger of a violent termination to his career; for however he may be convinced that there is not political virtue enough in a whole people to afford "the god-like stroke," he will always have to dread the arm of some melancholy enthusiast, whose mind, secretly agitated by the public indignation, directs itself solely on him. It was some time after having written this reflection, that I discovered the following notice of the Duke of Buckingham in the unpublished Life of Sir Symonds D'Ewes. "Some of his friends had advised him how generally he was hated in England, and how needful it would be for his greater safety to wear some coat of mail, or some other secret defensive armour, which the duke slighting, said, ' It needs not; there are no Roman spirits left.'"*

An account of the contemporary feelings which sympathised with Felton, and almost sanctioned the assassin's deed, I gather from the MS. letters of the times. The public mind, through a long state of discontent, had been prepared for, and not without an obscure expectation of, the mortal end of Buckingham. It is certain the duke received many warnings which he despised. The assassination kindled a tumult of joy throughout the nation, and a state-libel was written in strong characters in the faces of the people.† The passage of Felton to London, after the assassination, seemed a triumph. Now pitied, and now blessed, mothers held up

* Harl. MSS. 646.

+ One of the poems written at the time begins :

The Duke is dead!-and we are rid of strife
By Felton's hand that took away his life.

Another declares of his assassin :

He shall sit next to Brutus !

their children to behold the saviour of the country; and an old woman exclaimed, as Felton passed her, with a scriptural allusion to his short stature, and the mightiness of Buckingham, "God bless thee, little David!" Felton was nearly sainted before he reached the metropolis. His health was the reigning toast among the republicans. A character, somewhat remarkable, Alexander Gill (usher under his father, Dr. Gill, master of St. Paul's school), who was the tutor of Milton, and his dear friend afterwards, and perhaps from whose impressions in early life Milton derived his vehement hatred of Charles, was committed by the Star-chamber, heavily fined, and sentenced to lose his ears,* on three charges, one of which arose from drinking a health to Felton. At Trinity College Gill said that the king was fitter to stand in a Cheapside shop, with an apron before him, and say, What lack ye? than to govern a kingdom; that the duke was gone down to hell to see king James; and drinking a health to Felton, added he was sorry Felton had deprived him of the honour of doing that brave act. In the taste of that day, they contrived a political anagram of his name, to express the immovable self-devotion he showed after the assassination, never attempting to escape; and John Felton, for the nonce, was made to read,

Noh! flie not!

But while Felton's name was echoing through the kingdom, our new Brutus was at this moment exhibiting a piteous spectacle of remorse; so different often is the real person himself from the ideal personage of the public. The assassination, with him, was a sort of theoretical one, depending, as we shall show, on four propositions; so that when the king's attorney, as the attorney-general was then called, had furnished the unhappy criminal with an unexpected argument, which appeared to him to have overturned his, he declared that he had been in a mistake; and lamenting that he had not been aware of it before, from that instant his conscientious spirit sunk into despair. In the open court he stretched out his arm, offering it as the offending instrument to be first cut

* The fine, fixed originally at £2000, was mitigated, and the corporal punishment remitted, at the desire of the Bishop of London.

The MS. letter giving this account observes, that the words concerning his majesty were not read in open court, but only those relating to the duke and Felton.