Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

BORN A. D. 1627.—died a. d. 1688.

THIS brilliant but abandoned nobleman was the son of George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham, by Lady Catherine Manners. He was an infant of only one year at the time of his father's assassination by Felton.

He studied at Cambridge; and, having performed the usual continental tour, was presented at court. On the decline of the king's cause he attended Prince Charles into Scotland. After the battle of Worcester, he retired to the continent, and attached himself to the exiled court. Desirous, however, of retrieving his affairs, he came privately to England, and, in 1657, married Mary, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, through whose influence he recovered a considerable portion of his forfeited property. He contrived, however, to preserve his interest with the king, while thus making his peace with the parliament, for, immediately after the Restoration, we find him appointed one of the lords of the bed-chamber, and master of the horse.

In 1666 he forfeited his high offices by engaging in some very treasonable practices, the object of which seems to have been nothing less than to have thrown the whole kingdom into a state of rebellion, and to have availed himself of whatever opportunity might have presented itself during the crisis for gratifying his boundless ambition and rapacity. The detection of the plot at first highly irritated the king, who threatened to proceed to extremities against the duke. But, within less than a year after, we find him restored to his seat in the privy-council, and his offices at court. Charles was too much dependent on the ministers of his pleasures to deprive his court of the presence of one so fitted by his varied accomplishments to amuse and gratify him. But the duke's malevolence and love of intrigue suffered no abatement from his experience of the past. He is supposed, on pretty good evidence, to have been the prime instigator of Blood's atrocious attempt to put the duke of Ormond to death. Ormond had taken an active part in exposing Buckingham's treasonable practices, and that was sufficient to excite the latter to the deadliest purposes of revenge.

A still more infamous transaction was his murder of the earl of Shrewsbury in a duel, after having debauched his countess. Malone nas copied the following account of this affair from a MS. letter, dated Whitehall, 10th January, 1673-4:-" Upon Wednesday the 7th, the two houses met. In the lords' house, immediately upon his majesty's recess, the earl of Westmoreland brought in a petition against the duke of Bucks, in the name of the young earl of Shrewsbury, desiring justice against him for murdering his father, making his mother a whore, and keeping her now as an infamous strumpet. To this the duke replied-'Tis true he had had the hard fortune to kill the earl of Shrewsbury, but it was upon the greatest provocation in the world;

See Carte's Life of the duke of Ormond.

:

that he had fought him twice before, and had as often given him his life that he had threatened to pistol him wherever he should meet him, if he could not fight him: that for these reasons the king had given him his pardon. To the other part of the petition concerning the Lady Shrewsbury, he said he knew not how far his conversation with that lady was cognizable by that house; but if that had given offence, she was now gone to a retirement." The whole transaction may afford some idea of the profligacy of the reign in which such a tragedy could be acted with impunity; for although a day was appointed to consider the petition, it does not appear that any thing farther was done in the business, and Buckingham continued at court, the favoured and envied of all his competitors.

In 1671, this notoriously profligate and abandoned nobleman wa installed chancellor of the university of Cambridge. Soon after, he was sent on an embassy to the French court, where his manners and person fascinated the king so much that on his departure he presented him with a sword and belt, set with jewels, and valued at 40,000 pistules.

In 1674, a change seems to have come over the whole policy of the duke. He now courted the favour of the puritan party, and set himself in sturdy opposition to the court. But about the period of Charles's death, his own health became so much affected that he was reluctantly compelled to retire into the country to recruit himself. The spot which he made choice of with this view was his own manor of Helmesley, in Yorkshire. Here he generally passed his time betwixt the sports of the chace and the pleasures of the table. An ague and fever which he caught by sitting on the ground after a long hunt, terminated his life. The attack was so sudden and violent that he could not be removed to his own house, but was conducted to a wretched village inn, where, after languishing three days, he expired, unregretted, and almost unattended. He had lived the life of a profligate, and he died the death of an outcast.

It is impossible to say any thing favourable of such a man as Villiers, whose sole aim throughout life seems to have been self-gratification, and who scrupled not to commit any crime in the pursuit of this single object. He was a wit, and his writings possess considerable merit. particularly his comedy of the Rehearsal.'

plague in London, he threw a barrister's gown over his shoulders, and presenting himself at the Kingston assizes, was allowed, nemine contradicente, to commence the practice of his profession. Whether the fact was so or not, it is hardly worth while to inquire. Had no other stain attached to the memory of Jefferies but such an allegation as this, his name might have stood well with posterity; men would rather have admired the boldness and force of character which the incident displays, than esteemed it any solid ground of reproach. The arts which he seems to have early practised to obtain business, form a more serious ground of reproach. From the moment of his becoming a candidate for the public patronage, he seems to have lost sight of no artifice by which it seemed possible for him to engross favour; he fawned, truckled, stooped to a thousand meannesses, until he had so far won upon the good will of the citizens of London that, upon the 17th of March, 1670, on the resignation of Sir Richard Browne, he was appointed common sergeant. Some years after, the office of recorder becoming vacant, he solicited and obtained that appointment, through his intimacy with Chiffinch, the king's favourite page. From this point in his history, we find him devoting soul and body to the one great object of gaining fa

vour at court.

In 1680, he was made a Welsh judge. In 1681, he was created a baronet, having previously succeeded Sir Job Charlton as chief-justice of Chester, or rather compelled Sir Job to vacate his seat for him, and to accept of the seat of a puisne judge in the common pleas. In his office of recorder, it was Sir George's duty, as crown counsel, to conduct a number of the prosecutions arising out of the pretended Popish plot. At first, he exhibited considerable leniency towards the accused, but latterly he conducted himself with a harshness and brutality, set at defiance every principle of justice, and shocked and disgusted the spectators. Perhaps he had really wrought himself up into a conviction of the guilt of the prisoners, but, granting it were even so, his conduct was utterly unjustifiable, for it set at nought every maxim of executive jurisprudence. Nor was he content with urging the conviction of the parties at the bar; he seized the opportunity, which his frequent addresses to the court afforded him, of inculcating many highly unconstitutional doctrines, and that with the view of ingratiating himself still further with the court. At last, the resentment of the commons was roused against this creature of the government, and an address was moved and ordered, praying for the removal of Sir George Jefferies from all public offices. Jefferies trembled for the result, and submitted to receive a reprimand on his knees at the bar of the house. He also immediately resigned his office of recorder. he continued the same abject and heartless creature of the court that he had formerly proved himself to be. In the trials of Fitzharris, and of Plunket, Colledge, and others, he displayed the greatest acrimony and violence. But it was in the prosecutions which followed the discovery of the Rye-house plot that his true character revealed itself in the most palpable and decided manner. He did such good service to the government on this occasion, and especially on the trial of Lord John Russell, that it was impossible to overlook his unrivalled fitness for the highest judicial station. On the death of Sir Edmund Saunders, chief-justice of the king's bench, Jefferies was named to the vacaut

Yet

office. Soon afterwards he was sworn in as a member of the privy. council. Finally, on the 15th of May, 1685, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Jefferies of Wem.

The trial of Algernon Sydney afforded Jefferies another signal op. portunity of gratifying his patron at the small expense of truth, honour, justice, and the blood of a fellow-creature. And yet it is astonishing with what coolness of mind he seems to have looked back upo these deeds of his. Thus, in his summing up on the trial of Sir S Barnardiston, we find him indulging in the following language:"Then here is, as I said, the sainting of two horrid conspirators! Here is the Lord Russell sainted, that blessed martyr; my Lord Russell, that good man, that excellent protestant! he is lamented, and what an extraordinary man he was, who was fairly tried and justly convicted, and attainted for having a hand in this horrid conspiracy against the life of the king, and his dearest brother, his royal highness, and for the subversion of the government. And here is Mr Sydney sainted! What an extraordinary man he was! Yes, surely, he was a very good man, because you may some of you remember, or have read the history of those times, and know what share Mr Sydney had in that black and horrid villany, that cursed treason and murder-the murder, I mean, of King Charles I., of blessed memory; a shame to religion itself, a perpetual reproach to the island we live in, to think that a prince should be brought, by pretended methods of law and justice, to such an end at his own palace. And it is a shame to think that such bloody miscreants should be sainted and lamented, who had any hand in that horrid murder and treason, and who, to their dying moments, when they were upon the brink of eternity, and just stepping into another world, could confidently bless God for their being engaged in that good cause, as they call it, which was the rebellion which brought that blessed martyr to his death. It is high time for all mankind that have any Christianity, or sense of heaven or hell, to bestir themselves, to rid the nation of such caterpillars, such monsters of villany as these are."1 Jefferies was of course bound to hate the presbyterians with as thorough a hatred as his royal master. The trial of Baxter for what was called a seditious libel, afforded him a good opportunity for displaying his anti-presbyterian principles. How well he improved it, and with what success, may be seen in our sketch of his illustrious victim. Monmouth's rebellion occasioned the despatch of Jefferies to the west, not only with a commission of oyer and terminer, but with a military commission as general of the west. Thus invested with full civil and military powers, Jefferies marked his progress with blood. No considerations of humanity or justice seem ever to have been present to his mind. He sought only to extirpate all to whom even the suspicion of political disaffection attached. At last, to use the words of Mr Roscoe,"stained with the blood of the aged, the weak, and the defenceless, Jefferies returned to the capital, to claim from the hands of the master he had so faithfully and acceptably served, the reward due to his singular merits. That reward was immediately conferred upon him; on the 28th of September he received the great seal, and was appointed lord-high-chancellor "

State Trials, vol. ix. p. 1353.

It would appear, that Jefferies was scarcely seated on the wool-sack, before his influence began to wane at court. "I am very confident," says a letter-writer in the Ellis correspondence, "that matters are brewing to break the neck of our wide-mouthed, high paced &c. and as conjurors throw a dog or a cat to allay the devil with, so he may be thrown as a choosing morsel to the next parliament." The 'dog,' however, was resolved to shun his fate, if he could, by another piece of villany. By the advice of his chancellor, James resorted to the infatuated step of establishing an ecclesiastical commission, in which Jefferies bore himself so arrogantly, and with such outrageous violation of the most ordinary principles of justice, that the whole kingdom was thrown into a flame. At last the prince of Orange landed, and James fled from London. Jefferies, aware that for him at least no hope of mercy remained, hastened to follow his master's example. The following narrative of his abortive attempt at escape is taken from The Lives of the Chancellors :-" The chancellor, now without protection, having rendered himself obnoxious to most people, and being perfectly hated by the nation, on Monday, between three and four in the morning, withdrew, and having in disguise got down safe to Wapping, put himself on board a collier, which was pretended to be bound for Newcastle, but indeed was designed for Hamburgh; but some persons having notice thereof, by means of the mate, they went to a justice for a warrant to apprehend him; but he thought fit to put them off, whereupon they applied themselves forthwith to the lords of the council, who granted them a warrant, and they went immediately to search the ship. But he, on Tuesday night, not thinking himself safe on board the collier in which he was to pass, lay in another ship hard by, so that those who came that day to search for him missed of him on board, but had information given them that he was hard by at a little peddling alehouse, where accordingly they found him, being the sign of the Red Cow, in Anchor and Hope Alley, near King Edward's Stairs, from whence they immediately hurried him in a coach, guarded with several blunderbusses, to the lord mayor's; where the crowd was so great, and the rabble so numerous, all crying out together, Vengeance! Justice! Justice! that the lord mayor was forced to come out into his balcony, with his hat in his hand, and to desire the people to go away and keep peace, and did promise them that he had already sent to the lords of the council about the matter, and that they should have justice done them, and that in the mean time their prisoner should be safely guarded. Whereupon the people withdrew, and soon after my lord, under a strong guard, was sent to the lords of the council, who committed him to the Tower, where he continued to the 18th of April, 1689, when he was freed by death from his earthly confinement. He had for some years before been subject to terrible fits of the stone, which in all probability now accelerated his death, though others gave out he abandoned himself to excessive drinking, thinking to support his sinking spirits by it, and that that helped forward to put a period to his life. He was buried privately in the Tower the Sunday night following, by an order his relations got from King William." Burnet adds to his account of the capture of Jefferies, that "the lord mayor was so struck with the terror of the rude populace, and with the disgrace of a man who had