The Children of Westminster Abbey Part 10

But Prince Henry's memorial is a less perishable one than "bra.s.s or stony monument." He has left behind him a memory fragrant with all that makes youth lovely and manhood n.o.ble--the record of a pure and good life, which will last, as the memory of every good life must last, when stone and marble has crumbled to dust.

NOTE.--While writing the above words on Gunpowder Plot, Jan.

24, 1885, Westminster Hall, the House of Commons and the White Tower in the Tower of London, all closely connected with the histories of these children of Westminster, were partially wrecked by "forces"--to use the words of an Austrian writer--"such as to make those of Guy Fawkes' time look almost childish."

FOOTNOTES:

[71] "Bavin." Hampshire for f.a.ggot.

[72] There are many different versions of this old rhyme in the different counties of England. I give the Hampshire one exactly as it is used.

[73] Birch. Life of Henry, Prince of Wales. p. 379.

[74] Birch. p. 91.

[75] Birch, p. 39.

[76] Birch, p. 208.

[77] Afterwards Charles the First.

[78] Green's Princesses. Vol. V. p. 170.

[79] State Papers. Dec. 19, 1612.

CHAPTER X.

LORD FRANCIS VILLIERS.

On the north side of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, close to King Henry's tomb, there is a small side chapel, divided off by a low wall of carved stone, and almost filled up by a magnificent monument. A splendid personage of the time of Charles the First, remarkably handsome, and dressed in robes of state, lies on the tomb beside his fair wife.

Allegorical figures stand at the four corners. The rec.u.mbent effigies are in bra.s.s, richly gilded. Behind their heads kneel three children, a boy and two girls, beautifully carved in marble; and above this trio an exquisite child leans on his elbow, tired out with grief and fallen gently asleep.

Standing beside this tomb, Dean Stanley says:

We seem to be present in the Court of Charles as we look at its fantastic ornaments ("Fame even bursting herself, and trumpets to tell the news of his so sudden fall") and its pompous inscriptions calling each State in Europe severally to attest the several virtues of this "Enigma of the World."[80]

Who, we may well ask, is this man who lies buried among the tombs of the kings of England, in state far exceeding that accorded to many sovereigns?

Every one who has read the history of the reigns of James the First and Charles the First will remember the most famous, and perhaps most dangerous of all the court favorites who helped to bring ruin upon England--George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

His story reads like a chapter out of the _Arabian Nights_:

Never any man in any age, nor, I believe, in any country or nation, rose in so short a time to so much greatness of honour, fame, and fortune, upon no other advantage or recommendation than the beauty and gracefulness of his person.[81]

Young and exceedingly handsome, George Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire squire, was taken into favor by James the First, on the disgrace of his first favorite, the Earl of Rochester. In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time "Steenie," as his royal masters called him, rose through every rank of the peerage to a dukedom, and to the actual direction of English policy. Haughty, reckless, selfish, his only good quality was his personal bravery.

This was the man whose evil influence made itself felt throughout England, who plunged the country into disastrous wars and encouraged King Charles in those fatal measures which at last brought him to the scaffold. When Charles the First came to the throne in 1625, Buckingham was at the height of his glory and power. In vain did Parliament remonstrate with the king. In vain did they pet.i.tion him again and again to rid himself of a favorite who was becoming more hated and dreaded by the country each year. In vain did they impeach Buckingham. Charles, in his blind affection, took all the blame of the duke's deeds upon himself--burnt the remonstrance of the Commons--and actually dissolved Parliament in order to save his favorite.

But what the Commons of England failed to do, came to pa.s.s by the hand of one discontented man.

The Duke of Buckingham, after wasting men, money, and English prestige in one disastrous expedition to help the French Protestants at La Roch.e.l.le, was on the eve of setting out for a second attempt to relieve the beleagured town. He was at Portsmouth, and was to embark the very next day, when he was stabbed by John Felton, a lieutenant in the navy who had been disappointed of promotion.

All England and the court rejoiced at the death of the favorite. But King Charles "flung himself upon his bed in a pa.s.sion of tears when the news reached him."[82] On his first visit to the widowed d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham he promised to be a father to her sons. He ordered the duke to be buried in the Chapel of Henry the Seventh--which hitherto had been reserved for anointed kings. And it is George Villiers who lies in state to this day on the splendid tomb we have been looking at.

Soon after the duke's death, the lovely boy who leans sleeping above his father's monument was born.

The king stood G.o.dfather to the baby at his christening, together with Francis, Earl of Rutland, the d.u.c.h.ess's father. "After some compliments who should give the name," the king called the baby Francis, and the grandfather gave him his benediction, which was in the very pleasant form of seven thousand pounds a year.

King Charles faithfully kept the promise he had made the d.u.c.h.ess. Alas!

it had been well for him had he kept all other promises as faithfully.

He was indeed a father to young Francis and to his handsome, headstrong, worthless elder brother the young Duke of Buckingham.

The boys were brought up with the royal children under the same tutors and governors. They were sent quite young to Trinity College, Cambridge, where their names were entered in the college-book in the same year as that of Prince Charles. And here among other famous and learned men, they made the acquaintance of Abraham Cowley, the poet, who had lately published his pastoral comedy "Love's Riddle," which had been performed by members of the college.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOMB OF GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.]

From Cambridge the two brothers went to travel under the care of Mr.

William Aylesbury, who was appointed their tutor by the king. But their sojourn abroad was short.

Public affairs had been growing darker and darker at home. And at last, in 1642, there was an open breach between the king and the Parliament.

The Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham, August 25, and England was plunged into civil war, the most horrible of all scourges that can come on any country.

Francis Villiers was fourteen years old, and his brother, the young duke, a year older. Boys as they were, they now tried to show their grat.i.tude to the king for his care of them. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War they hastened back to England. The king's headquarters were at Oxford; and his nephew, the famous Prince Rupert, kept the whole country between Oxford and London in constant alarm with his sudden raids and fierce skirmishes. To Oxford then the two young brothers came. They were a beautiful pair, inheriting from both their parents "so graceful a body, as gave l.u.s.tre to the ornament of the mind." Full of headstrong courage, they "laid their lives and their fortunes at the king's feet,"

and chose Prince Rupert and Lord Gerard as their tutors in the art of War. They soon had their first lesson; for they were present at the storming of the Close at Lichfield on March 2, 1643. When they returned to Oxford, happily without harm after their first fight, their mother, the d.u.c.h.ess, was very angry with Lord Gerard for "tempting her sons into such danger." But he told her it was by the boys' own wish, "and the more the danger the greater the honor."

Parliament at first seemed to look on this escapade as a serious offence, for they seized upon the brothers' estates. But they were soon restored in consideration of the two boys' extreme youth. However, says Bryan Fairfax, their historian, "the young men kept it (their fortune) no longer than till they came to be at an age to forfeit it again."[83]

To keep these young fire-eaters out of fresh honorable danger, the king placed them in the care of the Earl of Northumberland, and sent them abroad again. They spent the next four or five years in France and Italy, living chiefly in Florence and Rome, where they kept as great state as many sovereign princes. It was the fashion of those days to send young n.o.blemen for a time to foreign countries; and the result in a good many cases was that they abjured Protestantism and returned to England either concealed or avowed Roman Catholics. But the Villiers brothers "brought their religion home again, wherein they had been educated under the eye of the most devout and best of kings."[84]

The moment at which the young men returned was a critical one. The royal cause had been going from bad to worse. And at the beginning of 1648 England was in the hands of Cromwell and Fairfax. The king, given up by the Scots the year before to the Parliamentarians, was a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. The Royalist forces were scattered and broken; and it seemed an almost hopeless task to make any further resistance in the king's behalf. Nevertheless, there were still a few faithful followers left; and the old English love for the monarchy still blazed up here and there in fierce outbursts against the Parliament and its army. But the Parliamentarians despised all these attempts, until in the spring of 1648 a serious rising took place in Kent, which was suppressed after a heavy fight at Maidstone. It was just at this juncture that the young Duke of Buckingham and his brother Francis returned to England. Strong, active, and courageous, they were burning with zeal to venture their large estates for the crown on the first opportunity.

They had not long to wait.

No sooner was the Kentish rising quelled than the Royalists crossed the Thames into Ess.e.x, and collected a large force at Colchester, intending from thence to march on London. Fairfax invested the town, and beseiged it for two months until it fell, August 27.

Meanwhile the Earl of Holland had offered his services to the queen, his late mistress, in Paris, and informed her of his resolution to adventure everything for the king. The young Villiers threw in their lot with Lord Holland, and declared themselves ready and willing to sacrifice their estates and their lives if need be in the royal cause.

The siege of Colchester which engaged the main body of the army under Fairfax seemed to offer a good opportunity for a rising nearer London.

The young Duke of Buckingham was made General of the Horse. Lord Francis Villiers and various other young n.o.blemen were given other posts. And these hot-blooded lads, impatient for action, urged Lord Holland to begin his perilous undertaking without further delay.

Unhappily for them the whole business was miserably mismanaged. Such a rising could only hope to succeed if it were kept the most profound secret. But so far from being a secret, it was, says Clarendon, "the common discourse of the town." There was a great appearance every morning at Lord Holland's lodging of officers who were known to have served the king--.

his commission showed in many hands; and no question being more commonly asked than--when doth my Lord Holland go out?

and the answer--Such and such a day; and the hour he did take horse, when he was accompanied by an hundred horse from his house was publickly talked of two or three days before.[85]

But these indiscretions were not all. The first rendezvous was to be at Kingston-on-Thames--the charming old town full of old red brick houses, and sunny walled gardens full of lilacs and laburnums and cedars of Lebanon, ten miles southwest of London. Here Lord Holland stayed for two nights and one whole day, expecting numbers to flock to his standard, "not only of officers, but of common men who had promised and listed themselves under several officers."[86] During his stay, some officers and soldiers, both of foot and horse did come. But the greater number of those who resorted to Kingston were "many persons of honor and quality,"