It was at a horse-race in Cambridgeshire that Villiers first attracted the attention of the King. The poverty of the young man was then such that even on this notable occasion, when the sovereign, on his annual progress, was expected, and at a time when the costliness, or, as it was well styled, the “bravery” of dress was at its height, he could not afford any new attire. An “old black suit, broken out in divers places,” was, as Sir Symonds D’Ewes asserts,[[46]] the garment in which his narrow means constrained him to appear amid the gay courtiers who composed the royal train.
As if this were not a sufficient mortification, other inconveniences arose. The race had taken place near Linton, and most of the company slept at that town. There was no room in the lodgings of the inn for the ill-dressed youth in the old black suit, “and he was obliged,” adds the same writer, “and even glad, to lie on a truckle bed in a gentleman’s chamber, of mean quality, also, at that time, from whose own mouth I heard this relation, who was himself an eye-witness of it.”[[47]]
According to another account, it was at Apthorpe, whither King James, in the month of August, 1614, had sent his dogs, that the monarch was so struck by the appearance and deportment of Villiers, that he resolved to mould him, as it were “platonically, to his own idea.”[[48]] The impression produced upon the King was publicly observed by attendants and courtiers, and the success of Villiers was decided. About this time, indeed, Villiers formed an acquaintance upon whose counsels he acted, so as to take the tide of fortune at its height.
Villiers into the English Court,[[49]] and there was, perhaps, not one of the subordinate personages better calculated to guide, in that sphere, the first steps of an inexperienced youth than Lake. Patronized originally by Sir Francis Walsingham, and by him recommended to the service of Queen Elizabeth, he had acted as Secretary for the French and Latin tongue to his Royal mistress, and acquired, from his accurate and rapid writing, the name of “Swiftsure.” In the Court of Elizabeth, where none but men of ability flourished, he had received his political education. He had enjoyed the Queen’s confidence, and was reading to her in French and Latin at the very moment when the Countess of Warwick told him that the Queen had expired. James made him a Privy Counsellor, and afterwards appointed him one of his Secretaries of State.[[50]] Lake eventually fell into disgrace, not from his own fault, but owing to the unfortunate marriage of his eldest daughter to the Lord de Roos[Roos], son of the Earl of Exeter, and to the subsequent enmity of the Cecils. But at the time when Villiers owed his first introduction to him, Lake was in the height of his influence, and James, even after his downfall, accorded to him the praise that “he was a Minister of State fit to serve any greater prince in Europe.”[[51]]
Under such auspices, Villiers secured the best introduction to the world that can be obtained—that afforded by individuals whose high rank was upheld in public estimation by their personal influence; and it augurs well of the views which were at that time entertained of his character, and of the terms on which it was desired to place him with the King, that those who were real lovers of their country, and patrons of its best interests, should have presented him to their sovereign.
Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, “led him,” says Fuller, “by the one hand, and William, Earl of Pembroke, by the other.”
Few women shone in the giddy revels of the Court with a purer lustre than the Countess of Bedford; her virtues and accomplishments may have been exaggerated by grateful poets and dependants, but they were such as to confer a certain dignity on all whom she countenanced. Hence we must admire the discrimination of Lake in obtaining for the youthful Villiers the friendship of one whom society estimated so highly. The sister of Sir John Harrington, the Countess of Bedford, resembled her brother in his love of letters, and fortune favoured the full indulgence of her inclinations. By the death of that accomplished brother, she succeeded to two-thirds of his possessions. She had then been married six months to Edward, Earl of Bedford; and, at his decease, which happened in 1627, she was left in the uncontrolled possession of all that nobleman’s estates. This proof of her husband’s confidence and attachment was not misapplied. The widowed Countess, resembling somewhat the Mrs. Montagu of later times, aimed to be the patroness of poets. Of course her motives have been satirised, and her mode of dispensing her patronage impugned, for there seems to be, in most biographers, a love of decrying lettered women of rank. Grainger, for instance, declares that the Countess of Bedford bought the praise of poets by money, and that they, in return, were lavish of incense.[[52]] Her taste for gardening has, however, met with more indulgence. Sir William Temple, in his “Gardens of Epicurus,” praises her “most perfect picture of a garden” at Moor Park, in Surrey, for she was, in truth, the first improver of the English flower-garden—an honourable distinction. Her education was in conformity with the practice of the day; she was well read in classics, and had a knowledge of ancient medals. Such was the lady-patroness of Villiers. To her Ben Jonson inscribed three of his epigrams:[[53]] to her Dr. Donne addressed several poems, whilst Daniel celebrated her in verse.
It is singular that no relics have been discovered of this far-famed lady’s writings, though numerous allusions are made to them in the works of others. A marvellous degree of uncertainty even attends many points of her career; the place of her death is unknown; and she left behind her no will; the abode on which she spent large sums is long since levelled to the ground; this was Burleigh-on-the-Hill[Burleigh-on-the-Hill], which she sold, eventually, to Villiers, when in the height of his fortunes; he erected a noble mansion upon it, but it was destroyed in the time of the Rebellion. Thus, as Mr. Lodge observes, “she has left, by a singular fatality, as it should seem, a splendid reputation, which can neither be supported nor depreciated by the evidence of historical facts.”[[54]]
Less exclusive, more patriotic, and far more popular even than the great Earl of Arundel, William, Earl of Pembroke, stood, on that day, on the same vantage ground with that lofty nobleman, the pre-eminence of character. Pembroke, however, was beloved as well as respected; he was pious, liberal, honourable; a lover of literature and the arts: he encouraged the ingenious and the learned, not only because he delighted in their society, but from a higher motive, a sense of duty to the community. He inherited, indeed, that generous spirit which ennobles the noble, for he was the nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, and the son of that Countess of Pembroke whom Ben Jonson has termed “the subject of all verse.” He was brave and honourable; his abilities were excellent; his character above all suspicion of the ordinary insincerity of courtiers. His immense fortune was employed worthily, not lavished, for his expenses were limited only by his “great mind,” and occasions, to use it nobly. His personal qualities were such as to make even the Court itself respectable, and “better esteemed in the country,” and he had the happiness, in spite of envy, to have more friends than any public character of his time No man dared to avow himself the enemy of one who was beloved equally at the Court of James and in the retirement of a home circle at Wilton; who sought for neither office nor honours, and yet was lenient to the faults from which his noble nature was exempt.
Such was the nobleman who took by the hand a poor youth, whose present integrity and innocence might, he perhaps believed, vanquish the degrading influence of Somerset and his wife, to whose fame report already attached the darkest rumours. In the patron who was moved to second by his well-earned influence the fortunes of an obscure country youth, Villiers was thus no less fortunate than in the favour of Lucy Harrington. Happy had it been for him had he modelled his own conduct and rectified his notions by the standards now placed before his view; for there was nothing in the bearing of Pembroke to lower the dignity of virtue. That nobleman had been termed “the very picture and viva effigies of nobility.”[[55]] In person, majestic, in his manners, full of stately gravity, which characterised him, whether in repose or when animated, his easy wit, free from every taint of malice, his habitual, unconscious good-breeding, might have assisted that young and unformed mind in the formation of good taste, a property which rarely flourishes without the aid of refined associates. Some defects there were, and those of a vital nature, which, in looking closely into any character of that time, cannot but be discovered. These were materially owing to the bartering marriages of the middle and early modern times—the selling one’s dearest hopes and interests in this life for an estate, or an honour, or a reversion. The standard of morality was, of course, lowered, as it still is in France, by the excuse that fidelity to a wife could hardly be expected under the circumstances of enforced unions, sometimes contracted while the parties were children. William, Earl of Pembroke, was one of the many who exhibited this doctrine in his practice. United to an heiress, for whose fortune even the grave Lord Clarendon observes, he paid “too dear by taking her person into the bargain,”[[56]] he devoted himself publicly to Christian, the daughter of Lord Bruce, afterwards Countess of Devonshire. To her he addressed those beautiful lines which were, with other poems, edited by Dr. Donne, prefixed with a fulsome dedication to the Countess.[[57]]