His disposition was full of tenderness and compassion. The man who fell by the assassin’s hand had a horror of capital punishment, “Those,” Lord Clarendon observes, “who think the laws dead if they are not severely executed, censured him for being too merciful; and he believed, doubtless, hanging the worst use a man could be put to.” Consistent with this sweetness of character were his affability and gentleness to men younger than himself, as well as his ready forgiveness of injuries, an “easiness to reconcilement,” which caused him even too soon to forget the circumstances of affronts and evil deeds, and, therefore, exposed him to a repetition.
Of all the imputations which were fixed on Buckingham, that of a desire to enrich himself, from motives of avarice, is the most completely refuted by facts. During the four years that he enjoyed the unbounded confidence of Charles I. he became every day poorer. His affairs were investigated, and the result was proved. It is, indeed, a question, and a very serious one,--how far any man is justified in spending, even on noble purposes, and certainly not in mere show, largely beyond his income, as Buckingham did; but his conduct is, at all events, more pardonable than the mere desire to collect a great fortune, from sources which he seems to have considered should be expended either in doing honour to his Sovereign abroad in his embassies--a notion paramount in those days, though out of date in ours--or by the encouragement of arts and sciences, and the duties of hospitality at home.
When we recapitulate the errors of this celebrated man--his omissions, his sins, his want of good faith, his overlooking the benefits he might have conferred on his country, until it was almost too late for repentance, his sacrifice of his Sovereign’s best interests to his own will--we must, at the same time, admit great extenuation. No mercy was shown to his faults by the historians of his time, nor of the age succeeding; they wrote under a sense of the deep injuries from which the Rebellion received its first impulse. We must not look for fairness in such a ferment. Even after the tomb had long been closed over his remains, it was scarcely safe, certainly scarcely prudent, to palliate the faults, or to place the virtues of Buckingham in a fair light. We have now, however, the satisfactory assurance that Buckingham was conscious of his faults; contrite for his misdeeds; and earnest in his resolution to repair them, had his life been spared.[[245]]
Lord Clarendon closes his “Disparity” between the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Buckingham in these words:--
“He that shall continue this argument further may haply begin his parallel after their deaths, and not unfitly. He may say that they were both as mighty in obligations as any subjects; and both their memories and families as unrecompensed by such as they had raised. He may tell you of the clients that buried the pictures of the one, and defaced the arms of the other, lest they might be too long suspected for their dependants, and find disadvantage by being honest to their memories. He may tell you of some that drew strangers to their houses, lest they might find the track of their own footsteps, that might upbraid them with their former attendance. He may say that both their memories shall have a reverend fervour with all posterity, and all nations. He may tell you many more particulars, which I dare not do.”
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
In the Calendar edited by Mr. Bruce (1859), there are the following details, amongst other curious particulars, of the state of affairs after the Duke of Buckingham’s unfortunate expedition to Rhé:--
"Lionel Sharp to Buckingham, reports his sermon preached (at St Margaret’s, Westminster), in which he had alluded to the censure thrown upon the Duke for his late failure at Rhé, and had declared that he who had ventured all that was dearest in the world for a foreign church, would, if he ‘had as many lives as hairs,’ venture them all for his own, with other laudatory personal allusions to the Duke. Is ready to ‘do the rest’ within two days, ‘if he may have the place in Westminster, or on Sunday next.’"--Vol. cii., Domestic, No. 76, April, 1628.
This is a singular letter, not only as showing the alarm which led the Duke to have recourse to the Elizabeth plan of “tuning the pulpits,” but also as an instance of the almost impious mixture of political and worldly affairs with sacred subjects.