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 recumbent effigies are in brass, 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]