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 space 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 petition 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 pass 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 Rochelle, 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 passion of tears when the news reached him."[82] On his first visit to the widowed Duchess 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 godfather to the baby at his christening, together with Francis, Earl of Rutland, the duchess'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 duchess. 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.