(C. L. K.)
[1] i.e. in the Stafford line; see above.
BUCKINGHAM, JAMES SILK (1786-1855), English author and traveller, was born near Falmouth on the 25th of August 1786, the son of a farmer. His youth was spent at sea. After years of wandering he established in 1818 the Calcutta Journal. This venture at first proved highly successful, but in 1823 the paper's outspoken criticisms of the East India Company led to the expulsion of Buckingham from India and to the suppression of the paper by John Adam, the acting governor-general. His case was brought before parliament, and a pension of £200 a year was subsequently awarded him by the East India Company as compensation. Buckingham continued his journalistic ventures on his return to England, and started the Oriental Herald (1824) and the Athenaeum (1828) which was not a success in his hands. In parliament, where he sat as member for Sheffield from 1832-1837, he was a strong advocate of social reform. He was a most voluminous writer. He had travelled much in Europe, America and the East, and wrote a great number of useful books of travel. In 1851 the value of these and of his other literary work was recognized by the grant of a civil list pension of £200 a year. At the time of his death in London, on the 30th of June 1855, Buckingham was at work on his autobiography, two volumes of the intended four being completed and published (1855).
His youngest son, Leicester Silk Buckingham (1825-1867), achieved no little popularity as a playwright, several of his free adaptations of French comedies being produced in London between 1860 and 1867.
BUCKINGHAM, a market town and municipal borough and the county town of Buckinghamshire, England, in the Buckingham parliamentary division, 61 m. N.W. of London by a branch of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 3152. It lies in an open valley on the upper part of the river Ouse, which encircles the main portion of the town on three sides. The church of St Peter and St Paul, which was extensively restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, a native of this neighbourhood, is of the 18th century, and stands on the site of the old castle; the town hall dates from the close of the previous century; and the grammar school was founded by Edward VI., in part occupying buildings of earlier date, which retain Perpendicular and Decorated windows, and a Norman door. A chantry, founded in 1268 by Matthew Stratton, archdeacon of Buckingham, previously occupied the site; the Norman work may be a remnant of the chapel of a gild of the Holy Trinity. The manor house is of the early part of the 17th century, and other old houses remain. The adjacent mansion of Stowe, approached from the town by a magnificent avenue of elms, and surrounded by gardens very beautifully laid out, was the seat of the dukes of Buckingham until the extinction of the title in 1889. Buckingham is served by a branch of the Grand Junction Canal, and has agricultural trade, manufactures of condensed milk and artificial manure, maltings and flour-mills; while an old industry survives to a modified extent in the manufacture of pillow-lace. The borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 5006 acres.
Buckingham (Bochingeham, Bukyngham) was an important stronghold in pre-Conquest times, and in 918 Edward the Elder encamped there with his army for four weeks, and threw up two forts on either side of the water. At the time of the Domesday survey there were twenty-six burgesses in Buckingham, which, together with the hamlet of Bourton, was assessed at one hide. Although it appears as a borough thus early, the town received no charter until 1554, when Queen Mary created it a free borough corporate with a bailiff, twelve principal burgesses and a steward, and defined the boundaries as extending in width from Dudley bridge to Thornborowe bridge and in length from Chackmore bridge to Padbury Mill bridge. A charter from Charles II. in 1684 was very shortly abandoned in favour of the original grant, which held force until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. In 1529 and from 1545 onwards Buckingham returned two members to parliament, until deprived by the Representation of the People Act of 1867 of one member, and by the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 of the other. Early mentions occur of markets and fairs, and from 1522, when Henry VIII. granted to Sir Henry Marney the borough of Buckingham with a Saturday market and two annual fairs, grants of fairs by various sovereigns were numerous. Buckingham was formerly an important agricultural centre, and Edward III. fixed here one of the staples for wool, but after the removal of these to Calais the trade suffered such decay that in an act of 32 Henry VIII. Buckingham is mentioned among thirty-six impoverished towns.
BUCKINGHAM AND NORMANBY, JOHN SHEFFIELD, 1st Duke of (1648-1721), English statesman and poet, was born on
the 7th of April 1648. He was the son of Edmund, 2nd earl of Mulgrave, and succeeded to that title on his father's death in 1658. At the age of eighteen he joined the fleet, to serve in the first Dutch war; on the renewal of hostilities in 1672 he was present at the battle of Southwold Bay, and in the next year received the command of a ship. He was also made a colonel of infantry, and served for some time under Turenne. In 1680 he was put in charge of an expedition sent to relieve the town of Tangier. It was said that he was provided with a rotten ship in the hope that he would not return, but the reason of this abortive plot, if plot there was, is not exactly ascertained. At court he took the side of the duke of York, and helped to bring about Monmouth's disgrace. In 1682 he was dismissed from the court, apparently for putting himself forward as a suitor for the princess Anne, but on the accession of King James he received a seat in the privy council, and was made lord chamberlain. He supported James in his most unpopular measures, and stayed with him in London during the time of his flight. He also protected the Spanish ambassador from the dangerous anger of the mob. He acquiesced, however, in the Revolution, and in 1694 was made marquess of Normanby. In 1696 he refused in company with other Tory peers to sign an agreement to support William as their "rightful and lawful king" against Jacobite attempts, and was consequently dismissed from the privy council. On the accession of Anne, with whom he was a personal favourite, he became lord privy seal and lord-lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1703 duke of Buckingham and Normanby. During the predominance of the Whigs between 1705 and 1710, Buckingham was deprived of his office as lord privy seal, but in 1710 he was made lord steward, and in 1711 lord president of the council. After the death of Anne he held no state appointment. He died on the 24th of February 1721 at his house in St James's Park, which stood on the site of the present Buckingham Palace. Buckingham was succeeded by his son, Edmund (1716-1735) on whose death the titles became extinct.
Buckingham, who is better known by his inherited titles as Lord Mulgrave, was the author of "An Account of the Revolution" and some other essays, and of numerous poems, among them the Essay on Poetry and the Essay on Satire. It is probable that the Essay on Satire, which attacked many notable persons, "sauntering Charles" amongst others, was circulated in MS. It was often attributed at the time to Dryden, who accordingly suffered a thrashing at the hands of Rochester's bravoes for the reflections it contained upon the earl. Mulgrave was a patron of Dryden, who may possibly have revised it, but was certainly not responsible, although it is commonly printed with his works. Mulgrave adapted Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, breaking it up into two plays, Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus. He introduced choruses between the acts, two of these being written by Pope, and an incongruous love scene between Brutus and Portia. He was a constant friend and patron of Pope, who expressed a flattering opinion of his Essay on Poetry. This, although smoothly enough written, deals chiefly with commonplaces.
In 1721 Edmund Curll published a pirated edition of his works, and was brought before the bar of the House of Lords for breach of privilege accordingly. An authorized edition under the superintendence of Pope appeared in 1723, but the authorities cut out the "Account of the Revolution" and "The Feast of the Gods" on account of their alleged Jacobite tendencies. These were printed at the Hague in 1727. Pope disingenuously repudiated any knowledge of the contents. Other editions reappeared in 1723, 1726, 1729, 1740 and 1753. His Poems were included in Johnson's and other editions of the British poets.