No complete life of this favourite of James I. and Charles I. has hitherto appeared, except the biographical sketch by Sir Henry Wotton.

That interesting account deserves all credit, from the character of its author; yet coming from one who owed Buckingham great obligations, it is more of a eulogy than a memoir; and is evidently written with a view to silence those slanderous attacks which not only pursued the Duke during his life, but continued after his death.

The “Disparity between the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Buckingham,” by Clarendon, printed, as well as Sir Henry Wotton’s Memoir in the “ReliquiÆ WottonianÆ,” bears, likewise, the impress of enthusiastic admiration. It is the tribute of a partisan rather than the memorial of an historian.

The opinions expressed, nevertheless, in both these works, have been confirmed, in many points, by the letters in the State Paper Office, to which historical writers have not only now free access, but which have lately been arranged, whilst valuable Calendars have been published, so as to facilitate investigations which were formerly most laborious. In all that relates personally to George Villiers, the State Papers are especially important.

The great Rebellion, amongst mightier devastations, swept away most of that domestic correspondence which might otherwise have been found in the three noble families who are collaterally descended from Buckingham; those of the Earls of Jersey and Clarendon, and of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, none of whom possess any letters of their unfortunate ancestor. Nor is this fact to be wondered at, when we consider not only the stormy period that succeeded Buckingham’s death, but the extreme youth of his children at the time of his assassination, the second marriage of his widow, and the long years of exile which his heir, George, the second Duke of Buckingham of the house of Villiers, passed in wandering and indigence.

The documents in the State Paper Office become, therefore, doubly valuable, and every possible advantage has been taken of a mine so rich in the present Memoir. It was, indeed, in 1849, some time before the Calendars by Mrs. Everett Green, and Mr. Bruce, were published, that this work was begun. The letters in the State Paper Office were then merely arranged in chronological order, and divided into foreign and domestic. But the valuable advice, the very great courtesy, and kind assistance of Mr. Lechmere and Mr. Lemon, enabled the authoress still to derive great benefit from her researches even at that time. Her work having been laid aside, though nearly completed, during a residence of several years on the Continent, the publication of the Calendars of State Papers had, meantime, taken place, and they enabled her, in resuming her task, to revise such parts of the memoir as had been written, and to finish the whole with greater accuracy and fulness of information than could otherwise have been done, and although the revision has caused considerable delay and labour, it has been of incalculable advantage to the work.

Of the Calendar for 1628-1629, which recently appeared, edited by Mr. Bruce, the authoress has not been able to avail herself to the same extent as of the four former volumes, since her work was nearly printed before it was published. She has, therefore, been obliged to insert in her Appendix the examination of Ben Jonson, and one or two other papers which could not be interwoven with the narrative, although of great interest. It is satisfactory to her to find that the contents of this, the latest volume of the State Paper Calendars, confirm, in some important points, the views which she has taken of Buckingham’s motives and intentions. They also exhibit distinctly the great difficulties of his course; and more especially in regard to the fatal expedition to La Rochelle.

The authoress believes that she has discharged her task as a biographer with impartiality: she confesses, nevertheless, to a strong interest in the faulty but attractive character which she has attempted to delineate. When stating, in her summary of the Duke’s qualities, that time and trouble were rendering him a wiser and a better man, she was ignorant of the following tribute to Buckingham, written, when all patronage was closed by his death, by Dudley, Viscount Dorchester, to the Queen of Bohemia, and printed in the last volume of the Calendar.

“The Duke declared a purpose to Dorchester on his (the Viscount’s) last return from the Queen of Bohemia, which he has since often reiterated, of making him, by his favour with the King his master, an instrument of better days than they have seen of late, he having a firm resolution (which he manifested to some other persons) to walk new ways, but upon old grounds and maxims, both of religion and policy, finding his own judgment to have been misled by errors of truth and persuasions of persons he began better to know; so as knowing otherwise the nobleness of his nature, and great parts and vigour, Dorchester had full satisfaction in him himself, and made no doubt but the world would have, notwithstanding the public hatred to which he was exposed. This testimony Dorchester owes him after his death.”^[1]

Of the restoration of the Navy by the strenuous efforts of the Duke the State Papers present almost a chronicle. The authoress regrets that she is not competent to do the subject justice; and hopes that some abler hand may employ with more effect the copious materials which will be found in those documents, of which she has touched merely on the leading points. Her aim has been chiefly to shew the energy, the sometime lofty purposes, of one who has been portrayed as a merely rapacious, vain, remorseless oppressor.

The state of the times, the Impeachment, the Remonstrance, the Petition of Right, all bear so strongly on the circumstances of the Duke’s life, that it would be impossible, in a Memoir of him, to escape the difficult office of explaining to some extent the intricate politics of the day. In this attempt she also has derived her chief materials from the State Papers. Personal incidents, trusts, manners, character, literature, the arts, are subjects in regard to which the annals of this period are calculated to afford a great amount of instruction and interest.

The authoress has already expressed her obligations to Mr. Lechmere and Mr. Lemon; to Mr. Bruce she also begs to offer her thanks for a suggestion by which she is enabled to insert an interesting account of the murder of Buckingham, in a letter from Lord Dorchester. (See page 112, vol. iii.)

She begs also to express her sense of the valuable aid afforded her by her friend, Mr. Amos, Professor of Law, Downing College, Cambridge, to whose kindness and great historical knowledge she is indebted for much that has facilitated her efforts.

March 1, 1860.