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Villiers of personal influence asserting itself, which might gradually be transformed into political power. In the case of Villiers the transformation came very gradually indeed. He had neither political principles nor political alliances, and for the time all he asked was to sun himself in the king's favour. Considering himself the wisest of mankind, James needed a young companion, full on the one hand of mirth and jollity, and on the other hand ready to carry out his bidding in political matters, whatever it might happen to be.

A purely domestic relation with the king is indicated by the appointment of Villiers on 3 Jan. 1616 to the mastership of the horse, which gave him the control of the royal stables, and by his investiture with the order of the Garter on 24 April. Yet, as a matter of fact, such a restrained position was quite untenable. James could not, as Elizabeth had done, distinguish between personal favourites and political advisers. Independent as he imagined himself to be, he fell too readily under the sway of an intimate companion, and those who wanted to gain the king to their ends had learnt by this time that the easiest way was to approach him through the favourite. Bacon, in tendering advice to Villiers on the policy which appeared to him desirable to pursue, and in his general expectation that Villiers would be an instrument for establishing better relations between the king and the nation, probably only did that which scores of less thoughtful persons were doing in the interests of their own advancement.

Villiers, who on 27 Aug. 1616 was created Viscount Villiers and Baron Waddon, to which was soon added a grant of land valued at 80,000l., and who on 5 Jan. 1616–7 became Earl of Buckingham, could not be brought to interest himself in such high matters. He had been anti-Spanish at his first appearance at court because Somerset was on the side of Spain, and in 1616 he declared for the Spanish marriage because it was at that time agreeable to the king. What he really wanted was to acquire notability as the dispenser of patronage. In 1616 he insisted on clearing away all other claims in order to place his own nominees in an office in the king's bench formerly held by Sir John Roper. In 1617 he stopped the appointment of Yelverton to the attorney-generalship, though it had been sanctioned by the king, till the candidate had made some kind of submission to himself. Buckingham, however, had not merely to assert his own importance; he had to please his mother by providing his brothers and sisters with good marriages; and in 1617 he made his first essay in the case of Sir John Villiers, his eldest brother by the whole blood. Sir John had set his mind on marrying Frances Coke, the daughter of the great lawyer. Coke, with some reluctance, came into the scheme; but Bacon, now lord-keeper, remonstrated with Buckingham, on the ground that it would be politically unwise to contract an alliance with one who had been so stubborn an opponent of the king's wishes. James, however, took up his favourite's part, and Buckingham treated the lord-keeper with the utmost coolness, only according his forgiveness after receiving a humble apology. On 28 Sept. Coke was reintroduced to his seat at the council table. ‘I am neither a god nor an angel,’ said James on the occasion, but ‘a man like any other, and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than any one else. … Christ had his John, and I have my George.’ The result was that ‘George’ was to have his way whenever he chose to ask for it (, Hist. of Engl. iii. 86–98).

On 1 Jan. 1618–9 the earl became Marquis of Buckingham. In the course of the year he was found in opposition to the Howards. It does not appear that he felt any dislike to them on account of their support of the Spanish marriage, but it was enough for him that by their possession of high political offices they presented the only possible bar to his own influence. Before the end of the year Suffolk had been driven from the treasurership and Nottingham from the admiralty; Suffolk's son-in-law, Wallingford, from the mastership of the wards; and Lake, a dependent of Suffolk's, from the secretaryship of state. On 19 Jan. 1619 Buckingham became lord high admiral.

So far as it was possible for a man of his character, Buckingham did what he could to save the navy from the wretched state into which it had fallen under Nottingham. A navy commission, of which the leading spirit was Sir John Coke, was appointed, which substituted the habits of business men for the peculation which had prevailed under the shadow of Nottingham's name. Buckingham, however, had neither the requisite knowledge of seamanship nor the stern self-devotion needed for a great administrator, and, although he appears to have been desirous of making satisfactory appointments, a favourite surrounded by favourites was hardly the man to restore the navy to the efficiency of Elizabeth's reign (, The Administration of the Royal Navy, i. 184–205).

In managing the navy Buckingham had