Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/344

Villiers completed their remonstrance, in which his excessive power was declared to be the principal cause of the evils under which they suffered. They further declared that no man could manage ‘so many and weighty affairs of the kingdom as he hath undertaken, besides the ordinary duties of those offices he holds,’ finally expressing a desire that he might no longer continue in office, or ‘in his place of nearness and counsel about’ the ‘sacred person’ of the king. Charles stood by his overbearing subject. On 16 June he commanded all documents relating to the sham prosecution of Buckingham in the Star-chamber in 1626 to be taken off the file, ‘that no memory thereof remain of the record against him which may tend to his disgrace.’ On the 17th, when the commons appeared with their remonstrance, he prohibited Buckingham from answering, though the duke begged to be allowed to speak in his own defence.

Buckingham was now the object of the common hatred. He was held up to obloquy in satires and pasquinades. Of these he took no notice, but after parliament had been prorogued he aimed at limiting the extent of the war by making peace with Spain, vainly hoping that some settlement of the question of the palatinate might in this way be reached. He even offered to go once more in person to Madrid. He did something to place himself in better relations with the country by employing Williams, to whom he had been reconciled before the end of the session, to place him in contact with one or other of the parliamentary leaders. With this object in view he resigned the wardenship of the Cinque ports. The policy thus adumbrated was deficient in brilliancy, and the duke turned aside from it to listen to Carleton, for whom he obtained the viscounty of Dorchester, who was sure to urge him to quit himself of the war with France and to turn his attention to the recovery of the palatinate. Both the Dutch and the Venetian ambassadors combined to give him the same advice, which he would perhaps have taken if it had been possible. It was not, however, easy to divert to a fresh object the preparations for the relief of Rochelle. Yet the insufficiency of the means at Buckingham's disposal was a terrible obstacle in the way of his securing efficiency in the fleet gathered at Portsmouth. While the king went down to Sir Daniel Norton's house at Southwick to be near the scene, Buckingham remained in London to hasten the necessary supplies. The limits of his authority, long known to others, were now becoming visible to himself. ‘I find nothing,’ he wrote on 6 Aug., ‘of more difficulty and uncertainty than the preparations here for this service of Rochelle. Every man says he has all things ready, and yet all remains as it were at a stand. It will be Saturday night before all the victuals will be aboard, and I dare not come from hence till I see that despatched, being of such importance.’ No wonder Buckingham received favourably a definite proposal from Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, that the Rochellese should treat directly with their own sovereign. In the hope that these negotiations might be effectual, Buckingham gave orders with a view to transferring the war to Germany. Charles, however, made objections, and when, on 17 Aug., Buckingham appeared at Portsmouth, the deputies from Rochelle protested warmly against the scheme. It was agreed that there should be a meeting on 23 Aug. in the king's presence, when a final resolution would be taken.

In Buckingham's mind there was a presentiment of danger. In taking leave of Laud, he had begged him to recommend his wife and children to the king. ‘Some adventure,’ he said, ‘may kill me as well as another man.’ It was not of assassination that he was thinking. A friend who urged him to wear a shirt of mail under his clothes found him not to be persuaded. ‘A shirt of mail,’ he replied, ‘would be but a silly defence against any popular fury. As for a single man's assault, I take myself to be in no danger. There are no Roman spirits left.’ On the 22nd he was exposed to danger from mutinous sailors. When he came down to breakfast on the morning of the 23rd, in the house in the High Street of Portsmouth occupied by Captain Mason, he received news—false as it turned out—that Rochelle had been relieved. When breakfast was over, as he stepped out into the hall he stopped for an instant to speak to Sir Thomas Fryer. As his attention was engaged a man who was standing close to the entrance of a passage leading to the breakfast-room struck him heavily with a knife in the left breast, calling out ‘God have mercy on thy soul!’ The duke drew the knife out of the wound, and, crying ‘Villain!’ attempted to follow the assassin. After tottering for a step or two he fell heavily against a table, and sank dead on the ground. The duchess, warned of her husband's murder, rushed in her night-dress to the gallery, and looked down on his bleeding corpse. The murderer was John Felton (1595?–1628) [q. v.], a discharged officer, who, meditating on his own wrongs, had found in the remonstrance of the House of Commons an inspiration to the deed as ridding the earth of a tyrant. He had acted, he believed,