Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/346

Villiers duke's collection of pictures and jewels, by selling or pledging which he obtained money for his subsistence (ib. ii. 7;, Life of Buckingham). The young king rewarded Buckingham by conferring upon him the order of the Garter on 19 Sept. 1649 and admitting him to the privy council on 6 April 1650. He entered that body as one of the representatives of the party which opposed the unyielding church policy of Nicholas and Hyde, and wished to come to an understanding with the presbyterians both in England and Scotland (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 53; Nicholas Papers, i. 173;, Charles II and Scotland, pp. 54, 60, 118). Consequently, after the landing of Charles II in Scotland, Buckingham was the only conspicuous English royalist allowed by the Scots to remain with the king (July 1650) (, Historical Discourses, pp. 159–63). He maintained his position by allying himself with Argyll, whose creature he was commonly considered; dissuaded Charles from putting himself at the head of the Scottish royalists, and was credited with treacherously revealing the king's plan to the presbyterian leaders (, Rebellion, xii. 124; xiii. 3, 47;, Historical Discourse, p. 197; Nicholas Papers, i. 201, 206, 254).

In spite of Buckingham's want of military experience, he was selected for the highest command in the intended rising among the English royalists. In 1650 he was designated general of the eastern association, and was also commissioned to raise forces for the king on the continent (, History of the Commonwealth, i. 268; Egerton MS. 2542, f. 35). In the spring of 1651 he was appointed to head a movement in Lancashire, which was to be backed by a division of Scottish cavalry. He also received a commission (16 May 1651) to command in chief all the English royalists in Scotland, and succeeded in getting together a regiment of horse—mostly Englishmen—but the projected insurrection in Lancashire was frustrated by the discovery of the plot (Egerton Charters, 422, in Brit. Mus.; Report on the Duke of Portland's MSS. i. 567, 597;, Memorials of the Civil War, ii. 283, 418). Buckingham accompanied Charles II in his expedition into England, and fought at Worcester. According to Clarendon, the duke pressed Charles to make him general-in-chief, alleging that no peer of England would willingly take orders from David Leslie; and, when the king told him he was too young, answered that Henry IV of France ‘commanded an army and won a battle when he was younger than he.’ So chagrined was Buckingham by the king's refusal that he ‘came no more to the council, scarce spoke to the king, neglected everybody else and himself, insomuch as for many days he never put on clean linen or conversed with any body.’ But, though this piece of presumption is quite in keeping with Buckingham's character, the story is not mentioned by other authorities (Rebellion, xiii. 72). The duke parted from the king during their flight from Worcester, and, thanks to his skill in disguising himself, escaped safely to the continent, landing at Rotterdam in October 1651 (Nicholas Papers, i. 277;, The Flight of the King, pp. 12, 24). Ere long he was busily engaged in new political intrigues, his chief confidants being Titus and Leighton. In June 1652 he sent Leighton over to England with a letter to Cromwell, which the latter refused to receive; and in the following May it was said that he had been endeavouring to make his peace through Major-general Lambert (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1651–2, p. 317; Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 208). During the same period he discussed with John Lilburne [q. v.] the feasibility of effecting a restoration of monarchy through an agreement with the levellers, and these negotiations were one of the chief charges against Lilburne at his trial in 1653. Lilburne asserted that Buckingham's only aim in these conferences was to obtain advice how to make his peace with the English government, and that the duke was willing to give any security for his peaceable living which the state demanded (Lilburne's Defensive Declaration, 1653, pp. 15, 16; Several Informations against Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, 1653).

These intrigues, and Buckingham's policy of sacrificing the interests of the church to the political exigencies of the moment, deepened the breach between the duke and the ministers of Charles II. Hyde and Nicholas habitually speak of him as a man of no religious principles, probably either a papist or a presbyterian, possessed of some wit but with no ballast, and far inferior to his father in ability (Nicholas Papers, ii. 287, iii. 41, 158, 170). His influence with the king had by this time greatly decreased. In 1652 a report that Buckingham aspired to the hand of the widowed Princess of Orange caused the greatest indignation among the royal family, and the queen protested that she would tear her daughter in pieces with her own hands if she thought she would degrade herself by such a match (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 50;, Lives of the Princesses of England, vi. 186). The freedom with which Buckingham criticised the king's policy, added to a quarrel with Charles about money, produced by 1654 a complete estrangement (Cal.