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Villiers engagements with France, and believing that their real safety depended upon what Louis would do in their favour (, i. 165, 190, 381;, iv. 534). When the revelations about the popish plot took place, Buckingham showed great zeal in eliciting evidence, and boldly accused the chief justice of illegally favouring papists (, Examen, p. 245; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. ii. 46, 99; Report on the Le Fleming Papers, p. 162). All his local influence was used to promote the return of whig candidates to parliament (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 474;, Life of Anthony à Wood, ii. 523). With the dissenters of the city he was reputed to possess great influence, and, to increase it, took a house in the city and was admitted as a freeman (7 March 1681). But, in spite of his boasts and of his real popularity in London, Barillon did not regard him as the real leader of the dissenting party there (, i. 313, 342, 357, 359;, Diary, i. 69; , Examen, p. 683). When the exclusion bill came before the House of Lords (15 Nov. 1680) Buckingham was purposely absent, professing to be dissatisfied with Shaftesbury (, Life of Shaftesbury, ii. 377). Barillon, writing in December 1680, describes him as an enemy to Monmouth, and thereby in some measure friendly to the Duke of York; and it is possible that Buckingham, who claimed descent from the Plantagenets, thought himself as suitable a pretender as Monmouth (, ii. 313, 359). In any case, Buckingham gradually separated himself from the rest of the opposition, and took no part in the plots which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament in 1681. In the epilogue to his version of Philastre, written evidently in 1683, Buckingham sneers at Shaftesbury as one who claimed infallibility and railed against popery in order to make himself a pope. In that year and in 1684 he is alluded to as again restored to the king's favour (, i. 316; Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. pp. 343, 351, 376).

When James II ascended the throne, Buckingham created some stir by a pamphlet in favour of toleration which produced a brisk controversy (A Short Discourse on the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion). But his public career was over, and he lived retired in Yorkshire, occupying himself with hunting and other country pursuits. In a letter from Ratisbon, dated November 1686, Etherege expresses the astonishment with which he heard of his friend's retreat, and compares it to the abdication of Charles V. ‘Is it possible,’ he adds, ‘that your grace should leave the play at the beginning of the fourth act, when all the spectators are in pain to know what will become of the hero, and what mighty matters he is reserved for, that set out so advantageously in the first?’ (Miscellaneous Works, i. 124). Ill-health was doubtless one cause of Buckingham's retirement. In March 1686 he was described as ‘worn to a thread with whoring,’ and there are frequent references to his illnesses during the last ten years of his life (Ellis Correspondence, i. 63). King James hoped to convert him to catholicism, but Buckingham ridiculed the priest sent for the purpose (An Account of a Conference between the late Duke of Buckingham and Father Fitzgerald, faithfully taken by one of his domestics). He died, of a chill caught while hunting on 16 April 1687, in the house of a tenant of his own at Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire. Pope's account of his death in ‘the worst inn's worst room,’ amid squalor and neglect, is, though based on contemporary rumours, refuted by the evidence of Lord Arran and Brian Fairfax (, Moral Essays, Epistle iii. 1. 299; Fairfax Correspondence, iv. 268; Ellis Correspondence, i. 276). Buckingham's body was embalmed and interred on 7 June 1687 in Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey, ‘in greater state,’ said one of the mourners, ‘than the late king, and with greater splendour’ (, Life of Robert Fairfax, p. 50;, Westminster Registers, p. 218). The duchess survived her husband seventeen years, dying on 20 Oct. 1704 at her house near the mews at St. James's. She was buried in Westminster Abbey (ib. p. 255; Fairfax Correspondence, iv. 240). The duke's great estate had been sold or vested in trustees for the payment of his debts, and little was left to the duchess except what she inherited from her father (ib. iv. 256–67; Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. vi. 218; Aylesbury Memoirs, i. 13). Buckingham left no legitimate issue, and the title consequently became extinct.

A portrait of Buckingham by Lely is in the National Portrait Gallery. Others, by Wright and Van Dyck, were exhibited in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866, which also contained two portraits of the duchess. Engravings are prefixed to Buckingham's ‘Miscellaneous Works,’ 1705 and 1775.

Reresby describes Buckingham as ‘the finest gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw’ (Memoirs, p. 40), and Burnet speaks of his ‘noble presence’ and ‘the liveliness of his wit’ (Own Time, i. 182). ‘He was reckoned,’ said Dean Lockier to Pope, ‘the most accomplished man of the age in riding, dancing, and fencing. When he came into the presence chamber, it was impossible for