Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/359

 he was appointed by Palmerston to the bishopric of Carlisle. He was consecrated at Whitehall on 13 April, and proved himself not less energetic in a diocese than he had been in a parish. In June 1860 he was translated to the see of Durham. Great things were expected from his energy and tact in Durham, where the spiritual provisions were very deficient; but he died at the Castle, Bishop Auckland, on 9 Aug. 1861, and was buried in the chapel of the Castle on 16 Aug.

He had been raised to the rank of an earl's son by a royal warrant in 1839. He married, on 30 Jan. 1837, Amelia Maria, eldest daughter of William Hulton of Hulton Park, Lancashire. She died on 5 Feb. 1871, leaving, besides four daughters, Henry Montagu, born in 1837, vicar of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, since 1881; and Frederick Ernest, born in 1841, captain in the Royal Herts yeomanry.

Villiers published numerous charges, lectures, sermons, and prefaces to books.



VILLIERS, JOHN, (1591?–1657), born about 1591, was the eldest son of Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, Leicestershire, by his second wife, Mary, afterwards Countess of Buckingham [see under ]. , first duke of Buckingham [q. v.], and, earl of Anglesey [q. v.], were his younger brothers. John was knighted on 30 June 1616, and in the same year became groom of the bedchamber and master of the robes to Charles, prince of Wales. Negotiations at the same time were begun by his mother for his marriage with a rich heiress; the lady selected was Frances, daughter of Sir Edward Coke and his wife, Lady Hatton, and Coke was required to give not only his consent, but a marriage portion of 10,000l. He refused to pay more than two-thirds of that sum, and was consequently called upon to resign his seat on the bench. Lady Hatton remained obdurately opposed to the marriage, but Coke gave way, and on 29 Sept. Frances and Villiers were married at Hampton Court, James I giving away the bride (Beaumont Papers, pp. 34–5;, London Marriage Licences; , Hist. iii. 87, 98). Lady Hatton still refused to make over her Dorset property to Villiers, and as compensation he was on 19 July 1619 created Baron Villiers of Stoke, Buckinghamshire, and Viscount Purbeck of Dorset. The marriage proved a tragedy; Weldon reports Buckingham as having said that ‘his brother Purbeck had more wit and honesty than all the kindred beside’ (Court of James I, p. 44), but according to Dr. Gardiner, he was ‘weak in mind and body,’ and soon after 1620 completely lost his reason (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1619–23, p. 405). In 1621 his wife deserted him and went to live with Sir Robert Howard. In 1624 she gave birth to a son [see, called ], and in October she was convicted of adultery. Eventually she died at Oxford, and was buried in St. Mary's on 4 June 1645. Purbeck, whose insanity was intermittent, married, as his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Slingsby of Kippax, Yorkshire, and died without legitimate issue on 18 Feb. 1656–7 at Charlton, near Greenwich. The peerage became extinct, though the claim to it put forward by Robert Danvers was for many years a cause célèbre.



VILLIERS, JOHN (1677?–1723), styling himself ‘Viscount Purbeck and Baron Villiers of Stoke,’ and after 1687 ‘third Earl of Buckingham,’ born about 1677, was grandson of [q. v.], and only surviving son and heir of Robert Villiers (1656–1684), by the eccentric Margaret, only daughter of Ulick de Burgh, second earl of St. Albans, and widow of Viscount Muskerry (see Memoirs, passim). Robert Villiers, alias Danvers, left England heavily in debt, and was killed in a duel at Liège, at the age of twenty-eight. He assumed the style of ‘Viscount Purbeck,’ despite the fact that his claim to succeed to the dignity had been disallowed by the House of Lords in 1678, on the ground of adulterine bastardy (see, Claims concerning Baronies by Writ), his father, Robert Danvers, alias Villiers, alias Wright [see ], being the illegitimate son of Frances, the wife of , viscount Purbeck [q. v.], upon whose heirs male the reversion of the earldom of Buckingham was entailed by the patent of 1617.

John Villiers, who was educated at Eton, and who subsequently became the prey of gamesters and depraved women, did not make a formal claim to the earldom of Buckingham until April 1709, nor did the lords then take