Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 2.djvu/411

 BUCKINGHAM 395 1674-79. From 1667 to 1672 he was one of the five Ministers of State who formed the unpopular '■'■ Cabal. '^) He m., 15 Sep. 1657, at Bolton Percy, co. York, Mary,('') da. and h. of Thomas (Fairfax), 3rd Baron Fairfax OF Cameron [S.], the celebrated Parliamentary General (to whom his forfeited estates had been granted), by Anne, da. and coh. of Horatio (Vere), Lord Vere of Tilbury. He d. s.p. legit., of a chill caught after hunting, 16 Apr. 1687, at the house of one of his tenants at Kirkby Moor- side, CO. York, aged 59,(') and was bur. next day in the church there, whence (^) See vol. i, p. 217, note " c." C') She is described in the Gramont Memoirs, c. xi, as "a short fat body like her Majesty," and in some MS. notes in Oldys' copy of Langbaine, teste Viscountess de Longueviile, as "a little round crumpled woman, very fond of finery." Brian Fairfax says of her, "She was a most virtuous and pious lady, in a vicious age and Court. If she had any of the vanities, she had certainly none of the vices of it. The Duke and she lived lovingly and decently together; she patiently bearing with those faults in him which she could not remedy." {Life of the Duke of Buckingham, 1758, p. 39). V.G. (f) His talents were perhaps more varied than great. The brilliant satire on him as Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel is well known: — "Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art, Nothing went unrewarded but desert. Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, and they had his estate." But the man who, as Walpole said, " could equally charm the Presbyterian Fairfax and the Dissolute Charles " was, indeed, no ordinary person, though his career is chiefly remarkable for its wild extravagance and profligacy, and his vices were not always redeemed by personal courage, as was prominently shewn bv his evasion of a duel with Lord Ossory in 1666, which his own insolence had provoked. His seduction of the Countess of Shrewsbury, whose husband he killed in a duel, 16 Mar. 1667/8, isa fair specimen of his mode of life. In a petition of the trustees of the young Earl of Shrewsbury, then a minor, 7 Jan. 1673/4, as to the "shameless cohabiting" of the Duke and the Countess, it is stated that they " have caused a base son of theirs to be buried in the Abbey church of Westminster, with all solemnities under the title of Earl of Coventry." On 6 Feb. following the House of Lords required the Duke and Countess to enter into security by recognizance to the King in ^^10,000 each not to cohabit. In April 1680 the Council ordered the Attorney Gen. to prefer a bill against him for sodomy, and removed a Justice of the Peace from the Commission for having aided the Duke in the attempt to suborn one Philip Lamar to deny his previous accusation. However, a month later, the said Philip and his mother were found guilty of having been suborned to swear the charge against the Duke. [Hist. MSS. Com.). As to his looks, a contemporary songster tells us: — " No gallant peer by nature framed to warm The lovely Fair could boast a nobler form."