VIII. HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM
George Villier's Courtship of Ann of Austria
He was Insolence incarnate.
Since the day when, a mere country lad, his singular good lookshad attracted the attention of King James--notoriously partial togood-looking lads--and had earned him the office of cup-bearer to hisMajesty, the career of George Villiers is to be read in a series ofacts of violent and ever-increasing arrogance, expressing the vanity andlevity inherent in his nature. Scarcely was he established in the royalfavour than he distinguished himself by striking an offending gentlemanin the very presence of his sovereign--an act of such gross disrespectto royalty that his hand would have paid forfeit, as by law demanded,had not the maudlin king deemed him too lovely a fellow to be so cruellymaimed.
Over the mind and will of King Charles his ascendancy became evengreater than it had been over that of King James; and it were easy toshow that the acts of George Villiers' life supplied the main planksof that scaffold in Whitehall whereupon Charles Stuart came to lose hishead. Charles was indeed a martyr; a martyr chiefly to the reckless,insolent, irresponsible vanity of this Villiers, who, from a simplecountry squire with nothing but personal beauty to recommend him, hadrisen to be, as Duke of Buckingham, the first gentleman in England.
The heady wine of power had gone to his brain, and so addled it that, asJohn Chamberlain tells us, there was presently a touch of crazinessin him--of the variety, no doubt, known to modern psychologists asmegalomania He lost the sense of proportion, and was without respect foranybody or anything. The Commons of England and the immensely dignifiedCourt of Spain--during that disgraceful, pseudo-romantic adventure atMadrid--were alike the butts of this parvenu's unmeasured arrogance Butthe crowning insolence of his career was that tragicomedy the second actof which was played on a June evening in an Amiens garden on the banksof the river Somme.
Three weeks ago--on the 14th May, 1625, to be precise--Buckingham hadarrived in Paris as Ambassador Extra-ordinary, charged with the task ofconducting to England the King of France's sister, Henrietta Maria, whothree days earlier had been married by proxy to King Charles.
The occasion enabled Buckingham to fling the reins on to the neck ofhis mad vanity, to indulge to the very fullest his crazy passionfor ostentation and magnificence. Because the Court of France wasproverbially renowned for splendour and luxury, Buckingham felt it dueto himself to extinguish its brilliance by his own. On his first comingto the Louvre he literally blazed. He wore a suit of white satin velvetwith a short cloak in the Spanish fashion, the whole powdered over withdiamonds to the value of some ten thousand pounds. An enormous diamondclasped the heron's plume in his hat; diamonds flashed in the hilt ofhis sword; diamonds studded his very spurs, which were of beaten gold;the highest orders of England, Spain, and France flamed on his breast.On the occasion of his second visit he wore a suit of purple satin, ofintent so lightly sewn with pearls that as he moved he shook them offlike raindrops, and left them to lie where they fell, as largesse forpages and the lesser fry of the Court.
His equipages and retinue were of a kind to match his personaleffulgence. His coaches were lined with velvet and covered with clothof gold, and some seven hundred people made up his train. There weremusicians, watermen, grooms of the chamber, thirty chief yeomen, ascore of cooks, as many grooms, a dozen pages, two dozen footmen, sixoutriders, and twenty gentlemen, each with his own attendants, allarrayed as became the satellites of a star of such great magnitude.
Buckingham succeeded in his ambition. Paris, that hitherto had set thefashion to the world, stared mouth-agape, dazzled by the splendour ofthis superb and scintillating ambassador.
Another, by betraying consciousness of the figure that he cut, mighthave made himself ridiculous. But Buckingham's insolent assurance wasproof against that peril. Supremely self-satisfied, he was consciousonly that what he did could not be better done, and he ruffled it withan air of easy insouciance, as if in all this costly display there wasnothing that was not normal. He treated with princes, and even withthe gloomy Louis XIII., as with equals; and, becoming more and moreintoxicated with his very obvious success, he condescended to observeapprovingly the fresh beauty of the young Queen.
Anne of Austria, then in her twenty-fourth year, was said to be oneof the most beautiful women in Europe. She was of a good height andcarriage, slight, and very gracefully built, of a ravishing fairness ofskin and hair, whilst a look of wistfulness had come to invest with anindefinable tenderness her splendid eyes. Her childless marriage to theyoung King of France, which had endured now for ten years, had hardlybeen successful. Gloomy, taciturn, easily moved to suspicion, anddifficult to convince of error, Louis XIII. held his wife aloof,throwing up between himself and her a wall of coldness, almost ofdislike.
There is a story--and Tallemant des Raux gives credit to it--that in theearly days of her reign as Queen of France, Richelieu had fallen deeplyin love with her, and that she, with the mischief of an irresponsibleyoung girl, had encouraged him, merely to betray him to a ridicule whichhis proud spirit had never been able to forgive. Be that or anotherthe reason, the fact that Richelieu hated her, and subjected her tohis vindictive persecution, is beyond dispute. And it was he who by ahundred suggestions poisoned against her the King's mind, and thus keptever open the gulf between the two.
The eyes of that neglected young wife dilated a little, and admirationkindled in them, when they rested upon the dazzling figure of my Lord ofBuckingham. He must have seemed to her a figure of romance, a prince outof a fairy-tale.
That betraying glance he caught, and it inflamed at once his monstrousarrogance. To the scalps already adorning the belt of his vanity hewould add that of the love of a beautiful young queen. Perhaps he wasthrilled in his madness by the thought of the peril that would spicesuch an adventure. Into that adventure he plunged forthwith. He wooedher during the eight days that he abode in Paris, flagrantly, openly,contemptuous of courtiers and of the very King himself. At the Louvre,at the Hotel de Chevreuse, at the Luxembourg, where the Queen-Motherheld her Court, at the Hotel de Guise, and elsewhere he was ever at theQueen's side.
Richelieu, whose hard pride and self-love had been wounded by the Duke'scavalier behaviour, who despised the fellow for an upstart, and may evenhave resented that so shallow a man should have been sent to treat witha statesman of his own caliber--for other business beside the marriagehad brought Buckingham to Paris--suggested to the King that the Duke'smanner in approaching the Queen lacked a proper deference, and theQueen's manner of receiving him a proper circumspection. Therefore theKing's long face became longer, his gloomy eyes gloomier, as he lookedon. Far, however, from acting as a deterrent, the royal scowl was mereincense to the vanity of Buckingham, a spur to goad him on to greaterdaring.
On the 2nd of June a splendid company of some four thousand Frenchnobles and ladies, besides Buckingham and his retinue, quitted Paris toaccompany Henrietta Maria, now Queen of England, on the first stage ofher journey to her new home. The King was not of the party. He hadgone with Richelieu to Fontainebieau, leaving it to the Queen and theQueen-Mother to accompany his sister.
Buckingham missed no chance upon that journey of pressing his attentionsupon Anne of Austria. Duty dictated that his place should be beside thecarriage of Henrietta Maria. But duty did not apply to His Insolence ofBuckingham, so indifferent of whom he might slight or offend. And thenthe devil took a hand in the game.
At Amiens, the Queen-Mother fell ill, so that the Court was compelled tohalt there for a few days to give her Majesty the repose she required.Whilst Amiens was thus honoured by the presence of three queens atone and the same time within its walls, the Duc de Chaulnes gave anentertainment in the Citadel. Buckingham attended this, and in the dancethat followed the banquet it was Buckingham who led out the Queen.
Thereafter the royal party had returned to the Bishop's Palace, where itwas lodged, and a small company went out to take the evening cool in theBishop's fragrant gardens on the Somme, Buckingham e
ver at the Queen'sside. Anne of Austria was attended by her Mistress of the Household,the beautiful, witty Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse, and by herequerry, Monsieur de Putange. Madame de Chevreuse had for cavalier thathandsome coxcomb, Lord Holland, who was one of Buckingham's creatures,between whom and herself a certain transient tenderness had sprung up.M. de Putange was accompanied by Madame de Vernet, with whom at the timehe was over head and ears in love. Elsewhere about the spacious gardensother courtiers sauntered.
Now either Madame de Chevreuse and M. de Putange were too deeplyengrossed in their respective companions, or else the state of theirown hearts and the tepid, languorous eventide disposed them complacentlytowards the affair of gallantry upon which their mistress almost seemedto wish to be embarked. They forgot, it would seem, that she was aqueen, and remembered sympathetically that she was a woman, and that shehad for companion the most splendid cavalier in all the world. Thus theycommitted the unpardonable fault of lagging behind, and allowing her topass out of their sight round the bend of an avenue by the water.
No sooner did Buckingham realize that he was alone with the Queen, thatthe friendly dusk and a screen of trees secured them from observation,than, piling audacity up on audacity, he determined to accomplish hereand now the conquest of this lovely lady who had used him so graciouslyand received his advances with such manifest pleasure.
"How soft the night! How exquisite!" he sighed.
"Indeed," she agreed. "And how still, but for the gentle murmur of theriver."
"The river!" he cried, on a new note. "That is no gentle murmur. Theriver laughs, maliciously mocking. The river is evil."
"Evil?" quoth she. He had checked in his step, and they stood now sideby side.
"Evil," he repeated. "Evil and cruel. It goes to swell the sea that soonshall divide me from you, and it mocks me, rejoicing wickedly in thepain that will presently be mine."
It took her aback. She laughed, a little breathlessly, to hide herdiscomposure, and scarce knew how to answer him, scarce knew whethershe took pleasure or offense in his daring encroachment upon that royalaloofness in which she dwelt, and in which her Spanish rearing hadtaught her she must ever dwell.
"Oh, but Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, you will be with us again, perhapsbefore so very long."
His answer came in a swift, throbbing question, his lips so near herface that she could feel his breath hot upon her cheek.
"Do you wish it, madame? Do you wish it? I implore you, of your pity,say but that you wish it, and I will come, though I tear down half aworld to reach you."
She recoiled in fright and displeasure before a wooing so impetuous andviolently outspoken; though the displeasure was perhaps but a passingemotion, the result of early training. Yet she contrived to answer himwith the proper icy dignity due to her position as a princess of Spain,now Queen of France.
"Monsieur, you forget yourself. The Queen of France does not listen tosuch words. You are mad, I think."
"Yes, I am mad," he flung back. "Mad with love--so mad that I haveforgot that you are a queen and I an ambassador. Under the ambassadorthere is a man, under the queen a woman--our real selves, not the titleswith which Fate seeks to dissemble our true natures. And with the wholestrength of my true nature do I love you, so potently, so overwhelminglythat I will not believe you sensible of no response."
Thus torrentially he delivered himself, and swept her a little offher feet. She was a woman, as he said; a queen, it is true; but alsoa neglected, coldly-used wife; and no one had ever addressed her inanything approaching this manner, no one had ever so much as suggestedthat her existence could matter greatly, that in her woman's naturethere was the magic power of awakening passion and devotion. He was sosplendidly magnificent, so masterful and unrivalled, and he came thusto lay his being, as it were, in homage at her feet. It touched her alittle, who knew so little of the real man. It cost her an effort torepulse him, and the effort was not very convincing.
"Hush, monsieur, for pity's sake! You must not talk so to me. It ... ithurts."
O fatal word! She meant that it was her dignity as Queen he wounded, forshe clung to that as to the anchor of salvation. But he in his egregiousvanity must of course misunderstand.
"Hurts!" he cried, and the rapture in his accents should have warnedher. "Because you resist it, because you fight against the commands ofyour true self. Anne!" He seized her, and crushed her to him. "Anne!"
Wild terror gripped her at that almost brutal contact, and anger, too,her dignity surging up in violent outraged rebellion. A scream, loud andpiercing, broke from her and rang through the still garden. It broughthim to his senses. It was as if he had been lifted up into the air, andthen suddenly allowed to fall.
He sprang away from her, an incoherent exclamation on his lips, and whenan instant later Monsieur de Putange came running up in alarm, his handupon his sword, those two stood with the width of the avenue betweenthem, Buckingham erect and defiant, the Queen breathing hard andtrembling, a hand upon her heaving breast as if to repress its tumult.
"Madame! Madame!" had been Putange's cry, as he sprang forward in alarmand self-reproach.
He stood now almost between them, looking from one to the other inbewilderment. Neither spoke.
"You cried out, Madame," M. de Putange reminded her, and Buckinghammay well have wondered whether presently he would be receiving M. dePutange's sword in his vitals. He must have known that his life now hungupon her answer.
"I called you, that was all," said the Queen, in a voice that she stroveto render calm. "I confess that I was startled to find myself alone withM. L'Ambassadeur. Do not let it occur again, M. de Putange!"
The equerry bowed in silence. His itching fingers fell away from hissword-hilt, and he breathed more freely. He had no illusions as towhat must have happened. But he was relieved there were to be nocomplications. The others now coming up with them, the party thereafterkept together until presently Buckingham and Lord Holland took theirleave.
On the morrow the last stage of the escorting journey was accomplished.A little way beyond Amiens the Court took its leave of Henrietta Maria,entrusting her now to Buckingham and his followers, who were to conveyher safely to Charles.
It was a very contrite and downcast Buckingham who came now to Anne ofAustria as she sat in her coach with the Princesse de Conti for onlycompanion.
"Madame," he said, "I am come to take my leave."
"Fare you well, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur," she said, and her voice waswarm and gentle, as if to show him that she bore no malice.
"I am come to ask your pardon, madame," he said, in a low voice.
"Oh, monsieur--no more, I beg you." She looked down; her hands weretrembling, her cheeks going red and white by turns.
He put his head behind the curtains of the coach, so that none might seehim from outside, and looking at him now, she beheld tears in his eyes.
"Do not misunderstand me, madame. I ask your pardon only for havingdiscomposed you, startled you. As for what I said, it were idle to askpardon, since I could no more help saying it than I can help drawingbreath. I obeyed an instinct stronger than the will to live. I gaveexpression to something that dominates my whole being, and will everdominate it as long as I have life. Adieu, madame! At need you knowwhere a servant who will gladly die for you is to be found." He kissedthe hem of her robe, dashed the back of his hand across his eyes, andwas gone before she could say a word in answer.
She sat pale, and very thoughtful, and the Princesse de Conti, watchingher furtively, observed that her eyes were moist.
"I will answer for the Queen's virtue," she stated afterwards, "but Icannot speak so positively for the hardness of her heart, since withoutdoubt the Duke's tears affected her spirits."
But it was not yet the end. As Buckingham was nearing Calais, he wasmet by a courier from Whitehall, with instructions for him regardingthe negotiations he had been empowered to carry out with France in thematter of an alliance against Spain--negotiations which had notthriven with Louis an
d Richelieu, possibly because the ambassador wasill-chosen. The instructions came too late to be of use, but in time toserve as a pretext for Buckingham's return to Amiens. There he sought anaudience of the Queen-Mother, and delivered himself to her of a futilemessage for the King. This chimerical business--as Madame de Mottevilleshrewdly calls it--being accomplished, he came to the real matter whichhad prompted him to use that pretext for his return, and sought audienceof Anne of Austria.
It was early morning, and the Queen was not yet risen. But the levees atthe Court of France were precisely what the word implies, and they wereheld by royalty whilst still abed. It was not, therefore, amazing thathe should have been admitted to her presence. She was alone save for herlady-in-waiting, Madame de Lannoi, who was, we are told, aged, prudentand virtuous. Conceive, therefore, the outraged feelings of this ladyupon seeing the English duke precipitate himself wildly into the room,and on his knees at the royal bedside seize the coverlet and bear it tohis lips.
Whilst the young Queen looked confused and agitated, Madame de Lannoibecame a pillar of icy dignity.
"M. le Duc," says she, "it is not customary in France to kneel whenspeaking to the Queen."
"I care nothing for the customs of France, madame," he answered rudely."I am not a Frenchman."
"That is too obvious, monsieur," snapped the elderly, prudent andvirtuous countess. "Nevertheless, whilst in France perhaps monsieur willperceive the convenience of conforming to French customs. Let me callfor a chair for Monsieur le Duc."
"I do not want a chair, madame."
The countess cast her eyes to Heaven, as if to say, "I suppose onecannot expect anything else in a foreigner," and let him kneel as heinsisted, placing herself, however, protectingly at the Queen's pillow.
Nevertheless, entirely unabashed, heeding Madame de Lannoi's presenceno more than if she had been part of the room's furniture, the Dukedelivered himself freely of what was in his mind. He had been obliged toreturn to Amiens on a matter of State. It was unthinkable that he shouldbe so near to her Majesty and not hasten to cast himself at her feet;and whilst gladdening the eyes of his body with the sight of hermatchless perfection, the image of which was ever before the eyes ofhis soul, allow himself the only felicity life now held for him--that ofprotesting himself her utter slave. This, and much more of the kind,did he pour out, what time the Queen, embarrassed and annoyed beyondutterance, could only stare at him in silence.
Apart from the matchless impudence of it, it was also of a rashnessbeyond pardon. Unless Madame de Lannoi were the most circumspect ofwomen, here was a fine tale for Court gossips, and for the King's ears,a tale that must hopelessly compromise the Queen. For that, Buckingham,in his self-sufficiency and arrogance, appears to have cared nothing.One suspects that it would have pleased his vanity to have his namelinked with the Queen's by the lips of scandal.
She found her tongue at last.
"Monsieur le Duc," she said in her confusion, "it was not necessary,it was not worth while, to have asked audience of me for this. You haveleave to go."
He looked up in doubt, and saw only confusion; attributed it perhapsto the presence of that third party to which himself he had been soindifferent. He kissed the coverlet again, stumbled to his feet, andreached the door. Thence he sent her a flaming glance of his bold eyes,and hand on heart--
"Adieu, madame!" said he in tragic tones, and so departed.
Madame de Lannoi was discreet, and related at the time nothing of whathad passed at that interview. But that the interview itself had takenplace under such conditions was enough to set the tongue of gossipwagging. An echo of it reached the King, together with the story of thatother business in the garden, and he was glad to know that the Duke ofBuckingham was back in London. Richelieu, to vent his own malice againstthe Queen, sought to feed the King's suspicions.
"Why did she cry out, sire?" he will have asked. "What did M. deBuckingham do to make her cry out?"
"I don't know. But whatever it was, she was no party to it since she didcry out."
Richelieu did not pursue the matter just then. But neither did heabandon it. He had his agents in London and elsewhere, and he desiredof them a close report upon the Duke of Buckingham's movements, and thefullest particulars of his private life.
Meanwhile, Buckingham had left behind him in France two faithful agentsof his own, with instructions to keep his memory green with the Queen.For he intended to return upon one pretext or another before very long,and complete the conquest. Those agents of his were Lord Holland andthe artist Balthazar Gerbier. It is to be presumed that they served theDuke's interests well, and it is no less to be presumed from that whichfollowed that they found her Majesty willing enough to hear news of thatamazingly romantic fellow who had flashed across the path of her greylife, touching it for a moment with his own flaming radiance. In herloneliness she came to think of him with tenderness and pity, in whichpity for herself and her dull lot was also blent. He was away, overseas;she might never see him again; therefore there could be little harm inindulging the romantic tenderness he had inspired.
So one day, many months after his departure, she begged Gerbier--asLa Rochefoucauld tells us--to journey to London and bear the Duke atrifling memento of her--a set of diamond studs. That love-token--for itamounted to no less--Gerbier conveyed to England, and delivered to theDuke.
Buckingham's head was so completely turned by the event, and his desireto see Anne of Austria again became thereupon so overmastering, that heat once communicated to France that he was coming over as the ambassadorof the King of England to treat of certain matters connected withSpain. But Richelieu had heard from the French ambassador in Londonthat portraits of the Queen of France were excessively abundant at YorkHouse, the Duke's residence, and he had considered it his duty to informthe King. Louis was angry, but not with the Queen. To have believed herguilty of any indiscretion would have hurt his gloomy pride toodeeply. All that he believed was that this was merely an expression ofBuckingham's fanfaronading, thrasonical disposition, a form of vain,empty boasting peculiar to megalomaniacs.
As a consequence, the King of England was informed that the Duke ofBuckingham, for reasons well known to himself, would not be agreeable asCharles's ambassador to his Most Christian Majesty. Upon learning this,the vainglorious Buckingham was loud in proclaiming the reason ("wellknown to himself") and in protesting that he would go to France to seethe Queen with the French King's consent or without it. This was dulyreported to Richelieu, and by Richelieu to King Louis. But his MostChristian Majesty merely sneered, accounted it more empty boasting onthe part of the parvenu, and dismissed it from his mind.
Richelieu found this attitude singularly exasperating in a King whowas temperamentally suspicious. It so piqued and annoyed him, that whenconsidered in addition to his undying rancour against Anne of Austria,it is easily believed he spared no pains to obtain something in thenature of a proof that the Queen was not as innocent as Louis insistedupon believing.
Now it happened that one of his London agents informed him, among othermatters connected with the Duke's private life, that he had a bitter andsecret enemy in the Countess of Carlisle, between whom and himself therehad been a passage of some tenderness too abruptly ended by the Duke.Richelieu, acting upon this information, contrived to enter intocorrespondence with Lady Carlisle, and in the course of thiscorrespondence he managed her so craftily--says La Rochefoucauld--thatvery soon she was, whilst hardly realizing it, his Eminence's mostvaluable spy near Buckingham. Richelieu informed her that he wasmainly concerned with information that would throw light upon the realrelations of Buckingharn and the Queen of France, and he persuaded herthat nothing was too insignificant to be communicated. Her resentmentof the treatment she had received from Buckingham, a resentment the morebitter for being stifled--since for her reputation's sake she darednot have given it expression--made her a very ready instrument inRichelieu's hands, and there was no scrap of gossip she did notcarefully gather up and dispatch to him. But all was naught unti
l oneday at last she was able to tell him something that set his pulsesbeating more quickly than their habit.
She had it upon the best authority that a set of diamond studsconstantly worn of late by the Duke was a love-token from the Queen ofFrance sent over to Buckingham by a messenger of her own. Here, indeed,was news. Here was a weapon by which the Queen might be destroyed.Richelieu considered. If he could but obtain possession of the studs,the rest would be easy. There would be an end--and such an end!--tothe King's obstinate, indolent faith in his wife's indifference to thatboastful, flamboyant English upstart. Richelieu held his peace for thetime being, and wrote to the Countess.
Some little time thereafter there was a sumptuous ball given at YorkHouse, graced by the presence of King Charles and his young FrenchQueen. Lady Carlisle was present, and in the course of the eveningBuckingham danced with her. She was a very beautiful, accomplished andready-witted woman, and to-night his Grace found her charms so alluringthat he was almost disposed to blame himself for having perhaps treatedher too lightly. Yet she seemed at pains to show him that it was his totake up again the affair at the point at which it had been dropped.She was gay, arch, provoking and irresistible. So irresistible thatpresently, yielding to the lure of her, the Duke slipped away from hisguests with the lady on his arm, and they found themselves at the footof the garden in the shadow of the water-gate that Inigo Jones had justcompleted for him. My lady languished at his side, permitted him toencircle her with a protecting arm, and for a moment lay heavily againsthim. He caught her violently to him, and now her ladyship, hitherto soyielding, with true feminine contrariness set herself to resist him. Ascuffle ensued between them. She broke from him at last, and sped swiftas a doe across the lawn towards the lights of the great house, hisGrace in pursuit between vexation and amusement.
But he did not overtake her, and it was with a sense of having beenfooled that he rejoined his guests. His questing eyes could discern hernowhere. Presently he made inquiries, to be told that she had desiredher carriage to be called, and had left York House immediately uponcoming in from the garden.
He concluded that she was gone off in a pet. It was very odd. It was, infact, most flagrantly contradictory that she should have taken offenseat that which she had so obviously invited. But then she always had beena perverse and provoking jade. With that reflection he put her from hismind.
But anon, when his guests had departed, and the lights in the greathouse were extinguished, Buckingham thought of the incident again.Cogitating it, he sat in his room, his fingers combing his fine,pointed, auburn beard. At last, with a shrug and a half-laugh, he roseto undress for bed. And then a cry escaped him, and brought in his valetfrom an adjoining room. The riband of diamond studs was gone.
Reckless and indifferent as he was, a sense of evil took him in themoment of his discovery of that loss, so that he stood there pale,staring, and moist of brow. It was no ordinary theft. There were uponhis person a dozen ornaments of greater value, any one of which couldhave been more easily detached. This was the work of some French agent.He had made no secret of whence those studs had come to him.
There his thoughts checked on a sudden. As in a flash of revelation, hesaw the meaning of Lady Carlisle's oddly contradictory behaviour. Thejade had fooled him. It was she who had stolen the riband. He sat downagain, his head in his hands, and swiftly, link by link, he piecedtogether a complete chain.
Almost as swiftly he decided upon the course of action which he mustadopt so as to protect the Queen of France's honour. He was virtuallythe ruler of England, master in these islands of an almost boundlesspower. That power he would exert to the full this very night to thwartthose enemies of his own and of the Queen's, who worked so subtly inconcert. Many would be wronged, much harm would be done, the libertiesof some thousands of freeborn Englishmen would be trampled underfoot.What did it matter? It was necessary that his Grace of Buckingham shouldcover up an indiscretion.
"Set ink and paper yonder," he bade his gaping valet. "Then go call M.Gerbier. Rouse Lacy and Thom, and send them to me at once, and leaveword that I shall require a score of couriers to be in the saddle andready to set out in half an hour."
Bewildered, the valet went off upon his errand. The Duke sat down towrite. And next morning English merchants learnt that the ports ofEngland were closed by the King's express command--delivered by hisminister, the Duke of Buckingham--that measures were being taken--werealready taken in all southern ports--so that no vessel of any kindshould leave the island until the King's further pleasure were madeknown. Startled, the people wondered was this enactment the forerunnerof war. Had they known the truth, they might have been more startledstill, though in a different manner. As swiftly as couriers couldtravel--and certainly well ahead of any messenger seeking escapeoverseas--did this blockade spread, until the gates of England weretight locked against the outgoing of those diamond studs which meant thehonour of the Queen of France.
And meanwhile a diamond-cutter was replacing the purloined stones byothers, matching them so closely that no man should be able to say whichwere the originals and which the copies. Buckingham and Gerbier betweenthem guided the work. Soon it was accomplished, and a vessel slippeddown the Thames, allowed to pass by those who kept close watch toenforce the royal decree, and made sail for Calais, which was beginningto manifest surprise at this entire cessation of traffic from England.From that vessel landed Gerbier, and rode straight to Paris, carryingthe Queen of France the duplicate studs, which were to replace thosewhich she had sent to Buckingham.
Twenty-four hours later the ports of England were unsealed, and commercewas free and unhampered once more. But it was twenty-four hours toolate for Richelieu and his agent, the Countess of Carlisle. His Eminencedeplored a fine chance lost through the excessive power that was wieldedin England by the parvenu.
Yet that is not quite the end of the story. Buckingham's inflamed andreckless mind would stop at nothing now to achieve the object of hisdesires--go to France and see the Queen. Since the country was closedto him, he would force a way into it, the red way of war. Blood shouldflow, ruin and misery desolate the land, but in the end he would go toParis to negotiate a peace, and that should be his opportunity. Otherreasons there may have been, but none so dominant, none that could nothave been removed by negotiation. The pretexted casus belli was thematter of the Protestants of La Rochelle, who were in rebellion againsttheir king.
To their aid sailed Buckingham with an English expedition. Disasterand defeat awaited it. Its shattered remnant crept back in disgrace toEngland, and the Duke found himself more detested by the people than hehad been already--which is saying much. He went off to seek comfort atthe hands of the two persons who really loved him--his doting King andhis splendid wife.
But the defeat had neither lessened his resolve nor chastened hisinsolence. He prepared a second expedition in the very teeth of along-suffering nation's hostility, indifferent to the mutinies andmutterings about him. What signified to him the will of a nation? Hedesired to win to the woman whom he loved, and to accomplish that henothing recked that he should set Europe in a blaze, nothing recked whatblood should be poured out, what treasure dissipated.
Hatred of him by now was so widespread and vocal, that his friends,fearing that soon it would pass from words to deeds, urged him to takeprecautions, advised the wearing of a shirt of mail for greater safety.
But he laughed sneeringly, ever arrogant and scornful.
"It needs not. There are no Roman spirits left," was his contemptuousanswer.
He was mistaken. One morning after breakfast, as he was leavingthe house in the High Street, Portsmouth, where he lodged whilstsuperintending the final preparations for that unpopular expedition,John Felton, a self-appointed instrument of national vengeance, drove aknife to the hilt into the Duke's breast.
"May the Lord have mercy on your soul!" was the pious exclamation withwhich the slayer struck home. And, in all the circumstances, there seemsto have been occasion for the prayer.
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