doing, he studied other incentives, alledging, not three hours before his execution, to Sir Richard Gresham, two only inducements thereof: The first, as he made it in order, was a certain libellous book, written by one Eggleston, a Scottish physician, which made the duke one of the foulest monsters upon the earth, and, indeed, unworthy not only of life in a christian court, and under so virtuous a king, but of any room within the bounds of all humanity, if his prodigious predictions had the least semblance of truth.

The second was the remonstrance itself of the lower house of parliament against him, which, perchance, he thought the fairest cover; so he put in the second place, whatsoever were the true motive, which, I think, none can determine, but the prince of darkness itself; he did thus prosecute the effect: In a bye cutler's shop on Tower-hill, he bought a tenpenny knife (so cheap was the instrument of this great attempt, and the sheath thereof he sewed to the lining of his pocket) that he might at any moment draw forth the blade alone with one hand, for he had maimed the other: This done, he made shift, partly, as it is said, on horseback, and partly on foot, to get to Portsmouth, for he was indigent and low in money, which, perhaps, might have a little edged his desperation. At Portsmouth, on Saturday, being the twenty-third of August, of that current year, he pressed, without any suspicion, in such a time of so many pretenders to employment, into an inward chamber, where the duke was at breakfast (the last of his repasts in this world) accompanied with men of quality and action, with Monsieur de Soubes, and Sir Thomas Fryer, and there, a little before the duke's rising from the table, he went and stood expecting till he should pass through a kind of lobby between that room and the next, where were divers attending him; towards which passage, as I conceive somewhat darker than the chamber, which he avoided, while the duke came with Sir Thomas Fryer close at his ear, in the very moment as the said knight withdrew himself from the duke, the assassin gave him with a back blow a deep wound into his left side, leaving the knife in his body, which the duke himself pulling out, on a sudden effusion of spirits, he sunk down under the table in the next room, and immediately expired. Certain it is, that, a good while before, Sir Clement Throckmorton, a gentleman then living, of grave judgment, had, in a private conference, advised him to wear a privy coat; whose counsel the duke received very kindly, but gave him this answer, That, against any popular fray, a shirt of mail would be but a silly defence, and, as for a single man's assault, he took himself to be in no danger: So dark is destiny.

One thing in this enormous accident is, I must confess, to me beyond all wonder (as I received it from a gentleman of judicious and diligent observation, and one whom the duke well favoured), That, within the space of not many minutes after the fall of the body, and removal thereof into the first room, there was not a living creature in either of the chambers, no more than if it had lain in the sands of Ethiopia; whereas commonly, in such cases, you shall note every where a great and sudden conflux of people unto the place, to hearken and to see: But it should seem the very horror of the fact had stupified all curiosity, and so dispersed the multitude, that it is thought even the murderer

himself might have escaped, for who gave the blow none could affirm, if he had not lingered about the house below, not by any confused arrest of conscience, as hath been seen in like examples, but by very pride in his own deed, as if, in effect, there were little difference between being remembered by a virtuous fame, or an illustrious infamy.

Thus died this great peer, in the thirty-sixth year of his age complete, and three days over; in a time of great recourse unto him, and dependence upon him; the house and town full of servants and suitors; his duchess in an upper room, scarce yet out of her bed; and the court, at that time, not above six or nine miles from him, which had been the stage of his greatness.

I have spent some inquiry, whether he had any ominous presagement before his end; wherein, though both ancient and modern stories have been infected with much vanity, yet, oftentimes, things fall out of that kind, which may bear a sober construction; whereof I will glean two or three in the duke's case.

Being to take his leave of my Lord's Grace of Canterbury, then Bishop of London, whom he knew well planted in the king's unchangeable affection, by his own great abilities, after courtesies of courage had passed between them: My Lord (says the duke) I know your lordship hath very worthily good accesses unto the King our Sovereign; let me pray you to put his Majesty in mind to be good, as I no way distrust, to my poor wife and children. At which words, or at his countenance in the delivery, or at both, my Lord Bishop, being somewhat troubled, took the freedom to ask him, Whether he had never any secret bodements in his mind? No (replied the duke), but I think some adventure may kill me, as well as another man.

The very day before he was slain, feeling some indisposition of body, the King was pleased to give him the honour of a visit, and found him in his bed; where, after much serious and private discourse, the duke, at his majesty's departing, embraced him in a very unusual and passionate manner, and did in like sort to his friend the Earl of Holland, as if his soul had divined he should see them no more: Which infusions towards fatal ends had been observed by some authors of no light authority.

On the very day of his death, the Countess of Denbigh received a letter from him; whereunto all the while she was writing her answer, she bedewed the paper with her tears; and, after a most bitter passion (whereof she could yield no reason, but, That her dearest brother was to be gone), she fell down in a swoon. Her said letter endeth thus:

'I will pray for your happy return, which I look at with a great cloud over my head, too heavy for my poor heart to bear without torment; but I hope the great God of heaven will bless you.'

The day following, the Bishop of Ely, her devoted friend, who was thought the fittest preparer of her mind to receive such a doleful accident, came to visit her; but, hearing she was at rest, he attended till she should awake of herself; which she did with the affrightment of a dream;

'Her brother seeming to pass through a field with her in her coach; where, hearing a sudden shout of the people, and asking the reason, it was answered to be for joy that the Duke of Buckingham was sick? Which natural impression she scarce had related unto her gentlewoman, before the bishop was entered into her bed-chamber for a chosen messenger of the duke's death.

This is all that I dare present of that nature to any of judgment, not unwillingly omitting certain prognostick anagrams and such strains of fancy.

He took to wife, eight years and two months before his death, the Lady Catharine Manners, heir-general to the noble house of Rutland, who, besides a solid addition to his estate, brought him three sons, and a daughter, called the Lady Mary, his first-born. His eldest son died at nurse before his journey to Rhee, and his third, the Lord Francis, was born after his father's death; so that neither his first, nor his last, were participant of any sense of his misfortunes, or felicities. His se cond son, now Duke of Buckingham, was born to chear him after his return from that unlucky voyage.

For these sweet pledges, and po less for the unquestionable virtues of her person and mind, he loved her dearly, and well expressed his love in an act and time of no simulation, towards his end, bequeathing herall his mansion-houses during her natural life, and a power to dispose of his whole personal estate, together with a fourth part of his lands in jointure. He left his elder brother of the same womb a viscount, and his younger an earl. Sir Edward Villiers, his half-brother on the father's side, he either preferred, or removed (call it how you will) from his stepmother's eye to the presidentship, where he lived in singular estimation for his justice and hospitality, and died with as much grief of the whole province, as ever any governor did before, his religious lady, of sweet and noble direction, adding much to his honour. The eldest of the brethren, and heir of the name, was made a baronet, but abstained from court, enjoying, perhaps, the greater greatness of selffruition.

He left his mother a countess by patent in her own person, which was a new leading example, grown before somewhat rare since the days of Queen Mary. His sister of Denbigh (that right character of a good lady) he most humbly recommended to the Queen, who, after a discharge of some French in her court, that were to return, took her into three several places of honour and trust.

In short, not to insist upon every particular branch of those private preferments, he left all his female kindred, of the intire or half blood, descending of the name of Villiers, or Beaumont, within any near degree, either matched with peers of the realm actually, or hopefully, with earls sons and heirs, or at least with knights, or doctors of divinity, and of plentiful condition. He did not much strengthen his own substance in court, but stood there on his own feet; for the truth is, the most of his allies rather leaned upon him, than shoared him up.

His familiar servants, either about his person in ordinary attendance, or about his affairs of state, as his secretaries; or of office, as his stew

ard; or of law, as that worthy knight whom he long used to sollicit his causes, he left all both in good fortune, and, which is more, in good fame: Things very seldom consociated in the instruments of great personages.

THE

BLOODY PARLIAMENT,

IN THE

REIGN OF AN UNHAPPY PRINCE.

Quarto, containing seven pages, Printed at London in the year of much bloodshed, 1643.

HIS present occasion serving so opportunely fit, I thought it a labour well worthy the observation, to lay down a true narration of that memorable parliament, begun in the tenth year of Richard the Second, both for the great wonders that it wrought, in the subversion of the malignants, who were near unto the king, and had distilled much pernicious counsel into his sacred ears: As also, that every good and careful reader might learn thereby to avoid diversities of miseries, and the fear and danger of a cruel death. I will therefore give a true and short narration of that which hath lain hid a long time in the shadow of forgetfulness, concerning men of great and eminent authority in this king dom, who have been led away in the deceitful path of covetousness, and have come to an untimely and ignominious end; being famous examples to deter all men in authority, or whom favour shall raise near unto the king, from practising those, or the like courses.

When Richard, the second of that name, about the prime of his youth, swayed the imperial scepter of our realm, there flourished in his court certain peers, viz. Alexander Nevill, Archbishop of York, a man more favoured by fortune, than by the honour of his descent; Robert Vere, Duke of Ireland; Michael de la Poole, Earl of Suffolk, and then Lord Chancellor; Robert Trissilian, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Nicholas Brambre, a man, though low in parentage, yet sometime Lord Mayor of London. These men being raised by the special favour of the King, and advanced to the degree of privy-counsellors, were the men, who had the only rule of the common-wealth, which they, for a little while, governed, under the King, with great care and diligence, meriting thereby deserved commendations; but this not long did continue, for, overcome either with ambition, or with covetousness, or

with the pleasures of the court, they despised the authority of their too easy King, and, neglecting the commodity of the realm, in a short time, the revenues of the crown began to waste, the treasure was exhausted, and the commons murmured at the multiplicity of levies, and subsidies, and new ways of taxations; the peers repine to see themselves disgraced, and, in one word, the whole kingdom endured an universal misery. The nobility, seeing the miserable estate wherein themselves and the kingdom was involved, urged the King to summon a parliament, which was done shortly after; in which, amongst many other acts, Michael de la Poole was dismissed of his chancellorship, and, being accused of many crimes of injustice, as, bribery, extortion, and the like, he was committed to Windsor-Castle, and all his lands confiscated to the King. Neither did the parliament here give over, but provided for the whole state, by a mutual consent betwixt his Majesty and the prelates, the barons, and the commons; and, with an unanimous consent, they chose a committee of the lords spiritual and temporal, to depress all civil dissensions, and to appease the grudgings of the people. Of the spiritualty were chosen the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ely, the Bishop of Winchester, &c. Of the laity were elected, by the Duke of York, the Earl of Arundel, the Lord Cobbam, the Lord Scroope, &c. these, as men eminent in virtue, were chosen by general suffrage, and (the parliament being then to be dissolved) were sworn to carry themselves as dutiful and obedient subjects in all their actions. Soon after the aforenamed chancellor, Michael de la Poole, buzzed in the King's ears (being moved with implacable fury against the parliament) that the statutes, then enacted, were prejudicial to the crown, and much derogatory to his princely prerogative, insomuch that he should not have the power in his own hands to preserve a servant, or to bestow a largess, &c. By these, and other the like impious instigations, with which the devil did continually supply them, they practised to annihilate these out of the parliament, or whatsoever might seem, by the liberty of the subject, to reflect on the royal prerogative of the prince: And, first, by their serpentine tongues, and ambitious projects, they so bewitched the noble instigation of the King, that they induced him to believe, that all the ill they did was a general good, and so wrought upon him, that he began to distaste and abhor the passed acts of his parliaments, as treacherous plots, and wicked devices. Next, they studied to ingross the riches of the kingdom into their own coffers, and, to the same end, deal so cunningly, yet pleasingly, with the King, that to some he gave ransoms of royal captives, taken in the late wars in France; to some towns, to some cities, to some lands, to others money, amounting to the sum of a 100000 marks, to the great impoverishment both of King and kingdom. Thirdly, contrary to their allegiance, they vilified the dignity of the King; they caused him to swear, that, with all his power, during his life, he should maintain and defend them from all their enemies, whether foreign or domestick. Fourthly, whereas it was enacted, that the King should sit with his parliament at Westminster, to consult of the publick affairs, through the persuasion of the aforesaid conspirators, he was drawn into the most remote parts