Yet, his favouritism admitted, it must be confessed that Rupert's friends were generally well-chosen. Chief among them was Colonel William Legge, a man so faithful, so unselfish, and so unassuming, that he contrived to remain on good terms with all parties. Best known to his contemporaries as "Honest Will", he shines forth, amidst the intriguing courtiers of Oxford, a bright example of disinterestedness. In spite of his intimacy with Rupert, he contrived to remain for long on friendly terms with Lord Digby, though, as he told the latter, "I often found this a hard matter to hold between you."[71] To Legge, Rupert {77} was wont to pour out the indignation of his soul in hastily scribbled letters, and "Will" pacified both the Prince and his enemies, as best he could, "conceiving it," he said, "a matter of advantage to my master's service to have a good intelligence between persons so eminently employed in his affairs."[72] At the same time he never hesitated to express his opinion in "plain language", and from him the fiery Prince seems to have accepted both counsel and reproof, without resentment. Even Clarendon could find nothing worse to say of Will Legge than that he was somewhat diffident of his own judgment.[73] And the King charged the Prince of Wales, in his last message, "to be sure to take care of Honest Will Legge, for he was the faithfullest servant that ever any Prince had." Which charge Charles II fulfilled at the Restoration.[74] Next to Legge among Rupert's friends we must count the grave and melancholy Duke of Richmond. As a Stuart he was Rupert's cousin, and him the Prince excepted from his general dislike of the English nobility. Like Legge, Richmond was free from all self-seeking, honourable, upright, irreproachable, both in public and in private life. His personal devotion to the King, who had brought him up, was intense, and, at the end of the tragedy, he volunteered with Southampton and Lindsey, to die in the stead of his sovereign. Like the King, he was deeply religious, a faithful son of the Church. He was courteous to all, gentle and reserved, but "of a great and haughty spirit."[75] At the beginning of the troubles he had been almost the only man of the first rank who had unswervingly opposed the popular party; and he valued his fidelity at the rate it was worth. He gave his friendship slowly, and only with the approval, asked and received, of the King.[76] But his friendship, once {78} given, was absolute and unalterable. He had in his character a Stuart strain of sensitiveness, amounting to morbidness. Thus, when gently warned by the King against too much correspondence with the treacherous Lady Carlisle, he considered his own loyalty impugned, and for weeks held aloof from the Committee of Secret Affairs. Hyde, commissioned by the distressed King to reason with the Duke, speedily discovered the true source of trouble to be Richmond's jealousy of his master's affection for Ashburnham.