The House of Lords after considering the matter petitioned the King to allow the introduction of a Bill to disable Robert from claiming the title of Viscount Purbeck: but seven peers opposed this petition stating in writing that "the said claimant's right ... did, both at the hearing at the bar and debate in the House, appear to them clear in fact and law and above all objection." Charles II. replied that he "would take it into consideration." This appears to have been the last official word ever pronounced upon the subject, and nobody has since then been summoned to the House of Lords as Viscount Purbeck. The claimant, however, continued to call himself Lord Purbeck. He came to an early end, being killed in a duel by Colonel Luttrell, at Liège, when he was only twenty-eight; but he left a son. Nor did this son only call himself Lord Purbeck, for on the death of the childless second Duke of Buckingham, of whom Dryden wrote:--[107] Stiff in opinion--always in the wrong-- Was everything by starts, but nothing long; Who in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon. Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking: Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking; John Villiers, alias Danvers, alias Wright, in addition to the title of Viscount Purbeck, assumed that of Earl of Buckingham, the reversion of which had been secured by the first Earl and Duke to his brother and his heirs, in the case of his own direct heirs failing. This self-styled Earl squandered his fortune in a life of debauchery, and then married the daughter of a clergyman, a widow with a large jointure but about as dissolute in character as himself, which is saying much. He left no sons. Such claims as there were to the titles of Purbeck and Buckingham then lay with the Rev. George Villiers, Rector of Chalgrove, in Oxfordshire. He was the son of Edward, the second son of the boy christened Robert Wright. In the year 1723, on the death of his cousin, the so-called Earl of Buckingham, this clergyman put in a claim to the titles of Earl of Buckingham and Viscount Purbeck; but, unlike his cousin, he does not appear to have ever "lorded" himself. This cleric left a son named George, who also became a parson, and Vicar of Frodsham in Cheshire. Efforts were made in his youth to obtain for him a summons to the House of Lords; but, in addition to the doubtful character of his claims, he was no _persona grata_ to the King, as he was known to be an ardent Jacobite. As Burke says: "Republicans during the reign of the Stuarts--Jacobites during the reign of the Guelphs--this unfortunate family seems always to have had hold of the wrong end of the stick." As a rule, they appear to have held that end of it, but certainly it is a rule to which George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, was a remarkable exception.