It was not alone poverty that seemed likely to keep the younger children of Sir George Villiers in obscurity; there were wanting in his father’s heir those qualities which bring the humble forward, and enrich more than even prudence and frugality. Sir William, who now took possession of Brookesby, was contented with his country lot; and so much did he despise honours and titles, that when he was created a Baronet in 1619,[24] the dignity was almost forced upon him. “He was,” says a contemporary author, “so careless of honour in courting that compliment, as that the King (James First) said, ‘Sir William would scarce give him thanks for it, and doubted whether he would accept of it.’” Thus, little assistance in the career of life could be expected from one who would scarcely deem the prizes most sought for by men, worth the trouble of a little personal exertion. Footnote 24: This title, the 109th baronetcy, ceased in 1711, when the elder branch of the Villiers family became extinct by the death of the third Baronet, Sir William, without issue. Upon the death of her husband, Lady Villiers retired to Godby Marward, which was appropriated to her as a dower house. Her son, George, was then ten years old; the loss which he had sustained in the death of his father, great as it seemed, was fully compensated by the care of her whom Sir Henry Wotton entitles “his beautiful and provident mother.” The promising boy had already received some education at Billesdon, in Leicestershire, where he was sent to school, and instructed in music and in some “slight literature;” but to no common hands would Lady Villiers, as the dawning personal charms of her son unfolded, entrust the culture of this, her favourite child; she had him, henceforth, as his biographer expresses it, “in her especial care.”[25] Possibly, in her widowed seclusion, when she looked upon the face which afterwards captivated all beholders, she anticipated the day when her son should appear at Court, and attract some marks of that royal favour which had been shewn to Leicester, to Raleigh, and to Essex for no better reason than that they were handsomer and more graceful than their compeers, and that their manly beauty was set off by the gallant bearing of well-trained “carpet knights.” Queen Elizabeth had taught her subjects to value those attributes which had sunk so low in fashion and estimation in the troublous reign of Mary, or during the short and saintly career of Edward. Footnote 25: Reliquiæ Wottonianæ.