The death of this nobleman was remarkable. It had been foretold by his tutor and Lady Davis that he should not outlive his fiftieth birthday. The fatal day arrived; it found his Lordship very “pleasant and healthful,” and he supped that evening at the Countess of Bedford’s; he was then heard to remark that he should never trust a lady prophetess again. He went to bed in the same good spirits; but was carried off by a fit of apoplexy in the night. Before his interment it was resolved to embalm his body; when one of the surgeons plunged his knife into it, the Earl is said by a tradition in the family to have lifted up one of his hands. The Lady Davis, who had foretold the death of this nobleman, was imprisoned for some time. The Earl died in 1630. Notwithstanding the countenance of the Countess of Bedford, and of the Earl of Pembroke, those who detailed the smallest incidents of the Court observed that the favour of Villiers appeared to be stationary; even his appointment as a Groom of the Bedchamber was deferred in favour of one Carr, a baseborn kinsman of the Earl of Somerset; and it began to be thought that the King’s preference for Villiers was declining.[59] But the game was begun—the hopes of future power, of wealth, perhaps of rank, cherished by maternal counsels, were now working upon the mind of the young adventurer, and he resolved upon one sacrifice to obtain the objects at which he grasped—the sacrifice was, his youthful attachment to old Sir Roger Aston’s daughter.[60] Footnote 59: Inedited letter in the State Paper Office, from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carlton, September 22nd, 1619. Footnote 60: Letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carlton, November, 1614, given in Nichols’s Progresses of James I., vol. iii., p. 26.