The life and times of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, Volume 1 (of 3): From original and authentic sourcesThomson, A. T., Mrs.
History
The life and times of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, Volume 1 (of 3): From original and authentic sources
Thomson, A. T., Mrs.
Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 1592-1628
In 1645, he was advanced to the Earldom of Norwich. He died in 1662,
leaving his title to George Goring, the celebrated loyalist, of whom
so masterly a portrait has been drawn by Clarendon.
Footnote 158:
Nichols, ii. p. 38, note; apud Sir Anthony Weldon.
Footnote 159:
Kennet’s England, vol. ii. p. 708.
The King proceeded by easy journeys of ten, twelve, and seventeen miles
a day northwards. It is curious to find him resting a day and a night at
the home of Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, near Huntingdon.[160]
At Lincoln, he healed fifty persons of the Evil, a gracious act which
was succeeded by an attendance upon a cock-fighting, at which His
Majesty was very merry. This diversion was varied by horse-racing.
Footnote 160:
Nichols, iii., p. 258.
On his arrival near Edinburgh, the King took up his arrival at Seton
House, the seat of the Earl of Wintoun, whose family continued to be
faithful to the descendants of James during the calamitous contest
between the modern Stuarts and the Hanoverians. James remained in
Scotland until the fifth of July, when he returned by the west coast of
Scotland to Carlisle.
The three great objects of his Majesty’s journey to Scotland, were the
extension of episcopal authority; the establishment of some ceremonials
in religion; and the elevation of the civil above the ecclesiastic
authority.[161] It does not, however, appear that Buckingham took any
active part in these designs, or that he was at this period regarded in
any other light than as one of the ministering agents to the amusement
of James’s vacant hours. It is possible that he may have viewed Scotland
with that prejudice with which the English at that time regarded that
nation. The revenues of that country being then insufficient to maintain
the Government, Buckingham probably deemed it, as others did, nothing
but a drain upon the resources of England—a barren ground from which “a
beggarly rabble (like a fluent spring),” to use the words of Osborne,
“was for ever to be found crossing the River Tweed.”[162] The national
prejudice was likewise considerably strengthened by the King’s
favourite, but abortive scheme of union between the two crowns; thus
dividing the kingdom into halves, so that he, “a Christian king under
the gospel, should no longer be a polygamist to two wives, under which
discreditable imputation he conceived that the partition of the kingdom
placed him.”[163] Whether Buckingham may have been propitiated by the
hospitality of the Scots or not, or whether he thought with Sir Anthony
Weldon that “the country was too good for them that possess it, and too
bad for others to be at the charge to conquer it,” does not appear. In
some passages of the Royal Progress it is most likely that the young
courtier found but little delight. At St. Andrews, disputations in
divinity, and at Stirling in philosophy, were honoured by the King’s
presence. They were delivered by some members of the University of
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