as the Red Cross Knight that was Una’s champion against Archinago."[75] And this scheme, which produced results afterwards, as well as at the time they were effected, of the utmost importance to Buckingham, had been accomplished from the suggestions and by the skill of the Lord Keeper Williams. Footnote 75: Hacket’s Life of Williams, pp. 172, 173. It may therefore be supposed that Buckingham would listen with reverence to his representations, when the Lord Keeper ventured to warn him from the course he was pursuing. So far, however, from such being the case, the Duke never forgave him for a letter addressed to him whilst in Spain, advising a reconciliation with the Earl of Bristol, whose knowledge of Spanish affairs, and repeated success in negotiations, would, it was thought, secure the completion of the marriage treaty.[76] Even whilst writing the letter, which seemed to alienate Williams from Buckingham for a time, the Lord Keeper was aware that he had already incurred the favourite’s displeasure. “What I wrote formerly,” he says, “may be ill-placed, and offend your grace, but all proceeded from as true and sincere a heart as you left behind you in all this kingdom.”[77] The Earl of Bristol, on hearing of this act of mediation, argued truly when he anticipated that it would produce a quarrel. He wrote to Williams to the following effect, “that the friendship of the Duke was a thing he did infinitely desire, that he did infinitely esteem the good offices that the Lord Keeper had done therein, but that he conceived that any motion he had made in that kind had been despised rather than received with thankfulness.”[78] Footnote 76: Hacket’s Life of Williams, p. 147. Footnote 77: Ibid. Footnote 78: Hacket, 148. Buckingham had formerly been compared to Alcibiades, the Lord Keeper to Socrates; but all obligations to that supposed Socrates were henceforth annulled. The interference of Williams, creditable to himself, and due to the King, was so misinterpreted that Buckingham withdrew from him his friendship, forgetting not only the axiom of Solon, “never to choose a friend suddenly, nor to lose him suddenly,” but the still stronger argument of services which could not be denied. During the Duke’s absence in Spain, Williams had watched over his welfare with the utmost care; he had ventured boldly to speak the truth to him; a benefit scarcely less important; yet Buckingham could not be appeased.