The most unjust aspersions were now circulated throughout all society. It was Buckingham’s custom to cast away, as unworthy of consideration, all reports that were brought to him. On one occasion, hearing that two Colonels, when before St. Martin’s Fort, had said to a third that they observed the Duke often go in his barge to the fleet, and that they believed he would steal away to England some day; and that if he did, they swore they would hand out the white flag, and deliver up the town and island to Tonar, the Governor; the Duke called a council of war, the accused being absent, and charged these gentlemen with their words. They flatly denied them on their swords. The Duke, without further inquiry, believed them, and dismissed the court. Nor did he ever pay any attention to things said about him, either in the Commons or in the camp. In the same way he appears to have treated James Howell, who, presuming on having been in his service, and on the affabilities of the Duke, and a facility of character which had its advantages as well as disadvantages, wrote an impertinent letter, saying, that in his “shallow apprehension” it might be well for the Duke to part with some of his places, and so to avoid opprobrium. “Your Grace,” he remarked, “might stand more firm without an anchor.” Then he next threw out some suggestions as to the better regulation of the Duke’s family and private affairs; and ended by saying that he knew the Duke did not, nor need not, affect popularity. “The people’s love,” he added, “is the strongest citadel of a sovereign prince, but wrath often proved fatal to a subject, for he who pulleth off his hat to the people giveth his head to the prince.” And he ends by referring to “a late unfortunate Earl,” who, a little before Queen Elizabeth’s death, had drawn the axe across his own neck; he had become so unpopular, that he was considered dangerous to the State. This very unpleasant reference was taken, at all events, amicably by Buckingham. The fate of Essex was often supposed to shadow forth his own; and the rapid rise, the more rapid fall, the generous, careless nature, the very early doom of both, to have suggested that parallel between the Earl of Essex and Buckingham, in which Lord Clarendon has placed the characters of both before the reader in delicate touches. In one respect they were very different. Essex, when attacked, even before going to Ireland, wrote an apology, which he dispersed with his own hands. Buckingham left his fame to his contemporaries, and to posterity, just as they choose to view it. On an offer once being made to him to write a justification of his actions, he refused it, says Lord Clarendon, “with a pretty kind of thankful scorn, saying that he would trust to his own good intentions, which God knew, and trust to Him for the pardon of his errors;” that he saw no “fruit of apologies but the multiplying of discourse, which, surely,” even Lord Clarendon observes, “was a well-settled matter.”[109]