Sir Henry Wotton, who had made some inquiries whether the Duke had had any presentiment of his death, relates a touching scene between the Duke and Laud. “My Lord,” Buckingham said, “you have, I know, very free access to the King, our sovereign; let me pray you to remind his Majesty to be good to my poor wife and children.” At these words, or perhaps rather on looking at the expression of countenance with which they were uttered, the Bishop, with some uneasiness, asked the Duke whether he had any forebodings in his mind which he did not like to betray? “No,” replied the Duke; “but I think some adventure may kill me as much as any other man,” The day before he was assassinated, the Duke being ill, Charles the First visited him whilst he was in bed. After a long and serious conversation in private, they separated, Buckingham embracing the King “in a very unusual and passionate manner;” and he also showed great emotion on taking leave of Lord Holland, “as if his soul had divined he should see them no more.” The twentieth of August was his birthday. He had completed his thirty-sixth year--that period which has been marked by a great writer as the departure of youth[115]--it might have been, perhaps, in Buckingham’s case, the beginning of wisdom extracted from experience. Footnote 115: Student. It was the age of omens and other superstitious weaknesses; and supernatural warnings were not wanting to heighten the effect of the tragedy that was soon to be acted. Neither did they who foreboded evil to the Duke wait until after the event to bring forth their ghostly revelations. One day, some little time before the Duke’s death, he was playing at bowls with the King in Spring Gardens. Buckingham, as he usually did,even in Charles’s presence, kept his hat on, a piece of presumption which irritated a Scotsman named Wilson, who, in his wrath, tossed off the Duke’s hat, and declared he would punish impertinence wherever he met it in the same way. On looking round for this man, he had vanished, and was nowhere to be found. The courtiers marvelled at the incident, and regarded it as ominous of the Duke’s fate; but he laughed at them for their folly, and showed no fear.[116] Footnote 116: Balfour’s Annals, MSS., Advocate’s Library, quoted from Brodie, vol. ii., p. 209. His indifference was regarded as infatuation; in fact, it proves that the Duke was, in some respects, superior to those whom he most respected. There was no lone spinster in the country more given to believe in dreams and omens than Laud; and his diary contains perpetual references to his dreams. Every slight incident had its peculiar meaning, foreshadowing some great event. Nor does Lord Clarendon rise above the tone of the times, in his relation of that famous ghost story which forms one of the most prominent incidents of Buckingham’s latest days.