It is unsatisfactory to refer to any statement of Gerbier’s as reliable; in a work on “Royal Favourites,” written in French, he stated that Dr. Egglisham had applied to him, through Sir William Chaloner, to procure his pardon, on condition of his confessing that he had been instigated by others to publish his libel on Buckingham. Gerbier stated that he had applied to the Secretary of State, but received no answer. It is unfortunate that no one could believe Gerbier, either when he calumniated or when he excused any individual. It was by this able, scurrilous sycophant that the catalogue of Buckingham’s pictures was drawn up. In it were enumerated thirteen pictures by Rubens, whom the Duke had seen when he was at Antwerp, shortly before the Expedition to Rhé. When, in 1630, the great painter came to England as a diplomatist, the Duke was dead, but the sovereign who had so greatly encouraged his tastes, did not, as Walpole remarks, “overlook in the ambassador the talents of the painter.” Rubens painted, for three thousand pounds, the ceiling of the Banqueting House built by Inigo Jones--and depicting the “Apotheosis of King James;” a subject highly inconsistent for the purpose for which it is now most strangely appropriated as a chapel. Vandyck was to have adorned the sides with the history of the Garter; so that three great masters would have combined to form that noblest room in the world; but so grand a possession was not destined to be the work of former times, or the pride of our own. After Buckingham’s death, some of his pictures were bought by the King, some by the Earl of Northumberland, and some by Abbot Montague.[156] In the collection there were nineteen pictures by Titian, seventeen by Tintoret, thirteen by Paul Veronese, twenty-one by Bassano, two by Julio Romano, two by Georgione, eight by Palina, three by Guido, thirteen by Rubens, three by Leonardo da Vinci, two by Correggio, and three by Raphael, besides several by inferior masters whose productions are scarce. The great prize of the collection was the “Ecce Homo,” of Titian, eight feet in length and twelve in breadth. For this magnificent work of art, in which portraits of the Pope, the Emperors Charles V. and Solyman the Magnificent are introduced, the Earl of Arundel had offered Buckingham seven thousand pounds in land or money. The proposal was refused, and the “Ecce Homo” shared the fate of many of the other pictures in the year 1648. Footnote 156: Dr. Waagen says they were sequestrated; but it appears only a portion of them were sold by the Parliament--the rest fell into the hands of the second Duke of Buckingham.