There was so close an intimacy at one time between the Earl of Pembroke’s family and that of the Duke of Buckingham, that it seems strange that no trace of Massinger’s having been patronized by him are to be discovered. In fact, the annals of Massinger’s life present little except the dates of his works. The eldest son of the unworthy Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the poet’s chief patron, was married in 1634 to Lady Mary Villiers, then a mere girl. It is true that this alliance was formed six years after Buckingham’s death; but it was probably concerted before that event, after the fashion of the day, in which the infant in the cradle was often affianced by ambitious parents, and the nuptials solemnized at ten or twelve years of age. Charles, Lord Herbert set out on his travels directly after he had married his young wife, and died of small-pox at Florence in 1636. Massinger wrote a poem on his loss, among others, to his little bride:-- “True sorrow fell With showers of tears--still bathe the widowed bed Of his dear spouse.” The elegy, as it has been observed, had better not have been written; and his “dear spouse” very likely at that time preferred balls and revelries to her husband. It was, however, not impossible that Villiers, to please the Herbert family, may have been the means of introducing Massinger to Charles I., who justly estimated his great merits, and proved a more generous as well as a worthier patron than the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. The political tenets of Massinger brought him on one occasion into considerable danger. They were, nevertheless, such as we should now term moderate; but they were irrelevantly introduced into his dramas, at a time when liberalism was almost regarded as next to treason. In 1631, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused to receive a play of Massinger’s because it contained what that functionary called “dangerous matters,” as to the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal, and “thereby reflected upon Spain.” Even the name of that piece is unknown, although the Master of the Revels took care that the fee of twenty shillings for reading it over was paid to him. In 1638, when the question of the Ship-money was dividing the nation from the Court, Massinger, unable to control his indignation at the oppressive measures of Charles I., produced another play, called “The King and the Subject,” founded on the history of Don Pedro the Cruel. It contained, amongst other free and bold passages, these lines:-- “Monies? We’ll raise supplies which way we please, And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which We’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Cæsars In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws But what their swords did ratify--the wives And daughters of the senators bowing to Their will as deities----”