The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume II.Cibber, Theophilus
History
The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume II.
Cibber, Theophilus
Poets, English -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Poets, Irish -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
He was an infant when his father's murder was perpetrated, and
received his early education from several domestic tutors, and was
afterwards sent to the university of Cambridge: when he had finished
his course there, he travelled with his brother lord Francis, under
the care of William Aylesbury, esquire. Upon his return, which was
after the breaking out of the civil wars, he was conducted to Oxford,
and presented to his Majesty, then there, and entered into Christ
Church. Upon the decline of the King's cause, the young duke of
Buckingham attended Prince Charles into Scotland, and was present in
the year 1651 at the battle of Worcester, where he escaped beyond sea,
and was soon after made knight of the garter. He came afterwards
privately into England, and, November 19, 1657, married Mary, the
daughter and heir of Thomas lord Fairfax, by whose interest he
recovered all or most of his estate, which he had lost before. After
the restoration, at which time he is said to have possessed an estate
of 20,000 l. per annum, he was made one of the lords of the King's
bed-chamber, and of the privy council, lord lieutenant of Yorkshire,
and, at last, master of the horse.
In the year 1666, being discovered to have maintained secret
correspondence by letters, and other transactions, tending to raise
mutinies among some of his Majesty's forces, and stir up sedition
among his people, and to have carried on other traiterous designs and
practices, he absconded, upon which a proclamation was issued the same
year for apprehending him. Mr. Thomas Carte, in his Life of the Duke
of Ormond[1], tells us, 'that the duke's being denied the post of
president of the North, was probably the reason of his disaffection to
the King; and, that just before the recess of the Parliament, one Dr.
John Heydon was taken up for treasonable practices, in sowing a
sedition in the navy, and engaging persons in a conspiracy to seize
the Tower. The man was a pretender to great skill in astrology, but
had lost much of his reputation, by prognosticating the hanging of
Oliver to his son Richard Cromwel and Thurloe, who came to him in
disguise, for the calculation of nativities, being dressed like
distressed cavaliers. He was for that put into prison, and continued
in confinement sixteen months, whilst Cromwel outlived the prediction
four years. This insignificant fellow was mighty great with the duke
of Buckingham, who, notwithstanding the vanity of the art, and the
notorious ignorance of the professor of it, made him cast not only his
own, but the King's nativity; a matter of dangerous curiosity, and
condemned by a statute which could only be said to be antiquated,
because it had not for a long time been put in execution. This fellow
he had likewise employed, among others, to excite the seamen to
mutiny, as he had given money to other rogues to put on jackets to
personate seamen, and to go about the country begging in that garb,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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