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Villiers
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Villiers

as the champion of God and his country. Buckingham was privately buried in Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey on 10 Sept. A pretentious and inartistic monument was subsequently erected above his grave by his widow.

Buckingham left three sons and one daughter. The daughter, Mary, married, first, Charles, lord Herbert, son and heir of Philip, earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; secondly, James Stuart, fourth duke of Lennox and first duke of Richmond [q. v.]; and, thirdly, Thomas Howard, brother to Charles, earl of Carlisle. Of the sons, Charles, the eldest, died an infant, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 17 March 1627; George (1628–1687) succeeded to the dukedom, and is separately noticed; Francis, a posthumous child, born on 2 April 1629, was killed near Kingston in 1648. The first duke's widow subsequently married Randal Macdonnell, viscount Dunluce and second earl and marquis of Antrim [q. v.]

There is a fine portrait of the duke by Rubens in the Pitti gallery at Florence. Another, by Gerard Honthorst, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A portrait of Buckingham and his family, painted by Cornelius Janssen, is at Buckingham Palace; another of the duke and his family, by Gerard Honthorst, is at Hampton Court. Janssen also painted a separate portrait of the duke, which is also at Hampton Court; and a portrait by Van Dyck belongs to the Marquis of Northampton (for various engravings, of which three were by Faithorne, Simon and William Pass, see Bromley, p. 70).

[For the political life of the duke see Gardiner's Hist. of England, 1603–42, vols. ii–vi. passim, where the references to original authorities will be found. Sir Henry Wotton's contemporary biography is reprinted in the Harl. Misc. (ed. 1808–12), viii. 613. Clarendon wrote The Characters of Robert, Earl of Essex, and George, Duke of Buckingham. In 1758 Horace Walpole edited A Catalogue of the Curious Collection of Pictures of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A collection of ballads relating to him was published for the Percy Society by F. W. Fairholt.]

S. R. G.

VILLIERS, GEORGE, second Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687), born on 30 Jan. 1627–8 at Wallingford House, Westminster, was the second son of George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham [q. v.], by Lady Katherine Manners. His elder brother Charles died in infancy. King Charles I, out of affection to their father, bred up George and his young brother, Francis Villiers, with his own children (Brian Fairfax, Life of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham). Both were sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where the duke is said to have contracted a close friendship with Abraham Cowley and Martin Clifford (ib.) He was admitted to the degree of M.A. on 5 March 1642 (Doyle, Official Baronage, p. 260). At the beginning of the civil war Buckingham and his brother joined the king at Oxford, and served under Prince Rupert at the storming of Lichfield Close in April 1643. Later they were both committed to the care of the Earl of Northumberland, sent to travel, and lived for some time at Florence and Rome ‘in as great state as some of those sovereign princes’ (Wood, Athenæ, iv. 207; Brian Fairfax). Parliament, which had sequestered Buckingham's estates, restored them to him on 4 Oct. 1647, taking into consideration his youth at the time of his delinquency (Lords' Journals, ix. 467). Regardless of this act of favour, Buckingham at once plunged into the royalist plot which gave rise to the second civil war, and at the beginning of July 1648 he and his brother joined the Earl of Holland in Surrey, with the intention of raising the siege of Colchester (Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ii. 130, ed. Firth; Clarendon, Rebellion, xi. 5). On 7 July the House of Commons voted Buckingham and his associates traitors, and ordered the sequestration of their estates (Old Parliamentary Hist. xvii. 288–92; Rushworth, vii. 1178, 1180). The same day Lord Francis Villiers was killed in a skirmish near Kingston with the parliamentary troops under Sir Michael Livesey [q. v.] and Major Gibbon (Ludlow, Memoirs, i. 198, ed. 1894; Aubrey, Hist. of Surrey, i. 46). Buckingham and Holland, with the rest of the party, were surprised at St. Neots on 10 July by Colonel Scrope. Holland and most of the others were captured. The duke, more fortunate, escaped, taking ship for Holland (Rushworth, vii. 1187; Report on the Duke of Portland's MSS. i. 478; Herbert, Memoirs, p. 55; Clarendon, xi. 104; Fairfax, Correspondence, iv. 252). In 1649 Buckingham thought of endeavouring to compound for his lands. But he could not stomach the ‘base submission’ required of him, and it is doubtful whether parliament would have condoned a second offence. His great estates, therefore, were all included in the act of confiscation passed on 16 July 1651. Helmsley Castle and York House in the Strand went to Lord Fairfax in satisfaction of his arrears, while New Hall was purchased by the state for Cromwell (Cal. of Committee for Compounding, iii. 2182; Peacock, Index of Royalists whose Estates were confiscated, pp. 1, 25; Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 7). Luckily, a faithful servant had conveyed to Antwerp a part of the