George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

For other people named 1st Duke of Buckingham, see 1st Duke of Buckingham.

His Grace The Duke of Buckingham KG
Master of the Horse
In office 1616–1628
Preceded by	The Earl of Worcester
Succeeded by	The Earl of Holland
Personal details
Born	(1592-08-28)28 August 1592 Brooksby, Leicestershire, England
Died	23 August 1628(1628-08-23) (aged 35) Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Spouse(s)	Katherine Manners, Baroness de Ros
Children	Mary Stewart, Duchess of Richmond Charles Villiers, Earl of Coventry George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham Francis Villiers, 1628–1648
Parents	George Villiers Mary Beaumont

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham KG (/ˈvɪlərz/; 28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628) was the favourite, claimed by some to be the lover, of King James I of England. Despite a very patchy political and military record, he remained at the height of royal favour for the first three years of the reign of Charles I, until he was assassinated by a disgruntled army officer.

Early life

Main article: Villiers family

George Villiers was born in Brooksby, Leicestershire, in August 1592, the son of the minor gentleman Sir George Villiers (1550–1604). His mother, Mary (1570–1632), daughter of Anthony Beaumont of Glenfield, Leicestershire, who was left a widow early, educated him for a courtier's life, sending him to France with Sir John Eliot.

Villiers took very well to the training set by his mother; he could dance and fence well, spoke a little French and was overall an excellent student. Bishop Godfrey Goodman declared Villiers to be "the handsomest-bodied man in all of England; his limbs so well compacted, and his conversation so pleasing, and of so sweet a disposition."

Ascent at court

Arms of Sir George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, KG, as they were quartered on his stall plate and banner within St. George's Chapel

In August 1614 at age twenty-one, Villiers caught the eye of James I at a hunt in Apethorpe. Opponents of the king's favourite Robert Carr saw an opportunity to usurp the Earl of Somerset and began promoting Villiers. Money was raised to purchase Villiers a new wardrobe and intense lobbying secured his appointment as royal Cupbearer, a position that allowed him to make conversation with the king.

Under the king's patronage Villiers advanced rapidly through the ranks of the nobility, and his court appointments grew in importance. In 1615 he was knighted as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. In 1616, when he was made Master of the King's Horses, he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Whaddon, Viscount Villiers, and made a Knight of the Garter. The next year he was made Earl and in 1618 Marquess of Buckingham, and appointed Lord Admiral of the Fleet in 1619. Finally in 1623 the former dukedom of Buckingham was recreated for him and he was negotiating abroad on the king's behalf. Since reductions in the peerage had taken place during the Tudor period, Buckingham was now the highest-ranking subject outside the royal family.

Relationship with James I

Villiers as Lord High Admiral, a portrait by Daniel Mytens the Elder, 1619

The personal relationships of James are much debated, with Villiers the last in a succession of handsome young favourites the king lavished with affection and patronage. Contemporaneous evidence suggests that Villiers was James' lover. In 1617, John Oglander wrote that he "never yet saw any fond husband make so much or so great dalliance over his beautiful spouse as I have seen King James over his favourites, especially the Duke of Buckingham." Edward Peyton wrote, "the king sold his affections to Sir George Villiers, whom he would tumble and kiss as a mistress."

James's nickname for Buckingham was "Steenie," after St. Stephen who was said to have had "the face of an angel." Speaking to the Privy Council in 1617, James declared:

You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.

In a letter to Buckingham in 1623, the King ends with, "God bless you, my sweet child and wife, and grant that ye may ever be a comfort to your dear father and husband." Buckingham reciprocated the King's affections, writing back to James: "I naturally so love your person, and adore all your other parts, which are more than ever one man had," "I desire only to live in the world for your sake" and "I will live and die a lover of you." Restoration of Apethorpe Hall in 2004–8 revealed a previously unknown passage linking his bedchamber with that of James. Buckingham himself provides evidence that he gave in to the King's passion, writing to James many years later that he had pondered: "whether you loved me now…better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog'.

Influence under James I

Until James I died in 1625, Buckingham was the king's constant companion and closest advisor, enjoying control of all royal patronage. Buckingham used his influence to prodigiously enrich his relatives and advance their social positions, which soured public opinion towards him.

In his rise to power, Buckingham became connected with the philosopher and jurist Francis Bacon. Bacon wrote letters of advice to the young favourite and drafted the patent of nobility when Buckingham ascended to the peerage. With Buckingham's support, Bacon was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1618. In gratitude, Bacon honoured Buckingham's many requests for favours from the court for friends and allies. Following an investigation by Parliament into royal grants of monopoly, financial peculation and corrupt officials, Bacon was convicted of corruption and forced into retirement. Neither Buckingham nor the King attempted to intervene on Bacon's behalf. Many of Buckingham's contemporaries believed he had sacrificed Bacon to save himself from Parliamentary scrutiny, as he had been liberally spending public funds and accepting gifts and bribes.

Michiel J. van Miereveld's pearl-studded portrait of the Duke, 1625

From 1616, Buckingham also established a dominant influence in Irish affairs, beginning with the appointment of his client, Sir Oliver St John, as Lord Deputy, 1616–22. Thence, he acquired control of the Irish customs farm (1618), dominated Irish patronage at court, particularly with the sale of Irish titles and honours, and (from 1618) began to build substantial Irish estates for himself, his family and clients—with the aid of a plantation lobby, composed of official clients in Dublin. To the same end, he secured the creation of an Irish Court of Wards in 1622. Buckingham's influence thus crucially sustained a forward Irish plantation policy into the 1620s.

When Parliament began its investigation into monopolies and other abuses in England, and later Ireland in 1621, Buckingham made a show of support to avoid action being taken against him. However, the king's decision to send a commission of inquiry to Ireland, that included parliamentary firebrands, threatened to expose Buckingham's growing, often clandestine interests there. Knowing that the king had assured the Spanish ambassador that the Parliament would not be allowed to imperil a Spanish matrimonial alliance, he therefore surreptitiously instigated a conflict between the Parliament and the king over the Spanish Match, which resulted in the Parliament's premature dissolution in December 1621 and a hobbling of the Irish commission in 1622. Irish reforms nevertheless introduced by Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, in 1623–24 were largely nullified by the impeachment and disgrace of the Lord Treasurer in the violently anti-Spanish 1624 parliament—spurred on by Buckingham and Prince Charles.

Charles I and foreign affairs

In 1623, Buckingham accompanied Charles I, then Prince of Wales, to Spain for marriage negotiations regarding the Infanta Maria. The negotiations had long been stuck, but it is believed that Buckingham's crassness was key to the total collapse of agreement. The Spanish ambassador asked Parliament to have Buckingham executed for his behaviour in Madrid, but Buckingham gained popularity by calling for war with Spain on his return. He headed further marriage negotiations, but when, in 1624, the betrothal to Henrietta Maria of France was announced, the choice of a Catholic was widely condemned. Buckingham's popularity suffered further when he was blamed for the failure of the military expedition under the command of Ernst von Mansfeld, a famous German mercenary general, sent to the continent to recover the Electorate of the Palatinate (1625), which had belonged to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, son-in-law of King James I of England. However, when the Duke of York became King Charles I, Buckingham was the only man to maintain his position from the court of James.

Peter Paul Rubens, an equestrian portrait of the Duke as a mailed warrior, 1625

Buckingham led an expedition to repeat the actions of Sir Francis Drake by seizing the main Spanish port at Cádiz and burning the fleet in its harbour. Though his plan was tactically sound, landing further up the coast and marching the militia army on the city, the troops were ill-equipped, ill-disciplined and ill-trained. Coming upon a warehouse filled with wine, they simply got drunk, and the attack was called off. The English army briefly occupied a small port further down the coast before re-boarding its ships.

This was followed by Buckingham leading the Army and the Navy to sea to intercept an anticipated Spanish silver fleet from its American territories. However, the Spanish were forewarned by their intelligence and easily avoided the planned ambush. With supplies running out and men sick and dying from starvation and disease, the fleet limped home in embarrassment.

Buckingham then negotiated with the French Chief Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, for English ships to aid Richelieu in his fight against the French Protestants (Huguenots), in return for French aid against the Spanish occupying the Palatinate. Seven English warships participated in operations against La Rochelle and in the Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, but Parliament was disgusted and horrified at the thought of English Protestants fighting French Protestants. The plan only fuelled their fears of crypto-Catholicism at court. Buckingham himself, believing that the failure of his enterprise was the result of treachery by Richelieu, formulated an alliance among the churchman's many enemies, a policy that included support for the very Huguenots whom he had recently attacked.

In 1627, Buckingham led another failure: an attempt to aid his new Huguenot allies besieged at La Rochelle in France, by leading the Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, during which he lost more than 4,000 of a force of 7,000 men.

Self-promotion through the arts

Although Villiers had the support of a court faction at the start of his career, his manipulation of the arts contributed increasingly to his advancement. He began to appear as a dancer in masques from 1615, in which he could exhibit his grace of movement and beauty of body, a recognised avenue to royal favour since the time of Elizabeth I. By 1618 his elevation in rank allowed him to dance side by side with the royal heir, with whom his friendship developed through his tutoring of the prince in dance. "Command over his body had provided him with the privilege of commanding the moves of a future king." As a means of manoeuvring for political as well as court advancement, he started commissioning masques of his own in which he was able to promote himself in a leading role. This culminated in connivance by his supporters in licensing Thomas Middleton's notorious play A Game at Chess (1624) as an extension of their anti-Spanish foreign policy. The Duke and Prince Charles are acknowledged as figuring there as The White Duke and The White Knight, while very obvious depictions of the Spanish monarch and his former ambassador in England eventually brought about the play's closure.

Villiers' advance also went hand in hand with the paintings of himself that he commissioned as "a medium for the cultivation of his personal image", which obviously had a more enduring potential than short-lived performances in a masque. William Larkin's portrait of 1616 records the start of his climb, showing him in the dress of a Knight of the Garter and emphasising the felicity of his stance and sumptuousness of dress. A 1619 portrait by Daniel Mytens the Elder is equally elegant. There he is dressed in white brocade and white silk hose, wearing the Garter and standing in a decor of costly silks. Another full length portrait by the same artist celebrates his succession as Lord High Admiral in 1619. Here he wears three-quarter armour; on the right, behind a balustrade, is a shoreline with the fleet beyond. Buckingham's growing wealth was emphasised by the detail of his clothes. This is evident in the lovingly depicted detail of the lace about his collar and cuffs in the full length portrait by Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen and the head and shoulders by Anthony van Dyck. The 1625 painting by Michiel van Miereveld is not only of unparalleled magnificence, with a jacket encrusted with pearls which also hang in ropes across it, but may also contain a reference to his diplomatic coup that year in negotiating the marriage of the future Charles I. At his entry to the French Court, he is recorded as wearing a grey velvet suit from which the loosely threaded pearls dropped to the ground as he advanced to make his bow to the queen, to the general wonder.

A series of more dramatic depictions heighten Buckingham's self-dramatisation and in certain cases make policy statements as well. Two of these are connected with his betrothal to and marriage with Lady Katherine Manners in 1620. In Van Dyck's historical painting The Continence of Scipio, Buckingham is clearly recognisable standing at the centre, receiving from Scipio the hand of his captured betrothed. A mythical composition commissioned from Van Dyck later commemorates the actual marriage. In contrast to the former painting, this was highly unconventional at the time. The couple are pictured all but naked as Venus and Adonis, emphasising heterosexual love and so countering all the rumours of the Duke's relations with the king. There is a further literary connection, since the story is found in Ovid, but the picture again defies convention by hinting at a different, happier ending.

A mythological treatment of Buckingham in Gerrit van Honthorst's allegorical The Liberal Arts presented to King Charles and Henrietta Maria

Buckingham probably met Peter Paul Rubens while conducting the royal marriage negotiations in Paris in 1625 and commissioned two ambitious advertisements of his standing from the painter. The first of these was destined for the ceiling of his residence, York House, and depicts a masque-like theme in which Minerva and Mercury conduct the Duke of Buckingham to the Temple of Virtue. In front of the marble temple to which he is carried upwards are the probable figures of Virtue and Abundance; the three Graces offer the Duke a crown of flowers, while Envy seeks to pull him down and a lion challenges him. The picture is an allegory of Buckingham's political aspirations and the forces that he saw as impeding him. The more realistic equestrian portrait of Buckingham (see above) is accounted "the finest state portrait of its date in England". A summation of his career to date, it depicts Buckingham as Lord High Admiral of the fleet just visible in the background. Several other personal references are also incorporated. As Master of the King's Horses, he sits on a Spanish jennet, a breed he introduced to Britain, lifting his baton as his horse rears on command. Beneath him, the sea god Neptune and a naiad adorned with pearls indicate the duke's dominion over the sea. Overhead, a winged allegory of Fame signals victory (which nevertheless evaded the commander in real life) with trumpet in hand. Privately Rubens noted Buckingham's "arrogance and caprice" and predicted that he was "heading for the precipice."

Popular prints, often drawing on his painted portraits, particularly Miervelt's of 1625, had served to advertise Buckingham's position more broadly over the years. These now form part of the collection at the National Portrait Gallery. At the same time martial statements were being made through this medium in support of Buckingham's foreign policy, as for instance in Willem de Passe's equestrian portrait of the Duke, executed at the same time as Rubens was engaged on his monumental work on the same theme. There he is similarly depicted as Lord Admiral with a military baton in his right hand. During the 1627 expedition that he led personally, Buckingham was recorded as sponsoring "an unprecedented campaign of intensive print propaganda."

In 1628, during the political turmoil that culminated in his assassination, Buckingham commissioned another masque-like painting from Gerrit van Honthorst, The Liberal Arts presented to King Charles and Henrietta Maria. In this the Duke is cast as Mercury, the patron of the arts, the procession of whom is brought in his train to the presence of the king and queen in the guise of Apollo and Diana. In this validation of his artistic credentials, it is appropriate to remember that Buckingham had taken part in the masque Mercury Vindicated at the start of his career in 1615.

Assassination

During the course of his incompetent leadership, Parliament had twice attempted to impeach the Duke. The king had rescued him by dissolving it both times, but public feeling was so inflamed as a result that he was widely blamed as a public enemy. Eventually his physician, Dr Lambe, popularly supposed to assert a diabolic influence over him, was mobbed in the streets and died as a result. Among the pamphlets issued afterwards was one that prophesied

Let Charles and George do what they can,

The Duke shall die like Doctor Lambe.

The Duke was stabbed to death, on 23 August 1628, at the Greyhound Pub in Portsmouth, where he had gone to organise yet another campaign. He lived just long enough to jump up, shouting "Villain!" and made to chase after his assailant, but then fell down dead. The assassin was John Felton, an army officer who had been wounded in the earlier military adventure and believed he had been passed over for promotion by Buckingham.

Such was the Duke's unpopularity by this time that Felton was widely acclaimed as a hero by the public. A large number of poems celebrating Felton and justifying his action were published. Copies of written statements Felton carried in his hat during the assassination were also widely circulated. Many of these described Buckingham as effeminate, cowardly and corrupt, and contrasted him with Felton who was held up and an example of manliness, courage and virtue. The son of Alexander Gill the Elder was sentenced to a fine of £2000 and the removal of his ears, after being overheard drinking to the health of Felton, and stating that Buckingham had joined King James I in hell. However these punishments were remitted after his father and Archbishop Laud appealed to King Charles I. Felton was hanged on 29 November and his body was taken to Portsmouth for public display. However this proved to be a miscalculation by the authorities as it became an object of veneration by the public.

Buckingham was buried in Westminster Abbey. His lavish tomb bears a Latin inscription that may be translated as "The Enigma of the World". Here too he was depicted surrounded by mythical figures. The black marble sculptures at each corner include Mars and Neptune, in reference to his military and naval exploits; on the catafalque lie bronze-gilt effigies of the Duke and his wife (who long survived him ), cast by Hubert le Sueur. Buckingham is clad in armour, enriched with crossed anchors and with an ermine cloak over it. He wears on his breast the chain and George of the Garter and on his head a ducal coronet, summing up the principal steps in his brief career. He had died at the age of 36.

A dagger, claimed to have been the one used by Felton, was displayed at least until the 19th century at Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire, the seat of the Earls of Denbigh. (Buckingham's sister, Susan, married William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh)

Descendants

Buckingham with his wife Katherine Manners, their daughter Mary and son George, Gerrit van Honthorst, 1628

Buckingham had married the daughter of the 6th Earl of Rutland, Lady Katherine Manners, later suo jure Baroness de Ros, on 16 May 1620, against her father's objections. The children of this marriage were:

1. Mary Villiers (1622 – November 1685)
2. Charles Villiers, Earl of Coventry (17 November 1625 – 16 March 1627, died in infancy)
3. George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (30 January 1628 – 16 April 1687)
4. Lord Francis Villiers (1629 – 48, died in a skirmish at Kingston during the Second English Civil War)

Literary references

The Duke has been mentioned as one of the candidates to whom the nursery rhyme "Georgie Porgie" refers, although there is no mention of its existence before the 19th century.

In the few years of popular feeling against the royal favourite at the start of Charles I's reign, and especially after his assassination, a large amount of satirical verse was circulated on the subject. Most of this reflected on how pride goes before a fall and the damage he had done the kingdom, while several pieces commended John Felton's action.

A fictionalised Buckingham is one of the characters in Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers (1844), which paints him as a lover of Anne of Austria and deals with the siege of La Rochelle and his assassination by Felton. In the 1973 two-film adaptation of the book, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, Buckingham (played by Simon Ward) has a prominent role as an ally of the main characters. The second film includes his assassination by Felton, but depicts the killing as being orchestrated by the fictional Milady de Winter, an agent of the main antagonist, Cardinal Richelieu.

Taylor Caldwell's The Arm and the Darkness (1943) also deals with this period in France, while Hilda Lewis' Wife to Great Buckingham (1959) goes so far as to make Buckingham's love for the French queen the main cause of his undoing. The Duke also figures in historical romances like Evelyn Anthony's Charles, The King (1963) and Bertrice Small's Darling Jasmine (2007), although the main focus there is on other protagonists. In Philippa Gregory's Earthly Joys (1998), which has as its subject the famous gardener John Tradescant the elder, the bewitching Duke appears half way through the novel as the object of Tradescant's love. Another historical fiction, Ronald Blythe's The Assassin (2004), is written from his killer's point of view as a final confession while awaiting execution in the Tower of London.

Buckingham also appears in the Doctor Who audio drama The Church and the Crown (2002), dealing with the political intrigue of the time. And as George Villiers, he is a major character in Howard Brenton's 2010 play Anne Boleyn as King James I's mate in sexual horseplay.

Bibliography

• Bergeron, David M. (1999). King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 175. 
• Bergeron, David M. (2002). "Writing King James's Sexuality". In Fischlin, Fortier. Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 
• Hille, Christiane, Visions of the Courtly Body: The Patronage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and the Triumph of Painting at the Stuart Court, Berlin 2012
• Ruigh, Robert E. (1971). The Parliament of 1624: Politics and Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 
• Stewart, Alan (2003). The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I. London: Macmillan. 
• Wroughton, John (2013). The Routledge Companion to the Stuart Age, 1603–1714. London: Routledge Companions. 
• Zagorin, Perez (1999). Francis Bacon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

External links

• Media related to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham at Wikimedia Commons
• The impeachment of Buckingham (1626), Historical Collections of Private Passages of State: Volume 1: 1618–29 (1721), pp. 302–358.

Political offices
Preceded by The Earl of Worcester	Master of the Horse 1616–1628	Succeeded by The Earl of Holland
Preceded by The Baron Ellesmere	Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire 1616–1628	Succeeded by The Earl of Montgomery
Preceded by Sir Francis Fortescue	Custos Rotulorum of Buckinghamshire 1617–1628	Succeeded by The Earl of Bridgewater
Preceded by The Earl of Nottingham	Lord High Admiral 1619–1628	Succeeded by In Commission (First Lord: The Earl of Portland)
Preceded by The Lord Wotton	Lord Lieutenant of Kent 1620	Succeeded by The Duke of Lennox
Preceded by In Commission	Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex 1622–1628	Succeeded by The Earl of Dorset The Earl of Holland
Preceded by The Earl of Exeter	Custos Rotulorum of Rutland 1623–1628	Succeeded by The Lord Noel
Honorary titles
Preceded by The Lord Zouche	Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports 1625–1628	Succeeded by The Earl of Suffolk
Legal offices
Preceded by The Earl of Shrewsbury	Justice in Eyre north of the Trent 1616–1619	Succeeded by The Earl of Rutland
Preceded by The Earl of Nottingham	Justice in Eyre south of the Trent 1625–1628	Succeeded by The Earl of Pembroke
Peerage of England
New title	Duke of Buckingham 1623–1628	Succeeded by George Villiers
	Marquess of Buckingham 1618–1628
	Earl of Buckingham 1617–1628
	Viscount Villiers 1616–1628