Buckingham, GEORGE VILLIERS, second DUKE OF

Buckingham, GEORGE VILLIERS, second DUKE OF, was born at Wallingford House (on the site of the Admiralty), 30th January 1627, and, after his father's assassination, was brought up with Charles I.'s children. On the outbreak of the Civil War, he hurried from Cambridge to the royalist camp, and lost, recovered, and once more lost his estates—almost his life, too, during Lord Holland's unfortunate rising in Surrey (1648), when his younger brother did meet a hero's death. He attended Charles II. to Scotland, and after the battle of Worcester and an escape more marvellous even than his master's, went again into exile. Returning secretly to England, he married, in 1657, the daughter of Lord Fairfax, to whom his forfeited estates had been assigned. The Restoration gave them back to Buckingham, and brought Buckingham to court, where for twenty-five years he was the wildest and wickedest roué of them all. In 1671 he killed in a duel the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose countess, his paramour, looked on, disguised as a page. When sated with pleasure, he would turn for a change to ambition, and four times his mad freaks lodged him in the Tower. He was mainly instrumental in Clarendon's downfall; was a member of the infamous 'Cabal' (q.v.); and on its break-up in 1673 passed over, like Shaftesbury, to the popular side. But crippled with debt, he retired, after Charles's death in 1685, to his manor of Helmsley, in Yorkshire, and amused himself with the chase. He died on 16th April 1688 at Kirby-Moorside, miserably, if not, indeed, 'in the worst inn's worst room.' Buckingham is remembered as the author of several comedies, the wittiest of which, The Rchearsal (1671), was a travesty of Dryden's tragedies; but he is better remembered as the 'Zimri' of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, a portraiture of merciless fidelity.