of favourites,” as Wotton well describes them; if one of his great crimes in the eyes of the people was, that “his enterprises succeeded not according to their impossible expectation;” and that it was a still greater, that Buckingham had been the permanent favourite of two monarchs, who had spoilt their child of fortune; then may the future inquirer find something of his character which remains to be opened; to instruct alike the sovereigns and the people, and “be worthy to be registered among the great examples of time and fortune.”

Contrast the fate of BUCKINGHAM with that of his great rival, RICHELIEU.  The one winning popularity and losing it; once in the Commons saluted as “their redeemer,” till, at length, they resolved that “Buckingham was the cause of all the evils and dangers to the king and kingdom.”  Magnificent, open, and merciful; so forbearing, even in his acts of gentle oppression, that they were easily evaded; and riots and libels were infecting the country, till, in the popular clamour, Buckingham was made a political monster, and the dagger was planted in the heart of the incautious minister.  The other statesman, unrelenting in his power, and grinding in his oppression, unblest with one brother-feeling, had his dungeons filled and his scaffolds raised, and died in safety and glory—­a cautious tyrant!

There exists a manuscript memoir of Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who was one of those ingenious men whom Buckingham delighted to assemble about him:  for this was one of his characteristics, that although the duke himself was not learned, yet he never wanted for knowledge; too early in life a practical man, he had not the leisure to become a contemplative one; he supplied this deficiency by perpetually “sifting and questioning well” the most eminent for their experience and knowledge; and Lord Bacon, and the Lord Keeper Williams, as well as such as Gerbier, were admitted into this sort of intimacy.  We have a curious letter by Lord Bacon, of advice to our minister, written at his own request:  and I have seen a large correspondence with that subtle politician, the Lord Keeper Williams, who afterwards attempted to supplant him, to the same purpose.  Gerbier was the painter and architect, and at the same time one of the confidential agents of Buckingham; the friend of Rubens the painter, with whom he was concerned in this country to open a Spanish negotiation, and became at length the master of the ceremonies to Charles the Second, in his exile.  He was an actor in many scenes.  Gerbier says of himself, that “he was a minister who had the honour of public employment, and may therefore incur censure for declaring some passages of state more overtly than becomes such an one; but secrets are secrets but for a time; others may be wiser for themselves, but it is their silence which makes me write."[230]