to assume:  witness the long traffic held at Exeter Change by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, Francis Jennings, in a white mask, selling laces, and French gew-gaws, a trader to all appearance, but really carrying on political intrigues; every one went to chat with the ‘White Milliner,’ as she was called, during the reign of William and Mary.  The Duke next erected a stage at Charing Cross—­in the very face of the stern Rumpers, who, with long faces, rode past the sinful man each day as they came ambling up from the Parliament House.  A band of puppet-players and violins set up their shows; and music covers a multitude of incongruities.  The ballad was then the great vehicle of personal attack, and Villiers’s dawning taste for poetry was shown in the ditties which he now composed, and in which he sometimes assisted vocally.  Whilst all the other Cavaliers were forced to fly, he thus bearded his enemies in their very homes:  sometimes he talked to them face to face, and kept the sanctimonious citizens in talk, till they found themselves sinfully disposed to laugh.  But this vagrant life had serious evils:  it broke down all the restraints which civilised society naturally, and beneficially, imposes.  The Duke of Buckingham, Butler, the author of Hudibras, writes, ’rises, eats, goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with owls and the Antipodes.  He is a great observer of the Tartar customs, and never eats till the great cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner.  He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that walks all night, to disturb the family, and never appears by day.  He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways in the dark:  and as blind men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures.  He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world.  His mind entertains all things that come and go; but like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long.  This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish.  He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses.  His ears are perpetually drilling with a fiddlestick, and endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.’

The more effectually to support his character as a mountebank, Villiers sold mithridate and galbanum plasters:  thousands of spectators and customers thronged every day to see and hear him.  Possibly many guessed that beneath all the fantastic exterior some ulterior project was concealed; yet he remained untouched by the City Guards.  Well did Dryden describe him:—­