’Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
     Beside ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
     Blest madman, who could every hour employ
     With something new to wish or to enjoy.’

His elder sister, Lady Mary Villiers, had married the Duke of Richmond, one of the loyal adherents of Charles I. The duke was, therefore, in durance at Windsor, whilst the duchess was to be placed under strict surveillance at Whitehall.

Villiers resolved to see her.  Hearing that she was to pass into Whitehall on a certain day, he set up his stage where she could not fail to perceive him.  He had something important to say to her.  As she drew near, he cried out to the mob that he would give them a song on the Duchess of Richmond and the Duke of Buckingham:  nothing could be more acceptable.  ‘The mob,’ it is related, ’stopped the coach and the duchess ...  Nay, so outrageous were the mob, that they forced the duchess, who was then the handsomest woman in England, to sit in the boot of the coach, and to hear him sing all his impertinent songs.  Having left off singing, he told them it was no more than reason that he should present the duchess with some of the songs.  So he alighted from his stage, covered all over with papers and ridiculous little pictures.  Having come to the coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he always wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered immediately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as not to give the least sign of mistrust; nay, she gave him some very opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching the papers he threw into her coach.  Among them was a packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went forward, the duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hallooing her a good way out of the town.’

[Illustration:  VILLIERS IN DISGUISE—­THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTER.]

A still more daring adventure was contemplated also by this young, irresistible duke.  Bridget Cromwell, the eldest daughter of Oliver, was, at that time, a bride of twenty-six years of age; having married, in 1647, the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy of Ireland.  Bridget was the pattern heroine of the ‘unco guid,’ the quintessence of all propriety; the impersonation of sanctity; an ultra republican, who scarcely accorded to her father the modest title of Protector.  She was esteemed by her party a ‘personage of sublime growth:’  ‘humbled, not exalted,’ according to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her elevation:  ‘nevertheless,’ says that excellent lady, ’as my Lady Ireton was walking in the St. James’s Park, the Lady Lambert, as proud as her husband, came by where she was, and as the present princess always hath precedency of the relict of the dead, so she put by my Lady Ireton, who, notwithstanding her piety and humility, was a little grieved at the affront.’