was drawn into chymistry; and for some years he thought he was very near the finding of the philosopher’s stone, which had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in, to lay out for it.  He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship; pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion, was all he laid to heart.  He was true to nothing; for he was not true to himself.  He had no steadiness nor conduct; he could keep no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it; he could never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, though then the greatest in England.  He was bred about the king, and for many years he had a great ascendant over him; but he spoke of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a lasting disgrace upon himself.  And he at length ruined both body and mind, fortune and reputation, equally.’

This was a sad prospect for poor Mary Fairfax, but certainly if in their choice

    ——­’Weak women go astray,
    Their stars are more in fault than they,’

and she was less to blame in her choice than her father, who ought to have advised her against the marriage.  Where and how they met is not known.  Mary was not attractive in person:  she was in her youth little, brown, and thin, but became a ‘short fat body,’ as De Grammont tells us, in her early married life; in the later period of her existence she was described by the Vicomtesse de Longueville as a ’little round crumpled woman, very fond of finery;’ and she adds that, on visiting the duchess one day, she found her, though in mourning, in a kind of loose robe over her, all edged and laced with gold.  So much for a Puritan’s daughter!

To this insipid personage the duke presented himself.  She soon liked him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, continued to like him after their marriage.

He carried his point:  Mary Fairfax became his wife on the 6th of September, 1675, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his estate, or, at all events, a portion of the revenues, about L4,000 a year, it is said, were restored to him.  Nevertheless, it is mortifying to find that in 1682, he sold York House, in which his father had taken such pride, for L30,000.  The house was pulled down; streets were erected on the gardens:  George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street, Buckingham Street, Off Alley recall the name of the ill-starred George, first duke, and of his needy, profligate son; but the only trace of the real greatness of the family importance thus swept away is in the motto inscribed on the point of old Inigo’s water-gate, towards the street:  ’Fidei coticula crux.’  It is sad for all good royalists to reflect that it was not the rabid Roundhead, but a degenerate Cavalier, who sold and thus destroyed York House.

The marriage with Mary Fairfax, though one of interest solely, was not a mesalliance:  her father was connected by the female side with the Earls of Rutland; he was also a man of a generous spirit, as he had shown, in handing over to the Countess of Derby the rents of the Isle of Man, which had been granted to him by the Parliament.  In a similar spirit he was not sorry to restore York House to the Duke of Buckingham.