We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, in concert with Halifax and Arlington.  In the year 1680, he was threatened with an impeachment, in which, with his usual skill, he managed to exculpate himself by blaming Lord Arlington.  The House of Commons passed a vote for his removal; and he entered the ranks of the opposition.

But this career of public meanness and private profligacy was drawing to a close.  Alcibiades no longer—­his frame wasted by vice—­his spirits broken by pecuniary difficulties—­Buckingham’s importance visibly sank away.  ‘He remained, at last,’ to borrow the words of Hume, ’as incapable of doing hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to mankind.’  His fortune had now dwindled down to L300 a year in land; he sold Wallingford House, and removed into the City.

And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we hope, too late, began to appear.  Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all his immoral works to be burnt, Buckingham now wished to retrieve the past.  In 1685 he wrote the religious works which form so striking a contrast with his other productions.

That he had been up to the very time of his ruin perfectly impervious to remorse, dead also to shame, is amply manifested by his conduct soon after his duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury.

Sir George Etherege had brought out a new play at the Duke of York’s Theatre.  It was called, ‘She Would if she Could.’  Plays in those days began at what we now consider our luncheon hour.  Though Pepys arrived at the theatre on this occasion at two o’clock—­his wife having gone before—­about a thousand people had then been put back from the pit.  At last, seeing his wife in the eighteen-penny-box, Samuel ‘made shift’ to get there and there saw, ‘but lord!’ (his own words are inimitable) ’how dull, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it.  The king was there; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all.  The play being done, I went into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and raining, but could not find her; and so staid, going between the two doors and through the pit an hour and a half, I think, after the play was done; the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk to one another.  And among the rest, here was the Duke of Buckingham to-day openly in the pit; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet, the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour, and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a ketch in it; and so was mightily concerned, while all the rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the play, and end, mighty insipid.’