If there was one man in England who hated and feared Buckingham more than either York or Chancellor Clarendon it was the Secretary of State, Baron Arlington. They had been friends when Arlington had first arrived at Court, six years before, but conflicting ambitions had since separated them until now each found it difficult to show the other the merest civility.

At last Baron Arlington paced majestically into the council-chamber—he never merely walked into any room.

Several years in Spain had given him an admiration for things Spanish and he assumed an exaggerated Castilian pomposity and arrogance. He wore a blonde wig, his eyes were pale and prominent, almost fish-like, and over the bridge of his nose was a crescent-shaped black plaster which had once been put there to cover a sabre wound and which he had kept because it gave his face a kind of sinister dignity he thought becoming. Charles had always liked him, though York, of course, did not. Now he paused, took a bottle and a spoon from one pocket and into the spoon poured several drops of ground-ivy juice. Placing the spoon to his nose he snuffed hard several times until most of the juice was gone; then he wiped at his nose with a handkerchief and put bottle and spoon away. His Lordship suffered from habitual headache, and that was his treatment for it. The headache was worse than usual today.

Charles sat at the head of the table, facing the door, his back to the fireplace. He lounged in his chair, a pair of spaniels in his lap—a lazy good-humoured man who slept well and had no trouble with his digestion so that he looked tolerantly upon the world and was inclined to be merely amused by many things which infuriated less tranquil men. His fits of anger were brief and he had long since lost interest in punishing the Duke. He knew Buckingham for exactly what he was, had no more illusions about him than he had about anyone else, but he also knew that the Duke’s own frivolity of temperament kept him from being truly dangerous. The trial was necessary because of wide-spread public interest in the case, but Charles no longer wanted vengeance. He would be satisfied if the Duke gave them an entertaining performance that afternoon.

At a signal from the King the door was flung open and there stood his Grace, George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham—dressed as magnificently as though he had been going to be married, or hanged. His handsome face wore an expression which somehow mingled both hauteur and pleasant civility. For a moment he stood there. Then, erect as a guardsman, he crossed the floor and knelt at the King’s feet. Charles nodded his head, but did not give him his hand to kiss.

The others stared hard at him, trying to see into the heart of the man. Was he worried, or was he confident? Did he expect to die, or to be forgiven? But Buckingham’s face did not betray him.

Arlington, who was chief prosecutor, got to his feet and began to read the charges against the Duke. They were many and serious: Being in cabal with the Commons. Opposing the King in the Lower House. Advising both the Commons and the Lords against the King’s interests. Trying to become popular. And finally, the crime for which they hoped to have his blood—treason against King and State, the casting of his Majesty’s horoscope. The incriminating paper was shown the Duke, held up at a safe distance for him to see.

Among these men Buckingham had just two friends, Lauderdale and Ashley, and though the others intended at first to conduct the investigation with dignity and decorum that resolution was soon gone. In their excitement several of them talked at once, they began to shout and to interrupt one another and him. But Buckingham kept his temper, which was notoriously short, and replied with polite submissiveness to every question or accusation. The only man for whom he showed less than respect was his one-time friend, Arlington, and to him he was openly insolent.

When they accused him of trying to make himself popular he looked the Baron straight in the eye: “Whoever is committed to prison by my Lord Chancellor and my Lord Arlington cannot help becoming popular.”

He had a glib answer for the charge of treason. “I do not deny, gentlemen, that that piece of paper is a horoscope. Neither do I deny that you got it from Dr. Heydon, who cast it. But I do deny that it was I who commissioned it or that it concerns his Majesty’s future.”

A murmur rushed round the table. What was the rascal saying? How dare he stand there and lie like that! Charles smiled, very faintly, but as the Duke shot him a hasty glance the smile vanished; his swarthy face set in stern lines again.

“Would your Grace be so good, then, as to tell us who did commission the horoscope?” asked Arlington sarcastically. “Or is that your Grace’s secret?”

“It’s no secret at all. If it will make matters more clear to you gentlemen I am glad to tell you. My sister had the horoscope cast.” This seemed to astonish everyone but the King, who merely lifted one quizzical eyebrow and continued to stroke his dog’s head.

“Your sister had the horoscope cast?” repeated Arlington, with an inflection which said plainly he considered the statement a bald lie. Then, suddenly, “Whose is it?”

Buckingham bowed, contemptuously. “That is my sister’s secret. You must ask her. She has not confided in me.”

His Grace was sent back to the Tower where he was as much visited as a new actress or the reigning courtesan. Charles pretended to examine the papers again and agreed that the signature on them was that of Mary Villiers. This brought furious and impassioned protest from both Arlington and Clarendon, neither of whom was willing to give up the fight for the Duke’s life or, at the very least, his prestige and fortune. He was caught this time, trapped like a stupid woodcock, but if he got away this once they might never have the like opportunity again.

Charles listened to both of them with his usual courteous attention. “I know very well, Chancellor,” he said one day when he had gone to visit the old man in his lodgings at Whitehall, “that I could pursue this charge of treason. But I’ve found a man’s often more use with his head on.” He was seated in a chair beside the couch on which Clarendon lay, for his gout now kept him bed-ridden much of the time.

“What use can he be to you, Sire? To run loose and hatch more plots—one of which may take, and cost your Majesty your life?”

Charles smiled. “I’m not in much awe of Buckingham’s plots. His tongue is hung too loose for him to be any great danger to anyone but himself. Before he could half get a plot under way he’d have made the fatal mistake of letting someone else into the secret. No, Chancellor. His Grace has gone to considerable pains to insinuate himself with the Commons, and there’s no doubt he has a good deal of interest with them. I think he’ll be more use to me this way—chopping off his head would only make a martyr of him.”

Clarendon was angry and worried, though he tried to conceal his feelings. He had never reconciled himself to the King’s stubborn habit of deciding, when the issue interested him, for himself.

“Your Majesty has a nature too fond and too forgiving. If you did not personally like his Grace this would never be allowed to pass.”

“Perhaps, Chancellor, it’s true as you say that I’m too forgiving—” He shrugged his shoulders and got up, gesturing with his hand for Clarendon to stay where he was. “But I don’t think so.”

For an instant Charles’s black eyes rested seriously on the Chancellor. At last he smiled faintly, gave a nod of his head and walked out of the room. Clarendon stared after him with a worried frown. As the King disappeared his eyes shifted and he sat looking at his bandaged foot. The King, he knew, was his only protection against a horde of jealous enemies, of whom Buckingham was merely one of the loudest and most spectacular. Should Charles withdraw his support Clarendon knew that he could not last a fortnight.

Perhaps I’m too forgiving—but I don’t think so.

Suddenly there began to go through the old Chancellor’s mind a parade of those things he had done which had offended Charles: Clarendon had never admitted it but many insisted and no doubt Charles believed that Parliament would have voted him a greater income at the Restoration, but for his opposition. Charles had been furious when he had prevented the passage of his act for religious toleration. There had been the arguments over Lady Castlemaine’s title, which had finally been passed through the Irish peerage because he refused to sign it. There were a hundred other instances, great and small, accumulated over the years.

Perhaps I am too forgiving—Clarendon knew what he had meant by that. Charles forgot nothing and, in the long run, he forgave nothing.


Less than three weeks from the time that Buckingham was sent to the Tower he was released and he appeared once more, arrogant as ever, in all his old haunts. At one of Castlemaine’s suppers the King allowed him to kiss his hand. He began to frequent the taverns again and in a few days he was at the theatre with Rochester and several others. They took one of the fore-boxes and hung over the edge of it, talking to the vizard-masks below and complaining noisily because Nell Gwynne had left the stage to be Lord Buckhurst’s mistress.

Harry Killigrew, who was in an adjoining box, presently began to comment audibly on the Duke’s affairs to a young man who sat beside him: “I have it on the best authority that his Grace will never be reinstated.”

Buckingham gave him a glance of displeasure and turned again to watch the stage, but Harry’s mischievous zeal was merely whetted. He took out his pocket-comb and began grooming his wig. “ ’Sdeath,” he drawled, “but I was somewhat surprised his Grace should be content to take over the cast-off whore of half the men at Court.” Some time since he had been a lover of the languid dangerous sensual Countess of Shrewsbury, and now that she was the Duke’s mistress he babbled incessantly about the affair.