TO-DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20661, 17 April 1929, Page 4

TO-DAY IN HISTORY

APRIL 17. Born: John Ford, dramatist, Islington, 1586. Bishop Edward Stillingflcet, Cranbourne, 1635. Died: Marino Falieri, doge of Venice, executed, 1355; Joachim Camerarius, German protestant scholar, Leipzig, 1574; George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, Kirby Moorsidc, 1787; Bishop Benjamin Hoadley, Winchester. 1761; Dr Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 1790; James Thom, “The Ayrshire" sculptor, New York, ISSO. GEORGE VILLIERS. This nobleman, whose miserable end is described by Pope, was about six or seven years old, when, on his father’s murder, he succeeded to his titles and estates. During his long minority which he passed chiefly on the Continent, his property so greatly accumulated as to have become it is said, fifty thousand a year. At the battle of Worcester he was General of the king’s horse, and after the loss of that contest he escaped with much difficulty. Travelling on foot through bye lanes, obtaining food at cottages, and changing his dress with a woodman, he was enabled to evade the vigilance of his pursuers. At the restoration of Charles 11, he was appointed to several offices of trust and honour; but such were his restless disposition and dissolute habits, that he soon lost the confidence of the king, and made a wreck of his property. “He gave himself up,” says Burnet, “to a monstrous course of studied immoralities.” His natural abilities, however, were considerable, and his wit and humour made him the life and admiration of the court of Charles. “He was,” says Granger, “the alchemist and the philosopher; the fiddler and the poet; the mimic and the statesman.”

His capricious spirit and licentious habits unfitted him for the permanent leadership of any political party, nor did he generally take much interest in politics, but occasionally he devoted himself to some, special measure and would then become its principal advocate; though, even on such occasions his captious ungoverned temper often led him to give personal offence, and to infringe the rules of the House, for which he was more than once admitted to the Tower. Lord Clarendon relates an amusing anecdote of him on one of these occasions which is also a ctirious illustration of the manner of conducting public business at that period. “It happened that upon the debate of the same affair, the Irish Bill, there was a conference appointed with the House of Commons, in which (he Duke of Buckingham was the manager, and as they were sitting down in the Painted Chamber, which is seldom done in good order, it. chanced that the Marquis of Dorchester sate next the Duke of Buckingham, between whom there was no good correspondence. The one changing his posture for his own ease which made the station of the other more uneasy, they first endeavoured by justling to recover what they had dispossessed each other of. and afterwards fell to direct blows. In the scuffle the Marquis who was the lower of the two in stature and less active in his limbs, was deprived of his periwig, and received some rudeness, which nobody imputed to his want of courage. Indeed he was considered to be beforehand with the Duke, for he had pulled off much of his hair to compensate for the loss of his own periwig.’’ For this misdemeanour they were both sent to the Tower but were liberated in a few davs.

Large as was his income, his profligate habits reduced him Io poverty, and he died in wretchedness at Kirby Moorsidc in Yorkshire in 1687.