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VIII. HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM
George Villier's Courtship of Ann of Austria
He was Insolence incarnate.
Since the day when, a mere country lad, his singular good looks
had attracted the attention of King James--notoriously partial to
good-looking lads--and had earned him the office of cup-bearer to
his Majesty, the career of George Villiers is to be read in a
series of acts of violent and ever-increasing arrogance,
expressing the vanity and levity inherent in his nature. Scarcely
was he established in the royal favour than he distinguished
himself by striking an offending gentleman in the very presence
of his sovereign--an act of such gross disrespect to royalty that
his hand would have paid forfeit, as by law demanded, had not the
maudlin king deemed him too lovely a fellow to be so cruelly
maimed.
Over the mind and will of King Charles his ascendancy became even
greater than it had been over that of King James; and it were
easy to show that the acts of George Villiers' life supplied the
main planks of that scaffold in Whitehall whereupon Charles
Stuart came to lose his head. Charles was indeed a martyr; a
martyr chiefly to the reckless, insolent, irresponsible vanity of
this Villiers, who, from a simple country squire with nothing but
personal beauty to recommend him, had risen to be, as Duke of
Buckingham, the first gentleman in England.
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