Favorite of the king, not the queen: little-known facts about the Duke of Buckingham

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Name Duke of Buckingham invariably associated with the novel by Alexandre Dumas "The Three Musketeers". The overly passionate Englishman had ardent feelings for Anna of Austria. In fact, the relationship between the French queen and the duke is nothing more than a fantasy of the famous writer. Buckingham himself was in the favorites not of the queen, but of the English king James I.

The mother of the future Duke of Buckingham, Lady Mary Villiers, was firmly convinced that of her three sons, George was destined for a brilliant career. She did not stint and sent her son to study in France. There, George achieved success in fencing, horse riding, dancing, and secular manners. After his return to England in 1610, Lady Mary placed her son at the royal court.

The rapid ascent of the career ladder, George Villiers was due to the homosexual orientation of King James I of England, who had a weakness for handsome young men. The young man became a trump card in the hands of the nobles, who wanted to dethrone the then king's favorite, Robert Coeur, Earl of Somerset. Each time, 22-year-old George Villiers seemed to accidentally caught the eye of James I, and, in the end, the monarch drew attention to him.

A love triangle formed at the court: the king could not decide between the new favorite and the old one. The influential aristocrats who supported Villiers managed to arrange everything so that Robert Coera was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The king took mercy and changed the execution to imprisonment. So the former favorite was eliminated.

Jacob I was so absorbed in his passion for Villiers that in his love letters he called his favorite either husband or wife. The King was referring to George as Steenie. This is an abbreviation for St. Stephen, whose face "shone like the face of an angel," according to the biblical texts.

Titles rained down on him like a cornucopia. Villiers was appointed equestrian, Knight of the Order of the Garter, Baron Waddon, Viscount. He secured a seat for himself in the House of Lords. In 1617, George Villiers became a member of the Privy Council. Then the king granted him the title of Earl of Buckingham, and a few years later - the duke. It is noteworthy that George Villiers became the only Englishman in the past half century who received this title. The king's favorite became the de facto head of the government of England. After the death of James I, his son Charles I took the throne. The new king did not have the same specific inclinations as his father, but he trusted Buckingham, and he continued to rule the country.

To be honest, the Duke of Buckingham politician was weak. He initiated wars with France and Spain, which he could not win. This resulted in the devastation of the royal treasury. Both the government and the people were opposed to the duke. Some even accused him of witchcraft. Charles I did not want to listen to anyone and remove Buckingham from the post of minister. By this he provoked an uprising against himself.

Despite the fact that the duke was the king's favorite, he did not deny attention to the ladies. As for Anne of Austria, during his visit to France, Buckingham expressed his feelings for the queen too forcefully. She did not reciprocate. Many researchers explain such pressure from Buckingham by his desire to annoy King Louis XIII for the fact that he did not enter into a military alliance with England. The alleged romance between them is nothing more than an invention of Alexandre Dumas in his novel The Three Musketeers.

In 1628, when the Duke of Buckingham was in Portsmouth, a certain John Felton arrived there. He was a retired lieutenant who took part in one of the military campaigns in France. Felton hoped for a promotion, but it went to someone from Buckingham's entourage. After returning to England, the lieutenant tried to obtain an audience with the duke, but to no avail.

Holding a grudge against the duke, he vowed revenge. Moreover, John Felton more than once heard people on the streets curse Buckingham in all their troubles and consider him a henchman of the devil. The man wrote a note of revenge and sewed it into his hat.

Its content was as follows:.

23 August 1628, gathering his courage and buying a knife for 10 pence, Felton went to the headquarters of the duke. As Buckingham walked towards his carriage, he came close to him and stabbed him in the chest with a knife. The wound was fatal, so the duke died a few moments later, having only managed to utter: "Ah, you scoundrel!"

Charles I gave the order to bury the Duke of Buckingham at Westminster Abbey. Subsequently, he called his minister nothing more than "my martyr."

Creating his novel about the adventures of the Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas not only distorted the historical facts about the Duke of Buckingham, but also interpreted D'Artagnan's actions in his own way. but the fate of a real Gascon was no less brilliant than that of his literary character.