George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham

George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham (born August 28, 1592, Brooksby, Leicestershire, England—died August 23, 1628, Portsmouth, Hampshire) was a royal favourite and statesman who virtually ruled England during the last years of King James I and the first years of the reign of Charles I. Buckingham was extremely unpopular, and the failure of his aggressive, erratic foreign policy increased the tensions that eventually exploded in the Civil War between the royalists and the parliamentarians.

George Villiers’s father was a knight and a sheriff in Leicestershire. Introduced to James I in August 1614, the charming, handsome Villiers soon replaced the Scottish favourite Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, in the king’s esteem. His relationship with James became sexual, and he retained the king’s passionate support to the end of the latter’s life. He became master of the horse in 1616, earl of Buckingham in 1617, and lord high admiral in 1619. By using his power both to elevate and to enrich his relatives, he alienated the upper classes from the crown.

Buckingham played his first major part in politics in 1623, when he and James’s son, Prince Charles (later King Charles I), visited Madrid to arrange a marriage between Charles and the daughter of the Spanish king. In attempting to conclude an alliance with Spain, Buckingham hoped to use Spanish influence to recover the Palatinate, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, for James’s son-in-law, Frederick V. But the arrogance of Buckingham—James had already created him a duke (May 18, 1623), the first known in England since the execution of the duke of Norfolk (1572)—contributed to the collapse of the marriage negotiations. He then returned to London and, with parliamentary backing, pressured James to go to war with Spain.

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After Charles ascended the throne in March 1625, Buckingham’s leadership led to a series of disasters. The marriage he arranged between Charles and the French Roman Catholic princess Henrietta Maria failed to bring about an Anglo-French alliance, and it angered Parliament by raising the threat of a Catholic succession to the English throne. In addition, the vast naval and land expedition Buckingham sent against the Spanish port of Cádiz in October 1625 was so poorly organized and equipped that it disintegrated before it could storm the city. Hence, a bill to impeach the duke was introduced in Parliament in May 1626. In order to save him, Charles dissolved Parliament in June. Buckingham’s case was then tried before the royal Court of Star Chamber, where, to no one’s surprise, the charges were dismissed.

Meanwhile, England was drifting toward war with France. In June 1627 Buckingham personally took command of an 8,000-man force sent to relieve the port of La Rochelle, a Huguenot (French Protestant) stronghold under attack by French government troops. After a four-month campaign in which Buckingham showed bravery—and an ignorance of the arts of war—his shattered army was compelled to withdraw. The Parliament of 1628 tried to force Charles to dismiss the favourite, but the king was unflinchingly loyal to his friend. On August 17 Buckingham arrived at Portsmouth to organize another expedition to La Rochelle. Five days later he was stabbed to death by John Felton, a naval lieutenant who had served in his campaigns and who misguidedly believed that he was acting in defense of principles asserted in the House of Commons. The populace of London rejoiced at the news.