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After Buckingham’s death, Charles the First cherished his memory as warmly as his life, advanced his friends, and designed to raise a magnificent monument to his memory;[244] and if any one accused the duke, the king always imputed the fault to himself. The king said, “Let not the duke’s enemies seek to catch at any of his offices, for they will find themselves deceived.” Charles called Buckingham “his martyr!” and often said the world was much mistaken in the duke’s character; for it was commonly thought the duke ruled his majesty; but it was much the contrary, having been his most faithful and obedient servant in all things, as the king said he would make sensibly appear to the world. Indeed, after the death of Buckingham, Charles showed himself extremely active in business. Lord Dorchester wrote–“The death of Buckingham causes no changes; the king holds in his own hands the total direction, leaving the executory part to every man within the compass of his charge.”[245] This is one proof, among many, that Charles the First was not the puppet-king of Buckingham, as modern historians have imagined.

[Footnote 226:
In “The Disparity.” to accompany “The Parallel” of Sir Henry Wotton; two exquisite cabinet-pictures, preserved in the Reliquiae Wottonianae; and at least equal to the finest “Parallels” of Plutarch. ]

[Footnote 227:
The singular openness of his character was not statesmanlike. He was one of those whose ungovernable sincerity “cannot put all their passions in their pockets.” He told the Count-Duke Olivarez, on quitting Spain, that “he would always cement the friendship between the two nations; but with regard to you, sir, in particular, you must not consider me as your friend, but must ever expect from me all possible enmity and opposition.” The cardinal was willing enough, says Hume, “to accept what was proffered, and on these terms the favourites parted.” Buckingham, desirous of accommodating the parties in the nation, once tried at the favour of the puritanic party, whose head was Dr. Preston, master of Emanuel College. The duke was his generous patron, and Dr. Preston his most servile adulator. The more zealous puritans were offended at this intimacy; and Dr. Preston, in a letter to some of his party, observed that it was true that the duke was a vile and profligate fellow, but that there was no other way to come at him but by the lowest flattery; that it was necessary for the glory of God that such instruments should be made use of; and more in this strain. Some officious hand conveyed this letter to the duke, who, when Dr. Preston came one morning as usual, asked him whether he had ever disobliged him, that he should describe him to his party in such black characters. The doctor, amazed, denied the fact; on which the duke instantly produced the letter, then turned from him, never to see him more. It is said that from this moment he abandoned the puritan party, and attached himself to Laud. This story was told by Thomas Baker to W. Wotton, as coming from one well versed in the secret history of that time.–Lansdowne MSS. 872, fo. 88. ]

[Footnote 228:
A well-known tract against the Duke of Buckingham, by Dr. George Eglisham, physician to James the First, entitled “The Forerunner of Revenge,” may be found in many of our collections. Gerbier, in his manuscript memoirs, gives a curious account of this political libeller, the model of that class of desperate scribblers. “The falseness of his libels,” says Gerbier, “he hath since acknowledged, though too late. During my residence at Bruxelles, this Eglisham desired Sir William Chaloner, who then was at Liege, to bear a letter to me, which is still extant: he proposed, if the king would pardon and receive him into favour again, with some competent subsistence, that he would recant all that he had said or written to the disadvantage of any in the court of England, confessing that he had been urged thereunto by some combustious spirits, that for their malicious designs had set him on work.” Buckingham would never notice these and similar libels. Eglisham flew to Holland after he had deposited his political venom in his native country, and found a fate which every villanous factionist who offers to recant for “a competent subsistence” does not always; he was found dead, assassinated in his walks by a companion. Yet this political libel, with many like it, are still authorities. “George Duke of Buckingham,” says Oldys, “will not speedily outstrip Dr. Eglisham’s ‘Forerunner of Revenge.'” ]