
Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of The Duke of Buckingham
As Hughes-Hallett states at the outset: ‘This book is about big things – peace and war, Parliament and despotism. It is also about small things – babies, jewels, anemones…aiming to make a collage that conjures up a life in all its complexity.’
The main supporters and promoters of Villiers remain James VI and I. The tortured family background of James VI of Scotland is well known: father murdered, Mary Queen of Scots, his mother, imprisoned and ultimately beheaded under Elizabeth I. He acceded to the Scottish throne as James VI as a one-year-old in 1567. He gained control of the Scottish government in 1583 and acceded to the monarchy of England and Ireland in 1603 as James I.
A man constantly seeking out friendship and counsel to approve his actions? Or did he just seek love and stability? Enter George Villiers, a younger son of a Leicestershire yeoman, certainly not of noble birth but endowed with ‘looks’, an ability to dance alongside good manners and the good sense to hold his own counsel, at least in his early years. A supernova at a royal court – Villiers rose up from the king’s favourite and purported bedfellow. James I had previous assignations but these were forgotten as Villiers outshone all with the love-struck king.
Sustained royal patronage landed Villiers with roles as Master of the Horse and Lord High Admiral. He rose and rose through the peerage to become Duke of Buckingham, England’s only duke and ultimately the most powerful non-royal in the kingdom. He was now effectively the head of the combined armed forces and the foreign secretary, with a patron condoning his actions, much to the open disapproval of a sickly parliament.
Over-endowed with titles and favour from the king, Villiers accompanied Charles Prince of Wales to Spain to negotiate the hand of the Infanta; the mission failed spectacularly due to his crass and obtuse behaviour. This is a man (over-) confident in his ability and under-endowed with intelligence. He had a free hand from the king to pursue a foreign policy, which resulted in loss of life and humiliation, all with the ear of a dying king and then his unseasoned successor, Charles I.
The failed discussions to help win a bride for Prince Charles were further compounded by an allegation of attempted rape on Anne of Austria, Queen of France, which soured any hope of an alliance between England and France. On he marched through life, losing La Rochelle in 1625 but he remained the only man from the court of James to maintain his position under Charles I. Their embassy to the Spanish Court had evidently made Buckingham a favourite of Charles: the boy had charisma, it must be granted.
An attempt to seize Cadiz in 1625 proved a disaster with English troops finding a warehouse full of wine, falling drunk and the attack was called off out of necessity.
Undeterred by a now well-deserved reputation for incompetence, Buckingham attempted a military campaign to seize Ile de Re in 1627 which was diplomatically reckless and strategically incompetent. Hughes-Hallett cites a litany of strategic and logistical errors with mass fatalities throughout his career and ‘naval-military operations undertaken with no clear idea of what advantage they might serve or how they were to be financed’.
Hughes-Hallett confronts the substance of the relationship between James, his previous paramours and indeed Buckingham: this is not new as much speculation has existed even during the early seventeenth century. At the same time and as expected at the time, James remained married to Queen Anne, formerly a princess of the Danish royal family: there were ten children, three of whom survived childhood.
The 600+ pages of The Scapegoat delve back into a time not widely known to us today so there is a requirement for a good infill on background to the early 17th century and deft presentation of the many themes within the book. Contemporary arts, parliamentary procedures, customs, the Gunpowder Plot and courtly processes are all there. Religion remained as contentious as in former Tudor times – the King James Version of the Bible was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611 – one venture in which Buckingham was absent!
Buckingham’s career was to extend into the reign of Charles I and The Scapegoat provides a colourful, pacey and highly readable resume of this ultimately inept if charming character who was loved and hated in equal measure by his contemporaries. Certainly an enemy of the people and arrogant alongside gracious, affectionate and modest – there is much to explore in the 600+ pages of this entertaining read.
As with the supernova, three final years of decidedly miscalculated war-mongering buoyed by over-confidence helped extinguish both a reputation, which could have been greater, and ultimately his life – Buckingham stabbed to death in Portsmouth by an army officer who felt passed over for promotion.
The book is presented in over 100 chapters in a well-paced and informative style. It will enlighten most readers and inform on a ‘one-off’ in a period of our history often overlooked between Gloriana and The Civil War.
Bob Bowmer