File:The roll-call of Westminster Abbey (1906) (14761662496).jpg

Identifier: rollcallofwestmi00smit (find matches)
Title: The roll-call of Westminster Abbey
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Smith, A. Murray, Mrs
Subjects: Westminster Abbey
Publisher: London : Smith, Elder, & Co.
Contributing Library: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
Digitizing Sponsor: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center

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Text Appearing Before Image:
marble group — which is placed in a niche above their
parents—of the Villiers children. Three are buried in the
vault below, the first-born, an infant, is represented in his
cradle; the youngest, Francis, Lord Villiers, was a posthumou
schild, and lived to fight for his King in the civil wars. He
met his death (1648) bravely in a skirmish at Kingston-on-
Thames, where he defended himself against overwhelming
odds with his back to a tree for some time, till one of the
Parliamentary troopers crept round the trunk and cleft his
skull with a battle-axe. Such were the attractions of his per-
sonality that the foe were moved to sorrow over his untimely
end, and his body was buried here with some state ; it is by
a strange chance that the only royalist soldier interred in the
Abbey by Parliament was a son of the hated favourite. A
plate on the coffin records his beauty and five wounds.
Better had it been for the name of Villiers if the male
line had become extinct with Francis, but his elder brother
had succeeded to the Dukedom, and afterwards gained an
Text Appearing After Image:

THE VILLIERS MONUMENT

See p. 150

A KING'S FAVOURITE 151

unenviable reputation as the most notorious of all the gay
and licentious nobles at the court of the Restoration.
George Villiers inherited his father's handsome presence,
his ready wit, and the manly accomplishments in which the
first Duke excelled—all passports to the favour of the second
Charles, at whose coronation he carried the orb and walked
before all the other Dukes. His character, as Walpole has
well observed, was drawn for posterity " by four masterly
hands. Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chisel; Count
Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy which finishes
while it seems but to sketch ; Dryden catched the living
likeness (as Zimri in 'Absalom and Achitophel') ; Pope com-
pleted the historical resemblance." To the modern reader
the Duke is best known by Walter Scott's delineation of
his portrait in " Peveril of the Peak." By the orders of
James II. the body was embalmed and buried (1687) " in
greater state than the late King, and with more splendour,"

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