Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber: a pair of
bellows is hanging before him for the purse; Colonel Titus is walking
with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace; the king,
himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter; the
courtiers are fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king
with his descriptions! 'Ipswich, for instance,' he said, 'was a town
without inhabitants--a river it had without water--streets without
names; and it was a place where asses wore boots:' alluding to the
asses, when employed in rolling Lord Hereford's bowling-green, having
boots on their feet to prevent their injuring the turf.

Flecknoe, the poet, describes the duke at this period, in 'Euterpe
Revived'--

The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde,
In all the world his prince could ever finde,
Or to participate his private cares,
Or bear the public weight of his affairs,
Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight,
And well-built minds, the steadier with their height;
Such was the composition and frame
O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham.'

The praise, however, even in the duke's best days, was overcharged.
Villiers was no 'well-built arch,' nor could Charles trust to the
fidelity of one so versatile for an hour. Besides, the moral character
of Villiers must have prevented him, even in those days, from bearing
'the public weight of affairs.'

A scandalous intrigue soon proved the unsoundness of Flecknoe's tribute.