his own revenue, to guard the sea, above £5,000,000, and odd £100,000;
which is a most prodigious sum. Sir H. Cholmly, as a true English
gentleman, do decry the king's expenses of his privy purse, which in
King James's time did not rise to above £5,000 a year, and in King
Charles's to £10,000, do now cost us above £100,000, besides the great
charge of the monarchy, as the Duke of York has £100,000 of it, and
other limbs of the royal family.'

In consequence of Lady Castlemaine's intervention, Villiers was restored
to liberty--a strange instance, as Pepys remarks, of the 'fool's play'
of the age. Buckingham was now as presuming as ever: he had a theatre of
his own, and he soon showed his usual arrogance by beating Henry
Killigrew on the stage, and taking away his coat and sword; all very
'innocently' done, according to Pepys. In July he appeared in his place
in the House of Lords, as 'brisk as ever,' and sat in his robes,
'which,' says Pepys, 'is a monstrous thing that a man should be
proclaimed against, and put in the Tower, and released without any
trial, and yet not restored to his places.'

We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, in concert
with Halifax and Arlington. In the year 1680, he was threatened with an
impeachment, in which, with his usual skill, he managed to exculpate
himself by blaming Lord Arlington. The House of Commons passed a vote
for his removal; and he entered the ranks of the opposition.

But this career of public meanness and private profligacy was drawing to
a close. Alcibiades no longer--his frame wasted by vice--his spirits
broken by pecuniary difficulties--Buckingham's importance visibly sank
away. 'He remained, at last,' to borrow the words of Hume, 'as incapable
of doing hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to