BUCKINGHAM. 



BUCKINGHAM, JAMBS SILK. 



On UM death of Charles II. the Duke of Buckingham, convioua 

 that be would have a more difficult maater in hU successor, nd finding 

 hit heejlh ruined by a long career of Tic*, and bU fortune diminUhed 

 by unbounded extravagance, retired to hi* Mat of Helmsley in Yorkshire, 

 where lie derated himself to fieM-amusementa. HU death occurred on 

 April 17th 1688, >t the haute of a tenant at Kirkby Moonide, after a 

 few day*' ferer produced by sitting on the damp ground when heated 

 by a fox -chase ; bat the picture of destitution to finely drawn by Pope 

 in the third of uu ' Moral Essays' ia greatly exaggerated. The duke 

 had not reduced himself to beggary, nor did lie breathe hi* lait in the 

 " wont inn'* wont room." The portrait which Dryden haa presented, 

 under the character of Zimri in ' Absalom and Acbitopbel ' U by no 

 mean* tbu* overcharged, and may be unhesitatingly received not only 

 on account of the finances of iU execution, but also the justice of iU 

 feat urea. 



The duke wa* interred under a sumptuous monument la Henry VH.'a 

 Chapel in Westminiter Abbey. By hi* death without inue hi* branch 

 of toe ancient family of Villiers became extinguixhed. It is said that 

 he wa* the first person who introduced from Venice into England the 

 manufacture of glass and crystal In the intervals which he matched 

 from dissipation and politic* he employed himself in literary compo- 

 sition. For the stage he produced ' The Restauration, or Right will 

 take place,' a tragi-oomedy ; ' The Battle of Sedgmore,' a force ; ' The 

 Chance*,' a loose and improbable comrdy, altered from Beaumont and 

 Fletcher ; and ' The Rehearsal' Beside* these he published a ' Satire 

 against Mankind,' some poems, and one of his speeches in parliament. 

 A treatise is also attributed to him in his later yean, the genuineness 

 of which may perhaps be doubted upon a perusal of its title, 'A 

 Discourse upon the Reasonableness of Men having a Religion or 

 Worship of a Uod." These writings were collected in an octavo volume 

 of miscellaneous works in 1704. 



The life of the Duke of Buckingham was printed and hi* works 

 were pirated by the notorious Curl in 1721, on which occasion a vote 

 passed the House of Lords, declaring it to be a breach of privilege to 

 print any account of the life or any of the works of a deceased peer 

 without consent of his heirs or executors. 



JOB* SHEFFIELD, DUKE or BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, was born in 1649, and 

 succeeded hi* father Edmund, earl of Mulgrave, in that title in 1658. 

 When he was but seventeen yean old he served in the same ship in 

 which Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle bad embarked in the 

 first Dutch war. At the meeting of parliament in the following year 

 he was summoned by writ to take bis seat, but was excluded on 

 account of nonage on a motion of the Earl of Northumberland. In 

 an encounter with the noted Karl of Rochester, which occurred about 

 this time, he conducted himself, according to hia own account as given 

 in his autobiography, with distinguished credit. 



In an engagement with De Ruyter in the second Dutch war, Sheffield 

 erred with gallantry as a volunteer on board the ship of the Earl 

 of Osaory. His behaviour in the engagement procured for him the 

 command of the best second-rate ship in the navy. In the land-service 

 he raised a regiment of foot, and commanded it as colonel ; and the 

 old Holltnd regiment, in which he bore the like commission, was also 

 placed under his orders, lie was installed Knight of the Garter, 

 and appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber. For a short time 

 he entered the French service under Turenne, and when the unhappy 

 Monmouth showed symptoms of rebellion, Sheffield received the lord- 

 Hsmtensnry of Yorkshire with the government of Hull, from which 

 .Monmouth was dismissed. 



On the accession of James II. he was sworn into the Privy Council, 

 and appointed Lord Chamberlain. Not being very fervent in his 

 religion* opinions, and indeed holding a place in the high commission, 

 with the illegality of which he afterward* professed himself to be 

 unacquainted, he took no part in the revolution. Once it wa* designed 

 to rvquest him to join in the invitation to the Prince of Orange, but 

 the Earl of Shrewsbury declared that he well knew that Mulgrave's 

 concurrence was not to be expected. His reply to King William, who 

 mentioned this fact to him, was singularly bold and upright : " Sire," 

 said be, " if the proposal bad been made, I would have discovered it 

 to the king whom I then served." To the honour of William, it should 

 be added, that he was far from b-ing displeased with this answer. 

 Mulgrave however by no mean* courted the favour of the reigning 

 king. He opposed him on some important question* ; and it is related 

 that this opposition neither interfered with his advancement, nor did 

 hia advancement silence bis opposition. In 1694 he was created 

 Marquis) of Normanby, and afterwards, wa* admitted into the cabinet 

 council with a pension of 3000/. per annum. 



On the accession of Quern Anne he was named Lord Privy Seal 

 It is said that an early tender attachment to that princess once nearly 

 cost him hi* life ; for that Charles II., in order to punish hi* ambition, 

 despatched him in a leaky vessel to the relirf of Tangier. In 1703 



i con- 

 he resigned 



_ . upporting the 



Tory motion for inviting the frincea* Sophia to England, He rofuaed 

 the strong 'temptation of the chancellorship, which wa* offered to 

 lure him back, and employed hi* leisure from politic* in ending 

 Buckingham House at Pimlico, upon land granted by the crown. In 

 1710 he wan made Lord-Chamberlain of the household, but afUr 



oeepatcnea mm in a leaky vessel to tne relief of Tnngier. In 1 

 be was created Duke of Normanby and of Buckinghamshire. In < 

 sequence of the ascendancy of the Duke of Mail borough he resig 

 the Privy Seal, and greatly oBended the queen by supporting 



Queen Anne's death he reverted to opposition. He died February 24, 

 1720-1. By his fint two wives he was without ouuMrrn ; by bis third, 

 a daughter of James IL by the oounteas of DorohesUr, and wi low 

 of the Earl of Angle***, beside* other children he had a son Edmond, 

 by whose death in 1735 the line of Sheffield became extinct 



A* a poet the Duke of Buckinghamshire is below criticism, and it 

 i* to bis rank rather than to his talent that we must ascribe the 

 praise* which he received from Roeoommon, from Dryden (to whom 

 he erected a monument in Westminster Abbey), and from Pope. The 

 few prose piece* which the Duke of Buckinghamshire hai l.-ft to us are 

 light and graceful, and although now perhaps forgotten, they deserve 

 a higher rank than his poetry. His remains lie under a sumptuous 

 monument erected by his widow in Westminster Abbey. 



U no RUB GBEXVILLI NUGENT TEMPLE, second earl of Temple, wa* 

 created marqui* of the town of Buckingham in 17S4, and his son, 

 Richard Qrenville Brydge* Cbandos, wa* advanced to the dukedom of 

 Buckingham and Chaudo* in 1822. 



BUCKINGHAM, JAMKS SILK, waa bora in 1786, in the marine 

 village of Flushing, near Falmouth, in Cornwall His father had been 

 a sue firing man, but then occupied a farm, an I died while Bucking- 

 ham wa* yet a boy. Hi* mother sent him to school at Falmouth, and 

 wa* desirous of bringing him up to the church, but he preferred 

 going to sea, and made a few voyages to Lisbon, in the last of which 

 the ship was captured by the French, and the crew made prisoners. 

 After some delay they were set at liberty, but on their way home 

 Were impressed for the British navy. Buckingham however escaped 

 from the press-gang, returned to Cornwall, and entered into an 

 engagement with a bookseller at Devonport, in whose employ he 

 remained about four year.* ; and here he sreins to have gained some 

 knowledge of the* trade of a printer. He however took to the sea 

 again on board a king's ship, but deserted, returned home, tried the 

 law, and abandoned that profruion also. He married before be was 

 twenty year* of ago. About this time his mother died, leaving him a 

 considerable property in charge of trustees. He then commenced 

 business a* a bookseller, on borrowed money. One of hia trustees 

 robbed him of his property, hia business proved a failure, and he was 

 left destitute with a wife and female child. 



Leaving hi* wife in the care of her friends, Buckingham then went 

 to London, in the hope of getting an engagement as captain of some 

 vessel, but having waited till he was almost in a state of starvation, 

 he obtained employment in a printing-office, and waa afterwards 

 engaged at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. At length he was appointed 

 captain of a West-Indiaman, and continued four or five yean in that 

 trade. He afterwards waa a captain in the Mediterranean trade, and 

 made many friend* at Malta and Smyrna, He then n solved to settle 

 at Malta as a ship-owner and merchant, aud having purcha.t-d a cargo 

 of goods, he sailed from London in April 1813. When the vessel 

 reached Malta, the plague had broken out thrrf , and no person* were 

 allowed to laud ; thu cargo however wa* taken on shore, aud the ship 

 then proceeded to Smyrna. While he remained at Smyrna, many 

 failures took place in Malta, and he among others lost all hi-! property. 



Buckingham then resolved to try his fortune in Egypt, and It- ft 

 Smyrna for that purpose, August 30, 1813. He was well received at 

 the British Embassy, and was introduced to Yuseff-Boghos, an Arme- 

 nian, the principal a,'eut of the pasha, Mohammed AH, who wa* 

 then absent on an expedition in Arabia. At thi* time there was much 

 peculation about renewing the commerce with India through the 

 Red Sea, and making a navigable canal from that sea to the Mediter- 

 ranean. Buckingham had a despatch forwarded to the pasha, in which 

 he offered hi* services to examine the Isthmus of Suez for an eligible 

 track, and to trace a* far as possible the course of the ancient canal 

 Hi* offer, after some delay, was accepted, and having in the un 

 ascended the Nile as far as the cataracts, he started from Ken. li on 

 the Nile, with a single attendant, for the purpose of travelling to 

 Kosaeir on the Red Sea. His attendant deserted him on the route, he 

 wa* robbed of everything he possessed, aud was left entirely naked. 

 He was befriended by a poor Arab, who supplied him with some 

 scanty covering, and at length reached Koeseir, whence however he 

 waa obliged to return to Kuneh, and thence to Cairo, without effecting 

 anything. At Cairo he wai introduced to the pasha, Mohammed Ali, 

 with whom he had some long conversations, aud again get out 

 February 15, 1814, for the same purposes as before ; he reached Suez, 

 and traced the ancient canal as far as it had not been filled up and 

 obliterated. After hi* return to Cairo the pasha bad changed hi* 

 mind a* to the canal, but gave him a commUnion to purchase ships 

 for him in India, and to encourage a trade between India and Egypt 



Mr. Buckingham then left Cairo fur the purpose of procei-ding to 

 Bombay by the Red Sea, and reached Suez, October 18, 1814, and 

 Bombay April 6, 1815, having been delayed in Arabia. Ho found thu 

 merchants at Bombay distrustful of the pasha of Kgypt, and unwilling 

 to trade with him; he therefore accepted an engagement I'M. MI the 

 agent of the Imaum of Muscut a* commander of a sbip of 1200 tons 

 burden, which waa intended to trade to China on the In. 

 account. When this wa* made known to th- civil authorities at 

 Bombay, and also that he hsd no licence from the East India Dn 

 to reside in India, he received an order to return to England, but, 

 after much remonstrance on hi* part, waa allowed to return to i 

 in one of the East India Company's ship.-, which was about to proceed 



