Book Excerpts: Page 9-10 from The Illustrious Lady by Elizabeth Hamilton
For the younger members of royalist society there was little to do except to snatch what pleasure was available to them. Unless they were involved in the cloak-and-dagger world of the underground movement, with its ciphers and secret letters hidden under floorboards and in the linings of hatbands, they could find little better occupations than carousing and falling in love. The uncertainty of the future seemed to lend an urgency to their self-indulgence. King Charles I had encouraged his courtiers to be chivalrous and dignified, and there had been more than a tinge of puritanism in his attitude. By contrast the children of his courtiers were rebating not only against the severe oral climate of the fifties, but also against the pallid philosophy of their fathers. In this, King Charles II and his childhood friend, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, were typical of their generation...
Bereft of a career at court or in public service of any kind, the new generation of Royalists sought consolation in the close companionship that often springs up among those who find themselves out of favor with the current government. Barbara Villiers found plenty of other girls in a similar situation to her own. There were the four daughters of the Duke of Hamilton who like Barbara's father had died as the result of a wound sustained in the King's service, and the eldest, Lady Anne, became one of Barbara's closest friend. Lady Elizabeth Howard, a niece of Barbara's uncle-in-law the Earl of Suffolk, was another member of the fast-living set which attracted all the high-born pleasure-seekers. Barbara herself, by the virtue of her birth and background, was inevitably drawn towards the wilder fringes of royalist society. It was soon clear that she had not inherited her father's exemplary character though she was amply endowed with the Villiers' beauty. In later years it was said that from her earliest childhood she had shown signs of an unusual lasciviousness and whether this was true of not, she certainly began to attract the attention of 'divers young gentleman of the town' soon after her arrival in London. She possessed the same kind of magnetism as her cousin the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, of whom it was said that 'if he did nut cross a room, all eyes were turned to follow him'. In addition she was as striking as the Duke's younger brother Francis, who had been judged a youth of 'rare beauty and comeliness of person'. She was to be described on more than one occasion as the finest woman of her age, with her auburn hair, her voluptuous figure and her dark blue eyes. The 1st Duke of Buckingham's eyes, which were of a similar color, have been described as 'the dark blue eves of the highly -sexed."
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