The pictures
were eagerly bought by a foreign collector named Duart. The proceeds
gave poor Villiers bread; but the noble works of Titian and Leonardo da
Vinci, and others, were lost for ever to England.
It must have been very irritating to Villiers to know that whilst he
just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being
subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by
the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate
many of the old properties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately
seat on which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken by
the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a line of
buildings, that the Parliamentarians could not hold it without leaving
in it a great garrison and stores of ammunition. It was therefore burnt,
and the stables alone occupied; and those even were formed into a house
of unusual size. York House was doubtless marked out for the next
destructive decree. There was something in the very history of this
house which might be supposed to excite the wrath of the Roundheads.
Queen Mary (whom we must not, after Miss Strickland's admirable life of
her, call Bloody Queen Mary, but who will always be best known by that
unpleasant title) had bestowed York House on the See of York, as a
compensation for York House, at Whitehall, which Henry VIII.
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