John of Bologna, given by Philip IV. of Spain to King Charles, and by
him bestowed on the elder George Villiers, made that fair _pleasaunce_
famous. It was doomed--as were what were called the 'superstitious'
pictures in the house--to destruction: henceforth all was in decay and
neglect. 'I went to see York House and gardens,' Evelyn writes in 1655,
'belonging to the former greate Buckingham, but now much ruined through
neglect.'

Traylman, doubtless, kept George Villiers the younger in full possession
of all that was to happen to that deserted tenement in which the old man
mourned for the departed, and thought of the absent.

The intelligence which he had soon to communicate was all-important.
York House was to be occupied again; and Cromwell and his coadjutors had
bestowed it on Fairfax. The blow was perhaps softened by the reflection
that Fairfax was a man of generous temper; and that he had an only
daughter, Mary Fairfax, young, and an heiress. Though the daughter of a
Puritan, a sort of interest was attached, even by Cavaliers, to Mary
Fairfax, from her having, at five years of age, followed her father
through the civil wars on horseback, seated before a maid-servant; and
having, on her journey, frequently fainted, she was so ill as to have
been left in a house by the roadside, her father never expecting to see
her again.

In reference to this young girl, then about eighteen years of age,
Buckingham now formed a plan. He resolved to return to England
disguised, to offer his hand to Mary Fairfax, and so recover his
property through the influence of Fairfax. He was confident of his own
attractions; and, indeed, from every account, he appears to have been
one of those reckless, handsome, speculative characters that often take