An officer appointed to serve up a feast.
But it is singular that from a personage of lowly fortunes, if not of humble family, sprang the generation which was so noted in its time.
At Brookesby, the manorial residence of the race, there had dwelt, for several centuries, successive proprietors, little remarkable, since the time of the valiant Crusaders, either for their career in arms, or for their ambition to rise in the State. A stream, dignified by the name of the River Wreke, flows near the house, which is said to have been the residence of the Villiers family; a gentleman’s seat, a plain and somewhat insignificant building, having a central division, and two projecting wings, now owns the name of Brookesby.[14]
It is situated nine miles from Leicester, and six from Melton Mowbray.
The town of Brookesby has, of late years, been returned as a decayed town; but its church is worthy of note in a county which, as Fuller remarks, “affordeth no cathedrals, and as for the parish churches, they may take the eye, but not ravish the admiration of the beholder.” This structure, dedicated to St. Michael, boasts a handsome tower, above which rises a small spire, well crocheted; the battlements of the tower are remarkably beautiful, being open worked, and embellished with a row of shields, of which the most conspicuous is that of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, and of his Duchess, and on it there is an honorary augmentation, showing the descent which he claimed from the blood royal of Edward the Fourth.[15] It seems as if, amid the decay which surrounds it, this church has remained as a witness of the former greatness of that now extinct branch of the Villiers family, whose glories emblazon its battlements and windows. The direct line of the favourite of James the First ceased in two generations after his proud and brief career.
Nichols’s History of Leicestershire, vol. iii., p. 189.
From the retirement of Brookesby, one of its owners was summoned, during a royal progress, to the presence of Queen Elizabeth. This was Sir George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, who was consequently knighted, when High Sheriff for Leicestershire,[16] by the Queen. Sir George married the daughter of William Sanders, of Harrington, in the County of Northampton, and had by that marriage two sons, William, who inherited Brokesby and became a baronet; and Edward, afterwards President of Munster, and the ancestor of the present Earl of Jersey.