supplant him, to the same purpose. Gerbier
was the painter and architect, and at the same time one of the
confidential agents of Buckingham; the friend of Rubens the painter,
with whom he was concerned in this country to open a Spanish
negotiation, and became at length the master of the ceremonies to
Charles the Second, in his exile. He was an actor in many scenes.
Gerbier says of himself, that "he was a minister who had the honour of
public employment, and may therefore incur censure for declaring some
passages of state more overtly than becomes such an one; but secrets
are secrets but for a time; others may be wiser for themselves, but it
is their silence which makes me write."[230]

A mystery has always hung over that piece of knight-errantry, the
romantic journey to Madrid, where the prime minister and the heir
apparent, in disguise, confided their safety in the hands of our
national enemies; which excited such popular clamour, and indeed
anxiety, for the prince and the protestant cause. A new light is cast
over this extraordinary transaction, by a secret which the Duke imparted
to Gerbier. The project was Buckingham's; a bright original view, but
taken far out of the line of precedence. It was one of those bold
inventions which no common mind could have conceived, and none but the
spirit of Buckingham could have carried on with a splendour and mastery
over the persons and events, which turned out, however, as unfavourable
as possible.

The restoration of the imprudent Palatine, the son-in-law of James the
First, to the Palatinate which that prince had lost by his own
indiscretion, when he accepted the crown of Bohemia, although warned of
his own incompetency, as well as of the incapacity of those princes of
the empire, who might have assisted him against the power of Austria and
Spain, seemed, however, to a great part of our nation necessary to the
stability of the protestant interests. James the First was most bitterly
run down at home for his civil pacific measures, but the truth is, by
Gerbier's account, that James could not depend on one single ally, who
had all taken fright, although some of the Germans were willing enough
to be subsidised at L30,000 a month from England; this James had not to
give, and which he had been a fool had he given; for though this war for
the protestant interests was popular in England, it was by no means
general among the German Princes: the Prince Elector of Treves, and
another