Buckingham appears thus to have taken the most effectual means to recover his serenity--retirement and economy; but the great duties of his station would not suffer him long to rest, either at Newhall or at the still more remote retreat of Burleigh. There, indeed, he was not permitted to hide himself until after he had assisted at the solemnity of the declaration of the King’s marriage, which was held in the Banqueting House at Whitehall in the following order.^[258] After it was concluded, the King conducted the Queen to her presence chamber, where she dined. The King returned to the banqueting chamber, where he dined with the three French ambassadors, the Duc de Chevreuse, Villeach, and the Marquis de Fite. At the second course the heralds came, and proclaimed the King’s titles, craved a largesse, and afterwards went to the Queen’s side, and did the same. The Queen went to the Banqueting House afterwards, and the evening was spent in dancing. On the following day the Duke of Buckingham dined with the Duc de Chevreuse at Nonsuch, and supped that evening at York House, giving there one of those sumptuous entertainments which must have added so much to his pecuniary difficulties. For the ambassadors were received at that noble dwelling with “such magnificence and plenty, that the like,” writes a contemporary, "hath not been seen in these parts. One rare dish came by mere chance: a sturgeon of full five feet long, that afternoon, not far from the place, leaping in a gentleman’s boat, was served in at supper."^[259]

During all this time, the pestilence was raging with fearful results; yet the people could not find in their hearts to leave London when the brave doings in celebration of the Queen’s arrival went on. It was observed that “in all these shews and feastings, there hath been such excessive bravery on all sides, as bred rather a surfeit than delights in them that saw it, and it were more fit and would better become us to compare and dispute with such pompous kind of people in iron and steel, than in gold and riches, wherein we come not near them.”

In addition to this insulting remark, one even still more disparaging to the strangers was publicly thrown out. The accession even of the high-bred Frenchwomen was considered to add little to the grace of the courtly revels at York House or elsewhere. Her retinue appears to have inspired neither admiration nor respect.

“The Queen hath brought, they say, such a poor, pitiful sort of women, that there is not one worth the looking after, saving herself and the Duchess of Chevreuse, who, though she be fair, paints foully. Among her priests you would little look for M. Sausy, that went an ambassador to Constantinople when we were at Venice, and is now become a padre del oratorio.”^[260]

The public heard with disgust that two hundred pounds a day were allowed for the maintenance of the Duc and Duchesse de Chevreuse, in Denmark House, “for victuals and comforts.”^[261] Buckingham, meantime, passed the remainder of the year 1625 at Hampton Court, his duchess staying at Burgleigh, where her father, the Earl of Rutland, remained to solace her retirement, for we find him excusing himself from attendance at Court on that plea.^[262] Buckingham experienced considerable inconvenience from the absence and illness of the Earl of Purbeck, who, of all his brothers, seems to have enjoyed the most of his confidence; referring to him all suitors who were obliged, to adopt the quaint phrase of the time, to “come in at that door.”^[263]