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1620.

The king and Buckingham.

Indecent correspondence.

The historians of the day tell such stories as these. The king was at one time very dejected and melancholy, when Buckingham contrived this plan to amuse him. In the first place, however, we ought to say, in order to illustrate the terms on which he and Buckingham lived together, that the king always called Buckingham Steeny, which was a contraction of Stephen. St. Stephen was always represented, in the Catholic pictures of the saints, as a very handsome man, and Buckingham being handsome too, James called him Steeny by way of compliment. Steeny called the king his dad, and used to sign himself, in his letters, "your slave and dog Steeny." There are extant some letters which passed between the king and his favorite, written, on the part of the king, in a style of grossness and indecency such that the chroniclers of those days said that they were not fit to be printed. They would not "blot their pages" with them, they said. King Charles's letters were more properly expressed.