Lord Danby
Lord Danby, born Thomas Osborne, began his public life through the influence of his Yorkshire friend and neighbour George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.
The first step in his future rise to power came when he was elected M.P. for York. Ambitious, and with friends in high places, he soon rose to a position of influence.
As Treasurer of the Navy, his path crossed that of Samuel Pepys who thought that Danby was ‘brought into the Navy for want of other ways of gratification’. However, Danby made his mark, and changed the course of English history, by effecting the marriage between Prince William of Orange and Mary, the daughter of James II.
When Lord High Treasurer of England, he fell from grace and was voted guilty by the House of Commons of encroaching to himself royal powers, corruption and embezzlement in the treasury - ‘selling English honour with French gold’. He was forced to resign and spent the next five years in the Tower of London.
Danby was at last set free on bail of £40,000 and took his seat once more in the Lords. In 1688 he was one of the seven leaders of the Glorious Revolution who invited Prince William of Orange to England. Six years later, William created him Duke of Leeds, a significant achievement for a man born a commoner.
John Evelyn described Danby in his Diary as ‘a man of excellent parts, but nothing of generous or grateful’. The Earl of Shaftesbury called him ‘proud, ambitious, revengeful, false, prodigal and covetous to the highest degree’.
His character inspired no respect, and it was said that he could not reckon during the whole of his long career (he died in his eighty-first year) on the support of a single individual.
That is, except for Herbert Aubrey of Clehonger.
As described in Salt & Silk, Herbert wrote him a letter of condolence to the Tower, recorded in the Calendar of State Papers, expressing his deep sympathy and finishing with the promise of sending him a ‘collar of brawn and some cyder’.
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