The Doomed Dukes of Buckingham have become a chilling symbol of how power and proximity to the crown could lead to a bloody downfall in Tudor and Stuart England. This notorious title was held by two men a century apart—Edward Stafford, the 3rd Duke under Henry VIII, and George Villiers, the 1st Duke under James I—both of whom rose to dazzling heights before meeting violent ends.
From treason trials and royal suspicion to assassination and public rejoicing, the story of the Dukes of Buckingham is more than coincidence. It’s a haunting legacy that raises the question: was the title cursed, or was ambition simply a dangerous game in royal circles?
Transcript of The Doomed Dukes of Buckingham: Two Men, One Title, and Two Spectacular Downfalls
So what is it about the Dukes of Buckingham anyway? You would think that being one of the top nobles in the country would come with all kinds of perks, right? There is the wealth, the power, the proximity to the crown. But for at least two men who held the title, it came with something else: a fast track to a very bloody end. One was executed for allegedly dreaming about having the crown himself, while the other, just over a hundred years later, was so unpopular that the public celebrated his assassination.
Today we are going to dive into the strange and cursed history of the Dukedom of Buckingham, and how two men a century apart both rose to dazzling heights and then lost everything.
We will also answer that persistent question: how can one be 3rd duke, and then a hundred years later, there is the first duke? Have you ever wondered about that? Like how the numbers work? We are going to answer that persistent question today as well.
Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham
Let us talk about a man who checked all the boxes for a tragic Tudor downfall. Royal birth? Check. Dazzling wealth? Check. And just enough pride to make the king nervous. Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was born in 1478 at Brecon Castle. His father, the second duke, had backed a failed rebellion against Richard III.
We hear about Buckingham’s Rebellion. He was executed without a trial and had all of his titles stripped. That left young Edward with a poisoned inheritance: the name of a traitor, a dangerous amount of royal blood, and a family tangled in the thorniest branches of the Plantagenet family tree.
His mother was Katherine Woodville, sister of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, making Edward a nephew to a king and first cousin once removed to —not exactly obscure. After his father’s execution, Edward was shuffled around Herefordshire. He was kept hidden during Richard III’s reign, and he knew what it was to live in fear.
That changed when Henry VII took the throne in 1485. At just seven years old, Edward was knighted at Henry’s coronation. His father’s attainder was reversed by Parliament, and the boy was able to inherit his dukedom back, at least in name.
In practice, everything was still tightly controlled. His wardship, his lands, his future were handed over to Margaret Beaufort. Yes, the Margaret Beaufort, the King’s mother. It is said that he was educated in her household, which probably meant long hours of pious devotion and a close-up view of how power actually operated.
As Edward grew up, he played the part expected of a nobleman. He was wealthy, strikingly handsome, and unmissable. At every major ceremony, he wore a gown worth 1,500 pounds, roughly half a million dollars today. At the wedding of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Katherine of Aragon, and at the tournament afterwards, he served as Chief Challenger. Buckingham knew how to make an entrance.
Under Henry VIII, his star continued to rise. He served as the Lord High Constable and the Lord High Steward at the 1509 coronation of Henry VIII. These were both grand ceremonial roles that he believed were his by hereditary right. He sat on the King’s Privy Council. He even got a license to turn his manor house at Thornbury into a moated castle-like estate. Just the sort of ostentatious move you make when you want the world to know exactly how important you really are.
But that wealth and bloodline came with a price. Buckingham was one of the last English nobles with significant Plantagenet descent. He could trace his lineage back to John of Gaunt. He had more royal ancestors than was strictly safe under a Tudor king.
Add to that his family alliances. His son married Margaret Pole’s daughter, tying him to the line of George, Duke of Clarence. And you start to see why Henry VIII might have had a reason to watch him a little more closely.
Buckingham did not exactly keep a low profile. Early on, he ran into scandal when he found Sir William Compton in his sister Anne’s bedchamber. That ended in a dramatic scene of Compton taking the sacrament to prove his innocence, and Anne being shipped off to a convent. The rumor mill claimed that she had had an affair with Compton, with the King, or possibly both. And Buckingham was not amused.
He remained a loyal subject in public. He served in France in 1513. He attended the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. He continued to perform his ceremonial duties, but he made no secret of his dislike for Cardinal Wolsey, who was rising fast as a royal favorite at the time.
And worse, far worse, he started to talk freely and openly about the succession. Saying that Henry VIII, still without a male heir at this point, was cursed by his father’s illegitimacy. Of course, Henry VII was the son of Edmund Tudor. Edmund Tudor himself was the son of Owen Tudor, the squire to Catherine of Valois, the dowager queen. People say they wed in secret. Some people also said they never wed.
So it is possible that people were saying Henry VIII came from an illegitimate line. Plus, there was the matter of the Beauforts being an illegitimate line as well. So Buckingham was saying that Henry VIII came from an illegitimate line. That is really not a good thing to say around the king, let alone say in public. You start talking about the king’s death, the weakness of his bloodline, and you are treading on very, very thin ice.
In 1521, Buckingham was summoned to court and he was arrested. The charges: listening to prophecies about the king’s death, harboring ambitions for the throne, and plotting treason. Whether or not he actually conspired is still debated. Thomas More noted that the key evidence came from terrified servants, possibly tortured to extract confessions.
Regardless, the sentence was death. On May 17, 1521, Edward Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill. He was 43. His lands were seized, and his children were disinherited. The message was clear. It did not matter how royal your blood was or how long your family had held a title. One whisper of too much ambition, even the suggestion that you might be better suited to the throne, and your head could roll.
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
Now, let’s fast forward a hundred years. The title of Duke of Buckingham is reborn, but with a new man, a new family, and a very different kind of downfall. George Villiers was not born into a great noble house. He was the son of a knight, raised in the Leicestershire countryside. He was handsome. He was charming. He was impeccably groomed. He was the kind of man who turned heads at court, especially the king’s head.
In 1614, Villiers caught the eye of James I at a royal hunt. James was now in his fifties. He had a well-established habit of surrounding himself with young, attractive favorites. Villiers was not only beautiful, he was also ambitious and very, very good at court politics.
He was installed as the Royal Cupbearer, a seemingly minor position but one that put him physically close to the king. From there, his rise was meteoric. He was knighted in 1615, made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and then quickly elevated to Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess.
Finally, in 1623, the Duke of Buckingham. It was the first non-royal dukedom in decades because, after the previous Dukes of Buckingham and Norfolk had ended or were executed, monarchs had gotten skittish about handing out titles with that much power.
But Villiers got it all. And he got more than just titles. His relationship with James I was extraordinarily close emotionally, and many historians believe physically. James called him Steenie after Saint Stephen, “because thou hast the face of an angel,” and once told his Privy Council, “Christ had his John, and I have my George.” Letters between them read like declarations of love. Villiers called the king “my dear dad and husband.” Not weird at all.
But Buckingham was not just a royal favorite lounging about in silks and pearls, though he did that too. He inserted himself into diplomacy, he led military campaigns, and he wielded real political power. And the results were not impressive.
As Lord High Admiral and de facto foreign minister, Villiers oversaw a string of disasters. The attempted Spanish Match in 1623 collapsed after he and the future Charles I stormed off from Madrid. A year later, Parliament tried to impeach him for corruption, and so Charles, now king, dissolved Parliament to protect him.
And then there was the Cádiz Expedition in 1625, a military catastrophe so inept the troops got drunk in a wine warehouse and never even attacked the city. Villiers did not even go himself; he just picked the wrong guy to lead it.
After that came a failed alliance with France, a bungled naval campaign to aid the Protestant Huguenots at La Rochelle, and another siege on the Île de Ré in 1627 that cost 5,000 English lives and achieved absolutely nothing. Zero. Diddly squat.
Parliament tried again to remove him, and Charles dissolved them again. By now, Buckingham was hated, truly despised by nearly everyone outside the king’s inner circle. Nobles, commoners, even clergymen saw him as arrogant, corrupt, and dangerously incompetent. In 1628, his own physician was murdered by a mob. Pamphlets predicting Buckingham’s downfall were passed around like scandalous souvenirs.
Then came John Felton. Felton was a disgruntled former officer who had served under Buckingham, been wounded, and denied a promotion. On August 23, 1628, Felton waited for the Duke in Portsmouth, where Buckingham was planning another campaign. As Villiers walked through the Greyhound Inn, Felton stabbed him in the chest with a dagger.
According to reports, Buckingham pulled the blade out himself and staggered a few steps before collapsing. His last word, allegedly, was “villaine!” Felton did not run. He made no secret of what he had done. And when the news of Buckingham’s death reached London, the reaction was not grief, it was celebration.
Ballads were sung. Felton’s name was toasted in taverns. In fact, the government put his body on display to shame him. Instead, crowds came to venerate it like a martyr’s shrine. The body of George Villiers was buried with full honors in Westminster Abbey in a lavish tomb. But in the public imagination, he was remembered not as a statesman or a diplomat, but as a symbol of unchecked royal favoritism and monumental failure.
Now, with all these dramatic downfalls, you might be wondering how Edward Stafford could be 3rd Duke of Buckingham and George Villiers the 1st, if they both had the same title. Welcome to the world of the English peerage. The short answer is that when a noble title is forfeited—usually because someone gets executed for treason, as Edward Stafford helpfully demonstrated—the line is considered extinct unless it is restored to a legitimate heir.
And in the Tudors’ case, they were generally not big on resurrecting titles once they chopped someone’s head off. Edward Stafford’s dukedom came from the Stafford family, and his execution in 1521 ended that line cold. His children were barred from inheriting most of his lands and titles. So that was it. Title gone.
A hundred years later, when James I wanted to reward George Villiers, he chose to recreate the title of Duke of Buckingham. Same name, different family, fresh start. It was like rebooting a franchise. George Villiers became the 1st Duke of Buckingham in his creation of the title, because in the peerage system, each creation is treated as a standalone instance.
The Crown can recycle title names, but it does not connect them unless there is a direct reinstatement of the original line. So Edward Stafford was 3rd and final Duke of one lineage. George Villiers was the first of another. They shared the title and name, but not blood and not fate. So is the title Duke of Buckingham cursed?
It is hard to ignore the pattern. Edward Stafford, royal cousin, courtier, and one of the richest men in England, was executed for treason after being accused of dreaming too loudly about the throne. George Villiers, beloved of the king and puppet master of early Stuart politics, was stabbed to death in a tavern by a man hailed as a hero.
Both rose fast, both flew too close to power, and both fell violently. Of course, plenty of dukes in other families met similarly grisly ends. This is England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fact that both Dukes of Buckingham came to such spectacular ruin has left the title with a certain air of doom.
And if nothing else, it makes for a fantastic cautionary tale. Proximity to power can always come with an axe, and honestly, if I were living in the Tudor period, I would want to stay as far away from dukedoms and peerage and all of that as I possibly could.
Make me a nice merchant class. I will join the guild. I will become successful as an entrepreneur like Katherine Fenkyll, who we have done a kick-ass Tudor women video about. She inherited her husband’s drapery business and became super popular, super wealthy, had people working for her. Awesome. I will do that, but I do not want any of those titles. You all can keep that. Anyway, there we go. A little bit about the cursed Dukes of Buckingham.
Related links:
Did Margaret Beaufort Kill the Princes in the Tower?
Episode 49: Tudor Times talks about James I of England
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
