ABSTRACT
In September 1643 William Villiers, second Viscount Grandison, died of the wounds he received when the royalist army stormed Bristol. From the beginning of his career as an ambitious young lawyer in the 1630s until his fall from power and final exile in 1667 the career of Edward Hyde was entwined with, and in various ways influenced by, these members of the Villiers family, first by Grandison, then by some of his siblings, then catastrophically by his daughter Barbara in alliance with Buckingham. It was the aftermath of the 'odious and accursed civil war' that Hyde hated so bitterly that was to provide most of the occasions for his greater involvement with members of the Villiers family. John Villiers succeeded to the Grandison title on the death of his brother William. Unlike his other brothers, he is a curiously elusive and ultimately tragic figure.
