That night was one of irresolution, if not of incredulity; but, on the next, the unhappy Towse, thus picked out for so ghostly a service, promised to go to the Duke. He went, indeed, and found out Sir Thomas Freeman and Sir Ralph Bladden, the Duke’s chamberlains, by whom he was presented to the Duke. Then followed some private and agitated interviews between Buckingham and Towse, and the cautions of the ghost were fully and forcibly communicated: they related chiefly to Buckingham’s patronage of Laud, and suggested some popular acts which the Duke was to perform in Parliament--and, in short, contained advice that any reasonable man might have offered. But nothing that was said by Mr. Towse made the slightest impression on the Duke, except, when certain passages of his life were referred to, with which the ghost had primed Mr. Towse, he owned he had believed “that no living creature knew of them but himself, and that it must be either God or the devil that had revealed them.” The Duke then offered to get Mr. Towse knighted, and to have him made a burgess in the forthcoming Parliament. But Mr. Towse, finding that the obstinate favourite was deaf to his advice, left him, prognosticating that the Duke’s death would happen at a certain time--which prognostic was fulfilled.
Mr. Towse then returned to Bishopsgate Without; and, there is much reason to believe, laboured under mental malady; for the visits of the apparition were now so frequent that he grew familiar with him, “as if it had been a friend or acquaintance that had come to visit him.” And from this very unpleasant guest Towse learned to see in perspective many events that had not then dawned on England; more especially the troubles of Prynne, who was Towse’s father-in-law--which was contrary to all rule, as a ghost should keep to one subject. On the day of Buckingham’s death, also, Mr. Towse and his wife being at Windsor Castle, where Towse had an office, they were sitting in company, when he started up, exclaiming, “The Duke of Buckingham is slain!” At the very moment that these words were uttered the blow had been given. Towse dying soon after, also foretold his own death.
This narrative, thought worthy of insertion by Clarendon, and therefore not to be completely disregarded in any biography of Buckingham, is taken, however, from a letter penned at Boulogne, by one Edmund Wyndham, in 1672, twenty years after the event.[117][118] According to Lord Clarendon, Buckingham, after hearing Towse’s revelation, was observed ever afterwards to be very melancholy. That he had misgivings as to his return, we have seen; but there are few men so insensible, at such a moment, as to be quite free from presentiment of evil--more especially one on whom the eyes of the country were directed in resentment, and regarding whom the Commons was then preparing a Remonstrance.[119]