Notes. This deliciously economical epitaph mocks the excessive list of offices and titles—“places”—that Buckingham had accumulated in his thirteen years as a royal favourite and has now taken with him to his early grave.

“Epitaph”

This little Grave embraces

One Duke and twentie places.

Source. BL MS Sloane 826, fol. 181v

Other known sources. Bodleian MS Malone 23, p. 145

Pi11