Cambridge the two brothers went to travel under the care of Mr.
William Aylesbury, who was appointed their tutor by the king. But their
sojourn abroad was short.

Public affairs had been growing darker and darker at home. And at last,
in 1642, there was an open breach between the king and the Parliament.
The Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham, August 25, and England was
plunged into civil war, the most horrible of all scourges that can come
on any country.

Francis Villiers was fourteen years old, and his brother, the young
duke, a year older. Boys as they were, they now tried to show their
gratitude to the king for his care of them. Upon the outbreak of the
Civil War they hastened back to England. The king's headquarters were at
Oxford; and his nephew, the famous Prince Rupert, kept the whole country
between Oxford and London in constant alarm with his sudden raids and
fierce skirmishes. To Oxford then the two young brothers came. They
were a beautiful pair, inheriting from both their parents "so graceful a
body, as gave lustre to the ornament of the mind." Full of headstrong
courage, they "laid their lives and their fortunes at the king's feet,"
and chose Prince Rupert and Lord Gerard as their tutors in the art of
War. They soon had their first lesson; for they were present at the
storming of the Close at Lichfield on March 2, 1643. When they returned
to Oxford, happily without harm after their first fight, their mother,
the duchess, was very angry with Lord Gerard for "tempting her sons into
such danger." But he told her it was by the boys' own wish, "and the
more the danger the greater the honor."

Parliament at first seemed to look on this escapade as a serious
offence, for they seized upon the brothers' estates. But they were soon
restored in consideration of the two boys' extreme youth. However, says
Bryan Fairfax, their historian, "the young men kept it (their fortune)
no longer than till they came to be at an age to forfeit it again."[83]

To keep these young fire-eaters out of fresh honorable danger, the king
placed them in the care of the Earl of Northumberland, and sent them
abroad again. They spent the next four or five years in France and
Italy, living chiefly in Florence and Rome, where they kept as great
state as many sovereign princes. It was the fashion of those days to
send young noblemen for a time to foreign countries; and the result in a
good many cases was that they abjured Protestantis