His father was the older half-brother of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, favourite of both James VI and I and Charles I, a relationship from which he greatly benefitted.

[5] When the First English Civil War began in August 1642, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant-Colonel in a regiment raised by Sir Charles Gerard, serving at Edgehill and the Siege of Reading, before he was wounded at the First Battle of Newbury in September 1643.

[7] By the end of 1645, it was clear the Royalist cause was lost, with its leadership bitterly divided; on 2 November, Villiers wrote to his brother George asking him to sell his house and possessions as he "intended shortly to leave for France".

[9] After the 1651 Third English Civil War, he returned home and in February 1654 contacted Hyde proposing the establishment of the Sealed Knot, a small group reporting directly to him and responsible for co-ordinating future plots.

By excluding Parliamentarian dissidents and Scots Covenanters whose support had been crucial in the Second and Third civil wars, it allowed Hyde to re-establish control over Royalist policy.

[12] Since Charles had no legitimate children, the heir was his Catholic brother James; from 1679 to 1681, English politics was dominated by the Exclusion Crisis, an attempt to bar him from the throne.

Forced to return to London, Elizabeth was allowed back to the Netherlands when Villiers interceded on her behalf, and the affair reportedly continued until 1695, when she married her cousin George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney.