DINING-ROOM.
DINING-ROOM.
No. 1. MARGARET HOWARD, COUNTESS OF CARLISLE, AND HER NIECE, LADY DIANA RUSSELL.
Reddish brown gown. Resting her hand on a table. Little girl in a white frock leaning against her aunt’s knee.
BORN 1618. DIED 1664.
By Stone after Vandyck.
SHE was the third daughter of Francis, fourth Earl of Bedford, by Catherine Brydges. She married at a very early age James Hay, afterwards second Earl of Carlisle, of that family. Margaret’s father-in-law was often connected with her own father in the political events of the reign of Charles the First. After the death of her husband in 1660, she married her second lord, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, second Earl of Holland; and lastly, Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, of whom Clarendon speaks in terms of high eulogium. The little girl in the picture is Lady Diana Russell, afterwards Lady Allington.
No. 3. THOMAS, EARL OF ARUNDEL AND SURREY.
In armour. With a boy beside him.
BORN 1592. DIED 1646.
By Vandyck.
RESPECTING this picture there has been more than one controversy, and it has been not only erroneously named in a catalogue of a gallery at Madrid, but copied, doubtless from thence, into the edition of engravings of Vandyck’s portraits in the British Museum. It has been miscalled Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman el Bueno and his son. The late Lord Bradford, when in Madrid, saw a replica of the picture in his possession, and made a note to the effect that the portrait could not be that of the Spanish nobleman in question, according to the date of Vandyck’s death. His lordship identified it as that of Thomas, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and his grandson.
Thomas was the only son of Philip, Earl of Arundel (who died a prisoner in the Tower), by Anne, sister and co-heir of Thomas, Lord Dacre of Gillesland. He was deprived, by his father’s attainder, of the honours and greater part of the estates of his family, and had only the title of Lord Maltravers by courtesy during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but was restored by Act of Parliament in the first year of James the First (1603) to all the titles and estates which his father had enjoyed before his attainder, as also to the Earldom of Surrey, and to such dignity of baronies as his grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk, had also forfeited. He was, moreover, created Earl Marshal in 1621, and Earl of Norfolk in 1644; he married Lady Alatheia Talbot, daughter, and eventually sole heir, of Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, and was succeeded by his second son, Henry Frederick.
No. 5. DOROTHY, COUNTESS OF SUNDERLAND.
Crimson dress. Pearl ornaments. Pillar in the background.
BORN 1620, DIED 1683-4.
By Vandyck.
IT has been well said of this beautiful and exemplary woman, that she is even (like the old Italian masters of painting) better known to posterity by her sobriquet than her name, for there were more than one Lady Sunderland, but only one ‘Saccharissa.’ The poet, therefore, may lay better claim to the title of godfather than the sponsors who held the infant Dorothy at the font. She was the eldest of the eight daughters of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, of that name, by Dorothy, daughter of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Lord and Lady Leicester bore a high character for ‘integrity and refinement of breeding at the Court of Charles the First, while in private life they shone a bright example of domestic harmony.’ Lady Leicester was a provident as well as a tender mother, and she entertained early projects in the matter of an advantageous marriage for her daughter, while Dorothy was still very young. At sixteen the girl was renowned for her beauty, and already surrounded by suitors. There appears to have been a talk at Court of the probability of a match with my Lord Russell, the heir of the house of Bedford; and Lady Leicester writes from the country to her lord at Court, in 1635:
‘It would rejoice me much to receave some hope of that lord’s addresses to Doll, that you writt of to me, for next to what consarns you, I confess she is considered by me above any thing of this world.’
This marriage, however, was not to be, and there was shortly after a talk of the Earl of Devonshire, which, by Lady Leicester’s correspondence, appears to have had some let or hindrance, through the interference of meddling interferers; beside, she considered his mother and sister were ‘full of decaite and jugling,’ professing to desire the union. The next aspirant to the fair hand of the beautiful daughter of Penshurst was no other than the celebrated Lord Lovelace, of whom her mother thus writes: ‘I find my Lord Lovelace so uncertaine and so idle, so much addicted to mean companie, and easily drawn to debaucherie, it is now my studie to brake off with him. Many particulars I could tell you of his wildnesse, but the knowledge of them would be of no use to you, as he is likely to be a stranger to us. For tho’ his estate is goode, his person pretie enowfe, his witte much more than ordinarie, yet dare I not venture to give Doll to him.’ Lady Leicester concludes her letter to her husband by saying, ‘My deere hart, let not these cross accidents trouble you, for we do not know what God has provided for her.’
The poet Waller now came forward and laid himself at the feet of the high-born beauty; he had been left a widower when quite young, and had gifts of nature and fortune to recommend him, but Dorothy’s parents looked for noble birth in a suitor for their daughter’s hand, and it is to be feared the poor poet was dismissed with some disdain. He was not inconsolable, however; he sought solace from his Muse, and, better still, in his union shortly afterwards with a willing bride.
A marriage was at length concluded ‘for dear Doll,’ which was calculated to satisfy the best expectations of her parents, and to ensure her own happiness.
Henry, Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, the first-born son of the second lord, by Penelope, daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, was born at Althorp, his father’s country house, in 1620. To that father’s titles and large estates the young man succeeded in 1636, and in 1639 he was married at Penshurst, Lord Leicester’s beautiful home in Kent, to that nobleman’s eldest and most beloved daughter, Lady Dorothy Sidney. Lord Leicester was at the time Ambassador to the Court of France, and immediately after the marriage the happy young couple hurried off to join the bride’s father in Paris, where they remained for two years, that is to say, until Lord Leicester’s diplomatic mission was at an end. On their return, Lord Spencer took his seat in the House of Lords, and soon made himself an object of esteem and commendation by his talents and general good conduct. These qualities, added to his high position and large property, naturally made him an object worth contending for by the two adverse parties that were now beginning to convulse England. Lord Spencer had liberal views in the literal acceptation of the word, and stoutly opposed many measures which he considered arbitrary that emanated from the Throne; and the Parliament, which was now beginning to assume the executive, had great hopes of the young lord, and believed that they had bound him to their side when he accepted the Lord-Lieutenancy of his native county which they offered him. But Lord Spencer came of a loyal stock, and there is little doubt he cherished the hope of mediating between the King and his Parliament, in which expectation he had many sharers amongst the nobility and gentry of the land. He strove all he could to be a ‘daysman’ between the two factions, but finding that his admonitions to the Parliament when they broke out into open rebellion were of no avail, he proclaimed himself stoutly for the King; and in the early and blissful days of his married life he tore himself from the embrace of his beautiful wife and the calm happiness of his ancestral home, to mix in the noise, turmoil, and danger of a camp, in company with his kinsman and countyman, the gallant Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, who was destined to fall at Hopton Heath. Lord Spencer joined the King at York, and when the royal standard was unfurled at Nottingham, he took the field as a volunteer. In his constant letters to his ‘dearest harte,’ he gives a melancholy picture of the perplexed and unsatisfactory state of affairs in the royal army. He says: ‘The discontent that I and other honest men receive dayly is beyond expression,’ and he declares ‘that were it not for the punctilio of honour’ he would not ‘remaine an howre.’
Lord Spencer was with the King at Edgehill, and with Prince Rupert at Bristol, etc. etc., and in 1643 he was raised to the dignity of Earl of Sunderland. He writes a long and most loving letter to his sweetest Doll from before Gloucester, and thanks her for her letters, ‘writing to you and hearing from you being the most pleasant entertainment I am capable of receiving in anie place, but especially here, where, but when I am in the trenches (which are seldom without my company), I am more solitarie than ever I was in mie life.’ In another letter written from Oxford in September 1643, he thus speaks of his little daughter: ‘Pray bless Popet for me, and tell her I would have writt to her, but on deliberation I deem it uncivil to return an answer to a ladie in anie other characters but her own, and that I am not learned enough to do.’ Alas! the brave soldier was never more destined to enjoy his wife’s dear company, or clasp his sweet Popet to his heart. Four days after that letter was penned, the writer was struck down by a cannon ball on the field of Newbury, in company with his friend and brother in arms, ‘the incomparable Falkland,’ and many other brave and loyal spirits. For twelve months Lord Sunderland had fought beside the King, as a volunteer, for he never would accept a commission. There is a most touching letter extant from Lord Leicester to his widowed daughter, which our limited space alone prevents our inserting here. The fair hopes contained in her old admirer Waller’s letter, written at the time of her marriage, to her sister, Lady Lucy Sidney, were far from being fulfilled. After wishing the couple every happiness, he says, ‘May her lord not mourn her long, but go hand in hand with her to that place where is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, but being divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her.’ There spoke the disappointed and jealous lover. Lady Sunderland was with child of a daughter at the period of her lord’s untimely death, who scarcely survived its birth. She retired to her husband’s estate in Northamptonshire, where she made herself generally beloved. ‘She is not to be mentioned,’ says Lloyd in his Memoirs of the Loyalists, ‘without the highest honour, in the catalogue of sufferers, to so many of whom her house was a sanctuary, her interest a protection, her estate a maintenance.’ Influenced, it is said, by her father’s wishes, she contracted a second marriage in 1652 to Sir Robert Smythe, of the family of the Lords Strangford, a gentleman of Kent, but was again left a widow; she survived Sir Robert some time, and, we are told, she continued to see her old flame Waller, to whom she one day put the dangerous question—‘Pray, Master Waller, when will you write such pretty verses to me again?’ Was it the sting of old mortification which prompted the cruel answer, ‘When your ladyship is young and beautiful again’? By her first husband Lady Sunderland had two children, Robert, the second Earl,—the Minister of whom the anecdote is told that when Addison intrusted Edmund Smith with the task of writing a history of the Revolution of 1688, the proposed author asked the staggering question, ‘What shall I do with the character of Lord Sunderland?’ and a daughter, Dorothy, who married Sir George Saville, afterwards Marquis of Halifax. By her second husband she had an only child, Robert, Governor of Dover Castle. Lady Sunderland lies buried by the side of her dearly loved Henry in a beautiful monument, in the Spencer chapel, in the church of Brington, hard by Althorp House, and in that house her name is still a household word; and Saccharissa’s bed, the curtains of which, having her embroidered monogram of S twisting round columns, may still be seen in one of the principal guest-chambers.
No. 7. CHARLES THE FIRST, KING OF ENGLAND.
Front face and two profiles.
BORN 1600, SUCCEEDED 1625, EXECUTED 1649.
By Carlo Maratti after Vandyck.
THE second son of James the First, by Anne of Denmark. Married Henrietta Maria of France. Dethroned and beheaded by his subjects. The original of this picture by Vandyck, now at Windsor Castle, was sent to Rome to Bernini, in order that he might make a bust from the same; Carlo Maratti copied the picture while in the sculptor’s studio. On first beholding the beautiful and noble head, the sculptor is said to have exclaimed, ‘That is the portrait of one who is born to misfortune.’
No. 12. VENETIAN COURTESAN.
By Titian.
No. 14. EDWARD SEYMOUR, FIRST DUKE OF SOMERSET, THE PROTECTOR.
Tight-fitting vest. Black hat.
EXECUTED 1552.
By Holbein.
THE second but eldest surviving son of Sir John Seymour, of Wulfhall, County Wilts, by Margaret, daughter of Sir John Wentworth of Nettlested, County Suffolk. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and joining his father, who was in high favour at Court, entered the army, distinguished himself in France, and was knighted for his services in 1525. On his return to England he was appointed Esquire to the King, and was one of the challengers in the tilt-yard at Greenwich, when Henry the Eighth kept his Christmas there.
On the King’s marriage with his sister, Jane Seymour, Edward was created Viscount Beauchamp, and in 1537 Earl of Hertford. He was then sent to France on a mission, and was created Knight Companion of the Garter, at Hampton Court, on his return. From this time his life became most eventful. He proceeded twice to Scotland, high in command, and again to France, where he was instrumental in concluding a peace with that country. Honours and distinctions too many to enumerate were heaped on the King’s brother-in-law, even after the death of poor Queen Jane. He was one of the many executors of Henry the Eighth, by whose will he was appointed guardian to the young King, and so prompt were his measures and so successful his ambitious and self-seeking policy that when the nephew was proclaimed King in London, the uncle was appointed Protector of the realm. He already bore the titles of Earl and Viscount, and Edward the Sixth, not content with adding the title of Baron, bestowed a ducal coronet upon him, in order that the name of that family, ‘from which our most beloved mother Jane, late Queen of England, drew her beginning, might not be clouded by any higher title or colour of dignity.’ Thus ran the words of the patent. When the Duke of Norfolk was attainted, the Protector was made Earl Marshal for life. His power now became almost absolute, and the boy King, delighted to do his uncle honour, elected that he should sit on the right hand of the throne. Indeed Somerset was now king in all but name, and his enemies, of whom there were many, accused him of aspiring to the Crown in good earnest. It was alleged against him that he used the royal pronoun ‘we,’ and signed himself ‘Protector by the grace of God.’ But the life of Protector Somerset belongs to the chronicles of the history of England. Numerous factions rose up against him, at the head of which were the Earl of Warwick, his sworn enemy, and his own ungrateful brother, Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudley. Many charges were brought against him; he was deprived of all his high offices, and imprisoned in the Tower. The young King, who loved him dearly, had little power to befriend his uncle, whose estates were forfeited, and he was treated with insult and contumely. The Earl of Warwick was bent on his destruction. Arraigned of high treason at Westminster Hall, he demanded a trial of his peers, was acquitted of the principal charge, but found guilty of felony, and after several months’ imprisonment, in spite of every attempt on King Edward’s part, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, was condemned to die on the scaffold. On reaching the platform, he kneeled in prayer, and afterwards addressed the people, with the majority of whom he was a great favourite, in calm and measured terms, declaring his innocence, his loyalty to the King, and his love of his native country. A tumult took place among the people, and a horseman appearing suddenly in the crowd, a cry was raised of ‘A pardon! a pardon!’ But all the time his arch-enemy, Lord Warwick (or rather Northumberland, as he then was), stood by untouched, shaking his cap and making signs to the people to be quiet. We have not space to make extracts from a dying speech, which for manliness, forbearance, and piety could scarcely be surpassed. The Duke, unbuckling his sword, presented it to the Lieutenant of the Tower, gave the executioner money, bade all near him farewell, and then kneeling down, arranged his collar and covered his face, which showed ‘no signs of trouble,’ with his handkerchief. Laying his head upon the block, he called out thrice ‘Lord Jesu, save me,’ and then received the death-stroke.
Edward, first Duke of Somerset, was twice married. First, to Catherine, daughter and co-heir of Sir William Fillol, of Woodlands, County Dorset, respecting whom there exists a mystery and rumours of misconduct. Certain it is that her son was disinherited. There seems little doubt, at all events, that the Duke’s second wife, the daughter of Sir Edward Stanhope, of Bampton, County Dorset, an ambitious and violent woman, worked on her husband’s mind, to the detriment of her predecessor’s children, in spite of which the coveted titles devolved after some generations on Catherine Fillol’s descendants, ancestors in direct line to the present Duke of Somerset.
No. 16. PORTRAIT OF A LADY. UNKNOWN.
By Lucas Cranach.
No. 18. PORTRAIT OF A LADY WITH A MONKEY.
By Paris Bordone (?).
No. 22. PORTRAIT OF A CHILD.
By Paul Veronese.
No. 23. ANTHONY VANDYCK
As Paris.
BORN 1599, DIED 1641.
After Vandyck.
THE eldest son of a merchant in Antwerp (himself a painter in glass), by one Maria Cuypero. Little Anthony’s mother was a skilful artist in embroidery, and encouraged her boy’s taste for drawing, in the rudiments of which he received instruction from his father. When only ten years of age he became the pupil of Hendrik van Balen, a much-esteemed painter, who had studied in Italy; but young Vandyck had set his heart on entering the studio of his famous fellow-citizen, Peter Paul Rubens, and that desire was fulfilled. His remarkable talent and untiring industry made him a favourite both of master and scholars, when an incident happened which brought him into prominent notice. It chanced one afternoon, when Rubens was absent, that the scholars invaded the sanctity of the private studio, and, in the exuberance of animal spirits, indulged in what in modern parlance is called ‘bear-fighting.’ An unfinished Holy Family stood on an easel, the colours not yet dry, and, in the course of the rough play, one of his companions pushed Van Diepenbeke so heavily against the precious canvas that the arm of the Magdalen and the head of the Virgin were nearly effaced, and all the colours smudged. The general consternation may easily be conceived. A council was held, and a general decision arrived at that the most skilful among the students should endeavour to repair the mischief. Unanimous choice fell on Vandyck, who began to work in right earnest, for there was not a moment to lose. There were but a few hours of daylight left him, but he accomplished his task before nightfall. Early next morning the dreaded moment arrived. Rubens entered his studio in order to examine the work of the preceding evening, when he pronounced the memorable words which seemed to bestow a diploma on his young disciple: ‘Why, this looks better than it did yesterday!’ Then, approaching nearer, he detected the traces of a strange hand. Investigation and explanation followed, and Vandyck came in for great praise from the lips of his beloved master. Rubens was most desirous that his talented pupil should proceed to Italy to study the works of the great masters, but in the meantime the young man had received an invitation to England. The first visit he paid to our country was short and unsatisfactory, and there are so many discrepancies in the accounts of the work he did at that period and his reasons for leaving England somewhat abruptly, that we refrain from entering further on the subject. From England Vandyck proceeded to the Hague, where he painted portraits of every class and denomination of person, commencing with the Court and family of the Stadtholder, Henry Frederick. Nobles, warriors, statesmen, burghers, all vied for the honour of sitting to him. The news of his father’s illness recalled him to Antwerp. He arrived just in time to receive that father’s blessing, and listen to his last injunctions, which included an order to paint an altar for the Chapel of the Dominican Sisters, who had nursed him tenderly in his illness. After many delays from various causes Vandyck arrived in Venice, where he studied Titian and Veronese, and afterwards proceeded to Genoa, where he became the favourite of the proudest nobles of that proud city, and adorned almost every palace therein with splendid portraits. At Rome he remained some years; the first order he received being that of the world-renowned portrait of Cardinal Bentivoglio, which attracted a crowd of sitters to his studio, including all the nobility of the city and most of the foreign visitors. He then made his way to Florence and most of the northern cities of Italy, with a flying visit to Sicily, whence he was driven by the outbreak of the plague. He returned to Antwerp, where he at first shared the proverbial fate of the prophet in his own country, and met with much ill-will and small patronage, until his old friend Rubens came to his rescue by buying every completed picture in his late scholar’s studio, and recommending and befriending him on every occasion. Shortly afterwards Rubens departed from Antwerp on a diplomatic mission, and he left Vandyck undisputed master of the field. His hands were now full; he received endless commissions both in portraits and sacred subjects. He afterwards went to Paris, and paid two visits to England; the second time he was received at Court with every mark of distinction. Charles the First treated the noble Fleming as a personal friend, taking the greatest delight in his society. He became the centre of attraction, and the cynosure of all eyes. Pre-eminently handsome, brilliant in conversation, a good linguist, an enlightened traveller—even without the crowning quality of his splendid talent, the painter became a shining light in the refined and aristocratic circles of the English capital. The King bestowed the honour of knighthood on him, and presented him with a valuable miniature of himself set in diamonds. Both their Majesties sat constantly for their portraits, and it is needless to observe that every country house in England is enriched by treasures from the brush of Vandyck. The King and the Duke of Buckingham were busy in arranging a suitable match for their friend and favourite. The lady selected was Mary Ruthven, a member of the Queen’s household, and grand-daughter of the unfortunate Earl Gowrie, much esteemed for her goodness and beauty, who visited Antwerp with her husband shortly after their marriage, where they were received with every mark of respect and distinction. After this they went to Paris, where Vandyck met with disappointment, and fell into bad health, and on his return to England he found that country in a state of confusion and political strife, his royal and private friends involved in trouble and perplexity, the King and Queen both absent from London, and the Parliament in arms against the Crown. Sir Anthony’s health declined, both physically and morally. He gave himself up to the pursuit of alchemy, and would stand for hours over a hot fire in the vain hope of obtaining the philosopher’s stone; He grew haggard and wrinkled while still in the prime of life. The King, returning to London, and hearing of his friend’s illness, sent his own physician, but all human aid was unavailing. A severe attack of gout, combined with other maladies, proved fatal, and on the 9th of December 1641, the man who by many has been considered the chief of the world’s portrait painters breathed his last. Followed by a large retinue of friends, he was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, leaving a most exemplary will, in which wife, child, sister, servants, were all remembered, as also the poor in two parishes. He left an only daughter, Justiniana, who married Sir John Stepney of Prendergast, Pembroke, and afterwards Martin de Carbonnell. She received a pension from King Charles the Second.
Lady Vandyck married a Welsh baronet, Sir Robert Pryce, as his second wife.
No. 25. PORTRAIT OF A CHILD.
By Paul Veronese.
No. 26. SIR NICHOLAS CAREW.
Black and white dress.
BEHEADED 1539.
By Holbein.
THE Carews came of an ancient family in Devonshire, but the branch to which Sir Nicholas belonged had settled at Beddington, in Surrey, an estate that had come into their possession by marriage.
Nicholas was the eldest son of Sir Richard Carew, Knight-Banneret, by Magdalen, daughter of Sir Thomas Oxenbridge, Bart., of Ford, in Sussex. When Sir Richard died, and his son succeeded, the landed property was very extensive, and it was said the owner might start from his own house, and ride in any direction straight on end for ten miles at least on his own land. When still a youth Nicholas went to Paris, where, we are told, he became so enamoured of French manners, customs, and fashions, that on his return to England he could speak and boast of nothing else. Handsome, well-born, and accomplished, he soon attracted the notice of Henry the Eighth, who welcomed him at Court, and appointed him a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, a place which was then of much higher standing than in later days. But Carew did not make himself popular in the royal household. The constant comparisons which he daily drew between the French and English Courts, to the great disparagement of the latter, offended his colleagues in the highest degree, and were not calculated to gratify the King. Henry resolved to give the young man a lesson. If he were so devoted to France, to France he should go, and that without delay. At the same time, unwilling to dismiss him without some ostensible reason, he appointed Sir Nicholas governor of a fortress in Picardy, which was in the hands of the English. A castle in a provincial town did not offer the charms which Carew had found in the splendid capital of France, and it may easily be believed the office did not suit his taste. He doubtless petitioned the King; at all events, he was recalled, forgiven, and taken back into favour. He now became Henry’s almost inseparable companion, and was foremost in all the jousts, tournaments, maskings, and all kinds of Court revelry, in which they both excelled and delighted. Carew was, moreover, appointed Master of the Horse, at that period one of the highest offices in the realm, and Knight of the Garter.
The favour of Henry the Eighth was as easily lost as won, and Fuller tells us that a tradition in the family reported that Carew’s downfall proceeded, in the first instance, from a quarrel between him and his master at bowls, ‘when his Grace, who was no good fellow, and would always rather give than take in repartee,’ so exasperated his Master of the Horse, ‘that his answer was rather true than discreet, consulting his own animosity rather than his allegiance, whereat the King was so offended that Sir Nicholas fell from the top of his favour to the bottom of his displeasure, and was bruised to death.’ ‘This’—we quote Fuller all the time—‘was the true cause of his execution. He was charged with high treason, as accomplice with the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague, Sir Edward Neville, and others, in a plot to depose King Henry the Eighth, and place Cardinal Pole on the throne. They were all found guilty, and sentenced to death, with the exception of the Cardinal’s brother, who saved his own life by betraying his confederates. The evidence against Sir Nicholas appears to have been slight, but he was out of favour, and everything was turned to his prejudice. He was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1539.’ Holinshed said ‘he made a godly confession of his fault, and his superstitious faith.’ He was a Roman Catholic. Sir Nicholas Carew married Elizabeth, daughter and afterwards sole heir of Sir Thomas Bryan, Master of Common Pleas, by whom he had one son and three or four daughters.
The son, Sir Francis Carew, never married, but having regained a considerable portion of the estates forfeited on his father’s attainder, during the reign of Elizabeth, he bequeathed his property to his sister’s son, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, on condition that he assumed the name and arms of Carew.
No. 27. AN OLD MAN’S HEAD.
By Vandyck.
No. 28. MAN’S HEAD.
By Tintoretto.
No. 30. THE COUNTESS OF OXFORD.
Blue and white dress. Holding a nosegay. A table beside her.
By Vandyck.
BEATRIX VAN HEMMEND, a Dutch lady, a native of Friesland, married Robert de Vere, nineteenth Earl of Oxford. He died in 1632, at the siege of Maestricht, leaving an only surviving child, in whom the earldom became extinct.
No. 33. PORTRAIT. UNKNOWN.
By Titian.
No. 36. SIR KENELM DIGBY.
Black dress. Hand on his breast. A globe by his side.
BORN 1603, DIED 1665.
By Vandyck.
SON of Sir Everard Digby, born at Gothurst or Gayhurst, County Bucks, the property of his mother, daughter and sole heir of Sir William Mulsho. He was but a child when his father suffered death as one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. The Crown laid claim to the estates and revenues of the family; but the widowed Lady Digby, a woman of great energy and determination, not only saved her own dower by her strenuous efforts, but rescued a few hundreds for her son out of the wreck, and, although a rigid Roman Catholic, she suffered her boy to be educated as a Protestant from prudential motives. The romance of the loves of Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley, which made such a noise at the time, and has been the subject of curiosity and controversy ever since, whenever their names are mentioned, began at a very early age. Sir Edward Stanley, of the noble house of Derby, lived at Tong Castle, County Salop. He married the daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Northumberland, who brought him two daughters, ‘the divine Venetia’ being the youngest. Her mother died when she was a few months old. The widower gave himself up to grief, shunned the world, and could not even derive comfort from the society of his children. He sent them therefore (or at all events Venetia) to the care of a relative, who was a neighbour of Lady Digby’s. Thus began the acquaintance, and Sir Edward’s beautiful little girl and Lady Digby’s lovely boy met constantly, and played at love-making, jealousy, rivalry, coquetry, quarrels, reconciliations,—in fact a perfect rehearsal of all the drama that was to be enacted in good earnest a few years later. The marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, afterwards King of Bohemia, called Sir Edward to London. With a violent wrench he tore himself away from his seclusion, and sending for Venetia carried her with him to the Court of King James, then the scene of great festivity.
In all these gaieties, according to Digby’s account, the juvenile beauty took part, and was the centre of admiration. In the meantime her young lover pursued his studies under the care of Laud, Dean of Gloucester, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards with Dr. Thomas Allen, an eminent scholar, at Oxford.
Digby distinguished himself at the University, where he remained two years, but whenever he returned home for the vacation, the flirtation with his fair neighbour was resumed. He wrote a strange and wild romance respecting her, in which it is impossible to disentangle truth from fiction, but some of the adventures are too marvellous for belief, and the whole narrative is disagreeable, and tedious into the bargain.
His jealousy seems to have been excited by a certain courtier, whose suit, he affirms, was favoured by Venetia’s governess. Lady Digby was too wise a mother to smile on such a precocious courtship, even if she disbelieved the reports which had already begun to circulate, detrimental to Mistress Stanley’s reputation.
She despatched her son on foreign travel, but before his departure the lovers had met and plighted their troth. According to the traveller’s own account, he made a conquest of the French Queen when in Paris en route for Italy.
A report of his death having been accidentally or purposely circulated, Venetia’s conduct on the occasion was differently represented to her absent lover, some declaring she was inconsolable, others that she lent a willing ear to the suit of the very same courtier who had before excited Kenelm’s jealousy.
Nothing can be more bombastic and high-flown than the language in which he describes the fluctuations of his passion for Venetia, his implicit trust in her constancy in one page, his doubts and suspicions in another.
It seems more than probable that the prudent Lady Digby intercepted her son’s love-letters, and did all in her power to prevent a marriage she thought most undesirable, and she was doubtless delighted when Kenelm accompanied his kinsman, Lord Bristol, to Spain, where he was then negotiating the Prince of Wales’s marriage with the Infanta at Madrid. Kenelm became himself attached to the Prince’s suite, and took an active part in diplomatic transactions.
In this land of romance it may well be imagined that the handsome and accomplished Englishman ran the gauntlet of many adventures among the dark-eyed daughters of the South, nor does he omit to allude to innumerable conquests; indeed, he went so far as to have a portrait of himself painted with an effigy of one of his victims in the background, yet he incessantly boasted of his constancy to the absent loved one. On his return to England with the Prince of Wales, he was knighted by the King at Hinchingbrook, and immediately flew to his lady-love in spite of maternal prohibition. Then followed recriminations, explanations, trials of her faith and virtue, challenges, duels—a stormy suit, indeed, according to his own testimony.
Respecting the date of their marriage there is great difference of opinion. At all events, Kenelm insisted on its being kept secret, nor was poor Venetia allowed to announce it, even when a fall from her horse brought on a premature confinement, which nearly cost her her life.
King James admired Sir Kenelm for his great erudition, and complimented him on his essays on Sympathetic Powder, Alchemy, and other subjects bordering on the supernatural. On the accession of Charles the First, Sir Kenelm Digby was made Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Commissioner of the Navy, and Governor of the Trinity House, shortly after which, he was appointed to the command of a naval squadron, sent to the Mediterranean against the Venetian fleet and the Algerine pirates.
In this voyage he was eminently successful, bringing the Venetians to terms, chastising the pirates, and releasing a large number of English slaves. It is said that on the eve of his embarkation, a second son being born to him, he had permitted his wife to declare their marriage, and had consigned her to the care of his kinsman, Lord Bristol, during his absence from England. About this time, his faithful old friend, Thomas Allen, bequeathed to him a splendid library, which he made over to the Bodleian.
In 1633, after his return, his beautiful but far from happy wife died, and the mystery which had shrouded Venetia’s whole life hung like a dark cloud over her death, and reports of all kinds were current.
There is no doubt that Sir Kenelm had been in the habit of making chemical and alchemical experiments on Venetia for some time past, and the tradition of the concoction of snails which he had invented as a preservative of her naturally brilliant complexion is still extant at Gayhurst, where it is said the somewhat rare breed of large ‘Pomatia’ is still to be found.
By Digby’s desire his wife’s head (‘which contained but little brain’) was opened, and he decided that she had taken an overdose of viper wine. But spiteful women declared she had fallen a victim to a viper husband’s jealousy, though Aubrey, who tells sad tales of Venetia before her marriage, says she was a blameless wife.
There is more than one portrait of her, with allegorical emblems of Innocence, Slander, and the like. Her name had often been coupled with that of the Earl of Dorset, and some said he had settled an annuity on her, which was paid up to the time of her death. Be this as it may, Sir Kenelm and Lady Digby always dined once a year with my Lord Dorset, who received them courteously but formally, only permitting himself to kiss the beauty’s hand with great respect.
Venetia was buried in a church near Newgate, in a tomb of black marble, with long inscriptions, surmounted by a copper-gilt bust, all destroyed in the great fire. Numerous epitaphs were written in her honour. Ben Jonson calls her ‘A tender mother, a discreet wife, a solemn mistress, a good friend, so lovely and charitable in all her petite actions, so devote in her whole life,’ etc.
Whatever Sir Kenelm’s real feelings were, his outward grief was extreme. He retired to Gresham College, lived like a hermit, studied chemistry, wore a long mourning cloak, and left his beard unshorn. Although it was generally supposed that his secession from the Protestant faith took place when he was in Spain, it was not until 1653 that he wrote to his friend Laud (whose admirable answer is extant) to announce the fact. He was a firm adherent of Charles I., and greatly esteemed by Henrietta Maria; but his loyalty got him into trouble with the Parliament, and he was exiled to France. Returning in a few months he was imprisoned in 1640 for nearly three years, and was supposed only to have regained his liberty through the intercession of the French Queen, who had loved him twenty years before. His release, however, was conditional. He was forbidden to take part in any public affairs, and he therefore gave himself up to literary and scientific pursuits, and engaged in a polemical correspondence with his quondam tutor, Laud, whom he is said to have tempted to change his faith, by the bait of a Cardinal’s Hat. Sir Kenelm returned to France and frequented the Court of his old flame, the Queen Dowager, where his noble appearance, almost gigantic size, his handsome features, agreeable conversation and manners, his learning, and last, but perhaps not least, his predilection for the occult sciences, made him an universal favourite. On the death of his eldest son, killed on the Royalist side at the battle of St. Neot’s, Sir Kenelm returned to compound for his estates, but was not suffered to remain in England. He went back to Paris, where Henrietta Maria made him her Chancellor; and he was then intrusted with a mission to Pope Innocent X., who welcomed him at first, but after a time the ‘Englishman grew high, and hectored at His Holiness, and gave him the lie.’
Once more in England, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, Cromwell took him into his confidence, hoping by his mediation to gain over the Roman Catholics.
His conduct in these circumstances has been praised by some and censured by others, as may well be imagined, according to religious and political bias. He travelled through France, Lower Germany, and the Palatinate, always seeking and being sought by men of letters; and 1660 saw him once more back in his native land.
Charles II. showed him but little favour. He was nominated F.R.S., and resided (1663) in a fair house in Covent Garden, where he had a laboratory. ‘Philosopher, theologian, courtier, soldier; polite, amiable, handsome, graceful.’ Lord Clarendon’s testimony is, ‘eccentric, vain, unstable in religion, a duellist.’ These are the counterbalancing portraits of Sir Kenelm Digby. He desired to be buried near Venetia. His epitaph was as follows:—
‘Under this tomb the matchless Digby lies,
Digby the great, the brilliant, and the wise;
This age’s wonder, for his noble partes,
Skilled in six tongues, and learn’d in all the artes!
Born on the day he died, th’ eleventh of June,
And that day bravely fought at Scanderoon:
It’s rare that one and the same day should be
The day of birth, and death, and victory.’
He had four sons and one daughter.
No. 40. SIR THOMAS KILLIGREW.
Red slashed doublet. Fair hair. A bracelet on his arm. His hand rests on a dog’s head.
BORN 1611, DIED 1683.
By Vandyck.
HE was the younger son of Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, County Middlesex, by Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Wodehouse, who married, secondly, Sir Thomas Stafford. Thomas, or as he was usually called, Tom Killigrew, was early initiated into the mysteries of Court life, being appointed Page of Honour to King Charles the First, to whom he remained faithful, and followed Charles the Second and his mother in their exile. About the year 1651 the King sent him in a diplomatic capacity to Venice, where Killigrew seems to have disported himself to his heart’s content, and it was evidently here that he imbibed that passion for music and the drama, which never forsook him, but which converted him into a dramatist and a theatrical entrepreneur, rather, we should say, confirmed him in these tastes which were already developed in his boyhood; for we have an anecdote of his school days, how he would go to the Red Bull Tavern, not far from the theatre, during the performance, and how, more than once, the waiter came in crying, ‘Who will go and be a devil on the stage, and he shall see the play for nothing?’ an offer with which young Tom gladly closed. Thus began his career; for was not he a merry devil the chief part of his life?
Venice, as we have seen, suited his humour well, and Thomas was evidently one of those foreigners who go on the principle of howling with the wolves, and doing at Rome more than the Romans do. In fact, he was so carried away by the vivacity of the Venetians, the maskings, flirtings, and what not, which he encountered in the fair city of the sea, that Thomas began to out-Herod Herod, and lived his life at such a rate as to scandalise the Venetian authorities, who directed their ambassador at Paris to wait on the English King, and urge the recall of his envoy. Charles complied, but it was not likely that the peccadilloes of which ‘Tommaso’ had been guilty should appear unpardonable in the eyes of the merry monarch, and he received the delinquent into especial favour, and on the Restoration Tom became Groom of the Bedchamber, and the King’s inseparable companion. Pepys, in his diary of 1660, about the time of Charles’s return to his dominions, records his meeting with Tom, when being on my Lord Sandwich’s ship, he met, ‘with other fine company, Tom Killigrew, a merry droll, but a gentleman, full of wit and humour, a general favourite, especially with the King. And I walked with him for some time on the deck, and he told most amusing stories.’
Killigrew had not been long in England before he put a darling scheme into execution, namely, to bring over an Italian troop of actors from Venice to perform in singing and recitative. He had by this time set up as a dramatic author, and was instrumental in introducing into England the fashion of female performers, for, until the Restoration, actresses had not appeared on the stage, although in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, the female characters were always represented by women. It may easily be believed that this innovation fell in with the royal taste, and there was great amusement afforded by a representation of the Parson’s Wedding, a comedy of Master Killigrew’s own writing, entirely performed by females. In another portion of his diary Pepys relates how he met Tom at my Lord Brouncker’s one night in company with a certain musician, one Signor Baptista, and Killigrew told us how they proposed to give an opera entirely in the Italian language, and he goes on to say that Baptista was singer, poet, and all in one, and that he sang them one of the acts, and that from the words alone, without any music prickt, which seemed to astonish good Master Samuel, who makes some of his accustomed sapient remarks on the occasion: ‘I did not understand the words, and so do not know if they are fitted, but I perceive there is a proper accent in every country’s discourse, but I am not as much smitten by it as if I were acquainted with the language.’
Good Master Pepys had made a discovery in those early times, which we recommend to the notice of many who pass in these days for proficients in the vocal line. The newly-born Italian opera now became the rage, very often, indeed, to the detriment of the English theatrical companies, so much so that sometimes Killigrew’s own dramatic productions were played to empty benches. Besides Signor Baptista there was another eminent musician, Francesco Corbetta, who not only sang in opera, but gave lessons in singing and the guitar, an instrument hitherto almost unknown in this country.
‘Famossissimo maestro, di ghitarra,
Qual Orfeo in suonar, ognun il narra!’
Guitar-playing became a perfect mania among the fine ladies and gentlemen at Court, ‘the King’s relish for that instrument,’ says De Grammont, ‘helping to bring it into vogue, and the guitar (whether for show or use) was now as necessary an appendage to a lady’s toilet-table as her rouge or patch-box. In fact, there was a universal strumming of the whole guitarrery at Court.’ Lord Arran, a younger son of the Duke of Ormonde, and his sister were amongst the greatest proficients; indeed, Lady Chesterfield was as much admired for her musical talent as for her undoubted beauty, and it was whispered her lord was very jealous of the Duke of York’s evident appreciation of both these attractions. Tom Killigrew’s popularity with the King increased daily, and there was a report that his Majesty intended to revive the disused office of Court Jester in the person of his favourite. We believe such an officer had been attached to his father’s household, but the post could only have been nominal. An old writer thus describes the duties of a Court Jester, ‘A witty and jocose person kept by princes, to inform them of their faults, and those of other people.’ We scarcely give Charles the Second credit for such a motive in his election. Pepys alludes to the circumstance in these words, ‘Tom Killigrew has a fee out of the Wardrobe for Cap and Bells as King’s Jester, and may tease and rule anybody, the greatest person, without offence, in privilege of his place.’ Of this privilege Tom took advantage, sometimes in a good cause, for with all their faults and failings, both he and his kindred spirit, Nell Gwynne, regretted the bad odour into which Charles had fallen through his neglect of public affairs, and Nell often admonished her royal lover on the subject. One day the two friends hatched a small plot. Says Nelly, ‘I have been just listening to the complaints of one of the Court Lords, of Charles’s neglect of all duty, and how that he has quite forgotten the existence of such a thing as a Cabinet Council, upon which I bet his Lordship £100 that the King should attend the very next. He sneered, but accepted the wager.’ Now we do not know if Nelly promised her accomplice to go halves, but we do know that that evening, when the King was in Madam Gwynne’s apartments, the door flew open, and in burst Tom, disguised as a pilgrim. The King swore at him, and asked if he had not heard the royal command that he should not be disturbed. ‘Oh yes, sire,’ was the reply, ‘but I was obliged to come and take leave of your Majesty before my departure.’
‘Why, where the —— are you going, and what does this absurd masquerading mean?’
‘I am starting this very moment for hell.’
‘Already,’ sneered the King, ‘and on what errand?’
‘To beg and pray of the devil to lend me Oliver Cromwell, if for ever so short a time, to attend to the affairs of the country, as his successor spends all his time in pleasure.’
The Jester was forgiven, and Nelly won her wager.
Another time Charles taxed his fool with telling everybody that the King was suffering from torturing pains in the nose, and asked the meaning of such a senseless report. ‘I crave your Majesty’s pardon,’ says Tom, ‘I knew you had been led by the nose for so many years, that I felt sure it must have become tender and painful.’
But the Jester occasionally carried the jest too far; there was a play called ‘The Silent Woman,’ given in London about this time, wherein appeared the character of Tom Otter, a henpecked husband, a reputation which the Duke of York enjoyed at Court. One night Charles said, ‘I will go no more abroad with Tom Otter and his wife.’ Now the courtiers well knew that when the King made any slighting allusion to his brother, they were expected to be tickled, so there was a general roar. The Jester alone looked solemn. ‘I wonder,’ said he, ‘which is best, to play Tom Otter to your wife or to your mistress?’—a sally which made Charles very angry, for he felt the reference was made to Lady Castlemaine, of whom the whole world knew he stood greatly in awe.
Another evening Tom made a comic onslaught on Lord Rochester, and that nobleman, actuated perhaps by jalousie de métier, was so enraged that he dealt the Jester a swinging box on the ear, unmindful of the royal presence, and threw the whole Court circle into confusion.
Death alone could put an end to poor Tom’s fooling. He died at his post at Whitehall in 1682-3, and then ‘where were his gibes, his gambols, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar? Alas! poor Yorick.’
No. 43. MISTRESS HERBERT.
Elizabethan dress. Ruff. Jewelled hat. Auburn hair. Inscription—‘Richard
Herbert of Blackhall’s wife, being daughter to Newport of Arcole.’
DIED 1627.
By Zucchero.
HE cannot do better in giving an account of this most remarkable and exemplary woman than to quote the words of her distinguished son, Edward, tenth Lord Herbert of Cherbury: ‘My mother, Magdalen, was the fourth daughter of Sir Richard Newport, by his wife, Margaret, daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Bromley, one of the Privy Council, and Executor of King Henry the Eighth. She married Richard Herbert, grandson of Sir Richard Herbert of Blackhall, County Montgomery, Knight, and surviving her husband, gave rare testimonies of an incomparable piety to God and love to her children. She was most assiduous and devout in her daily, both private and public, prayers, and so careful to provide for her posterity, that though it were in her power to give her estate, which was very great, to whom she would, yet she continued long unmarried, and so provident for them, that after she had bestowed all her daughters with sufficient portions upon very good neighbouring families she delivered up her estate and care of her housekeeping to her eldest son Francis. She had for many years kept hospitality with that plenty and order as exceeded all, either of her county or town, for besides abundance of provision and good cheer for guests, which her son Sir Francis continued, she used ever after dinner to distribute with her own hands to the poor, who resorted to her in great numbers. Alms in money she gave also, more or less, as she thought they needed it. After my mother had lived most virtuously and lovingly with her husband for many years (who died in 1597), she after his death erected a fair monument for him in Montgomery Church, brought up her children carefully, and put them in good courses for making their fortunes, and briefly was that woman Dr. Donne has described in his funeral sermon.’
Speaking of his father Lord Herbert says: ‘He was black-haired, and bearded, of a manly but somewhat stern look, but withal very handsome; compact in his limbs, and of a great courage.’ His grandfather was also distinguished for the same quality, and was noted to be a great enemy to the outlaws and thieves of his time, who appeared in great numbers in the mountains of Montgomeryshire. Lord Herbert also commends his grandfather’s extreme hospitality, which caused it to be an ordinary saying, if any one saw a fowl rise in the country at that time—‘Fly where thou wilt, thou wilt light at Blackhall.’
Mistress Herbert had seven sons, of whom the eldest was the aforementioned Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and three daughters. She seems to have merited her son’s encomiums. Izaak Walton says of her: ‘She was a person of superior abilities, and was highly esteemed for her great and harmless wit, cheerful gaiety, and obliging behaviour, which gained her a friendship with most of any eminent birth or learning in the University of Oxford, where she resided four years during the time of her widowhood, in order to superintend the education of her children, who were all young at the time of their father’s death. When she had provided for them she took to her second husband, Sir John Danvers, Knight, brother and heir to Henry, Earl of Danby, who highly valued both her person and most excellent endowments of mind. It was Magdalen Newport, Mrs. Herbert, and Dame Danvers, who inspired those favourite lines of Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s, so often quoted—
‘No spring or summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in an autumnal face.’
She lies buried at Chelsea.
No. 44. THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX.
Black and white dress.
By Holbein.
HE was the son of a blacksmith at Putney; his mother, who married again, sent him to a small school, where he learned little more than reading, writing, and the rudiments of Latin. When quite young he evinced a passion for travel, and set out for the Continent with very scanty means, which were soon exhausted, and he found himself at Antwerp without money or connections of any kind. But he was energetic and hard-working, and he soon found employment as a clerk in an English factory established in the city. Glad as Cromwell was to earn his livelihood, the drudgery and confinement of the life were irksome to the eager restless spirit of our young adventurer, and he took advantage of the first opportunity to escape. He made acquaintance with some countrymen from Boston in Lincolnshire, bound for Rome, in order to obtain certain indulgences from the reigning Pope, Julius the Second. These men soon became aware that Cromwell’s intelligence and capability were likely to make him a valuable fellow-traveller. They therefore proposed to convey him to Italy, an offer with which it may be imagined Cromwell eagerly closed. At Rome he rose into favour at the Vatican by his talent and ability, added to which substantial qualifications our young traveller made himself acceptable to the Pope by ministering to the well-known tastes of Julius for good living. He is said to have instructed the Papal cook in the art of preparing many a delicacy for the Pontiff’s table, till then unknown in Rome, especially ‘some rare English jellies, which his Holiness pronounced delicious.’ Italy was at that period the theatre of constant warfare, and Cromwell became not only a spectator, but an actor in many of the exciting events, serving for a time as trooper in the army of the Duke, afterwards Connétable, de Bourbon.
This great commander had left the service of France in disgust, and had espoused the cause of Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany. A companion in arms was John Russell, eventually Earl of Bedford; a man who shone alike as a soldier and a diplomatist, and had been employed in the latter capacity by Henry the Eighth, and his prime minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Being at Bologna a plot was formed to seize his person and send him prisoner to Paris, the hotel in which he lodged being already guarded by the soldiers of the Gonfaloniere. Thomas Cromwell was also in Bologna at that time, and no sooner did he receive intelligence of the affair than he went to the municipal authorities representing himself as a Neapolitan acquaintance of the English knight, and offering to persuade him to give himself up quietly. He thus gained access to Russell’s presence, and providing him with the disguise of a peasant contrived in the most skilful manner to effect his escape. Russell urged his deliverer to accompany him, but Cromwell was not disposed to leave Italy so soon, and entered the service of a rich merchant at Venice. Cromwell was said to have been present at the battle of Pavia, where Francis the First of France was taken prisoner. On his return to England, the man whose life and liberty he had saved, came forward to lend him a helping hand.
Russell, then in much repute at Court, recommended him to the patronage of Wolsey, then in the zenith of his power. The Cardinal took Cromwell into his service and confidence, and made him secretary and chief agent in the great scheme of the dissolution of the religious houses, which was now carrying on, the funds thus raised being ostensibly apportioned to defraying the expenses attendant on the erection of the colleges which Wolsey was now founding—
‘Those twin seats of learning,
Ipswich and Oxford.’
But there were whisperings abroad that much of the money thus obtained overflowed into the pockets of ‘master and man,’ a circumstance which Cromwell emphatically denied in a conversation with Master George Cavendish, one of the Cardinal’s gentlemen, and his eventual biographer. The question of Cromwell’s fidelity to his master, when Wolsey fell on evil days, has been differently treated by different writers; but there is no doubt that when Wolsey left London in disgrace, Cromwell followed him to Esher—or Asher, as it is written by Master Cavendish—who tells us he went into the great chamber, and to his surprise found Master Cromwell standing in the large window, the tears distilling from his eyes, with a primer in his hand, praying earnestly,—‘the which was a strange sight,’ for it did not appear that the said Master Cromwell was by any means given to devotion. Cavendish inquired into the cause of his sorrow, asking anxiously if he considered their master’s case to be so very hopeless, on which Cromwell, with much candour, confessed that it was his own fate he was bewailing, for it seemed most likely that he was on the point of losing everything for which he had been travailing all the days of his life; moreover, that he was in disdain of all men simply for doing his master’s service, through which he had never increased his living, on the contrary, had been a heavy loser. Then he confided to Master Cavendish how, that very afternoon, when the Cardinal had dined, it was his (Cromwell’s) intention to ride with all speed to London, and so to Court, ‘where I will either make or mar ere I come back again.’ Assuredly in the audience which he solicited and obtained did Master Cromwell make, and not mar, as far as he himself was concerned. He had a long and explicit conversation with the King, into whose favour he ingratiated himself by suggesting the very line of conduct on which he well knew Henry’s heart was bent. Acquainted with the Monarch’s infatuation for Anne Boleyn, he now suggested, as if from his own notion of advisability, that the King should throw off all allegiance to the Pope, declare himself supreme head of the Church throughout his own kingdom, and thus facilitate the much desired measure of his divorce from Queen Katherine. Such palatable advice was indeed well calculated to win Henry’s good graces, and from that moment Cromwell’s rapid rise began. The King, knowing what a valuable auxiliary he had proved to his late patron in the matter of the suppression of the religious houses, resolved to secure Cromwell’s services for the same purpose. He therefore confirmed him in the office of Steward of the Dissolved Monasteries, made him a Privy Councillor, a Knight, Secretary of State, Master of the Royal Jewel-house, Clerk of the Hanaper (a lucrative post in the Court of Chancery), and what Cromwell’s enemies termed ‘the Lord knows what.’ In 1535 Visitor-General of the said suppressed monasteries throughout the realm, in which capacity Sir Thomas incurred much censure, and was branded by many as cruel, rapacious, and overbearing. In our judgment of this sentence we must take into consideration the fever heat at which religious animosity now stood; suffice it to say that Cromwell satisfied the views of his royal master, and was not Henry cruel, rapacious, and overbearing? Fabulous sums were extorted from the exchequers of these establishments, and it was almost universally believed that the favourite came in for a considerable share of the booty. It was indeed evident he did not remember the injunction laid upon him by Sir Thomas More, namely, that he should advise the King what he ought to do, not only what he was able to do. In 1536 he was made Privy Seal, and the same year Baron Cromwell of Okeham, County Rutland, and (the authority of the Pope being by this time abolished in England) Henry instituted a new office, to which he appointed his favourite. This was Vicar-General, or in other words, Supreme Head of the Church, as representative of the King, in which capacity he sat in the House of Lords, and also at Convocation above the Archbishop of Canterbury. The office included that of Principal Commissary for the Administration of Justice in all ecclesiastical affairs; of the godly reformation, and the redress of all errors, heresies, and abuses of the English Reformed Church, both in Parliament and Convocation.
It was indeed strange that the man who, a very short time before, had professed infidel doctrines (and was so unsettled in his creed that when Cavendish found him at prayers, the primer in his hand should be our lady’s matins) strange to say that this individual should now come forward as the principal pillar of the Reformation. Dr. Hook, in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, says, Cromwell ‘was not a real Protestant, and was generally supposed to be a man who supported the party from which he could obtain most, a statesman whose religion depended on politics, and who had no knowledge of theological subjects.’ Yet from the circumstances in which he was now placed all the English Protestants rallied round him, and those of Germany treated with him. In his new capacity Cromwell issued the most stringent and binding regulations for the conduct of the reformed clergy, was indefatigable in propagating the Bible throughout the country, causing it to be read in churches, and placed in convenient parts of the building, where the parishioners themselves could refer to it on their own account. But Cromwell’s life forms part of the history of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and indeed of the Reformation itself. And it is incumbent on us to condense this narrative lest it exceed the prescribed bounds.
He continued to receive marks of favour from the King, but his keen eye detected the gathering clouds in his own future; and he knew if Henry once failed him there would be little hope of stemming the tide of unpopularity which threatened to overpower him. He well knew that he was hated by all classes; the nobility, who grudged all the titles and honours bestowed on ‘the blacksmith’s son’; the Roman Catholics, who had good reason to detest him; while the reformed clergy rebelled against many of the changes and innovations which the Vicar-General had instituted in the services and conduct of the Church; and the poorer classes were indignant with him for depriving them of the bounty which they had so long received from the religious houses. Cromwell had good cause to be uneasy. He began by propitiating ‘the poor and needy,’ who now flocked by invitation to the gate of his house in Throckmorton Street, oftentimes twice a day, where they were regaled with bread and meat and money. He then set on foot negotiations with the Protestant Princes of Germany, more especially the reigning Duke of Cleves, in order to bring about a marriage between that Prince’s sister and Henry the Eighth, who was at this moment in one of his transitory intervals of widowhood. Lord Cromwell imagined that a Protestant queen of his own selection would be an invaluable ally at Court, and help him to retain the favour of the King, who was persuaded into the belief that the Lady Anne of Cleves was not only ‘fair and portly,’ but comely in face and feature, an error in which Henry was confirmed by a very flattering portrait from the pencil of Holbein. So the Princess was sent for to come over to England, and a magnificent cortége was despatched, with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, to bring her on her way to London; and Henry conceived the romantic idea of riding down to Rochester in disguise to waylay his bride. Alas! for the eager glance which his Grace cast into the travelling coach, where sat a lady tall and portly indeed, but coarse and ugly in face and feature! Henry, we are told, was ‘alarmed and abashed,’ but he also was furious. He felt he had been deceived, and he sent for Cromwell and bade him devise some means for the prevention of the marriage. It was too late; matters had gone too far, and the ceremony was performed.
It would appear that at the time the King did not realise the idea that Cromwell was the principal instigator of the hated union, for it was after the marriage that he was raised to the Earldom of Essex, and made Lord Chamberlain, and his son granted a separate peerage. We know from the pages of history how the King’s horror of ‘the Flanders mare’ increased day by day, and he never rested till he had obtained a divorce, soon followed by the downfall of the newly created Earl of Essex, whose ruin was resolved on.
The Duke of Norfolk was intrusted with the task of arresting his enemy at the Council Board on the opening of Parliament in June 1540, and despatching him to the Tower, nor was he loth to carry out the royal command. Essex claimed a trial by his Peers, but the privilege was denied him. He was condemned, says Dr. Hook, by the iniquitous statute, admitting of attainder without trial, a measure of which he was not the actual founder, as affirmed by some writers, but the reviver of the same, and therefore by many pronounced deserving of his fate.
He was accused of high treason, heresy, embezzlement, and a host of other misdemeanours, but there is little doubt the worst offence in Henry’s eyes was his instrumentality in promoting the hateful marriage with Anne of Cleves.
The only voice that was raised in his behalf was that of Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote a most eloquent letter to the King, entreating him to spare the life of Lord Essex, but it was unavailing. Cromwell’s demeanour in the Tower was very different from that which had characterised Sir Thomas More. He addressed the most abject letters to Henry, and would have accepted life at almost any price. He wrote ‘with a heavy heart and trembling hand,’ and signed himself, ‘Your highness’s most humble and wretched prisoner and poor slave, Thomas Cromwell.’ While underneath the subscription came the words, ‘I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!’
Henry caused the letters to be read to him four times, and at one moment showed signs of relenting, but in the end was (as usual) inexorable. Four days from the passing of the sentence, Lord Essex was led forth to execution, and beheaded on Tower Hill. He made a speech full of loyalty and submission to the royal will, words which were thought to have been dictated by paternal solicitude for the welfare of his only son. He furthermore confessed his sins, repenting that he had ever abandoned the Catholic faith to which he now returned, for in that he was resolved to die; then kneeling in prayer, ‘he submitted his neck to the executioner, who mangled him in a shocking manner.’
No. 46. LADY KILLIGREW.
Standing. White satin gown, dark drapery. Hands crossed.
Brown curls.
By Vandyck.
Mistress Cecilia Crofts, maid of honour to the Queen Henrietta Maria?
