Not so Sir William Cavendish.
There are persons whom nothing will satisfy, and they are sometimes the most importunate in obtruding their supposed neglects upon the public: but it must surely have been past all endurance to have had such a complaint |His employments, promotions, and rewards.| as this preferred by Sir William Cavendish in the days of Queen Mary. His life had been a continual series of promotions and lucrative employments. In 1530, the very year in the November of which the Cardinal died, he was constituted one of the commissioners for visiting and taking the surrenders of divers religious houses. In 1539 he was made one of the Auditors of the Court of Augmentations, then lately established. At this period of his life he was living luxuriously at his mansion of North Awbrey near Lincoln, as appears by the inventory of his furniture there, which is preserved in manuscript[23]. In the next year he had a royal grant of several lordships in the county of Hertford. In 1546 he was knighted; constituted treasurer of the chamber to the king, a place of great trust and honour; and was soon afterwards admitted of the privy council. He continued to enjoy all these honours till his death, a space of eleven years, in which time his estate was much increased by the grants he received from King Edward VI. in seven several counties[24]. It was not surely for such a man as this to complain of the ludibria fortunæ, or of the little reward all his “painful diligence” had received. Few men, as Sylvius says, would have such a “poverty of grace” that they would not
“——think it a most plenteous crop
To glean the broken ears after the man
That such a harvest reaps.”
Sir William Cavendish began the world the younger son of a family of some respectability, but of no great wealth or consequence; and he left it, at about the age of fifty, a knight, a privy counsellor, and the owner of estates which, managed and improved as they were by his prudent relict, furnished two houses with the means of supporting in becoming splendour the very first rank in the British peerage.
But an ambitious man is not to be contented; and men do form erroneous estimates of their own deserts: let us see, then, if the work will not supply us with something more conclusive.
Zealous against the Reformation.
The writer is fond of bringing forward his religious sentiments. The reader will be amused with the following sally against the Reformation, its origin, and favourers. He who is disposed may find in it matter for serious reflection. When Cavendish has related that the king submitted to be cited by the two legates, and to appear in person before them, to be questioned touching the matter of the divorce, he breaks out into this exclamation:—“Forsoothe it is a world to consider the desirous will of wilfull princes, when they be set and earnestly bent to have their wills fulfilled, wherein no reasonable persuasions will suffice; and how little they regard the dangerous sequell that may ensue, as well to themselves as to their subjects. And above all things, there is nothing that maketh them more wilfull than carnall love and sensuall affection of voluptuous desire, and pleasures of their bodies, as was in this case; wherein nothing could be of greater experience than to see what inventions were furnished, what lawes were enacted, what costly edifications of noble and auncient monasteries were overthrowne, what diversity of opinions then rose, what executions were then committed, how many noble clerkes and good men were then for the same put to deathe, what alteration of good, auncient, and holesome lawes, customes, and charitable foundations were tourned from reliefe of the poore, to utter destruction and desolation, almost to the subversion of this noble realme. It is sure too much pitty to heare or understand the things that have since that time chaunced and happened to this region. The profe thereof hath taught us all Englishmen the experience, too lamentable of all good men to be considered. If eyes be not blind men may see, if eares be not stopped they may heare, and if pitty be not exiled the inward man may lament the sequell of this pernicious and inordinate love. Although it lasted but a while, the plague thereof is not yet ceased, which our Lorde quenche and take his indignation from us! Qui peccavimus cum patribus nostris, et injuste egimus.” p. 420 and 421.
Not so Sir William Cavendish.