His lady an extraordinary character.
This lady was Elizabeth Hardwick, a name familiar to all visitors of the county of Derby, where she lived more than half a century with little less than sovereign authority, having first adorned it with two most splendid mansions. The daughter, and the virgin widow of two Derbyshire gentlemen of moderate estates, she first stepped into consequence by her marriage with Sir William Cavendish, a gentleman much older than herself. The ceremony was performed at the house of the Marquis of Dorset[28], father to the Lady Jane Grey, who, with the Countess of Warwick and the Earl of Shrewsbury, was a sponsor at the baptism of her second child. Cavendish left her a widow with six children in 1557. Shortly after his death |Marries Sir William St. Lowe;| she united herself to Sir William St. Lowe, one of the old attendants of the Princess Elizabeth, on whose accession to the throne he was made captain of her guard. In 1567, being a third time a widow, she was raised to the bed of the most powerful peer |becomes Countess of Shrewsbury.| of the realm, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. He had been a friend of Sir William Cavendish, and it is possible that the magnificent state which he displayed in the immediate neighbourhood of this lady had more than once excited her envy. She loved pomp and magnificence and personal splendour, as much as she enjoyed the hurry and engagement of mind which multiplied worldly business brings with it. She had a passion for jewels, which was appealed to and gratified by the unhappy |Has a present of jewels from Mary Queen of Scots.| Mary Queen of Scotland[29], who lived many years under the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury, her husband. She united herself to this nobleman more, as it should seem, from motives of ambition, than as the consequence of any real affection she had for him. He had unquestionably the sincerest regard for her: and, though she forgot many of the duties of a wife, it continued many years in the midst of all that reserve and perfidity, and even tyranny, if such a word may be allowed, which she thought proper to exercise towards him. The decline of this good and great man’s life affords a striking lesson how utterly insufficient are wealth and splendour and rank to secure happiness even in a case where there is no experience of the more extraordinary vicissitudes of fortune, the peculiar danger of persons in elevated situations. Probably the happiest days of the last three and twenty years of his life were those in which he was employing himself in preparing his own sepulchre. This he |Death of the Earl.| occupied in 1590. But the effect of his ill advised nuptials extended beyond his life. His second countess had drawn over to her purposes some of his family, who had assisted her in the designs she carried on against her husband. She had drawn them closely to her interest by alliances with her own family. Hence arose family animosities, which appeared in the most frightful forms, and threatened the most deadly consequences[30]. Much may be seen respecting this extraordinary woman in the Talbot papers published by Mr. Lodge. A bundle of her private correspondence has been preserved, and forms a curious and valuable part of that collection of manuscripts which we have had occasion more than once to mention. These let in much light upon her conduct. It is impossible to contemplate her character in this faithful mirror without being convinced that Mr. Lodge has drawn the great outlines of it correctly, when he describes her as “a |Mr. Lodge’s character of her.| woman of masculine understanding and conduct; proud, furious, selfish, and unfeeling[31].” Yet she was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, who paid her this compliment soon after her last marriage, that “she had been glad |Anecdote of Queen Elizabeth.| to see my Lady Saint Lowe, but was more desirous to see my Lady Shrewsbury, and that there was no lady in the land whom she better loved and liked.” These flattering expressions were used to Mr. Wingfield, who was a near relation of this lady, and who lost no time in reporting them to her. Most of these letters are upon private affairs: a few only are from persons whom she had engaged to send her the news of the day, as was usual with the great people of that age when absent from court. There are several of the letters which |Letters to her.| she received from Saint Lowe and Shrewsbury, which show how extraordinary was the influence she had gained over their minds. There is one from Sir William Cavendish. Having laboured to show what the knight did not compose, I shall transcribe in the note below this genuine fragment of his writing, though in no respect worthy of publication, except as having passed between these two remarkable characters[32]. It is expressed in a strain of familiarity to which neither of his successors ever dared aspire. To conclude the history of this lady, she survived her last husband about seventeen years, which were spent for the most part at Hardwick, the place of her birth, and where she had built the present noble mansion. There she died in 1607, and was interred in the great church at Derby.
The courteous reader will, it is hoped, pardon this digression; and now set we forth on the second stage of our inquiry, Who wrote Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey?
Claim of Thomas Cavendish.
When there are only two claimants upon any property, if the pretensions of one can be shown to be groundless, those of the other seem to be established as a necessary consequence. But here we have a third party. Beside Sir William and his elder brother George, a claimant has been found in a Thomas Cavendish. In the account of Wolsey given in the Athenæ[33], Wood calls the author by this name: and Dodd, a Catholic divine, who published a Church History of England in 3 vols. folio, (Brussels, 1737.) in a list of historians and manuscripts used in the preparation of his work, enumerates “Cavendish Thomas, Life of Cardinal Wolsey, Lond. 1590.” It is very probable that Dodd may have contented himself with copying the name of this author from the Athenæ, a book he used: and it is with the utmost deference, and the highest possible respect, for the wonderful industry and the extraordinary exactness of the Oxford antiquary, I would intimate my opinion that, in this instance, he has been misled. To subject the pretensions of Thomas Cavendish to such a scrutiny as that to which those of Sir William have been brought is quite out of the question: for neither Wood nor Dodd have thrown any light whatever on his history or character. He appears before us like Homer, nomen, et præterea nihil. There was a person of both his names, of the Grimstone family, a noted navigator, and an author in the days of Queen Elizabeth; but he lived much too late to have ever formed a part of the household of Cardinal Wolsey.
We must now state the evidence in favour of George Cavendish. The reader will judge for himself whether the testimony of Anthony Wood, and that of the Catholic church-historian, supposing them to be distinct and independent testimonies, is sufficient to outweigh what is to be advanced in support of George Cavendish’s claim. We shall first state on what grounds the work is attributed to a Cavendish whose name was George; and secondly, the reasons we have for believing that he was the George Cavendish of Glemsford in Suffolk, to whom my Lord Herbert ascribes the work.
That the writer’s name was George.
On the former point the evidence is wholly external. It lies in a small compass; but it is of great weight. It consists in the testimony of all the ancient manuscripts which bear any title of an even date with themselves[34]: and in that of the learned herald and antiquary Francis Thinne, a contemporary of the author’s, who, in the list of writers of English history which he subjoined to Hollinshead’s Chronicle, mentions “George Cavendish, Gentleman Vsher vnto Cardinal Woolseie, whose life he did write.”
Four circumstances of the author’s condition discovered in the work.
Now to our second point. Four circumstances of the author’s situation are discovered to us in the work itself: viz. that his life was extended through the reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. and Queen Mary; that while he was in the Cardinal’s service he was a married man, and had a family: that he was in but moderate circumstances when he composed this memoir; and that he retained a zeal for the old profession of religion. If we find these circumstances concurring in a George Cavendish, it is probable we have found the person for whom we are in search.