Scanty as is the information afforded us concerning a simple esquire of the days of the Tudors, it will probably be made apparent that these circumstances do concur in the person to whom my Lord Herbert ascribes the work. Men of little celebrity in their lives, and whose track through the world cannot be discovered by the light of history, are sometimes found attaining a faint and obscure “life after death” in the herald’s visitation books and the labours of the scrivener. Those rolls of immortality are open to every man. They transmit to a remote posterity the worthless and the silly with as much certainty as the name of one who was instinct with the fire of genius, and whom a noble ambition to be good and great distinguished from the common herd of men. It is in these rolls only that the name of George Cavendish of Glemsford is come down to us: he forms a link in the pedigree: he is a medium in the transmission of manorial property.
Obscurity of George Cavendish a presumption in his favour.
But this very obscurity creates a presumption in favour of his claim. What employment that should raise him into notice would be offered in the days of Henry and Edward to the faithful and affectionate attendant upon a character so unpopular among the great as the haughty, low-born Wolsey? What should have placed his name upon public record who did not, like Cromwell and some other of Wolsey’s domestics, “find himself a way out of his master’s wreck to rise in” by throwing himself upon the court, but retired, as Cavendish at the conclusion of the Memoirs tells us he did, to his own estate in the country, with his wages, a small gratuity, and a present of six of the Cardinal’s horses to convey his furniture? That, living at a distance from the court, he should have been overlooked on the change of the times, cannot be surprising: he was only one among many who would have equal claims upon Mary and her ministry. Had she lived indeed till his work had been published, we might then reasonably have expected to have seen a man of so much virtue, and talent, and religious zeal, drawn from his obscurity, and his name might have been as well known to our history as that of his brother the reformist. But Mary died too soon for his hopes and those of many others of his party, though not too soon for the interests of religion and humanity. All expectation of seeing the admirer and apologist of Wolsey emerge from his obscurity must end with the accession of the protestant princess Elizabeth.
What is known of George Cavendish of Glemsford.
It is therefore not surprising, and on the whole rather favourable to our argument, that nearly all which can now be collected of George Cavendish of Glemsford is contained in the following passage extracted from certain “Notices of the manor of Cavendish in Suffolk, and of the Cavendish family while possessed of that manor,” which was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by Thomas Ruggles, Esq., the owner of the said manor[35]. Cavendish, it will be recollected, is a manor adjoining to Glemsford, and which belonged to the same parties.
George Cavendish is stated to be the eldest son of Thomas Cavendish, Esq. who was clerk of the pipe in the Exchequer. He "was in possession of the manor of Cavendish Overhall, and had two sons; William was the eldest, to whom, in the fourth year of Philip and Mary, 1558, he granted by deed enrolled in Chancery this manor in fee, on the said William, releasing to his father one annual payment of twenty marks, and covenanting to pay him yearly for life, at the site of the mansion-house of Spains-hall, in the parish of Finchingfield, in the county of Essex, forty pounds, at the four usual quarterly days of payment. When George Cavendishe died is uncertain: but it is apprehended in 1561 or 1562.
“William Cavendishe his son was in possession of the manor in the fourth year of Elizabeth.”... “He was succeeded in this estate by his son William Cavendysh of London, mercer, who, by that description, and reciting himself to be the son of William Cavendishe, gentleman, deceased, by deed dated the 25th of July, in the eleventh year of the reign of Elizabeth, 1569, released all his right and title to this estate, and to other lands lying in different parishes, to William Downes of Sudbury, in Suffolk, Esq.”
His fortune decayed.
This detail plainly intimates that decay of the consequence and circumstances of a family which we might expect from the complaints in the Memoirs of Wolsey, of the unequal dealings of fortune, and of the little reward all the writer’s “painfull diligence” had received. We see George Cavendish, for a small annual payment in money, giving up the ancient inheritance of his family, a manor called after his own name: and only eleven years after, that very estate passed to strangers to the name and blood of the Cavendishes by his grandson and next heir, who was engaged in trade in the city of London. We find also what we have the |Married before 1526.| concurrent testimony of the heralds of that time to prove, that this George Cavendish was married, and the father of sons: but on a closer inspection we find more than this: we discover that he must have been married as early as 1526, when we first find the biographer of Wolsey a member of the Cardinal’s household[36]. William Cavendish, the younger, grandson to George Cavendish, must have been of full age before he could convey the estate of his forefathers. He was born therefore as early as 1548. If from this we take a presumed age of his father at the time of his birth, we shall arrive at this conclusion, that George Cavendish the grandfather was a family-man at least as early as 1526.
A Catholic.