“In the midst of the civil commotions, Charles I. made several visits to Raglan Castle, and was entertained with becoming magnificence. The marquis not only declined all offers of remuneration, but also advanced large sums; and when the king thanked him for the loans, replied, Sir, I had your word for the money, but I never thought I should be so soon repayed; for now you have given me thanks, I have all I looked for.” At another time, the king, apprehensive lest the stores of the garrison should be consumed by his suite, empowered him to exact from the country such provisions as were necessary for his maintainance and recruit, “I humbly thank your majesty,” he said, “but my castle will not stand long if it leans on the country; I had rather be brought to a morsel of bread, than any morsels of bread should be brought me to entertain your majesty.”
The following conversation shows the amiable weakness of Charles’s humanity.
Sir Trevor Williams, and four other principal gentlemen of Monmouthshire, being arrested for disloyalty, and conducted to Abergavenny, the king was advised to order them to an immediate trial, which must have ended in their conviction; but Charles, moved by the tears and protestations of Trevor Williams, suffered him to be released, on bail, and committed the others only to a temporary confinement. “The king told the marquess what he had done, and that when he saw them speak so honestly, he could not but give some credit to their words, so seconded by tears, and withal told the marquess that he had onely sent them to prison; whereupon the marquess said, what to do? to poyson that garrison? Sir, you should have done well to have heard their accusations, and then to have shewn what mercy you pleased. The king told him, that he heard that they were accused by some contrary faction, as to themselves, who, out of distaste they bore to one another on old grudges, would be apt to charge them more home than the nature of their offences had deserved; to whom the marquess made this return, Well, Sir, you may chance to gain the kingdom of heaven by such doings as these, but if you ever get the kingdom of England by such ways, I will be your bondman.”
Another conversation between the marquis and Sir Thomas Fairfax is worth relating.
“After much conference between the marquess and General Fairfax, wherein many things were requested of the general by the marquess, and being, as he thought himself, happy in the attainment, his lordship was pleased to make a merry petition to the general as he was taking his leave, viz. in behalf of a couple of pigeons, who were wont to come to his hand, and feed out of it constantly, in whose behalf he desired the general that he would be pleased to give him his protection for them, fearing the little command that he should have over his soldiers in that behalf. To which the general said, I am glad to see your lordship so merry. Oh, said the marquess, you have given me no other cause, and hasty as you are, you shall not go untill I have told you a story.
“There were two men going up Holborn in a cart to be hanged; one of them being very merry and jocund, gave offence to the other who was sad and dejected, insomuch that the downcast man said unto the other, I wonder, brother, that you can be so frolic, considering the business we are going about. Tush, answered the other, thou art a fool; thou wentest a thieving, and never thought what would become of thee, wherefore being on a sudden surprised, thou fallest into such a shaking fit, that I am ashamed to see thee in that condition: whereas I was resolved to be hanged, before ever I fell to stealing, which is the reason nothing happenning strange or unexpected, I go so composed unto my death. So, said the marquess, I resolved to undergo whatsoever, even the worst of evils that you are able to lay upon me, before I took up arms for my sovereign, and therefore wonder not that I am so merry.”
“In the correspondence with Fairfax,” says the author of the Historical Tour, “which preceded the capitulation, the marquis of Worcester seems to have strongly suspected that the parliament would not adhere to the conditions. His apprehensions were not groundless, for on his arrival in London he was committed to the custody of the Black Rod. He bitterly complained of this cruel usage, and deeply regretted that he had trusted himself to the mercy of the parliament. A few hours before his death, he said to Dr. Bayley, If to seize upon all my goods, to pull down my house, to fell my estate, and send up for such a weak body as mine was, so enfeebled by disease, in the dead of winter, in the winter of mine age, be merciful, what are they whose mercies are so cruel? Neither do I expect that they should stop at all this, for I fear they will persecute me after death.
“Being informed, however, that parliament would permit him to be buried in his family vault, in Windsor Chapel; he cried out, with great sprightliness of manner, Why, God bless us all, why then I shall have a better castle when I am dead, than they took from me whilst I was alive. With so much cheerfulness and resignation did this hero expire, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.”
The second marquis was the author of that puzzling “Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as I can at present call to mind to have tried and perfected.”
“It appears,” we are told, “from a passage in the Experimental Philosophy of Dr. Desaguliers, that Captain Savary derived his invention of the fire engine, since called the steam engine, from the 68th article in the Century of Scantlings; and that to conceal his original he bought up all the marquis’s books, and burnt them.” The following is the “scantling.”