[9] In those times peers sometimes signed their names with an initial before the title.
It may have been observed that Cavendish writes as if payment for peerages were a matter of course, a rule in fact; and, allowing for the difference in the value of money, they appear to have cost as much then as they cost now, or even more. Evidently any man “willing to receave honor,” and willing to pay for it, was looked upon as fair game.
In the seventeenth century there was no central Conservative or central Liberal fund to receive the payments for peerages. Who then received them? Would it be the King? or would it be Buckingham?
“My cosen Pierepoint” must have submitted to be bled and to be bled freely; for a couple of months later he was created Baron Pierrepont, of Holme Pierrepont, Co. Nottingham, and Viscount Newark; and a year later he was created Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull.[10] Probably Buckingham took Cavendish’s advice as to Pierrepont, “spoke with him at London” and “brought him to good termes”—most likely something much better than the £12,000 mentioned in Cavendish’s letter. Let no one henceforward speak about the purchase of peerages as if it were a modern abuse.
[10] Burke’s Extinct Peerages, p. 427.
In the year 1628, Cavendish was created Earl of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Baron Cavendish of Bolsover;[11] and no doubt he was made to pay a good round sum in hard cash for this reward of “his true and faithful service to his King and Country”.
[11] He inherited the Barony of Ogle on the death of his mother who had eventually become sole heiress to the dignity of her father. He then waived any right he might have to that dignity by his first creation (Biog. Brit.).
In spite of what we have read as to Cavendish being out of favour with Buckingham, the letter just quoted shows that Buckingham entrusted him with so delicate and confidential an errand as the squeezing of money out of a candidate for a peerage. The following letter, written a year later than the first, and shortly before Cavendish’s promotion to an earldom, proves that Buckingham employed him also in an, if possible, even more purely business transaction, although with the same negotiator, namely, “my cosen Pierepoint,” who had now become Lord Newark.
“State Papers, Domestic, Charles Ist. Vol. CVIII, No. 72. June 1628.