Of this entertainment Clarendon says (Hist., Book i. pp. 78-9): “Both King and Court were received and entertained by the Earl of Newcastle, and at his own proper expense, in such a wonderful manner, and in such an excess of feasting, as had scarce ever been known in England, and would still be thought very prodigious, if the same noble person had not, within a year or two afterwards, made the King and Queen a more stupendous entertainment, which (God be thanked) though possibly it might too much whet the appetites of others to excess, no man ever in those days imitated”.
His Duchess writes of it:—
“When his Majesty was going into Scotland to be Crowned, he took His way through Nottinghamshire; and lying at Worksop-Mannor hardly two miles distant from Welbeck, where my Lord then was, my Lord invited His Majesty thither to a Dinner, which he was graciously pleased to accept of: This Entertainment cost my Lord between Four and Five thousand pounds”.
In the July of the previous year (1633), Wentworth had been created a Baron and sent to Ireland as Lord Deputy. He was not made Lord Strafford until 1640. Among the Strafford Letters[20] are a good many from Newcastle. The first to be noticed was written after the journey to Scotland, and it throws some light upon the expense to which Newcastle was put by the King’s visit to Welbeck, as well as upon the costs incident upon Newcastle’s state attendance on the royal progress. Besides this the letter seems to have reference to another matter. Of that matter we find a notice in this paragraph from the Duchess’s book:—
“Within some few years after, King Charles the First, of blessed Memory, His Gracious Soveraign, ... thought Him the fittest Person whom He might intrust with the Government of His Son Charles, then Prince of Wales, now our most Gracious King”.
[20] The Earl of Strafford’s Letters and Despatches, London: Wm. Bowyer, 1739.
She omits to mention that her husband had specially desired this office and that he had for a long time schemed, begged, and asked his friends to beg, in order to obtain it. A letter from Newcastle to Strafford shows how keenly he was longing for it, although hope deferred was evidently making the heart sick.