“For Books thus much more, the greatest clerks are not the wisest men; and the greate troublers of the world, the greatest captains, were not the greatest schollars; neither have I known bookewormes great statesmen; some have here to fore and some are now, but they study men more now then bookes, or else they would prove but silly statesmen....
“But Sr. you are [not?] in your own disposition religious and not very apte to your booke, so you need no great labour to perswade you from the one, or long discourses to dissuade from the other.
“The things that I have discoursed to you most, is to be courteous and civil to everybody; ... believe it, the putting off of your hat and making a leg pleases more then reward or preservation, so much doth it take all kind of people. Then to speak well of every body, and when you hear people speak ill of others reprehend them and seeme to dislike it so much, and do not look on em so favourably for a few days after.”
After this come long exhortations to courtesy, and instructions as to being agreeable to everybody without losing dignity.
In addition to all this advice, Newcastle personally superintended the riding lessons of the future Charles II. Newcastle was one of the finest horsemen of his times, and, in his standard work on horsemanship which we shall meet with later on, he says: “Our gracious and most excellent King” (Charles II), “is not only the handsomest and most comely horseman in the world, but as knowing and understanding in the art as any man”.
Very many years later, when Newcastle’s pupil became King of England, he either wrote, or caused to be written, in the Preamble to a Patent (16 March, 1664) creating Newcastle a duke: “The great proofs of his wisdom and piety, are sufficiently known to Us from our younger years, and we shall always retain a sense of those good principles he instilled into Us: the care of our youth, which he happily undertook for our good, he has faithfully and well discharged”.
We are anticipating, in the matter of time, when we say that Newcastle held the post of Governor to the Prince of Wales for about two years only; but the Governorship may as well be dealt with finally here. Her husband, says the Duchess, “was privately advertised, that the Parliaments Design was to take the Government of the Prince from Him, which he apprehending as a disgrace to Himself, wisely prevented, and obtained the Consent of His late Majesty, with His Favour, to deliver up the Charge of being Governor to the Prince, and retire into the Countrey”.
In “apprehending a disgrace to himself,” and resigning the governorship of the Prince, if Newcastle did not meet with the “downfall” spoken of by Bacon, he at least suffered the “eclipse, which is a melancholy thing,” mentioned by the same writer. For so short a time, the appointment seems hardly to have been worth all the trouble which Newcastle had taken to obtain it. How far he succeeded in it we do not know, but one historian did not take a very exalted view of his success.
In his Personal History of Charles II, published as an appendix to Bohn’s edition of Grammont’s Memoirs, Sir Walter Scott says of the Prince: “His governors, successively the Earls of Newcastle, Hertford, and Berkshire, who had the care of his education, appear to have afforded him but few helps towards his improvement”. The Duchess’s statement that Newcastle “attended the Prince, his Master, with all faithfulness and duty befitting so great an employment,” evidently did not weigh heavily in Sir Walter’s opinion. The Prince, however, must have gained little by his change of governors; since Clarendon[27] says that Hertford, “for the office of Governour, never thought himself fit, nor meddled with it”.