William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle[Frontispiece]
The Castle of the Ogles. Inherited by Newcastle from his Mother. From his Book on Horsemanship Facing page[4]
Welbeck. Double-page Engraving in Newcastle’s Book on Horsemanship”[24]
Bolsover Castle. From Newcastle’s Book on Horsemanship” [30]
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. From an Engraving by Wm. Holl. After a Painting by Van Dyck”[72]
William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, with his Seals and Autographs. From an Original by Van Dyck”[112]
Training with the Right Hand—Bolsover Castle in the Background. From Newcastle’s Book on Horsemanship”[170]
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. From an Engraving by Alais. After a Painting by Diepenbeck [1].”[174]
The Duke and Duchess of Newcastle and their Family. By Diepenbeck”[224]
“Art Avails Much More” than the Bridle. From Newcastle’s Book on Horsemanship”[230]
“Aids.” From Newcastle’s Book on Horsemanship”[234]
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. From the Frontispiece to one of her books by Diepenbeck”[248]
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. From an Engraving by G. P. Harding. After a Painting by A. Diepenbeck”[258]
Monument of the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle in Westminster Abbey”[274]

[1] Abraham Diepenbeck (1599-1675) was a pupil of Rubens. He painted in oils, he was also an engraver, and he painted a large number of windows for churches.

CHAPTER I.

In one or two former works relating to the seventeenth century, it has been the writer’s misfortune to lead his readers over rather muddy roads into somewhat shady places; but it will now be his privilege to offer himself as their guide along smooth paths paved with the strictest propriety into regions “of sweetness and delight,” where they may bask in the sunshine of unmitigated respectability. There will be nothing in these pages to give offence (and therefore pleasure) to Mrs. Grundy, or to raise that tender blush on the cheek of a maiden, which he has been assured still exists; although he has never yet had the good fortune to see it.

The two chief sources of information about the earlier part of the lives of the first Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, are The History of the Rebellion, by Lord Clarendon; and The Life of the Most Illustrious Prince, William Duke of Newcastle, by Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. The first-mentioned book needs no recommendation; as to the second and its fellow-works, such high authorities as the Master and other Dons of St. John’s College, Cambridge, wrote to its author: “Your Excellencies books ... will not only survive our University, but hold date even with time itself; ... and incontinently this age, by reading of your books, will lose its barbarity and rudeness, being made tame by the elegance of your style and matter”.

In case this testimony should not be considered sufficient, another contemporary criticism shall be produced, namely, that of a certain Mr. Pepys, who kept a diary, and wrote in it on the 18th of March, 1667 (the same year in which the Master and Dons of St. John’s wrote their letter quoted above)—“Staid at home reading the ridiculous History of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife; which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him”. Probably an estimate of the Duchess’s book, about half-way between that of the Dons and that of the diarist, would not be very far from a just one.

A serious drawback to most biographies is that they begin with the dull subject of family history and end with the dreary one of death; and, of the two, the latter frequently affords less dreary reading than the former. Happily, in the present instance, pedigree can be almost dispensed with; for it would be an insult to the reader to suppose him ignorant of the history of so celebrated a family as that of Cavendish, which, as Burke observes, “laid the foundations of its greatness originally on the share of Abbey lands, obtained, at the dissolution of the monasteries, by Sir William Cavendish”. This Sir William Cavendish left two sons who had issue; the eldest of these, William, became first Earl of Devonshire, and the younger, Sir Charles of Welbeck Abbey, was the father of William Cavendish (the chief subject of these pages), who became first Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Those who profess to understand the mysteries of heredity say that children more frequently inherit the characteristics of their grandparents than those of their parents, and that a great man more often had a brilliant mother or grandmother than a brilliant father or grandfather. The William Cavendish in whom it is hoped that the reader may be interested had a very remarkable grandmother in Margaret, the third wife of Sir William Cavendish of the aforesaid Abbey Lands. She was a widow when Sir William married her, and she had inherited her late husband’s large estates under settlements. This estimable woman had no less than four rich husbands and succeeded in obtaining magnificent settlements from every one of them.