WILLIAM CAVENDISH, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.
From an engraving by Wm. Holl, after a painting by Van Dyck.
“New Castell,
“The services I have receaved from you hath beene so eminent, and is lykely to have so great an influence upon all my Affaires, that I need not tell you that I shall never forgett it, but alwais looke upon you as a principall instrument in keeping the Crowne upon my heade. The business of Yorkshire I account almost done, only I put you in mynde to make yourself maister (according as formerly but breefly I have written to you) of all the Armes there, to aske them from the Trained bands by severall divisions, to desyre them from the rest of my well affected subjects, and to take them from the ill affected, espetially Leedes and Halifax....
“Your most asseured constant
“Frend,
“Charles R.”
Something having been said already of Newcastle’s troops and weapons, it may be well to say a little about the General who was in command of them. His contemporaries shall describe him. Clarendon says: “He liked the pomp and absolute authority of a General well, and preserved the dignity of it to the full; and for the discharge of the outward state, and circumstances of it, in acts of courtesy, affability, bounty, and generosity, he abounded, which, in the infancy of war, became him, and made him, for some time, very acceptable to men of all conditions”.
Sir Philip Warwick,[50] a well-known cavalier, who knew Newcastle intimately, bears very similar witness, saying: he “was a gentleman of grandeur, generosity, loyalty, and steady and forward courage”.
[50] Memoires of the Reign of King Charles I, by Sir Philip Warwick, i. p. 235.