CAPEFIGUE, JEAN-BAPTISTE HONORÉ RAYMOND (1801-1872), French historian and biographer, was born at Marseilles in 1801. At the age of twenty he went to Paris to study law; but he soon deserted law for journalism. He became editor of the Quotidienne, and was afterwards connected, either as editor or leading contributor, with the Temps, the Messager des Chambres, the Révolution de 1848 and other papers. During the ascendancy of the Bourbons he held a post in the foreign office, to which is due the royalism of some of his newspaper articles. Indeed all Capefigue’s works receive their colour from his legitimist politics; he preaches divine right and non-resistance, and finds polite words even for the profligacy of Louis XV. and the worthlessness of his mistresses. He wrote biographies of Catherine and Marie de’ Medici, Anne and Maria Theresa of Austria, Catherine II. of Russia, Elizabeth of England, Diana of Poitiers and Agnes Sorel—for he delighted in passing from “queens of the right hand” to “queens of the left.” His historical works, besides histories of the Jews from the fall of the Maccabees to the author’s time, of the first four centuries of the Christian church, and of European diplomatists, extend over the whole range of French history. He died at Paris in December 1872.
The general catalogue of printed books for the Bibliothèque Nationale contains no fewer than seventy-seven works (145 volumes) published by Capefigue during forty years. Of these only the Histoire de Philippe-Auguste (4 vols., 1829) and the Histoire de la réforme, de la ligue et du règne de Henri IV (8 vols., 1834-1835) perhaps deserve still to be remembered. For Capefigue’s style bears evident marks of haste, and although he had access to an exceptionally large number of sources of information, including the state papers, neither his accuracy nor his judgment was to be trusted.
CAPEL (of Hadham), ARTHUR CAPEL, Baron (fl. 1640-1649), English royalist, son of Sir Henry Capel of Rayne Hall, Essex, and of Theodosia, daughter of Sir Edward Montagu of Broughton, Northamptonshire, was elected a member of the Short and Long Parliaments in 1640 for Hertfordshire. He at first supported the opposition to Charles’s arbitrary government, but soon allied himself with the king’s cause, on which side his sympathies were engaged, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Capel of Hadham on the 6th of August 1641. On the outbreak of the war he was appointed lieutenant-general of Shropshire, Cheshire and North Wales, where he rendered useful military services, and later was made one of the prince of Wales’s councillors, and a commissioner at the negotiations at Uxbridge in 1645. He attended the queen in her flight to France in 1646, but disapproved of the prince’s journey thither, and retired to Jersey, subsequently aiding in the king’s escape to the Isle of Wight. He was one of the chief leaders in the second Civil War, but met with no success, and on the 27th of August, together with Lord Norwich, he surrendered to Fairfax at Colchester on promise of quarter for life.[1] This assurance, however, was afterwards interpreted as not binding the civil authorities, and his fate for some time hung in the balance. He succeeded in escaping from the Tower, but was again captured, was condemned to death by the new “high court of justice” on the 8th of March 1649, and was beheaded together with the duke of Hamilton and Lord Holland the next day. He married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, through whom that estate passed into his family, and by whom besides four daughters he had five sons, the eldest Arthur being created earl of Essex at the Restoration. Lord Capel, who was much beloved, and who was a man of deep religious feeling and exemplary life, wrote Daily Observations or Meditations: Divine, Morall, published with some of his letters in 1654, and reprinted, with a short life of the author, under the title Excellent Contemplations, in 1683.
[1] Gardiner’s Hist. of the Civil War, iv. 206; cf. article on Fairfax by C.H. Frith in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.
CAPEL CURIG, a tourist resort in Carnarvonshire, North Wales, 14½ m. from Bangor. It is a collection of a few houses, too scattered to form a village properly so called. At the Roberts hotel is shown on a window pane the supposed signature of Wellington. The road from Bettws y coed, past the Swallow Falls to Capel Curig, and thence to Llanberis and Carnarvon, is very interesting, grand and lonely. Excellent fishing is to be had here, chiefly for trout. In summer, coaching tours discharge numbers of visitors daily; the railway station is Bettws (London & North-Western railway). Capel Curig means “chapel of Curig,” a British saint mentioned in Welsh poetry. The place is a centre for artists, geologists and botanists, for the ascent of Snowdon, Moel Siabod, Glydyr Fawr, Glydyr Fach, Tryfan, &c., and for visiting Llyn Ogwen, Llyn Idwal, Twll du (Devil’s Kitchen), Nant Ffrancon and the Penrhyn quarries.