The Project Gutenberg eBook, The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by Thomas Longueville

Transcriber’s Notes.

Footnotes were moved to the ends of the text they pertain to and numbered in one continuous sequence.

Other changes made are noted at the [end of the book.]

WILLIAM CAVENDISH, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE

THE
FIRST DUKE AND DUCHESS
OF
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE

BY THE AUTHOR OF

“A LIFE OF SIR KENELM DIGBY,” “THE LIFE OF A PRIG,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1910

PREFACE

The compiler of these pages does not labour under the delusion that he has written a book. All that he has attempted has been, as it were, to invite his reader to an arm-chair in his study, and to place in the reader’s hands a succession of open volumes and copies of manuscripts containing passages which throw more or less light upon the lives of the first Duke and Duchess of Newcastle. Occasionally he has ventured to make a few remarks, either of introduction or of retrospection, concerning the evidence thus brought before his guest, remarks which may easily be skipped at will.

This humble form of literary labour has the signal advantage that, if it fails to attract the reader, it succeeds in affording an object for reading to the writer.

Much assistance has been most kindly given in this work by Mr. Walter Herries Pollock.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[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.

Collins[2] says that, on the death of Sir William Cavendish, she married Sir William St. Lowe, “possessor of divers fair lordships in Gloucester, which, in articles of marriage, she took care should be settled on her, and her own heirs, in default of issue by him, and accordingly, having no child by him, she lived to enjoy his whole estate, excluding his former daughters and brothers.” On his death she married George, Earl of Shrewsbury, “whom she brought to terms” in an excellent marriage settlement, and she made him marry his eldest son and heir to her own youngest daughter, and his youngest daughter to her own eldest son. Well, in her case, may Collins speak of “Conditions that, perhaps, never fell to any one woman ... to rise by every husband into greater wealth, and higher honours; to have an unanimous issue by one husband only, etc.”

[2] Historical Collections of the Noble Families of Cavendish, etc., p. 14 seq.

The “unanimous issue by one husband only” was the best part of the business, as it had the effect of concentrating the riches of four very wealthy husbands upon the offspring of one.

The grandmother of the first Duke of Newcastle, says Collins, “built three of the most elegant seats that were ever raised by one hand within the same county, beyond example, Chatsworth, Hardwick, and Oldcoates, all transmitted to the first Duke of Devonshire”.

Collins presently hints at a slight thorn which accompanied the roses of Lady Shrewsbury’s riches, at a certain period. He says: “It must not be forgotten, that this lady had the honour to be the Keeper of Mary, Queen of Scots, committed prisoner to George, Earl of Shrewsbury for seventeen years.” On the tomb of her husband, George, at Sheffield, is inscribed: “quod licet a malevolis propter suspectam cum captiva Regina familiaritatem saepius male audivit”.

THE CASTLE OF THE OGLES

Inherited by Newcastle from his mother. From his book on horsemanship

Possibly the excellent Lady Shrewsbury may have been more concerned about her husbands making first-rate settlements upon her before marriage, than about their morals after marriage. In the case of Mary, Queen of Scots, however, she gave Queen Elizabeth a gentle hint that there were “goings-on,” with the result that Lord Shrewsbury was immediately deprived of the smiles of his captive Queen.

The Sir William Cavendish with whom we have to deal was born during the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1592. Of course his mother was an heiress. Undoubtedly his grandmother would not have allowed his father to marry any one who was not! She was, in fact, the younger of the two daughters and co-heiresses of the seventh Baron Ogle. The elder co-heiress was the wife of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and, as was very proper, she died without issue.

Collins[3] has a little to tell us about Cavendish’s boyhood.

[3] P. 25.

“After his school-learning, he was entered a scholar of St. John’s College, in Cambridge; but, delighting more in sports than in books, his father finding he had a ready wit, and a very good disposition, suffered him to follow his own genius, and had him instructed, by the best masters, in the arts of horsemanship and weapons, which he was most inclined to, and soon became master of them.”

As the Duchess of Newcastle is said to have consulted her husband about her writings, and as he is reported to have helped her considerably in writing them, it is highly probable that her account of the education of a boy of the period describes Newcastle’s own experiences. In her Nature’s Pictures by Fancy’s Pencil, she says: “His education, in the first place, was to learn the horn-book, from that his primer, and so the Bible, by his mother’s chambermaid or the like. But after he came to ten years old or thereabouts he went to a free school where the noise of each scholar’s reading aloud did drown the sense of what they read, burying the knowledge and understanding in the confusion of many words, and several languages; yet was whipt for not learning by their tutors, for their ill-teaching them, which broke and weakened their memories with the over-heavy burthens, striving to thrust in more learning than could be digested or kept in the brain.... After some time he was sent to the University, there continuing from the age of fourteen to the years of eighteen; at last considering with himself that he was buried to the world and the delights therein, conversing more with the dead than the living, in reading old authors, and that little company he had, was only at prayers, and meat; wherein the time of the one was taken up in devotion, the other in eating, or rather fasting; for their prayers were so long and their commons so short, that it seemed rather an humiliation and fasting, than an eating and thanksgiving. But their conversation was a greater penance than their spare diet; for their disputations, which are fed by contradictions, did more wrack the brain, than the other did gripe the belly, the one filling the head with vain opinions and false imaginations, for want of the light of truth, as the other with wind and rude humours, for want of a sufficient nourishment. Where upon these considerations he left the University.”

Could there be a greater contrast than that between Oxford or Cambridge life in the seventeenth century and in the twentieth?

Despite what Collins says about the young Cavendish delighting more in sports than in books, as well as a statement by his Duchess that “to school-learning he never showed a great inclination,” it is said in the Biographia Britannica[4] that his father, “discovering, even in his infancy, the strongest marks of an extraordinary genius, etc...., was extremely careful in the cultivation of them, and took all imaginable pains to have him instructed, as well in sciences as in languages; so that, at an age when most young gentlemen are but entering on knowledge, he might be truly said to have acquired a large stock of solid learning, which was adorned with an easy and polite behaviour, that, except on proper occasions, entirely concealed the scholar under the more taking appearance of the fine gentleman.”

[4] Edition 1748, vol. II, p. 1208.

Thomas Hobbes, the “Philosopher of Malmsbury,” was tutor to William’s first cousin, whose name was also William. Hobbes may or may not have acted as tutor to the subject of our story; but it was probably through Hobbes’s introduction in a tutorial capacity into the Cavendish family that he became an intimate friend of the William with whom we are concerned.

Cavendish was taken early to the Court of James I who made him a Knight of the Bath when he was about 17 or 18, and he was sent from thence to Savoy, with the Ambassador Extraordinary, Sir Henry Wotton. It was thus Cavendish’s fortune to be thrown early in life into the company of a man of considerable culture and no little experience of foreign Courts. Wotton had had an opportunity of earning the deep gratitude of James I in a rather romantic episode; but when that King sent him as his Ambassador to Venice, he was asked (at Augsburg) to contribute to a lady’s album, and he was so imprudent as to write: “An Ambassador is an honest man, sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.” King James was told of this and was so offended that, for five years after Wotton’s return from Venice, he gave him no further employment. Then he relented, and, at the time with which we are now dealing, James sent him as his representative to the Duke of Savoy, who, after having been allied with Spain against France, was now making an alliance with France against Spain.

In Wotton, who eventually became Provost of Eton, Cavendish had as a companion a man of letters. Of his poetry only two fragments shall be quoted.

Untrue she was: yet I believed her eyes

(Instructed spies)

Till I was taught that love was but a school

To breed a fool.

—love, lodged in a woman’s breast,

Is but a guest.

Wotton’s literary tastes may have had the effect of implanting a love of literature in Cavendish, or at least of inducing him to dabble in literature. The very fact of his father’s never pressing the boy to give much attention to books or scholars in early youth, may have disposed him to cultivate both at maturity.

It was an advantage for Cavendish to learn something of foreign countries and customs at the Court of the Duke of Savoy; and in courtiery,[5] as in other professions, it is well for a man to make the inevitable mistakes of early practice away from home. At that Court he was treated with great kindness. The Duchess of Newcastle writes:—

“He went to travel with Sir Henry Wotton who was sent as Ambassador Extraordinary to the then Duke of Savoy; which Duke made very much of My Lord, and when he would be free in Feasting, placed Him next to himself. Before My Lord did return with the Ambassador into England, the said Duke profer’d my Lord, that if he would stay with him, he would not onely confer upon him the best Titles of Honour he could, but also give him an honourable Command in War, although My Lord was but young, for the Duke had then some designs of War. But the Ambassador, who had taken the care of My Lord, would not leave Him behind without His Parents consent.”

[5] A word used by Ben Jonson.

“At last, when My Lord took his leave of the Duke, the Duke being a very generous person, presented him with a Spanish Horse, a saddle very richly embroidered, and with a rich Jewel of Diamonds.”

About a year after William Cavendish’s return from Savoy, his father died; but the dates of the events recently recorded in this chapter vary so much according to different authorities, that it is difficult to arrive at anything like accuracy respecting them. Sir Charles Cavendish left his son great wealth and, as a very rich man was a valuable asset even to a King in those early times, Cavendish’s position at Court became more than doubly assured. On the other hand, he is said not to have been a favourite of that almighty potentate, Buckingham, although their correspondence shows that they professed to be on terms of friendship.

Some five years after his father’s death, Cavendish married. His second wife thus describes the marriage with his first:—

“His mother, being then a Widow, was desirous that My Lord should marry; in obedience to whose commands, he chose a Wife both to his own good liking, and his Mothers approving; who was Daughter and Heir to William Basset of Blore[6] Esq., a very honourable and ancient family in Staffordshire, by whom was added a great part to His Estate, as hereafter shall be mentioned”.

[6] This was the Blore near Ashbourne, and not the Blore near Blore Heath (also in Staffordshire), where the battle of that name was fought.

Elsewhere the Duchess is condescending enough to say that “his first wife was a very kind, loving and Virtuous Lady,” which, in most cases, might be taken to mean about the worst that one lady could politely say of another.

Collins states that Cavendish’s first wife, who, by the way, was the widow of the first Earl of Suffolk, “brought him a yearly inheritance of £2400, besides a jointure for life of £800 per ann. and between six and seven thousand pounds in money”. Something over £3000 a year in those days would be the equivalent of more than £10,000 in ours, and Cavendish seems to have inherited some of his celebrated grandmother’s talent for falling in love upon a sound financial basis. His Duchess writes:—

“After My Lord was married, he lived, for the most part, in the country, and pleased Himself and his neighbours with Hospitality, and such delights as the Country afforded; onely now and then he would go up to London for some short time to wait on the King”.

Possibly the frowns of Buckingham may have perceptibly increased Cavendish’s appreciation of “such delights as the Country afforded”.

CHAPTER II.

In the year 1620, Cavendish was raised to the peerage. The Duchess says:—

“About this time King James of blessed memory, having a purpose to confer some Honour upon My Lord, made him Viscount Mansfield, and Baron of Bolsover”.

But the event is less prettily described in a State Paper:—[7]

“John Woodford to Sir Fras. Nethersole.

“November 7th, 1620.

“The parliament is now resolved ... for the accommodating of your disputes between the heyres of the late Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir William Cavendish, a nephew of the Earl of Devonshire who hath been intitled to some of those lands by the Countess of Shrewsbury, prisoner in the tower, as an expedient to create the said Sir William, at the request of the heyres above mentioned, Viscount of Mansfield, which is newly done by pattent.”

[7] State Papers, Foreign (Germany, States), vol. XIX. p. 189.

From this it seems that the Duchess would have been nearer the mark if she had writen:—

“About this time King James, of blessed memory, having a purpose to smooth over a troublesome dispute, made my Lord Viscount Mansfield and Baron Ogle,[8] for a consideration”.

[8] Not Baron of Bolsover till later.

There is reason for suggesting the last clause. From what the Duchess wrote, it might be inferred that these honours were given simply as the reward of merit, without any monetary payment on the part of the recipient; but judging from the following very matter-of-fact letter from Cavendish, about a peerage, not for himself but for another, a somewhat different inference might excusably be drawn.

“State Papers, Domestic, Charles 1st. Vol. LV, No. 26. 1627, Feb. 27.

“Mansfield to the Duke of Buckingham.

“To my most Hon^ble Patron the Duke of Buckingham his Grace.

“May it please your Grace,

“Accordinge to your Lo^p commands I have treated with my cosen Pierepoint, and as effectually as I coulde, his answer in his own wordes are these: he sayeth that Doctor Moore treated with him in King James his times aboute Honor, and tolde him that if he woulde be a Baron he might and for 4000£.

Soone after that creation, he shoulde have the Honor to be a Viscount for 4000£ more, and within a little space after that to have the Dignety of an Erle conferr’d upon him for 4000£ more. And further he sayeth that a Scotch Knight offered him the Honor of a Viscount for 5000£ at the first, slippinge the title of a Baron. So that by this Valuation an Erle by purchase is but a reasonable bargaine att 12,000£ and a Viscount at 5000£ and a Barron 4000£.... For my parte, I never herde that a Baron was under 9 or 10,000£, but for my one experience I had little more than in the quittinge of an olde debt.”

Cavendish, even early in his life, lent, or gave, large sums to the King, and by what he says about “quittinge of an olde debt,” he probably means that his peerages were given to him in lieu of payment of the debts owed to him by the King. He continues:—

“He sayeth further that he is not a moneyde man and I believe itt, for he purchases mutch and therefore he sayeth he can not paye any great sum downe uppon the nayle, butt as he gets itt oute of his revenues, and so he must paye itt, and I think he would be loth to gve upon interest for Honor ... I protest, my Lo: I have dun my uttermost, and can get no more oute of him but infinite thankes to your Grace for his favour, and sweares he will never be a Lord but by your Grace’s favour, or your Ho^ble Mother’s whilst he lives. I thinke that if your Lo^p did speake with him at London, he might be brought to good termes....

“Your Grace’s

“W.[9] Mansfield.

[9] In those times peers sometimes signed their names with an initial before the title.

It may have been observed that Cavendish writes as if payment for peerages were a matter of course, a rule in fact; and, allowing for the difference in the value of money, they appear to have cost as much then as they cost now, or even more. Evidently any man “willing to receave honor,” and willing to pay for it, was looked upon as fair game.

In the seventeenth century there was no central Conservative or central Liberal fund to receive the payments for peerages. Who then received them? Would it be the King? or would it be Buckingham?

“My cosen Pierepoint” must have submitted to be bled and to be bled freely; for a couple of months later he was created Baron Pierrepont, of Holme Pierrepont, Co. Nottingham, and Viscount Newark; and a year later he was created Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull.[10] Probably Buckingham took Cavendish’s advice as to Pierrepont, “spoke with him at London” and “brought him to good termes”—most likely something much better than the £12,000 mentioned in Cavendish’s letter. Let no one henceforward speak about the purchase of peerages as if it were a modern abuse.

[10] Burke’s Extinct Peerages, p. 427.

In the year 1628, Cavendish was created Earl of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Baron Cavendish of Bolsover;[11] and no doubt he was made to pay a good round sum in hard cash for this reward of “his true and faithful service to his King and Country”.

[11] He inherited the Barony of Ogle on the death of his mother who had eventually become sole heiress to the dignity of her father. He then waived any right he might have to that dignity by his first creation (Biog. Brit.).

In spite of what we have read as to Cavendish being out of favour with Buckingham, the letter just quoted shows that Buckingham entrusted him with so delicate and confidential an errand as the squeezing of money out of a candidate for a peerage. The following letter, written a year later than the first, and shortly before Cavendish’s promotion to an earldom, proves that Buckingham employed him also in an, if possible, even more purely business transaction, although with the same negotiator, namely, “my cosen Pierepoint,” who had now become Lord Newark.

“State Papers, Domestic, Charles Ist. Vol. CVIII, No. 72. June 1628.

“William Viscount Mansfield to the Duke of Buckingham.

“May it please your Grace,

“To give you an account of your Commandes to me in treatinge with my Lo: of Newarke.

I protest to God I did use as much diligence and care posibly I could to bringe him on.”

The business, apparently, was a proposed sale of land. Cavendish had just begun to be hopeful of making his bargain, when Lord Newark suddenly protested:—

“That he had made sollem vowe which was nott to be broken that he would never sell that lande or part with itt any waye, and that he had made another vowe before the Docter bought his Lande, that he would never bye ... though I sett before him the goodness of the bargin and what a small value that was to advance himself to that Honor, and how mutch he should serve and please so Ho^ble a friend as your Grace was to him, not forgettinge of the contrary side to laye sum dangers before him.”

Cavendish might well point out that there would be “sum dangers” in opposing the will of Buckingham;[12] but, as it happened, a couple of months later Buckingham was assassinated.

[12] Cavendish’s son, Henry, married a grand-daughter of Lord Newark. Lord Newark lost his life through Cavendish’s brother, Sir Charles Cavendish. The Parliamentarians had captured Lord Newark—then Earl of Kingston—and were taking him in a boat to Hull. Sir Charles pursued them and demanded that they should stop and release the Earl. On their refusing, Sir Charles ordered his men to fire, when they unfortunately killed Kingston and his servant. They afterwards captured the boat and slew all its crew. Kingston had strongly disapproved of the King’s despotic measures; but could not bring himself to join the Parliamentary party against the sovereign to whom he owed all his honours: therefore he decided to be neutral. When urged to join the Roundhead army, he replied: “When I take arms with the King against the Parliament, or with the Parliament against the King, let a cannon bullet divide me between them”. On the occasion described above, when the men in Sir Charles Cavendish’s boat opened fire upon that in which Kingston was a prisoner, Kingston hurried on deck “to show himself, and to prevail with them to forbear shooting; but as soon as he appeared, a cannon bullet flew from the King’s army, and divided him in the middle, being then in the Parliament’s pinnace, who perished according to his own unhappy imprecation” (quoted in Burke’s Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, vol. I, pp. 208-9; authority not named).

Newcastle, as we must now call William Cavendish, had a rent-roll of more than £22,000 a year—a very large income at the then value of gold—besides more than £3000 a year from his wife. Even with this wealth, he found his visits to the Court very expensive and by degrees even embarrassing, as will be seen presently.

Of Newcastle’s private correspondence at the period which we have lately been considering, there is a good deal among the manuscripts at Welbeck.[13] Only a few specimens shall be given.

[13] Historical Manuscripts Commission, 13th Report, Appendix, Part II, p. 120 seq.

“The King to William, Viscount Mansfield.

“1621, March 10. The Palace of Westminster.—Permitting him on account of his wife’s sickness to be absent from Parliament, but directing him to send up his proxy to some fit person. Signed. Seal of Arms. Countersigned, ‘Windebank’.”

How many a modern legislator would be thankful to be allowed to send a proxy to the House!

“T. Earl of Arundel to Viscount Mansfield at Welbeck.

“1621, June 5. Whitehall.—I am sorry that this accidente of myne had that effecte to my frendes—especially farre of—as to make them, out of theyre care to me, give themselves trouble. For myselfe I thanke God it gave much ease and rest whilst I was in the Tower, and when I came out, it shewed the King’s constancy and favor to his servantes that love him truly, and made me see I had some true frendes.”

To be sent to the Tower was no rare event to a peer in those times. The father of the writer of the above letter had died in it.

“W. Earl of Newcastle to his Wife, the Countess of Newcastle, at Welbeck.

“1629, July 28. Chatsworth.—There is great change in Chatsworth since the death of the Lord. For privacy I could be weary, but I will not, out of respect for my lord.”

“Henry Bates to the Earl of Newcastle, at Welbeck.

“1631, April 30th. London.—The Lord Castlehaven is tryd by his peeres, condemned upon” certain horrible crimes “to be hanged.... Dr. Winniffe of Paul’s and Dr. Wickam of York are his confessors. He was very dumb at first, but now speakes, prayes, weepes, tells the confession of his sins, writes the confession of his faythe. He abjures Rome, disavows that aspersion of drinking wine and tobacco[14] in the church, and saying ‘this is better than 20£ a month’. Never man more humbled and wonderfully chered by the receipt of the Communion. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘I feele my Saviour,’ and instantly gusht out teares.... He confesses all crimes but those that touche his life. These he layes to a plott. His sisters petition for his life; some saye the Queene appeares in the suite. He desires death, and is no more ashamed—he sayth—of hanging in a rope, then Christ was for his sins upon the crosse. Had he craved his booke, he had lived by the statute that gives it to noblemen for any first fact or crime but treason or murther.[15] This week four have died of the plague.”

[14] “Drinking tobacco” has an odd look; but it was a phrase of the time. One version of a well-known refrain ran:—

“Think this while you’re drinking tobacco”.

[15] He was executed on Tower Hill on 14 May, 1631. A fresh patent of nobility was afterwards granted to his son.

The appointment of Newcastle to attend the King to Scotland, noticed at the end of the next letter, was destined to put him to enormous expense.

“Francis, Lord Cottington to the Earl of Newcastle.

“1632, December 13. Charing Cross.—The death of the two Kings, Sweden and Bohemia, with his Majesty’s late sickness of the small-pox, has almost put by here all kind of home negociations; yet I must tell you from my Lord Treasurer that you are lively in the memory both of the King and of his lordship. The King is now well though he still keeps his chamber, and my Lord Deputy[16] is precisely sent for, so that you will have one friend more here. You are appointed to attend the King into Scotland which I conceive might be a good motive for your friends to put it to a period.”

[16] Strafford.

The “good motive for your friends to put it to a period” probably alluded to an object that Newcastle had very much at heart, of which we shall hear more by and by.

CHAPTER III.

Clarendon tells us something of the personality of Newcastle.[17] “He was a very fine gentleman, active, full of courage and most accomplished in those qualities of horsemanship, dancing and fencing, which accompany a good breeding, in which his delight was. Besides that, he was amorous in poetry and music, to which he indulged the greatest part of his time.”

[17] History, Book viii. p. 507.

Newcastle seems also to have been “amorous” in pictures, if we may judge from the following letter.[18]

[18] Hist. MSS. Comm., 13th Rep., Appendix, Part II, p. 131.

“W. Earl of Newcastle to Sir Anthony Vandyke.

“1636 (7) February. Welbeck.—The favours of my friends you have so transmitted unto me as the longer I looke on them the more I think them nature and not art. It is not my error alone. If it be a disease, it is epidemical, for such power hath your hand on the eyes of mankind. Next the blessing of your company and sweetness of conversation, the greatest blessing were to be an Argus or all over but one eye, so it or they were ever fixed upon that which we must call yours. What wants in judgment I can supply with admiration, and scape the title of ignorance since I have the luck to be astonished in the right place, and the happiness to be passionately your humble servant.”

Clarendon evidently thought that Newcastle’s loyalty to the King and the Church did not proceed entirely from disinterested motives; for he says: “He loved Monarchy, as it was the foundation and support of his own greatness; and the Church, as it was well constituted for the splendour and security of the Crown; and religion, as it cherished and maintained that order and obedience that was necessary to both; without any other passion for the particular opinions which were grown up in it, and distinguished it into parties, than as he detested whatever was likely to disturb the public peace”. As indeed a man with a large estate and a large income well might!

The Duchess writes: “His shape is neat, and exactly proportioned; his stature of a middle size, and his complexion sanguine”. She was too refined to talk about a red face. “His behaviour is such that it might be a pattern for all gentlemen; for it is courtly, civil, easy and free, without formality or constraint; and yet hath something in it of grandure, that causes an awful respect towards him.” Was there ever a better description of pomposity combined with condescension? “His discourse is as free and unconcerned as his behaviour, pleasant, witty and instructive.... He is neat and cleanly; which makes him to be somewhat long in dressing.... He shifts,” i.e., changes his clothes, “ordinarily once a day, and every time when he uses exercise, or his temper” (temperature?) “is more hot than ordinary.... He makes but one meal a day, at which he drinks two good glasses of small-beer, one about the beginning, the other at the end thereof ... and a little glass of sack in the middle; which glass of sack he also uses in the morning for his breakfast, with a morsel of bread. His supper consists of an egg and a draught of small-beer.... His prime pastime and recreation hath always been the exercise of mannage and weapons.... The rest of his time he spends in music, poetry, and the like.”

The Duchess of Newcastle was such an admirer of her husband that it may be wise to give something more than full credit to her admissions respecting him. Among these are that he had “not so much of scholarship and learning as his brother Sir Charles,” that he was “no mathematician by art,” and that he had one vice in that “he has been a great lover and admirer of the female sex; which whether it be so great a crime as to condemn him for it, I will leave to the judgment of young gallants and beautiful ladies”. She also says: “He is quick in repartees”. The uncharitable may suspect that she had frequently winced under them.

WELBECK

Double-page engraving from Newcastle’s book on horsemanship

As to his religion, we learn something from a letter written by George Con, the papal agent at the Court of Queen Henrietta, to Barberini.[19] “In matters of religion,” he wrote, “the Earl is too indifferent. He hates the Puritans, he laughs at the Protestants, and he has little confidence in the Catholics.”

[19] Additional MSS. 15,391, fol. 1.

On 5 May, 1633, a proclamation was issued that King Charles was about to make a progress to Scotland. Rushworth (Hist. Collections, Part ii. p. 178) states that he left London on the 13th, that after visiting “Giddon near Stilton in Northamptonshire, which by the vulgar sort of people was called a Protestant nunnery,” he went to Welbeck, among other places, and that he “was treated there at a sumptuous feast, by the Earl (since Duke of Newcastle), estimated to stand the Earl in some thousands of pounds”.

Probably a very small part of this money was given to Ben Jonson for the Masque, “Love’s Welcome at Welbeck,” which Jonson’s friend, Newcastle, employed him in writing for the occasion.

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.

“The Earl of Newcastle to the Lord Deputy.[21]

“Welbeck, the 5th of August, 1633.

“I heartily congratulate your Lordship’s safe arrival in Ireland.... I give your Lordship thanks for your noble and kind counsel; the truth is, my Lord, I have waited of the King the Scotish journey both diligently, and, as Sir Robert Swift said of my Lord of Carlile, it was no small charge unto me. I cannot find by the King but he seemed to be pleased with me very well, and never used me better or more graciously; the truth is, I have hurt my estate much with the hopes of it,”—we may reasonably infer that “it” refers to the coveted governorship—“and I have been put in hope long, and so long as I will labour no more of it, but let nature work and expect the issue at Welbeck; for I would be loth to be sick in mind, body, and purse, and when it is too late to repent, and my reward laugh’d at for my labour. It is better to give over in time with some loss than lose all, and mend what is to come, seeing what is past is not in my power to help. Besides, my Lord, if I obtained what I desire, it would be a more painful life, and since I am so much plunged in debt, it would help very well to undo me; for I know not how to get, neither know I any reason why the King should give me anything. Children come on apace, my Lord, and with this weight of debt that lies upon me, I know no better diet than a strict diet in the country, which, in time, may recover me of the prodigal disease. By your favour, my Lord, I cannot say I have recovered myself at Welbeck this summer, but run much more in debt than I ever did, but I hope hereafter I may. The truth is, my Lord, for my Court business, your Lordship with your noble friends and mine have spoken so often to the King, and myself refreshed his memory in that particular, so that I mean not to move my friends any more to their so great trouble.”

[21] Strafford Letters, I. 101.

From this it would seem that Newcastle, as well as his friends, had very often asked the King to make him Governor to the Prince. “Refreshing the King’s memory,” he calls it!

After writing at some length in the same letter about his devotion to the King, he seems to have forgotten that he had said he would not trouble his friends to speak any more to the King on his behalf; for presently he rather inconsistently says:—

“To try your Lordship’s friends in my behalf, I humbly thank you for the motion, and desire your Lordship to follow it. For the King’s particular liking of my proper person, I think my Lord of Carlile would do best, or what doth your Lordship think of his Lady, for further I would not willingly have it go; but I assure your Lordship I am most confident of the King’s good opinion of me....

“W. Newcastle.”

Considerable further correspondence passed between Newcastle and Wentworth about the much-longed-for appointment and the most likely method of obtaining it. Nearly a year later than the date of the above letter, Wentworth wrote the following advice to Newcastle.

“The Lord Deputy to the Earl of Newcastle.[22]

“Dublin, this 19th of July, 1634.

[22] Strafford Letters, I. 274.

“Upon the whole matter my opinion is that attending upon the King two or three days journey after his going from Welbeck, you should yourself gently renew the motion to the King, as one resolved to take it only as a personal obligation from himself alone; and therefore if His Majesty should be induced to grant that you desire, which ariseth merely from a singleness of affection, you should receive it and value it, as the highest honour you can have in this world to be always near him. On the other side, if in his wisdom he should not conceive it fit, you should wholly acquiesce in his good pleasure, and beseech him to reckon you as a servant of his, ready to lay down your life, wherever he should be pleased to require it of you; and be sure to express it plainly, that if he in his grace toward you shall think good to take you so near him, it shall be your greatest comfort; but to have it by any other means or interposition, which might expect any of the obligation from His Majesty, it would in no degree be so acceptable unto you, that covet it not for any private bettering of your fortune, but merely as a mark of his respect and estimation of you, and that you might have the happiness to spend your life near that person, which you did not only reverence as your sovereign, but infinitely love and admire for his piety and wisdom....

“Your lordship’s most faithful and humble servant,

“Wentworth.”

BOLSOVER CASTLE

From Newcastle’s book on horsemanship

In the year 1634, an event took place which may have made Newcastle rather more hopeful of gaining his end about the Governorship.

The Duchess writes:—

“A year after His Return out of Scotland, He [the King] was pleased to send my Lord word, That Her Majesty the Queen was resolved to make a Progress into the Northern parts, desiring him to prepare the like Entertainment for Her, as he had formerly done for Him,”—no very moderate request—“which My Lord did, and endeavour’d for it with all possible Care and Industry, sparing nothing that might add splendor to that Feast, which both Their Majesties were pleased to honour with their Presence: Ben Jonson he employed in fitting such Scenes and Speeches as he could best devise;”—this was the masque entitled “Love’s Welcome at Bolsover,”—“and sent for all the Gentry of the Country to come and wait on their Majesties; and in short, did all that ever he could imagine, to render it Great, and worthy Their Royal Acceptance.

“This Entertainment he made at Bolsover-Castle, in Derbyshire, some five miles distant from Welbeck, and resigned Welbeck for Their Majesties Lodging; it cost him in all between Fourteen and Fifteen thousand pounds.”

Miss Strickland (Queens of England, VIII. 72) thought that this royal entertainment at Bolsover gained for Newcastle the Governorship of the Prince. “So much pleased,” she says, “were the royal pair with the literary taste of the earl and his royal hospitalities at Bolsover, that they agreed in the appointment of Newcastle, as governor to Charles, Prince of Wales.” But this is not very probable; for so long as two years later, Newcastle was very despondent about obtaining the appointment. He had gone to London, and his attempts to secure it had been so much talked about that he was reported to have succeeded. This report had even reached the ears of the King, and it is unlikely to have increased his chances of success.

“W. Earl of Newcastle to his wife (the Countess of Newcastle).[23]

“1636, April 8. London.—There is nothing I either say or do or here but it is a crime, and I find a great deal of venom against me, but both the King and the Queen have used me very graciously. Now they cry me down more than ever they cried me up, and so now think me a lost man. They say absolutely another shall be for the Prince and that the King wondered at the report and said he knew no such thing and told the Queen so; but I must tell you I think most of these are lies, and nobody knows except the King.”

[23] Welbeck MSS., Hist. Comm. Reports, 13th Report, Appendix, Part II, p. 127.

He had several rivals for the office.

The Same to (the Same).

“1636, April 15, Good Friday. London.—My Lord Danby certainly did put very far for governor to the Prince but is gone to his government at Guernsey, and they say is denied. My Lord of Leicester has also tried for it but they say he is to go ambassador into France. Lord Goring also plies it for the same place, but they say he will not get it. The Scots also put in for it but it is not thought they will get it. It is believed absolutely that I must be about the Prince, and some say that I am to have my Lord of Carlisle’s place, others that I am to be made of the Garter with the Prince, which will save me £10,000.”

The Same to (the Same).

“1636, May 23. London.—I am very weary and mean to come down presently. I was yesterday with the ‘B. B.,’ and for anything I find it is a lost business.”

At this date Newcastle was evidently in despair and was on the point of going home in very low spirits. Place-hunting is not invariably an exhilarating sport, and Newcastle was certainly a place-hunter at this period. Some words of one of his former contemporaries (Francis Bacon)—a place-hunter himself—are not inapplicable to his case. “The rising into place is laborious; and by pains men come to greater pains.... By indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.”

CHAPTER IV.

Everything is said to come to him who knows how to wait. Possibly this may not be a universal experience; but the Governorship of the Prince of Wales did come at last to the long-waiting Newcastle. The appointment was conveyed by the following very courteous letter, and it was accepted by a somewhat obsequious reply.

“Mr. Secretary Windebank to the Earl of Newcastle.[24]

“My Lord,

“His Majesty having a purpose, according to the precedents of former times, to settle the government of the person and family of the Prince answerable to his state and years; and having deliberately advised upon some person of honour and trust, to be near his Highness, and to be a chief director in so weighty a business; hath been pleased, in his gracious opinion of your Lordship, to make choice of you to be the only gentleman of his Bedchamber at this time, and hath commanded me to give you knowledge of this his princely resolution. And withal his Majesty’s pleasure is, that you prepare yourself to come to the Court in diligence, and to attend His Majesty before the Sunday fortnight after Easter, which will be the eighth day of April.

[24] Clarendon State Papers, Oxford, Clarendon Printing House, 1773, pp. 7, 8.

“And lastly his Majesty hath expressly commanded me to let your Lordship know, that you have no particular obligation to any whatsoever in this business, but merely and entirely to the King’s and Queen’s Majesties alone: who of their own mere and special grace and goodness have made this choice, and vouchsafed you this honour; the continuance and increase whereof, and of much happiness with it, I wish to your Lordship, and so rest your Lordship’s humble and faithful servant,

“Fran. Windebank.

“At the Court of Whitehall,
“19th March, 1637.”

“The Earl of Newcastle to Mr. Secretary Windebank.

“Noble Sir,

“I beseech you to present me in the most humble manner in the world to the Sacred Majesty, and to let his Majesty know I shall as cheerfully as diligently obey his Majesty’s commands. Truly, the infinite favour, honour and trust his Majesty is pleased to heap on me in this princely employment, is beyond any thing I can express. It was beyond a hope of the most partial thoughts I had about me.”—We have seen enough to be aware that Newcastle at least departed rather widely from accuracy of statement here.—“Neither is there any thing in me left, but a thankful heart filled with diligence, and obedience to his Sacred Majesty’s will.

“It is not the least favour of the King and Queen’s Majesties to let me know my obligation: and I pray, sir, humbly inform their Majesties, it is my greatest blessing that I owe myself to none but their Sacred Majesties, God ever preserve them and theirs, and make me worthy of their Majesty’s favours!

“I have but seldom had the honour to receive letters from you; but such as these you cannot write often. But truly I am very proud I received such happy news by your hand, which shall ever oblige me to be inviolably, Sir, your most faithful and obliged servant,

“W. Newcastle.

“Welbeck, the 21st of March, 1637.”

In Lodge’s opinion, although Windebank says the King had commanded him to assure Newcastle that he did not owe his appointment “to any whatsoever,” it “was most probably with Wentworth’s advice” that the King gave it to him, which seems likely enough. It is pretty clear that, all through, Newcastle had asked for the appointment himself and had got others to ask for it for him. We have seen that he sought Wentworth’s services in the matter and suggested that Wentworth should also obtain those of Lord and Lady Carlisle. At the same time he wanted to have the credit of having been given the appointment by the King, solely on the King’s own initiative, without any begging whatever, either by himself or by anybody else. Nor is it unlikely that Strafford, knowing Newcastle’s anxiety on this point, may have inspired Windebank to write the last paragraph of his letter, in which, with very suspicious ostentation, he assures Newcastle that he does not owe his appointment to any outside influence.

Few details exist concerning Newcastle’s conduct and experiences as Governor of the future Charles II. On one occasion he seems to have had reasons for complaining of his pupil to the boy’s mother, the Queen, who wrote to the little delinquent:—

“Charles,[25]

“I am sorry that I must begin my first letter by chiding you, because I hear that you will not take phisicke. I hope it was onlie for this day, and that to-morrow you will do it; for if you will not, I must come to you and make you take it, for it is for your health. I have given order to mi Lord of Newcastel to send mi word tonight whether you will or not; therefore I hope you will not give mi the paines to goe; and so I rest

“Your affectionate mother,

“Henriette Marie.

[25] Strickland’s Queens, VIII. 73.

It may have been in sarcastic reference to this little episode that the Prince wrote the following letter in a round hand, between double lines, when his correspondent was apparently also a patient.

“Charles, Prince of Wales, to His Governor,
Lord Newcastle.

“My Lord,

“I would not have you take too much phisicke, for it doth always make me worse; and I think it will doe the like with you. I ride every day, and am ready to follow any other directions from you.

“Make haste back to him that loves you.

“Charles P.”

A letter of instructions written by Newcastle to his pupil is a curiosity in its way. It is a sort of English Il Principe. Only portions of it are given here.

“The Earl of Newcastle’s Letter of Instructions to Prince Charles for His Studies, Conduct and Behaviour.[26]

“(From a copy preserved with the Royal Letters in the Harleian MS. 6988, art. 62.)

[26] Ellis’s Letters, Series I. vol. III. p. 288.

“May it Please your Highness ...

“for your education Sir, It is fitt you should have some languages, though I confess I would rather have you study things then words, matter, then language; for seldom a Critick in many languages hath time to study sense, for words; and at best he is or can be but a living dictionary. Besides I would not have you too studious, for too much contemplation spoiles action, and Virtue consists in that. What you read, I woud have it History and the best chosen Histories, that so you might compare the dead with the living, ... and thus you shall see the excellency and errors both of Kings and subjects, and tho’ you are young in years, yet living by your wading in all those times, be older in wisdom and judgement then Nature can afford any man to be without this help.

“For the Arts I wou’d have you know them so far as they are of use, and especially those that are most proper for war and use; but whensoever you are too studious, your contemplation will spoile your government, for you cannot be a good contemplative man and a good commonwealth’s man; therefore take heed of too much book.”

Presently we find this instructor of youth also warning his pupil against too much religious devotion.

“Beware of too much devotion for a King, for one may be a good man but a bad King; and how many will History represente to you that in seeming to gain the kingdome of Heaven, have lost their owne;”—unquestionably a very serious loss! But it seems to have escaped the notice of Newcastle that to keep a kingdom on earth and to lose the kingdom of heaven might also possibly entail certain inconveniences. Newcastle continues: “and the old saying is, that short prayers pierce the heaven’s gates; but if you be not religious, and not only seeme so..., God will not prosper you; and if you have no reverence to him, why should your subjects have any to you. At the best you are accounted for your greatest honour his servant, his deputy, his anointed, and you owe as much reverence and duty to him as we owe to you; and why, nay justly may not he punishe you for want of reverence and service to Him, if you fail in it, as well as you to punish us; but this subject I leave to the right reverend father in God, Lord Bishop of Chichester, your worthy tutor.

“But Sir to fall back again to your reverence at Prayers, so farr as concernes reason and your advantage is my duty to tell you; then I say S^r. were there no Heaven or Hell you shall see the disadvantage, for your government; if you have no reverence at prayers, what will the people have, think you? They go according to the example of the Prince; if they have none, then they have no obedience to God; then they will easily have none to your Highness; no obedience, no subjects.... Of the other side, if any be bible madd, over much burn’t with fiery zeal, they may think it a service to God to destroy you and say the Spirit moved them and bring some example of a King with a hard name in the Old Testament. Thus one way you may have a civil war, the other a private treason.”

There is something decidedly Machiavellian in this advice to the Prince to worship God in order that he may himself in turn be worshipped by his people, and in the warning against any excess of piety, lest his people should fall into the terrible error of worshipping their God so much as to neglect to worship their King. Later on, Newcastle says:—

“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 S^r. 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”.

[27] History, vol. II, part I. book vi.

Events of greater importance than the governorship of the Prince had begun to take place long before Newcastle resigned it, events which eventually proved of more moment than that governorship even to Newcastle himself. John Hampden had been condemned for refusing to pay ship money; Prynne had been pilloried for his writings; Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, had been suspended for libel; and the Scottish Parliament, after abolishing episcopacy, was preparing for war with England. Meanwhile the English Parliament was seething with disaffection.

King Charles mobilised an army to proceed against the Scots. He was sorely in need of money, and Newcastle gave him £10,000 towards the cost of the expedition. And he did more than this. Newcastle, says Clarendon,[28] “one of the most valuable men in the Kingdom, in his fortune, in his dependence, and in his qualifications, had, at his own charge, drawn together a goodly troop of horse of two hundred, which for the most part consisted of the best gentlemen of the North, who were either allied to the Earl, or of immediate dependence upon him, and came together purely on his account; and he called this troop the Prince of Wales’s troop, whereof the Earl himself was captain”.

[28] History, vol. I, part I. book ii.

Rushworth says[29] that, on the same day as the King, “the Earl of Newcastle marched with his troop, carrying the Prince’s colours, into Berwick; and sent out parties to scout upon the Scots borders. His troop consisted of all gentlemen, most of them of very good estates, and fortunes, some £2,000, £1,500, £1,000 and £500 per annum, and the rest of good annual revenue; all gallantly mounted and armed, and well attended, with their own servants well mounted; for the maintaining of which troop the King was put to no charge at all.”

[29] Collections, II, 929.

As everybody knows, this expedition was rendered fruitless, without a blow being struck, by an ill-judged treaty; but it was not altogether without adventure to Newcastle. The King’s cavalry were under the command of the Earl of Holland, and Holland not only disliked Newcastle personally, but was jealous of him on account of the £10,000 which he had given towards the expedition, and the brilliant troop which he had raised to accompany it. On a march over the Scottish border, says Rushworth, “the Earl of Holland put the Prince’s colours, commanded by the Earl of Newcastle, in the rear, which so offended the Earl of Newcastle, and that troop, as his Lordship commanded Cornet Edward Gray (brother to the Lord Gray of Wark), to take the colours from off the staff, yet marched in order without colours”.

Some pages farther on,[30] Rushworth continues this story. “The Earl of Holland, General of the Horse, after he returned from his first expedition into Scotland, complained to his Majesty of the Earl of Newcastle taking off his colours from his staff in that march; the King being also by another noble person made acquainted with the reason of his so doing, because the Prince his colours were put in the rear. The King commended the Earl of Newcastle’s prudence in so doing, and did not attribute it to any unwillingness or neglect of that Earl in his Majesty’s service on that occasion. And his Majesty commanded that, for time to come, that troop of the Earl of Newcastle should be commanded by none but himself whilst they remained upon duty.”

[30] P. 946.

“Afterwards, when a peace was concluded, and the army disbanded, the Earl of Newcastle thought fit to require an account of the Earl of Holland for the said affront which he had put upon him, and sent a challenge to him, and time and place where to meet appointed.[31] The Earl of Newcastle made choice of Francis Palmes for his second, a man of known courage and mettle.[32] The Earl of Newcastle appeared at the time and place, with his second; but the General of the Horse, his second, came alone, by which the Earl of Newcastle concluded that the design had been discovered to the King, who commanded them both to be confined and afterwards made a peace between them.”

[31] The Duchess says: “The place and hour being appointed by both their consents”.

[32] “A gentleman very punctual, and well acquainted with those errands,” says Clarendon, “who took a proper season to mention it to him [Holland] without a possibility of suspicion. The Earl of Holland was never suspected to want courage, yet in this occasion he showed not that alacrity, but that the delay exposed it to notice; and so, by the King’s authority, the matter was composed” (Hist., vol. I, part I. book ii.).

Of this incident Kippis remarks,[33] with a great deal of sense: “Little service could be expected from an army in which an inferior officer might challenge his general, on account of a supposed slight in the giving of orders; and those persons must have had strange ideas of the laws of honour who could blame a commander-in-chief for refusing so unsoldierly a challenge”.

[33] Biog. Brit., Kippis’s ed.

Shortly afterwards Newcastle received the following letter from Sir John Suckling, who, like Newcastle, had raised a troop of horse for the King, and had also led it on the same fruitless expedition to Scotland. Like Newcastle, again, he was literary and a playwright. He had been in a good deal of active military service on the Continent, and he was generous and amusing. If his troop of horse was only half the strength of Newcastle’s, it must have rivalled it, if it did not exceed it, in splendour. Aubrey says of it (Letters, p. 546):—

“Sir John Suckling, at his own chardge, razed a troop of 100 very handsome young proper men, whom he clad in white doubletts and scarlett breeches, scarlett coates, hatts and feathers, well-horsed and armed.”

“Sir John Suckling to the Earl of Newcastle.[34]

“(1640?) January 8. London.—Are the small buds of the white and red rose more delightful than the roses themselves? And cannot the King and Queen invite as stronglie as the roiall issue?

[34] Hist. Com., 13th Rep., Appendix, part ii. p. 133.

“Or has your lordship taken up your freinds opinion of you to your owne use, so that when you are in my Lord of Newcastle’s companie you cannot think of anie other. Excuse me—my Lord—I know it is a pleasure to enioy a priveledge due to the highest excelence—which is to be extreamlie honored and never seen—but withall I beleive the goodnesse of your nature so great that you will not think yourself dearelie borrowed, when your presence shall concerne the fortune of an humble servant. I write not this—my Lord—that you should take a journey on purpose, that were as extravagant as if a man should desire—the universall benefactor—the sun, to come a month or two before his time, onelie to make a spring in his garden. I will as men doe his, wait—my Lord—your comming and in the meantime promise myself good howres without the help of an astrologer, since I suddenlie hope to see the noblest planett of our orb in conjunction with your Lordship.”

Aubrey favours us with a portrait of this correspondent, and evidently familiar friend, of Newcastle: “He was of middle stature and slight strength, brisque round eie, reddish faced, and red nose (ill liver), his head not very big, his hayre a kind of sand colour; his beard turned up naturally, so that he had a brisk and gracefull looke”.

As will soon be seen, a good service which Suckling tried to do for Newcastle, resulted rather to his detriment.

After the expedition to the borders of Scotland and the settlement of his affair with Lord Holland, Newcastle returned to Welbeck, “to his great satisfaction,” says the Duchess, “and with an intent to have continued there, and rested under his own vine and managed his own estate”. As we shall find in the next chapter, he did not rest under his own vine very long.

CHAPTER V.

“Archbishop Laud,” says the Duchess, “was pleased to tell His late Majesty, that my Lord was one of the Wisest and Prudentest Persons that ever he was acquainted with.