| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Author: Longueville, Thomas
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne" ***
This book is indexed by ISYS Web Indexing system to allow the reader find any word or number within the document.
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE***
available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/firstdukeduchess01longuoft
Transcriber’s note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Some characters might not display properly in this UTF-8
text file (e.g., empty squares). If so, the reader should
consult the html version or the original page images noted
above.
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.
THE FIRST DUKE AND DUCHESS
OF NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE
[Illustration: 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
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER I.
Clarendon’s _History_ and the Duchess’s biography—Pepys—Family
history—A wonderful grandmother—Boyhood—Hobbes—Wotten—The Court
of Savoy—Said to have been disliked by Buckingham—Marriage 1
CHAPTER II.
Raised to the peerage—Purchases of peerages—Correspondence
with Buckingham—Cousin Pierrepont—Created Earl of
Newcastle—Money-squeezing—Newcastle’s rent-roll—Letters
among the Portland MSS. 12
CHAPTER III.
Personality of Newcastle—Charles I goes to Scotland—Dinner
to the King at Welbeck—Wentworth made Lord Deputy in
Ireland—Correspondence about the post of Governor to the
Prince of Wales—The King stays at Welbeck—Newcastle
discouraged in London—Letters to his wife 22
CHAPTER IV.
Appointed Governor to the Prince of Wales—His pupil will
not take his medicine—Advice of the Governor to the
pupil—Resigns the Governorship—Sir Walter Scott on the
Prince’s Governors—Hampden, Prynne and others—Expedition
against the Scots—Newcastle’s troop of gentlemen—Quarrel
with Lord Holland—Letter from Sir John Suckling 34
CHAPTER V.
Fears of civil war—The Short Parliament—Awkward position of
Strafford—Conway—The King goes to York—The Long
Parliament—Executions of Strafford and Laud—The
Queen—Suckling’s plot—Threatened impeachment of the
Queen—The five members—The King leaves London—Charles
appoints Newcastle Governor of Hull—The Parliament appoints
Sir John Hotham Governor of Hull—Newcastle summoned to
London by the Parliament—Sir John Hotham—The King goes to
Hull—Newcastle appointed to the command of the four northern
counties, and made governor of the city of Newcastle 50
CHAPTER VI.
Charles raises his standard at Nottingham—Appointment of
Fairfax as Newcastle’s opponent—Sedition in Durham—Newcastle
raises an army—Weapons of the period—Supplies sent by the
King of Denmark—Army of the North—Insurrection in
Yorkshire—Newcastle goes to York—A battle _à la_ Don
Quixote—Winter quarters—Newcastle as a General 64
CHAPTER VII.
The General of Infantry—The General of Cavalry—The General
of Artillery—Tadcaster—Correspondence with Hotham—Propositions
of Parliament—Objections to Catholics in Newcastle’s army—The
Parliament specially excepts Newcastle in case of a general
amnesty—The coming of the Queen to Yorkshire 75
CHAPTER VIII.
Boynton Hall—The Queen carries off the plate—Sir Hugh
Cholmley—Position of the Hothams—Hotham tells Newcastle that
he is being traduced at Court—Cholmley’s Memorials of the
Hothams 86
CHAPTER IX.
Goring’s victory at Bramham Moor—Goring’s defeat at
Wakefield—Newcastle takes Rotherham, Sheffield and Howley
House—Newcastle’s great victory at Adderton Moor—Newcastle
contemplates going South to the assistance of the King—He
is created a Marquess—He besieges Hull—The King wishes
him to go to the South—Newcastle raises the siege of Hull 99
CHAPTER X.
Newcastle goes to Chesterfield, and from thence to Bolsover
and Welbeck—News of an approaching Scottish invasion—Newcastle
encounters it at Newcastle—A battle—Skirmishes—A dispatch of
Newcastle’s—Disaster to some of Newcastle’s troops at Selby—He
retreats to York—Asks to be relieved of his command—A letter
from Charles—Hume on Newcastle 113
CHAPTER XI.
An army comes from Ireland to relieve the Royalists—It relieves
their enemies—Newcastle besieged at York—He sends Goring
with his cavalry to manœuvre in the adjoining
counties—Attacks, counterattacks, and sallies, at
York—Newcastle appeals to the King for reinforcements—Progress
of the siege of York—Newcastle asks the conditions of
surrender—The army of the Associated Counties—The Earl of
Manchester—Oliver Cromwell—State Papers about the proceedings
of Goring’s horse—State Papers about the siege of York 124
CHAPTER XII.
Newcastle’s feeling towards Rupert—Rupert reaches York—Problems
before each army—Councils of war—Retirement of the
enemy—Return of the enemy—Marston Moor—Soldiers refuse to
fight until paid—The order of battle—Ill-feeling between
Ethyn and Rupert—Psalm-singing and preaching—Rest, a pipe,
and a sleep 137
CHAPTER XIII.
Opening of the battle of Marston Moor—Newcastle in the
fight—Success of his horse on the left wing—Reports of a
Royalist victory spread throughout the country—Success of
the Roundhead horse on their own left—Action of
Cromwell—Heroism of Newcastle’s Whitecoats—Defeat 148
CHAPTER XIV.
Newcastle determines to fly the country—His journey—His
condition at Hamburg—Clarendon’s opinion of his
flight—Surrender of York—Quarrels among the Parliamentary
Generals—Manchester visits Welbeck—Death of Lady
Newcastle—Letters from Hamburg—Borrowing money—Journey to
Paris—Meets Margaret Lucas 162
CHAPTER XV.
Margaret Lucas—A duel—A perfect family—Love-letters—Opposition
by the Queen—Marriage—Six per cent—Raising the wind 174
CHAPTER XVI.
The Queen shows favour to Newcastle—A regal snub—Henrietta gives
Newcastle £2000—He keeps a large stud—His creditors’ tender
farewell—Rotterdam—Antwerp—More borrowing—Lady Newcastle
sent to England to raise money—Execution of Charles I—Literary
tastes of Lady Newcastle—She returns to her husband—The
starving man has a large stud—Death of Sir Charles
Cavendish—Correspondence of Newcastle—Calls himself Prince 190
CHAPTER XVII.
The Restoration—Newcastle pawns his wife and returns to England
after an exile of sixteen years—Redeems his wife from pawn—His
financial affairs as stated by his wife—Chief Justice in
Eyre—A stock of tobacco—Symptoms of rebellion—A son’s
debts—Created a Duke—Binds a son very tightly—A gentle
snub—Marriage negotiations 208
CHAPTER XVIII.
Newcastle poses as a man of letters—His book on Horsemanship—What
to do when a horse has a headache—How to sit on a horse—How to
reduce a “resty” horse—Bridles—Anatomy—Leaping-horses—
Pirouettes and voltes—Learning to ride from a book 226
CHAPTER XIX.
Newcastle as a playwright and a poet—Grainger’s
opinion—Langbaine’s opinion—Walpole’s opinion—Lodge’s
opinion—“The Humorous Lovers”—Pepys’s opinion—Newcastle’s
other plays—Newcastle as a patron of letters—Hobbes’s letters
to Newcastle 236
CHAPTER XX.
Literary works of the Duchess—List—Her secretaries—Rapid
out-put—Her “conceptions”—Her verse—D’Israeli and Grainger
on her works—Her philosophical works—An extract—James
Bristow’s difficulty 249
CHAPTER XXI.
Prologue to the Duchess’s plays—Specimens—Her dress—Pepys—The
Royal Society—Grammont and Charles II 262
CHAPTER XXII.
The Duchess’s religion—Time to stop—Deaths of the Duke and
Duchess—A defence of Newcastle—The Duchess—The best feature
of her character—Her great capacity for business
matters—Walpole again 273
APPENDIX
Descendants of Newcastle 281
INDEX 283
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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_”.
[Illustration: 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.
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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”.
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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”.
[Footnote 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 Honᵒᵘʳᵃᵇˡᵉ Patron the Duke of Buckingham his Grace.
“MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE,
“Accordinge to your Loʳᵈˢʰⁱᵖ 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 Honᵒᵘʳᵃᵇˡᵉ Mother’s whilst he lives. I thinke that if your
Loʳᵈˢʰⁱᵖ did speake with him at London, he might be brought to good
termes....
“Your Grace’s
“W.[9] MANSFIELD.
“FEB. 27
“1626.”
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 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”.
[Footnote 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 Honᵒᵘʳᵃᵇˡᵉ 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.
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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”.]
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 17: _History_, Book viii. p. 507.]
Newcastle seems also to have been “amorous” in pictures, if we may
judge from the following letter.[18]
[Footnote 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.
[Illustration: 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.”
[Footnote 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”.
[Footnote 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.
“MY MOST HONOURED LORD,
“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.”
[Footnote 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....
“Your Lordship’s most humble servant,
“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.
“MY VERY GOOD LORD,
[Footnote 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.”
[Illustration: 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.”
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 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.
“To mi deare sonne,
the prince. 1638.”
[Footnote 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.)
[Footnote 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
Sⁱʳ 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 Sⁱʳ 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”.
[Footnote 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”.
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 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.”
[Footnote 31: The Duchess says: “The place and hour being appointed by
both their consents”.]
[Footnote 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”.
[Footnote 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?
[Footnote 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.
“For further proof, I cannot pass by that my Lord told His late Majesty
King _Charles_ the First, and Her Majesty the now Queen-Mother, some
time before the Wars, That he observed by the humours of the People,
the approaching of a Civil War, and that His Majesties Person would be
in danger of being deposed, if timely care was not taken to prevent it.”
Perhaps a very far-reaching gift of prophecy may not have been
necessary to foretell all this. Early in 1640, things were looking
very threatening. Both in England and in Scotland political as well
as religious disputes were causing frictions likely at any moment to
produce a flame. Charles was preparing for a war against the Scots,
and, in order to obtain a vote of supplies for this war, he summoned a
Parliament, afterwards known as the Short Parliament.
When it had assembled, a letter from the Scots to the King of France,
appealing for his assistance in a war which they were contemplating
against the English, was produced in the House to stimulate the
loyalty of the Commons. It had little effect. Members boldly asserted
that a Scottish invasion might be a bad thing, but that invasions by
the Crown upon the liberties of Englishmen at home were worse things
still and that these home invasions ought to be repelled before the
Scottish invasion. As to either subsidies for the proposed campaign
against the Scots, or ship-money, the Commons passed a Resolution that
“till the liberties of the House and kingdom were cleared, they knew
not whether they had anything to give or no”. Pym urged peace with the
Scots, while Sir Henry Vane asked for £840,000 to make war upon them.
The Commons, and even the Lords, were in a sulky humour, the King was
now being publicly defied by his Government and he dissolved Parliament
on 5 May, 1640.
Charles, Strafford and Vane tried every possible means of raising funds
for the war. The citizens of London refused to make a loan at 8 per
cent. and they also refused to levy a rate. An appeal to the King of
Spain for a loan met with no better success. There were revolutionary
risings in London. Torture was used for the last time in England upon
one of the leaders[35] of the malcontents. Presently the bishops were
persuaded to give a few thousands; Cottington managed to borrow £50,000
from the East India Company at the usurious interest of 16 per cent.,
and at last the City agreed to a loan of £200,000, on the security
of the Peers. Of all the Peers none was more ready to help the King
financially than Newcastle.
[Footnote 35: Gardiner’s _History_, vol. IX, p. 141.]
The position of Newcastle’s great friend, Strafford, at this time,
was intolerable. He was practically at the head of the King’s
affairs; but those affairs were in an almost hopeless condition.
There was not enough money to pay and provide for the army during a
prolonged war; there was a mutinous spirit among the soldiers; their
commander-in-chief, Northumberland, had no heart for the war; the high
officials were trembling at the responsibility of illegal action; both
the King and Strafford were in agony, the one from vacillation, the
other from gout.
Conway, who was in command in the North and had been incredulous about
a Scottish invasion, on discovering its reality wrote a very doleful
letter early in August to Northumberland. He complained that he had
only half the number of troops with which the Scots were about to cross
the border and that nearly a quarter of his men were entirely unarmed.
On learning the state of things in the North, Charles issued orders to
all the lords-lieutenants in the Midlands and the North to call out
the trained bands for immediate service, and, Northumberland’s health
having broken down, Charles made Strafford Commander-in-Chief of the
English army. The failure of Conway, of Northumberland, and eventually
of Strafford, cleared the way for the employment of a man exceedingly
unambitious of military service, namely, Newcastle.
The King left London for the North on 20 August, 1640. On the night
of the same day, the Scottish army, of about 25,000 men, crossed the
Tweed at Coldstream and invaded England. Charles reached York on the
23rd, Strafford joined him there four days later, and, on the 29th,
the Scots took the city of Newcastle and occupied it. Before long the
counties of Northumberland and Durham were completely in their power.
Charles held a great council of the peers at York; he announced that he
was about to issue writs for a Parliament to meet on 3 November, and he
asked the advice of the council upon the situation. The upshot of much
deliberation on the part of the council, and much negotiation with the
enemy, was that a cessation of arms was agreed upon, the two northern
counties being left in the possession of the Scots.
The Parliament—the notorious Long Parliament—met on the day
appointed. Within ten days, Strafford, who had taken his seat in the
Lords, was impeached and arrested. About a month later, Laud had also
been impeached and, like Strafford, imprisoned in the Tower.
Charles soon discovered that he was no longer governing, but governed.
The Parliament negotiated with the Scots without consulting him or
even taking him into its confidence. Eventually the Commons voted
that £300,000 should be given to the King’s enemies, the Scots, as a
“Brotherly Assistance”.
The King’s affairs kept going rapidly from bad to worse. We
cannot here deal with the trials and the executions of Newcastle’s
two friends, Strafford and Laud—for Laud also was a friend of
Newcastle—or the Root and Branch Bill, or the Grand Remonstrance,
or the Rebellion in Ireland which is said to have cost that country
nearly half its population. We shall presently have enough to do with
Newcastle himself without troubling ourselves about general politics;
but it has been necessary to take a brief survey of them in so far as
they led up to the most important events in Newcastle’s life.
In the years 1640 and 1641, the Queen showed more energy than the
King, but she was equally, if not even more, injudicious. At about
the period dealt with at the beginning of the last chapter, or even
earlier, by way of obtaining the advice of a sage politician, she
had listened, and persuaded Charles to listen, to the proposals of
Newcastle’s profligate, and light-minded friend, Sir John Suckling.
That courtier recommended the King to make use of his army in the North
to re-establish and maintain his regal authority: as Strafford was in
the Tower and Northumberland was still invalided, he suggested that
Newcastle should be put in command of that army, and that he should
bring it South, to overawe the Parliament and support the King. In
addition to advising the use of force, Suckling personally endeavoured
to raise loyal troops in support of the Crown. His efforts, however,
did more harm than good to the King’s cause; his plot was discovered
by the Parliament, he fled to France and he was declared a traitor.
Although there was no proof of Newcastle’s complicity in this plot, the
fact that his appointment to command the army of the North was part of
its scheme made the Parliament suspect him more strongly than ever.
The effect of all this was that the Queen was now even more hateful to
the Parliament than was the King. The crisis arrived when five members
of Parliament began to urge that the Queen, as the prime author of the
encroachments upon the liberties of the subjects, should be formally
impeached. The King still hesitated; but, according to the well-known
story, the Queen said to him:[36] “Go, you coward! and pull these
rogues out by the ears, or never see my face again”. The Queen told
Lady Carlisle of this little episode, Lady Carlisle told Essex, Essex
told others, and others told the five members, who made their escape in
safety.
[Footnote 36: Gardiner’s _History_, X, p. 136.]
Urged on the one side by his councillors to use the utmost caution,
on the other by his Queen to be a man and to put his foot down, the
vacillating and nervous King, in a moment of spasmodic courage,
threatened the Parliament; whereupon the Parliament threatened the
King, who then practically ran away, leaving London on 10 January, 1642.
The first actual conflict between the King and the Parliament took
place in relation to Newcastle. When Charles had left York, to meet
the Long Parliament in London, he had sent all the ammunition and
stores which he had accumulated for his war against the Scots, to Hull.
He had foreseen the likelihood of a civil war, and he had privately
given Newcastle a commission, appointing him governor of Hull; but he
had told him not to use it unless he received further orders.
During the morning on which the King left London, early in January,
1642, one of his first acts was to dispatch orders to Newcastle,
commanding him to make immediate use of that commission, and to hurry
to Hull, as the Duchess says, “with all possible speed and privacy”. Of
what followed she says:—
“Immediately upon the receipt of these his Majesties Orders and
Commands, my Lord prepared for their execution, and about Twelve of the
Clock at night, hastened from his own house when his Familie were all
at their rest, save two or three Servants which he appointed to attend
him. The next day early in the morning he arrived at _Hull_, in the
quality of a private Gentleman, which place was distant from his house
forty miles; and none of his Family that were at home, knew what was
become of him, till he sent an Express to his Lady to inform her where
he was.”
The probable intense anxiety of his wife, which might so simply and so
easily have been saved, does not appear to have occurred to him. The
Duchess continues:—
“Thus being admitted into the Town, he fell upon his intended Design,
and brought it to so hopeful an issue for His Majesties Service, that
he wanted nothing but His Majesties further Commission and Pleasure
to have secured both the Town and Magazine for His Majesties use; and
to that end by a speedy Express gave His Majesty, who was then at
_Windsor_, an account of all his Transactions therein, together with
his Opinion of them, hoping His Majesty would have been pleased either
to come thither in Person, which he might have done with much security,
or at least have sent him a Commission and Orders how he should do His
Majesty further Service.”
Unfortunately for Charles, his most intimate followers could not be
trusted for secrecy, and there were spies in his train. His orders to
Newcastle were betrayed to the Parliament, and, by its authority, Sir
John Hotham, who lived very near Hull, was appointed its governor and
ordered to seize it with the help of the Yorkshire trained bands under
his command.
Newcastle had entered Hull, had proclaimed himself its governor, in
the King’s name, and had found that it contained a larger quantity of
munitions than the Tower of London itself; but, when Legg, on behalf of
the King, and Hotham, on the part of the Parliament, brought troops to
occupy the town, the Mayor—to use a very vulgar expression—uncertain
as to which way the cat would jump, refused to admit the soldiers of
either of them.
“Before Newcastle had been three days in Hull,” says Clarendon,[37]
“the House of Peers sent for him, to attend the service of that House,
which he had rarely used to do, being for the most part at Richmond
attending upon the Prince of Wales, whose Governor he was.[38] He made
no haste to return upon the summons of the House, but sent to the King
to know his pleasure.”
[Footnote 37: _Hist._, vol. I, part II. book iv.]
[Footnote 38: This, of course, refers to a past period.]
As usual, Charles showed weakness. Having dispatched Newcastle in
a tremendous hurry to secure his magazines at Hull against the
Parliament, he now ordered him to obey the Parliament, to leave Hull
and the magazines to their fate, and go to London. Newcastle, says the
Duchess, “received orders from His Majesty to observe such Directions
as he should receive from the Parliament then sitting: Whereupon he was
summoned personally to appear at the House of Lords, and a Committee
chosen to examine the Grounds and Reasons of his undertaking that
Design; but my Lord shewed them his Commission, and that it was done in
obedience to His Majesties Commands and so was cleared of that Action”.
Both Lords and Commons then petitioned the King to allow the magazines
at Hull to be removed to the Tower of London; and when the King was
slow in sending a reply, they ordered Hotham to dispatch them there at
once.
Clarendon (_Hist._, vol. I, part II. book v.) describes Sir John
Hotham as “by his nature and education a rough and rude man, of great
covetousness, of great pride, and great ambition; without any bowels
of good nature, or the least sense or touch of generosity; his parts
were not quick and sharp, but composed, and he judged well; he was a
man of craft, and more likely to deceive than be cozened.” “He had been
first induced to sympathise with the Parliament against the King,” adds
Clarendon, “by his particular malice against the Earl of Strafford;”
he had been imprisoned, probably as he suspected at the instigation
of Strafford, for complaining in Parliament at the King’s demands
for large subsidies for the army; and he had formally ranged himself
upon the Parliamentary side; but the Parliamentary leaders “well knew
that he was not possessed with their principles in any degree,” that,
although he had considered Laud guilty of treason, he was a zealous
supporter of Church and State, and that he had been “terrified” by
certain votes against sheriffs and deputy-lieutenants passed in the
House of Commons. “Therefore they sent his son, a member likewise of
the House, and in whom they confided, to assist him, or rather to be a
spy upon his father. And this was the first essay they made of their
Sovereign Power over the Militia and the Forts.” As will appear later,
the son was in reality more royalist in his inclinations than the
father upon whom he was to spy.
Against such a usurpation of the Royal Prerogative the King made a
protest on 9 March. He was determined to displace Hotham, and to
replace Newcastle, at Hull. In April he went North with a view to
testing the powers of the Parliament by entering Hull himself. At the
same time he was anxious to avoid all appearance of committing an act
of war. Ostensibly, he intended merely to enter Hull as he might enter
any of his other cities.
When Hotham was informed that the King was approaching, accompanied by
300 men, and that there were 400 more behind them, he was “in great
confusion,” says Clarendon, “and calling some of the chief magistrates,
and other officers together to consult, they persuaded him not to
suffer the King to enter the town”.
Presently a messenger from Charles arrived, bringing to Hotham the
information that the King would do him the honour of dining with him
that day.
Bewildered almost to distraction, Hotham resolved to obey orders which
he had received from the Parliament to admit no troops whatever without
its special instructions. Accordingly he had his drawbridges raised,
and standing upon the walls when the King arrived, he very respectfully
informed him of the strict injunctions which he had received from
his employers—the Commons. Then the King offered to come in with an
escort of only twenty men; but Hotham, knowing that there was a strong
royalist spirit within the town, was afraid of admitting him, and said
that to allow even so small a number of armed men to enter would be
a breach of his orders. Clarendon says: “the gentleman, with much
distraction in his looks, talked confusedly of ‘the trust he had from
the Parliament’; then fell upon his knees, and wished ‘that God would
bring confusion upon him and his, if he were not a loyal and faithful
subject to His Majesty, but, in conclusion, plainly denied to suffer
his Majesty to come into the town’”. The King’s soldiers then loudly
called upon the garrison to kill Hotham on the spot and throw him
over the wall; and Charles, having made his heralds proclaim Hotham a
traitor, rode away in a rage.
In the following month (May), the greater part of the arms and stores
were shipped from Hull to the Tower of London. The Hotham incident
greatly increased the irritation already existing between the King and
the Parliament; and, although war had not been actually declared, both
sides were collecting troops and stores.
Charles ordered Newcastle to take possession of the city bearing
his name, and also the command of the four adjacent counties of
Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham and Westmoreland. On 17 June, 1642,
he entered the city of Newcastle in the name of the King. He also
secured Tynemouth Castle and he fortified Shields. The King had now a
port on the East coast at which he could receive supplies from Holland,
whither the Queen had gone to raise money for the coming war by selling
her jewels and begging for loans.
It was all very well to be given the command of four counties; but it
was difficult to command them without men to enforce commands. The
King had indeed ordered Newcastle to make bricks without straw. As it
was, when Newcastle arrived, “he neither found any military provision
considerable for the undertaking that work, nor generally any great
encouragement from the people in those parts”. So says the Duchess; and
she adds:—
“As soon as my Lord came to _Newcastle_, in the first place he sent
for all his Tenants[39] and Friends in those parts, and presently
raised a Troop of Horse consisting of 120, and a Regiment of Foot,
and put them under Command, and upon duty and exercise in the Town of
_Newcastle_; and with this small beginning took the Government of that
place upon him ... and armed the Soldiers as well as he could: And thus
he stood upon his Guard, and continued them upon Duty; playing his weak
Game with much Prudence, and giving the Town and Country very great
satisfaction by his noble and honourable Deportment.” In short, under
the circumstances, Newcastle would have found it very dangerous, when
“playing his weak game,” to be anything except civil and obsequious.
[Footnote 39: The tenants on the Ogle property in the North, which he
had inherited from his mother.]
Clarendon says that Newcastle had no sooner occupied the city of
Newcastle, “without the slightest hostility (for that town received
him with all possible acknowledgment of the King’s goodness in
sending him), but he was impeached by the House of Commons of High
Treason”.[40] Although Clarendon states that he entered the town
without the slightest hostility, the following entry occurs in the
catalogue of the _Thomason Tracts_. “1642, July 12, Sir John Hotham’s
Resolution presented to the King at Beverley. Whereunto is annexed
joyful news from Newcastle, wherein is declared how the colliers
resisted the Earl of Newcastle.”
[Footnote 40: _Hist._, vol. II, part I. book vi.]
CHAPTER VI.
On 22 August, 1642, the King formally hoisted his standard at
Nottingham, and hostilities became a reality. He made Shrewsbury his
head-quarters in September, and from there he wrote:—
“NEW CASTEL,
“This is to tell you that this Rebellion is growen to that height,
that I must not looke what opinion men ar who at this tyme ar willing
and able to serve me.[41] Therfore I doe not only permitt, but command
you, to make use of all my loving subjects services, without examining
ther Contienses[42] (more than there loyalty to me) as you shall fynde
most to conduce to the uphoulding of my just Regall Power. So I rest.
“Your most asseured faithfull
“frend
“CHARLES R.[43]
SHREWSBURY, 23 SEP.
“1642.”
[Footnote 41: He means that he must not inquire what their religion
might be.]
[Footnote 42: Consciences.]
[Footnote 43: Harleian MS. 6988, art. 69, orig. entirely in the King’s
hand.]
In October the battle of Edgehill was fought, and in November there
were encounters at Brentford and Turnham Green, after which the King
took up his winter quarters at Oxford.
Essex, the Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentary forces, commissioned
Lord Fairfax to command the armies in Yorkshire and the adjacent
counties; therefore henceforth Fairfax was to be Newcastle’s principal
enemy.
Fairfax whose name in arms through Europe rings,
Filling each mouth with envy or with praise.
Milton.
Fairfax had a great advantage over Newcastle, having served with
the English army in the Low Countries, whereas Newcastle had had no
military experience. He had also the recommendation for a command in
Yorkshire, that he was a Yorkshireman both by birth and by blood.
On the other hand he laboured under the disadvantage of the intense
dislike and contempt of his fellow-Yorkshireman and brother officer,
Sir John Hotham, the Governor of Hull. There were very few “gentlemen,
or men of any quality, in that large county,” says Clarendon, “who
were disaffected to his Majesty”. The chief of these were Fairfax, the
Hothams, father and son, Cholmondley, and Stapleton.
We must now return to him in the summer of 1642. A special charge,
given to him by the King, was the Bishopric of Durham. In that diocese
were many sympathisers with the Parliament, and among such were not a
few of the clergy. Now Newcastle knew the Dean to be thoroughly loyal
to the King; so he issued an order that no sermon was to be preached in
the diocese until it had been written out and submitted to the Dean;
and he ordered the Dean not only to strike out anything which he might
consider savouring of disaffection, but also to put in expressions
of devoted loyalty to the sovereign, wherever such sentiments were
wanting. Besides this he empowered the Dean to punish any of the clergy
who might be in the least contumacious about the matter. We have the
Duchess’s authority for this statement.
In spite of the carefully doctored sermons, the Duchess tells us that
“there happened a great mutiny of the Trainband Souldiers of the
Bishoprick at Durham, so that my Lord was forced to remove thither in
Person, attended with some forces to appease them; where at his arrival
(I mention it by the way, and as a merry passage) a jovial Fellow used
this expression, That he liked my Lord very well, but not his Company
(meaning his Soldiers)”.
Then Newcastle set resolutely to work to raise an army. It would be
interesting to know with what weapons he armed it. The artillery of
the time was provided with very elementary guns; and the muskets,
harquebuses (carbines), and petronels (heavy pistols), all left much
to be desired. Pikes were then an all-important weapon; but pikemen
required almost more drill and training than did any other soldiers,
and it is doubtful how soon those in Newcastle’s hastily recruited
army could have been of any effective service; but, at any rate, they
could hardly be less experienced in military affairs than was their
commander-in-chief.
Scythes, fastened to the ends of poles, we know to have been used
in the seventeenth century by the defenders of fortresses, for
hooking off soldiers attempting to scale the walls and for upsetting
scaling-ladders. Most tempting tools to use, one would imagine. Bows
and arrows were certainly carried by the Scottish army which crossed
the English border, as described in an earlier chapter, and Grose (vol.
II, p. 272) says that one of their uses was “to gall or astoyne the
enemye with the hailshot of light arrows, before they have come within
danger of the harquebuss shot”.
The Duchess says that the King of Denmark sent a ship containing arms
and ammunition to Newcastle, and that, among the weapons, were “Danish
clubs”. In our twentieth century superiority, we may look down with
contempt upon clubs; but, in a hand-to-hand fight, heavy clubs might
be weapons to which considerable respect would be due, if swung by the
arms of able-bodied warriors upon the skulls of their enemies.
It was another person’s opinion that Newcastle had even more than a
sufficient supply of arms and ammunition, and that he was acting the
part of the dog in the manger.
“SIR MARMADUKE LANGDALE TO SIR WILLIAM SAVILE.[44]
“1642, NOV. 9TH, NEWCASTLE.—(My Lord of Newcastle) hath plenty of
arms and ammunitions, far more than he can tell what to do withal, in
so much as he must be forced to have a greater guard than he intended
for the safety thereof, yet I know he will not spare you either arms
or ammunition.”
[Footnote 44: Portland MSS., vol. I, 69.]
The King was of the same opinion as to Newcastle’s superfluity of
weapons, and wrote to him asking for a supply; but he did not receive
any, and Newcastle pleaded that he had none to spare. Charles then
wrote:—[45]
“NEW CASTELL....
“I give you free leave to disobey my warrants for issewing Armes;
for what I have done in that, was in supposition that you had anow
for your selfe and your frends; but having not, I confess Charity
begins at home. I wonder to heare you say that there ar few Armes in
that Country, for when I was there, to my knowledge there was twelve
thousand of the Trained Bands (except some few Hotham gott into Hull)
compleat, besydes those of particular men; therefor in God’s name
inquyre what is becume of them, and make use of them all; for those
who ar well affected will willingly give, or lend them to you; and
those who ar not, make no bones to take them from them.”
[Footnote 45: Harl. MS. 6988, art. 75. Orig.]
As to men, Newcastle was also successful. The Duchess says:—
“Amongst the rest of his Army, My Lord had chosen for his own Regiment
of Foot, 3,000 of such Valiant, stout and faithful men (whereof many
were bred in the Moorish-grounds of the Northern parts) that they were
ready to die at my Lord’s feet, and never gave over, whensoever they
were engaged in action, until they had either conquer’d the Enemy or
lost their lives. They were called Whitecoats, for this following
reason: My Lord being resolved to give them new Liveries, and there
being not red Cloth enough to be had, took up so much of white as would
serve to cloath them, desiring withal, their patience until he had
got it dyed; but they impatient of stay, requested my Lord, that he
would be pleased to let them have it un-dyed as it was, promising they
themselves would die it in the Enemies Blood: Which request my Lord
granted them, and from that time they were called White-Coats;” or,
sometimes, she might have added, “Newcastle’s Lambs”.
She tells us in another place that “Within a short time, my Lord
formed an Army of 8,000 Foot, Horse and Dragoons, and put them into
a condition to march in the beginning of _November, 1642_. No sooner
was this effected, but the Insurrection grew high in _Yorkshire_, in
so much, that most of His Majesties good subjects of that County, as
well the Nobility as Gentry, were forced for the preservation of their
persons, to retire to the City of _York_, a walled Town, but of no
great strength.”
Before going to York Newcastle had to leave about half his army behind
him. Clarendon says: “having left a good garrison at Newcastle,
and fixed such small garrisons in his way, as might secure his
communication with that port, to which all his ammunition was to
be brought, with a body of near 3,000 foot, and 600 or 700 horse
and dragoons, without any encounter with the enemy (though they had
threatened loud) he entered York, having lessened the enemy’s strength,
without blood, both in territories and men”. Two regiments, which had
been raised for the enemy, dissolved on his approach.
Newcastle then settled down for the winter, “yet,” says Clarendon, “few
days passed without blows, in which the parliament forces had usually
the worst”. But not always; for, if the following statement be true,
Newcastle’s forces were on one occasion repulsed in a manner of which
the description reads like a page from _Don Quixote_.
“SIR JOHN HOTHAM TO WILLIAM LENTHALL.[46]
“1642, OCT., HULL.... Upon Sunday night last, as the neighbours of
Sherborne tell our men, they” (the cavaliers) “drew certain forces
out of York to have set upon my son’s men at Cawood. When they came in
Sherborne, a village three miles from Cawood, they espied a windmill,
which they took for my son’s colours marching to meet them, and
certain stooks of beans for his men in order. Whereupon they returned
in more haste than they came.”
[Footnote 46: Portland MSS., vol. I, 67.]
When the winter set in,[47] Newcastle, with the King’s troops, held all
the country between York and the border of Scotland, while the south
of Yorkshire was under the control of Fairfax and the troops of the
Parliament.
[Footnote 47: In 1642, Newcastle sent his friend, Sir William Savile,
to take possession of the manufacturing towns in the West Riding of
Yorkshire. Some interesting letters relating to Newcastle and Sir
William may be found in Hunter’s _Hallamshire_.]
As no supplies came from the Government for the army of Newcastle, he
had to provide for it otherwise. The Duchess tells us how this was
managed: “It was agreed, That the Nobility and Gentry of the several
Counties, should select a certain number of themselves to raise money
by a regular Tax, for the making provisions for the support and
maintenance of the Army, rather than to leave them to free-quarter and
to carve for themselves”.
The seizure of York by Newcastle had been a step of the greatest
importance. Clarendon says of it:[48] “It cannot be denied that the
Earl of Newcastle, by the quick march of his troops, as soon as
he had received his commission to be General, and in the depth of
winter,”—late autumn would have been more accurate—“redeemed, or
rescued the city of York from the rebels, when they looked upon it
as their own, and had it even within their grasp; and as soon as he
was master of it, he raised men apace”. The Duchess says that he
raised from first to last 100,000;[49] but this must surely be an
exaggeration—“and drew an army together, with which he fought many
battles, in which he had always (the last excepted,) success and
victory”—another exaggeration.
[Footnote 48: _Hist._, vol. II, part II. book viii.]
[Footnote 49: “And afterwards upon this ground, at several times, and
in several places, so many several Troups, Regiments and Armies, that
in all from the first to the last, they amounted to above 100,000
men, and those most upon his own Interest, and without any other
considerable help or assistance, which was much for a particular
Subject, and in such a conjuncture of time.”]
Although Newcastle’s seizure of York was of the utmost importance,
the King was somewhat premature in thinking that now “the business
in Yorkshire” was “almost done”. On 15 December, 1642, he wrote (see
Ellis’s _Letters_, series 3, vol. III, p. 293):—
[Illustration: 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”.
[Footnote 50: _Memoires of the Reign of King Charles I_, by Sir Philip
Warwick, i. p. 235.]
Clarendon continues: “But the substantial part, and fatigue of
a General, he did not in any degree understand (being utterly
unacquainted with war), nor could submit to; but referred all matters
of that nature to the discretion of his Lieutenant-General King”.
Clarendon then says that when there was a battle he was always
present, if it was possible, and that, on such occasions, he “gave
instances of an invincible courage and fearlessness in danger, in which
the exposing himself notoriously did sometimes change the fortunes of
the day, when his troops (had) begun to give way”. But “such actions
were no sooner over than he retired to his delightful company, music,
or his softer pleasures, to all of which he was so indulgent, and to
his ease, that he would not be interrupted upon any occasion soever;
insomuch as he sometimes denied admission to the chiefest officers of
the army, even to General King himself, for two days together; from
whence many inconveniences fell out”. As indeed may easily be imagined.
Sir Philip Warwick supports this evidence. He says that Newcastle’s
“edge had too much razor in it; for he had a tincture of a romantic
spirit, and had the misfortune to have somewhat of the poet in him....
This inclination of his own and such kind of witty society (to be
modest in the expression of it) diverted many counsels, and lost many
opportunities, which the nature of that affair”—the campaign in the
North—“this great man had now entered into, required.”
CHAPTER VII.
Having said something of the Commander-in-Chief, it may be well to
notice his principal officers. King, the Lieutenant-General, whom he
placed over his infantry, was a soldier of considerable experience.
Clarendon says that he “had exercised the highest commands under the
King of Sweden with extraordinary ability and success”. We saw in the
last chapter that Newcastle left a great deal to the discretion of
King, and, considering our hero’s total inexperience of war, it was
probably well that he did so. Some readers of these pages may feel
inclined to add: Then probably, also, any merits that were earned by
Newcastle’s army were due to King and not to Newcastle. This may, or
may not, have been the case; but, if they were due to King, he did not
get the credit for them. In fact, the result was the other way about.
As everybody knows, Newcastle finally met with disaster, “when,” says
Clarendon, “those who were content to spare” Newcastle blame, poured
upon the head of the unfortunate General King bitter accusations
of “infidelity, treason and conjunction with his country-men” (the
Scots), “without the least foundation or ground for any such reproach”.
“Throughout the whole course of his life,” he had “been generally
reputed as a man of honour”. Elsewhere Clarendon says that, under
Newcastle, King “ordered the Foot with great wisdom and dexterity”.
We will notice next the general in command of Newcastle’s cavalry,
General Goring, who had obtained that appointment chiefly through the
influence of the Queen. When he took it up, he was bitterly chagrined
at not having been made Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the North,
instead of Newcastle. Goring also owed Newcastle a grudge over the
Governorship of the Prince of Wales. Goring had set his hopes upon that
appointment, and, as we have seen, Newcastle got it.
Of General Goring, Bulstrode says:[51] “If his conscience and integrity
had equalled his wit and courage, he had been one of the most eminent
men of the age he lived in: but he could not resist temptations, and
was a man without scruple, and loved no man so well, but he would cozen
him, and afterwards laugh at him, as he did at the Lord Kimbolton;
and of all his qualifications (which were many) dissimulation was his
master-piece, in which he so much excelled, with his great dexterity,
seeming modesty and unaffectedness, etc.”
[Footnote 51: _Memoirs and Reflections upon the Reign and Government
of Charles I_, by Sir Richard Bulstrode, President at Brussels to the
Court of Spain from Charles II, p. 71.]
Clarendon says[52] that he was a hard drinker, and that “he was not
able to resist the temptation, when he was in the middle of” the enemy,
“nor would decline it to obtain a victory: as, in one of those fits, he
had suffered the horse to escape out of Cornwall; and the most signal
misfortunes of his life in war had their rise from that uncontrollable
license”. Goring “in truth, wanted nothing but industry (for he had
wit, and courage, and understanding, and ambition uncontrolled by any
fear of God or man) to have been as eminent and successful in the
highest attempt of wickedness, as any man in the age he lived in, or
before”.
[Footnote 52: _Hist._, vol. II, part II. book viii.]
We come next to a general of a very different character, the general in
command of Newcastle’s artillery. It might be expected that a general
would be chosen to command artillery on account of his knowledge of
guns and their management; but Sir Philip Warwick says that Newcastle
chose Davenant as his General of Artillery because he was a poet.
Aubrey has something to tell us about this warbling warrior. He
says[53] that Shakespeare stayed “once a yeare” at the public-house
kept by Davenant’s father and mother, and the old scandal-monger
adds that, “when he was pleasant over a glasse of wine with his
most intimate friends,—e.g., Sam Butler (author of _Hudibras_)
etc.”—Davenant would say that he considered he wrote with the very
spirit of Shakespeare “and seemed contented enough to be thought his
son”. He was very intimate with Newcastle’s friend, Sir John Suckling;
and, long after the time with which we are dealing in this chapter, he
became Poet Laureate.
[Footnote 53: _Lives of Eminent Men._]
Like Goring, Davenant to some extent obtained his appointment by
the help of the Queen; for when she sent[54] “over a considerable
quantity of military stores, for the use of the Earl of Newcastle’s
army, Mr. Davenant came over with them, offered his services to that
noble Peer, who was his old friend and patron, and was by him made
Lieutenant-General of his Ordnance, to the no small dislike of some,
who thought that a post very unfit for a poet; in which, however, they
made no great compliment to their General” (Newcastle) “who wrote poems
and plays as well as Mr. Davenant”.
[Footnote 54: _Biog. Brit._, p. 1605.]
To make his staff complete, Newcastle appointed, “The Revᵉʳᵉⁿᵈ Mr.
Hudson,” a “very able Divine,” “Scout Master General of the army,” as
we learn from the same authority.
We find the army of the North, therefore, under a Commander-in-Chief
who was utterly inexperienced, a General of infantry who had[55] “the
unavoidable prejudice, in this conjuncture, of being a Scots-man,” a
drunkard for General of cavalry, a poet for General of Artillery, and
a very able divine for “Scout Master-General”. What could be expected
of a campaign in which, at any critical moment, the Commander-in-Chief
might have “retired to his softer pleasures” and refused to see
anybody, while one of his Generals might be getting drunk, another,
not exactly drunk, but “pleasant with a glass of wine,” reciting his
poems or boasting of his illegitimate birth, and a third writing a
sermon?
[Footnote 55: Clarendon.]
During the winter Newcastle was not idle. The Duchess says: “And
though the season of the year might well have invited my Lord to take
up his Winter-quarters, it being about _Christmas_; yet after he had
put a good Garison into the City of _York_, and fortified it, upon
intelligence that the Enemy was still at _Tadcaster_,” a town about
eight miles south-west of York, “and had fortified that place, he
resolved to march thither”.
The enemy had broken down part of the stone bridge which gave entrance
to the town, had planted guns on the remaining part, and had also
placed guns on a newly-made fort on a hill, near the town, commanding
the road from York. This affair is worthy of notice because, as will
presently be seen, it reflects upon the character of Goring, the
Lieutenant-General of the Horse.
“My Lord ... ordered a march before the said Town in this manner: That
the greatest part of his Horse and Dragoons should in the night march
to a Pass at _Weatherby_, five miles distant from _Tadcaster_, towards
North-west, from thence under the Command of his then Lieutenant
General of the Army, to appear on the West side of _Tadcaster_ early
the next morning, by which time my Lord with the rest of his Army
resolved to appear at the East-side of the said Town; which intention
was well design’d, but ill executed; for though my Lord with that part
of the Army which he commanded in person, that is to say, his Foot and
Cannon, attended by some Troops of Horse, did march that night, and
early in the morning appear’d before the Town on the East side thereof,
and there drew up his Army, planted his Cannon, and closely and orderly
besieged that side of the Town, and from ten in the morning till four
a Clock in the afternoon, battered the Enemies Forts and Works, as
being in continual expectation of the appearance of the Troops on the
other side, according to his order; yet (whether it was out of Neglect
or Treachery that my Lords Orders were not obeyed) that days Work was
rendered ineffectual as to the whole Design.”
“Ineffectual” because Goring and his horse did _not_ “appear on the
West side of Tadcaster early the next morning”. Consequently the
enemy escaped during the night and went “to another strong hold not
far distant from _Tadcaster_, called _Cawood_-Castle, to which, by
reason of its low and boggy Scituation, and foul and narrow Lanes
and passages, it was not possible for my Lord to pursue them without
too great an hazard to his Army; whereas had the Lieutenant General
performed his Duty, in all probability the greatest part of the
principal Rebels in _Yorkshire_ would that day have been taken in their
own trap, and their further mischief prevented”.
Although Goring is not mentioned by name, in the above account, there
can be little doubt that he was the delinquent. We know the name of the
Lieutenant-General who commanded “the greatest part of the horse and
dragoons”. Whether his conduct was due to drunkenness, or to treachery,
or to jealousy of Newcastle, does not appear. The poet, whose guns
“battered the enemy’s forts and works,” may have done better than might
have been expected on this occasion.
At about this period a very courteous correspondence took place
between Newcastle and the younger Hotham. The relations of the Hothams
to Newcastle are a matter of history concerning which the Welbeck
manuscripts contain many interesting and important details. Only
fragments from those manuscripts can be given here.
In December, 1642, Captain John Hotham, Sir John’s son, wrote to
Newcastle[56] about an exchange of prisoners, offering to release
“as many as the Earl has released, without an exchange”. On the 27th
he wrote: “Your free and noble expressions of doing me so many great
and real favours shall make me endeavour either to requite them or be
extremely thankful for them”.
[Footnote 56: Portland MSS., vol. I, 80, 84, 87.]
A few days later he wrote: “With faith and honour to serve the King and
the Commonwealth is all our ambition, and to leave that to posterity
which our ancestors left us, an untainted name”. And he goes on to
“bewail the unhappiness of these distractions, that hinder me from
attending upon your Lordship”.
A week afterwards he wrote again to Newcastle: “I honour the King as
much as any and love the Parliament, but do not desire to see either
absolute conquerors.... If the honourable endeavours of such powerful
men as yourself do not take place for a happy peace, the necessitous
people of the whole Kingdom will presently rise in mighty numbers and
whosoever they pretend for at first, within a while they will set up
for themselves, to the utter ruin of all the nobility and gentry of the
kingdom.”
We shall presently have occasion to look at some letters from Hotham to
Newcastle written three months later. In the meantime several events
took place of considerable importance both to Newcastle and to the
Hothams.
In some “propositions for peace,” which the Parliament sent to the
King in January, 1643, complaints were made at “the raising, drawing
together, and arming of great numbers of Papists, under the command of
the Earl of Newcastle ... whereby ... the Papists have attained means
of attempting, with hopes of effecting, their mischievous designs
of rooting out the Reformed Religion, and destroying the professors
therefore”. Newcastle had no love for Papists. He simply took into his
army any loyal men whom he met with. But the Commons were bent upon his
destruction, and one of their “propositions for peace” was that, in
any amnesty there should be a special “exception of William, Earl of
Newcastle”.
Although both Clarendon and the Duchess tell us that Newcastle won
nearly all his skirmishes in midwinter, 1642-3, there are what profess
to be “True Relations” to the contrary among the _Thomason Tracts_.
“1643. Jan. 2. A True Relation of a Great Victory obtained by Lord
Willoughby of Parham against divers forces of the Earl of Newcastle.”
“1643. Jan. 23. A True and Plenary Relation of the defeat given by Lord
Fairfax forces unto my Lord of Newcastles forces in Yorkshire.”
In February, 1643, Newcastle was informed that the Queen, having
sailed from Holland, would shortly land somewhere on the east coast of
Yorkshire, and he was ordered to meet her and to escort her to a place
of safety. One would imagine that, at this time, Newcastle must have
had more than sufficient worries and anxieties on his mind, without
having the care of the Queen’s precious person laid upon his shoulders.
Her Majesty had sailed from Scheveling in a fine English ship,
accompanied by eleven transports laden with stores and ammunition for
the King; and, as a convoy, she had the protection of the famous Dutch
Admiral, van Tromp. After tossing in a storm for a fortnight, she was
driven back to Scheveling; but in a few days she sailed again and
anchored in Burlington (now Bridlington) Bay, on 20 February.
Two days passed without any symptoms of troops for her protection; so
she remained on board; but, on the 22nd, a large body of cavaliers
appeared on the hills. Newcastle, who had not known where to expect
her to land, had been rambling along the east coast; and, as soon as
his scouts brought him news of the arrival of the Queen’s ships, he
hastened to Burlington.
Under the protection of Newcastle by land and van Tromp by sea, the
Queen landed and got lodgings in the town. On reaching the shores of
her husband’s kingdom, she might fairly have expected some peaceful
repose after her voyage; but her rest was disturbed at five o’clock the
next morning, by the sound of heavy firing.
Five small ships of war, belonging to the Parliament, had entered the
bay during the night, unobserved by van Tromp, whose large ship drew
too much water to follow them into the bay. It seems absurd that they
should have been out of shot of the Dutch guns; but the cannon of that
time did not carry far. As the Parliament had voted the Queen guilty
of high treason for sending supplies from abroad to the King’s army,
Batten, the Parliamentary Admiral, thought this a good opportunity of
taking either her person or her life. She wrote to King Charles:[57]
“One of these ships had done me the honour to flank my house, which
fronted the pier, and before I could get out of bed, the balls were
whistling upon me in such style that you may easily believe I loved not
such music. Everybody came to force me to go out, the balls beating so
on all the houses, that, dressed just as it happened, I went on foot to
some distance from the village to the shelter of a ditch like that at
Newmarket;[58] but, before we could reach it, the balls were singing
round us in fine style and a serjeant was killed within twenty paces of
me.” This must have been trying work for a lady, at between five and
six o’clock on a February morning, more than an hour before sunrise, on
the bleak coast of Yorkshire.
[Footnote 57: _Letters of Henrietta Maria_, ed. Mrs. Everett Green, p.
166.]
[Footnote 58: As all racing men know, the Ditch at Newmarket is a long
mound.]
When the Parliamentary ships sailed out of the bay into deep water, on
the ebbing of the tide, van Tromp had a word or two with them; but,
strange to say, he failed to capture them.
The captain of one of the Parliamentary ships, however, had imprudently
ventured on shore, where he was taken prisoner by some of Newcastle’s
soldiers. Having been tried by court-martial and condemned to be
hanged, he happened to be met by the Queen on his way to execution. She
asked what the procession meant and, on being informed, she ordered him
to be liberated, when he went over at once to the King’s service. This
incident is mentioned in Bossuet’s famous funeral oration after the
death of Henrietta Maria.
CHAPTER VIII.
According to a Yorkshire tradition, recorded by Miss Strickland in her
_Queens of England_ (viii. 98), while the Queen’s stores were being
laden and put in order of march, she stayed at Boynton Hall, a place
some two miles to the west of Burlington or Bridlington, belonging
to Sir William Strickland who, although he had received a baronetcy
from Charles I was now on the side of the Parliament. Sir William
happened to be away from home, but—probably owing to the presence of
Newcastle’s troops—the Queen was received as a guest, if only as an
enforced guest, by either Lady Strickland, or by whatever person may
have been in charge of the house. Among other efforts of hospitality
for the benefit of Her Majesty, a great display was made of gold and
silver plate.
When the Queen went away, she expressed her excessive gratitude for
the excellent entertainment which had been provided for herself and
her train, adding that, as the Parliament was granting no subsidies to
the King, she regretted to be under the painful necessity of carrying
away with her the plate of which there had been such a magnificent
display. She said that she should look upon it only as a loan—in fact
its temporary removal would be a mere matter of form—and she left
a portrait of herself as a pledge for its repayment. There never was
any return or repayment; but the portrait is stated to have become,
in course of time, at least as valuable as the plate for which it was
pledged. So says Miss Strickland who, as one of the family, should have
been able to judge; but, in making this calculation, we doubt whether
she sufficiently considered the increase in the value of the plate
during the same course of time. Silver plate of the reign of Charles I
has been sold for as much as £40 an ounce. The writer of these pages
has a silver box, given to an ancestress of his own by Charles II, and
it was lately valued for insurance, by a professional expert, at £30 an
ounce.
The Queen then retired to York, under the protection of Newcastle. The
Duchess says:—
“My Lord finding Her Majesty in this condition, drew his Army near
the place where she was, ready to attend and protect Her Majesties
Person, who was pleased to take a view of the Army as it was drawn up
in order; and immediately after, which was in _March, 1643_, took Her
journey towards _York_, whither the whole Army conducted Her Majesty
and brought her safe into the City. About this time, Her Majesty having
some present occasion for Money, My Lord presented Her with 3,000£
_Sterling_, which she graciously accepted”—Charles and Henrietta
seldom “graciously refused”—“and having spent some time there in
Consultation about the present affairs, she was pleased to send some
Armes and Ammunition to the King, who was then in _Oxford_; to which
end, my Lord ordered a Party, consisting of 1500, well commanded, to
conduct the same, with whom the _Lord Percy_, who then had waited
upon Her Majesty from the King, returned to _Oxford_; Which Party His
Majesty was pleased to keep with him for his own Service,” much to the
loss and inconvenience of Newcastle.
The Queen’s presence did much for the King’s cause in Yorkshire. Some
time earlier, Sir Hugh Cholmley had been induced by his friend, Sir
John Hotham, to take the side of the Parliament; and, as a reward, he
had been made Governor of the Castle of Scarborough, a fortress of
considerable importance. But, when the Queen came, says Clarendon, he
“very frankly revolted to his allegiance; and waited on Her Majesty
for her assurance of her pardon”. He then delivered up the Castle of
Scarborough to Newcastle, who reinstated him as Governor of it, on
behalf of the King. It may be worth mentioning that Clarendon says
Cholmley had[59] “oftener defeated the Earl of Newcastle’s troops ...
than any other officer of those parts”.
[Footnote 59: Vol. II, part I. book vi.]
The Queen wrote, in a letter to Charles I, on 20 March, 1643: “Sir Hugh
Cholmley is come in with a troop of horse to kiss my hand; the rest of
his people he left at Scarborough, with a ship laden with arms, which
the ships of the Parliament had brought thither. So she is ours.”
To some extent, the propinquity of the Queen was also influencing the
Hothams; although they hesitated to follow the example of Cholmley by
delivering up Hull to Newcastle. Sir Philip Warwick says[60]:—
“The Queen presently after landed at Burlington Bay with good provision
of arms, ordnance, and ammunition, and was by the Earl of Newcastle
conveyed to York; and she so influenced Sir Hugh Cholmley, who
commanded the port of Scarborough for the Parliament, and old Sir John
Hotham and his son, who commanded Hull, that important garrison; that
had she been as successful in the last as she was in the first, the
whole North had been cleared, and that undoubtedly would have turned
the scale upon the South, and restored his Majesty unto his just
rights, the people unto their true liberties, and the nation unto its
former profound peace. But Hotham’s timorous temper betrayed himself
and the design.”
[Footnote 60: _Memoires_, p. 237.]
Cholmley immediately became very active in the King’s service; and, to
some extent by his assistance, Newcastle obtained command of almost the
whole of Yorkshire. The younger Hotham at about this time explained
the position of himself and his father to Newcastle, in the following
letters:—
“CAPTAIN JOHN HOTHAM TO THE EARL OF NEWCASTLE.[61]
“1643. MAR. 22. I have sent this other letter to excuse me for not
granting Sir Marmaduke Langdale a safe conduct, and, to deal freely
with your Lordship, he shall never have one from me, I know him too
well. For a letter to the Queen, that I will certainly come in and
at such a time, I cannot do it. This enclosed you may show her, if
you please, or burn, for your Lordship knows that I ever said to you
that I would do anything which might further his Majesty’s service in
the peace of the kingdom, and that if the Parliament did stand upon
unreasonable terms with him, I would then declare myself against them
and for him, but otherwise to leave my party that I had set up with,
and no real cause given that an honest man may justify himself for so
doing before God and the world, I would never do it, although I endured
all the extremities in the world, for I well knew no man of honour or
worth will ever think such a man worthy of friendship or trust. For
the prejudice you undergo for not spoiling the East Riding truly you
have put an obligation upon me by sparing it thus long, but rather than
your Lordship shall suffer anything of prejudice either in your honour
or affairs, I shall not desire the thing any longer, but you may take
what course you please, and we shall do so for our defense. For Sir
Hugh Cholmley and his manner of coming in, every man must satisfy his
own conscience and then all is well! All are not of one mind.” Captain
Hotham was intensely jealous of Cholmley but dared not follow his
example.
[Footnote 61: Welbeck MSS., vol. I, 105.]
To this letter Newcastle would seem to have sent a civil reply; for
within a fortnight, Hotham wrote again:—[62]
“1643. MAR. 30. I thank you for your two letters in which you are
pleased so favourably to interpret the actions of your servant, and, if
your Lordship knew my real intentions, you would be far from blaming
me.... You have got by Sir Hugh Cholmley’s turning, when he could give
no reason for it, but an old castle,” [Scarborough] “which will cost
you more keeping than it is worth: his captains and soldiers are all
here and have left him naked enough.”
[Footnote 62: Welbeck MSS., vol. I, 109.]
One would infer from the next letter that Newcastle had written too
hopefully to the Hothams about the probability of a renewal of their
allegiance to the King, and that, in retaliation, Captain Hotham was
trying to shake the allegiance of Newcastle himself, by telling him
that he was distrusted by the Royalists.
“CAPTAIN JOHN HOTHAM TO THE EARL OF NEWCASTLE.[63]
“1643. APRIL. BEVERLEY.—I am very sorry you should ever harbour
such an opinion of me as to think that any motive whatsoever could
ever move me to betray the public trust I have ever undertaken.... My
particular affection to your person was a motive to me to be glad to
serve you if a way might be found to do it as befitted a gentleman,
otherwise I will not serve the greatest Emperor.... But now to give
you a taste that all is not as you think at Court, I shall freely tell
you this, that within this four days some very near her Majesty spoke
such words of contempt and disgrace of you as truly for my part I
could not hear them repeated with patience, and you will plainly see,
if they dare it, you will have a successor.”
[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, 701.]
Newcastle was evidently disturbed in his mind by this very disagreeable
news, as well he might be; for he must have sent immediately to Hotham
asking for fuller particulars. A couple of days after the preceding
letter, Captain Hotham sent him these details:—
“The words were these: ‘that you were a sweet General, lay in bed until
eleven o’clock and combed till twelve, then came to the Queen, and so
the work was done, and that General King did all the business’. They
were spoken by my Lady Cornwallis in the hearing of Mr. Portington,
a fellow cunning enough; and this to my father and another gentleman
with many other words of undervaluing, which he said were spoken by
others.... You can expect nothing at Court: truly the women rule
all.... You have now done great service; that will be forgotten when
they think they can shift without you.”
How far Hotham may have been perfectly honest and sincere in his
correspondence with Newcastle it is difficult to determine. That
there was a good deal of truth in what he said as to Newcastle
having enemies among the Royalists and the rumours of his living a
too easy and luxurious life in a campaign, and leaving the work of
the Commander-in-Chief to General King, is made probable by certain
statements which we have already seen in the words of Clarendon. But
both the Hothams were anxious to be on the winning side; they were
doubtful as to which side that would be, and it seems likely that,
in spite of all the high-sounding professions in the letters of the
younger Hotham, the motives of both the father and the son were
personal rather than patriotic.
Later in the same month, Hotham appears to have been trying to bring
about peace, by interesting some of the leading supporters of the
Parliament, with whom he came in contact, in favour of the King. On
14 April he wrote to Newcastle from Lincoln: “I have not been idle
since I writ last to do his Majesty and your Lordship the best service
I could, although to bring that about I was glad to go seemingly by
the contrary. I have since I came into this town dealt with some of
my friends that they would not be so violent against his Majesty’s
service, and was bold (enough) to promise them a pardon if they would
retire and give way, that this country might be wholly at his devotion.
The gentlemen are so considerable that of my knowledge, if they desist,
there shall not be a man here to hold up his hand against his Majesty.”
This was very cheering news for Newcastle and was almost enough to make
him fancy that the end of the campaign was in sight.
On 4 May Captain Hotham wrote to Newcastle: “I think you are mistaken
in my father, for the reason of his standing a little aloof is, that
he so infinitely wishes the peace of the kingdom, which he thinks the
King’s last answer tends not to, that I know staggered him much....
It was said from a good hand that the Queen thought much you did not
enough communicate with her and take her directions.... I confess I am
in a very great strait in these businesses, your Lordship’s wisdom can
best give directions in it.”
Yet the very next day Captain Hotham wrote with others to Lenthall
about joining his forces to those of Cromwell. This, however, may have
been with the object of throwing dust in the eyes of the Parliament;
and it is the more likely because the Parliament itself seems to
have thought that something of this sort was his object. Whitelock
says:—[64]
“Captain Hotham, being suspected by the Parliament, was imprisoned at
Nottingham, from whence escaping, he under-hand treated with the Earl
of Newcastle.”
[Footnote 64: _Memorials_, p. 67.]
We may as well dispose of the Hothams once for all; albeit to do so
will make it necessary to anticipate considerably beyond the period
of Newcastle’s campaign with which we are now dealing. Although long,
the following statement of the whole affair of the Hothams by Sir
Hugh Cholmley is worth reading, especially as the writer had been on
intimate terms both with the Hothams and with Newcastle. Yet it may
be that the statement should be taken _cum grano salis_; as Cholmley
probably felt considerable resentment towards the Hothams for regarding
him as a base renegade from the Parliamentary cause in which he had at
one time shown so much zeal.
“AN ORIGINAL, ENDORSED BY CLARENDON ‘SIR HUGH CHOLMLEY’S MEMORIALS’.[65]
“If Sir John Hotham could have been assured of what he had done or said
in Parliament, and received into grace and favour,”—Cholmley seems to
mean: If he could have been assured that what he had said in Parliament
in the past would have been forgiven him and that he would be received
into grace and favour by the King—“he might have been made a faithful
and serviceable person; the denying of which (or at least answering
it coldly) was a great motive to his undertaking that employment at
Hull....
[Footnote 65: Clarendon State Papers, 181.]
“Sir John Hotham, when he departed from London, gave assurance to
some of his nearest friends, that he would not deny the King entrance
into Hull, and surely had not done it, but that he was informed by
some person near the King, in case he permitted his Majesty entrance,
he would lose his head; and it is conceived the same person did most
prompt the King to go to Hull....
“The Earl of Newcastle had not been long with his forces in Yorkshire,
when there began a treaty between him and young Hotham; whom together
with his father they sought to draw to the King’s party.
Sir Marmaduke Langdale, a great friend of young Hotham’s,[66] was the
mover between him and the Earl; and this was sooner laid hold on, in
that the Lord Fairfax was now made a General for the Parliament of the
forces of Yorkshire, and some adjacent counties; which discontented old
Hotham, and though the son had as much as in reason he could expect
(and more than fell to his share), being made Lieutenant General to
Fairfax, yet he was not well pleased.
[Footnote 66: But see Hotham’s letter of 22 March, to Newcastle, p. 89.]
“The Queen’s army coming to Bridlington had brought such a magazine
of arms and ammunition, my Lord of Newcastle’s army began to be very
formidable and young Hotham having retired himself (and those forces
which belonged to him and his father) from the Lord Fairfax, and
being then at Beverley, began to have fresh notions of treating; and
thereupon makes a journey for one night to the Earl at Bridlington,
upon colour and pretences of a change of prisoners; there he demanded
his father to be made a Viscount, and himself a Baron, that they might
have £20,000 in money, and a Patent to the father to be Governor of
Hull during his life”;—this was, indeed, the very converse of the
system of purchasing peerages mentioned in an early chapter—“all
which, as it would have been granted, so probably accepted, but that in
this nick of time, Sir John received some assurance of the Scots coming
into England, and that young Hotham (by his alliance and friendship
with the Wrays) was chosen General of Lincolnshire; yet both parties
made this advantage by the treaty, that as the Lord Newcastle forebore
to come near Hull and Beverley, so young Hotham, though he had above
1,000 horse and dragoons, did not interrupt the Lord Newcastle’s march
from Bridlington; which might easily have been done, his army being
over-charged with baggage, and the season so tempestuous that his
forces were very much dispersed.
“Immediately after this young Hotham goes to be General for the
Parliament in Lincolnshire, so that the treaty was off the hinge,
till such time as he was laid hold of at Nottingham by Cromwell,
which the father did so much resent as he did not only write to the
close committee in a menacing style for his son’s enlargement, but
was otherwise so passionate in words and deportment that it gave the
Parliament a great suspicion of him.... In the interim young Hotham
breaks loose from Cromwell, and comes to Hull where the father and son
think it very opportune to renew the treaty with my Lord of Newcastle;
and thereupon Sir John writes that letter, which was after (at the
battle of York) taken in my Lord’s cabinet,” i.e. Newcastle’s, “and
cost both the Hothams their heads.”...
It is a matter of English history that Sir John Hotham and his son were
arrested, imprisoned for many months in London, tried, and beheaded.
And it is a somewhat remarkable fact—journalists would call it “the
irony of fate”—that Sir John Hotham, who had been one of the first to
express a wish in Parliament for proceedings against Archbishop Laud,
should have been executed a few days before that Archbishop. Possibly a
knowledge of this fact may have helped to mitigate the sadness of the
last days of Laud.
During the months dealt with in a portion of the present chapter;—to
be exact, on the 17th of April, 1643,—Newcastle lost his first wife.
It is scarcely possible that he can have been with her when she died;
but of her illness and death, the collector of these historical odds
and ends has been unable to discover any details.
CHAPTER IX.
In April Newcastle learned that the enemy’s General of cavalry
was going to leave Cawood Castle for the west of Yorkshire; so he
dispatched Goring, with a strong body of horse, to attack him on
his march. Goring, a really able General when sober, overtook the
Parliamentary cavalry and surprised their rear by a sudden charge,
at Bramham Moor, or, as it was sometimes called, Seacroft Moor, and
completely routed them, although their numbers were greater than his
and in spite of their being under the command of Fairfax himself. If
the Duchess’s story is true, Goring’s Horse killed many of the enemy,
and took about 800 prisoners whom, with ten or twelve colours, they
carried to York.
Lord Fairfax wrote[67] of this engagement: “Here our men, thinking
themselves secure, were more careless in keeping order; and, whilst
their officers were getting them out of houses where they sought for
drink (it being an extream hot day)”—apparently it was one of the
enemy’s drunken days and one of Goring’s sober days—“the enemy got,
by another way into the Moore, as soon as we,” and then he candidly
acknowledges the complete rout. Indeed he says: “Some officers, with
me, made our retreat with much difficulty”.
[Footnote 67: Masère’s _Select Tracts_, p. 422.]
This was an important victory to the credit of Goring; but the glory
of his surprising Fairfax in April was sadly tarnished in May by his
being surprised in his turn by Fairfax. Newcastle had taken Wakefield
in April and had left it under the protection of Goring and his Horse.
The enemy quietly approached and entered that town at night. Night is
usually a bad time, and a town a bad place, for a drunkard: be this as
it may, Goring was taken prisoner with most of his men and horses, and
the enemy “possessed themselves of the whole Magazine, which was a very
great loss and hindrance to my Lords designs, it being the Moity of his
Army, and most of his Ammunition”.[68]
[Footnote 68: The Duchess’s account.]
Fairfax wrote:[69] “This appeared the greater mercy, when we saw our
mistake; for we found three thousand men in the town, and expected but
half the number.... This was more a miracle than a victory.”
[Footnote 69: Masère’s _Select Tracts_, p. 424.]
Pious Royalists, on the contrary, would probably attribute their own
defeat to the machinations of the devil; and the impious modern reader
may possibly consider the victory, on Fairfax’s own showing, rather a
fluke.
Some time afterwards Newcastle recovered Goring by an exchange of
prisoners; but the defeat at Wakefield very seriously hampered him.
Shortly before the disaster at Wakefield, Newcastle had taken Rotherham
by storm, and Sheffield without opposition. Early in June he stormed
and took Howly House, a place which the Duchess describes as “a strong
stone house, well fortified ... wherein was a garrison of soldiers,
which My Lord summoned, but the Governor disobeying the summons, he
battered it with his cannon, and so took it by force”. She gives
Newcastle great credit for his extraordinary humanity in not killing
the Governor in cold blood, after the place had been captured.
The King was now becoming very nervous and he wished for Newcastle’s
help. On 18 June, 1643, the Queen wrote to Newcastle from Newark: “The
King is still expecting to be besieged in Oxford.... He had sent me a
letter to command you absolutely to march to him, But I do not send
it to you, since I have taken a resolution with you that you remain.
There is a gentleman, Lieutenant Markham, who has received from you a
letter, so angry, that I thought it could not be from you, so that I
have commanded him to remain, and I hope that he will not be punished
for it, moreover ... since I am yet good-natured enough not to send
you your order from the King to march to him, you, on your part, must
not punish one who stays by order of the Queen.... Your constant and
faithful friend, HENRIETTA MARIA.” [70]
[Footnote 70: _Letters of Henrietta Maria_, edited by Mrs. Everett
Green, p. 219.]
This letter shows the conveniences likely to follow from allowing a
lady to meddle in the conduct of a campaign.
Newcastle let his army rest at Howly House for five or six days. He
then marched towards Bradford, “a little, but a strong town”.
Very unexpectedly, Newcastle “met with a strong interruption” on
his march to the “little” town of Bradford; for the enemy had “very
privately gotten out of Lancashire” “a vast number of Musquetiers,”
and, as all the country about Bradford sympathized with the Parliament,
Newcastle was unable to obtain intelligence of the movements of his
foes. Newcastle’s greatest victory was to be won in the battle which
followed and the Duchess shall act as our War Correspondent—by no
means an inefficient one on this occasion.
Although written of as Alderton and Atherton and Adderton, the name of
the scene of this battle is now spelt Adwalton Moor. It is immediately
to the right of Drighlinton Station, on the branch line from Ardsley
Junction to Bradford.
The Duchess begins by saying that in Fairfax’s “Army there were near
5000 Musquetiers, and 18 Troops of Horse, drawn up in a place full of
hedges, called _Atherton-moor_, near to their Garison at _Bradford_,
ready to encounter my Lord’s Forces, which then contained not above
half so many Musquetiers as the Enemy had; their chiefest strength
consisting in Horse, and these made useless for a long time together
by the Enemies Horse possessing all the plain ground upon that Field;
so that no place was left to draw up my Lords Horse, but amongst old
Coalpits; Neither could they charge the Enemy, by reason of a great
ditch and high bank betwixt my Lord’s and the Enemies Troops, but by
two on a breast, and that within Musquet shot; the Enemy being drawn
up in hedges, and continually playing upon them, which rendered the
service exceeding difficult and hazardous.
“In the mean while the Foot of both sides on the right and left Wings
encounter’d each other, who fought from Hedg to Hedg, and for a long
time together overpower’d and got ground of my Lords Foot, almost to
the invironing of his Cannon; my Lords Horse (wherein consisted his
greatest strength) all this while being made, by reason of the ground,
incapable of charging; at last the Pikes of my Lords Army having had no
employment all the day, were drawn against the Enemies left wing, and
particularly those of my Lords own Regiment, which were all stout and
valiant men, who fell so furiously upon the Enemy, that they forsook
their hedges, and fell to their heels: At which very instant my Lord
caused a shot or two to be made by his Cannon against the Body of the
Enemies Horse, drawn up within Cannon shot, which took so good effect,
that it disordered the Enemies Troops.
“Hereupon my Lord’s Horse got over the Hedg, not in a body (for
that they could not), but dispersedly two on a breast; and as soon
as some considerable number was gotten over, and drawn up, they
charged the Enemy, and routed them; so that in an instant there was
a strange change of Fortune, and the Field totally won by my Lord,
notwithstanding he had quitted 7000 Men, to conduct Her Majesty,
besides a good Train of Artillery, which in such a Conjuncture would
have weakned _Caesars_ Army. In this Victory the Enemy lost most of
their Foot, about 3000 were taken Prisoners, and 700 Horse and Foot
slain, and those that escaped fled into their Garison at _Bradford_,
amongst whom was also their General of the Horse, Sir Thos. Fairfax.”
Fairfax, after stating that the Royalist troops had been on the very
point of retreating, goes on to say:[71] “Whilst they were in this
wavering condition, one Colonel Skirton”—a Colonel in Newcastle’s
army—“desired his General to let him charge with a stand of Pikes,
with which he broke in upon our men; and, they not being relieved by
our reserves (which were commanded by some ill-affected officers,
chiefly Major General Gifford, who did not his part as he ought to do),
our men lost ground which the enemy seeing, pursued this advantage, by
bringing up fresh troops; ours being discouraged, began to fly and were
soon routed.”
[Footnote 71: Masère’s _Select Tracts_, p. 426.]
Heath says:[72] “The Marquess of Newcastle ... routed the
Parliamentarians, gained their five pieces of cannon, and so amazed
them, that they fled to Leeds, which way was precluded and obstructed;
then to Bradford, in their flight whither, he took and killed two
thousand, while Fairfax hardly escaped to Leeds with the convoy of one
troop of horse. The next day the said Earl came before Bradford, which
after the battering of forty great shot, he took, with two thousand
more of the same party the next morning, with all their arms and
ammunition.”
[Footnote 72: _A Chronicle of the Late Intestine War in the Three
Kingdoms_, etc. By James Heath, London: Thomas Basset, 1676.]
After the battle of Adderton Heath, Newcastle had an opportunity of
showing courtesy to Fairfax,[73] “whose Lady being behind a Servant on
Horse-back, was taken by some of My Lord’s Soldiers, and brought to
his Quarters, where she was treated and attended with all civility and
respect and within few days sent to _York_ in my Lords own Coach, and
from thence very shortly after to _Kingstone_ upon _Hull_, where she
desired to be, attended by my Lords Coach and Servants”.
[Footnote 73: The Duchess’s account.]
Of this incident Fairfax himself wrote:[74] “Not many days after the
Earl of Newcastle sent my wife back again in his coach, with some horse
to guard her; which generous act of his gained him more reputation than
he would have got by detaining a lady prisoner, upon such terms”.
[Footnote 74: Masère’s _Tracts_, p. 431.]
Although he had captured his enemy’s wife, Newcastle unfortunately
failed to capture his enemy’s far more important staff, owing to some
dilatoriness on the part of a galloper,[75] “the chief Officers
retiring to _Hull_, a strong Garison of the Enemy ... My Lord, knowing
they would make their escape thither, as having no other place of
refuge to resort to, sent a Letter to _York_ to the Governour of that
City, to stop them in their passage; yet by neglect of the Post, it
coming not timely enough to his hands, his Design was frustrated.”
[Footnote 75: So says the Duchess.]
Newcastle had taken Lincoln and retaken Gainsborough, which had been
captured shortly before by Cromwell; so altogether, at this part of the
campaign, he was a victorious General.
It might seem pretty safe to infer that the Duchess’s account of the
war was written from what she heard from her husband’s lips, and it
is difficult to believe that he did not insist upon seeing it, either
in manuscript or in proof, before it was published. If this surmise
be correct, he intended, at the point in the campaign which we have
now reached, to have gone to the South, so as to attack the enemy from
the North, while the King fought them from the South. Ever afterwards
he appears to have believed that, had he done so, he “would doubtless
have made an end of the war”. But urgent requests reached him from the
General in command at York, as well as from “the nobility and gentry”
of the county, to return at once to their assistance, as they declared
that the enemy was increasing in number and power every day. His
General at York stated that, unless Newcastle came quickly, all would
be lost in the North. Hints also reached him, that if he took his army
to the South and left Yorkshire to its fate, he would be considered to
have betrayed his trust.
Newcastle then hurried back to York, only to find the enemy so weak,
that it retreated before him wherever he went, and his presence as well
as that of his troops unnecessary.
The question presents itself whether Newcastle would have been wise
to march to the South, leaving such a fortress as Hull behind him, a
fortress very strongly garrisoned and containing many of Fairfax’s
best officers. It is true that the younger Hotham had professed some
sympathy with the Royalists, but neither he nor his father had shown
any definite symptoms of deserting the Parliament. On the other
hand, it might be argued that it would have been worth while to lose
Yorkshire and the northern counties, if by co-operation Newcastle’s
army and the King’s could have completely conquered the southern
counties, subdued London, and broken the power of the Parliament.
In the early autumn of 1643, King Charles made Newcastle a Marquess.
This advance in the peerage was of course an acknowledgment of his
military services, and had nothing whatever to do with any purchase of
the title by such a gross thing as filthy lucre: at the same time it is
difficult to forget that the new Marquess had probably spent more in
hard cash out of his own pocket for the King in raising his army than
would have been necessary to buy the title in the ordinary heraldic
market.
The gentlemen of Yorkshire were very uneasy at the presence of the
recently-mentioned strong garrison in the south-east corner of their
county, at Hull, and they besought Newcastle to lay siege to it and
crush it, once for all, promising to raise 10,000 men to help him if he
would make the attempt, a promise which was never fulfilled. Newcastle
consented to their request, marched to Hull and besieged it.
The defence of Hull under Lord Fairfax was a very different thing
from what it would have been if the wavering, half-Royalist Sir John
Hotham had still been in command. But Hotham had lately been arrested
and taken to the Tower. Newcastle threw up a good many batteries and
fired red-hot shot into the town. Fairfax replied to Newcastle’s fire
with water, by cutting dykes on the Hull and Humber, thus flooding the
invaders, their batteries, their guns, their red-hot shot, and their
camps.
And now, again, the question of marching to the assistance of the royal
army in the South of England was urged upon Newcastle. According to
Clarendon, while he was besieging Hull—and he besieged it for six
weeks—the King ordered him,[76] if he thought he could not take it
quickly, to leave sufficient troops to invest it, and to march with
the remainder of his army through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire
and Essex towards London, which Charles would then approach from the
opposite side.
[Footnote 76: Clarendon, _Hist._, vol. II, part I. book vii.]
Charles also told the Queen to press Newcastle on this point—evidently
he had not much confidence in the power of his own commands! She wrote
to Newcastle: “He” (the King) “had written me to send you word to go
into Suffolk, Norfolk or Huntingdonshire. I answered him that you were
a better judge than he of that, and that I should not do it. The truth
is that they envy your army.” [77]
[Footnote 77: _Letters of Henrietta Maria_, Mrs. Everett Green, p. 225.]
Newcastle sent a reply back to the King, telling him that “he had
not strength enough to march and to leave Hull securely blocked up,”
and that the gentlemen of Yorkshire, “who had the best regiments and
were among the best officers, utterly refused to march till Hull were
taken”. This shows the state of discipline among the King’s faithful
officers at this period.
Besides Clarendon’s account of the King’s attempt to draw Newcastle to
the South, we have that of Sir Philip Warwick, who acted as Charles’s
envoy in this business:—[78]
“The King, finding by these experiences in the South, how tough the
business was likely to prove, sent me some time before into the North
to the Earl of Newcastle. My commission was, (for I had but three or
four words under the King’s hand, written on a piece of white sarsanet
to give me credit with him) to try what he meant to do with his army;
and whether he would (when the season was) march up Southerly and in
a distinct body keep at some distance from the King, to give a check
unto the Southern army. But I found him very averse to this, and
perceived that he apprehended nothing more than to be joined to the
King’s army, or to serve under Prince Rupert; for he designed himself
to be the man that should turn the scale, and to be a self-subsisting
and distinct army, wherever he was, which, when I perceived fixed in
him, being left to discretion, I thought it more reasonable to wave it,
than press him to the contrary.... He told me that, when he could quit
Yorkshire, and leave it in a condition to defend itself against the
aforementioned enemies in it, he would march through Lincolnshire and
recruit himself there, and so over the Washes into Norfolk and Suffolk
and the associated counties; which had been a noble design.” After
mentioning a disaster which later on befell Newcastle and the prospects
of King Charles, Warwick adds: “which if he had pursued that design of
marching into their associated counties, it had prevented; so as he had
a natural foresight, from whence his danger should arise; but not a
good angel or genius to divert it”.
[Footnote 78: _Memoires of the Reigne of King Charles_, by Sir Philip
Warwick. London: Ri. Chiswell, 1701.]
It was all very well for Newcastle to talk about his projects when he
should be able to quit Yorkshire and leave it in a condition to defend
itself; but very soon he was not in a position to do either.
On 10 October, Manchester, Fairfax, and Cromwell defeated a force which
Newcastle had collected in Lincolnshire. According to Whitelock,[79]
“The Earl of Manchester took in Lincoln upon surrender, and therein
2500 armes, 30 colours, 3 pieces of cannon”. The same authority states
that: “The Lord Fairfax beat from about Hull part of the King’s,” i.e.
Newcastle’s, “forces, took from them 9 pieces of cannon, of which one
was a demy-culverin, one of those which they called ‘the Queen’s Gods,’
and 100 arms.... Colonel Cromwell routed 7 troops of the King’s horse
in Lincolnshire under Colonel Hastings.” Newcastle was then obliged to
raise the siege of Hull, much to the disappointment and alarm of the
“nobility and gentlemen of Yorkshire”; and he marched back to York.
[Footnote 79: _Memorials_, p. 72.]
Of the state of the war after this event Clarendon says:[80] “Albeit
the Marquis of Newcastle had been forced to rise as unfortunately from
Hull, as the King had been from Gloucester, yet he had still a full
power over Yorkshire, and a greater in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire
than the Parliament had”. The latter part of this statement is rather
surprising when we consider the recent defeat of Newcastle’s forces in
Lincolnshire.
[Footnote 80: _Hist._, vol. II, part I. book vii.]
In ending this chapter we will notice a letter from the Queen to
Newcastle, written on 7 October, just before he raised the siege of
Hull, in which the old matter of the Governorship of the Prince crops
up again.[81]
[Footnote 81: _Letters of Henrietta Maria_, Mrs. Everett Green, p. 230.]
“There is one thing about which I want to be informed by you before
doing it. The Marquis of Hertford desires to be made groom of the
stole to the King. If that be, he must cease to be governor to Prince
Charles, so that we must place some one else about Prince Charles,
which I do not wish to do, without first knowing whether you wish to
have it again.” Presently she says (if he does not wish for it again):
“there are two other places and I desire to know which would be most
agreeable to you, for I have nothing in my thoughts so much as to show
you and all the world the esteem in which I hold you, therefore write
frankly to me, as to a friend, as I am now doing to you, which you
desire;—_chamberlain, or gentleman of the bedchamber_. If I had chosen
to act ceremoniously, I should have had this written to you by another,
that is all very well where there is no esteem, such I have for you;
and as this is written with frankness, I request a reply of the same,
and that you believe me, as I am, truly and constantly,
“Your faithful and very good friend,
“HENRIETTA MARIA R.”
[Illustration: William Cavindish Marquis of Newcastle.
_From an Original by_ Van Dyck.
_His Seals & Autographs from the original Letters in the Possession of_
John Thane]
CHAPTER X.
Newcastle had not been many days in York, when he heard a rumour that
the enemy was advancing from the South into Derbyshire, and he marched
thither at once, that is to say early in November, 1643. He posted
some troops in different parts of the county, and fortunately he met
with no serious opposition. On the contrary, he was able to raise a
considerable force both of cavalry and of infantry. The rumour of
the advance of an army from the South proved groundless, and he went
peacefully to his own houses of Bolsover and Welbeck, where he stayed
for a little time, making them his winter quarters.
Unfortunately, the pleasures of his hearth and home were marred by the
arrival of some very unwelcome information,[82] namely, that the Scots
were about to invade England with a large army, which was to fight
on the side of the Parliament. This was serious news, indeed, to the
Commander-in-Chief of the Royalist army in the North of England, which
would necessarily be called upon to check the invasion.
[Footnote 82: Kippis states that he was at Welbeck when he received
this news.]
“At this time,” [83] we read in Clarendon, “nothing troubled the
King so much as the intelligence he received from Scotland, that they
had already formed their army, and resolved to enter England in the
winter season.... The circumstance of the time made the danger of the
invasion the more formidable; for the Earl of Newcastle, lately created
a Marquis, had been compelled with his army, as much by the murmours
and indisposition of his officers, as by the season of the year, to
quit his design upon Hull, and to retire to York.” Clarendon adds that
the garrison at Hull had “made many strong infalls into the country and
defeated some of his” (Newcastle’s) “troops”.
[Footnote 83: _Hist._, vol. II, part I. bk. vii.]
The report of the expected advance of an army from Scotland greatly
alarmed the nervous “nobility and gentry of Yorkshire,” who sent to
implore Newcastle to return to their assistance, once more promising
to raise 10,000 men to strengthen his army. Newcastle marched back to
York,—not to please the nobility and gentry of that county, who had
promised, and yet failed to provide, a force of 10,000 men for him, on
a former occasion—but because it was necessary to proceed to York on
his way North against the Scots. When he reached York, he found that
the nobility and gentry had not raised so much as a single man to add
to his army. Therefore he had himself to raise what men he could for
the defence of the county, when he was actually on his march towards
the North against the enemy.
The military situation was now greatly changed. Hitherto the
Parliamentary army had lain between the King in the South and
Newcastle in the North. If Hull could have been taken and its garrison
captured, Newcastle would have marched to the South and the army of
the Parliament would soon have been attacked on both sides at once.
Now, on the contrary, it was Newcastle who was likely to be attacked on
both sides at once, by the Scots from the North and by Fairfax from the
South.
On 19 January, 1644, the Scottish army of 21,000 men crossed the
border and Newcastle marched to the city from which he took his title.
He came there in February, and on the 13th he wrote[84] to the King,
announcing his arrival there, and stating that he had had to march his
army through thawing snow and floods. He added that, the day after his
arrival, the Scots attacked the town; but that the town’s soldiers were
very faithful and drove the enemy a mile from its walls. He lamented
that he would not be able to take more than 5000 foot and 3000 horse
into the field, or 8000 in all, against the enemy’s 20,000 or more; and
he complained of want both of arms and of ammunition.
[Footnote 84: Rupert Correspondence, Warburton’s _Rupert_, vol. I, p.
504.]
According to the Duchess, the Scottish General was ignorant of
Newcastle’s arrival, expected no opposition, consequently approached
the town incautiously and was repulsed with considerable loss. She
writes as to what immediately followed:—
“The Enemy being thus stopt before the Town, thought fit to quarter
near it, in that part of the Country; and so soon as my Lords Army
was come up, he” (i.e., Newcastle) “designed one night to have fallen
into their Quarter; but by reason of some neglect of his Orders in
not giving timely notice to the party designed for it, it took not
an effect answerable to his expectation. In a word, there were three
Designs taken against the Enemy, whereof if one had but hit, they would
doubtless have been lost; but there was so much Treachery, Jugling
and Falshood in my Lord’s own Army” (were the poets and the divines
quarrelling?) “that it was impossible for him to be successful in his
Designs and Undertakings. However, though it failed in the Enemies
Foot-Quarters, which lay nearest the Town; yet it took good effect in
their Horse Quarters, which were more remote; for my Lord’s Horse,
Commanded by a very gallant and worthy Gentleman”—can this have been
the reinstated Goring?—“falling upon them, gave them such an Alarm,
that all they could do, was to draw into the Field, where my Lord’s
Forces charged them, and in a little time routed them totally, and
kill’d and took many Prisoners, to the number of 1500.”
Whitelock gives a slightly different account of this affair. “The
Scots besieged Newcastle, and took a main outwork, and beat back the
enemy sallying out upon them. The Marquess of Newcastle being in the
town, burnt a hundred houses in the suburbs; the inhabitants clamour
against him. Seven of the Parliamentary frigates lay in the mouth of
the haven to stop their passage by seas. The Marquess ordered the
firing of the coal-mines, but that was prevented by General Leslie’s
surprising of all the boats and vessels.”
The Scots withdrew; but they went Southwards and got into Newcastle’s
rear. Both armies manœuvred against each other in various parts
of the county of Durham, for some time, without coming into actual
collision, the Scots seeming anxious to avoid an engagement; indeed
their failure to take an immediate initiative with their large
preponderance in numbers was the cause of much discontent and grumbling
among the supporters of the Parliament in London.
On more than one occasion, we have seen the King desiring that
Newcastle should march his army to the support of that in the South.
The tables were now turned. On 16 February, Newcastle wrote to Charles,
urging him to send troops to the North against the powerful Scottish
army, and expressing a strong opinion that, unless reinforcements were
sent thither, and sent very speedily, the King would be in danger of
losing his crown.
Some desultory fighting took place in the beginning of March, of which
Newcastle gave an account to the King; and, as a specimen of his
military dispatches, parts of it shall be given here. They can be read,
or skipped at the reader’s pleasure.[85]
[Footnote 85: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles Ist, vol. LX,
pp. 42-43. March 9th, 1644. No. 13.]
(Dispatch communicating the doings of the army under the Marquis of
Newcastle to the King.) It is headed “A True relation of all the
observable passages that have happened in these (northern) parts since
my last to your Majesty; with the reason of the impossibility of making
good the Tyne against the Scots.... Sir Thos. Riddell sent about 50
musketeers from Tynemouth Castle to destroy some corn in the enemies’
quarters, from whence they were drawn out, as he was informed: But it
seems his intelligence betrayed them to the enemy and about 45 of them
were taken prisoners, who being carried to Leslie (Earl of Leven) he
sent them to me as a token, and I returned him thanks for his civility,
with this answer, that I hoped very shortly to repay that debt with
interest, which I did in a few days.”
“Colonel Dudley from his quarters about Prudhoe marched over the
river with some horse and dragoons and fell into a quarter of the
enemy’s in Northumberland, and slew and took all that was in it, 55
prisoners, and gave such an alarum to four of their quarters that they
quitted them in disorder and with some loss; in which (skirmish) we
should have suffered no loss at all, had not Colonel Brandling been
taken prisoner through the unfortunate fall of his horse; and Colonel
Dudley perceiving a greater force preparing to assult him, retreated,
and in his retreat took 8 of the Scots prisoners, both horses and men,
but they took 4 of his dragoons, whose horses were so weak they could
not pass the river.... Upon Wednesday the 6th inst. at one o’clock
afternoon our first troops passed Newbridge, and a while after the
enemy appeared with some horse; when they advanced toward us with more
than they first discovered, after some bullets had been exchanged, and
they appeared again in greater force, we backed our party with Lord
Henry (Percy’s) regiment,—Lieutenant Colonel Schrimsher (Scrimegour)
commanding them—being part of Colonel Dudley’s brigade, with which
he drew up after them, with whom also we sent some musketeers; which
caused the enemy that day to look upon us at a farther distance.”
It would appear much to Newcastle’s credit that he was able to
manœuvre for some time against an army nearly three times the size
of his own, were it not doubtful whether the credit was not due to King
(Lord Ethyn), to whom he is known to have left much of the work which
should properly have been done by himself. As to his other generals
they seem to have been Newcastle’s chief source of weakness. Here is a
story of disaster told by the Duchess:—
“A great misfortune befel My Lords Forces in _Yorkshire_; for the
Governour whom he had left behind with sufficient Forces for the
defence of that Country, although he had orders not to encounter the
Enemy, but to keep himself in a defensive posture; yet he being a
man of great valour and courage, it transported him so much that he
resolved to face the Enemy, and offering to keep a Town that was not
tenable, was utterly routed, and himself taken prisoner, although he
fought most gallantly.”
Of this affair, Whitelock gives a fuller account:—[86]
“The Lord Fairfax, and Sir Thomas Fairfax his son, joining together,
drew up their forces at Selby,[87] where a garrison of the King’s was,
and in it Colonel Bellasis the Governor of York; that night they beat
in a party of the enemy’s horse and took divers prisoners.
[Footnote 86: _Memorials_, p. 82.]
[Footnote 87: About a dozen miles south of York.]
“Early the next morning they beset the Town in three divisions, and
after a hot fight, wherein both parties performed brave service,
Fairfax routed them, and entered the town, where they took 4 Colonels,
4 Majors, 20 Captains, 130 inferior officers, 1,600 common soldiers,
4 brass pieces of ordnance, powder, match, 2,000 arms, 500 horse,
besides colours, and a pinnace, and ships in the river, and 500 more
prisoners at Hemcough near Selby.”
“The Earl of Newcastle, troubled at the news of Selby, and his army
waiting upon the approach of the Scots towards them, they left Durham
to the Scots and General Leslie pursued them.”
The forces of Newcastle were hard pressed throughout their return to
York. The Duchess’s account says that Newcastle’s rear had to fight
the enemy every day of the journey; but that the retreat was made in
excellent order.
News of Newcastle’s retreat to York caused great disappointment among
the Royalists at Court, and his enemies took the opportunity of blaming
his whole conduct of the war. These complaints were conveyed to him in
letters by his friends. Their effect upon him was so great that he
lost heart and, as is pretty evident from the following letter, he had
written to the King expressing a wish to resign his command.
(MS. Harl., 6988, art. 104. Orig. Entirely in the King’s hand.)
“NEW CASTELL
By your last dispach I perceave that the Scots are not the only, or
(it may be said) the least ennemies you contest withall at this tyme;
wherefore I must tell you in a word (for I have not tyme to make
longe discourses) you must as much contem the impertinent or malitius
tonges and pennes of those that ar or professe to be your frends, as
well as you dispyse the sword of an equall ennemie. The trewth is, if
eather you, or my L. Ethen leave my service, I am sure (at least) all
the Northe (I speake not all I thinke) is lost. Remember all courage
is not in fyghting; constancy in a good cause being the cheefe, and
the dispysing of slanderus tonges and pennes being not the least
ingredient. I’l say no more, but, let nothing disharten you from doing
that which is most for your owen honnor, and good of (the thought of
leaving your charge being against booke)
“Your most asseured reall
“constant frend
“CHARLES R.
“OXFORD 5. AP: 1644.”
The question presents itself whether the tongues and pens of those who
were dissatisfied with Newcastle’s conduct of the campaign in the
North, spoke and wrote with no foundation for dissatisfaction. Perhaps
both the blame and the praise which were his due are pretty fairly
allotted on one of the pages of Hume:—[88]
“Newcastle,” he says, “the ornament of the Court and of his order,
had been engaged, contrary to the natural bent of his disposition,
into these military operations, merely by a high sense of honour,
and a personal regard to his master. The dangers of the war were
disregarded by his valour; but its fatigues were oppressive to his
natural indolence. Munificent and generous in his expense, polite
and elegant in his taste, courteous and humane in his behaviour, he
brought a great accession of friends and of credit to the party which
he embraced.”
[Footnote 88: _History of England_, VII, 13.]
Undoubtedly this is true. His own expenditure upon the war was
enormous, as the Duchess assures us and as contemporary writers
testify; and his personal influence brought many great men, followed
by large numbers of their servants, dependants and tenants, into the
Royalist army. Again, his “humane behaviour” made him and his army
popular in the counties which they occupied, a condition as important
as difficult of attainment in a civil war.
Hume continues: “But amidst all the hurry of action, his inclinations
were secretly drawn to the soft arts of peace, in which he took
delight; and the charms of poetry, music, conversation, often stole
him from his rougher occupations. He chose Sir William Davenant, an
ingenious poet, for his lieutenant general”—“as one of his lieutenants
generals” would have been more accurate—“The other persons, in whom he
placed confidence, were more the instruments of his refined pleasures,
than qualified for the business which they undertook. And the severity
and application, requisite to the support of discipline, were qualities
in which he was entirely wanting.”
Very probably these defects were more accountable for Newcastle’s
failures than “the juggling, falsehood and treachery in his army
and amongst some of his officers” of which his Duchess was fond of
complaining. And it is more than likely that Granger was right in
saying that Newcastle “was much better qualified for a court than a
camp”.[89]
[Footnote 89: _Biog. Hist. of Eng._, 4th edition, 1804, vol. II, p.
125.]
Not the less should it be remembered that Newcastle was vastly
outnumbered by his enemy from Scotland and that his troops which he had
left in his rear had been defeated by his enemy in the South. Under
such conditions even Napoleon would have been in difficulties.
CHAPTER XI.
Early in the year 1644 five Irish regiments were landed at Mostyn, on
the north coast of Wales, to join the Royalist army, and probably that
part of it under the command of Newcastle. They were unopposed as they
marched through Wales, Chester, and a great portion of the county of
Cheshire. But when they reached Nantwich, some seventeen miles to the
south-east of Chester, they found it strongly garrisoned. They had
not long laid siege to it, when Sir Thomas Fairfax, the son of Lord
Fairfax, arrived with a superior force, and, after a stubborn battle of
two hours, routed them. Thereupon nearly half of the Irish regiments
“turned their coats” and joined the Parliamentary army under Sir Thomas
Fairfax, who then, considerably strengthened in numbers, was free to
join his forces with those of his father in Yorkshire. This made the
position of Newcastle much more precarious. He must have written to the
King asking for reinforcements, for Charles replied:—
(MS. Harl., 6988, art. 106. Orig. Entirely in the King’s hand.)
“NEW CASTELL
“You need not doute of the care I have of the North and in particular
of your assistance against the Scots invasion, but you must consider
that wee, lyke you, cannot doe alwais what we would; besydes our taske
is not litle that we strugle with, in which if we faile, all you can
doe will be to little purpose; wherfor You may be asseured of all
assistance from hence that may be, without laing our selfes open to
eminent danger, the particulars of which I refer you to my L. Digby
and rest.
“Your most asseured reall
“constant frend
“CHARLES R.
“OXFORD 11. AP:
“1644.”
Meanwhile, general interest was concentrated on the war in the South.
Essex and Waller, each with a large force, were endeavouring either
to enclose the army of the King, or to besiege him in Oxford. Knowing
his inferiority in numbers, Charles avoided a battle, and partly by
manœuvring, and partly owing to the mutual jealousy of Essex and
Waller which prevented them from acting in concert, the King managed
to escape them, after fighting one or two unimportant and indecisive
actions. His position was now one of great jeopardy, and it was just
then that he received the disheartening news of the defeat at Selby and
Newcastle’s enforced retreat to York, with his request to be relieved
of his command.
At York Newcastle soon found himself closely invested. Our female War
Correspondent shall tell us what she knew about it.
“My Lord being now at _York_, and finding three Armies against him,
_viz._ the Army of the _Scots_, the Army of the _English_ that gave the
defeat to the Governour of _York_, and an Army that was raised out of
associate Counties,”—this is a little premature; as the army of the
Associated Counties did not arrive for several weeks—“and but little
Ammunition and Provision in the Town; was forced to send his Horse away
to quarter in several Counties, _viz._ _Derbyshire_, _Nottinghamshire_,
_Leicestershire_, for their subsistence, under the Conduct of his
Lieutenant-General of the Horse, My dear Brother, Sir _Charles Lucas_,
himself remaining at _York_, with his Foot and Train for the defence
of that City.” Clarendon, however, says that Newcastle’s object in
sending his Lieutenant-General of the Horse (Goring, of course), with
a large body of cavalry, was “to remain in those places he should find
most convenient, and from whence he might best infest the enemy.” In
carrying out these instructions, Goring, at first, not only met with
some success, but at the same time raised additional forces on his
marches, and money also, as we learn from the following State Paper.[90]
[Footnote 90: S. P. Charles I, Dom., May 25, 1644, vol. DI. 141 A.]
“Proceedings at the Committee of both kingdoms.... To advertise the
Earl of Manchester of the great damage done to cos. Leicester, Stafford
and those parts, by the Earl of Newcastle’s horse, which, coming from
York, have raised 1,000 horse, and £10,000.”
Lord Newcastle has “now about 3,000 horse and dragoons near Uttoxeter
in Staffordshire, which we hear with 1,000 horse might have been wholly
prevented. They still increase their force, raise much money, and ruin
those that depend on protection from the Parliament.” Evidently Goring,
to use an expression of the Duchess, “carved for himself” in the
districts in which he was campaigning.
It was as much as Newcastle could do to withstand the siege of York.
His biographer says:—
“The Enemy having closely besiedged the City on all sides, came to
the very Gates thereof, and pull’d out the Earth at one end, as those
in the City put it in at the other end; they planted their great
Cannons against it, and threw in Granadoes at pleasure: But those
in the City made several sallies upon them with good success. At
last, the General of the associate Army of the Enemy, having closely
beleaguer’d the North side of the Town, sprung a Mine under the wall
of the Mannor-yard, and blew part of it up; and having beaten back the
Town-Forces (although they behaved themselves very gallantly) enter’d
the Mannor-house with a great number of their men, which as soon as my
Lord perceived, he went away in all haste, even to the amazement of all
that were by, not knowing what he intended to do; and drew 80 of his
own Regiment of Foot, called the White-Coats, all stout and valiant
Men, to that Post, who fought the Enemy with that courage, that within
a little time they killed and took 1500 of them; and My Lord gave
present order to make up the breach which they had made in the wall;
Whereupon the Enemy remain’d without any other attempt in that kind,
so long, till almost all provision for the support of the soldiery in
the City was spent, which nevertheless was so well ordered by my Lords
Prudence, that no Famine or great extremity of want ensued.”
No famine or great extremity, perhaps, for the moment. Nevertheless,
Newcastle was becoming very anxious, and, at the least, foresaw both
famine and great extremity facing him in the near future. Clarendon
tells us that “he sent an express to the King to inform him of the
condition he was in”; and to let him know “that he doubted not to
defend himself in that post, for the term of six weeks or two months;
in which time he hoped his Majesty would find some way to relieve him”.
Newcastle was well aware that the King would know of his objection
to having his army joined to that of Rupert, an objection proceeding
from something near akin to jealousy; so, now that he was in a strait,
and practically begging for Rupert’s help, since it was the only help
available, he thought it wise to write to Charles “that he hoped his
Majesty did believe that he would never make the least scruple to obey
the grandchild of King James”.
Charles, in fact, had already sent Prince Rupert northwards with the
relief of Newcastle as his ultimate object. Having marched for his
quarters at Shrewsbury, Rupert had taken by surprise the strong
Parliamentary forces that were investing Newcastle’s garrison at
Newark-upon-Trent, in Nottinghamshire, and had compelled them to raise
the siege. He had then marched westward and taken Stockport, Bolton,
and Liverpool. The message from the King, ordering him to proceed at
once to the relief of York, reached him when he had raised the siege of
Latham House, which had been gallantly defended by the brave Lady Derby
for more than four months.
Like Newcastle, Rupert had enemies at Court: like Newcastle again, he
was anxious to be relieved of his command, and this just at the time
when Newcastle was asking for his assistance. Once more, as in the case
of Newcastle, Rupert’s rivals were urging the King to recall him.
Things were going badly with Newcastle. Whitelock says: “A battery was
made at the Windmill-Hill at York, five pieces of ordnance planted,
which shot into the town, and did much hurt. The Lord Eglinton, with
four thousand Scots, entered some of the gates. A strong party sallying
out of the city was beaten back with loss. General Leven with his
regiment took a fort from the enemy, and in it 120 prisoners. The
garrison burnt up much of the suburbs.”
According to Whitelock,[91] Newcastle made an attempt to leave York.
“The Earl of Newcastle, Sir Thomas Widderington, and other chief
commanders with a strong party sallied out of the town, endeavouring
to escape, but were driven back into the city.” It is most unlikely
that Newcastle was “endeavouring to escape” and to desert York in its
extremity. The probability is that he was only making a sally upon the
enemy’s forces.
[Footnote 91: P. 86.]
Whitelock makes another statement. He says:[92] “The Earl of Newcastle
desired a treaty, which was admitted, and he demanded to march away
with bag and baggage, and arms, and drums beating, and colours flying,
and that all within the town should have liberty of conscience, the
Prebends to enjoy their places, to have Common Prayer, organs, surplice
hoods, crosses, etc.”
[Footnote 92: P. 87.]
It is almost incredible that in return he would have promised to
take no farther part in the war. But even if he and his army were
to continue to fight for the King, he would have been offering to
surrender the highly important fortress of York. It is far more likely
that he was endeavouring to delay the siege operations of the enemy by
parleys and negotiations, while awaiting the arrival of Rupert.
His conditions, however, were “denied by the Parliament’s Generals;
but they offered the Earl of Newcastle that he and all his commanders
should go forth on horseback with their swords and the common soldiers
with staves in their hands, and a month’s pay, and all else to be left
behind them”.
This obviously meant the disarmament of the troops, which one would
have expected Newcastle to have instantly refused; but, says
Whitelock, “the enemy desired four or five days to consider thereof
which was granted,” and this, if true, has an ugly sound. But every day
of armistice was of value to Newcastle, when a force was known to be
coming to his relief, and he may have seized the opportunity for delay.
Besides the large Scottish army, and the troops under Lord Fairfax,
Newcastle was to be besieged before long by the army that had been
raised against the King in what were known as the Associated Counties,
namely Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedford and Huntingdon.
This army had been placed under the command of the Earl of Manchester
who, when Lord Kimbolton, had been impeached by Charles at the same
time as the Five Members. His General of the Horse—or it might almost
be said his second in command—was Oliver Cromwell.
Manchester was a rigid Presbyterian. Warwick says of him:—[93]
“The Earl of Manchester, formerly known by the name of Lord Kimbolton,
was a gentleman of very good parts, and of very good education, both
at home and abroad, and of a debonnaire nature, but very facile or
changeable.... With all his good nature, or the facility of it, he did
as much harm as the worst-natured man could have done. And therefore it
was supposed, though he seemed the head, he was but the instrument of
Mr. Cromwell, who made great ravage in all those associated counties on
the King’s party.”
[Footnote 93: P. 246.]
Cromwell’s character is too well known to need description here; but,
as Warwick was with Newcastle, let us hear what he has to say about the
most formidable enemy against whom Newcastle ever fought a battle.[94]
[Footnote 94: P. 247.]
“I have no mind to give an ill character of Cromwell; for, in his
conversation with me, he was ever friendly; though at the latter
end ... he was sufficiently frigid. The first time that ever I took
notice of him was in the beginning of the Parliament held in November,
1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman, (for we
courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes). I came one
morning into the House well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking
(whom I knew not) very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth
suit, which seemed to have been made by a country tailor; his linen
was very plain and not very clean ... his hat was without a band,
his stature was a good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his
countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable....
Yet I lived to see this very gentleman, whom out of no ill-will I thus
describe, by multiplied good successes, and by real (but usurped) power
(having had a better tailor and more converse among good company) ...
appear of a great and majestic deportment.”
“... Whilst I was about Huntingdon, visiting old Sir Oliver Cromwell,
his uncle and godfather, at his house at Ramsey, he told me this
story of his successful nephew and godson; that he visited him with a
good strong party of horse, and that he asked him his blessing, and
that, the few hours he was there, he would not keep on his hat in his
presence; but, at the same time, he not only disarmed but plundered
him; for he took away all his plate.” As we are aware, there was a
royal precedent for robbing a host of his plate.
Among the State Papers, there are a good many dispatches from the
Parliamentary army in the North at this (to Newcastle) very critical
time. The first to be quoted tells us the strength of the force which
Rupert was said to be taking to the relief of Newcastle.[95]
[Footnote 95: S. P. Charles I, Dom., 1644, May 31, Manchester vol. DI,
No. 148.]
“SIR JOHN MELDRUM TO THE EARL OF DENBIGH.... Sir Thomas Fairfax and
Major-General (David) Leslie are in full pursuit of Prince Rupert’s
Army, deeply engaged in a country full of difficult passages for
ordnance and carriages. Rupert’s forces are divided into two bodies,
the Marquis of Newcastle’s horse, not exceeding 3,000 as I am credibly
informed, and 100 foot, without ordnance, lying upon the frontiers
of Yorkshire, betwixt Woodhead and Stopford; and the Prince himself
with 4,000 horse and 7,000 foot, and 14 pieces of ordnance lying about
Bolton and Bury, at a great distance from each other.”
From the following it would appear that Goring must have manœuvred
very skilfully to avoid being heavily outnumbered in a battle.[96]
[Footnote 96: S. P. Charles I, Dom., June 1, 1644, vol. DII, No. 1.]
“SELBY. THE EARL OF MANCHESTER TO THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS ... I
can assure you that I took all care to bring on an engagement with the
Duke of Newcastle’s horse which came from York, but they would not stay
within 20 or 30 miles of where my horse were. The time they employed
in plundering about Leicester, most part of my horse were on this side
Trent, unable to move by reason of the heavy rains. As soon as they
had notice that Major-General Leslie and my horse were moving towards
Nottingham, thinking to intercept them in their march northward, they
marched in such hot haste toward Uttoxeter that they left great numbers
of their horse dead on the highways, passing the Trent at Burton, and
so got into Derbyshire. Sir Thos. Fairfax was sent with directions to
engage Newcastle’s horse, we having intelligence that they were coming
toward Sheffield and Rotherham, but as soon as our horse were within
7 or 8 miles of them, they presently marched into those parts of the
country in which it would be very difficult to pursue them.”
Although Goring was not strong enough to engage his enemy at this time,
he was doing good service by delaying the juncture of the army of the
Associated Counties with the Scottish army before York. But a time
came when he could delay that juncture no longer.[97]
[Footnote 97: S. P. Charles I, Dom., June 11, 1644, vol. DII, No. 10.]
“SIR HARRY VANE, JUNR., TO THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS LEAGUER
BEFORE YORK.... It appears to me very evident that if Manchester had
not brought up his foot to the siege the business would have been very
dilatory, whereas the siege is now made very straight about the city,
the Earl’s forces lying on the North side, where they have advanced
very near the walls, and are busy in a mine of which we expect a speedy
account, if by a treaty we be not prevented. The Scotch forces under
Sir James Lumsdale’s (Lumsden’s) command united with those of Lord
Fairfax, possess the suburbs at the East side, and are within pistol
shot and less of Walmgate.”
In the later part of the same dispatch, Sir Harry Vane notices the
“parley” mentioned by Whitelock. He only dwells upon a matter of
etiquette, which turned upon the question whether Newcastle did not
put Manchester’s name on the direction of a letter, through literal
ignorance of his presence, or from a desire to ignore it.
“On the 9th inst., the Earl of Newcastle sent letters to the Earl of
Leven and Lord Fairfax for a parley, not taking notice of the Earl of
Manchester being there, but in that respect the treaty was refused and
notice sent to Newcastle that unless he directed his letters to all
three generals he could have no answer, whereupon letters were sent to
all three Generals, and a civil excuse by the omission in regard, as he
pretended, he did not know the Earl of Manchester in person had been
there.” It is possible the mistake may have been intentional, with the
object of again causing a delay.
In June, Newcastle was reported to have had a success of some sort, in
which he was said to have lost his life.[98]
[Footnote 98: S. P. Charles I, Dom., June 27, 1644, vol. DII, No. 30.]
“SIR E. NICHOLAS TO SIR GERVASE LUCAS. OXFORD.... It is not believed
at London that the Marquis of Newcastle is slain, but they confess the
Marquis of Newcastle has given the Scots a good blow.” Possibly this
may refer to the occasion on which the Duchess says that her husband
“killed and took 1500” of the enemy.
CHAPTER XII.
Although Newcastle had been anxious to avoid a junction with Rupert as
long as possible, lest he should lose some of the credit of defeating
the enemy in the North, he had no personal dislike of that General.
The two men were on good terms, and they were correspondents. Among
the Rupert letters are four from Newcastle, congratulating him on
different victories. In one of them he says of those victories that,
“as they are too big for anybody else, so they appear too small for his
Royal Highness,” and in another that, although Rupert will not allow
them to be talked about in his presence, they will be talked about “to
posterity, to His Royal Highness’s everlasting fame”.
Early on 1 July, Newcastle heard that Rupert with his army would arrive
that very day, and he immediately wrote, and sent to Rupert, the
following letter of welcome:—[99]
“May it please your Highness, you are welcome, sir, so many several
ways, as it is beyond my arithmetic to number, but this I know, you are
the Redeemer of the North, and the Saviour of the Crown. Your name,
sir, hath terrified three great Generals, and they fly before it. It
seems their design is not to meet your Highness, for I believe they
have got a river between you and them; but they are so nearly gone as
there is (no) certainty at all of them or their intentions, neither can
I resolve anything, since I am made of nothing but thankfulness and
obedience to your Highness’s commands.”
[Footnote 99: _The Pythouse Papers_, p. 19.]
Rupert arrived, as Warwick tells us, “with a very good army, Goring
being joined to him with the Northern horse”. It was not without some
skilful manœuvring that he was able to effect an entrance into York.
Here is his enemy’s account of it:—[100]
“LEAGUER BEFORE YORK.
“THE EARLS OF LEVEN, LINDSAY, AND MANCHESTER, FERDINANDO LORD FAIRFAX,
AND THOS. HATCHER. Since our last the conditions of affairs is not
a little changed for on Monday last, upon notice of Prince Rupert’s
march from Knaisburgh (Knaresborough) towards us, we resolved and
accordingly drew out the armies to have met him.” They do not say that
Newcastle came after them, but Heath (_Chronicle_, p. 58) says, “those
in York pursued their rear, and seized some provisions,” which must
have been most welcome to a half-famished garrison expecting a good
many thousand more hungry men who would also want food. The Generals
go on to say that they “for that end did march the same night to
Long Marston, about four miles west of York, but the Prince having
notice thereof passed with his army at Boroughbridge,” a place about
eighteen miles to the north-west of York, and quite out of his direct
route, “and so put the river Ouse betwixt him and us, whereby we were
disabled to oppose his passage into York, the bridge we built on the
west side of the town, being so weak that we durst not adventure to
transport our armies over upon it. This made us resolve the next
morning to march to Tadcaster for stopping his passage southward.”
[Footnote 100: S. P., Dom., Charles I, vol. LX.]
According to this account, therefore, it was Rupert who put the river
between himself and the enemy, and not the enemy who put the river
between themselves and Rupert, as Newcastle had written.
Rupert having effected his juncture with Newcastle, the Parliamentary
generals had to consider what should be their next step. It used to
be held that a besieging army should be larger than that of the place
invested; but the Royalist and the Parliamentary armies were pretty
equal in numbers. The most probable decision of the Parliamentary
Generals, therefore, would be to retire.
On the other hand, it was a question whether it would be the policy
of the Royalist army to force an engagement. With a fortified town
at their backs, it might have been under other circumstances; but
Newcastle’s men had been much underfed of late, and Rupert’s were
wearied by long marches, whereas the Parliamentary forces, although
very short of provisions, were better fed than Newcastle’s, nor were
they travel-worn like Rupert’s.
When Rupert went into York, on Monday, 1 July, he took about 2000 horse
with him; but he left his foot, his ordnance, and the remainder of his
cavalry in camp about five miles to the north of the town.
Newcastle, a dignified man of middle-age, accustomed to respect and
deference, had now to receive as his superior officer that impetuous
sprig of royalty, Prince Rupert, a youth of 22; and, glad as he was
that Rupert had come to his relief, he can scarcely have got rid of
all his previous feelings of jealousy. He told Rupert that the enemy
had already raised the siege, that the Parliamentary Generals were
quarrelling, that there was intense jealousy between the Scotch and the
English troops, and that, in all probability, the army from Scotland
would separate itself from its English allies, when, if left to
themselves, the enemy would disperse in various directions, and would
make no further attempts upon York.
Rupert, on the contrary, wanted to attack, stating that he had a
letter in his pocket from the King commanding him to give battle to
the Parliamentary army and crush it, once for all.[101] Newcastle
urged that it would at least be wiser to await the arrival of Colonel
Clavering, whom he was momentarily expecting with more than 3000
men, as well as that of 2000 men from the Northern garrisons. With
this addition of 5000 men, the Royalist army would have considerably
outnumbered that of the Parliament. Besides the reinforcements
definitely expected, Newcastle had great hopes of the arrival of
Montrose with some troops from Scotland. Rupert replied to Newcastle’s
arguments by saying: “Nothing venture, nothing win,” and then he
returned to his camp and spent the night there.
[Footnote 101: Sir Philip Warwick (p. 278), who was present at the
battle which followed, wrote: “Had not the Lord Digby, this year, given
a fatal direction to that excellent Prince Rupert to fight the Scottish
Army, surely that great Prince and soldier had never so precipitately
fought them”.
Digby was supposed to have inspired the King to write the letter to
Rupert here mentioned. The letter said: “If York be lost, I shall
esteem my crown little less.... But if York be relieved, and you
beat the rebels of both Kingdoms which are before it, then, but not
otherwise, I may possibly make a shift.” Lord Culpepper, when the King
told him that this letter had been sent, exclaimed: “Why, then, before
God you are undone; for upon this peremptory order he will fight,
whatever comes of it” (Warburton’s _Prince Rupert_, vol. II, p. 438).]
Early on the Tuesday morning Rupert was again in York and with
Newcastle. Meanwhile there had been as much diversity of opinion
between the Parliamentary Generals on the question of fighting or
not fighting, as between the Royalist. The English Generals were all
for action, the Scotch for a withdrawal to seek some more favourable
battle-field, and finally the latter over-persuaded the former.
In the Royalist council of war, Rupert was able to reply to Newcastle’s
continued desire for delay until the arrival of the shortly expected
reinforcements, by stating that his scouts reported the enemy to be
already on the move and that, unless they were attacked that day, they
would probably altogether escape a battle.
Newcastle persisted in his objections to an immediate engagement,
while Rupert’s persistence in favour of it never wavered. Heated, if
courteous, words are said to have passed between the two Generals—the
story that they even came to blows may be safely dismissed as
fiction—but finally Newcastle yielded although under strong protest,
to the royal authority, saying: “I am ready and willing, on my part,
to obey Your Highness, no otherwise than if His Majesty were here in
person. Happen what may, I will not shun to fight: for I have no other
ambition than to live and die a loyal subject of His Majesty.”
Rupert replied: “My Lord, I hope we shall have a glorious day”.[102]
Orders were then given to marshal all the forces into order of battle.
[Footnote 102: Such is the substance of the story as told by several
contemporary writers. Clarendon, however, in his very brief account of
the Battle of Marston Moor, says: “The Prince, without consulting with
the Marquis of Newcastle, or any of the officers within the town, sent
for all the soldiers to draw out, and put the whole army in battalia”.
But Cholmley’s Memorials touching the Battle of York, which were drawn
up for Clarendon’s information, and on which Clarendon most likely
based his own account, were written in 1649, five years after the
event, when Cholmondley may have forgotten some of the details.]
The rear-guard of the Parliamentary army was just preparing to
start—the advance-guard was already three miles on its road towards
Tadcaster, when a body of Royalist horse appeared, pulled up, and then
galloped away. Almost immediately afterwards, between ten and eleven
o’clock, 5000 of Rupert’s horse entered upon the moor, near Marston
village, where the rebel army had been encamped during the night
and a small part of it was still remaining. On hearing of this the
Parliamentary Generals thought that Rupert was manœuvring to attack
them on their march. If he fell upon their rear it might be fatal,
therefore Fairfax sent gallopers on the fastest horses he could find to
urge the immediate return of all the Parliamentary troops then on the
march.
Marston Moor lies seven miles to the west of York, about half-way
between that city and Knaresborough. Although enclosed in 1767, at the
time with which we are dealing much of it consisted of a large tract of
open moorland, covered with whinbushes and gorse; but there were fields
of rye on the southern side. The soil was marshy in some places and
sandy in others. A road called Marston Lane crossed it, for about two
miles from east to west, and 300 or 400 yards to the north of this lane
ran “a great ditch,” almost parallel with it. This ditch separated the
moor from some cultivated land.
On the south side, for the most part in some fields of rye, between the
road and the ditch, the Parliamentary Generals placed the main body of
their troops as they arrived. To the north of the ditch, the part of
the moor on which the Royalist troops were gradually assembling, the
ground was very flat; but from the road, running from east to west,
the ground rises towards the south; and, upon this rising ground,
the General of the Scotch ordnance placed twenty-five guns. Behind
these guns, and still higher on the incline, the Generals of the
Parliamentary army made their head-quarters, near which they posted
their wagons and stores.
The arrival and the posting of the troops seems to have been slow on
both sides. To distinguish between the two armies, the Cavaliers wore
no scarves, and the Puritans wore white paper or white handkerchiefs
in their hats; their watchword was “God with us,” while that of the
Cavaliers was “God and the King”. “How goodly a sight,” wrote Ash,
Lord Manchester’s chaplain, “was this to behold, when two mighty
armies, each of which consisted of above 20,000 horse and foot, did,
with flying colours prepared for the battle, look each other in the
face.”
But afternoon had come on and many of Newcastle’s troops had not yet
arrived. More extraordinary still, Newcastle himself had not put in
an appearance. Rupert galloped back to York to find out the reason of
the delay. There he found that a considerable number of Newcastle’s
cavalry were in a state of mutiny, clamouring for their long over-due
pay, and openly declaring that they would not leave the city to face
the enemy until they got it. Both Rupert and Newcastle “played the
orator” to them; but it was only after oft-repeated promises of prompt
payment that they yielded and marched out of York so late as nearly
five o’clock in the afternoon, with Rupert riding in the rear, and
Newcastle, in his state-coach drawn by six horses, following them at a
short distance.
Having once started, the hitherto reluctant cavalry rode rapidly to the
front. Rupert had arranged everything for his order of battle before
going into York. The accounts of that order are rather conflicting;
but, roughly speaking, it was something of this sort. The centre was
composed mainly of infantry under Newcastle and King, or Lord Ethyn
as he was now entitled. The right wing was formed of Rupert’s own
cavalry, including his regiment of “old soldiers all, gentlemen who
had seen much service in France and Spain,” Lord Byron’s Irish horse,
Lord Grandison’s horse, and some other cavalry, in all 7200 horse,
drawn up in twelve divisions. The left wing contained about 4000 of
Newcastle’s cavalry under Goring and Sir Charles Lucas, with a line of
musketeers in front of them. The whole of the ditch was also lined with
musketeers. A few guns were also posted in the ditch, and the rest of
the artillery was placed on the flanks.
Confronting the Royalist centre was the Parliamentary infantry under
Manchester and Leven. Opposite the Royalist right, the enemy’s left
contained Cromwell’s “Ironsides,” other cavalry of Manchester’s and
some Scottish horse; in all about 4200 horse, supported by 3000 foot
soldiers. In front of the Royalist left the enemy’s right was made up
of 4800 horse, consisting of Lord Fairfax’s famous cavalry and some
Scottish cavalry regiments, including the Ayrshire Lancers—rather an
uncommon armament at that period. In both armies reserves of cavalry
and infantry were drawn up in the rear. The numbers in the opposing
armies is doubtful; but probably they were pretty equal, and something
over 20,000 on either side.
Rupert showed Ethyn a sketch of his position and asked him how he liked
it. Ethyn replied that it was very fine on paper, but that it would
not be so on the field. Rupert had placed his front rank close to the
ditch, which was impassable in many places, and to this Ethyn strongly
objected. Rupert replied, “They may be drawn to a farther distance”.
Ethyn, probably thinking that any retreat along the whole line would
draw on an immediate attack from the enemy, replied, “No, sir. It is
too late.”
Rupert was very angry with Ethyn for saying this. They had not been
on the best of terms beforehand, for Rupert thought that Ethyn, when
General King, had not sufficiently supported him in a certain battle
on the Continent. Rupert revenged himself upon Ethyn for finding fault
with his order of battle on Marston Moor by twitting him when the
engagement was over, for having been of very little use during the
action.
In the course of the afternoon, a few shots were fired from the cannon
of both armies; but without important results, although a captain was
killed on each side; on one a nephew of Cromwell, on the other a son
of Sir Gilbert Haughton. Some of the Puritan soldiers sang psalms,
deriving considerable consolation from the psalmist’s denunciations
of his enemies, which they mentally applied to what they called “the
King’s cursed and cursing cormorants”. Rupert, not tolerating defeat
even in devotion, ordered his chaplain to preach to his men; on hearing
of which the Puritans declared Rupert to be a “jingling Machiavelian,”
guilty of a blasphemous mockery.
Several showers had fallen during the day, and towards evening black
clouds gathered overhead, a heavy thunderstorm set in, and rain fell in
torrents. On arriving at Marston Moor, Newcastle asked Rupert whether
he meant to fight that evening—it was then between five and six
o’clock. Rupert said that he had no intention of doing so and that he
would make his grand attack early in the morning: at the same time he
recommended Newcastle to seize the opportunity of taking a rest.
A rest was only too welcome! Newcastle had had a long, anxious,
perplexing day, and he was glad to return to his coach, which had been
left at some little distance behind the troops. The first thing he did
on getting into it was to light his pipe[103] and enjoy a soothing
smoke, after which, utterly worn out by worry, he fell asleep upon the
cushions of his chariot.
[Footnote 103: Leadman’s _Battles Fought in Yorkshire_, p. 135.
Clarendon also mentions the pipe incident (_Clarendon State Papers_,
No. 1805), but he gives a rather different account of it. This
opportunity may be taken of saying that the accounts of the Battle
of Marston Moor are so conflicting, that, for once, the scribe has
departed from his usual custom of making his witnesses speak for
themselves, and has attempted to give the substance of the story
as best as he can, after studying the various, and very varying,
authorities on the subject.]
CHAPTER XIII.
Many people may have experienced the sensation of being suddenly
disturbed soon after going to sleep, when very tired. Sleep at that
time is supposed to be at its deepest. On being awakened, although only
ten or twenty minutes may have actually passed since sleep came on, it
would seem as if it had lasted for hours; not that there is the sense
of refreshment usual after long sleep, on the contrary, the feeling
left is one of bewilderment combined with extreme languor.
It is probable that with some such sensations Newcastle suddenly awoke,
about seven o’clock, on the evening of Tuesday, 2 July, 1644; and there
was noise in abundance to disturb his slumbers. The heavy roll of the
thunder was drowned by the booming of cannon, the firing of muskets,
pistols and arquebuses, and the war cries of the excited soldiers; for
in those primitive times soldiers fought near enough to bandy curses
with each other. One naturally wonders whether, when it came to “push
of pike,” the Roundhead warriors remembered how strictly they had been
forbidden by Cromwell to use bad language, if indeed any language could
be worse than that of the Puritan divines themselves.
Most likely the Generals on either side had had no intention of
fighting that evening; certainly there is no reason for doubting
the sincerity of Rupert in telling Newcastle that he did not intend
to attack until the morning; but, as we have seen, the rival armies
had been drawn up perilously close to each other. They were within
musket-shot—a very short distance with the fire-arms of the period,
and it may be that the battle was begun by some of the men without
orders from their officers. Anyhow, the match had been applied to the
powder; probably the Generals on either side thought that the battle
had been begun by those on the other, and soon orders were given in all
directions for a general engagement.
Would’st hear the tale? On Marston Heath
Met, front to front, the ranks of Death;
Florished the trumpets fierce, and now
Fired was each eye, and flushed each brow,
On either side loud clamours ring
“God and the Cause!”—“God and the King!”
_Rokeby_, Canto I. xix.
Newcastle armed himself as quickly as possible, mounted his horse
and galloped to the front, accompanied by his brother, Sir Charles
Cavendish, two other officers, and his page. The first men he came upon
were some gentleman volunteers, who had formerly chosen him for their
captain, and he called out to them:—
“Gentlemen, You have done me the Honour to choose me your Captain, and
now is the fittest time that I may do you service; wherefore if you’ll
follow me I shall lead you on the best I can, and show you the way to
your own Honour”.
They were soon under fire and Newcastle led them against a regiment
of Scottish infantry. By some ill-luck, or clumsiness, he lost his
sword; but, although several officers immediately offered him theirs,
he refused them and took his page’s little sword, which the Duchess
tells us was “half leaden”. With this little weapon, however, he killed
three Scots and led his company of volunteers right through the enemy’s
regiment. Then he was brought to a standstill by a single brave Puritan
pikeman, whom he charged three times without effect, but the courageous
fellow was hacked down by the followers of Newcastle.
Meanwhile, Newcastle’s cavalry were doing splendidly on his left under
Goring and Sir Charles Lucas, whose sister Newcastle subsequently
married. She describes her brother as one who by nature “had a practick
genius to the warlike arts, or Arts in War, as Natural Poets have to
Poetry”. With regard to the Royalist cavalry, Mr. Fortescue, in his
standard work, _A History of the British Army_,[104] writes of “the
superiority of the Royalist cavalry. The long neglect of the mounted
service left the supremacy to the ablest amateurs, and the majority of
these, though there were hundreds of gentlemen on the Parliamentary
side, were undoubtedly for the King. Nor was it only the courage,
honour, and resolution of which Cromwell had spoken that favoured
them; they had from the nature of the case better horses, a higher
standard of horsemanship and equipment, a quicker natural intelligence
and a higher natural training. The thousand lessons which the county
gentlemen learned when riding with hawk and hound were of infinite
advantage in the casual and irregular warfare of the first two or three
years ... One fatal defect however marred what should have been a most
efficient cavalry, the blot had been hit by Cromwell, indiscipline.”
[Footnote 104: Vol. I, pp. 201-2.]
It was with such cavalry as this that Goring and Sir Charles Cavendish
charged on Marston Moor, on a day which, Mr. Fortescue says, “may
indeed be termed the first great day of English cavalry”.
On the whole, Ethyn may have been right in blaming Rupert for drawing
up his army close to the “great ditch,” but his having done so did him
good service on his left flank; for, when Fairfax wished to charge
Newcastle’s cavalry, he found the ditch impassable, and his only means
of reaching his enemy to be an almost straight lane which ran at right
angles to, and across, the ditch. Fairfax’s cavalry were only able
to cross the bridge over the ditch “three or four” abreast, and it
is surprising that they should have got over it at all, exposed as
they were to the fire of musketeers lining the lane. The muskets of
the period, however, could be reloaded but very slowly, and the heavy
rain which was falling may have interfered with the priming and caused
missfires. Nor did the Royalist artillery, likewise directed upon the
bridge, but also probably hampered by the rain, very seriously cripple
the invaders. Fairfax’s horse drove the Royalist gunners “from their
cannon, being two drakes” (six-pounders) and a “demiculverine” (a
nine-pounder).
What appears to have obstructed the progress of Fairfax’s cavalry
even more than the musketeers, the drakes and the demiculverine, was
a quantity of furze bushes and small ditches which they found lying
between themselves and Newcastle’s horse, when they had got over the
“great ditch”. The Royalist cavalry was also inconvenienced by these
impediments, for both sides charged simultaneously. “We were a long
time engaged with one another,” wrote Fairfax, who was unhorsed and
received a deep cut across the cheek which marked him for the rest of
his life. Sir Charles Fairfax and Major Fairfax were killed. “There
was scarce an officer but received a hurt,” wrote Lord Fairfax. Sir
William Fairfax led the Yorkshire foot across the ditch over Moor Lane
Bridge; but the fire of Newcastle’s famous regiment of Whitecoats did
this infantry more mischief than it had done to the cavalry; and the
Yorkshire foot were driven back, thinned in numbers and completely
demoralized by the gallant Royalists.
“On Marston, with Rupert, ’gainst traitors contending.”[105]
[Footnote 105: “On Leaving Newstead Abbey,” Byron.]
A small portion of Newcastle’s horse ran away and Fairfax, with about
400 men, made the mistake of following them for some distance towards
York. Then it occurred to him that he had better return to see how the
rest of his cavalry was faring; so he galloped back.
He says:[106] “Having charged through the enemy, my men going after in
pursuit, and myself returning back to my other troops, I was got-in
among the enemy who stood, up and down the field, in several bodies of
horse. So, taking the signal out of my hat, I passed through them for
one of their own commanders, and got to my Lord of Manchester’s horse.”
[Footnote 106: _Short Memorial._ Masères’s _Tracts_.]
During the temporary absence of Fairfax, the main body of his cavalry
had fallen into some confusion, and Goring seized the opportunity of
making a vigorous charge upon it. The King’s old horse, “veterans of
hard service and fame,” were more than the newly hired cavalry of
the Roundheads could withstand and a rout set in. Goring had a cry
raised of “See they run in the rear,” on hearing which those in the
van turned tail and began to run themselves. The Ayrshire Lancers and
the regiments of Lord Eglinton, whose son was mortally wounded in this
battle, held their ground for some time; but the stampede of the routed
van at last bore them with it to the rear. Then there was a general
rush for the bridge over the ditch, which some of the defeated foot
had not yet crossed, and the Parliamentary cavalry and infantry became
hopelessly mixed up, many men on foot being trampled upon by the horses
of their own comrades.
When the Roundhead troops had returned to their own side of the ditch,
the Royalist cavalry pursued them headlong. Heath says, “the Scots some
of them ran ten miles on end, and a wee bit, crying quarter, with other
lamentable expressions of fear”. Arthur Trevor in a letter to Ormonde,
says that the Scottish cavalry kept galloping away, crying “Wae’s us!
Wae’s us! We’re a’ undone.”
And many a bonny Scot, aghast,
Spurring his palfrey northward, passed,
Cursing the day when zeal or meed
First lured their Lesley o’er the Tweed.
_Rokeby._
All, however, did not spur northward: some spurred to Lincoln, some
to Hull, some to Halifax, some to Wakefield, all reporting the utter
rout of the Parliamentary army. The news reached Newark, whence the
Royalists sent an express messenger to convey the glorious tidings to
Oxford. Both at Oxford and at Banbury, Church bells were rung, bonfires
were lighted, and fireworks were let off in honour of the great victory
of Rupert and Newcastle over the combined armies of the Parliament and
the Scotch. The splendid news made happy the heart of King Charles and
set his anxious mind at rest.
Reports of the victory spread to London. Vicars, the Puritan author,
wrote: “Yea, our sottish and bewitched mole-eyed malignants of London
also, were so led along with a spirit of lying, like their father
the devil, that they mightily boasted of this robber’s vain victory
over us, the vanquishing of our whole three armies, the death and
imprisonment of all our three most renowned and precious Generals”.[107]
[Footnote 107: _Jehovah Jireh._]
The defeated Roundhead Generals fled for their lives. Manchester ran
away, but repented and returned: Lord Leven never drew rein till he
reached Leeds, twenty miles from the battle-field; and Lord Fairfax
fled for refuge to Cawood Castle, where, finding neither food, fire nor
candle, he philosophically got into bed. Indeed Principal Baillee wrote
in a letter to a friend, dated 12 July, 1644: “All six generals took to
their heels—this to you alone”.
But let us return to the battle-field and observe a few further details
of the fight: for thus far we have only been concerned with the
Royalist left wing and the Parliamentary right.
At the beginning of the battle, soon after seven in the evening, the
left wing of the Roundheads charged the ditch, which was passable in
their front. While Manchester’s infantry attacked that of Newcastle,
Cromwell’s cavalry charged Rupert’s, Byron’s and the Irish horse. “And
now,” wrote Manchester’s chaplain, “you might have seen the bravest
sight in the world, for they moved down the hill like so many thick
clouds, in brigades of 800, 1,000, 1,200 and 1,500 each.” “We came down
the hill,” says Watson, who was with Cromwell’s cavalry, “in bravest
order and with the greatest resolution that ever was seen.... In a
moment we were passed the ditch and on to the moor upon equal terms
with the enemy.” The Royalists abandoned four drakes in the ditch.
Watson continues: “Our front division charged their front, Cromwell’s
division of 300 horse, in which he himself was in person, charging the
first division of Prince Rupert’s, of which himself was in person,[108]
in which all were gallant men”.
[Footnote 108: Some accounts, however, state that, instead of leading
his own men, Rupert led Newcastle’s horse on the Royalist left.]
Yet it was not all plain sailing for Cromwell and his cavalry. A
sword-wound[109] on the neck obliged Cromwell to leave the field and
receive surgical treatment in a house hard by, and the Royalist cavalry
made a splendid resistance, repelling the Roundheads several times.
As was the custom in those days, both sides galloped towards each
other until they were within shot, when they pulled up and fired their
carbines or pistols, and then charged with their swords. It is said
that at the last charge on this occasion, the rival cavalry, after
firing, threw their pistols at each others heads.
[Footnote 109: Mark Trevor, who is said to have given the wound, was
created Lord Dungannon, for his services in this war. But Whitelock
says that the wound was made by a graze from a pistol bullet, “which
some imagined to be by accident and want of care by some of his
own men”. General Crawford supports this account of the wound. See
Masères’s _Tracts_. The story of the sword-wound is in Leadman’s
_Battles Fought in Yorkshire_, p. 138; a book giving a very elaborate
account of the battle.]
Carlyle describes the scene as “the most enormous hurly-burly of fire
and smoke and steel flashings and death tumult, ever seen in those
regions. We just get a glimpse of them joining battle in complete array
and the next shows them scattered, broken, straggling across moor and
field on both sides in utter bewilderment.” A spirited account, but
somewhat misleading, for they fought long and hard before either side
was scattered.
Unfortunately for the Royalists, among Rupert’s horse were some raw
levies, and although his own old troops were the bravest and most
brilliant cavalry then in this country, they were lacking in that
virtue in which Cromwell’s “Ironsides” excelled, namely discipline;
and discipline now told its tale. This cavalry contest is said to have
lasted an hour. Before the end of it Cromwell had returned to the
field. The issue still seemed doubtful, when Sir David Leslie’s horse
came up and attacked the Royalists in the flank, which at last wavered,
broke and fled, “Cromwell scattering them before him like a little
dust,” says Watson with bombastic exaggeration. Anyhow, in the end, the
cavalry on the right wing of the Royalist army was thoroughly routed.
On the Royalist left Goring, after defeating the enemy’s cavalry,
had followed the usual custom of attacking the flank of the enemy’s
infantry with his victorious horse; but he could rally only a few
troops for this purpose. The greater part of Newcastle’s cavalry
had galloped far out of sight in pursuit of the vanquished Scottish
fugitives. Another part had cantered up the hill and was busily engaged
in looting the Parliament’s wagons and stores.
But another General was adopting the same tactics on an opposite
side of the field with much greater success. Cromwell, having routed
the Royalist cavalry with his own, had nearly the whole of his
well-disciplined horse in hand, wherewith to attack the right flank
of the Royalist infantry, and that attack Newcastle’s infantry were
unable to resist. They were soon in confusion, regiment after regiment
was charged and dispersed, and the King’s infantry became a rabble of
scattered fugitives.
But not all! And now we come to the most heroic incident in the whole
battle, an incident which did great and lasting honour to the army of
Newcastle. It is thus described in a book which was published only
thirty-two years after it took place.[110]
[Footnote 110: _A Chronicle of the Late Intestine War_, etc., by James
Heath. London: Thomas Basset. 1676.]
“There was yet standing two regiments of the Lord Newcastle’s, one
called by the name of his Lambs [or Whitecoats]: these being veteran
soldiers, and accustomed to fight, stood their ground, and the fury
of that impression of Cromwell, which routed the whole army besides;
nor did the danger nor the slaughter round them make them cast away
their arms or their courage; but seeing themselves destitute of their
friends, and surrounded by their enemies, they cast themselves into a
ring, where though quarter was offered them, they gallantly refused
it, and so manfully behaved themselves, that they slew more of the
enemy in this particular fight, than they had killed of them before.
At last they were cut down, not by the sword, but showers of bullets,
after a long and stout resistance, leaving their enemies a sorrowful
victory, both in respect of themselves whom they would have spared, as
in regard of the loss of the bravest men on their own side, who fell in
assaulting them. A very inconsiderable number of them were preserved,
to be the living monuments of that Brigade’s loyalty and valour.”
William Lilly says, in his Diary, that the Whitecoats, “by mere valour,
for one whole hour kept the troops of horse from entering amongst
them at near push of pike: when the horse did enter they would have
no quarter, but fought it out until there was not thirty of them
living. Those whose hap it was to be beaten down upon the ground as the
troopers came near them, though they could not rise for their wounds,
yet were so desperate as to get either a pike or a sword, or piece
of them, and to gore the troopers’ horses, as they came over them or
passed by them. Captain Coventry, then a trooper under Cromwell, and an
actor,”—it is curious that there should have been a “play-actor” among
the troops of Cromwell—“who was the third or fourth man that entered
amongst them, protested he never, in all the fights he was in, met with
such resolute brave fellows, or whom he pitied so much, and said he
saved two or three against their wills.”
Heath says: “Night ended the pursuit: for it was eleven o’clock before
the fight ceased, else more blood had been shed.... Here were slain
to the number of 8,000 and upwards in the field and flight; which at
certain was divided equally between both armies: for what slaughter
was made by the prince upon the Scots and Fairfax, was requited by
Cromwell on the left wing as aforesaid, and the fight was furious and
bloody there. It must needs be a great carnage;” and then some horrible
details follow.
Newcastle remained on the field to the end. The Duchess says:—
“His two sons had Commands, but His Brother, though he had no Command,
by reason of the weakness of his body; yet he was never from My Lord
when he was in action, even to the last; for he was the last with my
Lord in the Field in that fatal Battel upon _Hessom-moor_,[111] near
York; and though my Brother, Sir Charles Lucas, desired My Lord to
send his sons away, when the said battel was fought, yet he would not,
saying, His sons should shew their Loyalty and Duty to His Majesty, in
venturing their lives, as well as Himself”.
[Footnote 111: Marston Moor was sometimes called Hessom Moor.]
The three Generals of the Roundhead army state in their official
dispatch that the Royalists lost “all their ordnance to the number of
20 (pieces), their ammunition, baggage, about 100 colours and 10,000
arms”. Whitelock says (89): “From this battle and the pursuit, some
reckon were buried 7,000 Englishmen, all agree that above 3,000 of the
Prince’s men were slain in the battle, besides those in the chace and
3,000 prisoners taken, etc.”
To the “chace,” as Whitelock calls it, an end was put by darkness.
Rupert escaped being taken prisoner by dismounting and hiding in a
field of standing beans. Afterwards he succeeded in getting into York,
as also did Newcastle. Just outside the town Newcastle met Rupert, to
whom he exclaimed: “All is lost!” As well he might. Marston Moor was a
defeat from which the Royalist cause never recovered, and it was one of
the greatest battles ever fought on English soil.
There was little disgrace in being overcome, after an exceptionally
hard-fought battle, by such a General as Cromwell, to whom the honours
of Marston Moor are chiefly due. And Newcastle can scarcely be
considered a defeated General in this case, for Rupert was in supreme
command. His was the defeat. Newcastle had been opposed to risking the
engagement; yet, finding himself in it, although against his will, he
exhibited exceptional courage as also did his men.
But Marston Moor saw the destruction, almost the annihilation, of his
army, the loss of his prestige, the blasting of his hopes, the ruin of
his fortunes.
CHAPTER XIV.
“No, I will not endure the laughter of the Court,” said Newcastle,[112]
when, on the following morning, Rupert asked him to make an effort to
recruit his forces. “I will go to Holland.”
[Footnote 112: Warburton’s _Rupert_, II, 468.]
“And I will rally my men!” said Rupert.
Before we blame Newcastle for deserting the King’s service and leaving
England without his permission, we ought to remember that he was in
a position widely different from that of most defeated Generals. He
had been publicly proclaimed a traitor by the Parliament. When any
indemnity had been proposed he had been specially excepted from it by
name. If he fell into the hands of the enemy, the Tower and the block
were almost inevitable; although, if he had been taken prisoner in
such a great battle as that of Marston Moor, there is just a bare, but
unlikely, possibility that he might have been liberated in an exchange
of prisoners.
The most important evidence in his favour is a letter from Charles I,
dated 28 November, 1644, that is about four months after Newcastle had
fled the country; for, if the King excused his conduct, no one else had
a right to complain.
“CHARLES R.
“Right trusty and entirely beloved Cousin and Councellor Wee greete
you well. The misfortune of our Forces in the North wee know is
ressented as sadly by you as the present hazard of the losse of soe
considerable a porcion of this our Kingdom deserves: which also
affects us the more, because in that losse so great a proporcion fals
upon your self, whose loyalty and eminent merit we have ever held, and
shall still, in a very high degree of our royall esteeme. And albeit
the distracted condition of our Affaires and Kingdom will not afford
us meanes at this present to comfort you in your sufferings, yet we
shall ever reteyne soe gracious a memory of your merit, as when it
shall please God in mercy to restore us to peace, it shalbe one of our
principall endeavours to consider how to recompense those that have
with soe great an affection and courage as yourself assisted us in the
time of our greatest necessity and troubles. And in the meane time if
there be any thing wherein we may ex-presse the reality of our good
intentions to you, or the value we have of your person, we shall most
readily doe it upon any occasion that shalbe ministred. And soe we bid
you very heartily farewell. Given at our Court at Oxford the 28th day
of November, 1644.
“By his Maʲᵉˢᵗʸ’ˢ command
EDW. NICHOLAS.
“TO OUR RIGHT TRUSTY AND ENTIRELY
BELOVED COUSIN AND COUNCELLᵒR.
WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.” [113]
[Footnote 113: Ellis’s _Letters_, Series I, vol. III, p. 303.]
The Duchess says, that before leaving York Newcastle had asked Rupert
“to give this true and just report of him to his Majesty, that he had
behaved himself like an honest man, a Gentleman, and a Loyal subject.
Which request the Prince having granted, my Lord took his leave;
and being conducted by a Troop of Horse, and a Troop of Dragoons to
_Scarborough_ went to Sea, and took shipping for _Hamborough_; the
Gentry of the Country, who also came to take their leaves of My Lord,
being much troubled at his departure, and speaking very honourably of
him, as surely they had no reason to the contrary.”
Quite true, in the main; but something said by Sir Hugh Cholmley in his
private memoirs[114] has a bearing upon his last remark. “After the
battle of Hess Moor, the Marquis of Newcastle came to Scarborough, and
lodged at my house two days, till I had furnished him with a ship to go
beyond sea; at his departure, he thanked me for my entertainment, and
told me ‘he had some fear I should have stayed [stopped] him’; which I
suppose he conceived would be some countenance to his: my answer was
‘I wish he could stay; that if he had committed an error, I knew my
duty so well, I was not to call him to account, but obey, he being my
general; that for my own part, though the place was in no defensible
posture, I meant not to surrender till I heard from the King, or was
forced to it’.” This was a broad hint to Newcastle as to Cholmley’s
opinion of his conduct in flying from the country.
[Footnote 114: _The Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley._ 100 copies.
Privately Printed. 1870, p. 41.]
In continuing her story, the Duchess says that Newcastle, when
“preparing for his journey, asked his Steward How Much Money he had
left? Who answer’d, That he had but 90£. My Lord not being at all
startled at so small a Summ, although his present design required much
more, was resolved too seek his Fortune, even with that little; ... he
embarqued with his Company, and arrived in four days time to the said
City, which was on the _8th of July, 1644_.”
Half a dozen lords, a bishop, and a good many of his relations and
friends, including his brother and two sons, sailed with Newcastle.
“But before My Lord landed at _Hamborough_ his eldest Son _Charles_,
Lord _Mansfield_, fell sick of the Small Pox, and not long after his
younger Son, Henry, now Earl of _Ogle_, fell likewise dangerously ill
of the Measels; but it pleased God that they both happily recovered.”
Here is some news of Newcastle after he had been only a few days in
Holland.
[115]“JOHN CONSTABLE TO HIS FATHER, SIR HENRY, VISCOUNT DUNBAR,
AMSTERDAM.... For the news that is here stirring, first Prince Rupert
is here mightily condemned for his rashness, but the Marquis of
Newcastle much more for coming away.”
[Footnote 115: S. P., Charles I, July 25, 1644, vol. DII, No. 70.]
[116]“JOHN CONSTABLE TO HIS FATHER, SIR HENRY, VISCOUNT DUNBAR
(Rotterdam).... The Marquis of Newcastle is still at Hamburgh in poor
condition; both his sons have had the measles; I believe he now repents
his folly.”
[Footnote 116: S. P., Charles I, Dom., July 30, 1644, vol. DII, No. 72.]
Luckily for Newcastle, much of the blame which was due to him was
thrown upon Ethyn. Clarendon says:[117] “The strange manner of the
Prince’s coming, and undeliberately throwing himself and all the
King’s hopes into that sudden and unnecessary engagement, by which
all the force the Marquis had raised, and with so many difficulties
preserved, was in a moment cast away and destroyed, so transported him
with passion and despair that he could not think of beginning the work
again and involving himself in the same undelightful condition of life,
from which he might now be free. He hoped his past meritorious actions
might outweigh his present abandoning the thought of future actions and
so, without farther consideration, he transported himself out of the
Kingdom, and took with him General King” (Ethyn); “upon whom they who
were content to spare the Marquis, poured out all the reproaches of
infidelity, treason, and conjunction with his country-men (the Scots),”
an accusation which Clarendon declares to have been “without the least
foundation”.
[Footnote 117: _Hist._, vol. II, part II. p. 510.]
In the next paragraph Clarendon says that “the loss of England,” which
soon followed, made the loss of York comparatively little spoken of,
and that Newcastle’s patient endurance of his subsequent losses “so
perfectly reconciled all good men to him, that they rather observed
what he had done and suffered for the King and for his country, without
inquiring what he had omitted to do”.
Henrietta Maria remained a steadfast friend to Newcastle, even when
he had fled from his country and from her husband’s service. I “shall
assure you,” she wrote to him from Paris (20 Nov., 1644), “of the
continuance of my esteem for you, not being so unjust as to forget
past services upon a present misfortune. And therefore believe that I
shall always continue to give proofs of what I tell you, and you will
see how I shall behave, and with what truth I am, Your very good, and
affectionate friend,
“HENRIETTA MARIA R.”[118]
[Footnote 118: _Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria_, p. 261.]
* * * * *
Of what happened to the remains of Newcastle’s army at York, Heath
tells us:—[119]
“The victor enemy being come again before York, summoned the city
again: they had used before their utmost endeavours, by mines and
assaults, (in one whereof they lost nearly one thousand men, and
were beaten off) to have entered; to which the Governor returned
answer, that he was no whit dismayed with their present success;
yet nevertheless on equal conditions he would come to a treaty and
surrender; which in nineteen days after the battle was concluded on.”
The garrison was allowed to “march out according to the honourable
custom of war”.
[Footnote 119: P. 61.]
If there was still a sufficient garrison at York to hold out for
nineteen days—and there is nothing to show that it could not have held
out longer—was Newcastle justified in deserting it? True, there was no
prospect of any adequate force coming to his relief; and, in any terms
of surrender, he, as a proclaimed traitor, might not have been allowed
to march out, a free man, either with or without the honours of war.
On the other hand, if he had held York, what honour would have been
his in the case of the success of the King’s army in the South and the
total defeat of the army of the Parliament, a contingency which, at
that time, was still apparently possible, and would have been rendered
more probable if a large portion of the army of the Parliament had been
occupied in the siege of York.
To sympathisers with Newcastle, it may be consoling to reflect that
recriminations and reproaches for neglect of duty or courage, at or
after the battle of Marston Moor, were not confined to the Royalist
side, as both Rushworth and Clarendon bear witness. Manchester and
Cromwell disliked each other; and another General, Crawford, a bitter
enemy of Cromwell, pretended that Cromwell, after receiving a very
slight wound in the neck given accidentally by one of his own men, at
the beginning of the battle of Marston Moor, had made it an excuse to
escape from the field until the fighting was practically over.[120]
Cromwell seized opportunities of bringing counter-charges against both
Crawford and Manchester, accusing the latter of disaffection to the
Parliamentary cause.
[Footnote 120: “Lieutenant-General Cromwell had the impudence and
boldness to assume much of the honour of that victory to himself.... My
friend Cromwell had neither part nor lot in the business. For I have
several times heard it from Crawford,” [Crawford was Major-General
to the Earl of Manchester’s Brigade] “that, when the whole army at
Marston Moor was in a fair possibility to be utterly routed, and
a great part of it was still running, he saw the body of horse of
that brigade standing still, and to his seeming doubtful which way
to charge, backward or forward, when he came up to them in a great
passion, reviling them with the names of poltroons and cowards, and
asked them if they would stand still and see the day lost? Whereupon
Cromwell showed himself, and said in a pitiful voice: ‘Major-General,
what shall I do?’ Crawford replied: ‘Sir, if you charge not, all is
lost’. Cromwell answered that he was wounded and was not able to charge
(his great wound being a little burn in the neck by the accidental
going-off behind him of one of the soldier’s pistols), then Crawford
desired him to go off the field, and sending one away with him ... led
them on himself, which was not the duty of his place and as little for
Cromwell’s honour.”—_Memoirs of Denzil Lord Hollis._]
Welbeck, Newcastle’s home, received a visit from the enemy, about a
month after its owner had sailed from England. The guest shall tell his
own story:—[121]
“EDWARD EARL OF MANCHESTER TO THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS.... Upon
my coming near Welbeck, I sent a summons to the place and they with
great civility sent to parley with me. The next day, Friday, they
rendered the house to me upon composition. I was willing to give them
large terms, because I was not in a condition to besiege a place so
well fortified as that was. I therefore gave the officers and soldiers
liberty to march out with all their arms and colours flying; but when
I came to take possession of the house most of the soldiers came to
me to lay down their arms, desiring tickets of me to return to their
own homes, the which I granted them, so as I had 350 muskets in the
house, 50 horse arms, 11 pieces of cannon great and small, whereof
the Governor had liberty to carry away one: I had likewise 20 barrels
of powder and a ton of match. The house I preserved entire, and put a
garrison into it of Notts men, until I know your Lordship’s resolutions
whether you will have it slighted or no. The place is very regularly
fortified; and the Marquis of Newcastle’s daughters and the rest of
his children and family are in it, unto whom I have engaged myself
for their quiet abode there, and to intercede to the Parliament for a
complete maintenance for them; in the which I beseech your Lordships
that they may have your favour and furtherance.”
[Footnote 121: S. P., Charles I, Dom., Aug. 6, 1644, vol. DII, No. 82.]
[Illustration: TRAINING WITH THE RIGHT HAND.]
Manchester seems not only to have “engaged” himself for the quiet abode
of Newcastle’s children in the home at Welbeck, but eventually to
have left it ungarrisoned by Parliamentary troops; for, some thirteen
months later, Welbeck entertained a very different visitor, in the
person of the King himself. Charles went there under most depressing
circumstances. There was no banquet costing £5000 awaiting him there
now, nor a masque of welcome written by Ben Jonson. The total defeat
of his army in the North at Marston Moor had recently been followed by
as complete a defeat by Cromwell of his army further South at Naseby,
when his baggage was captured and his compromising letters to and
from the Queen and the Irish rebels were seized and published by the
Parliament. Newcastle’s late General, Goring, had been defeated by
Fairfax at Langport; and Rupert had surrendered Bristol to the enemy.
The last battle fought in the open field on behalf of the King was lost
at Rowton, near Chester, on 23 September.
Charles’s only hope now lay in succour by Montrose, whose only hope,
again, lay in succour from the King. Wandering from place to place,
Charles, Clarendon tells us,[122] “had made haste from Ludlow, that the
Scottish army might no more be able to interrupt him; and with very
little rest, passed through Shropshire, and Derbyshire, till he came to
Welbeck, a house of the Marquis of Newcastle in Nottinghamshire, then
a garrison for his Majesty; where he refreshed himself and his troops,
two days”. But what a contrast must such gloomy refreshment have been
to the magnificent hospitality which he had received there on two
former occasions.
[Footnote 122: _Hist._, vol. II, part II. book ix.]
This was probably one of the saddest visits ever paid to Welbeck.
The Governor of Newark and the Royalist gentry of Nottinghamshire,
Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire waited upon the King during his short visit
at Newcastle’s home. At first it was decided that Charles should
proceed direct to Scotland and join Montrose; but afterwards it was
thought better that he should take up his quarters at Doncaster and
raise troops in Yorkshire. However, it is no part of our duty to follow
the footsteps of that ill-fated King.
Here is a pathetic letter from Newcastle to the Prince of Wales:—[123]
“W. MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE TO (THE PRINCE OF WALES).
“1644(5) FEBRUARY 4. HAMBURG.—After the great misfortunes and
miseries I have suffered, the first joy and only comfort I received
was to hear of your Highness’s health and your being a general, both
which I congratulate with my soul, and I dare say your Highness
believes me. And it is no small comfort to me and mine that we have
lived to see you a man; and could I see but peace in our Israel, truly
then I care not how soon death closes my eyes. But whilst I crawl
here in this uneven world your Highness must be troubled with me as
my first master, and now it is your turn to take care of me. Could
your Highness forget me, I would forgive you, and my last breath would
be a prayer for your happiness, and glory that I fell ruined in your
service!”
[Footnote 123: Portland MSS., at Welbeck Abbey.]
One of the first things that Newcastle had had to do, on reaching
Hamburg, was to raise money—no easy task under the circumstances.
He was so short of cash that, as the Duchess tells us, “when his
occasions drew him abroad,” he was obliged to travel in a wagon, “for
want of a coach”. Having succeeded in borrowing some money, a little
later, he bought nine horses for £160, and he also purchased a coach.
Of his subsequent proceedings, the Duchess has this to tell us:—
“After my Lord had stay’d in _Hamborough_ from _July 1644_, till
_February 16_, he being resolved to go into _France_ by Sea went
from _Hamborough_ to _Amsterdam_, and from thence to _Rotterdam_,
where he sent one of his Servants with a Complement and tender of his
humble Service to Her Highness, the then Princess Royal, the Queen
of _Bohemia_, the Princess Dowager of _Orange_, and the Prince of
_Orange_, which was received with much kindness and civility.”
After describing the rest of his journey, she says:—
“My Lord being arrived at _Paris_, which was in _April, 1645_,
immediately went to tender his humble duty to Her Majesty, the
Queen-Mother of _England_, where it was my Fortune to see him the first
time, I being then one of the Maids of Honour to Her Majesty.”
Upon this seeing of Newcastle by one of the Maids of Honour to Her
Majesty a good deal depended, and it will be best to deal with the
matter in a fresh chapter.
CHAPTER XV.
Of the Duchess of Newcastle’s writings we have already seen a good
deal, and the time has now arrived for introducing her in person.
Perhaps it may be best to begin by quoting Cibber’s statement[124] that
the future “Duchess herself in a book entitled ‘Nature’s Pictures,
Drawn by Fancy’s Pencil to the Life,’ has celebrated both the exquisite
beauty of her person and the rare endowments of her mind”. False
modesty is a vice from which the Duchess was perfectly free.
[Footnote 124: _Lives of the Poets_, II, 162.]
[Illustration: MARGARET DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving by Alais, after a painting by Diepenbeck]
Margaret Lucas was a daughter of Sir Thomas Lucas, of whom she says:
“though my father was not a peer of the realm, yet there were few peers
who had much greater estates, or lived more noble therewith”. She does
not mention the fact that her great-grandfather had been town-clerk
of Colchester.[125] Her two brothers, Sir John, who was created Lord
Lucas by Charles I in 1644, and Sir Charles, were both distinguished
cavaliers; and she mentions another brother, Sir Thomas, of whom
Burke—not the Duchess—says he “was illegitimate, having been born
prior to the marriage of his parents”. For this trifling confusion
of dates, the excellent Lady Lucas endeavoured to atone by the
prudishness upon which she insisted in her children. The Duchess tells
us that—
“She was of a grave Behaviour, and had such a Majestic Grandeur, as
it were continually hung about her, that it would strike a kind of an
awe to the beholders, and command respect from the rudest.... She had
a well favoured loveliness in her face, a pleasing sweetness in her
countenance, and a well-temper’d complexion, as neither too red nor too
pale.... Also she was an affectionate Mother, breeding her children
with a most industrious care, and tender love, and having eight
children, three sons and five daughters, there was not any one crooked,
or any ways deformed, neither were they dwarfish, or of a Giant-like
stature, but every ways proportionable; likewise well featured, cleer
complexions, brown haires, but some lighter than others, sound teeth,
sweet breaths, plain speeches, tunable voices, I mean not so much to
sing as in speaking, as not stuttering, nor wharling in the throat,
or speaking through the nose, or hoarsely, unless they had a cold, or
squeakingly, which impediments many have; neither were their voices of
too low a strain, or too high.” Negatively, a truly remarkable family!
[Footnote 125: Burke’s _Dormant and Extinct Peerages_, 335.]
Of her father the Duchess says: “He unfortunately killed one Mr.
Brooks in a single Duel; for my father by the Laws of Honour could do
no less than call him to the field, to question him for an injury he
did him, where their Swords were to dispute, and one or both of their
lives to decide the argument, wherein my Father had the better; and
though my Father by Honour challenged him, with Valour fought him, and
in Justice killed him, yet he suffered more than any Person of Quality
usually doth in cases of Honour; for though the Laws be rigorous, yet
the present Princes most commonly are gratious in those misfortunes,
especially to the injured. But my Father found it not, for his exile
was from the time of his misfortunes to Queen Elizabeth’s death; for
the Lord Cobham being then a great man with Queen Elizabeth, and this
Gentleman, Mr. Brooks, a kind of a Favourite, and as I take it Brother
to the then L. Cobham, which made Queen Elizabeth so severe, not to
pardon him: but King James of blessed memory graciously gave him his
Pardon, and leave to return home to his Native Country.”
The description of the education and family life of herself and her
sisters, given by the Duchess, is not altogether uninteresting.
“As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of vertues, as singing,
dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working, and the like,
yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they were rather for formality
than benefit, for my Mother cared not so much for our dancing and
fidling, singing and prating of severall languages, as that we should
be bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably, and on honest
principles.”
As to the habits of this edifying family, she says:—
“But to rehearse their Recreations. Their customs were in Winter
time to go sometimes to Plays, or to ride in their Coaches about the
Streets to see the concourse and recourse of People; and in the Spring
time to visit the Spring garden, Hide park, and the like places; and
sometimes they would have Musick; and sup in Barges upon the Water;
these harmless recreations they would pass their time away with; for
I observed, they did seldom make Visits, nor never went abroad with
Strangers in their Company, but onely themselves in a Flock together
agreeing so well, that there seemed but one Minde amongst them: And
not onely my own Brothers and Sisters agreed so, but my Brothers and
Sisters in law, and their Children, although but young, had the like
agreeable natures, and affectionable dispositions; for to my best
remembrance I do not know that ever they did fall out, or had any angry
or unkind disputes. Likewise, I did observe, that my Sisters were so
far from mingling themselves with any other Company, that they had
no familiar conversation or intimate acquaintance with the Families
to which each other were linkt to by Marriage, the Family of the one
being as great Strangers to the rest of my brothers and Sisters, as the
Family of the other.”
How far such an education and such surroundings would be conducive to
breadth of mind, sociability, and success in the world, the reader
must judge for himself.
Although she had been exceedingly anxious to become a Maid of Honour,
Margaret does not appear to have enjoyed the two years which she spent
in that capacity. She says: “I had heard that the world was apt to lay
aspersions even on the innocent, for which I durst neither look up with
my eyes, nor speak, nor be any way sociable, insomuch as I was thought
a Natural Fool”. Being “fearfull and bashfull, I neither heeded what
was said or practic’d, but just what belong’d to my loyal duty, and
my own honest reputation; and, indeed, I was so afraid to dishonour
my Friends and Family by my indiscreet actions, that I rather chose
to be accounted a Fool, then to be thought rude or wanton; in truth,
my bashfulness and fears made me repent my going from home to see the
World abroad”.
Ballard says:[126] “Her person was very graceful, her temper naturally
reserved and shy, and she seldom said much in company, especially among
strangers”. She herself confesses and deplores her own bashfulness; but
she declares it to be a better thing than rudeness on the ground that
“a rude nature is worse than a brute nature, by so much more as man
is better than beast, but those that are of civil natures and gentle
dispositions, are as much nearer to celestiall creatures, as those that
are of rude or cruell are to Devils”.
[Footnote 126: _Memoirs of British Ladies, Celebrated for their
Writings_, _etc._, p. 213.]
This particular “celestiall creature” favours us with some more details
of her own character. “I am gratefull, for I never received a curtesie
but I am impatient, and troubled untill I can return it; also I am
Chaste, both by Nature and Education, insomuch as I do abhorre an
unchast thought; likewise I am seldom angry,” yet “when I am angry, I
am very angry, but yet it is soon over, and I am easily pacified, if
it be not such an injury as may create a hate”;—a highly significant
reservation—“neither am I apt to be exceptious or jealous; but if
I have the lest symptome of this passion, I declare it to those it
concerns, for I never let it ly smothering in my breast to breed a
malignant disease in the minde.” “I am neither spitefull, envious nor
malicious; I repine not at the gifts that Nature or Fortune bestows
upon others.” “My God,” she would almost seem to have said, “I thank
Thee that I am not as other women are.”
Newcastle had heard a good deal of Margaret Lucas before he met her. He
had been a friend and a patron of her brother, whom Charles I had made
a peer. Lord Lucas had been in Newcastle’s army, and when Newcastle had
asked him in what manner he could best serve him, Lucas had replied
that he had no desires on his own account, being ready to suffer exile
or death in the royal cause; but that he was anxious about his sister
Margaret, at Queen Henrietta’s little Court in Paris, as her beauty
exposed her to danger, and, owing to his losses through the civil war,
he had no dowry to bestow upon her. At the same time he expatiated
upon her character and virtues to such an extent as to arouse the
curiosity of Newcastle.[127]
[Footnote 127: _Biog. Brit._, Kippis’s Ed., vol. III, 337; Cibber’s
_Lives_, II, 162-3.]
With the paragon of perfection self-described in the preceding pages,
the exiled Newcastle fell in love. The lady herself shall describe what
happened:—
“My Lord ... was pleased to take some particular notice of me, and
express more than an ordinary affection for me; insomuch that he
resolved to chuse me for his Second Wife; for he, having but two Sons,
purposed to marry me, a young Woman that might prove fruitful to him
and encrease his Posterity by a Masculine-Offspring. Nay, He was so
desirous of Male-Issue, that I have heard him say, He cared not (so
God would be pleased to give him many Sons) although they came to be
persons of the meanest Fortunes; but God (it seems) had ordered it
otherwise, and frustrated his Designs”—here the Duchess becomes very
plain-spoken—“which yet did never lessen his Love and Affection for
me.”
Several of Margaret Lucas’s love-letters are in existence at Welbeck
Abbey.[128] Let us look at a few of them.
[Footnote 128: Welbeck MSS.]
“MARGARET LUCAS TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“(1645, NOVEMBER.) I fear others foresee we shall be unfortunate
though we see it not ourselves, or else there would not be such pains
taken to untie the knot of our affection. I must confess that as you
have had good friends to counsel you, so I have had good friends to
counsel me and tell me they hear of your professions of affection to
me, which they bid me take heed of, for you had assured yourself to
many and were constant to none. I said my Lord Newcastle was too wise
and too honest to engage himself to many. I heard the Queen would take
it ill I did not make her acquainted before I had resolved.”
From this it is evident that Newcastle’s friends had been trying to
dissuade him from the marriage, and that Margaret’s friends were also
trying to prevent it. It is not surprising that they should have done
so. Newcastle was then living entirely on credit and was borrowing
wherever he could. However agreeable a man’s conversation may be, if it
ends in his saying, “By the way, I wonder whether you would kindly lend
me £... for a few days,” he is not likely to be very popular.
As Margaret writes that the Queen would take it ill unless informed
before Margaret “resolved,” the engagement was probably not yet
definitely made. In her next letter Margaret begins to fear that she
may have been immodestly forward in her flirtations with Newcastle.
Yet, under cover of ostentatious bashfulness, she takes the opportunity
of asking Newcastle to propose his suit to the Queen.
“THE SAME TO (THE SAME).
“(1645, NOVEMBER.) My Lord Widdrington in his advice has done as a
noble and true affectionate friend would do.
“I do not send to you to-day, for if I do, they will say I pursue you
for your affections, for though I love you extremely I never feared my
modesty so small as it would give me leave to court any man. If you
please to ask the Queen I think it would be well understood. I thank
you for the fear you have of my ruin.” Let us hope that this was not
written in the same spirit in which people say: “I thank you for the
fear you have of my damnation”: but it has rather that look.
In another letter she says: “Saint Germains is a place of much slander,
and thinks I send too often to you”. From the next letter it would seem
that Newcastle had been a little jealous of Porter; but no courtship
would be complete without a lover’s quarrel!
“I hope you are not angry for my advice about Saint Germans. I gave it
simply for the best. As for Mr. Porter he was a stranger to me, for
before I came to France I never saw him or at least knew him to be Mr.
Porter or my Lord Newcastle’s friend. I never speak to any man before
they address themselves to me nor look so much in their face as to
invite their discourse, and I hope I never was uncivil to any person of
whatsoever degree; but to-morrow the Queen comes to Paris and then I
hope to justify myself.”
In one letter she seems annoyed at hearing that Newcastle had announced
the engagement before it was quite settled:—
“It was said to me you had declared your marriage to Lord Jermyn. I
answered it was more than I could do.”
In an earlier chapter, Sir Philip Warwick told us that Newcastle “had
the misfortune to have somewhat of the poet in him”. This misfortune
impelled him to write poems to Margaret, who replied:—
“Your verses are more like you than your picture, though it resembles
you very well”.
From a later letter, she would seem to have been at St. Germains and
Newcastle in Paris, and that she feared to go with the Queen to Paris
lest she should be supposed to be doing so with the object of flirting
with Newcastle:—
“I hear the Queen comes to Paris next week to the solemnities of
Princess Mary’s marriage, and I am in a dispute whether I should come
with her if I can get leave to stay. My reason is because I think it
will stop their discourse of us when they see I do not come. My Lord
let your eye limit your poetry.” Possibly Newcastle’s verses may have
begun to savour too strongly of the Song of Solomon. The question of
the poems crops up again in a later letter, and they would seem to have
been the cause of a slight misunderstanding:—
“I am sorry you should bid me keep the verses you sent me, for it looks
as though you thought I had flung away those you sent before.”
But perhaps Newcastle may only have been anxious that his verses should
be carefully preserved, in order that, at some future date, he might
publish them in a book of his “Collected Poems”. Poets are not totally
destitute of eyes to business. Anyhow, no maker of verses would like to
think that they had been “flung away”. The next letter hints at more
troubled waters:—
“I never said any such thing as you mentioned in your letter about
your picture, nor even showed it to a creature before yesterday when
I gave it to mend; but I find such enemies that whatever is for my
disadvantage, though it have but a semblance of truth, is declared.
“It is not usual to give the Queen gloves or anything else, but if you
please I will give them to her.”
Presently comes another letter which looks as if, even then, all was
not quite smooth between the lovers.
“I am sorry you have metamorphosed my letter and made that masculine
which was efemenat. My ambition is to be thought a modest woman, and to
leave the title of a gallant man to you.”
Five affectionate letters follow, but they contain nothing of
world-wide interest. The last states Margaret’s intention of going to
Paris, and in a sixth she says:—
“There is nothing will please me more than to be where you are, and I
begin to admire Paris because you are in it.”
Both Newcastle and Margaret were afraid of the Queen, for in the next
letter she says:—
“I know not what counsel to give concerning the Queen, but I fear she
will take it ill if she be not made acquainted with our intentions. If
you please to write a letter to her and send it to me, I will deliver
it the day you send for me. I think it no policy to displease the
Queen, for though she will do us no good she may do us harm. I send
my maid about some business, and she and Lady Brown”—the wife of the
English Ambassador—“shall agree about the other thing you spoke of.
“Pray consider that I have enemies.”
From the following letter it would appear that the Queen had been
informed of the proposed marriage and that she was very angry.
Obviously Margaret was expecting a wigging:—
“I have not been with the Queen yet. I hear she would have me
acknowledge myself in a fault and she not to be in any, but it will
be hard for me to accuse myself and to make myself guilty of a fault
when I am innocent, but if it be the duty of a servant to obey all the
commands of a mistress though it be against myself I will do it, if it
be but to bring myself to the use of obedience against I am a wife. For
the hindrance of our marriage I hope it will not be in their power. I
am sure they cannot hinder me from loving.”
From the next missive it is clear that there had been an encounter
between the Queen and Margaret and that a truce had been patched up
merely for appearance’ sake. It is also pretty evident that the Queen
would have stopped the marriage altogether if she had had the power to
do so.
“I hope the Queen and I are friends. She saith she will seem so at
least, but I find if it had been in her power she would have crossed
us. I heard not of the letter, but she said to me that she had it in
writing that I prayed you not to make her acquainted with our designs.
My Lord since our affections are published, it will not be for our
honours to delay our marriage. The Queen intends to come on Monday. I
will wait on her to Paris and then I am at your service.”
In another letter she says:—
“I hope the Queen and I shall be very good friends again, and may be
the better for the differences we have had. It was reported here that
you would be with us before we could be with you, and be assured I will
bring none to our wedding but those you please. I find to satisfy the
opinion that we are not married already we must be married by one of
the priests here, of which I think Cousens is the fittest. We shall not
come till Monday.”
The marriage received the approval of Margaret’s mother; for she
wrote:—[129]
“ELIZABETH, LADY LUCAS, TO THE EARL OF NEWCASTLE.
“1645. DECEMBER 20. You have been pleased to honour me by your letter,
my daughter much more by marriage, and thereby made her extremely
happy. The state of the kingdom is such that her mother cannot give
unto her that which is hers nor can I shew my love and affection
towards my daughter as I would, in respect of the great burdens we
groan under.”
[Footnote 129: Welbeck MSS.]
Margaret thus analyses her love for Newcastle:—
“He was the onely Person I ever was in love with;
Neither was I ashamed to own it, but gloried therein, for it was not
Amorous Love, I never was infected therewith, it is a Disease, or a
Passion, or both, I only know by relation, not by experience; neither
could Title, Wealth, Power, or Person entice me to love; but my love
was honest and honourable, being placed upon Merit, which Affection
joy’d at the fame of his Worth, pleas’d with delight in his Wit, proud
of the respects he used to me, and triumphing in the affections he
profest for me.”
This sounds rather an arctic sort of love; but, be that as it may, the
wedding took place, and, according to Evelyn, in the chapel of Evelyn’s
father-in-law, Sir Richard Brown, the English Ambassador.
Although married to one who had been among the wealthiest of English
noblemen, the bride found herself in poverty. Her husband was unable to
obtain a penny from England; the Parliament had taken possession of his
estates and he was living with money borrowed upon, what looked at that
time, exceptionally bad security. The Duchess says that “the ordinary
Use” was then “at Six in the Hundred,” i.e. that the usual interest on
good securities was 6 per cent. Then what rate of interest were lenders
in Holland and France likely to have charged an exile whose chance of
ever regaining his property seemed very remote? The question summons up
visions of something nearer sixty than “six in the hundred”.
The bride thus describes the financial position:—
“After My Lord was married, having no Estate or Means left him to
maintain himself and his Family, he was necessitated to seek for
Credit, and live upon the Courtesie of those that were pleased to Trust
him; which although they did for somewhile, and shew’d themselves
very civil to My Lord, yet they grew weary at length, insomuch that
his Steward was forced one time to tell him, That he was not able to
provide a Dinner for him, for his Creditors were resolved to trust
him no longer. My Lord being always a great master of his Passions,
was, at least shew’d himself not in any manner troubled at it, but
in a pleasant humour told me, that I must of necessity pawn my
Cloaths to make so much Money as would procure a Dinner. I answer’d
That my Cloaths would be but of small value and therefore desired my
Waiting-Maid to pawn some small toys, which I had formerly given her,
which she willingly did.”
One cannot help admiring Newcastle for being so far “master of his
Passions,” as to overcome any desire to pawn his own clothes in order
to get a dinner, and for conceiving the happy idea of telling his
wife to pawn hers. When he had fortified himself by eating the dinner
provided by pawning the toys belonging to his wife’s maid, Newcastle
paid his creditors a visit and, by “perswasive arguments,” induced them
to lend him some more money, with which he got the toys out of pawn for
his wife’s maid, and provided her with means to go to England with the
object of endeavouring to obtain some money from his brother-in-law.
Soon afterwards, Newcastle had “proffers made him of rich matches in
England for his two sons,” whom he dispatched there forthwith, “hoping
by that means to provide for them _and himself_”—the italics are not
in the original. Somehow these matches failed to come off; but at least
one of his sons made a good marriage a little later.
It may seem that, when Newcastle himself married a girl who was not
an heiress, he must have lost the match-making instincts which he had
inherited from his grandmother; but in justice to his memory let it be
remembered that no heiresses were then to be had at the impoverished
Court of the English Queen in France; and that, as Margaret’s father
had been a very wealthy man, in the case of a royal restoration it was
just possible that there might yet be some useful pickings.
CHAPTER XVI.
Although Queen Henrietta Maria had disapproved of Newcastle’s marriage
with her maid-of-honour, she showed him considerable kindness. She
invited him to a great Council which was held at St. Germains, attended
by the Prince of Wales, Prince Rupert, the Marquesses of Worcester
and of Ormond, the Earl of St. Albans, Lord Jermyn and others. At
the Council, Newcastle[130] “delivered his sentiment, that he could
perceive no other probability of procuring Forces for His Majesty, but
an assistance of the Scots; But Her Majesty was pleased to answer my
Lord, That he was too quick”. An unpleasant expression; but Her Majesty
was quite right! For the King, unfortunately, _did_ seek “an assistance
of the Scots,” with a result only too well known.
[Footnote 130: _The Cavalier in Exile_, p. 59.]
The Queen did Newcastle a much greater service than the empty
compliment of an invitation to a Council at which he was snubbed. She
gave him £2000! Fortunately at that time, she still had some money. She
received 12,000 crowns a month from Anne of Austria, and she obtained
help from some of her relations; but she sent very large sums to her
husband in England, and she made handsome donations to distressed
cavaliers—such as Newcastle—in France and Belgium, selling her jewels
for the same purposes. When the wars of the Fronde began, those who
were helping her became in want themselves, and they could do nothing
more for her. She then found herself in sore straits.
Mademoiselle de Montpensier says in her _Memoirs_: “The Queen of
England appeared, during a little while, with the splendour of royal
equipage, she had a full number of ladies, of maids of honour, of
running footmen, coaches and guards. All vanished, however, by little
and little, and at last nothing could be more mean than her train and
appearance.” And so things went on, from bad to worse, until, about
three years after the time with which we are now dealing, Cardinal de
Retz found her, with her last loaf eaten, her last faggot burned, and
her little daughter in bed at mid-day, because there was no fire on the
hearth and snow was falling heavily.
Things were a long way from being so bad as that, however, when she
gave Newcastle £2000. Having got that money, and having squeezed
a little more cash out of his creditors, instead of economising,
Newcastle left his lodgings and took a good house, resolving, as his
wife says, “for his own recreation and divertisement in his banished
condition, to exercise the Art of Mannage, which he is a great lover
and Master of”. He gave £160 for one horse, and what is now vulgarly
termed an “I.O.U.” for £100, for another. To estimate these prices as
£480 and £300 of our money would be to undervalue them. But men in debt
always seem to buy the longest-priced horses.
Soon after he had made these purchases, the Queen desired Newcastle
to go to the Prince of Wales in Holland; but his ungrateful creditors
made a difficulty about their debtor leaving Paris, whereupon the Queen
most generously made herself responsible for his Parisian debts. On
the morning of the day on which he left Paris, his creditors, says his
wife, showed “so great a love and kindness for him” that they came to
“take their farewell of him”. No wonder! It is easy to understand that
they would be anxious, to have a few words with him—perhaps a good
many words—and to come to a very clear understanding, before losing
sight of him. Love and kindness indeed!
For about six months Newcastle lived at Rotterdam, as his wife tells
us, “at a great charge keeping an open and noble table for all comers”;
although he was heavily in debt and seemed to have little prospect of
ever repaying his creditors.
In addition to the large sums he owed in Holland and in Paris, he
borrowed £2000, while in Rotterdam, from Lord Hertford and Lord
Devonshire, all of which he spent there, as well as another £1000 which
he borrowed; “his expense being the more, by reason he lived freely
and nobly,” which, of course, he had no business to do.[131]
[Footnote 131: About this time Lady Newcastle lost her brother,
Sir Charles Lucas, a very brave Cavalier, who, as she says, “was
most inhumanly murthered and shot to death” at Colchester by the
Parliamentary army.]
While at Rotterdam, he made visits to the Prince of Wales at the Hague.
Finding that he could be of no help to the Prince, and probably also
finding that he could borrow no more money in Rotterdam, he went to
Antwerp, where he took a house[132] “that belonged to the widow of a
famous Picture-drawer, Van Ruben”. Here, however, was a difficulty, for
the Widow Rubens’s house was “to be let unfurnished,” and Newcastle had
no cash with which to buy furniture. Happily he was a past-master in
the art of borrowing.
[Footnote 132: _The Cavalier in Exile_, p. 63.]
His wife says:—
“About this time my Lord was much necessitated for Money, which forced
him to try several ways for to obtain so much as would relieve his
present wants. At last Mr. _Alesbury_, the onely Son to Sir _Th.
Alesbury_, Knight and Baronet, and Brother to the now Countess of
_Clarendon_, a very worthy Gentleman, and great Friend to my Lord,
having some Moneys that belonged to the now Duke of _Buckingham_, and
seeing my Lord in so great distress did him the favour to lend him
200£. (which money my Lord since his return hath honestly and justly
repaid).” No doubt! But that was some dozen years later, and the delay may
have been inconvenient to the Duke of Buckingham. “This relief came
so seasonably, that it got my Lord Credit in the City of _Antwerp_,
whereas otherwise he would have lost himself to his great disadvantage;
for my Lord having hired the house aforementioned, and wanting
Furniture for it, was credited by the Citizens for as many Goods as
he was pleased to have, as also for Meat and Drink, and all kind of
necessaries and provisions, which certainly was a special Blessing
of God, he being not onely a stranger in that Nation, but to all
appearance, a Ruined man.”
While at Antwerp, Newcastle was exempted from all taxes and excise
dues. In 1650 he was made a member of the Privy Council of Charles II,
and he urged the King to make an agreement with Scotland on any terms
and to go there in person. Hyde opposed the Scotch policy advocated
by Newcastle, whom he describes in one of his letters “as a most
lamentable man, as fit to be a general as to be a bishop”.[133] Yet
Hyde and Newcastle remained on good terms, and, when Hyde was accused
in 1653 of betraying the King’s Councils, Newcastle wrote him “a very
comfortable letter of advice”.[134]
[Footnote 133: _Clarendon State Papers_, II, 63.]
[Footnote 134: _Ibid._, 280.]
At Antwerp Newcastle’s chief amusement was riding the two horses which
he had bought for £160 and £100, until they both, unfortunately,
suffered premature death. This is remarkable; for tittupping
round a riding-school was a gentle form of exercise more likely to
lengthen than to shorten a horse’s existence. Being desperately hard
up, it might naturally be expected that he would give up riding and
economise. Not a bit of it! On the contrary, finding himself horseless,
“though he wanted present means to repair these his losses, yet he
endeavoured and obtained so much Credit at last that he was able to buy
two others, and by degrees so many as amounted in all to the number
of 8. In which he took so much delight and pleasure, that though he
was then in distress for Money, yet he would sooner have tried all
other ways, then parted with any of them; for I have hear’d him say,
that good Horses are so rare, as not to be valued for Money.” He had
excellent offers for two of these horses; but, poor as he was, nothing
would induce him to sell either of them.
So difficult did Newcastle find it to keep eight horses and himself,
to say nothing of his wife, with scarcely any money in hand, and a
rapidly diminishing credit, that it became necessary, not to reduce
his stud, but to send his wife to England to try to raise the wind.
He could spare her, but not his horses. With Lady Newcastle went
Newcastle’s brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, whose property, which had
been sequestered since he left England, was to be sold outright if he
did not quickly compound for it.
Lady Newcastle and Sir Charles had so little money for their journey
that they were obliged to stay at Southwark, until Sir Charles had
pawned his watch to pay for their night’s lodging and for the very
short remainder of their journey into London, where they found lodgings
in Covent Garden. The Duchess’s book relates what followed.
“Having rested our selves some time, I desired my Brother the Lord
_Lucas_, to claim, in my behalf, some subsistence for my self out
of my Lords Estate (for it was declared by the Parliament, That the
Lands of those that were banished, should be sold to any that would
buy them, onely their Wives and Children were allowed to put in their
Claims:) But he received this Answer, That I could not expect the least
allowance, by reason my Lord and Husband had been the greatest Traitor
of _England_ (that is to say, the honestest man, because he had been
most against them).”
Newcastle had felt some compunction about compounding with traitors to
his King. Henrietta Maria very kindly wrote to him, saying that she
had heard of his scruples from Lord Jermyn, adding: “I am sufficiently
assured of your affection and fidelity to tell you, that I think the
king cannot be displeased that you should do what the late king his
father”—it was after the death of Charles I—“permited those to do who
had served him, when he was not in a condition to assist them.... And I
cannot forbear pitying you, knowing well your repugnance to treat with
these abominable villains.”
The Duchess continues:—
“Then Sir _Charles_ intrusted some persons to compound for his Estate;
but it being a good while before they agreed in their Composition, and
then before the Rents could be received, we having in the mean time
nothing to live on, must of necessity have been starved, had not Sir
_Charles_ got some Credit of several Persons, and that not without
great difficulty; for all those that had Estates, were afraid to come
near him, much less to assist him, until he was sure of his own Estate.
So much is Misery and Poverty shun’d!” No novel discovery.
“But though our Condition was hard, yet my dear Lord and Husband, whom
we left in _Antwerp_, was then in a far greater distress than our
selves.”
In fact his creditors had become very “impatient”—who can wonder?—and
he wrote to his wife that, unless some money were sent to him
immediately, he would starve. With very great difficulty Sir Charles
Cavendish raised £200, which he sent out at once to his brother. We
need not enter into the details of Sir Charles’s compounding for his
estates, or of his saving Welbeck and Bolsover for Newcastle.
During her stay in England, Lady Newcastle consoled herself in her
anxieties with pens and paper, of which we shall hear a good deal later.
It was probably not very long before Lady Newcastle’s visit to London
that King Charles I was beheaded, an incident unmentioned in her
memoirs. But perhaps she regarded it as a tragedy too well known to
require notice.
After being in England a year and a half, having heard that her husband
was “not very well,” and having but “small hopes” of raising money out
of his estates, Lady Newcastle returned to him. Sir Charles Cavendish
was prevented from accompanying her by ague, and she had reached her
husband only a short time, when news came of Sir Charles’s death.
Clarendon[135] describes Sir Charles Cavendish as Newcastle’s “brave
brother, who was a man of the noblest and largest mind, though the
least, and most inconvenient body that lived”. Almost the only words
at all approaching disparagement of her husband, occurring in the
Duchess’s story of his life, are in her already quoted statement that
he had “not so much of scholarship and learning as his brother Sir
Charles Cavendish”.
[Footnote 135: _Hist._, vol. II, part II. bk. viii.]
As we have seen, Newcastle had written to his wife, in England, that
unless she or his brother sent him money immediately, he would starve;
therefore it might be reasonably supposed that he had sold the last of
his horses. Such was very far from being the fact. When Lady Newcastle
returned, she found her starving husband with “the Mannage of his
horses,” as she calls it, so splendid that “all strangers that were
Persons of Quality” came to see it.
It was at Antwerp that Newcastle wrote his famous book on horsemanship,
which we will notice when we consider his literary works in a later
chapter.
Ben Jonson had written, concerning Newcastle’s horsemanship:—
When first, my Lord, I saw you back your horse,
Provoke his mettle and command his force
To all the uses of the field and race,
Methought I read the ancient art of Thrace,
And saw a Centaur past those tales of Greece,
So seemed your horse and you both of a piece!
You showed like Perseus upon Pegasus,
Or Castor mounted on his Cyllarus,
Or what we hear our home-born legends tell,
Of bold Sir Bevis and his Arundel;
Nay, so your seat his beauties did endorse,
As I began to wish myself a horse;
And surely, had I but your stable seen
Before, I think my wish absolv’d had been,
For never saw I yet the Muses dwell,
Nor any of their household, half so well.
So well, as when I saw the floor and room,
I looked for Hercules to be the groom;
And cried, Away with the Cæsarian bread!
At these immortal mangers Virgil fed.
_Underwoods_, lxxii.
Of his book on horsemanship, Newcastle wrote to Secretary Nicholas
from Antwerp, on 15 February, 1656: “I am so tormented about my book
of horsemanship as you cannot believe, with a hundred several trades
I think, and the printing will cost above £1,300, which I could never
have done but for my good friends, Sir H. Cartwright and Mr. Loving;
and I hope they shall lose nothing by it, and I am sure they hope
the like”. Only the impecunious can afford to embark upon literary
extravagances of this sort.
Lady Newcastle’s return had one very inconvenient effect. It had been
generally known at Antwerp that her expedition to England had been for
the purpose of raising money to pay her husband’s debts, and it was
naturally, though most erroneously, assumed that she had returned with
that money. In consequence, there was a general rush of Newcastle’s
creditors to his house, crowding and clamouring for a settlement
of their little accounts. Wonderful to relate, when Newcastle “had
informed them of the truth of the business, and desired their patience
somewhat longer,” they were “willing to forbear”. This, says the pious
Duchess, “was a work of Divine Providence”. Undoubtedly it was; but did
not Newcastle tempt Providence very hard, when he lived in what she
admits to have been “so much Splendor and Grandure” on borrowed money,
with only a very problematical prospect of ever being able to repay it?
It would seem, from the following letter, written by Buckingham, that
Newcastle had asked him to beg on his account from Charles II; that
Charles had promised some money, and had been persuaded to break his
promise by Newcastle’s enemies. Buckingham also advises Newcastle to
make the best terms he can with the Government of the Commonwealth
about his property.[136]
[Footnote 136: Portland MSS. at Welbeck Abbey, HIST. MSS. COM., 13th
Rep., App., part II. vol. II. 137.]
“G. DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“(1650) DECEMBER 5. ST. JOHNSTONE’S (PERTH). Your Lordship’s kindnesse
to mee has beene ever soe great, and you have beene pleased to lay
soe many obligations upon mee that, I showld bee a very unworthy
person if I did not take all occasions of acknoledging them to your
Lordship....
“I am very sorry that I have not beene able to serve your Lordship at
this present as I desired, but the gentleman that delivers this to you
will lett you know how earnestly I have solicited his Majesty in your
lordship’s business.
“I had once gott a promise from the King to doe it, but the death of
the Prince of Orange, and—as I beleeve—letters from some that are
not your friends, have perswaded the King to change his resolution.
Hee sayes that when hee receives a just accownt of the somme my Lord
Culpepper bringes with him, hee will lett your Lordship have as much
as his occasions will give him leave to spare. But what that will bee,
or how long before it bee received, is soe uncertayne that withowt
doubt your Lordship ought not to rely upon it.
“The best cowncell that I am able to give you, considering your owne
condition, and the present state of owr affayres, is to make your
peace if it bee possible, in Ingland, for certaynly your Lordship’s
suffering for the King has beene great enoughf to excuse you if you
looke a little after your selfe now, when neither hee is able to
assist you, nor you in a possibility of doing him service.”
Some time later the Royalist affairs were going very badly.[137]
[Footnote 137: Portland MSS. at Welbeck Abbey, _Hist. MSS. Com._, 13th
Rep., App., part II. vol. II. 139.]
“G. DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“(1652) FEB. 18. THE HAGUE.
“I doe extreamly longe to have some discowrse with you concerning all
our late misfortunes, and am therfore resolved to stay five or sixe
dayes at Anwerp only to wayte upon your Lordship. The consequence of
owr miscarriages is soe sad, that it is hard to thinke of them without
affliction, and yett I am confident your Lordships naturall good
humour joyned to the rediculousnesse of many passages which I have to
tell you, will goe neere to make you laugh, but I shall deferre the
giving you that satisfaction till I have the honour to see you, and
at the present only protest to you, that there is noebody I have a
greater value or respect for then your Lordship.”
Among other correspondence of Newcastle’s of the same period, is a
letter from Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, asking him to try to
prevent a duel.[138]
[Footnote 138: Portland MSS. at Welbeck Abbey, _Hist. MSS. Com._, 13th
Rep., App., part II. vol. II. 140.]
“SIR EDWARD HYDE TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“1652, DECEMBER 14. PARIS.
“We are all here exceedingly troubled, that that old quarrelling
humour still rages amongst those of our miserable nation in all
places, and if your authority hath not already prevented the mischeive
which must probably attend that duell betweene the Earl of Oxford
and Colonell Slinger, any commands from his Majesty will come too
late, and indeed if they doe contemne your Lordships interposition,
there may be reason to beleive that they would not obey his Majesty
himselfe if he were upon the place, for if they consider themselves
as Englishmen, and will pay obedience to the lawes and constitution
of their country, they must acknowledge that your Lordship as a Privy
Councellour hath authority over them; and if they will decline it
because they are out of his Majesty’s dominions, they might have the
same obstinacy, if the King himselfe were at Antwerpe. His Majesty
desires you if it be not too late, to use his name in any way you
thinke necessary to prevent this mischeive, and will conclude that
if they refuse to be ordered by your Lordship that they would not
have obeyed his owne person, if he had been there. The King uses all
endeavours to put himselfe into a readynesse to remove from hence,
when there shall be occasion, which I pray God he may be able to doe.
God preserve your Lordship and keepe me in your favour.”
Newcastle appears to have called himself, or at least to have had some
idea of calling himself, by the title of Prince on the Continent.
A letter from so high an authority as Garter-King-at-Arms, at the
Herald’s College, asserted him to be justified in so doing.[139]
[Footnote 139: Portland MSS. at Welbeck Abbey, _Hist. MSS. Com._, 13th
Rep., App., part II. vol. II. 142.]
“SIR EDWARD WALKER, GARTER, TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“1657, AUGUST 20, BRUGES.—Giving his reasons why he held the opinion
that the Marquis of Newcastle was justified in assuming the title of
Prince.”
Towards the end of his exile, Newcastle put his son, who had succeeded
in obtaining an income, probably by his marriage, into his old home at
Welbeck, as will be seen by the following letters.[140]
[Footnote 140: Portland MSS. at Welbeck Abbey, _Hist. MSS. Com._, 13th
Rep., App., part II. vol. II. 143.]
“ROBERT DEANE (THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE) TO (VISCOUNT MANSFIELD).
“1659, OCTOBER 11.
“Now, for what is in our power, I pray you live at your own houses,
We(lbeck) and Bo(lsover), which will much conduce to your health. The
next is for the goods, which troubles me much, that so long gathering
by your ancestors, should be destroyed in a moment. This is my earnest
advice to you. First they are appraised, and goods are never appraised
at a third part of their value; and then you may buy them and no ill
bargain if you took the money at interest or your father-in-law laid
out the money and had all the goods in his hands for his security. My
intention is but to save the goods for you, that is all the design my
wife and I have in the business, for she is as kind to you as she was
to your brother, and so good a wife as that she is all for my family,
which she expresses is only you.”
“THE SAME TO THE SAME.
“1659, OCTOBER 25.—I can write no more about the goods except that I
and my wife give all our interest therein to you wholly and totally.
There are many good pictures besides Vandykes and ‘Stennickes’. Pray
leave your dovecot where you are now and live at Wel(beck), which will
conduce much to your health and your Lady’s and the little Ladies.”
“THE SAME TO (THE SAME).
“1659, NOVEMBER 15.—I give you hearty thanks for preserving the
remnants of those goods.... The pictures there are most rare, and if
you think they are a little spoiled I will send over the painter to
you again.
“If ever I see you I will make W(elbeck) a very fine place for you.
I am not in despair of it, though I believe you and I are not such
good architects as your worthy grandfather. If I am blessed with the
happiness of seeing you it will be many thousand pounds a year better
for you than if I should die before.”
The change of title from Duke to Prince, if he ever made it, did not
soften the hearts of Newcastle’s creditors. Their generosity steadily
decreased, until the poor men appeared to be losing their nerve
altogether. Newcastle, says his wife, “was put to great plunges and
difficulties”. Her chief fear was that her husband “for his debts
would suffer imprisonment, where sadness of mind, and want of exercise
and air, would have wrought his destruction”. However, when the yet
unrestored Charles II “was pleased to accept of a private dinner at”
Newcastle’s house in Antwerp, “he did merrily and in jest” tell Lady
Newcastle “that he perceived her Lord’s Credit could procure better
Meat than His own”.
The Newcastles also gave Charles something more than “a private
dinner”. Sir Charles Cotterell wrote to Nicholas:—[141]
“At the ball at Lord Newcastle’s was the Duchess of Lorraine and
her son and daughter, with the King and his brothers and sister,
several French people, and some of the town. The King was brought
in with music, and all being placed, Major Mohun, the player, in a
black satin robe and a garland of bays, made a speech in verse of his
lordship’s”—Newcastle’s—“own poetry, complimenting the King in his
highest hyperbole. Then there was dancing for two hours, and then my
Lady’s Moor, dressed in feathers, came in and sang a song of the same
authors, set and taught him by Nich. Lanier. Then was the banquet
brought in, in eight great chargers, each borne by two gentlemen of the
court, and others bringing wines, drinks, etc. Then they all danced
again two hours more, and Major Mohun ended all with another speech,
prophesying his Majesty’s Re-establishment.”
[Footnote 141: S. P., Feb. 1657-8, pp. 296, 311, quoted in Mr. Firth’s
splendid and admirably annotated ed. of _The Life of Newcastle_.]
The report of all this magnificence must have made Newcastle’s
creditors feel a little anxious.
Shortly afterwards, with the help of the remainder of his brother
Charles’s estate, Newcastle “sprinkled something amongst his Creditors,
and borrowed so much of Mr. _Top_ and Mr. _Smith_ (though without
assurance) that he could pay such scores as were most pressing,
contracted from the poorer sort of Tradesmen, and send ready mony to
Market, to avoid cozenage (for small scores run up most unreasonably,
especially if no strict accounts be kept, and the rate be left to the
Creditors pleasure) by which means there was in a short time so much
saved, as it could not have been imagined”.
Thus, by borrowing from new creditors to pay old ones, the Newcastles
contrived to live in luxury for a good many years; in short until the
Restoration.
Newcastle’s correspondence with Nicholas, among the Egerton Manuscripts
in the British Museum, reveals his alternate hopes and fears as to the
probability of that event. It is amusing to find a General, who rightly
or wrongly fled from his country, cavilling at others for doing the
same thing. In January, 1659, he wrote from Antwerp to Nicholas: “There
are many noblemen, or at least lords, that are comed over to Paris,
it is true, but those lords that can take such sudden apprehensions
of fears so far off, I doubt will hardly have the courage to help our
gracious Master to his throne—woful people—and the next generation of
lords they tell me are fools. It will be a brave Upper House!”[142]
[Footnote 142: Firth’s _Newcastle_, p. 358.]
CHAPTER XVII.
At last the long-looked-for Restoration actually took place, and
Newcastle determined to sail for England, which he could then do in
perfect safety, as he would now be a loyal subject in that country
instead of a traitor specially excepted from any possibility of pardon.
The only difficulty in returning to his country was the objection made
by his creditors to his leaving Holland until his debts were paid. But
Newcastle was a resourceful debtor; and he surmounted the difficulty by
the very simple expedient of pawning—not his wife’s clothes this time,
but his wife herself! Being in another part of Holland, says that lady,
“my Lord declared his intention of going for England, withal commanding
me to stay in that city (Antwerp), as a Pawn for his debts, until he
could compass money to discharge them”.
“Being in another part of Holland!” Yes! It is certainly pleasanter to
express desires of such a nature to one’s wife by letter rather than in
person.
Having left his wife in pawn at Antwerp, Newcastle started in excellent
spirits for England.[143]
[Footnote 143: _A Cavalier in Exile_, p. 83.]
“My Lord (who was so transported with the joy of returning into his
Native Countrey, that he regarded not the Vessel) having set Sail from
_Rotterdam_, was so becalmed, that he was six dayes and six nights
upon the Water, during which time he pleased himself with mirth, and
pass’d his time away as well as he could; Provisions he wanted not,
having them in great store and plenty. At last being come so far that
he was able to discern the smoak of _London_, which he had not seen in
a long time, he merrily was pleased to desire one that was near him,
to jogg and awake him out of his dream, for surely, said he, I have
been sixteen years asleep, and am not thoroughly awake yet. My Lord lay
that night at _Greenwich_, where his Supper seem’d more savoury to him,
than any meat he had hitherto tasted; and the noise of some scraping
Fidlers, he thought the pleasantest harmony that ever he had heard.”
It is gratifying to learn that thoughts of his absent wife in dreary
exile did not lessen the spirits, the merriness, or the transports of
joy, of the Marquess.
Collins[144] gives us the following information about Newcastle after
the Restoration. Newcastle, on his return to England, “finding his
estate much entangled, was obliged to borrow £5,000 whereof his cousin,
the Earl of Devonshire, lent him £1,000.... His Lordship lived at
Dorset House, during his stay in London.”
[Footnote 144: _Historical Collections_, etc., by Arthur Collins, ed.
1752, p. 41.]
“The King had made him a Knight of the Garter on Jan. 12, 1651; but he
does not appear to have received the insignia until ten years later. By
a warrant of April 10, 1661, the King ordered Lord Sandwich, Master of
the Great Wardrobe, to give Newcastle ‘18 yards of blue velvet for an
upper robe, 10 yards of crimson velvet for an under robe or surcoat,
together with 16 yards of white taffata to line them both’. The King
also ordered Sir Gilbert Talbot, Master of the Jewels, to give him a
collar of gold, ‘containing the usual number of garters,’ ‘likewise one
rich George on horseback’. After the Restoration, his Majesty made him
one of the Gentlemen of his Bed-Chamber.”
Lady Newcastle says that her husband “at last” borrowed enough money
to redeem her out of pawn; or rather nearly enough; for even then the
amount he sent over was £400 short, and she had to borrow that sum from
a Sir John Shaw, in Antwerp, to make it up. After sundry adventures,
she sailed for England in a Dutch man-of-war. When she had joined her
husband, she was rather disappointed at finding him in circumstances
which she did not consider befitting his rank. “After I was safely
arrived at _London_, I found my Lord in Lodgings; I cannot call them
unhandsome; but yet they were not fit for a Person of his Rank and
Quality, nor of the capacity to contain all his Family: Neither did I
find my Lord’s Condition such as I expected.”
Some historians hint that her ladyship found herself mocked and derided
by the gay ladies and the flippant gallants at the licentious Court
of Charles II, where she felt out of her element, and that this was
her chief reason for wishing to retire to Welbeck. She continues:
“Wherefore out of some passion I desir’d him to leave the Town, and
retire into the countrey; but my Lord gently reproved me for my
rashness and impatience”.
She got her way, however, before long; and Newcastle obtained the
King’s leave to retire to Welbeck. The only account we have of his
financial affairs, after the Restoration, is that of his wife;
therefore, part of it shall be given here; although even that part
is wearisome, lengthy, and far from lucid; indeed it may be skipped
without serious loss.[145]
[Footnote 145: _A Cavalier in Exile_, p. 88 _seq._]
Newcastle “kissed His Majesty’s hand, and went the next day into
_Nottinghamshire_, to his Manor-house call’d _Welbeck_; but when he
came there, and began to examine his Estate, and how it had been
ordered in the time of his Banishment, he knew not whether he had left
any thing of it for himself, or not, till by his prudence and wisdom
he inform’d himself the best he could, examining those that had most
knowledge therein. Some Lands, he found, could be recover’d no further
then for his life, and some not at all: Some had been in the Rebels
hands, which he could not recover, but by His Highness the Duke of
_York’s_ favour, to whom His Majesty had given all the Estates of
those that were condemned and executed for murdering his Royal Father
of blessed memory, which by the Law were forfeited to His Majesty;
whereof His Highness graciously restor’d my Lord so much of the Land
that formerly had been his, as amounted to 730£ a year. And though
my Lord’s Children had their Claims granted, and bought out the life
of my Lord, their Father, which came near upon the third part, yet
my Lord received nothing for himself out of his own Estate, for the
space of eighteen years, viz., During the time from the first entring
into Warr, which was June 11, 1642, till his return out of Banishment,
_May 28_, 1660; for though his Son _Henry_, now Earl of _Ogle_, and
his eldest Daughter, the now Lady _Cheiny_, did all what lay in their
power to relieve my Lord their Father, and sent him some supplies of
moneys at several times when he was in banishment; yet that was of
their own, rather then out of my Lord’s Estate; for the Lady _Cheiny_
sold some few Jewels which my Lord, her Father, had left her, and
some Chamber-Plate which she had from her Grandmother, and sent over
the money to my Lord, besides 1000£ of her Portion: And the now Earl
of _Ogle_ did at several times supply my Lord, his Father, with such
moneys as he had partly obtained upon Credit, and partly made by his
Marriage.
“After my Lord had begun to view those Ruines that were nearest,
and tried the Law to keep or recover what formerly was his, (which
certainly shew’d no favour to him, besides that the Act of Oblivion
proved a great hinderance and obstruction to those his designs, as it
did no less to all the Royal Party) and had settled so much of his
Estate as possibly he could, he cast up the Summ of his Debts, and set
out several parts of Land for the payment of them, or of some of them
(for some of his Lands could not be easily sold, being entailed)....”
From this we learn that, so soon as he was able, Newcastle sold
property to pay the large debts which he incurred during his sixteen
years of exile. With cumulative interest their amount must have been
very great.
“His two Houses _Welbeck_ and _Bolsover_ he found much out of repair,
and this later half pull’d down, no furniture or any necessary Goods
were left in them, but some few Hangings and Pictures, which had
been saved by the care and industry of his Eldest Daughter the Lady
_Cheiny_,[146] and were bought over again after the death of his eldest
Son _Charles_, Lord _Mansfield_; for they being given to him, and he
leaving some debts to be paid after his death, My Lord sent to his
other Son _Henry_, now Earl of _Ogle_, to endeavour for so much Credit,
that the said Hangings and Pictures (which my Lord esteemed very much,
the Pictures being drawn by _Van Dyke_) might be saved; which he also
did, and My Lord hath paid the debt since his return.”
[Footnote 146: Or, as we should now say, Lady Jane Cheiny, or Cheney,
the wife of Charles Cheney, Esq., of Chesham-Boys, Bucks.]
After giving a number of figures, including the former rent-roll of all
his estates, she says: “The Loss of my Lords Estate, in plain Rents, as
also upon ordinary Use, and Use upon Use, is as followeth:—
“The Annual Rent of My Lords Land, viz. 22,393£. 10s. 1d. being lost
for the space of 18 years, which was the time of his acting in the
Wars, and of his Banishment, without any benefit to him, reckoned
without any Interest, amounts to 403,083£. But being accounted with the
ordinary Use at Six in the Hundred, and Use upon Use for the mentioned
space of 18 Years, it amounts to 733,579£.”
Six in the hundred, or six per cent. and use upon use, or cumulative
interest, sounds fairly high.
Farther on, she says: “The Lands which My Lord hath lost in present
possession are 2,015£. per annum, which at 20 years’ purchase come to
40,300£. and those which he hath lost in Reversion, are 3,214£. per
annum, which at 16 years’ purchase amount to the value of 51,424£.
“The Lands which my Lord since his return has sold for the payment of
some of his debts, occasioned by the Wars (for I do not reckon those he
sold to buy others) come to the value of 56,000£. to which out of his
yearly revenue he has added 10,000£. more, which is in all 66,000£.
“Lastly, The Composition of his Brothers Estate was 5,000£. and the
loss of it for eight years comes to 16,000£.
“All which, if summ’d up together, amounts to 941,303£.
“These are the accountable losses, which My Dear Lord and Husband
has suffered by the late Civil Wars, and his Loyalty to his King and
Country.”
Certainly her ladyship had “an eye to the main chance,” nor did she
wish her husband to lose credit for one penny that he had sacrificed
in the loyalist cause; but even if we allow for considerable
exaggeration in her statement and object to six per cent. at “use upon
use,” his sacrifices must still have been enormous.
To descend from very great matters to very small, it may be remembered
that we found Newcastle having a quiet pipe immediately before the
battle of Marston Moor; and, from the following extract from a letter,
he evidently intended to solace his retirement at Welbeck by the use of
tobacco.[147]
[Footnote 147: Welbeck MSS., p. 143.]
“FRANCIS TOPP TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE, AT WELBECK.
“1661, NOVEMBER 16. BRISTOL.
“I send some wine, tobacco, and other commodities, the best that can
be had. I shall soon have some excellent tobacco, as many ships are
expected every hour from Spain.”
An important post was given by the King to Newcastle, namely, that
of Chief Justice in Eyre north of the Trent. Originally Justices in
Eyre, or _in itinere_, were delegated with power from the King’s great
Court to visit the counties assigned to them and hear all pleas. Their
functions were to protect the King’s interests and to try law-suits
and indictments. But the trial of law-suits and criminals by Justices
in Eyre had become practically obsolete before Newcastle’s time, and
what his duties may have been is somewhat doubtful; very likely they
may have been principally honorary or even nominal. They would appear,
however, to have included the defence of his large district; for, in
1662 and 1663, there were rumours of disaffection north of the Trent,
as the following extracts from letters to Newcastle, among the Welbeck
MSS., will show.
“LETTER TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“1662, AUGUST 6. TORMARTON. Every day there is preaching and rumour of
rebellion,”—preaching and rebellion seem to have been synonymous at
that time—“and until that be over, which I hope will be soon after
the dismantling of our neighbour, the city of Gloucester, and others
in the west that withstood the late King, then men will buy land,
which they will not do now.”
“SIR THOMAS OSBORNE TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE, AT WELBECK.
“1663, OCTOBER 9. KEETON (KIVETON). Though I had some former
notice of this designe, I was unwilling to trouble your Lordship
till my being at Yorke hath confirmed the truth of this inclosed
intelligence.... Wee have an account of their principall agents in
most countries. One Paumer a silenc’t minister—who is most about
Nottingham—is their agent for intelligence in your Lordship’s county,
and Collenel Hutchinson, Collenel Wright, and Captain Lockeir—not of
Barlbrough—is to head the soldiers, and Hutchinson is thought to have
a thousand armes. One Francs of Nottingham is also ingaged with them.
Ludlowe is their Generall.”
“(1663), OCTOBER 14TH. PONTEFRACT. I am commanded by my Lord Duke of
Buckingham to give your Lordship this intelligence, that his Grace
is now at Pomfrett, with 1500 foot, and 500 horse, which consists of
trained bands and volunteers, all but the two troops under my command.
Sir George Savill, and the rest of the most considerable persons of
this country are here, and the confirmed intelligence both from the
west and north of Yorkshire gives assurance that a party of rebels are
drawing together, and Skipton is one place of their rendezvous, and
North Allerton another. These parts are all in arms, and I believe
your Lordship will put Nottinghamshire speedily into defence.”
The threatened risings, however, subsided, and Newcastle had leisure to
turn his mind to matters of a more domestic nature.
Newcastle’s son seems to have inherited his taste for overspending
himself.[148]
[Footnote 148: Welbeck MSS., p. 145.]
“VISCOUNT MANSFIELD TO HIS FATHER (THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE).
(c. 1663). Giving a brief account of how he came to be 8000£. in debt.
Among the items are 500£. for his own and his wife’s linen, and 700£.
for two coaches and eight Flanders mares.”
Here is a significant entry among the Welbeck manuscripts.
“THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“1662(-3), JANUARY. An account of the money owing on a balance
of account, from the King to the Marquis of Newcastle, amounting
altogether to 9240£.”
But this must have included interest at a very high rate, which no
doubt Newcastle had had to pay himself; for a year later we find this
letter:—
“W. MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE TO HIS SON, VISCOUNT MANSFIELD, IN LONDON.
“1663(-4), JANUARY 20. WELBECK. I have heard from Mr. Loving that he
cannot promise any allowance for the money due to me from the King,
but only the principal money, which is 3500£., and that I must have
a privy seal for so much as some others have, and no allowance for
interest, which I have paid ever since the debt was contracted. I have
ordered him to forebear taking out any such privy seal.”
Apparently one of the King’s idiosyncrasies was a prejudice against
“six per cent. at Use upon Use”. Finding that he could not get repaid
even a comparatively small sum lent to the King, much less any of the
larger losses which he had suffered for the Royalist cause, Newcastle
would seem to have bethought him that a Dukedom might be better
than nothing, and, from the following letter written by the King,
it is quite clear that Newcastle must have asked for one in so many
words.[149]
[Footnote 149: Welbeck MSS., p. 145. The date June 7, 1664, must be
wrong, unless the Patent was drawn up for a considerable time before it
was issued, as it is dated 16 March, 1664.]
“KING CHARLES II. TO THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE.
“1664. JUNE 7. WHITEHALL. I have received yours by your son, and am
resolved to grant your request. Send me therefore word what title
you desire to have, or whether you will choose to keepe your old and
leave the rest to me. I do not tell you I will despatch it to-morrow;
you must leave the time to me, to accommodate it to some other
ends of myne; but the differing it shall not be long, nor with any
circumstance that shall trouble you. I am glad you enjoy your health
for I love you very well. _Signed. Signet._”
Newcastle was that year advanced to the dignities of Earl of Ogle and
Duke of Newcastle.
Charles II must have found this a cheap method of settling accounts
with, what he calls in the preamble to the Patent, his “most beloved
and faithful cousin and councillor,” and of preventing that cousin and
councillor from worrying him with any more requests for repayments
of money. As he had now promoted Newcastle to the same position on
which he was soon to place some illegitimate children, what more could
Newcastle want?
There is an extraordinary entry in the list of the Welbeck
manuscripts:—
“H. EARL OF OGLE.
“1665, December 1. An engagement not to marry again so long as he had
a son by his present wife, and to settle all his property on his wife
and children as soon as he should be free to do so after the death of
his father. _Signet._”
It is scarcely conceivable that a son should be asked solemnly to bind
himself, in the case of his wife’s death, never to marry again so long
as a son of hers should be living! Yet, if this summary of the document
in question is correct, so it must have been.
It is clear that Newcastle arranged, or endeavoured to arrange, all the
marriages and matchmakings of his children and grandchildren. In reply
to one of his attempted bargains, in the marriage market, he received
the following gentle snub.[150]
[Footnote 150: Welbeck MSS., p. 149.]
“E. COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND TO THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.
(c. 1671). I have received your Lordship’s letter full of obliging
expressions to our family which I am very sensible of, and for the
offer you are pleased to make of your grandson. I can only say I have
no present exceptions to make against so noble an alliance, but that
it is too early days to think of disposing of my grandchild [Baroness
Percy], whose tender years are not yet capable of distinguishing what
may most conduce to her future happiness. And when she is of age to
judge I must be so just as to give her the choice of all those who
shall then offer themselves, and possibly none may be more acceptable
to her than this young Lord.”
As a matter of fact, when she was “of an age to judge,” the sole
heiress of the eleventh and last Earl of Northumberland (of the old
Percys) did marry Newcastle’s grandson. And “the age to judge” was
fourteen. Her husband died in the following year; so she was a widow at
fifteen, which she only remained for two years, as she married a second
time at the age of seventeen,[151] and she had been engaged also to
another suitor[152] in the interval; but he was assassinated.
[Footnote 151: Burke’s _Extinct Peerages_, p. 425.]
[Footnote 152: “Thomas [Thynne] known as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’
who succeeded to Longleat [subsequently the home of the Marquesses
of Bath], and lived there in great magnificence. He was basely
assassinated, while in his coach in Pall Mall, 12 Feb., 1682, by the
connivance, it is thought, of Count Königsmark, a Swedish nobleman, who
was tried for the crime, but acquitted; his associates, who actually
committed the murder, were hanged.” Burke’s _Peerage, Baronetage and
Knightage_, see “The Marquess of Bath”. Count Königsmark invented the
blade of a small-sword once fashionable, called the “Clichernarde”. See
_Schools and Masters of Fence_, by Egerton Castle, p. 239.]
Later still, some very elaborate and most business-like matrimonial
arrangements were under discussion.[153]
[Footnote 153: Welbeck MSS., p. 151.]
“THE EARL OF OGLE, TO HIS FATHER, THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.
“1675, JULY 11. “I most humbly acquante your Grace, that when I was
at London Mr. Robert Buttler desired to know of me wheather I would
assent of my Lord Lexington for one of my daughters. I made answer if
his Lordship would be contented with three thowsand pound portion and
marry my second daughter, and upon those termes, I should take it for
a friendship from any friend that procured it, soe the young people
liked each other. After this discourse, my sister Bolingbrooke was
desired by my Lady Sellinger to offer her grandson my Lord Lexington
to me, I wayted with my sister Bolingbrooke upon my Lady Sellenger and
Sir Anthoney her husband, and before my sister I told them I desired
them to expect but 3000£. portion, and if thay weare contented with
that I would acquante your Grace, and that I did hope your Grace would
approove of it. Thay was very well contented and offered me my Lord
Lexington should come, downe with me. My Lord is fourteen years of
age next January; then I wish he was marryed, and soe doe thay too.
There can be no settlement of his esstate upon his childeren untill
he be one and twenty yeares old, and soe noe portion paid till that
time, but security thay will expect for the payment of it. If my Lord
Lexington should die before he be of age my daughter hath the thirds
of his esstate, and thay are not to live togeather till he be eighteen
yeares of age. He keepes him selfe, and I keepe my daughter, and my
wife and I thinkes it a very good fortune for such a portion, and my
wife and I most humbly desire to know your Graces pleasure concerning
this offer.”
Here we see a little of his celebrated match-making great-grandmother
exhibiting itself in Ogle. The Lexington match, however, never came
off. Ogle’s second daughter married John, second Earl of Breadalbane.
The next entry in the _Historical Commission’s Report_ of the Welbeck
MSS. shows that even daughters, like other worms, will turn if tried
too hard.
“THE COUNTESS OF OGLE TO HER DAUGHTER, ELIZABETH.
“1674(-5), MARCH 24.” A letter of reprimand for ill behaviour and for
“one of the unkindest, undutyfullest letters that ever was writ to a
mother”.
That graceful epistle seems to have been written more than a year
before Ogle’s letter to his father; but probably it had been provoked
by the family habit of daughter-dealing.
The best short account of the life of the Duke and Duchess of
Newcastle, after the Restoration, is to be found in Sir Egerton
Brydges’s Preface to the Duchess’s “True Relation” of her own life.
“After the Restoration, peace and affluence once more shone upon them
amid the long-lost domains of the Duke’s vast hereditary property.
Welbeck opened her gates to her Lord; and the castles of the North
received with joy their heroic chieftain, whose maternal ancestors,
the baronial house of Ogle, had ruled over them for centuries in
Northumberland. But Age had now made the Duke desirous only of repose;
and her Grace, the faithful companion of his fallen fortunes, was
little disposed to quit the luxurious quiet of rural grandeur, which
was as soothing to her disposition, as it was concordant with her
duty. To such a pair the noisy and intoxicated joy of a profligate
Court would probably have been a thousand times more painful than all
the wants of their late chilling, but calm, poverty. They came not,
therefore, to palaces and levees; but amused themselves in the country
with literature and the arts. This solitary state, this innocent
magnificence, seems to have afforded contempt and jests to the
sophisticated mob of dissolute wits, who crowded round King Charles
II. These momentary buzzers in the artificial sunshine of the regal
presence, probably thought that they, who having the power to mix with
superior wealth, in the busy scenes of high life, could prefer the
insipid charms of lonely Nature, were only fit to be the butt of their
ridicule!”
All very true, except on one point. This account, as well as one or
two other accounts, of the post-Restoration life of the Newcastles
might lead a reader to suppose that during the latter part of their
existence they never went to London. Any such supposition would be most
erroneous. They may have gone there very seldom; but, when they did
go, they took good care to make their presence felt. As Pepys will tell
us in a later chapter, they made a great show of splendour, and the
Duchess became the talk of the Town!
[Illustration: THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE AND THEIR FAMILY
By Diepenbeck
_Thus in this Semy-Circle wher they Sitt,
Telling of Tales of pleasure & of witt.
Heer you may read without a Sinn or Crime,
And how more innocently pass your tyme._]
CHAPTER XVIII.
Newcastle, after spending sixteen years in exile, lived to spend about
the same length of time in England.
It might be expected that he would have taken up the position of a
great Cavalier who had made larger financial sacrifices in the Royalist
cause than almost any other of the King’s subjects, or that he would
have posed as the hero of many battles. Instead of assuming any such
position, however, Newcastle chose to figure as a man of letters, an
author, a poet, and a playwright.
As an author, he had some claims to the position he desired; for he had
written a standard work. During his exile he produced a book entitled
_A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, and work
them, According to Nature by the Subtlety of Art_. This is mainly an
exposition of what is known as the _haute école_ of horsemanship;
thus the most ponderous volume on what we now talk of as the French
style of riding was written by an Englishman. It is a gorgeous folio,
beautifully printed, splendidly illustrated; and a good copy is worth
about ten guineas at the present moment. If it were a new book, modern
booksellers would doubtless advertise it either as an “édition de
luxe,” or as “a sumptuous volume”.
One of the best editions is that by J. Brindley, London, 1743. That the
book was a success, and a great success, the most malignant caviller at
Newcastle cannot fairly deny.
The work is illustrated by Diepenbeke, whose representations in it
of the Welbeck of those days, and of Bolsover Castle, have a special
interest. Editions were published in London, Paris and Nuremberg,
both in English and in French. In this magnificent volume the reader
may learn how to train his horse to make curvets, pirouettes,
demi-pirouettes, passades, voltes and demi-voltes, terms which may also
be found in modern French books upon horsemanship.
Men who fancy that they know all about hunters may be surprised at
their own ignorance when they read that “Your Hunter ... need not be
kept ... to an exact regimen of diet: any clean food is fit for him”.
If a horse’s wind is broken, it is a simple matter to mend it again
by feeding him on fat bacon, sweet oil, and brandy figs, or by dosing
him with small shot, pounded in a mortar and mixed with sulphur. Among
other remedies for the horse will be found “A receipt for ruined
nerves,” as well as “A remedy for the head-ach,” a malady seldom
complained of in modern stables.
No notice of the life of Newcastle would be complete without a few
quotations from the book with which his name is chiefly associated.
Let us begin with a description “Of the true Seat and the necessary
Actions of a good horseman.[154] Before a horseman mounts, he ought
first to take care that all his horse’s furniture be in order, which
is soon done, without prying into every minute circumstance, to show
himself an affected connoisseur in the art. When he is seated (for I
take it for granted that everyone knows how to mount a horse)”—a large
assumption—“he ought to sit upright upon the twist, and not upon the
buttocks, though most people think they were made by nature to sit
upon; however it is not so on horseback.
[Footnote 154: P. 29.]
“When he is thus placed upon his twist in the middle of the saddle,
he ought to advance, as much as he can, towards the pommel, leaving a
hand’s breadth between his backside and the arch of the saddle, holding
his legs perpendicular, as when he stands upon the ground, and his
knees and thighs turned inwards towards the saddle, keeping them as
close as if they were glued to the saddle; for a horseman has nothing
else but this, together with the balance of his body, to keep himself
on horseback. He ought to fix himself firm upon his stirrups, with
his heels a little lower than his toes, so that the ends of his toes
may pass about half an inch beyond the stirrup, or something more.
He should keep his hams stiff, having his legs neither too near, nor
too distant from the horse; that is to say, they should not touch the
horse’s sides, because of the aids which shall afterwards be explained.
“He ought to hold the reins in his left hand, separating them with his
little finger, holding the rest in his hand, having the thumb upon the
reins, which should be held strait over the horse’s neck.
“He should have a slender switch in his hand, not too long, like a
fishing rod, nor too short, like a bodkin; but rather short than long,
because there are many useful aids with a short one, that a long
one will not admit of. The handle of it ought to be a little beyond
the hand, not only for the sake of caressing the horse with it, but
likewise to hold it the faster. The right hand, that holds the switch,
ought to advance a little before the bridle hand, with the small end of
the switch pointing to the inside.
“The rider’s breast ought to be in some measure advanced, his
countenance pleasant and gay, but without a laugh, pointing directly
between his horse’s ears as he moves forward. I don’t mean, that he
should fix himself stiff like a post, or that he should sit upon a
horse like a statue; but, on the contrary, that he should be in a
free and easy position, as it is expressed in dancing with a free
air. Therefore I would have a Gentleman appear on horseback without
stiffness or formality, which rather savours of the scholar than the
master, and I could never observe such a formality, without conceiting
the rider to look awkward and silly.
“A good seat is of such importance, as you will see hereafter, that
the regular movement of a horse entirely depends upon it, which is
preferable to any other assistance; therefore let it not be despised.
Moreover I dare venture to affirm, that he who does not sit genteely
upon a horse, will never be a good horseman. As to the management of
the bridle-reins and caveson, I will teach you more concerning them in
the following discourse than has been hitherto known.”
Here is some safe advice.[155]
[Footnote 155: P. 105.]
“The Way I took to reduce a Horse, that was extreamly Resty.
“A Horse’s restiness, when it is in a high degree, does not consist
only in his refusing to advance, but also in his opposition to the
rider, in every thing he possibly can, and with the utmost malice....
One must endeavour therefore to gain the horse; for the perfection of
a well-managed horse consists in his following the will of his rider,
so that the will of both shall be the same.... Violent methods will not
do. For when the horseman thinks himself victorious, he is deceived,
etc., etc. If the rider begins again to beat and spur the horse will
resist again; it is not the beast then that is vanquished, but the man,
who is the greater brute of the two.... The whole therefore is to make
the horseman and his horse friends.
[Illustration: “ART AVAILS MUCH MORE THAN THE BRIDLE”
_Terre a terre la reste contre la muraille a Main droite_
From Newcastle’s book on horsemanship]
“If you can’t gain your point one way, you must have recourse to
another. You would make your horse advance, and he to defend himself
against you runs back; at that instant pull him back with all your
strength, and if to oppose you he advances, immediately force him
briskly forwards. If you would turn to the right, and he endeavours to
turn to the left, pull him round to the left as suddenly as possible:
if you would turn him to the left, and he insists on the right,
turn him as smartly to the right as you are able.... If he would
rise,” probably the author means rear, “make him rise two or three
times.” A very, very dangerous piece of advice! “In a word, follow
his inclinations in everything, and change as often as he. When he
perceives there can be no opposition, but that you always will the same
thing as he, he will be amazed, he will breathe short, snuff up his
nose, and won’t know what to do next.”
In these days, we are apt to consider good hands and the skilful use of
the bridle of the utmost possible importance in horsemanship. Newcastle
was of a different opinion.
“The bridle,” he says,[156] “I confess, is of some use, tho’ but
little; art avails much more, as all your excellent riders well know;
for I have managed a horse with a halter only, and he went as well as
with the bridle.... I have also managed an English one with a scarf,
and made him curvet and vault very justly.”
[Footnote 156: P. 27.]
Yet he tells us, later, that, in addition to his favourite curb, with
a high port and rings on it, and appallingly long cheeks to the bit—a
bridle about which the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
would have something to say, were it used in these days—he liked to
have a caveson on his horse’s nose, with the reins fastened to the
pommel of his saddle. By the way, in an illustration, the saddle which
he says cannot possibly be improved upon, looks more like an elephant’s
howdah than the saddle of a horse.
Here is some queer anatomy with some still queerer inference from it.
The horse’s[157] “fore-legs are made like those of a man, having his
knee bending forward; and his hind-legs like a man’s arm, having the
sinews of his ham bending backwards, which is diametrically opposite
to the former. If the hind-legs of a horse bent in the same manner
as those before, he would walk upright like a man; but his hind-legs
bending contrary, they resemble the arm of a man, and his fore-legs
bend as ours, which makes him go upon all four; and there is no other
reason for beasts going upon all four, with their bellies to the
ground.”
[Footnote 157: P. 63.]
Newcastle apparently did not realise that a man’s wrist corresponds to
a horse’s knee, and a man’s heel to a horse’s hock.
The following extract will show hunting-men how little they know about
leaping:—
“For Leaping-horses, there are four several airs, which are Croupades,
Balotades, Caprioles, and a Step and a Leap....
“Croupades is a leap where the horse pulls up his hinder legs, as if he
drew or pulled them up into his body.
“Balotades is a leap where the horse offers to strike out with his
hinder legs, but doth not, and makes only an offer or half strokes;
showing only the shoes of his hinder legs, but doth not strike, only
makes an offer, and no more.
“Caprioles is a leap, that when the horse is at the full height of his
leap he yerks, or strikes out his hinder legs, as near and as even
together, and as far out as ever he can stretch them, which the French
call _nouër l’aiguilette_, which is, to tie the point.”
It is a pity that the Duke does not inform his readers which of the
“four several airs” of “the leaping-horse” are respectively most
suitable for the negotiation of oxers, bulfinches and brooks.
In training the horse to make demi-pirouettes, demi-voltes, etc., not
content with the powerful curb, the caveson with its reins fastened
to the pommel of the saddle, and having the horse’s head tied by a
rope to a pole fixed in the ground, Newcastle would have his rider
wear terrible spurs on his heels and carry a _poinson_, which was a
“short stick with an iron point at one end of it,” in his hand. And,
as if even all this were not enough, he would have two men on foot to
“help” the horse, one with a switch in his hand and the other with a
“Scourge”. By these gentle means, he tells us, horses may acquire “airs
built only of art”.
Let us next learn something about curvets.[158]
[Footnote 158: P. 65.]
“To work a horse in Curvets backwards upon the Voltes.
“The pillar being on the right side, to the right you must advance your
breast and pull in your belly, your bridle-hand on the contrary side,
putting it very much out and back each time, and helping at the same
time with the opposite leg. This is to make him go in a circle; but all
the aids must be given in the right time. The rein and contrary leg
here works the horse’s croupe, and his shoulders are at liberty.”
Here we have a highly scientific description of “Curvets upon the
Voltes, sideways”.[159]
[Footnote 159: P. 77.]
“The horse’s hind-legs that are out ought to follow the fore-legs that
are in, neither more in nor more out; the fore-legs however are within
the lines of the hind ones, since they are narrower. The pillar or
center is without the head of the horse when you work the croupe out,
for which reason his fore-legs describe the smallest circles, and those
behind the largest. The fore-leg within the volte describes the least
of the two smaller, and the other fore-leg the largest of them. The
hind-leg within the volte describes the least of the larger circles,
and the other without the volte the greatest.”
It is pleasant to contemplate what the face of a British groom would be
like if the above instructions were given to him before getting into
the saddle.
Let not the conceited modern horseman smile at any of these quotations
from Newcastle’s great book.
[Illustration: “AIDS”
From Newcastle’s book on horsemanship]
He was a professor of a style of horsemanship which went out of fashion
in this country long ago, but culminated in France some two hundred
years later than the days of Newcastle, under those two great masters
of the _Haute École_, Baucher and Captain Raabe.
It was not only in the pirouetting and demi-volting of horses that
Newcastle interested himself. After the Restoration, he went on the
Turf; although it is doubtful whether he raced except at Welbeck.[160]
Near that place he established a race-course, where he held no less
than six meetings in the year, and the races at them were run under
special rules of his own making.
[Footnote 160: _Dictionary of National Biography_, IX, 368.]
Some years earlier (in 1659) he had denied all knowledge of racing—or
horse-coursing, as he called it—in a letter to Nicholas (_Egerton
MSS._, British Museum). “It is two professions, a good horseman and a
Horse courser. I pretend to the first, but know nothing of the second,
for I’ll cozen nobody; I only take care not to be cozened.”
CHAPTER XIX.
The book noticed in the last chapter is the most important that
Newcastle ever wrote; but he also wrote poems and plays. Granger
says:—[161]
“William, Marquis of Newcastle, who amused himself at this period with
poetry and horsemanship was, as a natural consequence of his rank, much
esteemed as a poet. His poetical works, which consist of plays and
poems, are very little regarded; but his fine book of horsemanship is
still in esteem.”
[Footnote 161: _The Biographical History of England_, by the Rev. J.
Granger, 4th ed., London, 1804, vol. III, p. 98.]
Another critic held a far higher opinion of Newcastle’s plays and
poems, and praised him also as a patron of men-of-letters. Langbaine,
who was almost his contemporary, says:—[162]
“To speak first of his acquaintance with the Muses, and his affable
deportment to all their votaries, no person since the time of Augustus
better understood dramatic poetry, nor more generously encouraged
poets; so that we may truly call him our English Mecaenas. He had a
more particular kindness for that great master of dramatic poesy, the
excellent Jonson, and ‘twas from him that he attained to a perfect
knowledge of what was to be accounted true humour in comedy. How well
he has copied his master, I leave to the critics: but I am sure our
late, as well as our present Laureate, have powerful reasons to defend
his memory. He has writ four Comedies, which have always been acted
with applause; viz., _Country Captain_, ... _Humorous Lovers_, ...
_Triumphant Widow_, and _Variety_. We have many other pieces writ by
this ingenious Nobleman, scattered up and down in the poems of his
Duchess; all which seem to confirm the character given by Mr. Shadwell,
‘That he was the greatest master of wit, the most exact observer of
mankind, and the most accurate judge of humour that ever he knew’.”
[Footnote 162: _An Account of the English Dramatic Poets_, by Gerard
Langbaine, 1691, p. 396.]
It is only fair to add that on page 104 of a later edition of the same
book, published in 1699 and entitled, “The Lives And Characters Of The
English Dramatick Poets, First Begun By Mr. Langbain, Improved and
Continued Down To This Time By A Careful Hand,” we read, concerning the
above notice of Newcastle:—
“Mr. Langbain has always a good word for quality; he can see no Blemish
in a Person that has a Title, tho’ he be so sharp-sighted in all those
of a lower station; and he is so transported on the worthy Nobleman”
(Newcastle) “that he baulks the Curiosity of his Readers, for some
Account of his Life, to vent a clumsey Flattery”.
Let us hear another critic. Walpole says:[163] “As an author he is
familiar to those who scarce know any other author ... from his book of
horsemanship.... He was fitter to break Pegasus for a manage than to
mount him on the steeps of Parnassus.... One does not know whether to
admire the philosophy or smile at the triflingness of this[164] peer,
who after sacrificing such a fortune for his Master and enduring such
calamities for his country, could accommodate his mind to the utmost
idleness of literature.”
[Footnote 163: _A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England_,
2nd ed., 1759, vol. II, p. 12 _seq._]
[Footnote 164: The plural is used in the original, as Walpole wrote “of
this and the last-mentioned Peer,” namely the Marquess of Winchester.]
In this instance, the critic has been criticised. Newcastle’s “elegant
and retired studies,” says Lodge,[165] “his adoption of which in
truth denoted the greatness of his spirit, a late noble person has
endeavoured to ridicule ... with less taste and justice than are
commonly to be found in his censures, and with more than his usual
spleen”. Lodge is probably right in saying that, although Newcastle
“could not claim the higher attributes of a dramatic author ... he
was a close observer, and a faithful delineator of the characters and
manners of ordinary society”.
[Footnote 165: _Portraits of Illustrious Personages._]
It would be impossible to give long extracts from Newcastle’s plays
here; but one or two are offered from “The Humorous Lovers,” a comedy
of which even Walpole says that it was “acted by his Royal Highnesses
servants,” that it “was received with great applause, and esteemed one
of the best plays at that time”.
The characters figuring in one scene were “Courtly, A gentleman in love
with Emilia,” and “Emilia, a gentlewoman in love with Courtly”.
ACT V. SCENE I.
_Enter_ COURTLY _and_ EMILIA.
COURT. May I not hope you will not always be so cruel, but that my
love in time may have a kind return?
EMIL. Yes, you may hope, but it is as Creditors may hope for the debts
from men that are undone; if ever I am Mistris of my heart again, I
shall remember what I owe you.
COURT. Though this acknowledgement is more than I deserve, pressed by
my love, as Beggars are by want, I still shall trouble you, there is
but poor relief in gentle words.
EMIL. But still in vain Beggars from them Charity implore, Who have
given all they had away before.
COURT. May I not know the happy man, to whom you have given your
heart? I wish—
EMIL. What do you wish?
COURT. The gift as welcome to him, as it wou’d have been to me.
Near the end of the play, the same characters are again alone together
upon the stage.
COURT. Pardon me, Madam, if I trouble you once more with my unwelcome
sute, let me but know the man you love.
EMIL. You cannot be his enemy I’m sure.
COURT. No, though he robs me of all my happiness, I shou’d but make
myself more miserable by offending him, for whose misfortunes you must
grieve.
EMIL. I cannot speak his name, but you were the occasion that I saw
him first.
COURT. The Colonel, my friend?
EMIL. It is—
COURT. The same is it not?
EMIL. His friend.
COURT. What means that blush?
EMIL. Do you not know him yet?
COURT. The Colonel’s friend you said, I think.
EMIL. The Colonel’s friend.
COURT. It is myself, he long has honour’d me with the name: speak, oh
speak, and confirm me now in this.
EMIL. I cannot tell you more, but I will never do a thing shall give
you cause to think otherwise.
COURT. You so surprise me with my happiness
My Joy’s too great and sudden to express.
The two next extracts from the same play may serve as specimens of
Newcastle’s verse. In each case the speaker is a sane man feigning
madness. In the first he is addressing his lady-love.
Do you gaze upon me? I come to bring you news from Lucifer:
In my Love’s despair I fell
Down to that Furnace we call Hell:
The first strange thing that I did mark
Was many fires, and yet ’twas dark:
Instead of costly Arras there
The walls poor sooty hangings wore;
Spirits went about each Room
With pans of sulphur for perfume;
Sod tender Ladies in a pot
For broths, and jellies they had got;
The Spits were loaded with poor sinners
That Devils rosted for their dinners;
While some were frying damned souls,
Others made rashers on the coals:
The waiting Women they did stew,
That robb’d their Ladies of their due:
Gamons of Us’rers down were taken,
That hung i’th chimney for their bacon:
Here Lawyers bak’d in Oven’s stand;
For couzeing Clients of their Land;
Millions of Souls, beyond expressing,
French Devils tortur’d in the dressing
To cool them there, they drank instead
Of beer huge draughts of molten lead.
As the poet, soon after this, becomes indecent, we will not read any
more of this effusion, which, if not exactly Dantesque, is not entirely
devoid of humour.
In the second poem, the sham madman again addresses the lady who is in
love with him.
Unto a Feast I will invite thee,
Where various dishes shall delight thee;
The Steeming vapours drawn up hot
From Earth, that’s Nature’s porridge-pot
Shall be our broth; We’l drink my dear
The thinner air for our small beer;
And if thou lik’st it not I’le call aloud
And make our Butler broach a cloud.
Of paler Planets for thy sake
White pots, and trembling custards make
The twinkling stars, shall to our wish
Make a grand salad in a dish;
Snow for our sugar shall not fail
Fine candid ice, comfits of hail;
For oranges gilt clouds we’l squeeze
The Milkie way we’l turn to cheese,
Sunbeams we’l catch shall stand in place
Of hotter ginger, Nutmegs, Mace;
Sunsetting clouds, for Roses sweet
And Violet skies strow’d for our feet.
It is curious that Pepys should have attributed this play to the
Duchess. On 30 March, 1667, he wrote in his Diary: “To see the silly
play of my Lady Newcastle called ‘The Humorous Lovers’; the most silly
thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would
not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her.”
Of another play attributed to Newcastle, “Sir Martin Marall,” Pepys
wrote on 16 August, 1667: “My wife and I to the Duke’s playhouse,
where we saw the new play acted yesterday, ‘The Feign Innocence, or
Sir Martin Marall’; a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but,
as everybody says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece
of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other that certainly
ever was writ. I never laughed so in all my life, and at very good wit
therein, not fooling.”
After all this high praise, it is painful to a writer of a panegyric on
Newcastle, to read in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ that he “translated
Molière’s _L’Etourdi_ under the title ‘Sir Martin Mar-All’”. Almost
worse still is it to read, in _The Dictionary of National Biography_,
that Newcastle “translated Molière’s _L’Etourdi_, which Dryden”—not
Newcastle—“converted into a play”.
Whatever may have been the assistance rendered by Dryden in what Pepys
calls the making of this play, he certainly wrote its prologue and
epilogue, which may be found in his collected works. They are by no
means the most brilliant efforts of Dryden’s genius.
The severe critic of Langbaine’s worship of nobility, already quoted,
says of Newcastle’s play, “The Triumphant Widow”: “This was esteemed
a good Play, and Mr. Shadwell had so good an opinion of it, that he
borrowed a great part thereof to compleat his Comedy called _Bury
Fair_”.
In a poem entitled “The Philosopher’s Complaint,” Newcastle professes
to watch a philosopher in his study, through a cranny in the wall. He
hears him bewailing his fate in being a man and not a beast. The poem
is long. Here are a few verses:—
Beasts slander not or falsehoods raise:
But full of truth as Nature taught,
They wisely shun dissembling ways,
Following Dame Nature as they ought.
Nor envy any that do rise[166]
Or joyful seem at those that fall,
Or crooked plans gainst others tries (_sic_)
But love their kind, themselves and all.
Hard labour suffer when they must,
When over-awed they wisely bend,
In only patience then they trust
As misery’s and affliction’s friend.
With cares men break their sweet repose
Like wheels that wear with turning round;
With beasts calm thoughts their eyelids close
And in soft sleep all cares are drowned.
[Footnote 166: How little Newcastle must have known of cats and dogs if
he thought that they were never jealous! And how pleased dogs are at
seeing another dog beaten. As to “dissembling,” a bird, at any rate,
will pretend to have a broken wing in order to draw away attention from
her brood. And has not the fox a reputation for “dissembling ways”?]
Probably Newcastle shone more as a patron, than as a producer, of
literature. Besides the men-of-letters whom he placed on the staff of
his army in the North, he befriended Ben Jonson, a poet who was often
in need of help in a pecuniary form, and also Shadwell, who, like
Newcastle, only on an infinitely humbler scale, had lost a large part
of his fortune in the service of his King. Both Jonson and Shadwell
were Poets Laureate. Shirley and Flecknoe were also patronized by
Newcastle.
Here is a begging letter from Ben Jonson to Newcastle: “My Noblest Lord
and Best Patron. I send no borrowing epistle to provoke your lordship,
for I have neither fortune to repay, nor security to engage that will
be taken; but I make a most humble petition to your lordship’s bounty
to succour my present necessities this good time of Easter, and it
shall conclude all begging requests hereafter on behalf of your truest
beadsman and most thankful servant, B. J.” (Harleian MSS. 4955).[167]
In another letter he thanks Newcastle for his “lordship’s timely
gratuity”.
[Footnote 167: Quoted in Cunninghame’s _Jonson_, vol. I, p. lvi.]
One of Newcastle’s most intimate literary friends was not a poet, but
a dry old philosopher. A good many letters written to Newcastle by
Hobbes, the author of _Leviathan_, are among the Welbeck manuscripts,
and from these a few extracts shall be given. At the time they were
written, Hobbes was travelling with the young Earl of Devonshire, then
a lad of 17 or 18.
“THOMAS HOBBES TO (THE EARL OF NEWCASTLE).
“1635, AUGUST 25. PARIS.—I have receaved your Lordships guift,
proportioned to your owne goodnesse, not to my service. If the world
saw my little desert, so plainely as they see your great rewards,
they might thinke me a mountibancke and that all that I do or would
do, were in the hope of what I receave. I hope your Lordship does
not thinke so, at least let me tell your Lordship once for all, that
though I honour you as my Lord, yet my love to you is just of the same
nature that it is to Mr. Payne, bred out of private talke, without
respect to your purse. Your letters since my comming abroad have bene
great testimonies of your favor, and great spurres of my endeavor, but
it seemes your Lordships thinkes silver spurres have a greater effect,
which is an error, but such a one as I see more reason to thanke you
for, then to confute, and therefore with my most humble thankes I end
this point.
“I told Mr. Benjamin and Monsieur de Pre—who is Monsieur Benjamin’s
eldest sonne, and teaches under his father—of the faults your
Lordship found in the horse. For the opening his mouth, they confesse
it, and say that when he was young and first began to be dressed he
put out his head too much, which they that dressed him endeavoring to
amend, for want of skill, did by a great bitte convert into this other
fault of gaping. For his feete they obstinately deny that he has any
fault in them at all, and do suppose that the journey may have hurt
him, or his wearinesse made it seeme so. That he has no other ayre but
corvettes, is a thing your Lordship was made acquainted with before.
The greatest fault is his price, which price adding the forty pounds
you gave me, is a very good reason why he should hence forward be
called _Le Superbe_.”
“THOMAS HOBBES TO (THE EARL OF NEWCASTLE).
“PARIS. 1636, JULY 29. I am sorry your Lordship finds not so good
dealing in the world as you deserve. But my Lord, he that will venture
to sea must resolve to endure all weather, but for my part I love to
keepe a’land. And it may be your Lordship now will do so to, whereby I
may have the happinesse which your Lordship partly promises me in the
end of your letter, to conferre meditations for a good time together,
which will be not onely honor to me, but that happinesse which I and
all that are in love with knowledge, use to fancy to themselves for
the true happinesse in this life.”
“THE SAME TO THE SAME, AT WELBECK.
“Mr. Payne willed me to go to Mr. Warner who lives but eight miles
off, to get his answer to certayne letters of his, but one while the
frost, and at other times the flouds, made the wayes impassable for
any but very ranke riders, of which I was never any. I have a cold
that makes me keepe my chamber, and a chamber—in this thronge of
company that stay Christmas here—that makes me keepe my cold.”
The greater part of the letters of Hobbes consists of disquisitions
upon certain matters connected with optics, and especially upon some
experiments made by Warner. They go far to show that Newcastle was
interested in science, as well as in literature, pictures, and music.
Hobbes also frequently expresses pleasant anticipations of discussions
on philosophy with Newcastle when he shall visit him at Welbeck.
Another, and an even better-known philosopher, Des Cartes, is said to
have been a friend of Newcastle. Surely Walpole was too severe when he
accused a companion of Des Cartes and Hobbes of “accommodating his mind
to the utmost idleness of literature”.
Newcastle seems to have made scientific experiments on his own account.
In a Preface which he wrote to his wife’s _Philosophical and Physical
Opinions_, he says: “Dr. Payne, a divine and my chaplain, who hath a
very witty, searching brain of his own, being at my house at Bolsover,
locked up with me in a chamber to make Lapis Prunellae, which is
saltpetre and brimstone[168] inflamed, looking at it a while, I said,
Mark it, Mr. Payne, the flame is pale like the sun and hath a violent
motion in it, like the sun; saith he, It is so, and the more to confirm
you, says he, look what abundance of little suns, round the globe,
appear to us everywhere, just the same motion as the sun makes in every
one’s eyes. So we concluded the sun could be nothing else but a very
solid body of salt and sulphur, inflamed by his own violent motion upon
his own axis.”
[Footnote 168: The ingredients of gunpowder, minus the charcoal.]
So much for scientific inference. But observe what presently follows:—
“This,” he concludes, “is my opinion, which I think can as hardly be
disproved as proved; since any opinion may be right or wrong, for
anything that anybody knows, for certainly there is none can make a
mathematical demonstration of natural philosophy”.
Well! The exact sciences have advanced a little since such a statement
as that could be made.
[Illustration: MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From the frontispiece of one of her books by Diepenbeck]
CHAPTER XX.
In the last two chapters we have been considering the literary works
of Newcastle. We must now face those of his Duchess—a very much more
serious matter. The quantity of her written stuff was prodigious. The
following list of her books, drawn up by Langbaine, is enough to cause
the stoutest heart to quail. He says:—[169]
“She has published six and twenty plays, besides several loose
scenes”—loose they are indeed—“nineteen of which are bound, and
printed in one volume in Fol. 1662, the others in Folio, Lond., 1668,
under the title of _Plays never before printed_. I know there are some
that have but a mean opinion of her plays; but, if it be considered
that both the language and plots of them are all her own, I think she
ought to be preferred to others of her sex, which have built their fame
on other people’s foundations.”
[Footnote 169: P. 392.]
Then he enumerates:—
“_Plays._
“1. Apocryphal Ladies.—Comedy.
“2. Bell in Campo.—Tragedy.
“3. Blasing World. Unfinished.—Comedy.
“4. Bridals.—Comedy.
“5. Comical Hash.—Comedy.
“6. Convent of Pleasure.—Comedy.
“7. Female Academy.—Comedy.
“8. Lady Contemplation.—Comedy.
“9. Love’s Adventures.—Comedy.
“10. Matrimonial Trouble.—Tragi-comedy.
“11. Nature’s Three Daughters.—Comedy.
“12. Presence.—Comedy.
“13. Public Wooing.—Comedy.
“14. Religious.—Tragi-comedy.
“15. Several Wits.—Comedy.
“16. Sociable Companions, or The Female Wits.—Comedy.
“17. Unnatural.—Tragedy.
“18. Wits Cabal.—Comedy.
“19. Youth’s Glory, and Death’s Banquet.—Tragedy.”
The other seven he does not name; but he says that to her play
“Presence” are added twenty-nine single scenes which the Duchess
designed to have inserted into this play, but finding it would too
much lengthen it, she printed them separately. Of her other works he
mentions:—
“The life of the Duke of Newcastle in English. Folio. London 1667.
“The same in Latin. Folio. London 1668.
“Nature’s Picture drawn by Fancy’s Pencil to the life. Folio. London
1656, at the end of which she has writ her own life.
“Philosophical Fancies. Folio. London 1653.
“Philosophical & Physical Opinions. Folio. London 1655.
“Philosophical Letters. Folio. London 1664.
“Two Hundred and Eleven Sociable Letters. Folio. London 1664.
“Orations. Folio. 1662.
“Poems. Folio. 1653.”
The reader need not be afraid that much of all this is to be inflicted
upon him; we have already seen a good deal of her writings; but a few
fresh examples must needs be given. One reason for the prodigious
number of her works was that she always kept secretaries at hand to
write at dictation whatever happened to come into her head, a second
seems to have been that she considered whatever came into her head to
have been worthy of publication. Cibber says of her:—[170]
“Being now restored to the sunshine of prosperity, she dedicated her
time to writing poems, philosophical discourses, orations and plays.
She was of a generous turn of mind, and kept a great many young ladies
about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of
them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her Grace lay, and
were ready, at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night, to
write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory. The
young ladies, no doubt, often dreaded her Grace’s conceptions, which
were frequent, but all of the poetical or philosophical kind.”
[Footnote 170: _Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland_, ed.
1755, vol. II, p. 164.]
She herself gives the following long-winded description of the speed at
which her mighty brain kept turning out matter for “copy,” and what is
given here is a mere fragment of a sentence of miraculous length.
“... the brain being quicker in creating than the hand in writing, or
the memory in retaining, many fancies are lost, by reason they ofttimes
outrun the pen; where I, to keep speed in the Race, write so fast as I
stay not so long as to write my letters plain, insomuch as some have
taken my hand-writing for some strange character, and being accustomed
so to do, I cannot now write very plain, when I strive to write my
best; indeed, my ordinary hand-writing is so bad as few can read it, so
as to write it fair for the Press, but however, that little wit I have,
it delights me to scribble it out, and disperse it about, for I being
addicted from my childhood to contemplation rather than conversation,
to solitariness rather than society, to melancholy rather than mirth,
to write with the pen than to work with a needle, passing my time with
harmeless fancies, their company being pleasing, their conversation
innocent, in which I take such pleasure, as I neglect my health, for
it is as great a grief to leave their society, as a joy to be in their
company, my only trouble is, lest my brain should grow barren, or that
the root of my fancies should become insipid, withering into a dull
stupidity for want of maturing subjects to write on,” and so on, and so
on!
The account given above by Cibber of the young ladies who “slept in a
room contiguous to that in which her Grace lay, ready, at the call of
her bell, to rise any hour of the night, to write down her conceptions,
lest they should escape her memory,” arouses our deepest sympathy.
Imagine what it would be to be awakened by her Grace’s bell from a
deep slumber to write down one or other of the following platitudinous
“conceptions” taken at hazard from one of her books:—
“I have observed, That many instead of great Actions, make onely a
great Noise, and like shallow Fords, or empty Bladders, sound most when
there is least in them.”
“I observe, That as it would be a grief to covetous and miserable
persons, to be rewarded with Honour, rather than with Wealth, because
they love Wealth, before Honour and Fame; so on the other side, Noble,
Heroick and Meritorious Persons, prefer Honour and Fame before Wealth.”
“It is not every ambitious and aspiring spirit that can do brave and
noble actions.”
The world would not have been very seriously poorer if the Duchess had
omitted to ring her bell, and if these sage “conceptions” had “escaped
her memory” in the morning.
Her best work, at any rate her most valuable contribution to the
history of her times, is the story of her husband’s life, into which
we have already dipped, perhaps too often and too deeply. In spite of
her pardonably exaggerated praise of Newcastle and all his works, the
narrative, if not always accurate, is pretty fairly rendered; and if
Nature ever intended that she should scribble at all, it may have been
as a war-correspondent to a daily newspaper, in which case she was born
a little before her time.
It would be easy to sneer at her poetry; but, at its best, it is not so
very bad, although it always contains some weak lines. Let us look at
one or two of her most successful efforts.
In her description of the Queen of the Fairies, she writes:—
She on a dewy leaf doth bathe,
And as she sits, the leaf doth wave;
There like a new-fallen flake of snow,
Doth her white limbs in beauty show.
Her garments fair her maids put on,
Made of the pure light from the sun.
In her poem, “Mirth and Melancholy,” both Mirth and Melancholy try to
attract the poetess. Mirth promises her amusement and sneers at her
rival, Melancholy, in these lines:—
Her voice is low and gives a hollow sound;
She hates the light and is in darkness found
Or sits with blinking lamps, or tapers small,
Which various shadows make against the wall.
She loves nought else but noise which discord makes;
As croaking frogs whose dwelling is in lakes;
The raven’s hoarse, the mandrake’s hollow groan
And shrieking owls which fly i’ the night alone;
The tolling bell, which for the dead rings out;
A mill, where rushing waters run about;
The roaring winds, which shake the cedars tall,
Plough up the seas, and beat the rocks withal.
She loves to walk in the still moonshine night,
And in a thick dark grove she takes delight;
In hollow caves, thatched houses, and low cells
She loves to live, and there alone she dwells.
Melancholy, on the other hand, states that her life and surroundings,
if subdued and retired, are tranquil and beautiful. It may be
remembered that a few pages back the Duchess said that she herself was
always addicted to “melancholy rather than mirth”.
I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun;
Sit on the banks by which clear waters run;
In summers hot down in a shade I lie,
My music is the buzzing of a fly;
I walk in meadows where grows fresh green grass;
In fields where corn is high I often pass;
Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see,
Some brushy woods, and some all champaigns be;
Returning back, I in fresh pastures go,
To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low;
In winter cold, when nipping frosts come on,
Then I do live in a small house alone.
One of the greatest admirers of the Duchess of Newcastle’s literary
labours was Charles Lamb, who calls her, in _The Essays of Elia_,[171]
“that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle,” whose
writings contain:—
Such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex’s wonder.
[Footnote 171: “The Two Races of Men.”]
In another of the Essays[172] he writes about “the intellectuals of a
dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one—the thrice noble,
chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and original
brained, generous Margaret Newcastle”.
[Footnote 172: “Mackery End.”]
And of her Life of her husband he says: “No casket is rich enough, no
casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep such a jewel”. Lamb had
a special admiration also for the Duchess’s “Two Hundred and Eleven
Sociable Letters,” platitudinous epistles, any extracts from which the
reader shall be spared.
A favourable, but more moderate criticism of her abilities is that of
D’Israeli, who, in his _Curiosities of Literature_, says: “Her labours
have been ridiculed by some wits; but had her studies been regulated,
she would have displayed no ordinary genius. Her verses have been
imitated by Milton.”
The latter is an amazing assertion; but D’Israeli is a literary
authority of high standing, and, as a rule, he was careful in his
statements.
The same idea is implied in _The Connoisseur_:[173] “As I fell asleep
my fancy presented to me the following dream. I was transported, I
know not how, to the regions of Parnassus.... Pegasus was brought out
of the stable and the Muses furnished him with a side-saddle.... A
lady advanced, who, though she had something rather extravagant in her
air and deportment, yet she had a noble presence that commanded at
once awe and admiration. She was dressed in an old-fashioned habit,
very fantastic, and trimmed with bugles and points, such as was worn
in the time of King Charles the First. This lady, I was informed, was
the Duchess of Newcastle. When she came to mount, she sprang into the
saddle with amazing agility; and giving an entire loose to the reins,
Pegasus directly set out at a gallop, and ran with her out of sight.”
[Footnote 173: _The Connoisseur_, by Mr. Towne, vol. I, p. 350, a new
edition, 1822.]
On her return she repeated, at request, her lines on Melancholy: “Her
voice is low and gives a hollow sound, etc.” quoted above: whereupon
Milton, who, with Shakespeare, had helped her to dismount, “seemed
very much chagrined, and it was whispered by some that he was obliged
for many of the thoughts in his ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ to
this lady’s dialogue between Mirth and Melancholy”.
Well! Who knows? But what a contrast to the blinking lamps, tapers
small, and shadows against the wall, of the Duchess, is Milton’s—
Hence, loathed Melancholy
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell, etc.
The beginning of _L’Allegro_.
Or, again, the Duchess’s summers hot, fresh green grass, and music the
buzzing of a fly, to Milton’s—
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that Heaven doth show
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy give,
And I with thee will choose to live.
The end of _Il Penseroso_.
An apology is due for this very facile criticism, but D’Israeli and
_The Connoisseur_ rendered it irresistible.
Grainger says:[174] “We are greatly surprised that a lady of her
quality should have written so much, and are little less surprised that
one who loved writing so well, has writ no better”. He considers, as
well he may, that certain critics were far too lavish in their praises
of the Duchess’s literary efforts. He says:—
“There is a very scarce folio volume of ‘Letters and Poems’ printed
in 1678. It consists of 182 pages, filled with the grossest and most
fulsome panegyric on the Duke and Dutchess of Newcastle, especially her
Grace. I know no flattery, ancient or modern, that is, in any degree,
comparable to it, except the deification of Augustus and the erection
of altars to him in his lifetime. Incense and adoration seem to have
been equally acceptable to the Roman god and English goddess.”
[Footnote 174: Vol. IV, p. 60.]
[Illustration: MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving by G. P. Harding, after a painting by Diepenbeck]
Before proceeding to the lighter works of the Duchess, it may be well
to give a specimen of her philosophy. The reader shall be left
to judge for himself whether the following extract contains great
truths; if it contains great truths, whether it presents them in clear
language, and whether it explains them in the fewest possible words.
The extract is taken from the first chapter of a work entitled:—
_Observations upon Experimental Philosophy._
“Written by The Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princesse The
Duchess of Newcastle. Printed by A. Maxwell, London 1666.”
“Reason reforms and instructs sense, in all its actions; But both
the rational and sensitive knowledge and perception, being divideable
as well as composeable, it causes ignorance, as well as knowledge
amongst Nature’s Creatures; for though Nature is but one body and
has no share or copartner, but is intire and whole in itself, as not
composed of several parts or substances, and consequently has but
one Infinite natural knowledge and wisdom, yet by reason she is also
divideable and composeable, according to the nature of a body, we can
justly and with all reason say, that as Nature is divided into infinite
several parts, so each several part has a several and particular
knowledge and perception both sensitive and rational, and again that
each part is ignorant of the others knowledge and perception; when
as otherwise, considered altogether and in general, as they make up
but one infinite body of Nature, so they make also but one infinite
general knowledge. And thus Nature may be called both Individual, as
not having single parts subsisting without her, but all united in one
body; and Divideable, by reason she is partable in her own several
corporeal figurative motions, and not otherwise; for there is no Vacuum
in Nature, neither can her parts start or remove from the Infinite body
of Nature, so as to separate themselves from it, for there is no place
to flee to but body and place are all one thing, so that the parts of
Nature can only joyn and disjoyn to and from parts, but not to and from
the body of Nature.”
After a careful study of the above lucid passage, it may not greatly
astonish the reader to learn that Grainger says:—
“James Bristow, of Corpus Christi college in Oxford, undertook to
translate a volume of her philosophical works into the same language,”
i.e. into Latin; “but he was forced to desist from the undertaking.
Such was the obscurity and perplexity of the subject, that he could not
find words where he had no ideas.”
In writing about this book, the Duchess gives vent to the following
smoothly flowing lines:—
When I did write this book I took great pains,
For I did walk and think and break my brains.
And certainly there are unmistakably symptoms of broken brains in that
work.
As we have already observed, D’Israeli has informed us that Milton
imitated the verse of the Duchess; and, after reading the above extract
from one of her books on philosophy, people devoid of legal knowledge
may possibly be inclined to think that certain other scribes have
imitated her prose, namely lawyers in drawing up deeds and wills.
At the end of one of her books, entitled _Philosophical Opinions_, the
Duchess wrote:—
Of all my works this work which I have writ,
My best beloved and greatest favourite,
I look upon it with a pleasing eye,
I take pleasure in its sweet company.
Probably few authors, after re-reading the manuscripts, correcting the
proofs, and again correcting the revised proofs of their books, ever
find “sweet company” in them again. In most cases the only printed
things they read in connexion with them, in the future, are reviews.
Nor do these invariably prove “sweet company”.
The Duchess wrote books on all sorts of subjects. Not the least curious
are her _Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places_, a
work which, strange to say, went through two editions. It contains
orations suited, or professing to be suited, for weddings, funerals,
and battlefields, loyal speeches and seditious speeches, speeches in
favour of taxation and speeches against taxation, and after-dinner
speeches both for “a quarter-drunk gentleman” and for “a half-drunken
gentleman”. The Duchess writes the heaviest stuff of all when she tries
to be funny. She is even heavier as a Wit than as a Philosopher.
CHAPTER XXI.
In facing the formidable array of the Duchess of Newcastle’s plays, it
may be well to begin with their Prologue, or rather with part of that
Prologue. It is not the happiest of her poetical efforts, but as we
have already mentioned even Dryden failing in a Prologue, we may well
make excuses for the Duchess.
But noble readers, do not think my plays
Are such as have been writ in former days:
As Johnson,[175] Shakespeare, Beaumount, Fletcher writ,
Mine want their learning, reading, language, wit.
The Latin phrases, I could never tell,
But Johnson could, which made him write so well.
Greek, Latin poets, I could never read,
Nor their historians, but our English Speed:[176]
I could not steal their wit, nor plots outrake:
All my plays’ plots, my own poor brain did make.[177]
From Plutarch’s story, I ne’er took a plot,
Nor from romances, nor from Don Quixote.
[Footnote 175: The Duchess seems usually to have spelt Ben Jonson’s
name Johnson.]
[Footnote 176: Author of _The History of Great Britain_, etc. The
second edition was published in 1627. Speed was a tailor and a man of
very little education; but his history of England was for a long time
the best in existence.]
[Footnote 177: Is this a slap at Shakespeare?]
Only three short quotations shall be given from her plays; and first we
have a fair specimen of her heavy, wearisome style in a few sentences
from her play, “The Presence”.
ACT II. SCENE I.
_Enter_ SPEND-ALL _in a fine suit of clothes, meeting_ CONVERSANT.
_Conversant._ Jupiter bless us! how fine and brave you are in a rich
suit of clothes: is this your wedding-day?
_Spend._ No, this day is not my wedding-day: but the suit is my
wooing-suit, for I am going to woo an old lady, who is very rich.
_Conv._ Is she wise?
_Spend._ I hope not, for if she were, she would never grant my suit,
but if she be a fool, as I hope she is, then youth and bravery will
win her.
_Conv._ And the more sprightly, lively and fantastical you appear, the
better the old lady will like you.
_Spend._ I believe you, but I doubt that the sight of the old lady
will put me into so dull and melancholy a humour, as I shall not
please her.
_Conv._ Imagine her a young beauty.
_Spend._ I cannot imagine her a young beauty, when I see her: for
imagination works only upon absent objects.
In the next extract, taken from her play, “The Bridals,” we have an
example of her attempts to be comic.
ACT III. SCENE II.
_Enter_ SIR WILLIAM SAGE _and his lady_.
_Sir William Sage._ I wonder that Mimick is not here! for his company
is very delightful, to pass away idle time; for idle time is only free
for fool’s company.
_Lady._ He is rather a knave than a fool, but here he comes.
_Enter_ MIMICK.
_Sir W. Sage._ Mimick, have you chosen a profession yet?
_Mimick._ Yes, marry have I, for I intend to be an orator.
_Sir W. Sage._ If you be a professed orator, I suppose you have
studied a speech.
_Mimick._ Yes, I have studied, as orators use to do, in making an
oration: for I have rackt my brain, stretched my wit, strapadoed my
memory, tortured my thoughts, and kept my sences awake.
_Sir W. Sage._ Certainly, it is a very eloquent and wise oration,
since you have taken so much pains.
_Mimick._ Labour and study is not a certain rule for wise, witty or
eloquent orations or speeches, for many studied speeches are very
foolish, but you will hear my speech?
_Sir W. Sage._ I will.
_Mimick._ But then Master, you must stand for, signifie, or represent
a multitude or an assembly.
_Sir W. Sage._ That is impossible, being but a single person.
_Mimick._ Why doth not a single figure stand for a number, as the
figure of five, eight or nine, and joining ciphers to them, they stand
for so many hundreds or thousands: and here be two joint-stools, one
of which stools and you lady shall serve for two ciphers and my master
for the figure nine and so you and the joint-stool make nine hundred.
In our third and last quotation, we have a specimen of what she
considered wit. It is from “The Wit’s Cabal”.
ACT II. SCENE V.
_Enter_ CAPTAIN, HARRY, WILL, DICK, LIEUTENANT _and_ CORNET, _as in the
Tavern_.
_Will._ Well, this wine is so fresh and full of spirit, as it would
make a fool a poet.
_Harry._ Or a poet a fool.
_Dick._ Then here’s a health to the most fools in the world.
_Capt._ Then you must drink a health to the whole world, that is one
great fool.
_Lieut._ Prithee Dick, do not drink that health, for it will choak
thee, for the world of fools is too big for one draught.
_Dick._ Then here’s a health to the wisest man.
_Cornet._ You may as well drink a health to a drop of water in the
ocean.
Possibly the reader may think that a little of this sort of wit goes a
long way. Unfortunately, in the Duchess’s plays, there is a vast amount
of it.
It is a remarkable sign of the times in which she lived, especially
of the moral tone and the taste of those times, that, although the
Duchess of Newcastle was a most virtuous woman, and one of high
principles—Ballard[178] says that she was “truly pious, charitable and
generous: was an excellent economist, very kind to her servants, and a
perfect pattern of conjugal love and duty”—yet her plays were of such
a character that, as they stand, the most lenient official censor of
our generation would certainly refuse to allow them to be acted: nor is
it too much to say of them that they combine indecency and obscenity
with the stagnate dullness so usually the accompaniment of literary
ditch-water. Yet in the Preface to one of her books she says: “I hope
this work of mine will rather quench amorous passions than inflame
them, and beget chaste thoughts,” etc.
[Footnote 178: _Memoirs of British Ladies who have been celebrated for
their Writings_, etc., by George Ballard, ed. 1785, p. 213.]
The critics of the plays and other works of the Duchess were very far
from being of one and the same mind. Some half century after her
death, Horace Walpole, in his _Royal and Noble Authors_, says that
“though she had written philosophy it seems she had read none,” and
that she had an “unbounded passion for scribbling”.
During her life, in fact in the year 1667, the Master and Fellows of
St. John’s College, Cambridge, addressed her in the language of fulsome
flattery quoted at the opening of the first chapter of the present
volume. But all the critics of her own day were not of their opinion
and M. Emile Montégut, in his excellent essay on the Newcastles,
writes:[179] “this very high and mighty lady” was “very maliciously
ridiculed by her contemporaries and scornfully neglected by the
succeeding generations”.
On the other hand, the Vice-Chancellor and the Senate of the
University of Cambridge, fairly excelled the Master and Fellows of
St. John’s College in flattery, and Ananias in mendacity, when they
exclaimed:—[180]
“Most excellent Princess, you have unspeakably obliged us all; but not
in one respect alone, for whensoever we find ourselves nonplus’d in
our studies, we repair to you as to our oracle: if we be to speak, you
dictate to us: if we knock at Apollo’s door, you alone open to us: if
we compose an History, you are the remembrancer: if we be confounded
and puzzled among the philosophers, you disentangle us and assoil our
difficulties”.
[Footnote 179: P. 189.]
[Footnote 180: _Biog. Brit._, ed. Kippis.]
Grainger says that “these monstrous strains of panegyrics relate
chiefly to that wild philosophy which would have puzzled the whole
Royal Society”.
Pearson, Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge (“Pearson On The
Creed” ), afterwards Bishop of Chester, could lie so grossly as to
exclaim to the Duchess:[181] “What shall we think of your Excellency,
who are both a Minerva and an Athens in yourself, the Muses as well as
an Helicon, Aristotle as well as his Lycaeum?”
[Footnote 181: _Biog. Brit._, ed. Kippis.]
Another Bishop, Bishop Wilkins, was more honest. He had been talking to
the Duchess about his book on the possibility of a journey to the moon.
“Doctor,” she said, “where am I to find a place for waiting in the way
up to that Planet?” “Madam,” he replied, “of all people in the world,
I never expected that question from you, who have built so many castles
in the air, that you may be every night at one of your own.” [182]
[Footnote 182: Stanley’s _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 247.]
M. Montégut says that, during her later years she was often spoken
of as “That fool, Mad Madge of Newcastle”. Yet Kippis states that
the Rev. Knightly Chatwood, afterwards Dean of Gloucester, “wrote a
preposterously over-laudatory elegy” on her death, “in whose guilt the
author of this note would be involved, were he to produce any quotation
from so impious a performance”.
Of course the Duchess has much to say about her own literary powers.
Here is a specimen of it:—
“But it pleased God to command his Servant Nature to indue me with a
Poetical and Philosophical Genius, even from my Birth: for I did write
some Books in that kind, before I was twelve years of Age”.
One very precious and very touching criticism of our Duchess has
happily been preserved. It was made by her devoted husband, the Duke
himself. A friend had congratulated him on having such a very wise
woman as his wife; whereupon, he exclaimed with genuine emotion: “Sir,
a very wise woman is a very foolish thing”.[183]
[Footnote 183: _Richardsonia_, by Jonathan Richardson, pp. 249, 250.]
It is consoling to learn that the Duchess could sometimes condescend to
lower matters than literature. We have Her Grace’s own authority for
stating that she was fond of dress. She says:—
“I took great delight in attiring, fine dressing, and fashions,
especially such fashions as I did invent myself, not taking that
pleasure in such fashions as was invented by others: also I did
dislike any should follow my Fashions, for I always took delight in
a singularity, even in accoutrements of habits, but whatsoever I was
addicted to, either in fashion of Cloths, contemplation of Thoughts,
actions of Life, they were Lawful, Honest, Honourable, and Modest, of
which I can avouch to the world with a great confidence, because it is
a pure Truth”.
Next, let us hear what Pepys has to say about her dress and other
matters, in an entry in his Diary containing another notice of “The
Humorous Lovers”.
“1667, April 11th. To White Hall, thinking there to have seen the
Duchesse of Newcastle’s coming this night to Court to make a visit to
the Queene, the King having been with her yesterday to make her a visit
since her coming to town. The whole story of this lady is a romance,
and all she does is romantic. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself
in an antique dress, as they say, and was the other day at her own play
‘The Humourous Lovers’; the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote,
but yet she and her Lord mightily pleased with it; and she, at the
end, made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them
thanks. There is as much expectation of her coming to Court, that so
people may come to see her, as if it were the Queene of Sweden, but I
lost my labour, for she did not come this night.”
On the 26th of the same month, Pepys was more fortunate.
“Met my Lady Newcastle going with her coaches and footmen all in
velvet: herself (whom I never saw before) as I have heard her often
described (for all the town-talk is now-a-days of her extravagancies),
with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears; many black patches,
because of pimples about her mouth; naked-necked, without any thing
about it, and a black just-au-corps. She seemed to me a very comely
woman: but I hope to see more of her on May-day.”
The Duchess seems to have “got upon his brain,” to make use of a phrase
which came into use long after his own days; for on 1 May he wrote:—
“That which we and almost all went for, was to see my Lady Newcastle:
which we could not, she being followed and crowded upon by coaches all
the way she went, that nobody could come near her: only I could see she
was in a large black coach adorned with silver instead of gold, and so
white curtains, and everything black and white, and herself in her cap”.
Pepys fairly hunted the poor Duchess through the streets of London. A
week later he made the following entry:—
“Drove hard towards Clerkenwell, thinking to have overtaken my Lady
Newcastle, whom I saw before us in her coach, with 100 boys and girls
running looking upon her; but I could not: and so she got home before I
could come up to her. But I will get a time to see her.”
And he did “get a time to see her”.
“30th. After dinner I walked to Arundell House, the way very dusty,
(the day of meeting of the Society)[184] ... where I find very much
company, in expectation of the Duchesse of Newcastle, who had desired
to be invited to the Society; and was; after much debate pro and con,
it seems many being against it; and we do believe the town will be full
of ballads of it. Anon comes the Duchesse with her women attending her;
among others the Ferabosco, of whom so much talk is that her lady would
bid her show her face and kill the gallants. She is indeed black, and
hath good black little eyes, but otherwise a very ordinary woman I do
think, but they say sings well. The Duchesse hath been a good, comely
woman; but her dress is so antick, and her deportment so ordinary, that
I do not like her at all, nor did I hear her say anything that was
worth hearing, but that she was full of admiration, all admiration.
Several fine experiments were shewn her of colours, loadstones,
microscopes, and of liquors: among others, of one that did while she
was there turn a piece of roasted mutton into pure blood, which was
very rare. After they had shown her any experiments, and she cried
still she was full of admiration, she departed, being led out and in by
several Lords that were there; among others, Lord George Barkeley and
Earl of Carlisle, and a very pretty young man, the Duke of Somerset.”
[Footnote 184: The Royal Society.]
Here is some evidence from another source.
There was a masquerade at Court and that very smart and amusing
courtier, Count Grammont,[185] was talking to the King. “As I was
getting out of my chair,” he said, “I was stopped by the devil of a
phantom in masquerade.... It is worth while to see her dress; for she
must have at least sixty ells of gauze and silver tissue about her, not
to mention a sort of a pyramid upon her head, adorned with a hundred
thousand baubles.”
[Footnote 185: _Memoirs of Count Grammont_, Bohn, p. 134.]
“I bet,” said the King, “that it is the Duchess of Newcastle.” [186]
[Footnote 186: It turned out to be somebody else, but this shows the
King’s opinion of the Duchess’s style of dress.]
CHAPTER XXII.
Monsieur Emile Montégut, in his essay[187] on the Duke and Duchess of
Newcastle, has dealt with the question of the Duchess’s religion, at
some length; and the following is a very free translation of a part of
what he has written on the subject. A certain author has “belauded
the great piety of the Duchess; but, after studying all the available
evidence on this point, we are inclined to think that her piety must
have been but moderate and we feel doubtful as to the nature of her
faith and the extent of her religious fervour. This much is certain,
that she was not devout enough for a Catholic or interior enough for
a Protestant.... When she writes of religion, she is dignified, but
dry, without the least affection in her language or humility in her
mind. She shows no liking for any particular ceremony, or pious rite
or practice; nor does she seem to attach any importance to things
connected with exterior worship; although she belonged to that Anglican
Church in which controversies over such matters have always occupied
so important a place. She had some disposition towards mysticism;
but prayer, the most natural of all religious actions, was almost
distasteful to her. She liked prayers to be short and few, and anything
like repetitions in devotion she considered irreverent if not impious;
but it should be remembered that, in those times, the Puritans made
prayers of prodigious length, far longer than any made by Catholics.”
Her “cool calculation of the relative values of prayer and good works
at any rate exhibits considerable originality and piquancy”.
[Footnote 187: _Le Maréchal Davout—Le Duc et la Duchesse de
Newcastle_, 1895, p. 335.]
Be all this as it may, she attained that Highest Heaven of British
ambition, a grave and a monument in Westminster Abbey, and who can
doubt that one who was so very much a Duchess has gone where Duchesses
go?
* * * * *
Certainly the readers, and as certainly the compiler, of this book must
be deeply conscious that it is now high time to let fall the curtain.
And we will let it fall without fatal illnesses or deathbed scenes.
That people who lived considerably more than two hundred years ago are
dead by this time may be taken for granted; and it should be enough to
say that the Duchess of Newcastle was buried in Westminster Abbey on
17 January, 1673; and that the Duke was laid beside her on 22 January,
1677.
[Illustration: MONUMENT OF THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE IN
WESTMINSTER ABBEY]
The scribe who has collected and copied out the evidence concerning
this illustrious pair, while deeply conscious of the many faults in his
work, is not aware that excessive flattery of his subjects is one of
them. The characters of both the Duke and the Duchess were certainly
open to criticism, perhaps also to ridicule. Yet much may be said in
favour of each.
Newcastle was a dignified, cultivated, and courageous English
gentleman. He was a most loyal subject; he cheerfully bore greater
financial losses, for the sake of his King, than perhaps any other
cavalier; and he fought bravely in the civil war. He excelled in
horsemanship and he was a fine swordsman. Although not a scholar, he
wrote a standard work; and he was an appreciative and critical patron
of art, science, and literature. If only a very minor poet, he could
write verses of considerable spirit; if not a great playwright, he
could write plays which succeeded.
No sensible reader would take Shadwell’s dedication of “The Libertine”
to Newcastle as pure gospel; but there may be a few grains of truth
in it. He says: “By the great honour I had to be daily admitted into
your Grace’s private and public conversation, I observed that admirable
experience and judgment surmounting all the old, and that vigorousness
of wit and smartness of expression, exceeding all the young, I ever
saw, and not only in sharp and apt replies, but, which is much more
difficult, by giving easy and unforced occasions, the most admirable
way of beginning one, and all this adapted to men of all circumstances
and conditions”.
The great misfortune of Newcastle’s life was to be suddenly forced into
the position of a Commander-in-Chief, without any previous training,
or personal inclination; and perhaps the great error of his life may
have been his flight to Holland after the battle of Marston Moor; but,
as was shown on the pages dealing with the incident, a good deal has
been urged, and may justly be urged, in defence of his conduct on that
occasion.
If he made many mistakes as a General, he never showed want of courage
as a soldier. If he asked for appointments and honours from the King,
he amply paid for them, both with money and with services. If his wife
said that he was too great an admirer of the fair sex, there is nothing
to show that he was immoral. If he was somewhat eccentric, he had a
good deal of originality. If he was extravagant when young, he was
economical when old. If he was ambitious, he never intrigued. If his
literary work is open to criticism, he himself is said to have been an
excellent critic.
Although a loyal, a stately, a polished and a handsome courtier, he
was no hanger-on at Court; and his dignified retirement to Welbeck,
when the licentious Court of Charles II had been established, showed at
least good taste. He always appears to have had enemies near the King,
both in the reign of Charles I and in that of Charles II; but he must
have been very popular in the country, or he would not have been able
to raise such large forces for the army of the North, during the civil
war.
Lastly, he is to be admired for his business-like perseverance in
retrieving his ruined fortunes after the Restoration, when they were in
a condition which would have broken the heart of a man of meaner spirit.
As to the Duchess of Newcastle, let us at once get rid of the idea,
held by M. Montégut, and apparently also by other people, that she was
the first of the Blue Stockings. The origin of that term is well known.
Quite a hundred years after the death of our Duchess, the leader of
a coterie of learned ladies invited a clever but ill-clad scholar to
attend their social gatherings. He always wore breeches and the usual
bluish-grey stockings of the cheaper kind; and when he pleaded lack of
suitable attire, his hostess said: “Oh! Come in your blue-stockings”.
The little gatherings of these ladies were afterwards called the
meetings of the Blue Stockings.
But, even taking the term in its wider sense, as including the learned
ladies of any, or of all ages, we might find women far more learned
than Margaret Newcastle in the depths of antiquity. As to her own
country, a century before her time Erasmus wrote: “The monks, famed in
times past for learning, are become ignorant; and women love books. It
is pretty enough that this sex should now at last betake it self to
antient examples.” In the sixteenth century, very literary ladies were
to be found in the families of Sir Thomas More and Sir Anthony Cooke,
and to give Henry VIII his due, it must be acknowledged that he took
good care his daughters should be thoroughly educated and cultivated
women. Nor was our Duchess by any means the first of her sex to rush
into print in the seventeenth century; moreover, much as she wrote for
the press, little print did she read except her own, and she seems to
have been almost entirely devoid of scholarship.
Again, in the first half of the century in which lived the Duchess of
Newcastle, unlike that Duchess Lady Jane Grey knew Latin and Greek and
studied Plato. At the same time, in Italy, the notorious courtesan,
Tullia of Aragon, was a poetess; and, like several of her contemporary
courtesans, knew, as says Aretino, “all Petrarch and Boccaccio by
heart, beside innumerable fine Latin verses by Virgil, Horace, Ovid,
etc.” Any of these ladies could have taught the Duchess lessons and put
her in the corner as a dunce.
In another sense, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, was unlike what
are generally known as literary ladies; for she was no patroness of
literary people; she was not the leader of any literary set, she
started no literary school; she led a retired life, was nervous in
society, and was so much absorbed in her own writings that she seems
to have taken no interest in those of anybody else, either ancient or
modern.
Had she but spent a larger proportion of her time in learning instead
of in teaching, she might have become a successful author; for
undoubtedly she had talent, although not genius. The fatal idea that
all her “conceptions,” as she called them, were worthy of paper, and in
most cases worthy of print, was the chief cause of her literary ruin.
The finest feature of her character was her devotion to her husband.
Although she declares herself to have been devoid of any “passion,” or
“amourous love,” a study of her biography of Newcastle inclines one to
think that on this point she deceived herself; unless, as is possible,
the place of passionate love was supplied by unqualified hero-worship.
She had a profound admiration for his talents. Exaggerated as is her
praise in the following lines, it at least shows an affectionate
devotion. They occur at the end of her book of poems:—
A Poet I am neither born nor bred,
But to a witty poet married,
Whose brain is fresh, and pleasant as the Spring,
Where fancies grow, and where the Muses sing;
There oft I lean my head, and listening hark,
T’observe his words, and all his fancies mark,
And from that garden flowers of fancy take,
Whereof a posy up in verse I make:
Thus I that have no garden of my own
There gather flowers, that are newly blown.
And she did indeed “there gather flowers,” if there is any truth in the
pretty general idea that the best lines in her poems were the work of
her husband.
Her expedition to England to try to wrest something for Newcastle from
his worst enemies was a noble action, and her murmurless endurance of
the pawn-shop, where her husband left her when he returned to his own
country, was a splendid example of self-sacrifice and patience.
Her lengthy and carefully drawn up statements of her husband’s
financial affairs testify to her capacity for business, and suggest
the probability that she was of great help in restoring his fortunes.
Indeed it may be that her talents were more suited for the high-stool
of a clerk than for the arm-chair of a poet.
Walpole’s notice of the later years of the Newcastles’ life is severe.
“What a picture of foolish nobility was this stately poetic couple,
retired to their own little domain, and intoxicating one another with
circumstantial flattery on what was of consequence to no mortal but
themselves.” In all this there is a measure of truth; but unless they
had retired to their own domain, which, by the way, was not “little,”
and unless they had lived there economically, they could never have
restored the fortunes of their family. Surely the atmosphere of Welbeck
Abbey was more wholesome than that of the vicious and intriguing Court
of Charles II; and, if they chose to amuse themselves with pens and
paper, it can truly be said of them that how much soever they may have
injured their own literary reputations by a rather injudicious use of
those dangerous instruments, they did not injure those of other people,
which is more than can be said of many other writers, both ancient and
modern.
APPENDIX.
DESCENDANTS OF NEWCASTLE.
William Cavendish, first Duke of Newcastle, was succeeded by his son,
Henry, second Duke, who left no son, and the title became extinct. But
the second Duke’s daughter, Margaret, married John Holies, fourth Earl
of Clare, who was created Duke of Newcastle in 1694. At his death this
second Dukedom of Newcastle also became extinct, as he only left a
daughter. She also left an only daughter, who married William Bentinck,
second Duke of Portland, and it was through this marriage that Welbeck
Abbey became the property of the Dukes of Portland.
Although he left large estates to his daughter and only child, John
Holies, the first and only Duke of Newcastle by the second creation
of that title, adopted the eldest son of his sister who had married
Sir Thomas Pelham. This nephew, after the death of his uncle, was
eventually created Duke of Newcastle in 1715. This was the third
Dukedom of Newcastle, and it was given with special remainder to his
brother. But neither he nor his brother had any children, and he was
anxious that his title should descend to the son of his sister, who
had married the seventh Earl of Lincoln. To effect this, he had to
be given an entirely different Dukedom of Newcastle; and, in 1756,
he was created Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme—he was already Duke of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne—with remainder to his sister’s male heirs. This
was the fourth Dukedom of Newcastle, and it continues to this day.
INDEX.
Adwalton Moor (also called Adderton and Atherton), Battle of,
102 _seq._
Ailesbury, 193.
Amsterdam, 173.
Antwerp, 193.
Aragon, Tullia, Duchess of, 278.
Arundel, Earl of, 19.
Associated Counties, 131.
Bacon, 33.
Baillee, Principal, 155.
Ballard, 265.
Barkeley, Lord George, 271.
Barrett, William of Blore, 10.
Baucher, 235.
Beaumont, 262.
Bellasis, Colonel, 120.
Benjamin, Mr., 245.
Berkshire, Lord, 43.
Blue Stockings, the, 277.
Bolingbroke, Lady, 222.
Bradford, 102-5.
Bramham Moor, Battle of, 99.
Brandling, Colonel, 118.
Breadalbane, Lord, 223.
Brentford, 65.
Bristow, James, 260.
Brooks, Mr., 175.
Brown, Sir Richard, 187.
Brydges, Sir Egerton, 223.
Buckingham, first Duke of, 11-17:
Buckingham, second Duke of, 193, 200-2.
Butler, Robert, 222.
Butler, Samuel, 77.
Byron, Lord (contemporary of Newcastle), 145, 155.
Byron, Lord, the poet, 152.
Carlisle, Lord, 27, 33, 37, 271.
Carlisle, Lady, 55.
Carlyle, Thomas, 156.
Castlehaven, Lord, 19.
Cavendish, Sir Charles, 17, 24, 149, 151, 195-8.
Cavendish, Henry, Earl of Ogle, 165, 212, 220, 222, 223.
Cavendish, Lord Mansfield, 165, 213.
Cavendish, Margaret, Lady, 3-5.
Cavendish, Sir William, 2.
Cavendish, Sir William, _see_ Newcastle.
Charles I., visit to Welbeck, 25;
visit to Bolsover, 31;
last visit to Welbeck, 170;
letters to Newcastle, 64, 68, 72, 121, 124, 163.
Charles II., 26 _seq._, 37, 38, 42, 172, 206-7, 272.
Chatwood, the Rev. Knightley, 267.
Cheney, Lady Jane, 212, 213.
Cholmley, Sir Hugh, 65, 88-91, 94;
his memorials for Clarendon, 95 _seq._, 142, 164.
Cibber, 251 _seq._
Clarendon, Lord (as Hyde), 194, 202;
his History frequently quoted.
Cooke, Sir Anthony, 277.
Con, George, 24.
Conway, 52.
Cottington, Lord, 20, 51.
Cousens, 186.
Coventry, Captain, 159.
Crawford, General, 156, 168-9.
Cromwell, 97, 111, 131;
Warwick’s description of him, 132, 145, 161;
wounded, 156, 168-9.
Culpepper, Lord, 141, 201.
Davenant, 77-8, 123.
Denbigh, Lord, 133.
Denmark, King of, 67.
Devonshire, Lord, 192, 209.
Digby, Lord, 140.
D’Israeli, 256, 260.
Dryden, John, 242.
Dudley, Colonel, 118.
Dunbar, Lord, 165-6.
Dungannon, Lord, 156.
Eglinton, Lord, 129, 153.
Elizabeth, Queen, 5, 176.
Erasmus, 277.
Essex, Lord, 55, 65, 125.
Ethyn, Lord, 73-6, 119, 121, 145-6, 166.
Evelyn, John, 187.
Fairfax, Sir Charles, 152.
Fairfax, Lord, 65, 96, 99, 100, 104-5;
his wife captured by Newcastle, 105, 108, 111, 120, 124,
135, 138, 145-55, 171.
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 120, 124, 134.
Fairfax, Sir William, 152.
Flecknoe, 244.
Fletcher, 262.
Fortescue, Mr., 150.
Gainsborough, taken by Newcastle, 106.
Gifford, General, 104.
Goring, Lord, 76-7, 79;
victory at Bramham Moor, 99;
defeat and capture at Wakefield, 100, 126 _seq._, 150,
153, 157, 171.
Grainger, 236 _seq._, 258.
Grammont, Count, 271.
Grand Remonstrance, 54.
Grandison, Lord, 145.
Grey, Lady Jane, 278.
Hague, The, 193.
Hampden, John, 44.
Hatcher, Thomas, 138.
Haughton, Sir Gilbert, 146.
Heath, 104.
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 54-5, 61;
in Yorkshire, 83-90;
in relation to Margaret Lucas, 181 _seq._;
letters to Newcastle, 101, 112, 167, 196.
Hertford, Lord, 43, 192.
Holland, Lord, 45 _seq._
Hollis Denzil, Lord, 169.
Hotham, Captain, 81 _seq._, 89 _seq._, 95 _seq._
Hotham, Sir John, 57-63, 65, 70, 95 _seq._, 107.
Howly House, 101-2.
Hudson, the Rev. Mr., 78.
Hume, 122.
Hutchinson, Colonel, 216.
Hyde, _see_ Clarendon.
Jermyn, Lord, 190, 196.
Jonson, Ben, 25, 31, 198-9, 244, 262.
Kimbolton, _see_ Manchester.
King, _see_ Ethyn.
Kingston, Lord, 13-17 (Pierrepont).
Königsmark, 221.
Lamb, Charles, 255, 256.
Langbaine, 236 _seq._, 243.
Langdale, Marmaduke, 68, 89, 96.
Lanier, Nicholas, 206.
Laud, Archbishop, 50, 53-4, 59, 98.
Legg, 57.
Leicester, Lord, 32.
Leslie, Sir David, 133, 157.
Leven, Lord (Leslie), 118, 120, 129, 135, 145, 155.
Lexington, Lord, 222.
Lilly, William, 159.
Lincoln taken by Newcastle, 106.
Lindsey, Lord, 138.
Lockeir, 216.
Lodge, 238.
Lucas, Sir Charles, 145, 150, 160, 174, 193.
Lucas, Elizabeth, Lady, 175, 186.
Lucas, Sir Gervase, 136.
Lucas, Lord, 174, 179, 196.
Lucas, Sir John, 174.
Lucas, Sir Thomas, 174.
Ludlow, General, 217.
Lumsdale (Lumsden), Sir James, 135.
Manchester, Lord (Kimbolton), 76, 131, 134, 136, 145-60;
visits Welbeck, 169.
Markham, Lieutenant, 101.
Marston Moor, Battle of, 143, 161.
Mary, Queen of Scots, 4.
Meldrum, Sir J., 133.
Milton, 65, 256 _seq._
Mohun, Major, 206.
Molière, 242.
Montégut, M. Emile, 266-7, 273 _seq._, 277.
Montpensier, Mademoiselle de, 191.
Montrose, 171.
More, Sir Thomas, 277.
Naseby, Battle of, 171.
Newcastle, Lady, Newcastle’s first wife, 10, 11, 98.
Newcastle, Sir William Cavendish, first Duke of,
birth and youth, 5-9;
sent to Savoy, 10;
marriage, 10, 11;
created Viscount Mansfield, 12;
correspondence with Buckingham, 13-7;
description of, 22;
religion, 24-5;
governorship to the Prince of Wales, 26-43;
correspondence with Stafford, 27-30;
letters to his wife, 32-3;
his _Il Principe_, 38;
his troop of gentlemen, 44;
his quarrel with Lord Holland, 45 _seq._;
appointed Governor of Hull, 56;
given command of four northern counties, 61;
raising an army and its weapons, 64, _seq._;
he seizes York, 72;
his staff, 75;
Battle of Tadcaster, 79;
death of his first wife, 98;
created a Marquis, 107;
besieges Hull, 108 _seq._;
returns to Welbeck and Bolsover, 113;
marches to meet the Scottish army, 115;
a specimen of his dispatches, 117;
a disaster at Selby, 120;
retreat to York, 120;
besieged at York, 126;
parley with the enemy, 130 _seq._;
reported killed, 136;
joined by Rupert, 138;
Battle of Marston Moor, 143-60;
goes to Holland, 162;
goes to Amsterdam and Paris, 173;
second marriage, 187;
Rotterdam again, 192;
Antwerp, 206;
entertainments to Charles II., 206;
return to England, 208;
made a Knight of the Garter, 209;
made Chief Justice in Eyre, 215;
created a Duke, 219;
figures as a man of letters, 226 _seq._;
his book on Horsemanship and his other literary works, 226 _seq._
Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, Margaret Lucas and her family, 174
_seq._;
Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, 173, 178;
her love-letters, 180 _seq._;
her marriage, 187;
sent by her husband to England to raise money, 195 _seq._;
pawned by her husband, 208;
her financial statements, 211;
her literary works, 249 _seq._
Nicholas, 136, 163, 199, 207, 235.
Northumberland, Lord, 52, 54.
Northumberland, Countess of, 220-1.
Orange, The Prince of, 201.
Ormond, Lord, 190.
Osborne, Sir Thomas, 216.
Oxford, Lord, 203.
Palmes, Francis, 46.
Paumer, 216.
Pearson, Bishop, 267.
Pepys, 2, 242 _seq._
Percy, Baroness, 221.
Percy, Lord Henry, 119.
“Philosopher’s Complaint,” 243.
“Philosophy, Observations upon Experimentals,” 259.
Pierrepont, _see_ Kingston.
Porter, 182.
Pre, M. de, 245.
“Presence, The,” 263.
Prynne, 44.
Quixote, Don, 262; a battle _â la_, 70.
Raabe, Captain, 235.
Riddell, Sir Thomas, 118.
Root and Branch Bill, 54.
Rotherham, taken by Newcastle, 101.
Rotterdam, 173, 192.
Rubens, 193.
Rupert, Prince, 110, 128-65, 171, 190.
St. Albans, Lord, 190.
St. Lowe, Sir William, 3.
Savile, Sir William, 71.
Savoy, the Duke of, 8-10.
Scotch invasion, 53;
second, 115.
Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 149, 154.
Scrimegour, 119.
Selby, disaster at, 120.
Sellinger, Sir Anthony, 222.
Shadwell, 243-4, 275.
Shakespeare, 77, 262.
Shaw, Sir John, 210.
Sheffield, taken by Newcastle, 101.
Shirley, 244.
Shrewsbury, Lord, 4.
Skirton, Colonel, 104.
Slinger, Colonel, 203.
Smith, Mr., 207.
Somerset, the Duke of, 271.
Speed, 262.
Stafford, 26 _seq._, 33 _seq._, 51-4.
Stapleton, 65.
Stennickes, 205.
Strickland, Miss, 31 _seq._, 87.
Suckling, Sir John, 47-8, 54, 78.
Suffolk, Lord, 11.
Swift, Sir Robert, 27.
Talbot, Sir Gilbert, 210.
Thynne, Thomas, 221.
Tobacco, 215.
Top, F., 207, 215.
Trevor, Arthur, 154.
Trevor, Mark, _see_ Dungannon.
Turnham Green, Battle of, 65.
Vandyke, 22, 205.
Vane, Sir Henry, 51, 135.
Van Tromp, 83 _seq._
Vicars, 154.
Wakefield, Battle of, 100.
Wales, Prince of, _see_ Charles II.
Waller, 125.
Walker, Sir Edward, Garter, 204.
Walpole, Horace, 238, 247, 266, 280.
Warner, 246.
Watson, 155.
Warwick, Sir Philip, 73, 109 and elsewhere.
Whitecoats, The, 69, 152, 158, 159.
Widdrington, Lord, 129, 181.
Wilkins, Bishop, 267.
Williams, Bishop, 44.
Windebank, 34-5.
Worcester, Lord, 190.
Wotton, Sir Henry, 8, 9.
Wright, Colonel, 216.
York, Duke of, 211.
York, siege of, 126 _seq._
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
THE CURIOUS CASE OF LADY PURBECK: a Scandal of the XVIIth Century.
8vo, 6_s._ net.
ROCHESTER AND OTHER LITERARY RAKES OF THE COURT OF CHARLES II. With
some Account of their Surroundings. With 15 Portraits. 8vo,
16_s._
FALKLANDS. With 8 Portraits and other Illustrations. 8vo,
10_s._ 6_d._
THE LIFE OF SIR KENELM DIGBY. With 7 Illustrations. 8vo,
16_s._
CHISEL, PEN AND POIGNARD; OR, BENVENUTO CELLINI, HIS TIMES
AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. With 19 Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
5_s._
PRYINGS AMONG PRIVATE PAPERS, chiefly of the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries. 8vo, 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
THE ADVENTURES OF KING JAMES II. OF ENGLAND. With an Introduction
by Abbot GASQUET, O.S.B. With 27 Portraits and other
Illustrations. 8vo, 13_s._ 6_d._ net.
MARSHAL TURENNE. With an Introduction by Major-General FRANCIS
LLOYD, C.B., D.S.O., etc. With 20 Illustrations. 8vo,
12_s._ 6_d._ net.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA.
THE PRIGMENT:“THE LIFE OF A PRIG,” “PRIG’S
BEDE,” “HOW TO MAKE A SAINT,” “BLACK IS
WHITE”. In one Volume. Crown 8vo, 5_s._
THE PLATITUDES OF A PESSIMIST. 8vo, 6_s._
A LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 8vo, 15_s._
THE LIFE OF A CONSPIRATOR (SIR EVERARD DIGBY).
With Portrait. 8vo, 9_s._
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.,
LONDON.
ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
The variations in the old English spelling and inconsistent
hyphenation, have been retained.
The page of Publications by the Same Author which is placed at the
front of the original, has been moved to the end of the book.
The following two spelling changes were made:
Page 132 — Huntington changed to Huntingdon.
Page 156 — Leadham’s changed to Leadman’s.
In the Index, Stafford has been moved above Stapleton and Wilkens moved
above Williams.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.