at the report of a possible separation between Lord and Lady Cowper,
but without assigning any reason. There can be little doubt that the
union was not a happy one, for, whatever other ground of complaint the
husband might have had, Lady Cowper was of a quarrelsome and
unconciliatory disposition, and her sister, who lived with the family
at Florence, seems, by all accounts, to have been far the more amiable
of the two. Miss Berry alludes to a visit she paid her compatriots at
Lord Cowper’s house in Florence, ‘where you have the best of society,
both native and foreign, and where all the English (in particular) are
desirous of obtaining an introduction.’ She goes on to describe the
house as ‘fitted up in a peculiar manner: one room as a museum,
another as a laboratory, a third a workshop; in fact, too many to
enumerate.’ He was evidently a man of very versatile tastes, and one
who had many irons in the fire at the same moment. In 1781 Horace
Walpole, alluding to the fact that the three Cowper boys had been sent
over to England for their education, says, ‘It is astonishing that
neither parent nor child can bring your _principal_ Earl from that
specific spot,—but we are a lunatic nation.’ Another letter speaks of
a vacant green ribbon, and the possibility it might be given to Lord
Cowper, if he were on the spot; ‘but he won’t come. I do allow him a
place in the Tribune at Florence. An English earl, who has never seen
his earldom, and takes root and has fruit at Florence, and is proud of
his pinchbeck principality in a third country, is as great a curiosity
as any in the Tuscan Collection.’
Lord Cowper did go to England at last, and Walpole owns to his going
to a concert at Mrs. Cosway’s—‘out of curiosity, not to hear an
Italian singer sing one song, at the extravagant sum of £10—the same
whom I have heard half a dozen times at the opera-house for as many
shillings—but to see an English earl, who had passed thirty years at
Florence, and thought so much of his silly title, and his order from
Würtemberg! You know, he really imagined he was to take precedence of
all the English dukes, and now he has tumbled down into a tinsel
titularity. I only meant to amuse my eyes, but Mr. Durens brought the
personage up, and presented us to each other. He answered very well,
to my idea, for I should have taken his Highness for a Doge of Genoa.
He has the awkward dignity of a temporary representative of a nominal
power. I wonder his Highness does not desire the Pope to make one of
his sons a bishop _in partibus infidelium_, and that Miss Anne Pitt
does not request his Holiness to create her Principessa Fossani.’
It is inconsistent with the character of Horace Walpole, who did not
disdain rank or titles, and who was by no means insensible to the
charm of decorations—whether of walls or button-holes—to inveigh so
harshly against a dignity which entitles the owner to the privilege,
dear in heraldic eyes, of bearing his paternal coat on the breast of
the Imperial Eagle.
England could not long detain Lord Cowper from the country of his
adoption. He returned to Florence, where he died in 1789. The greater
part of the Italian pictures in this beautiful collection was
purchased by the third Lord Cowper, who was a true lover of art, and
who was reduced to great difficulties, on more than one occasion, in
conveying his pictures out of Florence, the inhabitants of that city
being averse to parting with such treasures. One of the most valuable
is said to have been concealed in the lining of his travelling
carriage, when he went to England.
------------------
_No. 14._
GEORGE AUGUSTUS, FOURTH EARL COWPER.
_Peer’s Parliamentary robes. Powder._
BORN 1776, DIED 1799.
BY JACKSON.
BORN at Florence, Sir Horace Mann stood proxy as godfather for the
King of England at the boy’s baptism, and Sir Horace Walpole writes to
the Minister giving him information on some especial points of
etiquette to be observed on the occasion. Lord Cowper died suddenly.
He was unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother, Peter Leopold.
------------------
_No. 15._
PETER LEOPOLD FRANCIS NASSAU, FIFTH EARL COWPER.
_In Peer’s Parliamentary robes_
BORN 1778, DIED 1837.
BY NORTHCOTE.
HE was the second son of the third Earl, born at Florence, godson to
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, married, in 1805, Emily, only daughter of
Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne (afterwards Viscountess
Palmerston), by whom he had three sons,—George, his successor,
William, and Spencer, and two daughters, the Countess of Shaftesbury
and Viscountess Jocelyn. He succeeded his brother. Lord Campbell, in
his _Lives of the Chancellors_, concludes his notice of the first Earl
Cowper with a sincere tribute of admiration to Peter Leopold, the
fifth earl:—
‘He had too much delicacy of sentiment to take a leading part in
public life, but to the most exquisitely pleasing manners he joined a
manly understanding and a playful wit. From him I received kind and
encouraging notice when I was poor and obscure; and his benevolent and
exhilarating smile is one of the most delightful images in my memory
of pleasures to return no more.’
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_No. 16._
JOHN OF NASSAU, COUNT OF NASSAU SIEGEN; HIS WIFE AND FAMILY.
_The Count and Countess are seated side by side in a large vestibule;
he is richly dressed, and wears the collar of the Golden Fleece; a
dog at his feet. On the lap of the Countess lies a small spaniel,
and at her side leans her son, in a red dress. Three daughters, in
different-coloured frocks, stand together; the eldest holds a
rose._
BORN 1583, DIED 1638.
BY VANDYCK.
HE was surnamed the Junior, son of Count John of Nassau Siegen by his
wife, Margaret de Waldeck. He began public life in the service of the
Archbishop of Cologne, and afterwards entered that of the United
Provinces, in which he fought against Spain. But the Count considered
that he was slighted, and his merits not duly appreciated by the
Government, and in disgust he renounced the Protestant faith in 1609
(or 1613), at the Hague, where he published an explanation of the
motives which led him to embrace the tenets of the Church of Rome. He
moreover transferred his military services to the Emperor of Germany,
Ferdinand II., the sworn enemy of the Protestants, the adversary of
the unfortunate King of Bohemia, of Gustavus Adolphus, and all the
heroes of the Reformed religion in the early part of the Thirty Years’
War. In 1620, when the Stadtholder, Frederic Henry, was besieging
Bois-le-Duc, the Count of Nassau Siegen (his kinsman) invaded Holland
at the head of eight or ten thousand men, and took the town of
Amersfoort. The following year, in command of a small army, he
encamped in the neighbourhood of Rynberg, and did all in his power to
prevent his brother William from crossing the Rhine between Broek and
Orsoy. In this attempt he was defeated, wounded, and carried prisoner
to Wesel, where, we are told, his brother frequently visited him
during his captivity. When his wounds were cured, Count John purchased
his freedom with the sum of ten thousand rixdollars; but he narrowly
escaped being taken prisoner a second time, in a naval engagement with
the Spaniards. This was at Mosselkreek (the Creek of Mussels), where
his vessels were stranded, and he lost a considerable number of men.
The Dutch on this occasion gave him the derisive title of Mussulman.
In 1637 he made an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Rynberg; and in
1638 death put an end to his adventurous, but by no means blameless,
career.
It is impossible to look on Vandyck’s splendid picture without
experiencing a feeling of profound regret that a brave and able
soldier, a man of so imposing a presence, and so noble a bearing,
should have renounced the faith for which numerous members of his
family had fought and bled, and drawn his sword against his native
land in the service of an alien sovereign. The proud order of the
Golden Fleece which hangs round his neck seems but a poor distinction
when we remember the circumstances by which it was obtained. In 1618
he had married Ernestine, daughter of Lamoral, Prince de Ligne, by
whom he had one son and three daughters:—
John Francis Desideratus, Prince of Nassau Siegen, Knight of the
Golden Fleece, and Spanish Governor of Guelderland in 1688. He
had three wives: first, Johanna Claudia, daughter of John,
Count of Köningseck, who died in 1664; second, Eleanor Sophia,
daughter of Hermann Fortunatus, Margrave of Baden, who died in
1668; third, Isabella Clara Eugenia de la Serre, _alias_ de
Montant, ‘a noble lady.’ She died in 1714. Prince John of
Nassau Siegen had eleven children. He died in 1690.
The three daughters represented in this family group were—
1. Ernestine, married to the Prince Maurice Henry, Hadawar.
2. Clara Mary, married first Albert Henry, Prince de Ligne, and
afterwards Claudius Lamoral, his brother.
3. Lamberta Alberta, who died unmarried.
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[Illustration]
ANTE-LIBRARY.
[Illustration]
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ANTE-LIBRARY.
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_No. 1._
ADMIRAL DE RUYTER.
_In armour, holding a truncheon. The other arm akimbo. Curtain._
BORN 1607, DIED 1676.
BORN at Flushing, of which town his father was a burgher. As a mere
child Michael de Ruyter was determined to be a sailor, and gained the
paternal consent that he should go to sea as cabin-boy when only
eleven years of age. He rose quickly in his profession, was made a
pilot when still very young for the post, and passed through the
intermediate grades, till he gained the command of a vessel. In 1635
he made several campaigns in the East Indies, and in 1645 was sent as
Vice-Admiral in command of a Dutch fleet to assist the Portuguese
against the Spaniards. After two years’ retirement from service, De
Ruyter engaged the Algerine corsairs off Sarley, and gained a complete
victory. The Moors, who were spectators of the conflict, insisted on
his entering the town in triumph, on a richly caparisoned horse,
followed by a long retinue, including many of the captive pirates.
These ‘plagues of the ocean,’ as they were justly termed, continued to
give De Ruyter much annoyance, but he was usually successful in his
encounters with them, and in one fierce combat he seized and hanged
one of the most notoriously cruel and rapacious of these ‘buccaneer
sea-dogs.’ In 1659 he was sent, by order of the States-General, to the
assistance of Denmark against Sweden, an enterprise in which he
distinguished himself greatly, and gained the gratitude of the King of
Denmark, who complimented him highly, and granted him a pension. On
his return home De Ruyter was received with great honour, and
promoted. He then proceeded to the coast of Africa, to look after some
Dutch colonies, of which England had taken possession. England and the
United Provinces were now in constant collision, and the Dutch Admiral
found a noble and well-matched foe in the gallant commander Prince
Rupert, soldier, sailor, and artist. De Ruyter was afterwards joined
in command with Van Tromp, a worthy colleague, but of no friendly
spirit. During the time that negotiations were pending for peace with
England, at Breda, De Ruyter resolved, so to speak, to hasten his
opportunities; he therefore bore down on Sheerness, burned all the
available shipping, and, continuing his work of destruction up the
river Thames, approached too near London to be agreeable to the more
peaceable portion of the citizens.
In 1671 he had sole command of his country’s fleet, against the
combined forces of England (under the Duke of York) and France (under
the Comte D’Estrées), and it is but just to record that he was
frequently successful, but invariably brave. Indeed, the French
Admiral wrote to Colbert, the Minister, at home, ‘I would lay down my
life for the glory that De Ruyter has gained.’ In 1675 the Spaniards
had recourse to their old enemies, the Dutch, to ask assistance for
the inhabitants of Messina, against the French, and De Ruyter was
despatched to Sicily for that purpose. A terrible sea-fight ensued,
the French being commanded by Duquesne, a brave and efficient officer;
many vessels were sunk and destroyed on both sides, and the carnage
was terrible.
At the commencement of the action the gallant De Ruyter had his left
foot carried away, and a few moments afterwards his right leg was
shattered by a shell. Writhing with pain, and covered with blood, the
brave sailor remained on deck, and issued his orders, even to the
bitter end of the battle. It was only when he became aware that five
of his vessels, including his own, were about to fall into the hands
of the enemy, that he could be prevailed upon to give the word for
retreat. Favoured by the approaching darkness, he made the port of
Syracuse, and in that town he died of his wounds. His heart was
carried to Amsterdam, where the States-General caused a noble
mausoleum to be erected to the memory of this brave and patriotic
commander. His name is still venerated in his native country.
The King of Spain sent De Ruyter the title of Duke, but the patent did
not arrive till after his death, and his children wisely refrained
from pressing any claim to rank, which would have been incongruous in
a Republic; and they were more proud of their father’s simple name
than of any foreign and alien dignity. Louis XIV. expressed his regret
for the death of this brave commander in public, and when reminded
that he had lost a dangerous enemy, he replied generously, ‘I always
mourn the death of a great and brave man.’ A medal was struck in
honour of Admiral de Ruyter, and the following distich was written on
his name:—
‘Terruit Hispanos Ruyter, _ter_ _ter_ruit Anglos,
_Ter_ ruit Gallos, _ter_ritus ipse ruit.’
It will not be necessary that the reader should be a scholar to enable
_her_ to perceive the anagrammatic and punning nature of these lines,
but we subjoin a very ingenious rendering of the same, done into
English by a friend in what he terms ‘a free-and-easy translation’—
‘Ruyter thrice the Spaniards routed,
Daunted thrice the British foe,
Thrice o’ercame the Gallic squadrons,
Struck his flag, and went below.’
------------------
_No. 2._
WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, AFTERWARDS WILLIAM III. OF ENGLAND.
_In armour. His hand resting on a black and white dog. Helmet lying on
the table._
DIED 1702.
BY WISSING.
HE was the son of William of Nassau, Prince of Orange (and grandson of
Henry Frederic, the Stadtholder), by Princess Mary, daughter of
Charles I. of England. He married, in 1677, Mary, daughter of James
II., and in 1688 came over to England, and ascended the throne as King
Consort. He left no children.
------------------
_No.3._
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.
_Fawn-coloured Chancellor’s robes. Wig. Sitting in an arm-chair._
BORN 1621, DIED 1683.
BY GREENHILL.
SON of Sir John Cooper of Rockbourne, county Hants, by Anne, daughter
and sole heir of Sir Anthony Ashley, Bart., of Wimborne St. Giles,
county Dorset, where the future Chancellor was born.
In his Autobiography he describes his mother of ‘low stature,’ as was
also the aforesaid Sir Anthony, ‘a large mind, but his person of the
lowest,’ while his own father was ‘lovely and graceful in mind and
person, neither too high nor too low,’ therefore the pigmy body of
which Dryden speaks must have been inherited from the maternal side.
Sir Anthony was delighted with his grandson; and although at the time
of the infant’s birth the septuagenarian was on the point of espousing
a young wife, his affection was in nowise diminished for his daughter,
or her boy.
Lady Cooper and her father died within six months of each other. Sir
John married again, a daughter of Sir Charles Morrison, of Cassiobury,
county Herts, by whom he had several children. He died in 1631,
leaving the little Anthony bereft of both parents, with large but
much-encumbered estates, and lawsuits pending.
Many of his own relations being most inimical to his interests,
Anthony went with his brother and sister to reside with Sir Daniel
Norton, one of his trustees, who—we once more quote the
Autobiography—‘took me to London, thinking my presence might work some
compassion on those who ought to have been my friends.’
He refers to the suit in which they were now engaged. The boy must
have had a winning way with him (as the old saying goes), for,
when only thirteen, he went of his own accord to Noy, the
Solicitor-General, and entreated his assistance as the friend of
his grandfather. Noy was deeply touched, took up the case warmly,
and gained one suit in the Court of Wards, stoutly refusing to
take any fee whatever.
After Sir Daniel Norton’s death, Anthony went to live with an uncle,
Mr. Tooker, near Salisbury, though it was supposed Lady Norton would
gladly have kept him under her roof, with a view to a match with one
of her daughters. He says himself: ‘Had it not been for the state of
my litigious fortune, the young lady’s sweet disposition had made me
look no farther for a wife.’
In 1637 he went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he ‘made such rapid
strides in learning as to be accounted the most prodigious youth in
the whole University.’ By his own showing, he was popular with his
companions and well satisfied with himself,—indeed, a general spirit
of self-complacency pervades these pages. In little more than a year
he went to Lincoln’s Inn, where he appears to have found the theatres,
fencing galleries, and the like, more to his taste than the study of
the law.
An astrologer who was in old Sir Anthony’s house at the time of the
grandson’s birth cast the horoscope, and to the fulfilment of these
predictions may probably be attributed young Anthony’s own
predilection for the study of astrology in later days. The horoscope
in question foreboded feuds and trouble at an early age; and some
years afterwards the same magician, foreseeing through the medium of
the planets that a certain Miss Roberts (a neighbour without any
apparent prospect of wealth) would become a great heiress, he
endeavoured to persuade his pupil to marry her. The lady did
eventually come into a considerable fortune; but Mr. Tooker, who was
not over-credulous, had other views at the time for his nephew; and
accordingly, at eighteen, Ashley Cooper became the husband of
Margaret, the daughter of my Lord Keeper Coventry, ‘a woman of
excellent beauty and incomparable gifts.’
The young couple resided with the bride’s father in London, Sir
Anthony, as he now was, paying flying visits to Dorsetshire. He was
subject to fits, but even this infirmity redounded to his advantage,
according to his own version; how that being in Gloucestershire on one
occasion, and taken suddenly ill, ‘the women admired his courage and
patience under suffering,’ and he contrived to ingratiate himself with
the electors of Tewkesbury to some purpose.
He gives us an amusing and characteristic description of how he won
the favour of the electors and bailiffs of this town by his conduct at
a public dinner, where he and a certain Sir Henry Spiller were guests,
and sat opposite each other. The knight, a crafty, perverse, rich man,
a Privy Councillor, had rendered himself very obnoxious in the
hunting-field, and, at the banquet aforementioned, began the dinner
with all the affronts and dislikes he could possibly put on the
bailiffs and their entertainment, which enraged and disgusted them,
and this rough raillery he continued. ‘At length I thought it my duty
to defend the cause of those whose bread I was eating, which I did
with so good success, sparing not the bitterest retorts, that I had a
complete victory. This gained the townsmen’s hearts, and their wives’
to boot. I was made free of the town, and at the next Parliament
(though absent at the time), was chosen burgess by an unanimous vote,
and that without a penny charge.’
Sir Anthony had strange humours: he loved a frolic dearly. He had a
confidential servant who resembled him so much that, when dressed in
his master’s left-offs, the lackey was often mistaken for his better.
This worthy was a clever man-milliner, and had many small
accomplishments which made him popular in country houses, and his
master confesses that he often listened to the valet’s gossip, and
made use of it, in the exercise of palmistry and fortune-telling,
which produced great jollity, and ‘of which I did not make so bad a
use as many would have done.’ With this account he finishes the record
of his youth. A time of business followed, ‘and the rest of my life is
not without great mixture of public concerns, and intermingled with
the history of the times.’
Sir Anthony sat for Tewkesbury in 1639, but that Parliament was
hastily dissolved. He raised a regiment of horse for the King’s
service, and occupied places of trust in his own county; but,
believing himself unjustly treated and slighted by the Court, he
listened to the overtures of the Parliament, and returned to
Dorsetshire as colonel of a regiment in their army.
In 1649 he lost the wife he dearly loved, to whose memory he pays a
most touching tribute in his Diary. But she left no living child, and
before the expiration of the year the widower had espoused Lady
Frances Cecil, daughter of the Earl of Exeter, a Royalist.
The friendship of the Protector and Sir Anthony was of a most fitful
and spasmodic nature,—now fast allies, now at daggers drawn. Some
writers affirm that, on the death of his second wife, he asked the
hand of one of Cromwell’s daughters; others, that he advised the
Protector to assume the Crown, who offered it to him in turn!
He held many appointments under the reigning Government, and continued
to sit in Parliament; but having, with many other Members, withstood
the encroachments of the great man, Oliver endeavoured to prevent his
return, and, not being able to do so, forbade him to enter the House
of Commons. (See the history of the times.) The Members, with Ashley
Cooper at their head, insisted on re-admittance. Again ousted, again
admitted; nothing but quarrels and reconciliations. The fact was, that
Sir Anthony was too great a card to lose hold of entirely. He had
still a commission in the Parliamentary army, and a seat at the Privy
Council, circumstances that in nowise prevented him carrying on a
correspondence with the King ‘over the water.’ Indeed, he was accused
of levying men for the Royal service; arrested, acquitted; sat again
in Parliament under Richard Cromwell, joined the Presbyterian party to
bring back Charles, and when the Parliament declared for the King, Sir
Anthony was one of the twelve Members sent over to Breda to invite his
return. While in Holland, Ashley Cooper had a fall from his carriage,
and a narrow escape of being killed. Clarendon (there was no love lost
between them) says it was hoped that by his alliance (as his third
wife) with a daughter of Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, a niece of the
Earl of Southampton, ‘his slippery humour would be restrained by his
uncle.’
He now took a leading part in politics, was appointed one of the
Judges of the Regicides, created Baron Ashley at the Coronation, and
afterwards became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Under-Treasurer, and
further high offices, and in 1672 Lord Cooper of Pawlett, county
Somerset, and Earl of Shaftesbury; and so quickly did honours rain on
him, that the same year saw him Lord High Chancellor of England. He
appears to have given great umbrage to many of the law officers by his
haughty bearing. We are told ‘he was the gloriousest man alive; he
said he would teach the bar that a man of sense was above all their
forms; and that he was impatient to show them he was a superior judge
to all who had ever sat before on the marble chair.’
He maddened the gentlemen of the long robe by his vagaries and
innovations, and defiance of precedents. He wore an ash-coloured gown
instead of the regulation black, assigning as his reason that black
was distinctive of the barrister-at-law, and he had never been called
to the bar.
He went to keep Hilary term ‘on a horse richly caparisoned, his grooms
walking beside him,’ all his officers ordered to ride on horseback,
‘as in the olden time.’
No doubt the good Dorsetshire country gentleman, the lover of sport
and of horse-flesh, who had been accused of regaling his four-footed
favourites on wine and cheese-cakes, had a mischievous pleasure in
seeing the uneasy and scared looks of his worshipful brethren, some of
whom perhaps had never sat on a saddle till that day.
At all events, poor Judge Twisden was laid in the dust, and he swore
roundly no Lord Chancellor should ever reduce him to such a plight
again. Shaftesbury lived at this time in great pomp at Exeter House,
in the Strand, and was in high favour with his Royal master, who
visited him at Wimborne St. Giles during the Plague, when the Court
was at Salisbury.
At Oxford, when Parliament sat, he made acquaintance with the
celebrated John Locke, who afterwards became an inmate of his patron’s
house, his tried friend, and medical adviser.