rather than rank. Here are Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, Chaucer,
Congreve, Gay, Rowe, Garth, Cowley, Swift, Otway, Pope, Milton,
Addison, Waller, Dryden, Hobbes, Newton, Locke (the six last named by
Kneller), Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, Garrick (marvellous paintings by Sir
Joshua Reynolds), Walter Scott, and other heroes of the pen, many of
whom were honoured visitors at Knole during their lives, and have been
reverenced there since they left earth.
The Staircase at the Grand Entrance is singular and interesting: parts
of it are old, but the decorative portions are of a modern, and not of
a good character.
[Illustration: _The Staircase._]
The Crimson Drawing-room contains pictures by Reynolds, Wouvermans,
Parmigiano, Vandyke, Holbein, Lely, the Carracci, Titian, Berghem, and
others.
The Retainers’ Gallery, a gallery that runs the whole length of the
house, is on the topmost floor. From its peculiarly picturesque
character it has been drawn or painted by nearly every artist whose
pencil has found work at Knole: we engrave one portion of it.
The collection of fire-dogs at Knole is singularly rich; they adorn
every room throughout the mansion, the greater number being of chased
silver. The chairs and seats of various kinds, to be seen in all parts
of the house, are, as we have intimated, so many models for the artist.
[Illustration: _The Retainers’ Gallery._]
The Great Hall has its dais, its Minstrels’ Gallery, and even
its oak tables, where retainers feasted long ago. In a window of
the Billiard-room is a painting on glass of a knight in armour,
representing the famous ancestor of the Sackvilles; and in the Cartoon
Gallery are, also on glass, the armorial bearings of twenty-one of his
descendants, ending with Richard, the third Earl of Dorset. Of the
several Galleries and the Drawing-rooms it is sufficient to state that
they are magnificent in reference to their contents, and beautiful as
regards the style of decoration accorded to each. There is, indeed, no
part of the building which may not afford exquisite and useful models
to the painter—a fact of which the noble owners are fully aware, for
to artists they have afforded repeated facilities for study. It will
not be difficult to recognise, in some of the best productions of
modern art, copies of the gems which give value and adornment to the
noble House of Knole.
The beeches of Knole have long been famous: they are of magnificent
growth, gnarled by time into picturesque forms, sometimes singly, here
and there in groups, and occasionally in long and gracefully arched
avenues: of the latter is the Duchess’s Walk. The gardens, too, are
laid out with much taste. The park is, indeed, one of the grandest and
most striking, if not the most extensive, in the kingdom.
There is not a gallery, not a room, that does not teach to the present
and the future the lessons that are to be learned from the past. Every
step has its reminder of the great men who have flourished in times
gone by, to leave their impress on their “hereafter”—
“Footprints on the sands of time.”
CASTLE HOWARD.
THIS princely seat of the Howards is distant about twenty miles from
the venerable city of York, on the road from thence to Malton. The
railway station, four miles from the mansion, on the borders of the
Derwent, and not far from one of the most interesting of monastic
ruins, the ancient abbey of Kirkham, is pretty and picturesque, and the
drive from thence to the castle is by a road full of beauty—passing
by tranquil villages and umbrageous woods, and commanding, here and
there, glorious and extensive views of fertile country, far away from
the active bustle of busy life. Castle Howard, one of the most perfect
of the “dwellings” that succeeded the castles and “strong houses” of
our forefathers, with its gardens, grounds, lawns, plantations, woods,
and all the accessories of refined taste, is a model of that repose
which speaks of happiness—and makes it; and it is pleasant to imagine
there the good statesman, retiring from the political warfare in which
he had so large a share, to leave earth, “after life’s fitful fever,”
in the midst of the graces of the demesne, and the honourable and lofty
associations connected with a numerous list of heroic ancestors.
The Earl of Carlisle, the owner of Castle Howard, is descended from
a long line of noble and distinguished men whose services to their
sovereigns and their country gained for them the highest honours and
distinctions; yet the parts they took in the troublous times in which
they lived brought no less than three of their brightest ornaments to
the block under charges of high treason.
The House of Howard, although not of the oldest of English families, is
one that claims precedence of rank over all others; for its head, the
Duke of Norfolk, is Premier Duke and Earl, Hereditary Earl Marshal, and
Chief Butler of England, and has, therefore, extraordinary importance
attached to it.
This great historical House can only with certainty be traced to Sir
William Howard, Judge of Common Pleas in the year 1297, although
plausible, and indeed highly probable, connections have been made
out to a much earlier period. They inherit much of their Norfolk
property from their ancestors, the Bigods. In the fourteenth century,
by the match of the then head of the family, Sir Robert Howard, with
the heiress of Thomas de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, the foundation of
the splendour and consequence of the Howards was laid. That lady was
Margaret, eldest daughter of the Duke of Norfolk by his wife Elizabeth,
daughter and co-heiress of Richard, Earl of Arundel. The said Thomas de
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, was son and heir to John, Lord Mowbray, by
Elizabeth, his wife, daughter and heiress to John, Lord Segrave, and
Margaret, his wife, daughter and heiress of Thomas de Brotherton, Earl
of Norfolk and Earl Marshal of England, the eldest son of King Edward
I., by his second wife Margaret, daughter to Philip the Hardy, King of
France.
By this splendid alliance Sir Robert Howard had an only son and two
daughters. The son, Sir John Howard, was created Lord Howard, and
afterwards Duke of Norfolk, and had the highest offices bestowed
on him—a title and honours which have (excepting the periods of
sequestration) remained in the family ever since.
All the present English peers of the noble House of Howard descend from
a common ancestor in Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk of the name
of Howard, who died in 1524. Thus the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of
Suffolk, and the Earl of Carlisle are descended from his first wife,
Mary, daughter and heiress to Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; and the
Earl of Effingham from his second wife, Margaret, daughter and heiress
of Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden, and widow of Lord Henry Dudley, son
of the Duke of Northumberland. The Howards of Greystoke, in Cumberland,
are a younger branch of the present ducal House, as are the Howards
of Glossop, &c. The Howards of Corby Castle descend from the Carlisle
branch, tracing from “Belted Will Howard.” The titles and dignities
now enjoyed by different members of the family of Howard are—Duke of
Norfolk, Earl Marshal, and Hereditary Marshal of England; Premier Duke
and Earl next to the royal blood; Earl of Norfolk, Earl of Surrey, Earl
of Arundel, Baron Fitzalan, Baron Clun, Baron Oswaldestre, and Baron
Maltravers; Earl of Suffolk, Earl of Berkshire, Viscount Andover, and
Baron Howard; Earl of Carlisle, Viscount Howard of Morpeth (generally
called Viscount Morpeth), and Baron Dacre of Gillesland; Earl of
Effingham, Viscount Howard of Effingham, and Baron Howard of Effingham;
Baron Howard of Glossop; Baron Lanerton of Naworth; Earl of Wicklow,
Viscount Wicklow, and Baron Clonmore.
The earldom of Carlisle was originally enjoyed by Ranulph de Meschines,
nephew of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester. The earldom appears next to
have been given to Andrew de Harcla, who was son of Michael de Harcla,
Governor of Carlisle, who afterwards “being condemned for a traytor, he
was at first in form degraded, having his knightly spurs hew’d off from
his heels; and at last hang’d, drawn, and quartered, 3rd March, 1322.”
The title was next enjoyed by the Plantagenets, and thus again merged
into the Crown. In 1620, the title—with those of Viscount Doncaster
and Baron Hay—was conferred on Sir James Hay: he was succeeded by his
son James, who died without issue. The title thus again became extinct,
and so remained until it was conferred on the Howards.
Lord William Howard—third son of the Duke of Norfolk, already spoken
of—was the “Belted Will Howard” of history, one of the leading heroes
of Border minstrelsy—the hero of whom Sir Walter Scott writes—
“Costly his garb—his Flemish ruff
Fell o’er his doublet, shaped of buff,
With satin slashed and lined;
Tawny his boot, and gold his spur,
His cloak was all of Poland fur,
His hose with silver twined;
His Bilboa blade, by Marchmen felt,
Hung in a broad and studded belt;—
Hence, in rude phrase, the Borderers still
Called noble Howard ‘BELTED WILL.’”
He was, as we have stated, the third son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk,
and grandson of the famous Earl of Surrey:—
“Who has not heard of Surrey’s fame?”
His father lost his title, his estates, and his head on Tower Hill, and
bequeathed him to the care of his elder brother, as “having nothing
to feed the cormorants withal.” He was married, in 1577, to the Lady
Elizabeth Dacre, daughter of Thomas, and sister and co-heiress of
George, Lord Dacre of Gillesland, the ages of both together being
short of eight-and-twenty—he being fourteen years old, and she a few
months younger. During the whole of the reign of Elizabeth, however,
he and his brother Arundel, and several other members of his family,
were greatly oppressed—subjected repeatedly to charges of treason, and
kept in a state of poverty, “very grievous to bear.” On the accession
of James I. their prospects brightened; Lord William was received into
special favour, and, in 1605, was appointed to the perilous post of
King’s Lieutenant and Lord Warden of the Marches, when the northern
shires of England were exposed to perpetual inroads of Border caterans.
The onerous and very difficult duties imposed upon him he discharged
with equal fearlessness and severity. His boast was so to act that the
rush-bush should guard the cow; so that, to quote “quaint old Fuller,”
“when in their greatest height, the moss-troopers had two fierce
enemies—the laws of the land, and Lord William Howard, who sent many
of them to Carlisle, that place where the officer does his work by
daylight.”
Although formidable to his enemies, Lord William Howard was fervent
and faithful to his friends. His attachment to his lady was of the
“truest affection, esteem, and friendship;” and his love of letters
and the refined pursuits of leisure and ease rendered him conspicuous
even among the many intellectual men of the period. He was the friend
of Camden and other men of note. For Camden he copied the inscriptions
on the Roman remains in his district; and he collected together a fine
library of the best authors (part of which still exists), and, in
addition, he himself edited the “Chronicle of Florence of Worcester.”
He collected a number of valuable MSS., which now form a part of the
Arundel Collection in the British Museum. An excellent portrait of
this great man, of whom the Howards may well feel proud, is preserved
at Castle Howard. His dress is a close jacket of thick black figured
silk, with rounded skirts to mid-thigh, and many small buttons. The
rest of his dress is also of black silk. His sleeves are turned up,
and he has a deep white falling collar. He wears a dress rapier, and
is bareheaded. The dress in which he is painted is, curiously enough,
ascertained, from the steward’s accounts of the time, to have cost £17
7_s._ 6_d._ There is also a portrait by the same artist (Cornelius
Jansen) of the Lady Elizabeth, his wife. To the courage of the soldier
“Belted Will” added the courtesy of the scholar, and, although the
“tamer of the wild border” has been pictured as a ferocious man-slayer,
history does him but justice in describing him as a model of chivalry,
when chivalry was the leading characteristic of the age. He died in
1640, surviving the Lady Bessy—“Bessie with the braid apron”—only
one year, their union having continued during sixty-three years, and
leaving by her ten sons and five daughters, the eldest of the sons
being the direct ancestor of the Earls of Carlisle. Their sons and
daughters, with their wives and husbands and children, are said,
all at one time, to have lived with them; the family numbering
fifty-two persons. The sobriquet of “Belted Will” was “not, it is
understood, derived from the breadth of the baldric, a broad belt,
the distinguishing badge of high station, but rather meant ‘bauld,’
or bold, Willie; and that the term ‘Bessie with the braid apron’ did
not refer to that portion of a lady’s dress, but to the _breadth_, or
extent, of her possessions.”
Their eldest son, Sir Philip Howard, died in his father’s lifetime,
leaving by his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir John Carryl, a son, Sir
William Howard, who succeeded his grandfather, Lord William, in the
enjoyment of his estates. He married Mary, eldest daughter of William,
Lord Eure, by whom he had issue five sons—William (who died in the
lifetime of his father), Charles, Philip, Thomas, and John—and five
daughters. He was succeeded by his second son, Charles, who, for
many loyal services to his king, was, in 1661, created Baron Dacre
of Gillesland, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, and Earl of Carlisle. He
also enjoyed many high appointments and privileges. He married Anne,
daughter of Edward, Lord Howard of Escrick, and had issue by her two
sons, Edward and Frederick Christian, and three daughters. Dying in
1684, his lordship was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward Howard.
Edward, second Earl of Carlisle, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir
William Berkeley, by whom he had issue three sons and two daughters.
His lordship died in 1692, and was succeeded by his only surviving son,
Charles, as third earl, who, during the minority of his kinsman, the
Duke of Norfolk, held the office of Deputy Earl Marshal: many important
posts were conferred upon, and trusts reposed in, him. He married Lady
Elizabeth Capel, daughter of the Earl of Essex, by whom he left issue
two sons—Henry, who succeeded him, and Charles, a general of the
army—and three daughters.
Henry, who succeeded his father, in 1738, as fourth Earl of Carlisle,
married, first, Lady Frances Spencer, only daughter of Charles, Earl of
Sunderland, by whom he had issue three sons, who predeceased him, and
two daughters; and, secondly, in 1743, Isabella, daughter of William,
fourth Lord Byron, by whom he left issue one son—Frederick, who
succeeded him—and four daughters.
[Illustration: _The South Front._]
Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle, succeeded his father in the title
and estates in 1758, being at the time only ten years of age. In
1768 he was made a Knight of the Thistle, and in 1793 installed as
K.G. His lordship, who was a man of letters and of high intellectual
attainments, in 1801 published “The Tragedies and Poems of Frederick,
Earl of Carlisle, K.G.” This lord was the guardian of Lord Byron, and
to him the “Hours of Idleness” was dedicated. Some severe and satiric
passages concerning the Earl may be called to mind in “English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers”—passages which the erratic poet afterwards
regretted.
[Illustration: _The Garden Front._]
He married the Lady Margaret Caroline Leveson-Gower, daughter of
Granville, first Marquis of Stafford, by whom he had issue—the Hon.
George, Viscount Morpeth; Lady Isabella Caroline, who was married,
first, to Lord Cawdor, and, secondly, to the Hon. Captain George Pryse;
Lady Charlotte; Lady Susan Maria; Lady Louisa; Lady Elizabeth, who
married John Henry, Duke of Rutland, and was mother of the present
Duke of Rutland, of Lord John Manners, and a numerous family;[42] the
Hon. William Howard, who died unmarried; Lady Gertrude, who married
William Sloane Stanley, Esq.; Major the Hon. Frederick Howard, who
married Frances Susan Lambton, sister to the Earl of Durham (he was
killed at the battle of Waterloo), who married, secondly, the Hon. H.
F. C. Cavendish, second son of the Earl of Burlington; and the Hon. and
Very Rev. Henry Edward John Howard, Dean of Lichfield, &c., who married
Henrietta Elizabeth, daughter of Ichabod Wright, Esq. His lordship died
in 1825, and was succeeded by his son—
George, Viscount Morpeth, as sixth Earl of Carlisle, who filled many
important offices. He married the Lady Georgiana Dorothy Cavendish,
daughter of William, fifth Duke of Devonshire, and sister to the late
duke, and by her had issue—George William Frederick, Lord Morpeth
(who succeeded his father); Lady Caroline Georgiana, married to the
Hon. William Saunders Sebright Lascelles, brother to the Earl of
Harewood; Lady Georgiana, married to Lord Dover; the Hon. Frederick
George; Lady Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana, married to the Duke of
Sutherland, and mother to the present illustrious nobleman of that
title;[43] the Hon. and Rev. William George Howard (the present peer);
the Hon. Edward Granville George, Baron Lanerton, married to Diana,
niece of Lord Ponsonby; Lady Blanche Georgiana, married to William
Cavendish, afterwards second Earl of Burlington, and now the present
highly esteemed and illustrious Duke of Devonshire, by whom she had
issue—the present Marquis of Hartington, M.P., Lord Frederick Charles
Cavendish, M.P., Lord Edward Cavendish, M.P., and Lady Louisa Cavendish
(Egerton); the Hon. Charles Wentworth George Howard, M.P., married to
Mary, daughter of Judge Parke; Lady Elizabeth Anne Georgiana Dorothea,
married to the Hon. and Rev. F. R. Grey, brother to Earl Grey; the Hon.
Henry George Howard, married to a niece of the Marchioness Wellesley;
and Lady Mary Matilda, married to the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere,
Baron Taunton. His lordship, who died in 1848, was succeeded by his
son—
George William Frederick, Viscount Morpeth, as seventh earl, one of
the most distinguished men of the age in literature and science, as
well as in the senate. His lordship, as Lord Morpeth, took a prominent
part in the political affairs of the kingdom, and among the important
offices he held, at one time or other in his useful life, were those of
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests,
and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was a man of the most
refined taste and of the highest intellectual culture, and his writings
were of a rare order of merit. He died unmarried in 1864, and was
succeeded by his brother—
The present noble peer, the Hon. and Rev. William George Howard,
eighth Earl of Carlisle, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, and Baron Dacre
of Gillesland, in the titles and estates. His lordship was born in
1808, and was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he
took honours, and proceeded M.A. in 1840. In 1832 he was appointed
to the rectory of Londesborough, which living he held until 1866. He
is senior co-heir to the barony of Clifford, and is unmarried, the
heir-presumptive to the earldom being his brother, Admiral the Hon.
Edward Granville George Howard, R.N., Lord Lanerton. His lordship is
patron of five livings—viz. Brampton, Farlam, and Lanercost Abbey, in
Cumberland; Slingsby, in Yorkshire; and Morpeth, in Northumberland.
The arms of the Earl of Carlisle are—quarterly of six: 1st, _gules_,
a bend between six cross crosslets fitchée, _argent_, on the bend an
escutcheon, _or_, charged with a demi-lion, pierced through the mouth
with an arrow, within a double tressure flory counter-flory, all
_gules_, and above the escutcheon a mullet, _sable_, for difference,
Howard; 2nd, _gules_, three lions passant guardant, _or_, and a label
of three points, _argent_, Thomas of Brotherton, son of Edward I.; 3rd,
checky, _or_ and _azure_, Warren, Earl Warren and Surrey; 4th, _gules_,
a lion rampant, _argent_, Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; 5th, _gules_, three
escallops, _argent_, Dacre; 6th, barry of eight, _argent_ and _azure_,
three chaplets of roses, _proper_, Greystock. Crest—on a chapeau,
_gules_, turned up ermine, a lion statant guardant, with the tail
extended, _or_, ducally gorged, _argent_. Supporters—dexter, a lion,
_argent_, charged with a mullet, _sable_, for difference; sinister,
a bull, _gules_, armed, unguled, ducally gorged and lined, _or_.
Motto—“Valo non valeo” (“I am willing, but not able”).
His seats are Castle Howard, Yorkshire, and Naworth Castle, Cumberland.
The heir-presumptive to the titles and estates is, as just stated,
Admiral the Right Hon. Edward Granville George Howard, Baron Lanerton
of Naworth, which peerage was bestowed on him in 1873. He was born in
1809, entered the Royal Navy in 1823, and advanced step by step till
he became Admiral in 1870. He married, in 1842, Diana, daughter of the
Hon. George Ponsonby, by whom, however, he has no issue.
In the grounds of Castle Howard an avenue of about a mile in
length, bordered on either side by groups of ash-trees, leads to
a pretty, cosy, and comfortable inn, on the front of which is the
inscription:—“CAROLUS HOWARD, COMES CARLIOLENSIS, HOC CONDIDIT ANNO
DOMINI MDCCXIX.” It forms a sort of entrance gate to the park: the
mansion, however, is a long way off, the whole length of the avenue
from the road to the house being four miles, with the avenue of trees
continued all the way. Midway is an obelisk one hundred feet in height,
which contains the following inscriptions:—
“Virtute et Fortunæ, Johannes, Marlburiæ
Ducis Patriæ Europæquæ Defensoris.
Hoc saxum admirationi ac famæ
Sacrum Carolus Comes Carliol posuit,
Anno Domini MDCCXIV.”
“If to perfection these plantations rise,
If they agreeably my heirs surprise,
This faithful pillar will their age declare,
As long as time these characters shall spare;
Here then with kind remembrance read his name,
Who for posterity perform’d the same.”
“Charles, the third Earl of Carlisle of the family of Howards, erected
a Castle where the old Castle of Henderskelf[44] stood, and called it
Castle Howard. He likewise made the plantations in this park, and all
the outworks, monuments, and other plantations belonging to the said
seat.
“He began these works in the year MDCCII, and set up this inscription
anno Domin MDCCXXXI.”
The history of the house is thus told; but it has no pretensions to the
name of a castle: the mansion is free from all semblance of character
as a place for defence, being simply and purely the domestic home of
an English nobleman, though, as our engravings show, very beautiful in
construction, of great extent, and perfect in all its appliances.
It is the _chef-d’œuvre_ of the architect, Sir John Vanbrugh, he
who laid in England “many a heavy load,” and whose graceful and
emphatically “comfortable” structures, including notably that of
Blenheim, adorn several of our English shires. Comparing Castle Howard
with Blenheim, Dr. Waagen writes—“The former is less ‘broken up’
than the latter, and though not of equal extent, has a grander and
more massive appearance. In the whole arrangement of the mansion and
the garden, the architect evidently had Versailles in his mind as the
perfection of this style.”
[Illustration: _The Mausoleum._]
Sir John Vanbrugh was, as his name indicates, of Dutch descent. He was
born at Chester in 1666. his father being a sugar-baker in that city.
In 1695, his architectural skill having acquired him some reputation,
he was appointed one of the commissioners for completing Greenwich
Palace, at the time when it was about to be converted into a hospital.
In 1702 he built Castle Howard for the Earl of Carlisle, who was so
pleased with his skill, that, being at the time Deputy Earl Marshal of
England, he conferred upon him the important appointment of Clarencieux
King-of-arms. In 1726 he died, and was buried in the church of St.
Stephen, Walbrook.