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.]