_neglected_ man at the time of writing. He tells us that he engaged in
the work to vindicate the memory of his master from "diverse sondrie
surmises and imagined tales, made of his proceedings and doings,"
which he himself had "perfectly knowen to be most untrue." We cannot
however but discover, that he was also stimulated by the desire of
attracting attention to himself, the old and faithful domestic of a
great man whose character was then beginning to retrieve itself in
the eyes of an abused nation, and whose misfortunes had prevented him
from advancing his servants in a manner accordant to his own wishes,
and to the dignity of his service. He dwells with manifest complacency
upon the words of commendation he received on different occasions from
his master; and relates towards the conclusion how kindly he had been
received by the king after the death of Wolsey, and what promises
had been made to him both by Henry and the Duke of Norfolk, who yet
suffered him to depart into his own country. But what shows most
strikingly that he was an unsatisfied man, and thought that he had
by no means had the reward due to his faithful services, is a remark
he makes after having related the sudden elevation of Wolsey to the
deanery of Lincoln. "Here," says he, "may all men note the chaunces
of fortune that followethe some whome she intendeth to promote, and
to some her favor is cleane contrary, though they travaille never so
much, with all the painfull diligence that they can devise or imagine:
_whereof for my part I have tasted of the experience_." p. 332[22].
[Sidenote: Not so Sir William Cavendish.]
[Sidenote: His employments, promotions, and rewards.]
There are persons whom nothing will satisfy, and they are sometimes
the most importunate in obtruding their supposed neglects upon the
public: but it must surely have been past all endurance to have had
such a complaint as this preferred by Sir William Cavendish in the
days of Queen Mary. His life had been a continual series of promotions
and lucrative employments. In 1530, the very year in the November of
which the Cardinal died, he was constituted one of the commissioners
for visiting and taking the surrenders of divers religious houses. In
1539 he was made one of the Auditors of the Court of Augmentations,
then lately established. At this period of his life he was living
luxuriously at his mansion of North Awbrey near Lincoln, as appears
by the inventory of his furniture there, which is preserved in
manuscript[23]. In the next year he had a royal grant of several
lordships in the county of Hertford. In 1546 he was knighted;
constituted treasurer of the chamber to the king, a place of great
trust and honour; and was soon afterwards admitted of the privy
council. He continued to enjoy all these honours till his death, a
space of eleven years, in which time his estate was much increased
by the grants he received from King Edward VI. in seven several
counties[24]. It was not surely for such a man as this to complain
of the _ludibria fortunæ_, or of the little reward all his "painful
diligence" had received. Few men, as Sylvius says, would have such a
"poverty of grace" that they would not
"----think it a most plenteous crop
To glean the broken ears after the man
That such a harvest reaps."
Sir William Cavendish began the world the younger son of a family of
some respectability, but of no great wealth or consequence; and he
left it, at about the age of fifty, a knight, a privy counsellor, and
the owner of estates which, managed and improved as they were by his
prudent relict, furnished two houses with the means of supporting in
becoming splendour the very first rank in the British peerage.
[Sidenote: Zealous against the Reformation.]
But an ambitious man is not to be contented; and men do form erroneous
estimates of their own deserts: let us see, then, if the work will
not supply us with something more conclusive. The writer is fond
of bringing forward his religious sentiments. The reader will be
amused with the following sally against the Reformation, its origin,
and favourers. He who is disposed may find in it matter for serious
reflection. When Cavendish has related that the king submitted to be
cited by the two legates, and to appear in person before them, to be
questioned touching the matter of the divorce, he breaks out into this
exclamation:--"Forsoothe it is a world to consider the desirous will
of wilfull princes, when they be set and earnestly bent to have their
wills fulfilled, wherein no reasonable persuasions will suffice; and
how little they regard the dangerous sequell that may ensue, as well
to themselves as to their subjects. And above all things, there is
nothing that maketh them more wilfull than carnall love and sensuall
affection of voluptuous desire, and pleasures of their bodies, as was
in this case; wherein nothing could be of greater experience than to
see what inventions were furnished, what lawes were enacted, what
costly edifications of noble and auncient monasteries were overthrowne,
what diversity of opinions then rose, what executions were then
committed, how many noble clerkes and good men were then for the same
put to deathe, what alteration of good, auncient, and holesome lawes,
customes, and charitable foundations were tourned from reliefe of the
poore, to utter destruction and desolation, almost to the subversion of
this noble realme. It is sure too much pitty to heare or understand the
things that have since that time chaunced and happened to this region.
The profe thereof hath taught us all Englishmen the experience, too
lamentable of all good men to be considered. If eyes be not blind men
may see, if eares be not stopped they may heare, and if pitty be not
exiled the inward man may lament the sequell of this pernicious and
inordinate love. Although it lasted but a while, the plague thereof is
not yet ceased, which our Lorde quenche and take his indignation from
us! _Qui peccavimus cum patribus nostris, et injuste egimus._" p. 420
and 421.
[Sidenote: Not so Sir William Cavendish.]
This passage, warm from the heart, could have been written by none
but a zealous anti-reformist. That certainly was not Sir William
Cavendish. He had been one of the principal instruments in effecting
what I must be allowed to call a necessary and glorious work. Men
are not accustomed to record their own condemnation with such a
bold, untrembling hand. That hand, which is supposed to have penned
these words, had been once extended to receive the conventual seal
of the Priory of Sheen, and the Abbey of St. Alban's. The person by
whom we are to believe they were written had been an officer in that
court which was purposely erected to attend to the augmentation of
the king's revenue by the sequestration of ecclesiastical property;
the proceedings of which court were too often unnecessarily harsh
and arbitrary, if not unjust and oppressive. Nay, more, at the very
time these words were written, Sir William Cavendish was living on
the spoils of those very monasteries whose overthrow is so deeply
deplored; and rearing out of them a magnificent mansion at Chatsworth
in Derbyshire, to be the abode of himself and his posterity. After so
long and so decided a passage, it has been thought unnecessary to quote
any other: but throughout the work appears the same zeal in the writer
to signalize himself as a friend to the old profession. May not this
be considered as amounting to something almost conclusive against the
supposition that the attendant upon Wolsey and Sir William Cavendish
were the same person?
[Sidenote: Sir William Cavendish did not change with the times.]
Will it be said that he turned with the times; that he who, in the
Protestant reigns, had been zealous for the _Gospel_, in the Catholic
reign was equally zealous for the _Mass_: and that this work was his
_amende_ to the offended party? I know not of any authority we have
for charging this religious tergiversation upon Sir William Cavendish,
who, for any thing that appears in his history, was animated by
other views in promoting the cause of reform, than the desire of
personal advancement, and of obtaining the favour of his prince:
and I am prepared with two facts in his history, not mentioned by
former writers, which are unfavourable to such a supposition. The
first shows that he was in some disgrace at the court of Queen Mary
as late as the fourth year of her reign; the second, that he did not
seek to ingratiate himself there. On the 17th of August, 1556, a very
peremptory order of council was issued, commanding his "indelaid
repaire" to the court to answer on "suche matters as at his cōmyng"
should be declared unto him. The original, subscribed by seven of the
Queen's council, is among the Wilson collections mentioned in the note
at page 22. What the particular charges were it is not material to our
argument to inquire. The next year also, the year in which he died,
he ungraciously refused a loan of one hundred pounds required of him
and other Derbyshire gentlemen by the Queen, when her majesty was in
distress for money to carry on the French war. These facts show that
though he was continued in the offices of treasurer of the chamber and
privy counsellor, he was in no very high esteem with Queen Mary, nor
sought to conciliate her favourable regards. To which we may add, that
his lady, whose spirit and masculine understanding would probably give
her very considerable influence in the deliberations of his mind, was
through life a firm friend to the Reformation, and in high favour with
Queen Elizabeth.
Whatever effect the preceding facts and argument may have had upon the
reader's mind, there is a piece of evidence still to be brought out,
which is more conclusive against the claim of Sir William Cavendish.
Soon after the Cardinal was arrested at his house of Cawood in
Yorkshire, Cavendish tells us that he resorted to his lord, "where he
was in his chamber sitting in a chaire, the tables being spred for him
to goe to dinner. But as soone as he perceived me to come in, he fell
out into suche a wofull lamentation, with suche ruthefull teares and
watery eies, that it would have caused a flinty harte to mourne with
him. And as I could, I with others comforted him; but it would not
be. For, quoth he, nowe I lament that I see this gentleman (meaning
me) how faithefull, how dilligent, and how painefull he hath served
me, abandonning his owne country, _wife and children_, his house and
family, his rest and quietnesse, only to serve me, and I have nothinge
to rewarde him for his highe merittes." p. 517.
[Sidenote: The author married and a father before 1530.]
[Sidenote: Not so Sir William Cavendish.]
Hence it appears that the Cavendish who wrote this work was married,
and had a family _probably_ before he entered into the Cardinal's
service, _certainly_ while he was engaged in it. At what precise period
he became a member of the Cardinal's household cannot be collected
from his own writings. Grove says it was as early as 1519[25]; the
Biographia tells us that the place was procured for him by his father,
who died in 1524. This however is certain, that the first mention of
himself, as one in attendance upon the Cardinal, is in the exceedingly
curious account he has given of the means used to break the growing
attachment between the Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn, in order to make way
for the king. Cavendish was present when the Earl of Northumberland
took his son to task. This must have been before the year 1527; for in
that year the Lord Percy became himself Earl of Northumberland; and
probably it was at least a twelvemonth before; for ere the old Earl's
departure, a marriage had been concluded between Lord Percy and the
Lady Mary Talbot, a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury[26]. In 1526
then, the Cavendish who wrote this work was a member of Wolsey's
household. Now, fortunately for this inquiry, it happens that an exact
account has been preserved of the several marriages and the numerous
issue of Sir William Cavendish. It is to be found in the funeral
certificate, which, according to a laudable custom of those times, was
entered by his relict among the records of the College of Arms. This
document, subscribed by her own hand, sets forth that her husband's
first-born child came into the world on the 7th of January, in the 25th
year of King Henry VIII. This answers to 1534: that is at least seven
years after the Cavendish, for whom we are inquiring, had become a
member of Wolsey's family, and more than three years after the Cardinal
had remarked that his gentleman usher had left "wife and children, his
home and family, his rest and quietnesse," only to serve him. This is
decisive.
[Sidenote: The funeral certificate where to be found.]
The document which contains these family particulars of the Cavendishes
is not known only to those gentlemen who have access to the arcana of
the College of Arms. It has been published: and it is remarkable that
Arthur Collins, who has been a principal cause of the error concerning
the author of this work, gaining such firm hold on the public mind,
should have been the first to lay before the public a record which
proves beyond dispute that the Cavendish who wrote the Life of Wolsey
could not be the Cavendish who was the progenitor of the house of
Devonshire. It is printed in his 'Noble Families,' where is a more
complete account of the Cavendishes than is to be found in his Peerage,
and which might have been transferred with advantage into the later
editions of that work. This document has also been printed by Guthrie
and Jacob, whose account of the nobility of this nation may often
be consulted with advantage, after having read any of the editions
of Collins. Of its _authenticity_, the only point material to this
inquiry, no suspicion can reasonably be entertained.
[Sidenote: How the early years of Sir William Cavendish may have been
spent.]
We have now brought to a conclusion our inquiry into the right of the
_tenant in possession_. It has been questioned, examined, and, I think,
disproved. It is not contended that the common opinion respecting Sir
William Cavendish's attendance upon Wolsey does not harmonize well
enough with what is known of his real history, and to render our proof
absolutely complete, it might seem to be almost incumbent upon us to
show how Sir William Cavendish was engaged while Wolsey's biographer
was discharging the duties of his office as an attendant upon the
Cardinal. Could we do this, we should also disclose the steps by which
he attained to his honourable state employments, and the favour of
successive monarchs. In the absence of positive testimony I would be
permitted to hazard the conjecture, that in early life he followed the
steps of his father, who had an office in the court of Exchequer. Such
an education as he would receive in that court would render him a most
fit instrument for the purpose in which we first find his services
used, the suppression of the monasteries, and the appropriation of the
lands belonging to them to his royal master. Having signalized his
zeal, and given proof of his ability in this service, so grateful to
the King, we may easily account for his further employments, and the
promotions and rewards which followed them. Let it however be observed,
that this is no essential part of our argument; nor shall I pursue the
inquiry any further, mindful of the well known and sage counsel of the
Lord Chancellor Bacon.
I would however be permitted to say something on that very
extraordinary woman, the lady of Sir William Cavendish, and the sharer
with him in raising the family to that state of affluence and honour
in which we now behold it. Indeed she was a more than equal sharer. He
laid the foundation, she raised the superstructure; as she finished the
family palace at Chatsworth, of which he had laid the first stone.
[Sidenote: His lady an extraordinary character.]
[Sidenote: Marries Sir William St. Lowe;]
[Sidenote: becomes Countess of Shrewsbury.]
[Sidenote: Has a present of jewels from Mary Queen of Scots.]
[Sidenote: Death of the Earl.]
This lady was Elizabeth Hardwick, a name familiar to all visitors of
the county of Derby, where she lived more than half a century with
little less than sovereign authority, having first adorned it with
two most splendid mansions. The daughter, and the virgin widow of
two Derbyshire gentlemen of moderate estates, she first stepped into
consequence by her marriage with Sir William Cavendish, a gentleman
much older than herself. The ceremony was performed at the house of
the Marquis of Dorset[28], father to the Lady Jane Grey, who, with
the Countess of Warwick and the Earl of Shrewsbury, was a sponsor at
the baptism of her second child. Cavendish left her a widow with six
children in 1557. Shortly after his death she united herself to Sir
William St. Lowe, one of the old attendants of the Princess Elizabeth,
on whose accession to the throne he was made captain of her guard. In
1567, being a third time a widow, she was raised to the bed of the most
powerful peer of the realm, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. He had
been a friend of Sir William Cavendish, and it is possible that the
magnificent state which he displayed in the immediate neighbourhood
of this lady had more than once excited her envy. She loved pomp and
magnificence and personal splendour, as much as she enjoyed the hurry
and engagement of mind which multiplied worldly business brings with
it. She had a passion for jewels, which was appealed to and gratified
by the unhappy Mary Queen of Scotland[29], who lived many years under
the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury, her husband. She united herself
to this nobleman more, as it should seem, from motives of ambition,
than as the consequence of any real affection she had for him. He had
unquestionably the sincerest regard for her: and, though she forgot
many of the duties of a wife, it continued many years in the midst of
all that reserve and perfidity, and even tyranny, if such a word may
be allowed, which she thought proper to exercise towards him. The
decline of this good and great man's life affords a striking lesson
how utterly insufficient are wealth and splendour and rank to secure
happiness even in a case where there is no experience of the more
extraordinary vicissitudes of fortune, the peculiar danger of persons
in elevated situations. Probably the happiest days of the last three
and twenty years of his life were those in which he was employing
himself in preparing his own sepulchre. This he occupied in 1590. But
the effect of his ill advised nuptials extended beyond his life. His
second countess had drawn over to her purposes some of his family, who
had assisted her in the designs she carried on against her husband.
She had drawn them closely to her interest by alliances with her own
family. Hence arose family animosities, which appeared in the most
frightful forms, and threatened the most deadly consequences[30].
Much may be seen respecting this extraordinary woman in the Talbot
papers published by Mr. Lodge. A bundle of her private correspondence
has been preserved, and forms a curious and valuable part of that
collection of manuscripts which we have had occasion more than once to
mention. These let in much light upon her conduct. It is impossible
to contemplate her character in this faithful mirror without being
convinced that Mr. Lodge has drawn the great outlines of it correctly,
when he describes her as "a woman of masculine understanding and
conduct; proud, furious, selfish, and unfeeling[31]." Yet she was a
favourite of Queen Elizabeth, who paid her this compliment soon after
her last marriage, that "she had been glad to see my Lady Saint Lowe,
but was more desirous to see my Lady Shrewsbury, and that there was no
lady in the land whom she better loved and liked." These flattering
expressions were used to Mr. Wingfield, who was a near relation of this
lady, and who lost no time in reporting them to her. Most of these
letters are upon private affairs: a few only are from persons whom she
had engaged to send her the news of the day, as was usual with the
great people of that age when absent from court. There are several of
the letters which she received from Saint Lowe and Shrewsbury, which
show how extraordinary was the influence she had gained over their
minds. There is one from Sir William Cavendish. Having laboured to
show what the knight did _not_ compose, I shall transcribe in the note
below this genuine fragment of his writing, though in no respect worthy
of publication, except as having passed between these two remarkable
characters[32]. It is expressed in a strain of familiarity to which
neither of his successors ever dared aspire. To conclude the history of
this lady, she survived her last husband about seventeen years, which
were spent for the most part at Hardwick, the place of her birth, and
where she had built the present noble mansion. There she died in 1607,
and was interred in the great church at Derby.
[Sidenote: Mr. Lodge's character of her.]
[Sidenote: Anecdote of Queen Elizabeth.]
[Sidenote: Letters to her.]
The courteous reader will, it is hoped, pardon this digression; and now
set we forth on the second stage of our inquiry, Who wrote Cavendish's
Life of Wolsey?
[Sidenote: Claim of Thomas Cavendish.]
When there are only two claimants upon any property, if the pretensions
of one can be shown to be groundless, those of the other seem to be
established as a necessary consequence. But here we have a third party.
Beside Sir William and his elder brother George, a claimant has been
found in a _Thomas_ Cavendish. In the account of Wolsey given in the
Athenæ[33], Wood calls the author by this name: and Dodd, a Catholic
divine, who published a Church History of England in 3 vols. folio,
(Brussels, 1737.) in a list of historians and manuscripts used in
the preparation of his work, enumerates "Cavendish _Thomas_, Life of
Cardinal Wolsey, Lond. 1590." It is very probable that Dodd may have
contented himself with copying the name of this author from the Athenæ,
a book he used: and it is with the utmost deference, and the highest
possible respect, for the wonderful industry and the extraordinary
exactness of the Oxford antiquary, I would intimate my opinion that,
in this instance, he has been misled. To subject the pretensions of
_Thomas_ Cavendish to such a scrutiny as that to which those of Sir
William have been brought is quite out of the question: for neither
Wood nor Dodd have thrown any light whatever on his history or
character. He appears before us like Homer, _nomen, et præterea nihil_.
There was a person of both his names, of the Grimstone family, a noted
navigator, and an author in the days of Queen Elizabeth; but he lived
much too late to have ever formed a part of the household of Cardinal
Wolsey.
We must now state the evidence in favour of George Cavendish. The
reader will judge for himself whether the testimony of Anthony Wood,
and that of the Catholic church-historian, supposing them to be
distinct and independent testimonies, is sufficient to outweigh what is
to be advanced in support of George Cavendish's claim. We shall first
state on what grounds the work is attributed to a Cavendish whose name
was George; and secondly, the reasons we have for believing that he was
the George Cavendish of Glemsford in Suffolk, to whom my Lord Herbert
ascribes the work.
[Sidenote: That the writer's name was George.]
On the former point the evidence is wholly external. It lies in a small
compass; but it is of great weight. It consists in the testimony of
all the ancient manuscripts which bear any title of an even date with
themselves[34]: and in that of the learned herald and antiquary Francis
Thinne, a contemporary of the author's, who, in the list of writers of
English history which he subjoined to Hollinshead's Chronicle, mentions
"George Cavendish, Gentleman Vsher vnto Cardinal Woolseie, whose life
he did write."
[Sidenote: Four circumstances of the author's condition discovered in
the work.]
Now to our second point. Four circumstances of the author's situation
are discovered to us in the work itself: viz. that his life was
extended through the reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. and Queen Mary;
that while he was in the Cardinal's service he was a married man,
and had a family: that he was in but moderate circumstances when
he composed this memoir; and that he retained a zeal for the _old
profession_ of religion. If we find these circumstances concurring in a
George Cavendish, it is probable we have found the person for whom we
are in search.