If celebrating the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons, and
transmitting their great virtues for the imitation of posterity, be one
of the principal ends and duties of history, it will not be thought
impertinent in this place to remember a loss which no time will suffer
to be forgotten, and no success or good fortune could repair. In this
unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland; a person of such
prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness
and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and
goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of
life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed
civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable
to all posterity.
Before this Parliament, his condition of life was so happy that it was
hardly capable of improvement. Before he came to twenty years of age he
was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a
grandfather without passing through his father or mother, who were then
both alive, and not well enough contented to find themselves passed by
in the descent. His education for some years had been in Ireland, where
his father was Lord Deputy; so that when he returned into England to the
possession of his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance or
friends, which usually grow up by the custom of conversation; and
therefore was to make a pure election of his company, which he chose by
other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time. And
it cannot be denied, though he admitted some few to his friendship for
the agreeableness of their natures and their undoubted affection to him,
that his familiarity and friendship, for the most part, was with men of
the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in the
point of integrity; and such men had a title to his bosom.
He was a great cherisher of wit and fancy and good parts in any man; and
if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and
bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in
those administrations, he was such a dispenser as if he had been trusted
with it to such uses; and if there had been the least of vice in his
expense he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and
pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by
any pains that were necessary to that end. And therefore having once
resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had
perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the
country and pursued it with that indefatigable industry that it will not
be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and accurately read
all the Greek historians.
In this time, his house being within ten miles of Oxford, he contracted
familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that
university; who found such an immenseness of wit and such a solidity of
judgment in him, so infinite a fancy bound in by a most logical
ratiocination, such a vast knowledge that he was not ignorant in
anything, yet such an excessive humility as if he had known nothing,
that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college
situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university bound in a
less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study, and to
examine and refine those grosser propositions which laziness and consent
made current in vulgar conversation....
The great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those
persons who appeared most active, especially of Mr. Hampden, kept him
longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom; and
though he differed commonly from them in conclusions, he believed long
their purposes were honest. When he grew better informed what was law,
and discerned (in them) a desire to control that law by a vote of one or
both Houses, no man more opposed those attempts, and gave the adverse
party more trouble by reason and argumentation; insomuch as he was, by
degrees, looked upon as an advocate for the court, to which he
contributed so little that he declined those addresses and even those
invitations which he was obliged almost by civility to entertain. And he
was so jealous of the least imagination that he should incline to
preferment, that he affected even a morosity to the court and to the
courtiers, and left nothing undone which might prevent and divert the
King's or Queen's favor towards him, but the deserving it. For when the
King sent for him once or twice to speak with him, and to give him
thanks for his excellent comportment in those councils which his Majesty
graciously termed doing him service, his answers were more negligent and
less satisfactory than might have been expected; as if he cared only
that his actions should be just, not that they should be acceptable, and
that his Majesty should think that they proceeded only from the
impulsion of conscience, without any sympathy in his affections; which
from a stoical and sullen nature might not have been misinterpreted; yet
from a person of so perfect a habit of generous and obsequious
compliance with all good men, might very well have been interpreted by
the King as more than an ordinary averseness to his service: so that he
took more pains and more forced his nature to actions unagreeable and
unpleasant to it, that he might not be thought to incline to the court,
than any man hath done to procure an office there....
Two reasons prevailed with him to receive the seals, and but for those
he had resolutely avoided them. The first, consideration that it [his
refusal] might bring some blemish upon the King's affairs, and that men
would have believed that he had refused so great an honor and trust
because he must have been with it obliged to do somewhat else not
justifiable. And this he made matter of conscience, since he knew the
King made choice of him before other men especially because he thought
him more honest than other men. The other was, lest he might be thought
to avoid it out of fear to do an ungracious thing to the House of
Commons, who were sorely troubled at the displacing of Harry Vane, whom
they looked upon as removed for having done them those offices they
stood in need of; and the disdain of so popular an incumbrance wrought
upon him next to the other. For as he had a full appetite of fame by
just and generous actions, so he had an equal contempt of it by any
servile expedients; and he had so much the more consented to and
approved the justice upon Sir Harry Vane in his own private judgment, by
how much he surpassed most men in the religious observation of a trust,
the violation whereof he would not admit of any excuse for.
For these reasons he submitted to the King's command and became his
secretary, with as humble and devout an acknowledgment of the greatness
of the obligation as could be expressed, and as true a sense of it in
his own heart. Yet two things he could never bring himself to whilst he
continued in that office, that was to his death; for which he was
contented to be reproached, as for omissions in a most necessary part of
his office. The one, employing of spies, or giving any countenance or
entertainment to them. I do not mean such emissaries as with danger
would venture to view the enemy's camp and bring intelligence of their
number and quartering, or such generals as such an observation can
comprehend; but those who by communication of guilt or dissimulation of
manners wound themselves into such trusts and secrets as enabled them to
make discoveries for the benefit of the State. The other, the liberty of
opening letters upon a suspicion that they might contain matter of
dangerous consequence. For the first he would say, such instruments must
be void of all ingenuity and common honesty, before they could be of
use; and afterwards they could never be fit to be credited: and that no
single preservation could be worth so general a wound and corruption of
human society as the cherishing such persons would carry with it. The
last, he thought such a violation of the law of nature that no
qualification by office could justify a single person in the trespass;
and though he was convinced by the necessity and iniquity of the time
that those advantages of information were not to be declined and were
necessarily to be practiced, he found means to shift it from himself;
when he confessed he needed excuse and pardon for the omission: so
unwilling he was to resign anything in his nature to an obligation in
his office.
In all other particulars he filled his place plentifully, being
sufficiently versed in languages to understand any that [are] used in
business, and to make himself again understood. To speak of his
integrity, and his high disdain of any bait that might seem to look
towards corruption, _in tanto viro, injuria virtutum fuerit_ [in the
case of so great a man, would be an insult to his merits]....
He had a courage of the most clear and keen temper, and so far from fear
that he was not without appetite of danger; and therefore, upon any
occasion of action, he always engaged his person in those troops which
he thought by the forwardness of the commanders to be most like to be
farthest engaged; and in all such encounters he had about him a strange
cheerfulness and companionableness, without at all affecting the
execution that was then principally to be attended, in which he took no
delight, but took pains to prevent it, where it was not by resistance
necessary; insomuch that at Edgehill, when the enemy was routed, he was
like to have incurred great peril by interposing to save those who had
thrown away their arms, and against whom, it may be, others were more
fierce for their having thrown them away: insomuch as a man might think
he came into the field only out of curiosity to see the face of danger,
and charity to prevent the shedding of blood. Yet in his natural
inclination he acknowledged that he was addicted to the profession of a
soldier; and shortly after he came to his fortune, and before he came to
age, he went into the Low Countries with a resolution of procuring
command, and to give himself up to it, from which he was converted by
the complete inactivity of that summer: and so he returned into England
and shortly after entered upon that vehement course of study we
mentioned before, till the first alarm from the North; and then again he
made ready for the field, and though he received some repulse in the
command of a troop of horse of which he had a promise, he went volunteer
with the Earl of Essex.
From the entrance into this unnatural war his natural cheerfulness and
vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit
stole upon him which he had never been used to; yet being one of those
who believed that one battle would end all differences, and that there
would be so great a victory on the one side that the other would be
compelled to submit to any conditions from the victor (which supposition
and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most men, and prevented
the looking after many advantages which might then have been laid hold
of), he resisted those indispositions, _et in luctu, bellum inter
remedia erat_ [and in his grief, strife was one of his curatives]. But
after the King's return from Brentford, and the furious resolution of
the two Houses not to admit any treaty for peace, those indispositions
which had before touched him grew into a perfect habit of
uncheerfulness; and he who had been so exactly unreserved and affable to
all men that his face and countenance was always present and vacant to
his company, and held any cloudiness and less pleasantness of the visage
a kind of rudeness or incivility, became, on a sudden, less
communicable; and thence, very sad, pale, and exceedingly affected with
the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he had intended before
always with more neatness and industry and expense than is usual in so
great a mind, he was now not only incurious, but too negligent; and in
his reception of suitors, and the necessary or casual addresses to his
place, so quick and sharp and severe that there wanted not some men (who
were strangers to his nature and disposition) who believed him proud and
imperious,--from which no mortal man was ever more free.
The truth is, that as he was of a most incomparable gentleness,
application, and even a demissness and submission to good and worthy and
entire men, so he was naturally (which could not but be more evident in
his place, which objected him to another conversation and intermixture
than his own election had done) _adversus malos injucundus_ [toward
evil-doers ungracious] and was so ill a dissembler of his dislike and
disinclination to ill men that it was not possible for such not to
discern it. There was once in the House of Commons such a declared
acceptation of the good service an eminent member had done to them, and
as they said, to the whole kingdom, that it was moved, he being present,
that the Speaker might in the name of the whole House give him thanks;
and then, that every member might as a testimony of his particular
acknowledgment stir or move his hat towards him; the which (though not
ordered) when very many did, the Lord Falkland (who believed the
service itself not to be of that moment, and that an honorable and
generous person could not have stooped to it for any recompense),
instead of moving his hat, stretched both his arms out and clasped his
hands together upon the crown of his hat, and held it close down to his
head; that all men might see how odious that flattery was to him, and
the very approbation of the person, though at that time most popular.
When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and
vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought
might promote it; and sitting amongst his friends, often, after a deep
silence and frequent sighs, would with a shrill and sad accent
ingeminate the word _Peace, Peace_; and would passionately profess that
the very agony of the war and the view of the calamities and desolation
the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would
shortly break his heart. This made some think or pretend to think that
he was so much enamored on peace, that he would have been glad the King
should have bought it at any price; which was a most unreasonable
calumny. As if a man that was himself the most punctual and precise in
every circumstance that might reflect upon conscience or honor, could
have wished the King to have committed a trespass against either....
In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very
cheerful, and put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's
regiment, who was then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the
hedges on both sides with musketeers, from whence he was shot with a
musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from
his horse, his body was not found till the next morning; till when,
there was some hope he might have been a prisoner; though his nearest
friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that
imagination. Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the
four-and-thirtieth year of his age, having so much dispatched the
business of life that the oldest rarely attain to that immense
knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more
innocence: and whosoever leads such a life needs not care upon how short
warning it be taken from him.