Magdalen, daughter of Sir Thomas Oxenbridge, Bart., of Ford, in Sussex.
When Sir Richard died, and his son succeeded, the landed property was
very extensive, and it was said the owner might start from his own
house, and ride in any direction straight on end for ten miles at least
on his own land. When still a youth Nicholas went to Paris, where, we
are told, he became so enamoured of French manners, customs, and
fashions, that on his return to England he could speak and boast of
nothing else. Handsome, well-born, and accomplished, he soon attracted
the notice of Henry the Eighth, who welcomed him at Court, and appointed
him a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, a place which was then of much
higher standing than in later days. But Carew did not make himself
popular in the royal household. The constant comparisons which he daily
drew between the French and English Courts, to the great disparagement
of the latter, offended his colleagues in the highest degree, and were
not calculated to gratify the King. Henry resolved to give the young man
a lesson. If he were so devoted to France, to France he should go, and
that without delay. At the same time, unwilling to dismiss him without
some ostensible reason, he appointed Sir Nicholas governor of a fortress
in Picardy, which was in the hands of the English. A castle in a
provincial town did not offer the charms which Carew had found in the
splendid capital of France, and it may easily be believed the office did
not suit his taste. He doubtless petitioned the King; at all events, he
was recalled, forgiven, and taken back into favour. He now became
Henry’s almost inseparable companion, and was foremost in all the
jousts, tournaments, maskings, and all kinds of Court revelry, in which
they both excelled and delighted. Carew was, moreover, appointed Master
of the Horse, at that period one of the highest offices in the realm,
and Knight of the Garter.
The favour of Henry the Eighth was as easily lost as won, and Fuller
tells us that a tradition in the family reported that Carew’s downfall
proceeded, in the first instance, from a quarrel between him and his
master at bowls, ‘when his Grace, who was no good fellow, and would
always rather give than take in repartee,’ so exasperated his Master of
the Horse, ‘that his answer was rather true than discreet, consulting
his own animosity rather than his allegiance, whereat the King was so
offended that Sir Nicholas fell from the top of his favour to the bottom
of his displeasure, and was bruised to death.’ ‘This’—we quote Fuller
all the time—‘was the true cause of his execution. He was charged with
high treason, as accomplice with the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague,
Sir Edward Neville, and others, in a plot to depose King Henry the
Eighth, and place Cardinal Pole on the throne. They were all found
guilty, and sentenced to death, with the exception of the Cardinal’s
brother, who saved his own life by betraying his confederates. The
evidence against Sir Nicholas appears to have been slight, but he was
out of favour, and everything was turned to his prejudice. He was
beheaded on Tower Hill in 1539.’ Holinshed said ‘he made a godly
confession of his fault, and his superstitious faith.’ He was a Roman
Catholic. Sir Nicholas Carew married Elizabeth, daughter and afterwards
sole heir of Sir Thomas Bryan, Master of Common Pleas, by whom he had
one son and three or four daughters.
The son, Sir Francis Carew, never married, but having regained a
considerable portion of the estates forfeited on his father’s attainder,
during the reign of Elizabeth, he bequeathed his property to his
sister’s son, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, on condition that he assumed
the name and arms of Carew.
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No. 27. AN OLD MAN’S HEAD.
BY VANDYCK.
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No. 28. MAN’S HEAD.
BY TINTORETTO.
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No. 30. THE COUNTESS OF OXFORD.
_Blue and white dress. Holding a nosegay. A table beside her._
BY VANDYCK.
BEATRIX VAN HEMMEND, a Dutch lady, a native of Friesland, married Robert
de Vere, nineteenth Earl of Oxford. He died in 1632, at the siege of
Maestricht, leaving an only surviving child, in whom the earldom became
extinct.
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No. 33. PORTRAIT. UNKNOWN.
BY TITIAN.
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No. 36. SIR KENELM DIGBY.
_Black dress. Hand on his breast. A globe by his side._
BORN 1603, DIED 1665.
BY VANDYCK.
SON of Sir Everard Digby, born at Gothurst or Gayhurst, County Bucks,
the property of his mother, daughter and sole heir of Sir William
Mulsho. He was but a child when his father suffered death as one of the
conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. The Crown laid claim to the estates
and revenues of the family; but the widowed Lady Digby, a woman of great
energy and determination, not only saved her own dower by her strenuous
efforts, but rescued a few hundreds for her son out of the wreck, and,
although a rigid Roman Catholic, she suffered her boy to be educated as
a Protestant from prudential motives. The romance of the loves of Kenelm
Digby and Venetia Stanley, which made such a noise at the time, and has
been the subject of curiosity and controversy ever since, whenever their
names are mentioned, began at a very early age. Sir Edward Stanley, of
the noble house of Derby, lived at Tong Castle, County Salop. He married
the daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Northumberland, who brought him
two daughters, ‘the divine Venetia’ being the youngest. Her mother died
when she was a few months old. The widower gave himself up to grief,
shunned the world, and could not even derive comfort from the society of
his children. He sent them therefore (or at all events Venetia) to the
care of a relative, who was a neighbour of Lady Digby’s. Thus began the
acquaintance, and Sir Edward’s beautiful little girl and Lady Digby’s
lovely boy met constantly, and played at love-making, jealousy, rivalry,
coquetry, quarrels, reconciliations,—in fact a perfect rehearsal of all
the drama that was to be enacted in good earnest a few years later. The
marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, afterwards
King of Bohemia, called Sir Edward to London. With a violent wrench he
tore himself away from his seclusion, and sending for Venetia carried
her with him to the Court of King James, then the scene of great
festivity.
In all these gaieties, according to Digby’s account, the juvenile beauty
took part, and was the centre of admiration. In the meantime her young
lover pursued his studies under the care of Laud, Dean of Gloucester,
subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards with Dr. Thomas
Allen, an eminent scholar, at Oxford.
Digby distinguished himself at the University, where he remained two
years, but whenever he returned home for the vacation, the flirtation
with his fair neighbour was resumed. He wrote a strange and wild romance
respecting her, in which it is impossible to disentangle truth from
fiction, but some of the adventures are too marvellous for belief, and
the whole narrative is disagreeable, and tedious into the bargain.
His jealousy seems to have been excited by a certain courtier, whose
suit, he affirms, was favoured by Venetia’s governess. Lady Digby was
too wise a mother to smile on such a precocious courtship, even if she
disbelieved the reports which had already begun to circulate,
detrimental to Mistress Stanley’s reputation.
She despatched her son on foreign travel, but before his departure the
lovers had met and plighted their troth. According to the traveller’s
own account, he made a conquest of the French Queen when in Paris _en
route_ for Italy.
A report of his death having been accidentally or purposely circulated,
Venetia’s conduct on the occasion was differently represented to her
absent lover, some declaring she was inconsolable, others that she lent
a willing ear to the suit of the very same courtier who had before
excited Kenelm’s jealousy.
Nothing can be more bombastic and high-flown than the language in which
he describes the fluctuations of his passion for Venetia, his implicit
trust in her constancy in one page, his doubts and suspicions in
another.
It seems more than probable that the prudent Lady Digby intercepted her
son’s love-letters, and did all in her power to prevent a marriage she
thought most undesirable, and she was doubtless delighted when Kenelm
accompanied his kinsman, Lord Bristol, to Spain, where he was then
negotiating the Prince of Wales’s marriage with the Infanta at Madrid.
Kenelm became himself attached to the Prince’s suite, and took an active
part in diplomatic transactions.
In this land of romance it may well be imagined that the handsome and
accomplished Englishman ran the gauntlet of many adventures among the
dark-eyed daughters of the South, nor does he omit to allude to
innumerable conquests; indeed, he went so far as to have a portrait of
himself painted with an effigy of one of his victims in the background,
yet he incessantly boasted of his constancy to the absent loved one. On
his return to England with the Prince of Wales, he was knighted by the
King at Hinchingbrook, and immediately flew to his lady-love in spite of
maternal prohibition. Then followed recriminations, explanations, trials
of her faith and virtue, challenges, duels—a stormy suit, indeed,
according to his own testimony.
Respecting the date of their marriage there is great difference of
opinion. At all events, Kenelm insisted on its being kept secret, nor
was poor Venetia allowed to announce it, even when a fall from her horse
brought on a premature confinement, which nearly cost her her life.
King James admired Sir Kenelm for his great erudition, and complimented
him on his essays on Sympathetic Powder, Alchemy, and other subjects
bordering on the supernatural. On the accession of Charles the First,
Sir Kenelm Digby was made Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Commissioner
of the Navy, and Governor of the Trinity House, shortly after which, he
was appointed to the command of a naval squadron, sent to the
Mediterranean against the Venetian fleet and the Algerine pirates.
In this voyage he was eminently successful, bringing the Venetians to
terms, chastising the pirates, and releasing a large number of English
slaves. It is said that on the eve of his embarkation, a second son
being born to him, he had permitted his wife to declare their marriage,
and had consigned her to the care of his kinsman, Lord Bristol, during
his absence from England. About this time, his faithful old friend,
Thomas Allen, bequeathed to him a splendid library, which he made over
to the Bodleian.
In 1633, after his return, his beautiful but far from happy wife died,
and the mystery which had shrouded Venetia’s whole life hung like a dark
cloud over her death, and reports of all kinds were current.
There is no doubt that Sir Kenelm had been in the habit of making
chemical and alchemical experiments on Venetia for some time past, and
the tradition of the concoction of snails which he had invented as a
preservative of her naturally brilliant complexion is still extant at
Gayhurst, where it is said the somewhat rare breed of large ‘Pomatia’ is
still to be found.
By Digby’s desire his wife’s head (‘which contained but little brain’)
was opened, and he decided that she had taken an overdose of viper wine.
But spiteful women declared she had fallen a victim to a viper husband’s
jealousy, though Aubrey, who tells sad tales of Venetia before her
marriage, says she was a blameless wife.
There is more than one portrait of her, with allegorical emblems of
Innocence, Slander, and the like. Her name had often been coupled with
that of the Earl of Dorset, and some said he had settled an annuity on
her, which was paid up to the time of her death. Be this as it may, Sir
Kenelm and Lady Digby always dined once a year with my Lord Dorset, who
received them courteously but formally, only permitting himself to kiss
the beauty’s hand with great respect.
Venetia was buried in a church near Newgate, in a tomb of black marble,
with long inscriptions, surmounted by a copper-gilt bust, all destroyed
in the great fire. Numerous epitaphs were written in her honour. Ben
Jonson calls her ‘A tender mother, a discreet wife, a solemn mistress, a
good friend, so lovely and charitable in all her petite actions, so
devote in her whole life,’ etc.
Whatever Sir Kenelm’s real feelings were, his outward grief was extreme.
He retired to Gresham College, lived like a hermit, studied chemistry,
wore a long mourning cloak, and left his beard unshorn. Although it was
generally supposed that his secession from the Protestant faith took
place when he was in Spain, it was not until 1653 that he wrote to his
friend Laud (whose admirable answer is extant) to announce the fact. He
was a firm adherent of Charles I., and greatly esteemed by Henrietta
Maria; but his loyalty got him into trouble with the Parliament, and he
was exiled to France. Returning in a few months he was imprisoned in
1640 for nearly three years, and was supposed only to have regained his
liberty through the intercession of the French Queen, who had loved him
twenty years before. His release, however, was conditional. He was
forbidden to take part in any public affairs, and he therefore gave
himself up to literary and scientific pursuits, and engaged in a
polemical correspondence with his quondam tutor, Laud, whom he is said
to have tempted to change his faith, by the bait of a Cardinal’s Hat.
Sir Kenelm returned to France and frequented the Court of his old flame,
the Queen Dowager, where his noble appearance, almost gigantic size, his
handsome features, agreeable conversation and manners, his learning, and
last, but perhaps not least, his predilection for the occult sciences,
made him an universal favourite. On the death of his eldest son, killed
on the Royalist side at the battle of St. Neot’s, Sir Kenelm returned to
compound for his estates, but was not suffered to remain in England. He
went back to Paris, where Henrietta Maria made him her Chancellor; and
he was then intrusted with a mission to Pope Innocent X., who welcomed
him at first, but after a time the ‘Englishman grew high, and hectored
at His Holiness, and gave him the lie.’
Once more in England, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament,
Cromwell took him into his confidence, hoping by his mediation to gain
over the Roman Catholics.
His conduct in these circumstances has been praised by some and censured
by others, as may well be imagined, according to religious and political
bias. He travelled through France, Lower Germany, and the Palatinate,
always seeking and being sought by men of letters; and 1660 saw him once
more back in his native land.
Charles II. showed him but little favour. He was nominated F.R.S., and
resided (1663) in a fair house in Covent Garden, where he had a
laboratory. ‘Philosopher, theologian, courtier, soldier; polite,
amiable, handsome, graceful.’ Lord Clarendon’s testimony is, ‘eccentric,
vain, unstable in religion, a duellist.’ These are the counterbalancing
portraits of Sir Kenelm Digby. He desired to be buried near Venetia. His
epitaph was as follows:—
‘Under this tomb the matchless Digby lies,
Digby the great, the brilliant, and the wise;
This age’s wonder, for his noble partes,
Skilled in six tongues, and learn’d in all the artes!
Born on the day he died, th’ eleventh of June,
And that day bravely fought at Scanderoon:
It’s rare that one and the same day should be
The day of birth, and death, and victory.’
He had four sons and one daughter.
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No. 40. SIR THOMAS KILLIGREW.
_Red slashed doublet. Fair hair. A bracelet on his arm. His hand rests
on a dog’s head._
BORN 1611, DIED 1683.
BY VANDYCK.
HE was the younger son of Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, County
Middlesex, by Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Wodehouse, who married,
secondly, Sir Thomas Stafford. Thomas, or as he was usually called, Tom
Killigrew, was early initiated into the mysteries of Court life, being
appointed Page of Honour to King Charles the First, to whom he remained
faithful, and followed Charles the Second and his mother in their exile.
About the year 1651 the King sent him in a diplomatic capacity to
Venice, where Killigrew seems to have disported himself to his heart’s
content, and it was evidently here that he imbibed that passion for
music and the drama, which never forsook him, but which converted him
into a dramatist and a theatrical _entrepreneur_, rather, we should say,
confirmed him in these tastes which were already developed in his
boyhood; for we have an anecdote of his school days, how he would go to
the Red Bull Tavern, not far from the theatre, during the performance,
and how, more than once, the waiter came in crying, ‘Who will go and be
a devil on the stage, and he shall see the play for nothing?’ an offer
with which young Tom gladly closed. Thus began his career; for was not
he a merry devil the chief part of his life?
Venice, as we have seen, suited his humour well, and Thomas was
evidently one of those foreigners who go on the principle of howling
with the wolves, and doing at Rome more than the Romans do. In fact, he
was so carried away by the vivacity of the Venetians, the maskings,
flirtings, and what not, which he encountered in the fair city of the
sea, that Thomas began to out-Herod Herod, and lived his life at such a
rate as to scandalise the Venetian authorities, who directed their
ambassador at Paris to wait on the English King, and urge the recall of
his envoy. Charles complied, but it was not likely that the peccadilloes
of which ‘Tommaso’ had been guilty should appear unpardonable in the
eyes of the merry monarch, and he received the delinquent into especial
favour, and on the Restoration Tom became Groom of the Bedchamber, and
the King’s inseparable companion. Pepys, in his diary of 1660, about the
time of Charles’s return to his dominions, records his meeting with Tom,
when being on my Lord Sandwich’s ship, he met, ‘with other fine company,
Tom Killigrew, a merry droll, but a gentleman, full of wit and humour, a
general favourite, especially with the King. And I walked with him for
some time on the deck, and he told most amusing stories.’
Killigrew had not been long in England before he put a darling scheme
into execution, namely, to bring over an Italian troop of actors from
Venice to perform in singing and recitative. He had by this time set up
as a dramatic author, and was instrumental in introducing into England
the fashion of female performers, for, until the Restoration, actresses
had not appeared on the stage, although in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere,
the female characters were always represented by women. It may easily be
believed that this innovation fell in with the royal taste, and there
was great amusement afforded by a representation of the Parson’s
Wedding, a comedy of Master Killigrew’s own writing, entirely performed
by females. In another portion of his diary Pepys relates how he met Tom
at my Lord Brouncker’s one night in company with a certain musician, one
Signor Baptista, and Killigrew told us how they proposed to give an
opera entirely in the Italian language, and he goes on to say that
Baptista was singer, poet, and all in one, and that he sang them one of
the acts, and that from the words alone, without any music prickt, which
seemed to astonish good Master Samuel, who makes some of his accustomed
sapient remarks on the occasion: ‘I did not understand the words, and so
do not know if they are fitted, but I perceive there is a proper accent
in every country’s discourse, but I am not as much smitten by it as if I
were acquainted with the language.’
Good Master Pepys had made a discovery in those early times, which we
recommend to the notice of many who pass in these days for proficients
in the vocal line. The newly-born Italian opera now became the rage,
very often, indeed, to the detriment of the English theatrical
companies, so much so that sometimes Killigrew’s own dramatic
productions were played to empty benches. Besides Signor Baptista there
was another eminent musician, Francesco Corbetta, who not only sang in
opera, but gave lessons in singing and the guitar, an instrument
hitherto almost unknown in this country.
‘Famossissimo maestro, di ghitarra,
Qual Orfeo in suonar, ognun il narra!’
Guitar-playing became a perfect mania among the fine ladies and
gentlemen at Court, ‘the King’s relish for that instrument,’ says De
Grammont, ‘helping to bring it into vogue, and the guitar (whether for
show or use) was now as necessary an appendage to a lady’s toilet-table
as her rouge or patch-box. In fact, there was a universal strumming of
the whole _guitarrery_ at Court.’ Lord Arran, a younger son of the Duke
of Ormonde, and his sister were amongst the greatest proficients;
indeed, Lady Chesterfield was as much admired for her musical talent as
for her undoubted beauty, and it was whispered her lord was very jealous
of the Duke of York’s evident appreciation of both these attractions.
Tom Killigrew’s popularity with the King increased daily, and there was
a report that his Majesty intended to revive the disused office of Court
Jester in the person of his favourite. We believe such an _officer_ had
been attached to his father’s household, but the post could only have
been nominal. An old writer thus describes the duties of a Court Jester,
‘A witty and jocose person kept by princes, to inform them of their
faults, and those of other people.’ We scarcely give Charles the Second
credit for such a motive in his election. Pepys alludes to the
circumstance in these words, ‘Tom Killigrew has a fee out of the
Wardrobe for Cap and Bells as King’s Jester, and may tease and rule
anybody, the greatest person, without offence, in privilege of his
place.’ Of this privilege Tom took advantage, sometimes in a good cause,
for with all their faults and failings, both he and his kindred spirit,
Nell Gwynne, regretted the bad odour into which Charles had fallen
through his neglect of public affairs, and Nell often admonished her
royal lover on the subject. One day the two friends hatched a small
plot. Says Nelly, ‘I have been just listening to the complaints of one
of the Court Lords, of Charles’s neglect of all duty, and how that he
has quite forgotten the existence of such a thing as a Cabinet Council,
upon which I bet his Lordship £100 that the King should attend the very
next. He sneered, but accepted the wager.’ Now we do not know if Nelly
promised her accomplice to go halves, but we do know that that evening,
when the King was in Madam Gwynne’s apartments, the door flew open, and
in burst Tom, disguised as a pilgrim. The King swore at him, and asked
if he had not heard the royal command that he should not be disturbed.
‘Oh yes, sire,’ was the reply, ‘but I was obliged to come and take leave
of your Majesty before my departure.’
‘Why, where the —— are you going, and what does this absurd masquerading
mean?’
‘I am starting this very moment for hell.’
‘Already,’ sneered the King, ‘and on what errand?’
‘To beg and pray of the devil to lend me Oliver Cromwell, if for ever so
short a time, to attend to the affairs of the country, as his successor
spends all his time in pleasure.’
The Jester was forgiven, and Nelly won her wager.
Another time Charles taxed his fool with telling everybody that the King
was suffering from torturing pains in the nose, and asked the meaning of
such a senseless report. ‘I crave your Majesty’s pardon,’ says Tom, ‘I
knew you had been led by the nose for so many years, that I felt sure it
must have become tender and painful.’
But the Jester occasionally carried the jest too far; there was a play
called ‘The Silent Woman,’ given in London about this time, wherein
appeared the character of Tom Otter, a henpecked husband, a reputation
which the Duke of York enjoyed at Court. One night Charles said, ‘I will
go no more abroad with Tom Otter and his wife.’ Now the courtiers well
knew that when the King made any slighting allusion to his brother, they
were expected to be tickled, so there was a general roar. The Jester
alone looked solemn. ‘I wonder,’ said he, ‘which is best, to play Tom
Otter to your wife or to your mistress?’—a sally which made Charles very
angry, for he felt the reference was made to Lady Castlemaine, of whom
the whole world knew he stood greatly in awe.
Another evening Tom made a comic onslaught on Lord Rochester, and that
nobleman, actuated perhaps by _jalousie de métier_, was so enraged that
he dealt the Jester a swinging box on the ear, unmindful of the royal
presence, and threw the whole Court circle into confusion.
Death alone could put an end to poor Tom’s fooling. He died at his post
at Whitehall in 1682-3, and then ‘where were his gibes, his gambols, his
flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar? Alas!
poor Yorick.’
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No. 43. MISTRESS HERBERT.
_Elizabethan dress. Ruff. Jewelled hat. Auburn hair._
Inscription—‘_Richard
Herbert of Blackhall’s wife, being daughter to Newport of Arcole_.’
DIED 1627.
BY ZUCCHERO.