CRASH'S ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE. *
Tam second volume exhibits a considerable improvement upon its pre- decessor. The persons noticed are less hacknied both in history and biography than Leicester, Essex, and Carr Earl of Rochester; but most of them have figured in history sufficiently to excite the reader's curiosity to know more of them. There is also greater closeness and unity in the subjects. The Lettice Knollys, who occupied so much of the first volume, though remarkable herself, and remarkable in her con- nexions and descendants, had such numbers of the latter that the ramifi- cation induced a confusion of persons and subjects, from which the pre- sent volume is freer. The style, too, is better—not pitched in so high a key.
Some of the persons in this volume are properly historical,—as Mar- garet Tudor Queen of Scotland, eldest daughter of Henry the Seventh ; and her younger sister, Mary, wedded to Louis the Twelfth of France. Others are grouped formally together,—as the kindred of Anne Boleyn, and the sisters of Lady Jane Grey. In the case of the old Pereies, the story of a member of the family is made a means of introducing the his- tory of the race. The life and misfortunes of Lady Arabella Stuart have been told to the world both in real and fictitious narratives ; but Mr. Craik treats the story in a more sensible manner, though somewhat at the expense of the "romance." The notices of the last Lord Cobham and the last Lord Grey of Wilton, the two noblemen who were implicated with Raleigh in the alleged conspiracies of the Bye and the Main, are not strictly romance ; but there is some interest in the characters of the men, still more in their sad reverse of fortune and the extinction of their race; • for though neither was properly speaking the last of his family, or the last lord of "that ilk," the old titles may be held to have perished, and the representatives of these ancient barons are collateral descendants. The last of the Ruthvens, the younger brother of the heroes of the Gowrie conspiracy, is as striking and more touching. A man of merit and lite- rature, Patrick Ruthven wasted his best years in the Tower, and in age was obliged to gain his bread—and not too much of that—by turning" the studies of his prison to account. He was released from the Tower in 1619, and allowed a small pension by King James, which it is said was continued till the breaking out of the civil war, and then the descendant of those who had bearded and imprisoned sovereigns subsisted as a medi- cal practitioner. "He walks the streets," says the last notice of him, "poor, but well experienced in chemical physic, and in other parts of learning."
It may seem trifling to comment upon the terms of a title, but words are important when they divert or mislead the attention, and such is the case with Mr. Craik's "Romance of the Peerage." In neither of his volumes is there much of what is romantic. The idea, however, of pro- ducing romance, has not only led Mr. Craik to labour for an unat- tainable object, but diverted his mind from the true nature of his ma- terials. The first element of interest his subjects present is that on which the attraction of epic or dramatic poetry and history itself pri- marily depends—mutability—change of fortune—great reverses, great advances, or both combined. The next element is social and historical: from their necessary engagement in public affairs in former times, the for- tunes of the most conspicuous amongst the Peerage throw a very strong light upon the power and practice of the government, the state and opinions of society, the sufferings which circumstances induced or the conduct they enforced upon men. Another element seems to owe its interest to rarity—crimes or actions of a strange or mysterious character —that which is rare to our experience, or which we cannot penetrate. And though a good deal that has been reported of the order in all times is probably exaggerated, enough of the bad remains related on good authority to form a large portion of the curiosities of the Peerage. So powerful is the true character of the materials, that it overpowers the idea of romance, and sometimes contradicts it as we get into the reality. For example, the case of Lady Arabella Stuart at first looks exceedingly promising. A lady of the blood royal making a secret love-match, and cruelly imprisoned till her death for indulging her affections towards a young nobleman with as much of royalty in his veins as in her own, seems just the subject for a romance. On a closer view, the lady turns Out to be five-and-thirty, the swain some dozen years younger; while, according to his own confession, a main object in the match was to ad- vance his fortunes, he being a younger brother; and the wooing was settled at a first meeting. It is true, Lady Arabella's age was not so advanced but that she might feel a deep passion, though scarcely BO suddenly, and for a mere youth ; but she was old enough to know the restraint which her relation to the crown imposed upon her marriage, with the inevitable consequences in that age of defying power; and both parties acted throughout in opposition to warning. Neither was she neglected by her royal kinsman, James : nor does her previous life seem to have been of the most romantic turn.
"For some years we find her in great favour, and one of the principal channels by which solicitations were made to the King. A notion of her position may be gathered from what one of his Court correspondents writes from Greenwich to the Earl of Shrewsbury, in April 1605. Mr. Candish (that is, William Cavendish, her mother's eldest surviving brother) is at London; comes to the Court, and waits hard on my Lady Arabella for his barony: but I am confidently assured 4 The Romance of the Peerage; or Curiosities of Family History. By George Lam Craik. Volume II. Published by Chapman and Hall. that be will not prevail, for I understand that my Lady Arabella is nothing for- ward in his business, although we be certainly informed that my lady bath a pro- mise of the King for one of her uncles to be a baron ; but it is not likely to be Mr. William, for he is very sparing in his gratuity, as I hear,—would be glad it were done, but would be sorry to part with anything for the doing of it. . . . His chief solicitor to my Lady Arabella is Sir William Begot.' But mere solici- tation, this letter-writer is of opinion, would not do. '1 was with Mr. Candish; he goes on, 'at my Lady Arabella's chamber; and he entreated me to speak to my Lady Bedford to further him, and to solicit my Lady Arabella in his behalf; but spoke nothing of anything that might move her to spend her breath for him,
so that, by the grace of God, he is likely to come good speed.' * • •
"In July 1608, it was proposed that a yearly tax of half-a-crown should be ex- acted from all the innkeepers and master ostlers in the kingdom, and that she should have the collecting of it by herself or her deputies, and be paid by a fifth of its amount. A notice of her in one of Chamberlain's letters to Carleton, writ- ten in January of this year, would imply that she indulged in great show and expense. Describing a Court masque which was about to take place, he mentions the abundant display of jewels that was expected, when one lady, and she under the rank of a baroness, was said 'to be furnished for better than a hundred thou- sand pounds '; adding. 'And the Lady Arabella goes beyond her; and the Queen must not come behind.' Her profuse expenditure involved her in difficulties, and drove her to have recourse to some strange expedients. A few months after this, (in October 1608,) Chamberlain notices a report of a suit commenced in the Ex- chequer or some other court, for the recovery of certain lands on the astounding plea of the bastardy of Queen Elizabeth, one of the chief parties to which was said to be the Lady Arabella. 'If there be any such thing,' says Chamberlain with proper feeling, 'methinks the whole state should prevent and resent such an in- dignity.' Her ladyship, we may be sure, made nothing of this desperate attempt:, The name of Cobham has an interest from the supposed martyrdom of Lord Cobham as a Lollard, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, and from his having been (when Sir John Oldcastle) the original of "old Jack Falstaff." The last that bore the territorial title is the Lord Cobham who was implicated in Raleigh's plots, and whose cowardly confession mainly convicted his great leader. His closing years offered a sad contrast to his earlier splendour, and could have furnished moralists with a more striking instance of the mutability of fortune than some they have chosen. "Cobham's conviction, of course, stripped him of everything he possessed in the world. All that had descended to him from his long line of ancestors was forfeited to the Crown. He was kept in the Tower for many years; but he did not die a prisoner. When he had been quite forgotten by everybody, and was probably now a man well advanced in years, he was discharged, or allowed to walk out, as no longer worth detaining. If we may credit the common account, it would seem to have been rather a dismissal from a place of shelter than a re- storation to liberty. The liberty he acquired was such, in Francis Osborne's phrase, 'as only afforded him the choice of a place to starve in, all his land being formerly confiscate and begged." Myself,' continues Osborne, heard William Earl of Pembroke relate, with much regret towards hint, (though in his life his opposer in exasperating the old Queen against him in relation to a juvenile lapse, for which he was by her committed to the Fleet,) that he died, in a room ascend- , ed by a ladder, at a poor woman's house in the Minories, formerly his laundress, rather of hunger than any more natural disease.' Weldon, who calls Cobham 'a most silly lord,' and elsewhere describes him as but ons degree from a fool,' tells the same story, in his sourer or more envenomed style, with some variations or additional particulars. His death, he says, was base; 'for he died lousy for want of apparel and linen; and had starved, had not a trencher-scraper, some time his servant in Court, relieved him with scraps, in whose house he died ; being so poor a house as he was forced to creep up a ladder into a little hole to his chamber; which was a strange judgment, and unprecedented, that a man of seven thousand pounds per annum, and of a personal estate of thirty thousand pounds, of all which the King was cheated of what should [have] escheated to him, that he could not give him any maintenance, as in all cases the King doth, unless out of his own revenue of the Crown, which was the occasion of this lord's want; his wife, being very rich, would not give him the crumbs that fell from her table; and this was a just judgment of God on him.'"
Previous page
