THE CAVENDLSHES.
IATE are among a new order of magnates. The House of Cavendish does not belong to the rcll of Norman nobles, conquered no acre of soil, sent no leader to the Crusades, lost no member during the Wars of the Roses, and, though of high historic importance, is as a great house not old. It rose above the surface during that re-distribution of England popularly known as the dissolution of the monasteries, the greatest social event between the Conquest and the Reform Bill ; but its real founder was a woman, Elizabeth Hardwick, who devoted a long life, enduring beauty, matchless wit, and a heart above or below most scruples, to the aggrandizement of the Cavendishes. The first man of the race who can be admitted to have risen above the mass was William Cavendish, who, in the reign of Henry VIII., obtained an appoint- ment in the Royal Exchequer. He was the second son of Thomas Cavendish, of Cavendish-Overhall, in Suffolk, a well-to-do though undistinguished squire. Genealogists will have it that Thomas was the lineal descendant of Sir John Cavendish, Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of Edward UI., who obtained the lordship of Cavendish-Overhall by his marriage with the heiress of John de Odyngseles ; and that the Cavendishes of Grimston Hall, in Suffolk, who produced the greatest man oi the name, Elizabeth's illustrious navigator, were of the same stock, but -the pedigree must be pronounced untenable. So must the pleasing story that it was the first of the House who was gentleman usher to Wolsey, who wrote his life, devoted him- self to the Cardinal in his misfortunes, and was, therefore, the honoured friend of Henry VIII. Great houses absorb the achievements of all who bear their name, but this man was George, elder brother of the founder, and the repute of mention by Shakes- peare and aid in the defeat of the Armada must be struck from the family claims. All that is certain is that William Cavendish, a gentleman owning some small lands in Suffolk, was in the year of the Cardinal's death one of the commissioners fur taking the " surrenders" of several religious houses, and in 1539 was ap- pointed one of the auditors of the Court of Augmentation—a tribunal established to perform a task which at that time puzzled all English statesmen, viz., so to "augment" the King's revenue that he might be able to put England in a condition of decent defence. In those days the ox who trod out the corn was not muzzled, and on the 26th of February, 1540, little more than three hundred years ago, William Cavendish received a royal grant of the lordships and manors of Northawe, Cuffeley, and Chyldewicke, in Hertfordshire, all abbey property. Six years after he was knighted and appointed Treasurer of the Chamber to the King, "a place of great trust and honour," and no coLtemptible pickings in the way of small abbeys, out of the way rectories, and other trifles then going pretty freely, sometimes in grants; more often in sales forced on with ruinous speed. The Exchequer was always selling, and the officials naturally knew well where the fat morsels lay. So well did William Cavendish employ his opportuni- ties, that in the last year of Edward VI, he received a royal grant of "divers lands belonging to several dissolved priories and abbeys in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Dorsetshire, Corn- wall, Kent, and Essex," in exchange for his manors at Northawe in Hertfordshire, Northawberry in Lincolnshire, the site of the priory of Cardigan, and other lands in Cornwall and other counties, and so blossomed from a minor official into a very considerable landholder. This was pretty well for one generation, but fortune had fallen in love with the Cavendish, who seems to have had very indistinct ideas of any other worship ; for he con- tinued to hold under .Mary the office which he had held under Henry and Edward VI. Two wives had died leaving no male issue, when he wooed Mistress Barley, widow of Alexander Barley, of Barley, Derbyshire, the Elizabeth Hardwick of whom we have already made mention. She was the daughter and (after her brother's death) the heiress of John Hardwick, of Hardwick, Derbyshire, and had been married at fourteen, and her hus- band, who died soon after, bequeathed her his whole estate. It is probable that she warmly loved her second choice, for during her long career the single object which lay close to the heart of this extraordinary woman was to exalt the name and wealth of the Cavendishes. Her first command, which like every other she ever issued in life was at once obeyed, was to sell all the southern estates, and aggregate the Cavendish property round her ancestral farms. Among the consequent purchases was the manor of Chatsworth, then in the possession of the Agard family, but formerly the seat of the Leeches, of Leech, who had built there a decent mansion and laid out a park. Lady Cavendish, however, foresaw her destinies, and persuaded her husband to pull down the hall and build what Camden calls a "spacious elegant house," a quadrangular affair with turrets, bearing little resemblance to the existing palace. Sir William did not live to finish it, dying in 1557; but his widow did, as she did everything else which might tend to Cavendish advantage. There were three sons of the marriage and three daughters ; but Sir William Cavendish, like Alexander Barley, left everything to his widow, who with three inheritances was naturally courted by many suitors. After a curious list of proposals she found the con- nection she wanted, Sir William St. Loe, of Tormarton, in Gloucestershire, owner of several fair lordships. She insisted, however, on her price, and in the marriage articles a clause was inserted by which, in default of more children, all the lordships and manors of St. Loo passed from his race to the children of William Cavendish, to the exclusion of St. I.oe's brothers and his own daughters by a previous marriage, perhaps the coolest stipulation ever made even by a widow. This husband, too, died, and the widow, still beautiful and with a tongue which must have been of almost magical power, captivated the greatest
subject then in the realm, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. She made excellent terms with him, too, for besides a great join-
ture—heaped up always for Cavendishes—he consented to a triple
union of the families. His son and heir Gilbert was bidden to marry Mary Cavendish, youngest daughter of Sir William, while Henry Cavendish, eldest son, married Lady Grace Talbot, the Earl's youngest daughter. The Countess married her other two daughters equally well—the eldest, Frances Cavendish, to Sir Henry Pierrepont, of Ilolme-Pierrepont, Notts, by whom she bore the ancestors of the Earls and Dukes of Kingston, and (through a female), of the Earls Manvers, who at present possess the Pierre- pont property ; her second daughter, Elizabeth, she contrived to marry into the royal family, viz., to Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, younger brother of the unfortunate Henry Lord Darnley, King of Scotland, and Elizabeth Cavendish became by him the mother of the equally unfortunate Lady Arabella Stuart. This rela- tionship, as we shall see, gained the Chataworth Cavendishes their step to the Peerage. The Countess of Shrewsbury resided occasionally at Chatsworth during her union with her fourth husband, and the Earl, having been entrusted with the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots, the hall "acquired a more than common interest," as having been one of the prisons of that Princess.
The Countess survived her fourth husband also, and lived in great splendour for many years on her rich jointures. Besides Chataworth, she built two other houses in Derbyshire, Oldcotes and Hardwick, leaving at the latter place her old family mansion standing near the new edifice, and transmitting them all three to her second and favourite son, William Cavendish, who, we may mention, inherited all his elder brother's fortune (on his early death), and stood lord of the greater portion of the vast accumulations carved by his father from abbey lands, and by his mother from the estates of every family with which four wealthy marriageshad brought her in contact. Among the exceptions was Welbeck Abbey, be- queathed with other estates by the mother to her third son, Charles. He married, as his second wife, Catherine, daughter and heiress of Cuthbert, Lord Ogle, of Ogle Castle, Northumberland, and hence- forward the Cavendish stem splits into two mighty branches, the Chatsworth, or elder Cavendishes, masters of endless abbey and other property, and the Welbeek, or younger Cavendishes, possessors of the lordships accumulated by the extinct house of Ogle. Such a rise from a petty estate in Suffolk effected in one life-time is almost without a precedent even in a country where, from the Conqu?st to the death of William III., the personal favour of the Sovereign could in a day maim a gentleman an immensely wealthy peer.
We follow the Welbeck branch first. The Ogle heiress was, on the death of her father and husband, declared by letters patent Baroness of Ogle, and her eldest surviving son, William Cavendish, inherited her title, the vast Ogle and part of the Cavendish estates, and was created successively Baron Cavendish of Bolsover, Derbyshire, Viscount Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, Earl of Ogle, Earl, Marquis, and Duke of Newea.stle-upon-Tyne. The two last of these dignities were bestowed upon him in reward for magnificent services to the Stuarts. Like all the Cavendishes for generations, he was a man of a large but self-indulgent nature, indolent and voluptuous, with a certain greatness of soul which nothing but severe political pressure, "stormy times," in other words, could bring out of him. By his great power and influence in the North —his property there affording him a gallant regiment of tenants, the renowned Whitecoats- and his steady principles, he managed to overbalance the Parliamentary interest there ; and, on the whole (though with great changes of fortune), he kept the advantage over the Fair- faxes till the advance of the Scotch army in 1644 drove him to the shelter of York walls, whence be emerged (against his will) with Prince Rupert to encounter the defeat at Marston which the latter had brought on by his obstinate rashness. After the battle the Marquis took shipping at Hull and returned to the Continent, being unable, as he himself said, to encounter the laughter of the courtiers at his discomfiture. Soon after his arrival at Paris he fell in love with, and married as his second wife, Margaret Lucas, one of Queen Henrietta's maids of honour, daughter of Thomas Lucas, of St. John's, near Colchester, and sister of the Sir Charles Lucas shot by Fairfax after the capture of that town in 1648. This is the well-known blue-stocking, and most eccentric and learned Duchess of Newcastle, who was so much admired in her own day and has been so much ridiculed since. Whether she were a wise person or not, she was certainly a devoted and admiring wife, as her writings testify. His estate being under sequestration he was put to great straits in living till the death of his younger brother Sir Charles, a mathematician of the highest class, described by Clarendon as a magnificent soul in a frail body, brought him an income of 4,200/ a year, on which he lived till the Restoration. Sir Charles had fortunately been induced to compound with the Parliamentarians, and had bought in as much of his brother's confiscated estates as he could lay his hands on, preserving, for example, Welbeck and Bolsover. On the return of the elder to England, however, he found his means sadly crip- pled, and the statement of his position will illustrate better than entire histories the position to which the younger Cavendishes had risen, and the sacrifices entailed by the Civil War on a great English lauded proprietor.
Of eight parks that he possessed before the Civil War all but Welbeck were destroyed. Clipston Park, seven miles in com- pass, and filled with magnificent trees, estimated at 20,000/., in which he had chiefly delighted, was utterly defaced, not a tree being left standing. He had still, however, remaining in Notts 6,229/. per annum ; in Lincolnshire, 100/. per annum; in Derbyshire, 6,1281. per annum; in Staffordshire, 2,349/. per annum ; in Gloucestershire, 1,581/. per annum ; in Somerset- shire, 1,3031. per annum ; in Yorkshire, 1,700/. per annum ; in Northumberland, the Baronies of Bothal, Ogle, and Hepple, 3,000/. per annum ; total, 22,390/. per annum. His losses his wife com- putes at 941,3001., of which she attributes 403,0001., without inte- rest, to the Civil War; lands lost, 2,0001. per annum; and lost in reversion, 3,2001.; and he sold Lands to pay his debts to the value of 56,000/. His woods cut down she estimates at 45,000/. As a compensation for his losses he asked and obtained a step in the Peerage, and was accordingly, in 1664, made Duke of Newcastle. He died in December, 1676, and was succeeded by his son Henry (his eldest son Charles, LordMansfield, having died before him) who adhered firmly to the Stuart family—was greatly trusted and admired by James II., opposed the Revolution, and refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, retired from public business, and died at Welbeck in 1691. Henry's four sons preceded him to the tomb, and he left five coheiresses, but the bulk of the Newcastle property passed eventually through one of them to the Holies family ; thence by a second heiress to Harley, Earl of Oxford, and thence by a third heiress to the Bentincks, Dukes of Portland, who now enjoy it. The younger branch was extinct. It had lasted but two generations, the almost regal Duke whose opposition to a new dynasty was a great question of State being only the great- grandson of William Cavendish, clerk in the Exchequer, and manager of the Tudor confiscations. The family had done their work in the world, and their eagerness to accumulate was only equalled by the splendid decision with which they staked their much desired wealth on behalf of the cause which, like most of the new noblesse, they held to be that of duty.
The elder, or Chatsworth branch, however, remained still in prosperous existence. William Cavendish, son of the Sequestra- tor, after the ordinary career of a great country gentleman during the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, serving as sheriff and sitting in Parliament, was in 1604 created by James (through Arabella Stuart's influence), Baron Cavendish of Hardwick. He had caught the passion of the day for geo- graphical adventure, was one of the first "adventurers" who settled a colony and plantation in Virginia, and on the discovery of Bermuda was one of the knot of nobles to whom the King granted the island. They settled and provisioned it in 1612,. and in memory of the fact one of the eight counties of Bermuda still bears the name of Cavendish. In 1618 he was created Earl of Devonshire, and died at Hardwick in 1625, at the age of seventy-five. His son William survived him only three years. He was a man notorious for his accomplishments, his dissoluteness, and his half insane expenditure. The Ring married him to Christian, the daughter of his Scotch favourite, Edward Lord Bruce of Kinloss—his younger brother is ancestor of the present Governor-General of India—taking that means of, reward- ing Lord Bruce by marrying him into an already great family.. He gave the bride himself 10,000/. on the wedding, and on the father of the bridegroom making a second marriage, enjoined him not on that account to diminish the inheritance which he would leave to his eldest son. Before his father's death, however, Lord Cavendish had already contracted a large debt, and when his fortunes were by that eve it reinstated he launched out into still larger expenses, making his house more like a palace than the dwelling of a subject. He was, however, more than a spendthrift and a roue. Hobbes had been his tutor, he had travelled, he knew European languages so well that he was used as courtly interpreter to foreign ambassadors, and he was a magnificent patron of 1:terature and the fine arts. His vices have been obscured by the praises heaped upon him in return, but he nearly undid all the efforts of the Sequestrator and Elizabeth Hardwick. At his death his affairs seemed in hopeless confusion, a vast and increasing debt and upwards of thirty law-suits making up the inheritance. For the second time, however, a woman built up the House. His widow Christian was guardian of the minor, and she calmly devoted her life to the unravelling of the skein. She had a jointure of 5,000 a year, a clear head, a fascinating tongue, and that incapacity of blundering in matters pecuniary which is included in Scotch descent. With this, and still more with her own woman's wit, perseverance, and fascination of manner, she fought successfully all the law-suite against powerful adversaries, and brought them to an end in moderate time, so that King Charles said to her in astonishment,. "Madam: you have all my judges at your disposal." Some of the debts she liquidated by the sale of some estates disentailed by her husband by Act of Parliament (a rare act of grace in those days), the rest she fairly paid off by mere prudent management of the property, and she handed over to her son his inheritance scarcely impaired by his father's mad extravagance. When her son came of age she retired to her seat, Leicester Abbey, and resided there till the Civil War broke out, remaining, we may add, the providence of the family. The Earl, under her advice, fluag in his lot, like his great cousin of Newcastle, with the King, voted for the King at West- minster to the last minute, obeyed his summons to York, and to the Anti-Parliament at Oxford, and then ran away to the Continent. The motive for this act will never now be explained, but it seems possible that Christian had made the blunder of all women of her kind, and governed her son till his manliness
was somewhat questionable. She saved him again, however. Parlia- ment admitted him to composition, and on her advice he overcame his obstinacy, came to terms, returned to England, and lived in strict retirement till the Restoration, dying a highly respectable nonentity in 1684. His younger brother, Charles, had more of his mother's spirit. The Templars chose him captain of the body- guard they raised for the King, he distinguished himself at Edge- hill, took Grantham and Burton-on-Trent by storm, became his cousin Newcastle's lieutenant-general of horse, and seems to have had in him all the qualities of a great and successful com- mander. His destiny, however, crowed Cromwell's, and instantly snapped. Cromwell met him near Gainsborough, broke his force, and drove him into a quagmire, where he was slain by the famous Captain Berry (Baxter's friend), with "a thrust under the short ribs." Thirty years alter his mother ordered his body to be ex- humed, that it might lie next hers, and all Cavalier England mourned loudly for the perfect Cavalier.
By 1664, then, the Cavendishes, who but began to grow in 1530, had advanced thus far. They had earned a dukedom and earldom, had contributed three great captains to the royal cause, and were collectively, without exception, the richest landed proprietors in Great Britain. In 1691 only one branch remained, but that still held the earldom, all the Sequestrator had seized, and most of all his wife had gathered so patiently, and had commenced with William, fourth Earl, a new and far brighter career.
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