A GREAT HOUSE IN HISTORY

BOOKS OF THE DAY

By CHRISTOPHER HOBHOUSE

THIS is a sumptuous and fascinating book. There can be no more satisfying way of writing history than to weave it round the fabric of a great house, and to trace the impact of diverse personalities in changing times upon a single place. Welbeck itself is immensely rich in historical material ; and Professor Turberville is a writer whose skill, authority, and discrimination fit him ideally for his task. In this book we are brought really close to the details of the past, and are able to see the great families of the Midlands in work and relaxation, in ambition and retreat, busy with match-making and litigation, making debts and paying them, planting and felling, creating and destroying the fortunes of their houses. It is a series of related biographies—a feast of history in which the courses are many, satisfying, and well matched.

Professor Turberville starts off the meal with an admirable cocktail in his short and lively account of the career of Richard Whalley, who obtained the grant of Welbeck Abbey in 1539. Till then it had been a Premonstratensian monastery. Whalley was a specimen of the Tudor adventurer, a grasping opportunist, whose fall was as sudden as his rise. In the scramble for monastic properties, he obtained much else besides Welbeck ; but a few years later he found himself in the Tower. Soon after his death, Welbeck passed into the hands of the families of Talbot and Cavendish, whose fortunes bad been inextricably joined together by the scheming of that extraordinary woman, Bess of Hardwick.

It is a pity that Bess of Hardwick enters only indirectly into the history of Welbeck. • Her ruling passions were the acquisition of land and the building of enormous houses. Her life is neatly, if inaccurately, summed up in some lines of Horace Walpole : " Four times the nuptial bed she -warmed,

And every time so well performed

That when death spoiled each husband's billing, He left the widow every shilling.

Sad was the dame, but not dejected ; Five stately mansions she erected . . .

and so forth. Hardwic4c she had inherited on her own account Her first three husbands, a Mr. Barlow, Sir William Cavendish, and Sir William St. Loe, left her the richer by a number of properties including Chatsworth. Her fourth husband was the Earl of Shrewsbury, the greatest owner of lands and castles in the kingdom. In order to make sure of these, she would not marry him herself until two of his children by his first wife had been betrothed to two of her children by Sir William Cavendish.

The outcome of this transaction was satisfactory beyond all expeetation. ' Shrewsbury's " billing " was brought to an end by the intrusion of Mary Queen of Scots, who was landed on him as an unwanted and unwilling gueit for 1 space of fifteen years. The terrible Countess accused her husband of taking advantage of his position as Mary's -Custodian ; and their marriage petered out in lawsuits and recriminations. But when Shrewsbury died, the whole gigantic patrimony fell to be divided, pretty much as the widow pleased, between three

sons and a devoted son-in-law. The eldest Cavendish, one Henry, had been so bold as to stand up for his step-father against his mother ; he got Tutbury, the least of the places. William Cavendish, his mother's favourite, got Chatsworth, Hardwick, and the nucleus of the present Devonshire estates.

Charles Cavendish, the youngest, was provided for by the acquisition of Welbeck and the exquisite castle of Bolsover. He married a Baroness Ogle, who brought him large Northumbrian properties, and begat the first Duke of Newcastle.

This Newcastle is the subject of one of the strangest and

A History of Welbeek Abbey and Its Owners. Vol. I, 1539- 1755. By A. S. Turberville. (Faber and Faber. 255.) • .

most effective biographies in the language. He was a splendid figure in his time, the Lord Lieutenant of Nottingham and Derby, the governor of Charles II as Prince of Wales, and distinguished above all as the greatest horseman of his age. Welbeck seems to have inspired its owners with a glorious prodigality. Newcastle was magnificent as a builder, as a patron of Sir Anthony van Dyck, as a giver of feasts and entertainments. He severely taxed a rent-roll of £2o,000 a year. In the Civil War he raised the devoted regiment of White- coats, and showed himself a popular but unsuccessful general. Exile and confiscation set him back, according to his wife's account, by nearly a million pounds. For sixteen years after the Restoration he lived a quiet and comparatively economical life, training his famous horses in their " voLtoes, curvets and balotades," writing an occasional play, and accepting fulsome dedications. His wife was the " mad Madge of Newcastle," who is remembered for her life of the Duke, and for Pepys' comments on her " antick dress." Her nineteen plays and het crazy philosophical works are luckily forgotten.

The second Duke was a nonentity, whose only importance was that he lost the city of York for James II. Welbeck passed to his son-in-laiv, John Holies, Lord Clare, in whom the Dukedom was revived. He was the richest man in England in his day, and played a small part in the reign of Queen Anne as a moderate Whig. Again there was no male heir, and Holies' will was so contrived as to divide the pro- perties between his daughter and his nephews. There followed a,n outburst of litigation, the upshot of which was an Act of 'Parliament by which the bulk of the prOper. ty went to Them' as Pelban, the future Duke of Newcastle by yet another creation, who had not a drop of Cavendish blood in his veins. But I3olover and Welbeck were saved by the daughter, who had married the second Earl of OXford..

.This young Lord Oxford was the son, of Robert Harley, the friend of Swift and Lord Treasurer under Queen Anne, one of the most enigmatic figures in political history.. ,Though ten volumes of his papers have been printed, Professor 'Turber- vile tells us that the bulk has not been, touched. As thp father of an owner, of Welbeck, Lord. Treasurer Harley only touches the fringe of the present subject, and Professor Turberl ville's references are brief but tantalising. The.son was no politician. His life and fortune, were devoted to increasing ,hi,s father's collection of books and manuscripts. He maintained his father's literary friendships, with Swift, with Pope, fend, particularly with Matthew Prior. But his great generosity and his bibliomania outstripped his fortune. He was forced, to sell Wimpole, his father's seat; after which he took to.drink and died.

For the third time Welbeck passed through the female line. Lady Oxford lived on till 1755, an enterprising widow, venting an inherited passion for building in the construction of Gothic halls and vestibules.. Her only child was that ".noble, lovely, little Peggy," to whom Prior addressed his " first Epistle." She was married in 1734 to William Bentinck, the second Duke of Portland ; and so it was that Welbeck came into its present hands, and put aside entirely its Tory associations of the seventeenth century. At this stage in the story, Professor Turberville breaks off, leaving the reader to anticipate the advent of George III, Mrs: Delany, and Edmund Burke. Such vicissitudes and contrasts are denied to the simple biographer : indeed there can be few historians who have ever had such an abundance of material put at their disposal in so convenient a compass. Every reader, serious or casual, will feel .a sense of gratitude to the Duke of Portland for having chosen so skilled a hand as Professor TUrbetTllits for such an opportunity.