The first duchess of Newcastle and her husband as figures in literary history

Preface

This book was first written as a doctor's thesis at Harvard, and it stands now in substantially its original form. Consequently I must make acknowledgments to many Cantabrigians who assisted me at various times in my efforts. For suggesting the subject credit belongs to Dr. James B. Munn, whose intimate acquaintance with the works of Elia gave me the hint that was ultimately developed into this work. While still in the thesis stage, it was greatly benefited by the advice of Professor Kittredge and Dr. Bernbaum ; since it has become a book Professor Neilson and Dr. Maynadier have united to improve it. The two latter have read the entire proof, assisted by Professor Bliss Perry, under whom the dissertation was written. To all these gentlemen I owe most extended and hearty thanks, but especially to Professor Perry for his tireless interest and sympathetic criticism, which have continued from the very beginning of my task to its present completion.

The chief difficulty thrown in my way was that several of the Duchess's volumes exist in only one copy on this side of the Atlantic, and discovering them has not always been an easy task. The search was profitable, however, and I wish here to express my gratitude to all those who had any share in it. Most of all I am indebted to Mr. Henry E. Huntington of New York City for permitting me to use his extraordinarily fine library. His collection of Margaret Cavendish's works, besides supplying several useful details, furnished me with the only available copies of The World's Olio and Natures Picture Drawn by Fancies Pencil. Mr. Huntington's viii THE FIRST DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

librarian, Mr. George Watson Cole, showed me unfailing consideration during my research, and Mr. George D. Smith of New York made possible this entire opportunity. A chance to examine the CCXI Sociable Letters I owe to the efficiency of the Arthur H. Clark Company of Cleveland and to the good services of Mr. John B. Dempsey of that city.

For various and sundry other favors in connection with preparing this study I am under obligations to Dr. John J. Parry, to Mr. Andrew Keogh, Librarian of Yale, to Mr. Richard W. Goulding, Librarian at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire,

and to Mr. George van Santvoord.

Introduction

Students of English literature know of Margaret Cavendish, first Duchess of Newcastle — if they know of her at all — as " a dear friend " of Charles Lamb's, frequently mentioned in the Essays of Elia. As we all love Lamb for himself, it is not unnatural that any person for whom he expresses admiration should be of some general interest, and the more one comes to learn of his " dear friend's " character and peculiarities, the more fascinating a study she proves to be. There can be no doubt that Margaret Cavendish is an unusual and engaging personality, whatever one may think of her as an authoress. Her thirteen volumes are various and varied, in subject matter as well as in artistic excellence ; she is at times stimulating and readable, more often, it must be admitted, verbose and tiresome. The worst feature of her work is its length, which proves discouraging to the uninitiated and exasperating to those who do peruse her books. Among the Duchess's many words, however, there may be discovered upon occasion much valuable and delightful matter.

Her most famous and important single work is the Life of William Cavendishe, which purports to be a historical biography of her husband and from one point of view lives up to this claim. As such, it has been frequently reprinted and edited, and in 1906 Professor C. H. Firth of Oxford published the definitive edition. Professor Firth's wide reading and vast knowledge in the Civil War period have enabled him to assemble many remote passages to illuminate the Duchess's work, so that little now remains to be done for the Life by historians. It is possible, however, to look at the biography more as literature than history, which is the attitude assumed in Chapter I of this book. So regarded, it appears to be an early species of "glory-story," in which the truth is so colored as to distort authentic facts, and hence it is perhaps not unjustifiable to class the work as an embryonic novel. Its authoress herself, no doubt, would have been profoundly outraged at such an idea, but in any case her book is literature and all discussion of Margaret Cavendish must inevitably have its beginning with this biography.

When one does begin to discuss the Life, he finds his interest not wholly devoted to the Duchess ; it is also decidedly intrigued by the protagonist, Newcastle himself. He becomes to the reader more than a mere puppet or figurehead ; he proves to be a very real flesh-and-blood man, a fine example of the Stuart aristocrat, the English Cavalier. Apart from the Life, Cavendish is interesting from a literary point of view. He too was an author; he wrote proclamations, treatises filled with political advice, books on horsemanship, and plays. He was also a patron of letters, as is shown by his literary productions ; three of the five plays in which the Duke had a share were largely written by his proteges, so that his position as a writer is inextricably entangled with his position as Maecenas. Chapter II attempts to cover both these subjects, and if some confusion results, it is because of the difficulty inherent in this web of cross-relationships. At all events Newcastle appreciated art and, though he only dabbled in it, he has a distinct position as patron and author — not to mention the fact that he furnished his wife with the material from which she built her masterpiece.

INTRODUCTION 3

The Duchess's works all have a place in literature apart from their intrinsic value, for Margaret Cavendish was one of the first Englishwomen to attain recognition as a writer. This in itself is no small claim to fame and is a sufficient reason for discussing her lesser books, which is done in Chapter III. As has been said, however, these volumes are for the most part extremely tedious, and because of this quality, coupled with their scarcity, they are little known to-day. Nevertheless, delving in them has its compensations, for it is of absorbing interest to see how one woman began written composition and how she continued it. Her works have no sources but her own imagination, and their influence is too nebulous to compute. Still the Duchess did write at a time when women were just entering the field of literature. Her enterprise may have encouraged more talented authoresses, and if her results are not tangible, that is no cause for denying them ; tradition often works more subtly than the eye of science can perceive.

The chief pleasure in perusing Margaret Cavendish's writings (both the Life and the minor works) is in seeing what light they cast upon the character of their author. What sort of person was this woman of whom Charles Lamb thought so highly, but who was so ridiculed by Horace Walpole and Sir Walter Scott .? Whence grew the Newcastle legend t The answer is to be found largely in the Duchess's own books, most of all in her True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life, where she recounts her life from the quiet home circle of the Lucas family through her probation as maid of honor to Henrietta Maria, until she at last found a safe harbor in her husband's arms. Here the truth may easily be reached and the Duchess's famous peculiarities may be analyzed and explained. Exaggeration and myth set aside, Margaret Lucas's heredity and environment account for even the most surprising occurrences of her life. When her history is considered step by step and its gradual growth is minutely observed, each specific act seems the inevitable outcome of all that has preceded it. The Duchess emerges from the test a fallible mortal like the rest of us, only a trifle more warped and lopsided than modern psychology tells us that we all are. In Chapter IV the course of her development has been traced in an effort to rationalize the eccentric figure which tradition has built up, and to substitute for it a more human personage, whom we may come to love and understand.

This book, then, is a sketch of the Duchess of Newcastle first, and only secondarily of her husband ; the Duke's life must be included in any account of his wife's career, and no literary study could ignore his accomplishments in authorship and the encouragement of authorship. Yet, just because this is a literary study, Margaret Cavendish must necessarily have a more prominent place in it than her lord, her right to future reputation resting, as it does fundamentally, upon the impor-" tance of her books. Even her strange personality depends upon her life as an authoress, and the notoriety which she has achieved has been gained in works of art, not in chronicles of fact. It is the imaginative mind which is fascinated by the Duchess's inconsistencies, just as the Duke appeals to the more practical historians. Both interests have their place, and it would be the part of rashness to rate either above the other. Up to this time Newcastle has been treated merely with a cold regard to facts ; his wife has been lauded or condemned with a total lack of reasonable moderation. The present book is an effort to consider their artistic significance sanely and without bias.

Chapter I The Life Of William Cavendishe I

If William and Margaret Cavendish, first Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, deserve any place in the history of literature, their first claim rests on the wife's biography of her husband. The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince, William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess and Earl of Newcastle, Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, His Wife was printed in London by A. Maxwell in 1667. The following year appeared a Latin translation by Walter Charleton, later to be known as President of the College of Physicians ; and a second English edition in 1675 bears witness to the volume's immediate popularity. That it has maintained an audience to our own day is shown by frequent reprintings, the last and best-edited by C. H. Firth (1906).^ Indeed, it has always been regarded by historians as the chief document relating to Newcastle's by no means insignificant part in the Civil War. It was written, too, in a period when fictitious material was beginning to masquerade as veracious record, and it may therefore be considered as a literary product as well as an authentic history. With whatever

1 The other modern reprints are : 1872, ed. M. A. Lower; 1886, ed. C. H. Firth; 1903, The Cavalier in Exile, Newnes' Pocket Classics. An edition in Everyman's Library (No. 722) came out in November, 1915. Hazlitt's Handbook to the Poptilar, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, 1867, p. 416, says, "His life was also written by W. Pomfret," but I can find no further trace of such a work.

genre we choose to classify it, however, critical opinions have, for the most part, been extremely favorable to this work. A single dissenting note is struck the very year following its publication, by Samuel Pepys on March i8, 1667- 1668 : '" Stayed at home, reading the ridiculous History of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shews her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him." But the diarist had already made up his mind about the Duchess on extraneous evidence, nor is he to be trusted implicitly as a critic of literary matters. Even the unfriendly Horace Walpole admits that it is " amusing to hear her sometimes compare her lord to Julius Caesar, and oftener to acquaint you with such anecdotes, as in what sort of coach he went to Amsterdam." ^

Yet at the other end of the scale is to be found the most extravagant adulation. Perhaps the authoress's rank had its share in producing such a letter as that addressed to her by the University of Cambridge, in which it is asserted that " hereafter, if generous and highborn men shall search our library for a model of a most accomplished general, they shall find it expressed to the life, not in Xenophon's Cyrus, but in the Duchess of Newcastle's William." ^ Again in 1691, after the death of both Duke and Duchess had removed any such artificial stimulus, Gerard Langbaine in his Account of the English Dramatick Poets refers his readers to the life of the Duke, "already writ in Latin and English, by the Hand of his Incomparable Dutchess ; who during his Lifetime, describ'd all his Glorious Actions, in a stile so Noble and Masculine, that she seems to have antedated his Apotheosis." ^ And much nearer our own day the gentle Elia held that "no

^ A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, ed. Park, 1806, III, 189-190. ^ Letters and Poems in Honour of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, 1676. • P. 386.

casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe such a jewel." ^ The consensus of opinion has evidently approved this biography. Wherein lie the causes of its popularity and its real value ?

The First Book deals with William Cavendish's history up to his flight from England after Marston Moor, the material being derived at first hand from the Duke himself or, even more often, from his secretary, John Rolleston.^ The authoress spares us a long account of her hero's pedigree and is content with furnishing a background for his birth and upbringing : his father was Sir Charles Cavendish, youngest son to Sir William of the same name ; his mother Catharine, the second daughter of Cuthbert, Lord Ogle. By the death of an older brother in infancy, he was left heir to the family title and estate. The Duchess with a self-confessed^ neglect of dates does not state the year of her Lord's birth, but Cokayne's Complete Peerage says that he was baptized on December 16, I593> ^t Handsworth, and Anthony a Wood confirms it.* In a letter to Secretary Nicholas from Antwerp, April 2, 1659, Cavendish himself writes, " For age I am in less than a year of you,"^ and as Nicholas was born on April 4, 1593, the passage is added proof for a later date in that year. All this evidence is needed, for Collins in his Historical Collections^ put it as 1592, which the usually reliable Firth accepts, perhaps misunderstanding "aetatis suae 84" on Newcastle's tomb. This same error is repeated in the Dictionary of National

1 " Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading" in Essays of Elia, Boston, i860, p. 275.

2 " To his Grace, the Duke of Newcastle," dedication to the Life of William Cavendish, ed. Firth, 1906, p. xxv.

* " The Preface," Firth, p. xlv. The dates given throughout are from other sources.

* The article on Walter Charleton in Athence Oxonienses, Vol. IV, Col. 756. ^ Egerton Mss., 536, f. 336, in Firth, p. 207.

Biography y whence it has become generally prevalent, — but it is an error none the less.

William and his younger brother Charles spent much of their boyhood with their aunt, Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury,^ and her husband, the Earl Gilbert. This Gilbert was not only Sir Charles Cavendish's brother-in-law twice over^ but his closest and most intimate friend, for they had been brought up together in the same family, because of the marriage of Sir William Cavendish's widow with George Talbot, Gilbert's father. In connection with this uncle and aunt we first hear definitely of our William Cavendish, by a letter from him to his father, written sometime in 1604, when he could not have been more than eleven years old. In that year Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I, then a child of three or four, journeyed from Scotland to London and on the way was entertained at Worksop, the Earl of Shrewsbury's home. It was perhaps because of this royal guest's tender age that Shrewsbury deputed the actual reception to his young nephews, but at all events he did so, as is shown by the following letter, composed in by no means contemptible French : ^

1 Cavendish afterwards gave a portrait of this lady to St. John's College, Cambridge, of which she was the "second Found'ress." See the letter of acknowledgment in Letters and Poems in Honour of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret, Dzitchess of Newcastle, 1676.

2 Henry Cavendish, his eldest brother, married Grace Talbot, Gilbert's sister. 8 An English translation of this appears in the Welheck Mss., II, 118 ^Hist.

Mss. Comm., ij Rep., App., Part II), but I am indebted for the French original to Mr. R. W. Goulding, Librarian at Welbeck Abbey.

A Monsieur & Pere

Monsieur Cauendysshe.

It may be seen that the boy's education began early, both as to specific knowledge and, what is of greater importance, as to how to use it. The future court politician was in training even from his cradle.

In two homes, then, the future Duke of Newcastle was reared and in each he was shown unbounded affection. On the whole, life seems to have been made too easy for him ; when he was sent to St. John's College at Cambridge, his tutors "could not persuade him to read or study much, he taking more delight in sport than in learning; so that his father being a wise man and seeing that his son had a good natural wit, and was of a very good disposition, suffer'd him to follow his own genius. . . . One time it happened that a young gentleman, one of my Lord's relations, had bought some land, at the same time when my Lord had bought a singing-boy for £^0, a horse for £^0, and a dog for £2, which humour his father Sir Charles liked so well, that he was pleased to say. That if he should find his son to be so covetous, that he would buy land before he was twenty years of age, he would disinherit him. But above all the rest, my Lord had a great inclination to the art of horsemanship and weapons, in which later his father Sir Charles, being a most ingenious and unparalleled master of that age, was his only tutor, and kept him also several masters in the art of horsemanship and lO THE FIRST DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

sent him to the Mews to Mons. Antoine, who was then accounted the best master in that art." ^ Such an education was dehghtful enough, no doubt, and eminently suited to produce a fine gentleman of the time, but it must, also, have encouraged expensive tastes, ill fitting the youth to encounter those difficulties which were to beset his path in later life.

This Cavalier training came to a climax in 1610, for young Cavendish was made a Knight of the Bath when James I's oldest son was created Prince of Wales. Two years after this honor he went to travel abroad with Sir Henry Wotton, Ambassador Extraordinary to the Duke of Savoy, and " the honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country " evidently took Cavendish into high favor. On March 28 he writes from Amiens of "Sir William Candishe, son and heir to Sir Charles his father, and by his mother heir to the Barony of Ogle, a young gentleman very nobly bred, and of singular expectation." 2 And at Liineburg on May 9, " From Bologne to Lyons I spent just three weeks, staying in no place longer than was meet for some care of our horses, save only at Troyes, where I rested a day and a half upon a little indisposition <which> William Candish had contracted, first by the extre<me of cold) and wind, and then of heats, being loath to leave <behind> so sweet an ornament of my journey, and a gentleman himself of so excellent nature and institution." ^ The Duke of Savoy also conceived a fancy for the lad, and having urged him in vain to stay after the Ambassador's return, presented him on his departure with a Spanish horse, a richly embroidered saddle, and a rich jewel of diamonds. Within the twelvemonth^ our travellers were back in London, where for the next few years Cavendish lived, attending at court. In 16 16

1 Book III, Section 8, Firth, pp. 104-105.

^ Sir Henry Wotton^ Life and Letters, by Logan Pearsall Smith, II, 2.

the Earl of Shrewsbury died and left his nephew his executor ; nor did Sir Charles Cavendish long outlive his friend, as he was buried within the year. The widowed Lady Cavendish wished her eldest son to marry, whereupon he satisfied both himself and her by his choice of Elizabeth, daughter and heir to William Basset, Esq., of Blore in the county of Stafford, and widow of Henry Howard, third son of the Earl of Suffolk. This lady, of whom little is known, seems to have led a very troubled life until her death in 1643. We find occasional allusions to her ill health and once an extensive list of remedies to ease her labor in childbirth ;i the fact that she was the mother of ten children, five of whom died in infancy, may explain this, and indeed she seems to have been a poor harmless drudge, destined to be worn out by the highest function of woman. After their marriage in 161 8, they went to live at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, only coming up to town occasionally that they might wait upon the king. On August 10, 16 19, James stayed with them in the country during a royal progress .^ We have now come to Cavendish's first advancement, and here it is necessary to distinguish carefully between what the Duchess states and what recent investigations have revealed to be the facts. Says our chronicler :

About this time King James, of blessed memory, having a purpose to confer some honour upon my Lord, made him Viscount Mansfield, and Baron of Bolsover ; ^ and after the decease of King James, King Charles the First, of blessed memory, constituted him Lord Warden of the Forest of Sherwood and Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, and restored his mother, Catharine, the second daughter of Cuthbert, Lord Ogle, to her father's dignity, after the death of her only sister Jane, Countess of Shrewsbury, publicly declaring that it was her right ; which tide, after the death of his mother, descended also upon my Lord, and his heirs general, together with a large inheritance of ^3000 a year in Northumberland.

^ Nichols's Progresses of King James /, III, 559-560.

* An estate in Derbyshire not far from Cavendish's home at Welbeck.

But Cavendish was not made Baron of Bolsover in the 1620 patent creating him Viscount Mansfield, that honor coming with the title of Newcastle eight years later. Shortly after, on December 4, 1628, the Barony of Ogle was revived in favor of his mother (Lady Jane Ogle, her sister and joint heir, had died several years before), and on her death in 1629 it descended to her heirs general.^ This shows why Newcastle chose to have his new Barony of Bolsover created by the royal patent, and how he comes to be styled Baron of Ogle in right of his mother ; for it seems that he waived all right to the latter Barony by his first creation, that he might take it by descent as an old Barony in fee, together with the family estate of Ogle.^ The title. Baron Ogle of Bothal, which has sometimes figured in connection with that of Viscount Mansfield, does not seem to rest on a sufficiently secure basis, but may be due to a confusion of two later baronies.^ There is a tail to the Viscount kite however. Witness a state letter from John Woodford to Sir Francis Nethersole on November 7, 1620:*

The parliament is now resolved ... for the accomodating of your disputes between the heyrs of the late Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir William Cavendish, a nephew of the Earl of Devonshire who hath been intitled to some of those lands by the Countess of Shrewsbury,

^ Collins's Historical Collections, p. 24, and Welbeck Mss., II, 120.

2 Biographia Britannica, article on William Cavendish.

8 Cokayne's Complete Peerage, VI, 22, note a, says: "The creation of this Barony is given in ' Courthope,' and almost all other peerage writers [including Banks's Dormaitt and Extinct Baronage of England, III, 547] but the Viscounty of Mansfield is given (as the sole creation) in the 'Creations 1483-1646' in the ap. 47th Rep. D. K. Pub. [p. 105]. Neither is the Barony mentioned in his M[onumental] inscription], where all his titles seem fully set out." Collins also gives the " Ogle of Bothal " title, p. 25.

* State Papers {Foreign: Germany, States), XIX, 189, in The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-iipon-Tyne, 1910, p. 12. The author's name is not given on the title-page, but this book is by T. Longueville. It is a comprehensive but unscholarly memoir and the only secondary work of which the entire bulk is devoted to William and Margaret Cavendish.

prisoner in the tower, as an expedient to create the said Sir William, at the request of the heyres above mentioned, Viscount of Mansfield, which is newly done by patent.

As a pendant to this bargain may be added an extract from a letter of the new Viscount Mansfield to Buckingham. It is dated February 27, 1626-1627 : ^

May it please your Grace,

Accordinge to your LoP commands I have treated with my cosen Pierepont, and as effectually as I coulde, his answer in his own wordes are these: he sayeth that Doctor Moore treated with him in King James his times about Honor and tolde him that if he woulde be a Baron he might and for 4000^ .... For my parte I never herde that a Baron was under 9 or 10,000^, but for my one experience, I had little more than in the quittinge of an olde debt.

Apparently traffic in peerages was well understood in that day, and if Cavendish did not in cold blood put his money down on the table, there was " value received " for his honors in the cancelling of old claims or obligations.

The Duchess, unconscious of this political chicanery, goes on to mention her husband's appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire, a post which he kept during the minority of "the now Earl of Devonshire." She expatiates on his abilities in this office and also as Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire ^ and then comes quickly down to 1628, the year in which he was created Earl of Newcastle by Charles L^ At this time he was made Baron Cavendish of Bolsover and, as his wife claims, also of Bothal

1 State Papers {^Domestic), Charles I, LV, No. 26, in First Duke and Duchess, pp. 13-14. There is no reason to suppose Buckingham was jealous of Newcastle, and Lodge's statement to that effect {Portraits, ed. 1850, VI, 2), may be due to a confusion between the elder Buckingham and his son. Cavendish's relations with the second George Villiers will be discussed in another place.

^ For details about this period see Hist. Mss. Com?n., 12 Rep., App., Part I, PP- 303' 32S) and especially pp. 443-445 concerning the punishment of a criminal and Newcastle's gifts to the surviving relatives.

* "His arms were S, three Buck's Heads caboshed, Arg. attired O. A crescent for difference." — Banks, III, 547.

and Heple.^ These latter titles have not been satisfactorily authenticated, but her mere statement, being so nearly contemporary, ought to decide the matter ; besides, to any but an extreme hero-worshipper great subsequent honors might easily cause the less to be forgotten.

Now " in the year 1638, his Majesty called him up to Court, and thought him the fittest person whom he might intrust with the government of his son Charles, then Prince of Wales, now our most gracious King, and made him withal a member of the Lords of his Majesty's most honourable Privy Council," Thus the Duchess, but again there is a seamy side to her story. This appointment seems to have been the result of five and a half years of deliberate scheming on Cavendish's part. We first find the matter mentioned in a letter from Francis, Lord Cottington to Newcastle, dated December 13, 1632 -.^

The King is now well though he still keeps his chamber, and my Lord Deputy [i.e. Strafford] is precisely sent for, so that you will have one friend more here. You are appointed to attend the King into Scotland which I conceive might be a good motive for your friends to put it to a period.

In accordance with this suggestion, when the royal visit to Welbeck occurred in May, 1633, Newcastle made a sumptuous feast, which reached its climax in a masque written for the occasion by Ben Jonson, and which cost, according to the frequently exaggerative Duchess, upwards of four thousand pounds.^ He

^ Cokayne, VI, 22, has this note in connection with his Marquessate : " Also according to Doyle's ' Official Baronage,' Baron Bertram and Bolsover and, according to Beatson's ' Political Index,' Baron of Bothal and Hepple. Heylin asserts that he was a Baron of Bertram together with the Marquessate of Newcastle. No mention, however, is made of any of these Baronies in the ' Creations 1 483-1 646,' tho' in his Garter plate his Baronial titles are given as •Ogle, Bertrum and Bolsover.'" ^ i^r^n^eck Mss., II, 122-123.