FIRST PRINTED IN MDCCCXIV.

When a writer undertakes to give cuique suum in a question of literary property, if he would avoid the ridicule which they deservedly incur who raise a controversy only that they may have the honour of settling it, he must show that there are more claimants than one on the property he means to assign.

This then will be our first object.

Let the reader turn to the ‘Biographia Britannica,’ and look out the article ‘Sir William Cavendish.’ He will find in either of the editions what follows in the words of Dr. Campbell, the original projector of that work, or rather of his friend Mr. Morant, the historian of Essex, for it does not appear that the later editors have either reconsidered the article, or added to it any thing material. Sir William Cavendish, we are told, “had a liberal education given him by his father, who settled upon him also certain lands in the county of Suffolk; but made a much better provision for him by procuring him to be admitted into the family of the great Cardinal Wolsey, upon whom he waited in quality of gentleman usher of his chamber.”——“As Mr. Cavendish was the Cardinal’s countryman, and the Cardinal had a great kindness for his father, he took him early into his confidence, and showed him upon all occasions very particular marks of kindness and respect[7]” Several extracts from the Life of Wolsey are then produced to show the honourable nature of this employment. Mr. Cavendish’s faithful adherence to Wolsey in his fall receives due encomium: and we are then favoured with a detail of Mr. Cavendish’s public services after the Cardinal’s death, his rich rewards, his knighthood, marriages, and issue, in which the writer of the article has followed Sir William Dugdale, and the Peerages. Towards the conclusion Cavendish is spoken of in his character of an author, a character which alone could entitle him to admission into that temple of British worthies. We are told that "he appears from his writings to have been a man of great honour and integrity, a good subject to his prince, a true lover of his country, and one who preserved to the last a very high reverence and esteem for his old master and first patron Cardinal Wolsey, whose life he wrote in the latter part of his own, and there gives him a very high character."——"This work of his remained long in manuscript, and the original some years ago was in the hands of the Duke of Kingston, supposed to be given by the author to his daughter, who married into that family. It had been seen and consulted by the Lord Herbert when he wrote his history of the Reign of King |To whom, Lord Herbert.| Henry VIII., but he was either unacquainted with our author’s Christian name, or mistook him for his elder brother George Cavendish of Glemsford in the county of Suffolk, Esq. for by that name his lordship calls him: but it appears plainly from what he says that the history he made use of was our author’s." p. 324.

Such is the reputation in which the Biographia Britannica is held in the world, and indeed not undeservedly, that most writers of English biography have recourse to it for information: and with its authority those among them are usually well satisfied, who neither value, nor are willing to undertake, the toilsome researches of the genealogist and the antiquary. Another such work, for an illustrious class of English worthies, is ‘The Peerage of England,’ begun by the respectable and ill rewarded Arthur Collins, and continued by successive editors with as much exactness as could reasonably have been expected. |To whom the Peerages.| The several editions of this work, from that of 1712, in one volume, to that of 1812, in nine, contain the same account of Sir William Cavendish’s attendance upon Wolsey, of his tried attachment to him, and of his lasting gratitude to the memory of his old master, displayed in writing apologetical memoirs of his life. At the very opening of the pages devoted to the Devonshire family, in the recent edition of this work, we are told that “the potent and illustrious family of Cavendish, of which, in the last century, two branches arrived at dukedoms, laid the foundation of their future greatness, first, on the share of abbey lands obtained at the dissolution of monasteries by Sir William Cavendish, who had been gentleman usher to Cardinal Wolsey, who died in 1557, and afterwards by the abilities, the rapacity, and the good fortune of Elizabeth his widow, who remarried George Earl of Shrewsbury, and died in 1607[8].” And afterwards, in the account of the said Sir William Cavendish, we are told nearly in the words used by Morant, that “to give a more lasting testimony of his gratitude to the Cardinal, he drew up a fair account of his life and death, which he wrote in the reign of Queen Mary: whereof the oldest copy is in the hands of the noble family of Pierrepoint, into which the author’s daughter was married. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in the Life and Reign of King Henry VIII., quotes the manuscript in many places, but mentions George Cavendish to be the author of it; which, from divers circumstances, we may conclude to be a mistake. In the year 1641 it was printed, and again in 1667[9].” A full account is then given of the public employments and honourable rewards of Sir William Cavendish; and the descent of the two ducal families of Devonshire and Newcastle from this most fortunate subject is set forth with all due regard to genealogical accuracy.

From these two great public reservoirs of English biography this account of Sir William Cavendish, both as an author and a man, has been drawn off into innumerable other works. Writers of high authority in affairs of this nature have adopted it; and even historians of the life of Wolsey, upon whom it appeared to be incumbent to make accurate inquiry into this subject, have retailed as unquestioned truth what the Biographia and the Peerages have told us concerning an author to whose most faithful and interesting narrative |but erroneously.| they have been so largely indebted. Sir William Cavendish may therefore be regarded as the tenant in possession of this property: nor, as far as I know, hath his right ever been formally controverted. Before the reader has got to the last page of this little treatise he will probably have seen reason to conclude that this account is all fable: for that Sir William Cavendish could not possibly have been the Cardinal’s biographer, nor, of course, the faithful attendant upon him; that circumstance of his history proceeding entirely upon the supposition that he was the writer of the work in question[10].

While we have thus brought before the public the person who may be considered as the presumed proprietor of this work, we have also made good our promise to show that there are more claimants than one upon this piece of literary property. Lord Herbert, we have seen, quotes the manuscript as the production of a George |A third claimant.| Cavendish. Other writers of no mean authority, as will be seen in the course of this disquisition, have attributed it to another member of the house of Cavendish whose name was Thomas.

The editors of the Biographia and the Peerages have made very light of my Lord Herbert’s testimony. What those divers circumstances were which led the latter to reject it, as they have not informed us, so we must be content to remain in ignorance. The noble historian of the life and reign of Henry VIII. is not accustomed to quote his authorities at random. If he sometimes endeavour too much to palliate enormities which can neither be excused nor softened down, he is nevertheless generally correct as to the open fact, as he is always ingenious and interesting. Supported by so respectable an authority, the pretensions of this George Cavendish of Glemsford to have been the faithful attendant upon Wolsey, and the lively historian of his rise and fall, ought to have received a more patient examination. Descended of the same parents with Sir William, and by birth the elder, in fortune he was far behind him. At a period of great uncertainty the two brothers took opposite courses. William was for reform, George for existing circumstances. Contrary to the ordinary course of events, the first was led to wealth and honours, the latter left in mediocrity and obscurity. The former yet lives in a posterity not less distinguished by personal merit than by the splendour cast upon them by the highest rank in the British peerage, the just reward of meritorious services performed by a |George Cavendish the real author.| race of patriots their ancestors. Of the progeny from the other, history has no splendid deeds to relate; and, after the third generation, they are unknown to the herald and the antiquary. But this is to anticipate. I contend that the wreath which he has justly deserved, who produces one of the most beautiful specimens of unaffected faithful biography that any language contains, has been torn from this poor man’s brow, to decorate the temples of his more fortunate brother. To replace it is the object of the present publication. It will, I trust, be shown, to the satisfaction of the reader, that this George Cavendish was the author of the work in question, and the disinterested attendant upon the fallen favourite. The illustrious house of Devonshire needs no borrowed merit to command the respect and admiration of the world.

Let it not however be supposed that the writer is meaning to arrogate to himself the credit of being the first to dispute the right of Sir William Cavendish, and to advance the claim of the real owner. The possession which Sir William has had has not been an undisturbed one: so that were there any statute of limitations applicable |Writers who have advanced his claim.| to literary property, that statute would avail him nothing. The manuscript of this work, which now forms a part of the Harleian library, is described by the accurate Wanley as being from the pen of a |Wanley.| George Cavendish[11]. In 1742 and the two following years, ‘A History of the Life and Times of Cardinal Wolsey’ was published in four volumes |Grove.| octavo by Mr. Joseph Grove, who subjoined, in the form of notes, the whole of what was then known to the public of these Memoirs; describing them in a running title, ‘The Secret History of the Cardinal, by George Cavendish, Esq.:’ but, as if to show that no one who touched this subject should escape defilement from the errors of the Biographia and the Peerages, he confounds together the two brothers in the account he gives of the author at the 98th page of his third volume. During the remainder of the last century it does not appear that Sir William Cavendish suffered any material molestation in his possession of this property: |Douce.| but in the present century Mr. Francis Douce, in his most curious ‘Illustrations of Shakspeare,’ restores to George Cavendish the honour of having produced this work, and marks by significative Italics that it was an honour which |Wordsworth.| another had usurped[12]. Dr. Wordsworth may also be ranked amongst those writers who have ventured to put a spade into Sir William’s estate. To this gentleman belongs the merit of having first presented to the public an impression of this work, which conveys any just idea of the original[13]. In an advertisement he expresses himself thus cautiously as to the name of the author: “The following life was written by the Cardinal’s gentleman-usher, Cavendish, whose Christian name in the superscription to some of the manuscript copies is George, but by Bishop Kennet, in his Memoirs of the family of Cavendish, by Collins in his Peerage, and by Dr. Birch (No. 4233, Ayscough’s Catalogue Brit. Museum) he is called William[14].” Had the learned editor pursued the question thus started, it is probable he would have been led to the conclusion which will here be brought out, and have thus rendered wholly unnecessary the disquisition now tendered to the notice of the public. But here he has suffered the matter to rest.

And indeed, to say the truth, though there may possibly have been two or three other writers who have intimated a doubt as to the right of Sir William Cavendish to the work in question, these doubts seem never to have gained hold on the public attention. It would be an invidious task to collect together the many modern supporters of his claim: there are, amongst them, names who have deservedly attained a high degree of celebrity in the walks of biography, history, antiquities, and topography. All the writer wishes is, that he may stand excused with the public in offering what he has collected upon this point: and if the concession is made that the suspicions of Sir William Cavendish’s right to this piece of biography have never gained much hold on the public mind, and that it is a prevailing opinion in the world that the greatness in which we now behold the house of Devonshire owes its origin to a train of fortunate circumstances resulting out of an attendance on Cardinal Wolsey, he must consider himself as amply excused.

Let us now hear the evidence.

The learned editor of the ‘Ecclesiastical Biography’ has mentioned several names as supporters of Sir William’s claim. And indeed, if names might carry the day, Kennet and Collins, Birch and Morant, are in themselves a host. But who is there accustomed to close and minute investigation, that has not discovered for himself, of how little moment is simple authority in any question? It is, especially, of little weight in historical and antiquarian discussion. The most laborious may sometimes overlook evidence which is afterwards accidentally discovered to another of far inferior pretensions: the most accurate may mistake: the most faithful may be bribed into inattention by supposititious facts, which give a roundness and compactness to what, without them, forms but an imperfect narration. The case before us may possibly come under the latter head. Take away the attendance upon Wolsey, and we have several years unaccounted for in the life of Sir William Cavendish; and lose what the mind perceives to be a step by which a private gentleman, as he was, might advance himself into the councils of princes, and the possession of important offices of state. There is in this what might lay a general biographer, who was a very Argus, asleep. But these authorities, it must also be |all modern.| observed, are all moderns: they lived a century and a half after both the Cavendishes had been gathered to their fathers; and earlier biographers, who have made mention of this founder of two ducal houses, have said nothing of any attendance upon the Cardinal, never ascribed the flourishing state of his fortunes to any recommendation of him to the king from his old master, nor taken any notice of what is so much to his honour, that he adhered faithfully to Wolsey in his fall, and produced this beautiful tribute to his memory. Negative evidence of this kind, it may be said, is of no great weight. It will be allowed, however, to be of some, when it is recollected who they are that have omitted these leading particulars in Sir William Cavendish’s history. They are no other than the author |Dugdale and the Duchess of Newcastle do not ascribe it to him.| of ‘The Baronage of England,’ and Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, who has given a laboured genealogy of the ancestors and kindred of her lord, a grandson of Sir William Cavendish, annexed to the very entertaining memoirs which she left of his life. The omissions of two such writers, living at the time when this work was first made public, and whose duty as well as inclination it would have been to have mentioned the fact, had it been so, will at least serve to weigh against the positive but unsupported testimonies of the abovementioned respectable writers, all of whom lived much too late to be supposed to have received any information by private tradition.

But the original manuscript was in the hands of the Pierrepoint family, and into that family Sir William Cavendish’s daughter was married. Possibly; but were it even so, it is obvious that this lays but a very insufficient foundation for believing that Sir William was the author. Why might it not have been given to Frances Cavendish by George Cavendish her uncle? But Doctor Kennet, upon whose authority this statement has been made, has not informed us by what criterion he was guided in assigning that priority to the Pierrepoint manuscript which this statement assumes. There are so many manuscripts of this work abroad, that it must, I presume, be exceedingly difficult to decide which has the best claim to be the author’s autograph, if indeed that autograph be in existence[15]. Scarcely any work of this magnitude, composed after the invention of printing, has been so often transcribed. There |Manuscripts;| is a copy in the cathedral library at York which once belonged to Archbishop Matthew; another very valuable one in the library of the College of Arms, presented to that learned society by Henry Duke of Norfolk; another in Mr. Douce’s collection; another in the public library at Cambridge; another in the Bodleian. There are two in Mr. Heber’s library; two at Lambeth; two in the British Museum[16]. |reason for their multiplication.| The reason of this multiplication of copies by the laborious process of transcription seems to have been this: the work was composed in the days of Queen Mary by a zealous catholic, but not committed to the press during her short reign. It contained a very favourable representation of the conduct of a man who was held in but little esteem in the days of her successor, and whom it was then almost treason to praise. The conduct of several persons was reflected on who were flourishing themselves, or in their immediate posterity, in the court of Queen Elizabeth: and it contained also the freest censures of the Reformation, and very strong remarks upon the conduct and character of Anne Boleyn, the Cardinal’s great enemy. It is probable that no printer could be found who had so little fear of the Star-Chamber before his eyes as to venture the publication of a work so obnoxious: while such was the gratification which all persons of taste and reading would find in it, from its fidelity, its curious minuteness, its lively details, and above all, from that unaffected air of sweet natural eloquence in which it is composed, that many among them must have been desirous of possessing it. Can we wonder then that so many copies should have been taken between the time when it was written and the year 1641, when it was first sent to the press: or that one of these copies should have found its way into the library of Henry Pierrepoint, Marquis of Dorchester, who was an author, and a man of some taste and learning[17]? It cannot surely be difficult to divine how it came into his possession, without supposing that it was brought into his family by Sir William’s daughter, his grandmother, Frances Cavendish.

Trifling as it appears, we have now had nearly all that has ever been alleged as rendering it |No evidence in his favour from the MSS.| probable that Sir William Cavendish was the author of this work. We have no evidence in his favour from any early catalogue of writers in English history: nor any testimony in inscription or title upon any of the manuscripts, except a modern one by Dr. Birch, upon one of the Museum copies. But in appropriating any literary composition to its author, that evidence is the most conclusive which is derived from the work itself. This is the kind of proof to which it is proposed to bring the claims of the two competitors. It is contended that there are passages in the work, and self-notices, which are absolutely inconsistent with the supposition that it was the production of the person to whom it has usually been ascribed. Let us attend to these.

It will be of some importance to us to have clearly ascertained the period at which this work was composed. We have information sufficient for this purpose. At page 350[18] of Dr. Wordsworth’s impression, we read that the Cardinal “was sent twice on an embassage unto the Emperor Charles the Fifth that now reigneth, and father unto King Philip, now our soveraign lord.” Mary queen of England was married to Philip of Spain on the 25th of July, 1554. Again, at page 401, we hear of "Mr. Ratcliffe, who was sonne and heire to the Lord Fitzwalter, and nowe[19] Earle of Sussex." The Earl of Sussex of Queen Mary’s reign, who had been son and heir to a Lord Fitzwalter in the days of King Henry VIII., could be no other than Henry Radcliffe, the second earl of that name, who died on the 17th of February, 1557[20]. Without incurring any risk by following older authorities, when so much misconception is abroad, we may set down as fairly proved that the Life of Wolsey was composed about the middle of the reign of Queen Mary[21].

Now we may collect that the author, whoever he was, thought himself a neglected man at the time of writing. He tells us that he engaged in the work to vindicate the memory of his master from “diverse sondrie surmises and imagined tales, made of his proceedings and doings,” which he himself had “perfectly knowen to be most untrue.” We cannot however but discover, that he was also stimulated by the desire of attracting attention to himself, the old and faithful domestic of a great man whose character was then beginning to retrieve itself in the eyes of an abused nation, and whose misfortunes had prevented him from advancing his servants in a manner accordant to his own wishes, and to the dignity of his service. He dwells with manifest complacency upon the words of commendation he received on different occasions from his master; and relates towards the conclusion how kindly he had been received by the king after the death of Wolsey, and what promises had been made to him both by Henry and the Duke of Norfolk, who yet suffered him to depart into his own country. But what shows most strikingly that he was an unsatisfied man, and thought that he had by no means had the reward due to his faithful services, is a remark he makes after having related the sudden elevation of Wolsey to the deanery of Lincoln. “Here,” says he, “may all men note the chaunces of fortune that followethe some whome she intendeth to promote, and to some her favor is cleane contrary, though they travaille never so much, with all the painfull diligence that they can devise or imagine: whereof for my part I have tasted of the experience.” p. 332[22].

There are persons whom nothing will satisfy, and they are sometimes the most importunate in obtruding their supposed neglects upon the public: but it must surely have been past all endurance to have had such a complaint |His employments, promotions, and rewards.| as this preferred by Sir William Cavendish in the days of Queen Mary. His life had been a continual series of promotions and lucrative employments. In 1530, the very year in the November of which the Cardinal died, he was constituted one of the commissioners for visiting and taking the surrenders of divers religious houses. In 1539 he was made one of the Auditors of the Court of Augmentations, then lately established. At this period of his life he was living luxuriously at his mansion of North Awbrey near Lincoln, as appears by the inventory of his furniture there, which is preserved in manuscript[23]. In the next year he had a royal grant of several lordships in the county of Hertford. In 1546 he was knighted; constituted treasurer of the chamber to the king, a place of great trust and honour; and was soon afterwards admitted of the privy council. He continued to enjoy all these honours till his death, a space of eleven years, in which time his estate was much increased by the grants he received from King Edward VI. in seven several counties[24]. It was not surely for such a man as this to complain of the ludibria fortunæ, or of the little reward all his “painful diligence” had received. Few men, as Sylvius says, would have such a “poverty of grace” that they would not

Sir William Cavendish began the world the younger son of a family of some respectability, but of no great wealth or consequence; and he left it, at about the age of fifty, a knight, a privy counsellor, and the owner of estates which, managed and improved as they were by his prudent relict, furnished two houses with the means of supporting in becoming splendour the very first rank in the British peerage.

But an ambitious man is not to be contented; and men do form erroneous estimates of their own deserts: let us see, then, if the work will not supply us with something more conclusive.

The writer is fond of bringing forward his religious sentiments. The reader will be amused with the following sally against the Reformation, its origin, and favourers. He who is disposed may find in it matter for serious reflection. When Cavendish has related that the king submitted to be cited by the two legates, and to appear in person before them, to be questioned touching the matter of the divorce, he breaks out into this exclamation:—“Forsoothe it is a world to consider the desirous will of wilfull princes, when they be set and earnestly bent to have their wills fulfilled, wherein no reasonable persuasions will suffice; and how little they regard the dangerous sequell that may ensue, as well to themselves as to their subjects. And above all things, there is nothing that maketh them more wilfull than carnall love and sensuall affection of voluptuous desire, and pleasures of their bodies, as was in this case; wherein nothing could be of greater experience than to see what inventions were furnished, what lawes were enacted, what costly edifications of noble and auncient monasteries were overthrowne, what diversity of opinions then rose, what executions were then committed, how many noble clerkes and good men were then for the same put to deathe, what alteration of good, auncient, and holesome lawes, customes, and charitable foundations were tourned from reliefe of the poore, to utter destruction and desolation, almost to the subversion of this noble realme. It is sure too much pitty to heare or understand the things that have since that time chaunced and happened to this region. The profe thereof hath taught us all Englishmen the experience, too lamentable of all good men to be considered. If eyes be not blind men may see, if eares be not stopped they may heare, and if pitty be not exiled the inward man may lament the sequell of this pernicious and inordinate love. Although it lasted but a while, the plague thereof is not yet ceased, which our Lorde quenche and take his indignation from us! Qui peccavimus cum patribus nostris, et injuste egimus.” p. 420 and 421.

This passage, warm from the heart, could have been written by none but a zealous anti-reformist. That certainly was not Sir William Cavendish. He had been one of the principal instruments in effecting what I must be allowed to call a necessary and glorious work. Men are not accustomed to record their own condemnation with such a bold, untrembling hand. That hand, which is supposed to have penned these words, had been once extended to receive the conventual seal of the Priory of Sheen, and the Abbey of St. Alban’s. The person by whom we are to believe they were written had been an officer in that court which was purposely erected to attend to the augmentation of the king’s revenue by the sequestration of ecclesiastical property; the proceedings of which court were too often unnecessarily harsh and arbitrary, if not unjust and oppressive. Nay, more, at the very time these words were written, Sir William Cavendish was living on the spoils of those very monasteries whose overthrow is so deeply deplored; and rearing out of them a magnificent mansion at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, to be the abode of himself and his posterity. After so long and so decided a passage, it has been thought unnecessary to quote any other: but throughout the work appears the same zeal in the writer to signalize himself as a friend to the old profession. May not this be considered as amounting to something almost conclusive against the supposition that the attendant upon Wolsey and Sir William Cavendish were the same person?

Will it be said that he turned with the times; that he who, in the Protestant reigns, had been zealous for the Gospel, in the Catholic reign was equally zealous for the Mass: and that this work was his amende to the offended party? I know not of any authority we have for charging this religious tergiversation upon Sir William Cavendish, who, for any thing that appears in his history, was animated by other views in promoting the cause of reform, than the desire of personal advancement, and of obtaining the favour of his prince: and I am prepared with two facts in his history, not mentioned by former writers, which are unfavourable to such a supposition. The first shows that he was in some disgrace at the court of Queen Mary as late as the fourth year of her reign; the second, that he did not seek to ingratiate himself there. On the 17th of August, 1556, a very peremptory order of council was issued, commanding his “indelaid repaire” to the court to answer on “suche matters as at his cōmyng” should be declared unto him. The original, subscribed by seven of the Queen’s council, is among the Wilson collections mentioned in the note at page 22. What the particular charges were it is not material to our argument to inquire. The next year also, the year in which he died, he ungraciously refused a loan of one hundred pounds required of him and other Derbyshire gentlemen by the Queen, when her majesty was in distress for money to carry on the French war. These facts show that though he was continued in the offices of treasurer of the chamber and privy counsellor, he was in no very high esteem with Queen Mary, nor sought to conciliate her favourable regards. To which we may add, that his lady, whose spirit and masculine understanding would probably give her very considerable influence in the deliberations of his mind, was through life a firm friend to the Reformation, and in high favour with Queen Elizabeth.

Whatever effect the preceding facts and argument may have had upon the reader’s mind, there is a piece of evidence still to be brought out, which is more conclusive against the claim of Sir William Cavendish. Soon after the Cardinal was arrested at his house of Cawood in Yorkshire, Cavendish tells us that he resorted to his lord, "where he was in his chamber sitting in a chaire, the tables being spred for him to goe to dinner. But as soone as he perceived me to come in, he fell out into suche a wofull lamentation, with suche ruthefull teares and watery eies, that it would have caused a flinty harte to mourne with him. And as I could, I with others comforted him; but it would not be. For, quoth he, nowe I lament that I see this gentleman (meaning me) how faithefull, how dilligent, and how painefull he hath served me, abandonning his owne country, wife and children, his house and family, his rest and quietnesse, |The author married and a father before 1530.| only to serve me, and I have nothinge to rewarde him for his highe merittes." p. 517.

Hence it appears that the Cavendish who wrote this work was married, and had a family probably before he entered into the Cardinal’s service, certainly while he was engaged in it. At what precise period he became a member of the Cardinal’s household cannot be collected from his own writings. Grove says it was as early as 1519[25]; the Biographia tells us that the place was procured for him by his father, who died in 1524. This however is certain, that the first mention of himself, as one in attendance upon the Cardinal, is in the exceedingly curious account he has given of the means used to break the growing attachment between the Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn, in order to make way for the king. Cavendish was present when the Earl of Northumberland took his son to task. This must have been before the year 1527; for in that year the Lord Percy became himself Earl of Northumberland; and probably it was at least a twelvemonth before; for ere the old Earl’s departure, a marriage had been concluded between Lord Percy and the Lady Mary Talbot, a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury[26]. In 1526 then, the Cavendish who wrote this work was a member of Wolsey’s household. Now, |Not so Sir William Cavendish.| fortunately for this inquiry, it happens that an exact account has been preserved of the several marriages and the numerous issue of Sir William Cavendish. It is to be found in the funeral certificate, which, according to a laudable custom of those times, was entered by his relict among the records of the College of Arms. This document, subscribed by her own hand, sets forth that her husband’s first-born child came into the world on the 7th of January, in the 25th year of King Henry VIII. This answers to 1534: that is at least seven years after the Cavendish, for whom we are inquiring, had become a member of Wolsey’s family, and more than three years after the Cardinal had remarked that his gentleman usher had left “wife and children, his home and family, his rest and quietnesse,” only to serve him. This is decisive.

The document which contains these family particulars of the Cavendishes is not known only to those gentlemen who have access to the arcana of the College of Arms. It has been published: and it is remarkable that Arthur Collins, who has been a principal cause of the error concerning the author of this work, gaining such firm hold on the public mind, should have been the first to lay before the public a record which proves beyond dispute that the Cavendish who wrote the Life of Wolsey could not be the Cavendish who was the progenitor of the house of Devonshire. It is printed in his ‘Noble Families,’ where is a more complete account of the Cavendishes than is to be found in his Peerage, and which might have been transferred with advantage into the later editions of that work. This document has also been printed by Guthrie and Jacob, whose account of the nobility of this nation may often be consulted with advantage, after having read any of the editions of Collins. Of its authenticity, the only point material to this inquiry, no suspicion can reasonably be entertained.

We have now brought to a conclusion our inquiry into the right of the tenant in possession. It has been questioned, examined, and, I think, disproved. It is not contended that the common opinion respecting Sir William Cavendish’s attendance upon Wolsey does not harmonize well enough with what is known of his real history, and to render our proof absolutely complete, it might seem to be almost incumbent upon us to show how Sir William Cavendish was engaged while Wolsey’s biographer was discharging the duties of his office as an attendant upon the Cardinal. Could we do this, we should also disclose the steps by which he attained to his honourable state employments, and the favour |How the early years of Sir William Cavendish may have been spent.| of successive monarchs. In the absence of positive testimony I would be permitted to hazard the conjecture, that in early life he followed the steps of his father, who had an office in the court of Exchequer. Such an education as he would receive in that court would render him a most fit instrument for the purpose in which we first find his services used, the suppression of the monasteries, and the appropriation of the lands belonging to them to his royal master. Having signalized his zeal, and given proof of his ability in this service, so grateful to the King, we may easily account for his further employments, and the promotions and rewards which followed them. Let it however be observed, that this is no essential part of our argument; nor shall I pursue the inquiry any further, mindful of the well known and sage counsel of the Lord Chancellor Bacon.

I would however be permitted to say something on that very extraordinary woman, the lady of Sir William Cavendish, and the sharer with him in raising the family to that state of affluence and honour in which we now behold it. Indeed she was a more than equal sharer. He laid the foundation, she raised the superstructure; as she finished the family palace at Chatsworth, of which he had laid the first stone.

This lady was Elizabeth Hardwick, a name familiar to all visitors of the county of Derby, where she lived more than half a century with little less than sovereign authority, having first adorned it with two most splendid mansions. The daughter, and the virgin widow of two Derbyshire gentlemen of moderate estates, she first stepped into consequence by her marriage with Sir William Cavendish, a gentleman much older than herself. The ceremony was performed at the house of the Marquis of Dorset[28], father to the Lady Jane Grey, who, with the Countess of Warwick and the Earl of Shrewsbury, was a sponsor at the baptism of her second child. Cavendish left her a widow with six children in 1557. Shortly after his death |Marries Sir William St. Lowe;| she united herself to Sir William St. Lowe, one of the old attendants of the Princess Elizabeth, on whose accession to the throne he was made captain of her guard. In 1567, being a third time a widow, she was raised to the bed of the most powerful peer |becomes Countess of Shrewsbury.| of the realm, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. He had been a friend of Sir William Cavendish, and it is possible that the magnificent state which he displayed in the immediate neighbourhood of this lady had more than once excited her envy. She loved pomp and magnificence and personal splendour, as much as she enjoyed the hurry and engagement of mind which multiplied worldly business brings with it. She had a passion for jewels, which was appealed to and gratified by the unhappy |Has a present of jewels from Mary Queen of Scots.| Mary Queen of Scotland[29], who lived many years under the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury, her husband. She united herself to this nobleman more, as it should seem, from motives of ambition, than as the consequence of any real affection she had for him. He had unquestionably the sincerest regard for her: and, though she forgot many of the duties of a wife, it continued many years in the midst of all that reserve and perfidity, and even tyranny, if such a word may be allowed, which she thought proper to exercise towards him. The decline of this good and great man’s life affords a striking lesson how utterly insufficient are wealth and splendour and rank to secure happiness even in a case where there is no experience of the more extraordinary vicissitudes of fortune, the peculiar danger of persons in elevated situations. Probably the happiest days of the last three and twenty years of his life were those in which he was employing himself in preparing his own sepulchre. This he |Death of the Earl.| occupied in 1590. But the effect of his ill advised nuptials extended beyond his life. His second countess had drawn over to her purposes some of his family, who had assisted her in the designs she carried on against her husband. She had drawn them closely to her interest by alliances with her own family. Hence arose family animosities, which appeared in the most frightful forms, and threatened the most deadly consequences[30]. Much may be seen respecting this extraordinary woman in the Talbot papers published by Mr. Lodge. A bundle of her private correspondence has been preserved, and forms a curious and valuable part of that collection of manuscripts which we have had occasion more than once to mention. These let in much light upon her conduct. It is impossible to contemplate her character in this faithful mirror without being convinced that Mr. Lodge has drawn the great outlines of it correctly, when he describes her as “a |Mr. Lodge’s character of her.| woman of masculine understanding and conduct; proud, furious, selfish, and unfeeling[31].” Yet she was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, who paid her this compliment soon after her last marriage, that “she had been glad |Anecdote of Queen Elizabeth.| to see my Lady Saint Lowe, but was more desirous to see my Lady Shrewsbury, and that there was no lady in the land whom she better loved and liked.” These flattering expressions were used to Mr. Wingfield, who was a near relation of this lady, and who lost no time in reporting them to her. Most of these letters are upon private affairs: a few only are from persons whom she had engaged to send her the news of the day, as was usual with the great people of that age when absent from court. There are several of the letters which |Letters to her.| she received from Saint Lowe and Shrewsbury, which show how extraordinary was the influence she had gained over their minds. There is one from Sir William Cavendish. Having laboured to show what the knight did not compose, I shall transcribe in the note below this genuine fragment of his writing, though in no respect worthy of publication, except as having passed between these two remarkable characters[32]. It is expressed in a strain of familiarity to which neither of his successors ever dared aspire. To conclude the history of this lady, she survived her last husband about seventeen years, which were spent for the most part at Hardwick, the place of her birth, and where she had built the present noble mansion. There she died in 1607, and was interred in the great church at Derby.

The courteous reader will, it is hoped, pardon this digression; and now set we forth on the second stage of our inquiry, Who wrote Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey?