CAVENDISH, William (1593-1676)

According to the memoir of his life published by his wife in 1667, Newcastle was so taken aback by his first sight of London in May 1660 after 16 years in exile, that he urged a companion to ‘jog him and awake him out of his dream, for surely, said he, I have been sixteen years asleep, and am not thoroughly awake yet’. Having arrived in the capital ‘his supper seemed more savoury to him, than any meat he had hitherto tasted; and the noise of some scraping fiddlers he thought the pleasantest harmony that ever he had heard’. However, within six months Newcastle had taken his leave of the court and returned to his midlands estates. Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 66, 68. He visited London on only a handful of occasions thereafter and, after 25 Aug. 1660, never again took his place in the House of Lords.

That Newcastle had welcomed the Restoration so emotionally is unsurprising given his devotion to the house of Stuart. During the 1630s he had served as governor to the then Prince of Wales and, during the Civil War, he had wholeheartedly thrown himself into the royalist war effort. Though his shortcomings as a general became obvious during the course of the conflict, there was no doubt of his personal courage or of his absolute commitment to the cause of the Stuarts. Clarendon, Rebellion, iii. 381–4.

On the eve of the Restoration, Newcastle’s concern to ensure that Charles II never suffered the fate of his royal father prompted him to pen a letter of advice to his former charge, offering his thoughts on how best to re-establish monarchical government in England. Ideology and Politics on the Eve of the Restoration: Newcastle’s Advice to Charles II ed. T.P. Slaughter, (Am. Phil. Soc. Mems. ser. clix); Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 100. Newcastle began his advice modestly enough. He stated of his letter that ‘there is no oratory in it, or anything stolen out of books, for I seldom or ever read any, but these discourses are out of my long experience’. He then proceeded to address a wide range of subjects, profoundly conservative in content, though whether truly Hobbesian in nature has been questioned. Pol. Discourse in Early Modern Britain ed. N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner, 164-86. His advice emphasized the need for a strong monarch, in control of both the army and the militia, supported by an episcopal national church. He believed that ‘every body politic’ was composed of civil and ecclesiastical states and that both ‘popery and presbytery’ inevitably led to clashes between civil and ecclesiastical authority. Only episcopacy, ‘instituted by the apostles, received and approved by the primitive Christians, established by the princes, and parliaments, of our own kingdom, [and] pretending to no power over the king at all’, was compatible with the avoidance of civil strife. Newcastle regarded Parliament as a natural part of the constitution, but he emphasized that parliaments ‘should be kept within their bounds, which every body knows, for your Majesty gives life or death to bills’. Ideology and Politics, xvii–xxvii, 5, 13, 14, 49–50.

The main concern of Newcastle’s letter was to ensure that no repetition of the events of the 1640s would be possible under the restored Stuarts. To this end he repeatedly harked back to the perceived golden age of the Elizabethan polity and highlighted the errors of both James I and Charles I. He drew particular attention to the neglect of ceremony, stressing the need to maintain the correct order and precedences of the peerage and the gentry as ‘when the lower degrees strive to out brave higher degrees, it breeds envy in the better sort, and pride in the meaner sort, and a contempt by vulgar of the nobility – which breeds, faction, and disorder, which are the causes of a civil war’. He argued that the ennobling of ‘buggerly people’ unable to maintain the proper dignity of the peerage had led to the decrying and pulling down of ceremony. For Newcastle, the consequences of this were obvious: ‘noblemen were pulled down, which is the foundation of monarchy, and monarchy soon after fell’. Newcastle also warned Charles of the dangers of repeating his grandfather’s and father’s expansion of the peerage. He opined that prior to the civil wars this practice had encouraged faction and division first in the Lords and at court, and then in the Commons. Ibid. xii, xvi–xvii, 46, 48, 50–51. It is difficult to know what, if any, influence Newcastle had upon Charles II, but his letter of advice undoubtedly evinced a deep conservatism which was shared by many Royalist peers on the eve of Restoration.

Shortly before Charles II set sail for England in 1660, Newcastle had visited him hoping to secure for himself the post of master of the horse. Newcastle’s passion for horse breeding and training was of long standing, and his efforts in the Royalist cause during the Civil War no doubt encouraged him in his pretensions to this post. The financial cost of his devotion to the royal house had been considerable. Taking into account compound interest, his duchess reckoned his losses amounted to £941,303. Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 72–79. The exact figure is difficult to establish though the estimate provides some indication of the extent of Newcastle’s losses in the royalist cause. Consequently, Newcastle’s claims to the office of master of the horse appeared strong, not least on account of his deserved fame as an equestrian of particular skill. The post had, however, already been requested by George Monck, later duke of Albemarle, and Newcastle was left disappointed. One of the errors of James I and Charles I that Newcastle had highlighted in his letter of advice was that they had ‘rewarded their enemies, and neglected their friends’. Ideology and Politics, 52. It may be that the rebuff of his request for office influenced his decision to retire from political life in the autumn of 1660.

Though he was present in London from the beginning of May 1660 Newcastle exhibited no great interest in the proceedings of the Lords. He did not take his seat until 1 June and was thereafter present on just 15 additional days before sitting in the House for the final time on 25 August. It is perhaps significant that on a number of the days upon which he attended, business relating to Sherwood Forest was before the House, though he was not present on 22 June when an order was made to end the cutting of timber in his parks in Sherwood. He was in attendance on 6 Aug. when a bill for the restoration of his estates was proposed by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, and again the following day when the bill was read for the first time. HMC 4th Rep. 155, 177. He was not present later in the month, however, when his brother-in-law, Lucas, managed the bill through the Lords, nor when the bill received the royal assent on 13 September. At the opening of the new Parliament the following year (May 1661), Newcastle registered his proxy with Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and his presence in the chamber thereafter was managed by a series of proxies.

In July 1663 Newcastle was reported to be one of the royalist peers disenchanted with the failure of the Restoration to produce a promised land for royalists, and was said as a result to have supported Bristol’s attempt to impeach Clarendon. Seaward, Cavalier Parlt. 230; Bodl. Carte 77, f. 524. The previous October, however, relations between Clarendon and Newcastle were sufficiently cordial for Newcastle to ask the lord chancellor to approach the king concerning the Nottinghamshire militia. Notes which passed, 74. Moreover, he registered his proxy with Clarendon on 18 Feb. and Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, predicted that the proxy would be cast in opposition to the attempted impeachment. Wharton’s assessment may have been the more accurate as Newcastle continued to register his proxy with the lord chancellor on several subsequent occasions (10 Mar. and 14 Nov. 1664, 2 Oct. 1665 and 13 Sept. 1666). Thereafter, the recipient of Newcastle’s proxy seems to have been determined by kinship. It was entrusted to his son-in-law John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, on five occasions between 14 Oct. 1667 and 15 Dec. 1673. Following a letter from Thomas Osborne, Viscount Latimer (later earl of Danby and duke of Leeds), relaying the king’s request that Newcastle ‘place his proxy in some good hand’, Newcastle entrusted it to the court peer John Frescheville, Baron Frescheville, on 9 Apr. 1675. He registered the proxy with Frescheville again later that year on 21 September. HMC Portland, ii. 150.

Rather than the pursuit of office or attendance upon court and Parliament, Newcastle’s priority for the remainder of his life was the restoration of his estates. Prior to the civil wars he had possessed considerable estates in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland, in addition to lesser holdings in other counties. The private act he had obtained in 1660 was only the start of re-establishing his position as one of the nation’s leading landowners. The process involved not only the recovery of those lands lost during the 1640s and 1650s but also the restoration of his eight parks in the midlands. Trease, Portrait of a Cavalier, 185–9; Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 68–72; A.S. Turbeville, History of Welbeck Abbey, i. 147–8; Eg. 2551, f. 77; CTB, i. 296–7. It may be that it was Newcastle’s determination to restore his finances that led to conflict with the treasury in the late 1660s and early 1670s over alleged encroachment into royal forests in the midlands. Though he was unable to recover all of his pre-war estates, and was forced to sell estates worth over £50,000 in order to settle debts, Newcastle’s position had recovered sufficiently for him to estimate in 1667 that his yearly rental amounted to £14,000. Though this figure compares with his wife’s claim that his estates were worth £22,000 p.a. before the civil wars, the accuracy of the estimate can be questioned and Newcastle had certainly effected a substantial recovery in his fortunes. CTB, ii. 220, 387, 411, 430, 479, iv. 189, 375; Add. 70503, f. 65; Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 72–79; Renaissance and Mod. Stud. ix. 26.

One indication of this recovery was conspicuous consumption. In 1665 the duke and his duchess ‘splendidly entertained’ the duchess of York on her return from a sojourn in the north, an echo of the lavish entertainments which Newcastle had provided for members of the royal family in the 1630s. Reresby Mems. 56–57; Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 103–4. Two years later, one traveller passing through the midlands described the Newcastles as ‘the Queen of Sheba and her more considerable prince’. CSP Dom. 1667–9, p. 602. The duke’s fortunes also enabled him to renovate both Welbeck and Bolsover, and to purchase and develop Nottingham Castle at a cost of £14,000. Trease, Portrait of a Cavalier, 189, 207–11; Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 71–72; Eg. 3330, ff. 57–58.

Though re-establishing his estates was the main preoccupation of Newcastle’s final years they were not his sole interest. He continued to write plays and verse, and acted as patron to a number of noted writers, such as Dryden, Shadwell and Flecknoe. Trease, Portrait of a Cavalier, 189–91; Turbeville, History of Welbeck Abbey, i. 160–8. His love of horse-breeding and -rearing also remained strong, and he established a racecourse and meeting at Welbeck. Turbeville, History of Welbeck Abbey, i. 149–50; Cavendish, Life of Newcastle, 139, 218-19. A preference for the country and country pursuits is clearly evident from his decision to visit London on only two occasions after 1660. The first of these visits was occasioned by his elevation to a dukedom, an honour that Charles II had resolved to bestow on Newcastle following the marquess’s request in June 1664 but which was not conferred until the following year. HMC Portland, ii. 145. Newcastle arrived in the capital ‘with a princely train’ in May 1665 to attend the court, but left London soon afterwards. HMC Laing, ii. 152. He returned two years later, presumably to attend the London performance of his play The Humorous Lovers, when his presence in the capital appears to have slipped by almost unnoticed by contemporaries fascinated by the eccentricities of his wife, who shortly after published her biography of the duke. The duchess’s work – like her dress – attracted some ridicule, notably from Samuel Pepys^‡. Pepys was equally rude about the duke’s play. Pepys Diary, viii. 163, 186–7, 196, 209, 243; Evelyn Diary, iii. 478, 480–1. Newcastle in 1665 confided to a friend ‘what a rude country clown I am grown – but I cannot help it’. Add. 75359, Newcastle to Sir G. Savile, 9 Sept. 1665.

Though personal matters bulked large in Newcastle’s later years he nevertheless continued to take an active role in local affairs. He employed his interest in the election of knights of the shire for Nottinghamshire and Northumberland and in the return of members for the Nottinghamshire borough of East Retford. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 343-44, 349-51, 351-52. He appears moreover to have been a diligent lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. In 1662 he was one of the Corporation Act commissioners who attempted to have John Holles, 2nd earl of Clare, removed from the office of recorder of Nottingham. Stater, Noble Govt. 129. The following year he assisted in securing those suspected of disaffection, though exercising a degree of restraint a little at odds with the perception of him as an archetypal cavalier. HMC Portland, ii. 144; CSP Dom. 1663–4, pp. 316, 329, 474; Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson ed. J. Hutchinson, 297-9. He undertook similar action in 1665. CSP Dom. 1664–5, pp. 503, 514; CSP Dom. 1665–6, p. 373; UNL, Cl C 8, Arlington to Newcastle, 15 Aug. 1665; HMC Var. vii. 427, 428–9. His concern to fulfil his duties appears to have remained strong until virtually the end of his life. Stater, Noble Govt. 114; HMC Portland, ii. 147. As late as January 1676 he was still taking a keen interest in such matters as the appointment of Nottinghamshire’s deputy lieutenants. CSP Dom. 1675–6, pp. 221, 576–7.

Newcastle died at Welbeck on 25 Dec. 1676. His demise had been reported prematurely in September of the previous year. Verney ms mic. M636/28, Dr. W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 23 Sept. 1675. He was buried on 22 Jan. 1677, according to his wishes, ‘without any funeral solemnity’, next to his wife in Westminster Abbey. Add. 12514, ff. 100–1; Add. 37998, f. 241. In his will he instructed that £2,000 a year should be set aside from his personal estate to fund the completion of his building works at Nottingham Castle. He was succeeded in his estates and titles by his only surviving son, Henry Cavendish, who was named sole executor and who also took his father’s place in the order of the garter. HMC Portland, ii. 152.