CAVENDISH, Charles, Visct. Mansfield (c.1626-59), of Welbeck Abbey, Notts.

The Cavendishes of Welbeck and Bolsover were one of Caroline England’s rising aristocratic families. Cavendish’s father, created 1st earl of Newcastle in 1628, was lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire and numbered Archbishop William Laud, the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) and other powerful courtiers among his friends. He also enjoyed the favour of the king, who appointed him governor of the prince of Wales in 1638.15Add. 70499, ff. 156, 196, 198; HMC Portland, ii. 122-3, 127; Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 98, 181-2; ‘William Cavendish, 1st duke of Newcastle upon Tyne’, Oxford DNB. Cavendish (styled Viscount Mansfield) was only four years older than the young prince and still a minor when his father attempted to secure his return for East Retford in the elections to the Short Parliament. In the event, Newcastle seems to have come to an arrangement with his friend Sir Gervase Clifton* – East Retford’s principal electoral patron – whereby the earl acquiesced in the return of Francis Pierrepont for the borough on the understanding that Clifton would back Mansfield next time round. Consequently, in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, East Retford returned Clifton in first place and Mansfield in second.16Supra, ‘East Retford’; Notts. RO, DD/HO/18/1.

Newcastle was by no means a popular figure with the parliamentary leadership in 1640-1, and it is perhaps surprising that the Commons took no notice of the fact that his son was a minor. In himself, Mansfield was too insignificant a figure at Westminster to excite much attention. He was named to just one committee (on 10 November 1640), took the Protestation in May 1641, and then on 10 August he was granted leave of absence, after which he evidently did not resume his seat.17CJ ii. 25b, 133b, 249a, 626. Mansfield later alleged that in the spring of 1642 he had asked his father’s permission to return to the House or, failing that, to travel to the continent, but had been denied on both counts.18CJ vii. 311b. Following his appointment as commander of the king’s northern army in the summer of 1642, Newcastle took Mansfield with him into the north and made him a colonel of horse and foot and general of the ordnance.19CJ vii. 311b; Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 88; Newman, Royalist Officers, 65. Mansfield later admitted that he had worn a sword while attending his father on campaign, but claimed that he had never used it in combat, ‘being weak of body and constitution’.20CJ vii. 311b. But his mere presence in the king’s northern army would have been crime enough in the eyes of his former colleagues at Westminster, and on 22 January 1644 the Commons disabled him from sitting as an MP.21CJ iii. 374a. After the royalist defeat at Marston Moor in July 1644, and with the entire north seemingly lost, Newcastle, Mansfield and their friends repaired to Scarborough and took ship for the continent.22Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 43.

Mansfield returned to England in 1647, and there being no charge of delinquency against him – the Committee for Compounding* having accepted his plea that he had been too young during the civil war to be held responsible for his actions – he was allowed to live quietly in London.23CJ vii. 312a; CCC 1799. In 1649, he petitioned to compound for the reversion of lands in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and several other counties that had belonged to his mother and in which his father enjoyed only an estate for life.24SP23/101, p. 903; CCC 1799. The committee for removing obstructions on the sale of delinquents’ estates conceded that Mansfield had a valid claim to the reversion of these lands; and the Rump repeatedly rejected motions for his exclusion from the terms of the act of oblivion.25CJ vii. 93, 96a, 312a; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/629. In April 1651, he was imprisoned by the council of state, but this was largely a precautionary measure it seems, and he was quickly released.26CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 155, 162, 527. His exemption from charges of delinquency enabled his father to convey large parts of the family estate to Mansfield in an attempt to save them from the clutches of the commissioners for the sale of delinquents’ estates.27Notts. RO, DD/P/114/74; DD/P/6/1/18/21.

Mansfield’s status as a non-delinquent was thrown into doubt in October 1653, when the Nominated Parliament voted against passing a bill (drawn up by the council of state) for granting him the benefit of the act of oblivion.28Notts. RO, DD/P/6/1/31/18; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 261, 371; CJ vii. 334a. With the establishment of the protectorate in December, Mansfield’s friends on the protectoral council (who seem to have included Sir Gilbert Pykeringe* and Walter Strickland*) revived this bill, which the protector passed in March 1654.29Notts. RO, DD/P/6/1/31/19; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 371, 385; CJ vii. 311b, 334a. Mansfield’s title to the Cavendish patrimony assured, he was able to settle a jointure of £2,000 a year upon his wife, whom he married some time early in 1654.30Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/228; Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 141. During the next five years, he sold and mortgaged various parts of the family estate, while at the same buying back others that had been forfeited or sold since 1644.31Notts. RO, DD/12/2; DD/P/7/9; DD/P/70/43; DD/P/73/12; DD/P/85/39; DD/P/88/8, 10-11; DD/P/108/8-9; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/95; Derbys. RO, D239/M/T/12, 122, 193, 1089; Sheffield City Archives, CM/267. With the help of his brother’s father-in-law William Pierrepont*, he was able to keep on the right side of Major-general Edward Whalley* and thus avoided having to pay decimation tax on his lands in the midlands.32HMC Portland, ii. 141-2. But though he was also on friendly terms with Major-general John Lambert*, whose jurisdiction included the four northern counties, he was charged £48 decimation tax on his lands in Northumberland.33Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/164; HMC Portland, ii. 141-2.

Besides the Cromwellian grandees Lambert and Whalley, Mansfield’s parliamentarian network during the 1650s included Gervase Bennett* and Colonel Thomas Sanders*, who both wrote to him in the spring of 1656 requesting that he present the Presbyterian minister Robert Seddon to his living of Kirk Langley, which he duly did.34Add. 70499, ff. 333, 335; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/10, 96; Calamy Revised, 431. Mansfield had received favours in the past from Bennett and therefore felt ‘obliged to requite [him] in all gratitude’.35Add. 70499, f. 335. In 1656 Mansfield, in turn, recommended one Mr Leadbetter to Henry Pierrepont†, 1st marquess of Dorchester, for his vacant living of Norton Cuckney, Nottinghamshire.36Add. 70499, f. 346. If this was the future ejected minister Thomas Leadbetter, it suggests that Mansfield looked more favourably on puritan clergymen than did his father.37Calamy Revised, 319-20.

Mansfield died, without surviving children, on 31 May 1659, having been struck down by a ‘dead palsy’.38Corresp. of Duppa and Isham ed. Isham, 169-70. He was buried in the Cavendish family vault at Bolsover.39D. Lysons, Magna Britannia (1822), v. 55. He had drawn up a will in 1654, bequeathing his estate to his wife, but this was never entered in probate, and therefore he died intestate.40Notts. RO, DD/P/6/1/19/29. On 11 July 1661, Mansfield’s widow having also died, the administration of his estate was granted to his principal creditor.41PROB6/37, f. 73. Commiserating with Newcastle on his loss, Secretary Edward Nicholas† described Mansfield as ‘a matchless son, a truly noble and virtuous person’.42CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 374.