CAVENDYSSHE (CAVENDISH), Sir Charles (d. 1654), of Welbeck Abbey, Notts.; later of Wellingore, Lincs.

Cavendysshe – as he signed himself – was a scion on his mother’s and paternal grandmother’s side of the distinguished aristocratic houses the lords Ogle of Ogle Castle, Northumberland, and the Talbot earls of Shrewsbury.18Add. 4278, f. 161; Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 72. Like his elder brother William Cavendish† – the future 1st earl and marquess of Newcastle and commander of the king’s northern army in the civil war – he was ‘partly bred’ up in the household of Gilbert Talbot†, 7th earl of Shrewsbury.19Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 1. He was ‘inclined from his youth to learning (particularly the mathematics) ... studies agreeing better with his vigorous soul than other exercises did with his weak body’.20D. Lloyd, Memoires (1668), 672. The contrast between Cavendysshe’s intellectual powers and his small and deformed body was noted by several contemporaries. His close friend (by the 1650s) Sir Edward Hyde* thought him ‘a man of the noblest and largest mind, though the least and most inconvenient body that lived’.21Clarendon, Hist. iii. 375; Life, i. 250. John Aubrey described him as ‘a little weak crooked man, and nature having not adapted him for the court nor camp, he betook himself to the study of the mathematics, wherein he became a great master’.22Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 153.

In the elections to the 1624 Parliament, Cavendysshe beat off perhaps as many as nine other gentlemen (including John Selden*) to take the senior place at Nottingham – a testament to his family’s considerable influence in the county. He stood for the borough again in the elections to the 1625 Parliament, but was thwarted by the corporation’s determination to return townsmen. By 1628, however, the corporation felt the need for powerful county patrons and returned Cavendysshe and Henry Pierrepont (brother of William* and Francis Pierrepont*) in order to ‘gain the friendship and favour of those two noble families and have their assistance to the town when any occasion shall [be] offered’.23HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Nottingham’. During the 1630s, Cavendysshe generally resided at Newcastle’s house at Welbeck and became closely embroiled in his brother’s estate and legal affairs.24E134/12Chas1/East31; E134/13Chas1/East24; Notts. RO, DDX 44; Portland of Welbeck mss, DDP, DD/P1, DD/2P, DD/6P, passim; Coventry Docquets, 211, 247, 253, 620, 671. He and Newcastle also conducted scientific experiments and held correspondence about mathematics, optics and related subjects with Thomas Hobbes and various eminent English and French scholars.25Harl. 6796, f. 291; HMC Portland, ii. 122, 124, 126, 128; J. Jacquot, ‘Sir Charles Cavendish and his learned friends’, Annals of Science viii. 13-27; ‘Sir Charles Cavendish’, Oxford DNB.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in 1640, it was Cavendysshe who was returned for Nottingham (as is clear from the indenture) and not his young nephew Charles Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield* as some authorities have stated.26Supra, ‘Nottingham’; P. R. Seddon, ‘The Notts. elections for the Short Parliament’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. lxxx. 67. He received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. In the elections to the Long Parliament, his place at Nottingham was taken by the future royalist William Stanhope.

Cavendysshe, like his brother Newcastle, sided with the king during the civil war. Although one near contemporary claimed that he had served as master of ordnance in Newcastle’s northern army, the earl’s wife – the celebrated author Margaret countess of Newcastle, who dedicated her Philosophicall Fancies to Cavendysshe – was probably correct in stating that he ‘had no command, by reason of the weakness of his body’.27Lloyd, Memoires, 672; M. Cavendish, Philosophicall Fancies (1653), sig. B4v (E.1474.1); Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 92. He should not be confused, as he sometimes is, with his kinsman Charles Cavendish, brother of the 3rd earl of Devonshire, who was Newcastle’s lieutenant-general of horse.28Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 88; ‘Sir Charles Cavendish’, Oxford DNB. Despite his physical frailty, Cavendysshe ‘usually went out in all parties and was present, and charged the enemy, in all battles’.29Clarendon, Life, i. 250. He fought alongside Newcastle at Marston Moor in July 1644, but the conspicuous gallantry of the two brothers and their troops could not save the day for the royalists.30Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 40, 92; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 375. In the aftermath of defeat, with the entire north seemingly lost, the Cavendishes and their friends – including Sir William Withrington* and Sir William Carnabye* – retired to Scarborough and took ship for the continent.31Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 43. In 1645, Cavendysshe accompanied Newcastle to Paris, where he seems to have spent much of the next three years indulging his interest in mathematics and scientific experiment. Among the men of science and letters with whom he socialised and corresponded were Hobbes and René Descartes.32Add. 4278, ff. 161-324; Hervey, ‘Hobbes and Descartes’, 67–90; Jacquot, ‘Sir Charles Cavendish’, 175-91; ‘Sir Charles Cavendish’, Oxford DNB. Newcastle and Cavendysshe waited upon the prince of Wales in Holland in the summer of 1648, when the prospects of a royalist victory in England seemed good.33Hervey, ‘Hobbes and Descartes’, 84; Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 47, 49. But after the defeats at Preston and Colchester they retired to private lodgings in Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands.34Add. 4278, f. 278; Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 50.

In May 1649, Cavendysshe petitioned to compound for his estates, and despite referring to his ‘small fortune’ he was able to pay the £1,507 fine for discharging his estate from sequestration.35SP23/217, p. 42; CCC 2021. However, in January 1651 the committee for Staffordshire informed the Committee for Compounding* that at the time of his composition, Cavendysshe had been ‘beyond seas and a very dangerous person’.36CCC 2022. Consequently, in March 1651, his estate was again sequestered – the charge against him being that he had adhered to Charles Stuart (Charles II) and was living abroad without leave. Cavendysshe was very reluctant to return to England to compound for his estate a second time ‘out of apprehension that he might be required to take the Covenant or Engagement, or to do somewhat else which his conscience would not permit him to do’.37Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 55; Clarendon, Life, i. 251. Newcastle, however, ‘considering that it was better to recover something than lose all, entreated the lord chancellor [Sir Edward Hyde], who was then in Antwerp, to persuade his brother to a composition, which his lordship did very effectually and proved himself a noble and true friend in it’.38Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 55-6; Clarendon, Life, i. 251-3.

Late in 1651, therefore, Cavendysshe and Lady Newcastle returned to England, lodging in Southwark and Covent Garden in very straitened circumstances.39Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 56-7. Somehow Cavendysshe managed to find a further £5,000 to discharge his estate from sequestration, and through the sale of some of his own lands he succeeded in purchasing his brother’s two ‘chief houses’, Welbeck and Bolsover.40Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 57-8. Prevented from returning to Antwerp with Lady Newcastle in 1653 by a bout of malaria, he died on 4 February 1654 unmarried and intestate and was buried in the Cavendish family vault at Bolsover on 25 February.41Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 58, 170-1; Turberville, Welbeck Abbey and its Owners, i. 135. The administration of his estate was granted to his nephew Charles Cavendish*, Viscount Mansfield.42PROB6/29, f. 98.

Lady Newcastle, who felt her brother-in-law’s loss particularly keenly, claimed that he was ‘a person of so great worth, such extraordinary civility, so obliging a nature, so full of generosity, justice and charity, besides all manner of learning, especially in the mathematics, that not only his friends, but even his enemies, did much lament his loss’.43Life of Cavendish, ed. Firth, 58, 166. Hyde was equally lavish in his praise of Cavendysshe

who was one of the most extraordinary persons of that age in all the noble endowments of the mind. He had all the disadvantages imaginable in his person, which was not only of so small a size that it drew the eyes of men upon him, but [also] with such deformity in his little person, and an aspect in his countenance, that was apter to raise contempt than application. But in this unhandsome or homely habitation, there was a mind and a soul lodged that was very lovely and beautiful; cultivated and polished by all the knowledge and wisdom that arts and sciences could supply it with. He was a great philosopher, in the extent of it, and an excellent mathematician, whose correspondence was very dear to Gassendus [the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi] and Descartes – the last of which dedicated some of his works to him.44Clarendon, Life, i. 250.