Cavalier Read online

  Cavalier

  A TALE OF

  CHIVALRY, PASSION,

  AND GREAT HOUSES

  Lucy Worsley

  BLOOMSBURY

  Copyright © by Lucy Worsley 2007

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

  Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

  All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR

  eISBN 978-1-59691-358-5

  First U.S. Edition 2007

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Family Trees

  Map

  Timeline

  1 A Deathbed: Welbeck Abbey, 27th March, 1617

  2 A Building Site:Bolsover Castle, 12th June, 1613

  3 In a Closet: Welbeck Abbey, 9th July, 1625

  4 A Masque: Bolsover Castle, 30th July, 1634

  5 A Royal Palace: The Palace of Richmond, a Day in July, 1638

  6 A Battle: The King's Manor, York, 2nd July, 1644

  7 A Household Divided: The house of Rubens, Antwerp 15 th November, 1659

  8 A Bedchamber Conversation: Newcastle House, London 11th May, 1667

  9 A Conspiracy: Welbeck Abbey, 30th October-2nd November, 1670

  10 A Second Deathbed: Welbeck Abbey, 25th December, 1676

  Afterword: William Cavendish's Legacy

  Acknowledgements

  Sources

  Notes

  Illustrations

  PLATE SECTIONS

  1 A copy of the painting of William by his friend Anthony van Dyck.

  2 William's parents on their marble monument in Bolsover Church.

  3 One of William's horses and a groom before the west front of Welbeck Abbey.

  4 The east front of Welbeck Abbey.

  5 William's grandmother's house: Hardwick New Hall, Derbyshire.

  6 William's first wife Elizabeth, painted by Daniel Mytens in 1624.

  7 Elizabeth's earring.

  8 A bracelet made from the hair of Elizabeth's mother.

  9 The Cavendish family's masterpiece: Bolsover Castle.

  10 An old man woos a young lady (wall painting, Little Castle).

  11 The ceiling of the Heaven closet in the Little Castle at Bolsover.

  12 A masque in progress.

  13 The Fountain Garden at Bolsover.

  14 The Star Chamber, the Little Castle's great chamber.

  15 The Pillar Parlour in the Little Castle at Bolsover.

  16 The interior of William's Riding House at Bolsover Castle.

  17 Hercules struggles with the man-eating mare of Diomedes.

  18 Charles I and Henrietta Maria dining with their eldest son Charles.

  19 Painted lunette in the Marble closet of the Little Castle at Bolsover.

  20 Hercules dallies with the nymph in the frieze of William's Elysium closet in the Little Castle at Bolsover.

  21 Charles I with his riding teacher, Monsieur de St Antoine, 1633.

  22 Charles I, Henrietta Maria and Prince Charles, c.1632.

  23 The Garden of Love by Peter Paul Rubens.

  24 The painting studio in Rubens's House, Antwerp.

  25 Miniature of William in later middle age.

  26 The reconstructed dining room in Rubens's house.

  27 A printing press at the Plantin-Moretus House, Antwerp.

  28 John Evelyn, painted by Robert Walker in 1648.

  29 Henry Cavendish, painted by Mary Beale.

  30 Margaret Cavendish, painted by Sir Peter Lely (1663-4).

  TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

  1 Welbeck Abbey in the early seventeenth century, after the addition of William's Riding House and Great Stable.

  2 Members of the household of the Duke of Albemarle.

  3 John Smithson's drawing for the cellars of the Little Castle at Bolsover.

  4 Some of the tools used on the building site.

  5 Inigo Jones's design for 'Oberon's Palace', a piece of scenery for the masque Oberon, the faery Prince (1611). This design has much in common with the Cavendishes' Little Castle.

  6 The orders of architecture.

  7 Inigo Jones's Banqueting House in Whitehall.

  8 A design for a gateway at Arundel House by Inigo Jones, contrasted with John Smithson's drawing of the finished work.

  9 A bird's-eye view of Welbeck as it is in 1625.

  10 The Riding House at Welbeck, designed by John Smithson.

  11 John Smithson's design for the Marble closet at Bolsover Castle.

  12 An English lady's bedchamber, c.1640.

  13 A bird's-eye view of Bolsover Castle.

  14 The Little Castle, Bolsover. Plans of all four floors.

  15 The cellars of the Little Castle.

  16 A seventeenth-century sketch of Bolsover Castle from the north.

  17 Detail of John Smithson's design for the fountain at Bolsover Castle.

  18 The western front of Bolsover Castle.

  19 Plan of the Little Castle, ground floor.

  20 Plan of the Little Castle, first floor.

  21 Napkins being folded and made into strange shapes.

  22 Inigo Jones's design for 'two lackeys', comic dancers who would have appeared in the earlier part of a masque.

  23 A broadsheet lampooning fashionable young 'hot-spur Cavaliers'.

  24 Detail showing the 'ye palace of our hopeful prince', from Moses Glover's map of Richmond (1635).

  25 Antonis van Wyngaerde's view of Richmond Palace.

  26 Plan of Richmond Palace.

  27 A gentleman (disputing with a devil) sits upon Sir John Harington's new flushing toilet.

  28 William invites his pupil Prince Charles to walk in the mead opposite the Palace of Richmond.

  29 Morris men perform on the banks of the Thames in this view of Richmond Palace (c.1630) by an unknown artist.

  30 Armour of the type that William wore at the battle of Marston Moor.

  31 A detail from The disposition of a single regiment of infantry in the fields (according to the present discipline of His Majesty King Charles), an etching by Wenceslaus Hollar.

  32 A woodcut of Prince Rupert and his dog Boye.

  33 The two armies prepare for battle at Marston Moor.

  34 A Parliamentarian soldier shoots Boye, and Rupert, dressed as a Catholic priest with donkey's ears, performs the last rites.

  35 Plan of Rubens's house.

  36 William in a characteristically insouciant pose.

  37 Rubens's house as it was in 1692.

  38 A crowded square in seventeenth-century Antwerp, with coaches and street performers.

  39 Margaret Cavendish, standing in a niche, wearing a little crown.

  40 A sample of William's handwriting.

  41 A map of the city of London made in 1666.

  42 Plan of Newcastle House, Clerkenwell.

  43 The entrance to Newcastle House.

  44 Images of 'vertue' and 'vice' from the 1650s.

  45 Margaret is disturbed while writing in her closet.

  46 The new state rooms of the Terrace Range at Bolsover, designed by Samuel Marsh and added under Andrew Clayton's supervision in the 1660s.

  47 William's last great mansion: Nottingh
am Castle.

  48 William and Margaret's monument, designed by Grinling Gibbons, in the north transept of Westminster Abbey.

  Chapter heads: some of the jobs performed in the household. From Randle Holme, An Academie or Store of Armory & Blazon (Book III, Chapter 3), apparently published in 1688. This is a book of ideas for motifs to be used in heraldry.

  THE CAVENDISH FAMILY TREE: PART ONE

  Key: Cavendish of Welbeck. Cavendish of Chatsworth. Other relation.

  Family Trees

  THE CAVENDISH FAMILY TREE: PART TWO

  Key: Cavendish of Welbeck. Relations by marriage.

  THE CAVENDISH FAMILY TREE: PART THREE

  Key: Cavendish of Welbeck. Relations by marriage.

  England, France and the Low Countries, showing places mentioned in the story. The insert shows Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Cavendish country

  Timeline

  1 - A Deathbed

  WELBECK ABBEY, 27TH MARCH, 1617

  Sir William Cavendish, twenty-three years old, is hurrying through the draughty stone passages of Welbeck Abbey towards the chamber where his father lies ill. A servant opens a low door, and a breath of fresh air accompanies William into a dimly lit bedchamber. His silhouette, seen against the light from the passage, describes a tightly tailored upper body and arms above voluminous breeches. His face and high white ruff show brightly against his dark doublet and his hair is brushed into a fashionable peak over his forehead. Crossing the threshold into the room, William leaves behind one stage of his life and enters another, for his father is suffering from a grievous illness and has summoned his son for one of the most important conversations in a great landowner's lifetime.

  Inside Sir Charles Cavendish's room the air is heavy with the scent of fresh blood drained from the patient's veins by his doctors. There is also a tang emanating from his close stool, the upholstered seat that hides his chamber pot. The bedchamber's walls are richly hung with tapestry, and a fringe hangs down from the canopy or sparver of Sir Charles's great curtained bed.1 Only a murky finger of light enters through the flecked, translucent leaded panes of the stone-mullioned windows. Sir Charles's stout shoehorn, carved with the miniature figures of Adam and Eve and the Cavendish family's symbol of a stag's head, lies near to hand upon a table draped with a rich Turkish carpet, but it is doubtful whether he will ever need it again.2 In his long nightshirt, a kerchief tied round his head, William's father lies propped up in bed, half-sitting against plump pillows; sixty-five years old, he is accustomed to sleeping semi-upright rather than prone. Sir Charles's nose is lengthy and aquiline. Hair still sprouts thickly over his high forehead and kinks round his ears; his beard is chest-length below clean-shaven cheeks, and his fingers are long and pointed.3 Until now, he has maintained his health with some success. Despite his advanced years, he has been a hale, active man, keeping himself fit with regular riding and swordplay, an art at which he is a great master. Such martial pursuits have brought him pain as well as pleasure: today he lies uncomfortably upon an old injury to the buttock that he suffered in a pistol fight with a group of his Nottinghamshire neighbours. Sir Charles has been thrusting, successful and well-connected, but also valiant and generous. He still possesses a clear mind and memory, and his household has little idea of how ill he is. But now, crossing the room and seeing his father's face, William realises that this sickness could be fatal.

  As William approaches his father's bed, many other people are waiting to hear why Sir Charles has summoned his son with such solemnity and whether the head of their household is going to pass safely through his illness. At this pivotal moment in the quiet bedchamber at Welbeck Abbey, the very epicentre of the vast Cavendish estates, the fears and expectations of the many members of the family and household remain pinned to their patriarch. Elsewhere in the house, Sir Charles's wife and younger son await news of his condition. They are anxious to know whether Sir Charles believes that he will recover or whether he has decided that the time has come to make provision for the future management of the household. Also waiting for news are Sir Charles's confidential upper servants (many of them his relations), his lower servants going about their menial tasks in the kitchens, gardens and stables, the servants out at the farm, the builders at his half-finished new castle at Bolsover, seven miles away, the tenants of his estates across the Midlands, their own maids and servingmen, the labourers in the fields and the paupers who depend on the Cavendishes' charity. The household and estates revolve like a vast wheel around the fixed point of Sir Charles's bed. As William's father's life moves towards crisis, change will ripple through all these lives, and the power bases and allegiances of the household will now begin to shift.

  The person most immediately affected by the danger to Sir Charles's health is the young man now sinking to his knees on the matting of plaited rushes by his father's bed. William is a true Cavendish, ambitious and proud. His grandmother was one of her age's greatest builders: the Countess of Shrewsbury (£.1527-1608), commonly known as 'Bess of Hardwick', who constructed the famous Hardwick Hall. William was brought up in the landlocked Midlands, where the country houses built by competitive neighbours form a dense clot of England's most impressive architectural achievements. Sir Charles, Bess's youngest son, is one of the courteous and chivalrous Elizabethan knights who will leave a lasting reminder of their pleasant and prosperous lives in the form of their near miraculous houses, and the new stately suite he has added to Welbeck Abbey is only one of his many building projects. The grandson of a Derbyshire sheep farmer, Sir Charles is now the proud possessor of an abbey, a castle and two healthy heirs.

  His elder son William is a similarly likeable, warm-hearted young man, but he is also impulsive and addicted to risk-taking and pleasure. He is, and will remain, a lifelong lover of horses, architecture and women. His smile and manner are engaging, but he has yet to grow into the grave, responsible figure who may successfully hold high office at court or govern a household, let alone manage the raucous and competitive Cavendish servants. Physically, he is only moderately tall, but 'his shape is neat, and exactly proportioned'. He is extremely fit and upright in bearing from his daily exercise on horseback or with the sword. He eats like an athlete, keeping himself on a strict diet, and his habitual supper consists only of 'an egg and a draught of small-beer'. Fastidious and careful in dressing, he wears bright silks, lace collars, feathered hats and high boots, following fashion so far as it is appropriate 'for men of Heroick Exercises and Actions'.4 He rides his beloved dancing stallions every morning, demonstrating the flying leaps of the art of horsemanship or manege, while his curls and feathers mirror the horses' luxuriant manes. This moment in his father's bedchamber is one of the rare occasions on which he is to be seen without a whip in his gloved hand.

  Despite the carefully calculated image of arrogant perfection that William presents to the world - jaunty beard and high-heeled shoes he relishes his body's natural functions. He is a fluent and enthusiastic, if as yet unpublished, writer, devoted to his mentor the poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637), and colourfully records his experiences of spitting, removing gum from his eyes, blowing his nose, extracting earwax with an ear-pick, his 'lecherous sweatings', his 'greatest pimple' and his 'buttocks married to his open close stool' during a bout of diarrhoea.5

  No one can fail to warm to William's attractively voluble enthusiasms; his love for horses and women; his unerring ability to sabotage his own interests. He has attended the court with his father from a young age and already holds the title of a Knight of the Bath. His glamour and his vulnerability are two sides of the same coin: he has all the charming insouciance and panache of a brave young blood ambitious to make his mark at the Stuart court, haunt of the Cavaliers, where success waits for many a well-dressed and well-mounted young man. Yet it may already be guessed that, like his fellow Cavaliers, William suffers from a potentially fatal lack of diligence, sobriety and common sense. He longs to be a serious player at court, but he can ruin a delicate meeting with his 'customary
swearing', and one of his friends says that if you tell him a secret 'it might as well be proclaimed at the [market] cross'.6 His love for the arts in all their guises - and his reputation for chasing women mean that he is accused of frivolity, of being forever 'fornicating with the Nine Muses, or the Dean of York's daughters'.7