FALKLANDS
 
 ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
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 FALKLANDS 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE LIFE OF SIR KENELM DIGBV," "THE LIFE OF A PRIG," 
 
 ETC. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1897 
 All rights reserved
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS is "a book written with a purpose" to 
 amuse its author. To the obvious rejoinder, " So 
 far so good ; but why publish it ? " I would reply 
 that the public reads a great deal of rubbish ; and 
 that, so long as it chooses to buy and to read mine, 
 it is welcome to do so. But there is a more im- 
 portant object in publishing, for publishing is the 
 only means of obtaining anything approaching an 
 impartial criticism of literary labour. Not that 
 reviews are always impartial, or that the sugges- 
 tions of all reviewers are to be implicitly followed ; 
 but the author who sends his book to a score or 
 so of the best journals will obtain a collection of 
 opinions, as a whole, better worth having than any 
 he could acquire through other channels, and, in 
 some cases, they would be cheap at the cost of 
 the production of his book, even if not a copy of 
 it were to be sold. 
 
 Let me take this opportunity of thanking the 
 critics for the very kind manner in which they 
 have dealt with my own works. Some people are 
 never satisfied ; and I often tell myself that I have 
 been gently handled because, having, in a literary 
 
 20GC546
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 sense, neither name nor fame, I excite no jealousy. 
 I fear also that, although I have written anony- 
 mously, a good many reviewers are aware of a 
 disability under which I labour, and have for that 
 reason treated me more charitably than I deserve. 
 I am not pretending that no faults have been found 
 with my writings. Quite the contrary ! Never- 
 theless, as a rule, the adverse criticisms have been 
 very just, and I venture to hope that I have derived 
 considerable benefit from them. 
 
 While thanking my reviewers most heartily for 
 the assistance thus afforded to me, I will say that, 
 in my own opinion, my already published books, of 
 the same type as the present, are open to one un- 
 favourable criticism, which has not yet been passed 
 upon them. I, therefore, will supply that want. My 
 books are reviews. Having become interested in 
 some character or subject, I and I am only an 
 insignificant unit among many writers of the same 
 school read everything bearing upon it that I 
 can find ; then I take up my pen and I write a 
 review of such portions of the books and manu- 
 scripts thus read as are more or less to the point, 
 giving my opinions with ample quotations, and 
 ending by having the result printed and published 
 in the form of a book. A book may be a very 
 good thing ; so also may a review. It cannot, 
 however, be good that a review should be a book, 
 or that a book should be a review. 
 
 If I am conscious of this fault, why, it may 
 reasonably be asked, do I continue to sin against 
 light ? Because it has become so engrained a
 
 PREFACE. Vli 
 
 habit as to be incurable ; for my pen was much 
 earlier, and has been much more, employed in 
 reviewing books than in writing them. I will 
 not go the length of inverting an often-quoted 
 passage in one of Lord Beaconsfield's novels into 
 " Who are the authors and the artists ? Those 
 who have failed as critics ; " but I will go so far 
 as to say that criticism is not the best of prepara- 
 tions for authorship or art. 
 
 Having thus reviewed my own work, I will 
 now leave it to be reviewed by others ; but they 
 cannot criticise it more severely than by calling 
 it, as I have called it, a review. 
 
 I have to thank Lord Falkland for his very 
 great courtesy in allowing me to copy his portraits, 
 and for his readiness to give me any help in his 
 power. My gratitude is also due to Lord Arundell 
 of Wardour for most kindly sending me a photo- 
 graph of his portrait of the second Viscount 
 Falkland, with permission to use it. I am in- 
 debted to Professor Gardiner for some very 
 valuable information, and to Mr. Walter Herries 
 Pollock for revising my work. Other assistance 
 afforded to me will be acknowledged in the course 
 of the book. 
 
 T. L.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A SOLE HEIRESS . 
 
 Views Henry Gary Elizabeth Tanfield Sole heiresses An odd child 
 Trial of a witch- An illiterate mother and a literary daughter A 
 polite letter-writer Gary goes to Holland Two prisoners A mother- 
 in-law The Venerable Hooker Dr. Neale Birth of Lucius 
 Whipping Financial matters Master of the Jewel House and 
 Keeper of Marybone Park Elizabeth hates fine clothes and dressing. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 POVERTY, PROMOTION AND "POPERY" n 
 
 A mortgage Viscount Falkland A wrecker Literary pursuits Lady 
 Home Toothache Lord Deputy in Ireland Impecuniosity Policy 
 in Ireland Improving Irish industries 1625 Lady Falkland goes to 
 England Death of Lady Home Lady Denbigh Dr. Cozens Incli- 
 nations to the Catholic Church Lord Ormonde Father Dunstan 
 Everard Reception into the Church Lady Falkland Buckingham 
 A prisoner at home. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A WIFE EXPELLED FROM HOME AND HER HUSBAND FROM OFFICE I 
 
 Anger of Cozens Falkland's agent cuts off supplies A faithful servant 
 Falkland writes to the King about his wife's conversion Feminine 
 mediation Lady Tanfield Lady Falkland's letter to the King The 
 Privy Council orders Falkland to support his wife A wretched habita- 
 tion Death of Lady Tanfield Lucius Gary The Byrnes Sedition 
 Forced evidence Recall of Falkland Lucius challenges Sir F. Wil- 
 loughby Lucius committed to the Fleet Falkland's letter to the King.
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MARRIAGE FOR MONEY, OR FOR LOVE ? . . . -3 
 
 You shall marry for money. No, I will marry for love Value of a pound 
 in the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries Various estimates of 
 Lucius His friend, Sir Henry Morison Ben Jonson's poem on the 
 two friends Dr. Johnson on the "metaphysical poets" Morison's 
 sister, Letice Verses about her Lucius marries her Anger of his 
 father Lucius offers his property to his father Falkland imprisoned 
 for debt Lucius goes to Holland Reconciliation of Falkland with his 
 wife Death of Falkland. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A LITERARY LIFE 45 
 
 Great Tew Lucius, Lord Falkland made a Gentleman of the Privy 
 Chamber Sale of Burford Priory to pay his father's debts Winters 
 with his mother in London His religious tendencies His wife's 
 Discontent among Charles' subjects Was Falkland Liberal or Con- 
 servative ? Hackney coaches and sedan chairs Falkland's literary 
 powers and his poetry Entertaining at Great Tew Letice and her 
 devotions for her servants. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE FRIENDS OF FALKLAND 59 
 
 Clarendon George Sandys Thomas Carew Sir John Suckling ' ' A 
 Session of the Poets " Sir John Digby Edmund Waller Sir Francis 
 Wenman Walter Montague Sir Kenelm Digby Chillingworth 
 Morley Earles Shelden Henry Hammond Hugh Cressy Hales. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " POETREY AND CONTROVERSIE " 71 
 
 Thorn. Triplet Selden Ben Jonson " Poetrey and Controversie with the 
 Church of Rome' ' What was then thought of Shakespeare Masques 
 Socinus and his writings Chillingworth's intrigues against Falkland's 
 sisters and brothers Falkland's correspondence with Montague and 
 his " Discourse of the Infallibilitie of the Church of Rome." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 STEALING ONE'S OWN 84 
 
 Poverty of Elizabeth, Lady Falkland ''Entangling businesses" Pil- 
 grimage to Holywell Elizabeth takes away her two younger sons 
 from Great Tew by stealth Their adventures Elizabeth summoned 
 before the Council Afterwards before the Lord Chief Justice 
 Reconciled to her eldest son Her death Her character.
 
 CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FROM PEACE TO WAR 95 
 
 Death of Ben Jonson Falkland's " Eglogue " on it Falkland joins 
 Holland's Horse in the expedition against Scotland Waller and 
 Cowley lament his doing so, in verse "A fair and safe retreat" 
 Did Letice bore her husband ? Falkland becomes M. P. for 
 Newport The Short Parliament Pym Lenthall The Long Par- 
 liament Impeachment of Strafford Impeachment of Finch and 
 Falkland's speech. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LONG PARLIAMENT 108 
 
 Agitation against the bishops Falkland's speech against them Attitude 
 of Lord Digby Division in the opposition to the bishops Falkland's 
 and Pym's parties Bailie's letters Strafford's trial Execution of 
 Strafford Bill against the bishops Temporary opposition of Falkland 
 to his friend Hyde The Root-and-Branch Bill Falkland's opposition 
 to it Charles sends for Hyde Charles starts for Scotland End of the 
 Long Parliament. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A POLITICAL TRIO 120 
 
 Falkland and Hyde take Colepepper as an ally His character Supposed 
 plot in Edinburgh Root-and-Branch Bill dropped New Bill against 
 bishops Hampden taunts Falkland upon changing his opinions 
 Rebellion in Ireland Falkland opposes the raising of an army by the 
 King to quell it The Grand Remonstrance Great debate on it Oliver 
 Cromwell and Falkland Scene in the House of Commons Falkland 
 made Secretary of State by the King His acceptance of that office 
 discussed. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FROM THE COMMONS TO THE COURT 133 
 
 Falkland and Mistress Moray Falkland, Hyde, Colepepper and Lord 
 Digby Digby's character Impeachment of several M.P. 's The 
 King's folly and duplicity Difficult and awkward position of Falk- 
 land Plot to seize Falkland, Hyde and Colepepper Commons' 
 suspicion of Hyde Falkland's letter to him The King at York 
 Charles's treatment of Essex and Holland Embarrassments of Falk- 
 land Lyttleton Nineteen Propositions Falkland joins the King at 
 York.
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WITH THE ROYAL STANDARD 144 
 
 Death of Falkland's brother Fining M.P.'s Friction between Falkland 
 and Hyde Declaration of the Forty-five Peers Their conduct con- 
 sidered The Commons raise an army Selden and the Commission of 
 Array The royal standard raised at Nottingham Efforts for peace 
 by Falkland and Hyde Falkland sent by Charles as a legate to 
 London Fails to make peace Arrival of Rupert His character 
 Royal army at Shrewsbury Quarrels among the generals Falkland's 
 unpleasantness with Rupert Battle of Edgehill Battle of Brentford. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WITH THE COURT AT OXFORD 158 
 
 Falkland's apology for conduct of Charles Depression of Falkland 
 Wintering at Oxford Charles's bet with Falkland Sortes 
 Virgilianee Hyde made Chancellor of the Exchequer Squabble 
 with Colepepper Scotch Commissioners at Oxford Charles vexed 
 with Falkland Waller's Plot Death of Hampden Taking of Bristol 
 Another quarrel with Colepepper. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BATTLE AND DEATH 171 
 
 Siege of Gloucester Falkland in the trenches Essex raises the siege and 
 surprises the King's troops at Cirencester Rupert repulses the Parlia- 
 mentary troops and occupies Newbury Falkland the night before the 
 battle Receives the Sacrament from Dr. Twisse Jeremy Taylor 
 Killing a witch A clean shirt Morning of the battle Falkland joins 
 Byron's Horse Weapons and uniforms Cavalry Advance of Byron's 
 Horse A gap in a hedge Death of Falkland Was it a moral suicide ? 
 Recovery of his body Burial at Great Tew Letice Henry Gary 
 sells his father's library The third Lord Falkland saves Judge Martin's 
 life Epilogue. 
 
 INDEX 191
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lucius GARY, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND . . . Frontispiece 
 
 HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND 2 
 
 ELIZABETH, WIFE OF HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND . 10 
 
 LETICE, WIFE OF Lucius, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND . . 36 
 
 BURFORD PRIORY 47 
 
 ELIZABETH, WIFE OF HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND . 94 
 
 LETICE, WIFE OF Lucius, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND . . 161 
 
 PARISH CHURCH AT GREAT TEW 184
 
 FALKLANDS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A SOLE HEIRESS. 
 
 FEW books are so dull as are family histories ; but the 
 history of several contemporary members of a family may 
 sometimes be more entertaining, as well as more illustrative 
 of the times in which they lived, than that of a single 
 individual. I propose, therefore, to write out some of the 
 results of my own reading and research concerning a family, 
 belonging to the long past, which happens to have attracted 
 my attention. 
 
 Many have been the monographs written of Lucius 
 Gary, second Viscount Falkland, and many the opinions 
 expressed of his character, from Horace Walpole's* "well- 
 meaning man, with a moderate understanding," to Matthew 
 Arnold's f " martyr of sweetness and light, of lucidity of 
 mind and largeness of temper ; " but although, in any notice 
 of the Falklands of the seventeenth century, Lucius Gary 
 must inevitably be accorded the foremost place, in the 
 present volume it is intended to make him rather the 
 hero of a story than the subject of a biography. 
 
 Henry Cary,J the first of the Falklands whom I propose 
 
 * Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors of England, p. 80. 
 
 t Mixed Essays, p. 236. 
 
 J He was probably born about the year 1576, for in her memoirs of her 
 mother, his daughter says that he died about the age of fifty-seven, in the 
 year 1633. The Lady Falkland, Her Life: Dolman, 1861, p. 49. Henry 
 
 I
 
 2 FALKLANDS. 
 
 to notice, " by the help of a good tutor, and extraordinary 
 parts," "became a most accomplished gentleman." * He 
 went to Exeter College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen. 
 " It doth not appear he took any degree ; but, however, 
 when he quitted the university, he left behind him a 
 celebrated name." Shortly after leaving Oxford, he was 
 presented to the king, and became " a compleat courtier." f 
 Like other complete courtiers, he soon found himself in 
 want of money. In this difficulty he sought for an heiress, 
 whom he discovered in the person of a girl of fifteen, 
 Elizabeth, only child of the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Lawrence 
 Tanfield, of Burford Priory, Oxfordshire. J 
 
 Although she had a good complexion, " she was 
 nothing handsome," and " he had no acquaintance with her 
 (she scarce ever having spoke to him)." But that was 
 nothing to him ; for he appears to have been the most 
 unemotional of men. So pure a matter of business was 
 the marriage, that it was contracted with the under- 
 standing that she was to remain for the following year 
 at her father's home. 
 
 A commonplace marriage does not insure a common- 
 place bride. Sole heiresses are apt to have peculiarities. 
 Elizabeth Tanfield was no exception in this regard. 
 
 Gary was descended from Thomas Gary, a younger son of Sir Wm. Gary, 
 who fell at the battle of Tewkesbury, 1471. The elder branch of the family 
 is now represented by the Carys of Torr Abbey, Torquay. The family 
 derives its name from Gary, or Kari, a manor in the parish of St. Giles-in- 
 the-Heath, near Launceston. In the year 1198, Adam de Karry was Lord 
 of Castle Karry, Somerset. Burke's Landed Gentry, vol. i., p. 310. 
 
 * Biographia Britannica, Kippis' edition, vol. iii., p. 290. 
 
 t Lloyd's State Worthies, vol. ii., p. 255. 
 
 I Sir Lawrence Tanfield's house was an Elizabethan mansion built on 
 the ruins of the Priory. " When the Priory, which had lasted at least since 
 1291, was dissolved, Edmund Harman, the king's barber, had the grant of 
 it." W. H. H. in a letter to The Guardian, 5th February, 1896. 
 
 The Lady Falkland, Her Life. From a MS. in the Imperial Archives 
 at Lille. London: Dolman, 1861. "The writer," says the editor in the 
 preface, " is clearly one of Lady Falkland's four daughters."
 
 7 
 
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 in f/if //r.i ;><;>.>/ rue/ It. 
 
 - cunt' .
 
 A SOLE HEIRESS. 3 
 
 " Having neither brother nor sister, nor other companion of 
 her age," she "spent her whole time in reading;"* and, 
 like many other sole heiresses, she developed a strong will 
 of her own. But her early history was exceptional as to 
 the manner in which she was treated by her mother,f who 
 appears to have been a very hard-hearted woman, as we 
 shall see later on. 
 
 LadyTanfield, perhaps rightly, objected to her daughter's 
 reading at night, and, with a view to putting a stop to it, 
 she allowed her no candles in her bedroom. The sole 
 heiress, however, outwitted her mother ; for she bribed the 
 servants to provide her with candles to such an extent 
 that, on her marriage, at fifteen, she found herself owing 
 the servants .100 for candles alone, as well as 200 for 
 other things which she had surreptitiously purchased from 
 them. J And this little incident leads me to suggest that, 
 however unimportant the character of a well-dowered bride 
 may have seemed to a man of Henry Gary's disposition, he 
 would have been wiser in observing the golden rule that, 
 before marrying an heiress, it is well to ascertain whether 
 she may not be likely to get rid of more money than she 
 will bring. 
 
 In writing of the state of England exactly a hundred 
 years later than the birth of Elizabeth Tanfield, and dilat- 
 ing upon the lamentable condition of feminine education 
 then prevalent when " As to the Lady of the Manor and 
 her daughters, their literary stores generally consisted of a 
 prayer book and a receipt book " Lord Macaulay says 
 that " At an earlier period they had studied the master- 
 pieces of ancient genius." An instance of this was afforded 
 by the future Lady Gary. She understood French, 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, Her Life, 6. 
 
 t Elizabeth, throughout her life, usually spoke to her mother on her 
 knees, sometimes " for more than an hour together, though she was but an 
 ill kneeler, and a worse riser." Ib., 21-2. 
 
 t Ib., 6, 7.
 
 4 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Latin. When very young, 
 she translated some of Seneca's Epistles, and her chief 
 pleasure was in reading the great folios in her father's 
 library. 
 
 Elizabeth Tanfield was what nurses call " an odd 
 child." Sometimes her father took her with him into 
 court ; and, on one of these occasions, a woman was 
 brought before him on a charge of witchcraft. It was 
 said that the accused woman had bewitched two or three 
 people to death ; and, when the judge asked her what she 
 had to say for herself, she fell on her knees " trembling and 
 weeping," confessed that the accusations against her were 
 true, and, begging her judge to have mercy on her, 
 promised amendment if he would but spare her. 
 
 * " Did you bewitch ... to death?" he then asked. 
 
 " Yes," was her reply. 
 
 " Did you not send your familiar in the shape of a black 
 dog, a hare, or a cat ? and he, finding him asleep, licked 
 his hand, or breathed on him, or stepped over him, and 
 he presently came home sick, and languished away ? " 
 
 " I did." 
 
 And then the grave judge heard a whisper at his ear, 
 and his little daughter she was only ten begged him to 
 ask the woman whether she had not also bewitched to 
 death a man named John Symondes ? 
 
 The question was put and immediately answered in 
 the affirmative. How had she done it ? asked the judge. 
 Then " she told one of her former stories." 
 
 According to the practice of modern reporters of trials, 
 we ought here to put " (laughter)." Our old authority, 
 however, has it " (all the company laughing)." The reason 
 of the merriment was that Mr. John Symondes was the 
 judge's brother-in-law, and was at that very moment 
 standing near him in court. Why, then, demanded the 
 judge, had she said she had bewitched him? 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 5.
 
 SAVING A LIFE. 5 
 
 " Alas ! sir, I knew him not," replied the poor prisoner. 
 " I said so because you asked me." 
 
 " Are you no witch, then ? " 
 
 " No ; God knows. I know no more what belongs to 
 it than the child new born." 
 
 " Nor did you never see the devil ? " 
 
 " No, God bless me ; never in all my life." 
 
 On further examination she said she had been told 
 that, if she did not confess, she would be tortured until 
 she did ; but that if she admitted all the accusations, 
 mercy would be shown to her. She was then acquitted ; 
 and she owed her release, and probably her life, to the 
 shrewdness of a little girl of ten ! 
 
 But she had not saved the life of her husband ; and, 
 as a biographer of Lady Falkland puts it,* " Gary took 
 scarcely any notice of his young bride. She was not 
 pretty, her manners were not attractive, and, as to her 
 mental gifts, he did not take the least trouble to find out 
 anything about them." 
 
 During the year she remained at home after her 
 marriage, her mother, who was a very ignorant woman for 
 her position, judged of her daughter's literary powers by her 
 own, which, as will be seen later, would disgrace a servant 
 girl in these days ; and she employed a polite letter-writer f 
 to " indite " suitable epistles from a newly-married wife 
 to an absent husband. These productions she obliged 
 her daughter to copy out and to send to her husband 
 as her own. 
 
 Gary had not returned to visit his young bride for more 
 than a year, when he was sent to Holland. The war with 
 Spain was raging at that time. While Philip was landing 
 men in Ireland and there endeavouring to raise Catholic 
 rebels against a Protestant queen, Elizabeth was sending 
 
 * The Life of Elizabeth, Lady Falkland, by Lady Georgiana Fuller- 
 ton, p. 14. 
 
 t The Lady Falkland, p. 7.
 
 6 FALKLANDS. 
 
 troops to the Netherlands, to assist Protestant rebels against 
 a Catholic king. Perhaps Gary, with his short purse, may 
 have thought this a fine opportunity of gaining distinction 
 with subsequent royal preferment and emolument ; for he 
 seems to have accompanied one of these military expedi- 
 tions to Holland. But it turned out a very bad specula- 
 tion, as he had the ill-fortune to be taken prisoner by 
 Don Luis de Velasco ; * and his funds, already low, were 
 still further impoverished by his ransom. 
 
 In one of his epigrams, f Ben Jonson notices Henry 
 Gary and this incident : 
 
 No foe that day 
 
 Could conquer thee, but chance, who did betray. 
 Love thy great loss, which a renown hath won, 
 To live when Brceck not stand, nor Roor doth run : 
 He's valiant'st that dares fight and not for pay ; 
 That virtuous is, when the reward's away. 
 
 It is most unlikely that Henry Gary agreed with 
 Jonson in these unsordid sentiments. He was taken to 
 Spain, " where he was kept a year," and more than two 
 years passed between his departure from England and 
 his return to it. 
 
 On the death of his father, Sir Edward Gary of Alden- 
 ham and Berchamsted in Hertfordshire, Henry Gary suc- 
 ceeded to the appointment of Master of the Queen's Jewels ; 
 but the exact date of his father's death is doubtful. During 
 Henry Gary's absence on the Continent, his wife had 
 left her father's home for that of her mother-in-law. Lady 
 Gary had expressed a strong desire that her daughter-in- 
 law should be entrusted to her keeping. She " must needs 
 have her to her, and her friends not being able to satisfy the 
 mother-in-law with any excuse, were fain to send her."J 
 
 Now the " mother-in-law having her, and being one 
 that loved much to be humoured, and finding her not 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 8. 
 
 t No. LXVI. t The Lady Falkland, p. 7.
 
 A SEVERE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 7 
 
 to apply herself to it, used her very hardly, so far at least 
 as to confine her to her chamber, which seeing she little 
 cared for, but entertained herself with reading, the mother- 
 in-law took away all her books, with commands to have 
 no more brought her." * 
 
 In these days it seems amazing that a mother-in-law 
 should thus have kept her son's wife a close prisoner, and 
 for no other offence than that she did not " apply herself" 
 to humouring her whims. Yet so it was that while 
 Sir Henry was a prisoner in Spain, his young wife was 
 a prisoner in England. 
 
 About this time, Elizabeth contrived to get some 
 letters of her own writing despatched to her husband. f 
 So different was their style from the stilted compositions 
 which he had hitherto received from her, that, although he 
 " liked " them " much," he made the mistake of supposing 
 that these were borrowed from a " polite letter- writer," and 
 that the former letters had been his wife's own. 
 
 On his return he rescued his wife from captivity, 
 and they lived together, although still, it would seem, 
 at the house of her late jailer. " Becoming better ac- 
 quainted with his wife, he esteemed her more," and he was 
 " much displeased at the treatment she had undergone." { 
 They cannot have begun their married life in each 
 other's company until about four years after their wedding, 
 or about a year after the death of Queen Elizabeth. Three 
 more years passed before the birth of their first child, a 
 daughter. 
 
 Among Lady Gary's more serious readings was a " book, 
 much esteemed, called Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity." 
 The consequence of reading the " venerable Hooker " was 
 that "she grew into much doubt of her religion." "This 
 was more confirmed in her by a brother of her husband's 
 [Adulphus] returning out of Italy with a good opinion of 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 8. 
 
 t Ib., pp. 8, 9. t Ib., pp. 8, 9.
 
 8 FALKLANDS. 
 
 the Catholic religion. His wit, judgment and conversation 
 she was much pleased withal." He persuaded her to 
 read the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, "whom he 
 affirmed to be of the religion of the Church of Rome." 
 " Her distrust of her religion increased by reading them so 
 far as that at two several times she refused to go to church 
 for a long time together." Curiously enough, this would 
 appear to have been about the time of the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 Her difficulties and scruples were allayed for the time 
 by Dr. Neale, then Bishop of Durham, by whom "she 
 was persuaded she might lawfully remain as she was," in 
 spite of her belief " that to be in the Roman Church were 
 infinitely better and securer." * 
 
 After the birth of one or two more daughters, the 
 Carys were gratified by that of a son in the year 1610. 
 They had this boy christened Lucius, f We are informed 
 that to her eleven children "she was so much a mother 
 that she nursed them all herself," except " her eldest son 
 (whom her father took from her to live with him from his 
 birth)." She taught several of her children herself, and 
 her daughter tells J the following little anecdote of her 
 experiences as a disciplinarian. "One of her elder sons " 
 this was probably Lawrence, as Lucius lived with his 
 grandfather - - was " dreadfully apprehensive " of being 
 whipped. On one occasion this little boy had done some- 
 thing wrong, and " with an oath " his mother declared that 
 she would punish him for it with a whipping. The use 
 of strong language was habitual to both sexes early in 
 the seventeenth century, and, as Lady Georgiana Fullerton 
 puts it, it may in this case have amounted to no more than 
 the French expression " Je vous jure que non." The child, 
 however, took it very seriously, and, when his mother for- 
 gave him his offence, he " begged of her to save her oath." 
 " She, much pleased with him for his innocent care of her, 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 10. t Ib., p. n. 
 
 J Ib., p. 12. In her Life of Lady Falkland, p. 24, F.N.
 
 HONOURS. 9 
 
 was more resolved not to do it, but he so feared her being 
 forsworn that, with tears in his eyes and on his knees, he 
 continued to beg that which he trembled at ; nor was there 
 any other way to satisfy the child " but by whipping him. 
 
 In the same year in which their eldest son was born, 
 1610, Henry Gary was made a Knight of the Bath,* on the 
 occasion of Prince Henry's being made Prince of Wales. 
 In 1617, he was made Comptroller of His Majesty's 
 Household, and a Privy Councillor.f But, if he received 
 many favours from the king, he also had to give up some- 
 thing to him. In 1611, lands, which were probably a 
 considerable part of his wife's jointure, were taken pos- 
 session of by the Crown. Chamberlain in a letter J to 
 Carelton informed him that the prince had just taken 
 Berchamsted from Sir Henry Gary, as belonging to the 
 Duchy of Cornwall ; and Lady Falkland's daughter says, 
 apparently concerning the same transaction : " a consider- 
 able part of her jointure (which upon her marriage had 
 been sufficiently good) having been reassumed to the 
 Crown, to which it had formerly belonged, etc., etc." This 
 must have been a heavy blow to Sir Henry. 
 
 By and by he obtained another appointment, || as 
 " Keeper of Marybone Park," which would doubtless 
 bring in an income of some sort. Evidently he was very 
 short of ready money in 1618 ; for Chamberlain then 
 wrote to Carelton IT that Sir Henry Gary had sold the 
 Mastership of the Jewel House to Sir Henry Mildmay, a 
 young man with no experience, for either 2000 or ^"3000. 
 A few months later, the same writer sent a letter ** to the 
 same correspondent, announcing that Sir Henry Gary was 
 to be made Master of the Court of Wards. 
 
 * Wood's Athence Oxonienses, vol. i., p. 585. 
 t S. P. O. Dom. James /., vol. xciv., No. 77. 
 
 \ Ib., vol. Ixvii., No. 67. The Lady Falkland, p. 15. 
 
 || S. P. O. Dom. James /., vol. Ixxvii., No. 69. 
 IF 76., vol. xcv., No. 5. ** Ib., vol. ciii., No. no.
 
 10 FALKLANDS. 
 
 During these years Lady Gary was probably a good 
 deal in London and at Court. In some respects she must 
 have found this irksome, for " dressing was all her life a 
 torture to her; yet because" her husband "would have it 
 so, she willingly supported it," " even to tediousness."* 
 She knew little or nothing about fine clothes, and " all that 
 ever she could do towards it, was to have those about her 
 that could do it well, and to take order that it should be 
 done, and then endure the trouble." She had a habit of 
 walking about her chamber meditating ; and " her women 
 were fain to walk round the room after her," " whilst she 
 was seriously thinking on some other business, and pin on 
 her things and braid her hair;-]- and while she writ or read, 
 to curl her hair and dress her head." 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, pp. 14, 15. 
 
 t A glance at her portrait will show what a lengthy business it must 
 have been to " braid her hair."
 
 ' 7 ' 
 /rent a ^L>c /-//Y///'/r f^tUtA 
 
 the //<>>.> <".>.) trn <>/ I neon/I/
 
 II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 POVERTY, PROMOTION AND " POPERY." 
 
 To please her husband, Elizabeth, Lady Gary, took a 
 step which entailed very serious consequences upon her- 
 self. During a severe attack of his chronic impecuniosity, 
 with a view to giving him temporary relief, she mortgaged 
 the greater part of the land which had been given to her as 
 a jointure. At this her father was very irate, so much so 
 that "he disinherited her upon it, putting before her her 
 two eldest (and then only) sons, tying his estate on the 
 eldest, and in case he failed, on the second." * As things 
 turned out, this alteration in her father's will did her much 
 more personal mischief than might have been anticipated ; 
 and it placed her entirely at her husband's and her son's 
 mercy. 
 
 In the year 1620 Sir Henry Gary was raised to the 
 peerage, with the Scottish title of Viscount Falkland. He 
 was then living at Gary House, in London. Just at this 
 time he was engaged in hot dispute over a right which he 
 claimed to a share in all wrecks at Margate, Broadstairs 
 and Ramsgate.f He wrote to Lord Zouch, Warden of the 
 Cinque Ports, J protesting that it was his wish, as " servant 
 to the glorious Peace-maker of Christendom," to recover 
 his rights in a peaceable fashion. He based his claims to 
 the wreckage on his lordship of the manor of Minster in 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 16. 
 
 \ S. P. Dotn. James /., vol. cxxviii., No. 43. 
 
 \ Ib., vol. cxv., No. 22.
 
 12 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Kent, a property which he had purchased in 1611.* He 
 asserted that the terms of his purchase included royalties 
 and wrecks at sea. 
 
 If much of his time was occupied by his official duties, 
 his various forms of reckless extravagance and his en- 
 deavours to raise money, Lord Falkland found leisure for 
 literary pursuits, though to what extent is doubtful, as we 
 learn from Wood.f but this seems certain, that " He wrote 
 several things, but not printed " a noble example to 
 modern writers ! Wood further tells us that Falkland was 
 " in much esteem by " the " king for his great abilities and 
 experience in State affairs." James had so high an opinion 
 of him as to appoint him Lord Deputy of Ireland in Sep- 
 tember, 1622. 
 
 Just before Lord and Lady Falkland started for Ireland, 
 one of their daughters, a girl of only thirteen, J was married 
 to the Earl of Home. This was an earlier marriage than 
 even her mother's ; and, unlike her mother, she went to 
 live with her husband, of which there is evidence in a 
 letter written by Welsted, Falkland's agent, in the same 
 year. This " noble young lady," wrote Welsted, " with 
 her lord hath been much diseased with the toothache, my 
 lord having an imposthume growed in his mouth, which 
 came to ripeness and brake ; my lady drew out her tooth, 
 and so both are cured and in good health." 
 
 Falkland's want of ready money tormented him as 
 much in Ireland as in England. He had scarcely reached 
 Dublin before he sent a letter to the Council, begging for 
 more cash. Welsted || wrote to him on ist December, 
 1622, that "small hope was expected in obtaining moneys 
 
 * S. P. Dom. y antes I., vol. Ixv., No. 52. 
 
 t Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 586. H. Cary was supposed to be the real author 
 of a History of Edward II., published under an assumed name. 
 : The Lady Falkland, Appendix, p. 126. 
 British Museum Add. MSS., 11,033, P- X 4- 
 || /&., p. 16.
 
 THE REBELLIOUS IRISH. 13 
 
 from the Lord Treasurer," who " in an insolent manner 
 and an angry countenance uttered this ensuing speech : 
 ' That your lordship should pay your own debts, but not 
 with the king's moneys, and he would willingly surrender 
 up his white staff unto you, craving no recompense for his 
 service, and accept of yours.' " 
 
 Upon Lord Falkland's policy in Ireland it is not my 
 intention to expatiate. Professor Gardiner says of him : 
 " A man naturally kindly and desirous of fulfilling his 
 duties, he was alike wanting in the clear-sightedness which 
 detects the root of an evil, and in the firmness which 
 is needed to eradicate it." * 
 
 Another writer says : " He kept a strict hand over 
 the Roman Catholics in that kingdom, which gave them 
 occasion to send complaints to the Court of England 
 against him." t " On the 2ist of January, 1623, there was 
 issued out a proclamation against the Popish clergy, 
 secular and regular, ordering them to depart the kingdom 
 within forty days " J a pretty strong measure ! This seems 
 to have been overlooked by Lloyd when, in writing of 
 Falkland's policy, he says : " The Rebellious Irish will 
 complain, only because kept in subjection, though with 
 never so much lenity." 
 
 Soon after his arrival in Dublin, Falkland placed 
 his eldest son, Lucius, when about thirteen years of age, 
 at Trinity College. In Queen Elizabeth's reign, Ireland 
 had become a refuge for many of the ultra-reforming 
 clergy who feared the English bishops ; and the theo- 
 logical tone at Trinity College, when Lucius attended it, 
 was Calvinistic with a tendency to Puritanism. || 
 
 Lady Falkland took much trouble to improve the Irish 
 
 * Hist. Eng., vol. viii., p. g. 
 
 t Biographia Britannica, ed. Kippis, vol. Hi., p. 290. 
 
 \ History of Ireland, by Professor Cox, p. 39. 
 
 Lloyd's Memoirs, p. 331. 
 
 || Rational Theology, by J. Tulloch, D.D., vol. i., p. 81.
 
 14 FALKLANDS. 
 
 industries. She sent to England,* or elsewhere, for skilled 
 weavers, dyers, spinners, knitters, hatters, lace-makers and 
 linen-makers, to teach the people how to work ; " and for 
 this purpose she took of beggar children (with which that 
 country swarms) more than eight score prentices." + So 
 good was the broadcloth made at her works that her own 
 husband wore it. Unfortunately, " her workhouse, with 
 all that was in it much cloth and much materials was 
 burnt ; her fulling-mills carried away, and much things 
 spoiled with water." 
 
 All these misfortunes Lady Falkland attributed to 
 "the children's going to the Protestant church." "But," says 
 her daughter, who was a Catholic, "others [held] that it rather 
 was that she was better at contriving than executing, and 
 that too many things were undertaken at the very first ; 
 and that she was fain (having little choice) to employ either 
 those that had little skill in the matters they dealt in, 
 or less honesty ; and so she was extremely cozened, 
 which she was most easily, though she were not a little 
 suspicious in her nature." + But the cause above all others 
 which led to her failure was " the ill order she took for 
 paying money in this (as in all other occasions), having 
 the worst memory in such things in the world ; and wholly 
 trusting to it (or them she dealt with) and never keeping 
 any account of what she did, she was most subject to pay " 
 for " the same things often," etc. 
 
 It is hardly to be wondered at that "about these 
 works, after the beginning of them, her lord seemed often 
 displeased with her ; " yet Lady Falkland was an ex- 
 cellent woman. She was a good wife, a good mother, 
 a good friend. But her zeal was not invariably " according 
 to knowledge." || 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 19. 
 
 t/&. J 76., p. 20. 76., p. 21. 
 
 || " His wife he probably admired more than he loved. Her 
 peculiarities and faults may often have been trying to him, and her
 
 THE PLAGUE. 15 
 
 The year 1625 was important in English history. It 
 was remarkable for the death of James I., the accession 
 of Charles I., and the marriage of the latter with the 
 French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria. The same 
 year was very memorable also to Elizabeth, Lady Falk- 
 land. Among its other events were the death of her father, 
 and her own departure from Ireland. The reasons of her 
 leaving Dublin are not very certain ; but her husband may 
 have hoped that she would be able to induce the English 
 Ministers to give him more money. 
 
 Soon after she had started on her voyage across the 
 Irish Channel, accompanied by four of her children the 
 rest being left with her husband " a violent tempest at 
 sea"* drove them back to Ireland. When we consider the 
 comfort of ordinary passengers, to say nothing of the wives 
 of Lord Deputies, in crossing from Dublin to Holyhead in 
 these days, it seems curious to read of Lady Falkland that 
 " the child at her breast (she sitting upon the hatches) had 
 his breath struck out of his body by a wave and remained 
 as dead for a quarter of an hour." 
 
 At last they reached England in safety. When they 
 arrived in London, they found the plague " very hot," there- 
 fore, as soon as she had " kissed Her Majesty's hands," 
 Lady Falkland hurried away to her mother's house in 
 Oxfordshire with her children, including Lady Home, who, 
 then just sixteen, was in a condition demanding great care. 
 
 All went well till they came to a stream, through 
 which the carriage had to be drawn. The roads were then 
 so bad and the carriages so lumbering and shaky that to 
 drive through a rivulet was a discomfort if not a danger ; 
 the ladies, therefore, walked across a narrow footbridge, 
 while their chariot was bumping over the bed of the stream. 
 
 virtues also. The combination of great merits with troublesome little 
 defects is often a peculiar source of irritation in domestic life." Lady 
 Georgiana Fullerton's Life of Lady Falkland, p. 47. 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 24 scq.
 
 1 6 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Unfortunately they were accompanied by a faithful 
 retainer of Lady Tanfield's, and nothing would satisfy this 
 good man but that he should be allowed to carry Lady 
 Home across the footbridge. In the middle of it his foot 
 slipped and he fell into the water with his charge. Al- 
 though she was apparently unhurt, the shock was too much 
 for the poor girl, and a week later, after prematurely giving 
 birth to a child, that lived only three hours, she died in 
 her mother's arms. 
 
 The death of her daughter had the effect of directing 
 Lady Falkland's mind to the subject of purgatory ; and, 
 on returning to London a little later, she sought the com- 
 pany of her friend, Lady Denbigh, a sister of the all- 
 powerful Buckingham. Lady Denbigh was, like Lady 
 Falkland, unsettled in her religious opinions, with what 
 Anglican clergymen now call " Romish leanings." Dr. 
 Cozens had written a book of Protestant Hours, with the 
 hope of persuading her that she could obtain everything 
 she wanted in the Established Church. 
 
 Lady Falkland made the acquaintance of this divine > 
 and determined to make use of him. She had advanced 
 to that stage of High-Churchism, common enough in the 
 present day, in which the devotee believes, or, as we must 
 say in speaking of her, believed Anglican clergymen "to 
 be, as they pretended, truly priests (never yet having 
 heard the contrary, that being a truth they most unwillingly 
 hear of any) ; she was desirous at least to do as like 
 Catholics in all, and to draw as near them as she could." * 
 For this reason she made up her mind to go to confession, 
 and she asked Dr. Cozens to hear her. He " excused 
 himself at the present as not being used to take confessions, 
 but," he said, " that he would take time to prepare for it 
 by studying the casuists, being to go into the country (or 
 going a-purpose)." f 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, pp. 26-7. f Ib., p. 27.
 
 LADY DENBIGH. I? 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Falkland became intimate at the 
 London home of the great Irish peer, the Earl of Ormonde. 
 Lord Ormonde was a zealous Catholic, and at his house 
 she met several priests, as well as lay Catholics. There 
 Lady Falkland took opportunities o*f inquiring about 
 religion, and she soon became convinced that the Roman 
 <( Catholic Church was the one true and only Church of 
 Christ upon earth. 
 
 When Lady Falkland discussed religious questions with 
 priests at Lord Ormonde's, she was sometimes accompanied 
 by Lady Denbigh ; and, when she announced her intention 
 of becoming a Catholic, or to be " reconciled to the Church," 
 as it was termed, Lady Denbigh declared her intention of 
 taking the same step. If, said she, Lady Falkland would 
 wait until she had heard " one more dispute, she would be 
 reconciled together with her." '* 
 
 This suggestion was repeated until Lady Falkland could 
 wait no longer. Accordingly she made arrangements to be 
 received into the Catholic Church at Lord Ormonde's by 
 Father Dunstan Everard,-f a priest of the Order of St. 
 Benedict. The morning after she had settled this she went 
 to Lady Denbigh at the palace, told her that she was going, 
 on such and such a day, to be received into the Church, 
 and asked whether Lady Denbigh would like to accom- 
 pany her. 
 
 As usual, Lady Denbigh begged for just a little more 
 time ; but Lady Falkland was firm to her purpose. 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 28. 
 
 t " Illustrious for his ingenuity, piety and learning, loyalty to his 
 king, love to his country and zeal for the orthodox faith for which he had 
 suffered imprisonments and banishments, and disputing often with the most 
 famous heretics," he " had converted many, amongst which was my Lady 
 Faulkland, illustrious consort to Henry Gary, Viscount Faulkland and 
 Viceroy of Ireland." He died (1650) "in attending His Majesty Charles II. 
 in Jersey." " King Charles II. much honoured him with his favour, and had 
 taken a wonderful liking to him." Chronological Notes of the English 
 Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, by Dom. Bennet Weldon, 
 O.S.B., p. 188. 
 
 2
 
 1 8 FALKLANDS. 
 
 "Well," said Lady Denbigh, " I have you now in the 
 court, and here I will keep you ; you shall lie in my 
 chamber, and shall not go forth." * Calling a servant, she 
 gave orders to have a bed prepared for Lady Falkland ; 
 and so left the room. 
 
 Lady Falkland " suspecting, as it was, truly, that the 
 lady was gone to fetch one that should confirm her stay 
 let not this opportunity slip, but rushed from the room and 
 from the palace, and hurried to Lord Ormonde's." Father 
 Dunstan Everard was not there ; but she found another 
 Benedictine, Father Dunstan Pettinger ; and she besought 
 him to receive her then and there, to which he consented. 
 
 The reception of a convert in a private house was then 
 a capital offence on the part of its owner.f Father Dunstan, 
 therefore, reconciled Lady Falkland to the Church, not in 
 Lord Ormonde's house, but in his stable. Leaving it 
 a Catholic, she returned to the palace and to Lady 
 Denbigh's suite of rooms. Lady Denbigh was at home. 
 " Now," said Lady Falkland, " I shall be content to stay 
 with you as long as you please ; for all is done." 
 
 Lady Denbigh went to her brother, the Duke of 
 Buckingham, and informed him of what had taken place. 
 Buckingham went " instantly to the king, who showed him- 
 self highly displeased." Lady Falkland was then sent for, 
 and seeming "obdurate" was allowed to return to her 
 house. She had not long reached it, when Mr. Secretary 
 Coke was announced. He had come, he said, on an un- 
 pleasant errand. By the king's commands Lady Falkland 
 was to consider herself a prisoner, and was not to leave 
 her house until she received permission to do so. 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 28 seq. 
 
 t Dom. Weldon calls Father Dunstan Pettinger " a painful labourer and 
 zealous preacher for a long time in the mission, wherein he died at London 
 in Drury Lane, as it was supposed of the plague, in 1665 (at the age of 
 seventy-nine)." Chron. Notes, p. 92.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A WIFE EXPELLED FROM HOME AND HER HUSBAND 
 FROM OFFICE. 
 
 THE day after Lady Falkland's reconciliation, Dr. Cozens 
 returned to London, prepared, and expecting to hear her 
 confession. On learning that she had already been to 
 confession to a Catholic priest, he was horror-stricken. 
 He went at once to see her, " and, having heard from her 
 of all that had been done," he "fell into so great and 
 violent a trouble that, casting himself on the ground, he 
 would not rise nor eat from morning till night, weeping 
 even to roaring." * 
 
 He implored her to return to the Established Church, 
 pointing out the scandal which would else be given to 
 others, who would say that this showed the result of the 
 High Church teaching of men such as himself. Seeing, 
 however, that " he noway prevailed with her (but only to 
 sit fasting with him all day), he went his way, coming no 
 more to her." 
 
 Welsted, Falkland's agent, was exceedingly angry when 
 he heard of Lady Falkland's conversion : without waiting 
 for orders from her husband, he took it upon himself to 
 stop her allowance ; and she became in such want that she 
 had to send her children to her friends' houses to get their 
 " dinners and suppers." 
 
 As to Lord Falkland himself, he was enraged beyond 
 measure, on receiving the news of his wife's change of 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 30 seq.
 
 20 FALKLANDS. 
 
 religion. He immediately sent orders that all her children 
 should be taken from her. He also commanded his steward 
 to take every servant away from her house, as well as all 
 "beer, coal, wood, or whatsoever was movable, leaving her 
 confined, alone, and in this necessity." 
 
 One servant, quite a girl, named Bessie Poulter, refused 
 to leave her; and Lady Falkland sent her to Lord 
 Ormonde's for her meals, forbidding her to let any one 
 there know of her own need of food. " Pieces of pie-crust, or 
 bread and butter, or other such thing," which Bessie " did 
 from the table privately take and put into a handkerchief" 
 and carry home to her mistress, were all that Lady Falkland 
 had to live upon for several days. 
 
 Lord Falkland, sincerely or not, gave credit to reports 
 that his wife " did put impediments in his affairs at Court, 
 and did him ill offices to his friends there." In his wrath, 
 he determined to do all in his power to injure her. By 
 this time the king had allowed her to leave her house 
 freely. 
 
 On the 8th of December of the year wherein she had 
 become a Catholic, Lord Falkland * wrote to the king on 
 the subject of the " apostacy " of her whom he might say 
 he had " long unhappily called wife." He thanked the 
 king for his " God-like mercy " in delivering his eldest 
 daughter from " that most leprous infection " of Popery 
 surrounding his wife, by making her a maid-of-honour to 
 the queen. As the queen was herself a papist, far more 
 surrounded by priests than was his wife, this mercy, one 
 would think, must have been a small one, from his own 
 point of view. He had written to " my Lord of Canter- 
 bury's grace," urging him to " duly punish all those who " 
 had "been instruments in" his wife's "prevarication, for 
 example to others." The very throne was not safe " whilst 
 these locusts of Rome, whose doctrines are as full of horrid 
 treasons as many of their lives of horrible impieties," were 
 *S. P. O. Ireland, 8th Dec., 1626.
 
 AN ANGRY HUSBAND. 21 
 
 " permitted to pass at liberty." " For the apostate herself," 
 he begs the king's orders that she should be committed to 
 the custody of her own mother, "with commandment to 
 her " " to receive her, and to keep her safe, and free from 
 any communication by word or letter with any " Catholic. 
 
 This letter does not seem to have been very effectual 
 with Charles ; for, in the following April, Falkland wrote * 
 to Lord Killultagh saying that an order had been given 
 that his "wife's mother and her unhappy self" were "to 
 cohabit together," adding : " I understand to my great 
 vexation of mind that there is a pause obtained of the 
 execution thereof, and liberty propounded for her to be 
 free where she likes. I am confident it is but her great 
 importunity, mixed with some feminine wily pretences, 
 and assisted by feminine mediation, which hath procured 
 the stop." 
 
 The " feminine mediation " was that of the Duchess of 
 Buckingham, who had written to Conway on behalf of 
 Lady Falkland. 
 
 The prospect of being sent to the keeping of her mother 
 was anything but attractive to Lady Falkland, and the 
 jailer was quite as unwilling to receive the prisoner as the 
 prisoner to be sent to the jailer. Lady Tanfield had heard 
 from her daughter of what had been ordered, and she wrote 
 to her, in a letter f beginning " Bes," (Bess), "I will not 
 exsept of you, and if by any exterordenary devis he [that 
 is to say, Lord Falkland] cold compel you, you shall fynd 
 the worst of it." " For my part," she adds, " you may lyve 
 wher you pies." 
 
 Lady Falkland wrote J to Secretary Conway explaining 
 her mother's unwillingness to receive her, and begging to 
 be confined, if confined she must be, in Essex, near her 
 " sister Barrett." " I have nor meat, drink, nor clothes," 
 
 * S. P. O. Ireland, 4th April, 1627. 
 
 t S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. Ixii., No. 62. 
 
 : Ib. t vol. Iviii., No. 19.
 
 22 FALKLANDS. 
 
 she complained, " nor money to purchase them, and long 
 have I been in this misery. I lie in a lodging where I 
 have no means to pay for it." 
 
 She also wrote a letter * to the king, and besought 
 Conway to deliver it to him. Her mother, she says in this 
 letter, " vows if ever I come to her, either willingly or by 
 command," she " will never, neither in her life nor at her 
 death, either give me anything or take any care of me. 
 ... I am here in an estate so miserable, as to starve is 
 one of my least fears." She says that she has heard of His 
 Majesty's belief that she became a Catholic in hopes of thus 
 obtaining preferment at Court from the Catholic queen ; 
 but, apart from the wickedness of making " religion a 
 ladder to climb by," she was not so mistaken as to sup- 
 pose "promotion likely to come that way," in those times. 
 
 Conway mentioned this letter to her husband, who 
 wrote in his reply : " She being replete with serpentine 
 subtlety, and that conjoined with Romish hypocrisy, what 
 semblances can she not put on, and what oblique ways will 
 she not walk in ? " f 
 
 At this juncture kind friends intervened, with the 
 usual result of making matters worse. The king was 
 persuaded to refer Lady Falkland's case to a committee of 
 the Privy Council, which sent an official letter J to Lord 
 Falkland, ordering him to pay his wife's debts of 272, 
 and either to make her an allowance of 500 a year, or 
 else keep up an establishment for her, the details of which 
 were specified. 
 
 This proceeding simply exasperated Lord Falkland. 
 But, womanlike, Lady Falkland, now that she had ob- 
 tained the order, rather than still further madden her 
 husband against her, refused to avail herself of it. Finally 
 she relinquished herself to circumstances, and "retired to 
 
 * S. P. Dom. Charles /., vol. Ixiii., No. 89. 
 
 t S. P. O. Ireland, sth July, 1627. 
 
 J Council Register, Charles I., vol. iii., p. 188.
 
 IN POVERTY. 23 
 
 a little old house that she took in a little town ten miles 
 from London," * where she lived alone with her one servant, 
 Bessie, who had now become a Catholic. 
 
 The house was almost "ready to fall on their heads," 
 their only furniture was " a flock bed on the bare ground 
 (which was also borrowed of a poor lady in the town), and 
 an old hamper which served her for a table, and a wooden 
 stool." Here Lady Falkland passed her time in writing 
 the lives of four saints in verse, and in translating the 
 works of Cardinal Perron. 
 
 She had been in this humble retirement for about a 
 couple of years, when her mother died.f Her own position 
 was little altered or improved by the death of Lady Tan- 
 field, which affected much more the fortunes of her eldest 
 son, Lucius, on whom Lady Tanfield's property, as I have 
 already said, had been entailed. This had been done in 
 consequence of Sir Lawrence's anger when Lady Falkland 
 sacrificed the greater portion of her own jointure for her 
 husband's relief. 
 
 To her death she was poor, and often even in want of 
 food ; yet she is said to have erected the very expensive 
 and pretentious monument in Burford Church to the 
 memory of her father, mother, and husband. The figures 
 of her father and mother lie side by side, and those of her 
 husband + and herself are at either end, kneeling. After the 
 inscription describing her husband, it is stated that Lady 
 Falkland " erected this monument of his virtues and her 
 sorrowes." Very possibly she may only have paid for the 
 portion of the monument relating to her husband. There 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 37. 
 
 t Both Lady Tanfield and her husband were buried with remarkable 
 haste. Sir Lawrence " departed this life about 2 of the clock in the morning 
 upon Saturday the last of April," and he " was buried the ist of May at 12 
 of the clock in the night." His widow, Elizabeth, "died 22nd July, and 
 was buried the same day." Register in Burford Church. See History of 
 Burford, p. 62. 
 
 \ Some authorities consider this figure to represent her son, Lucius.
 
 24 FALKLANDS. 
 
 is a good deal of verse, both in Latin and in English, upon 
 the tomb.* It may be sufficient to quote the following, 
 which is apparently Lady Falkland's : 
 
 Here shadowe lie 
 Whilst life is sadd, 
 Still hopes to die, 
 To him she hadd, 
 In blisse is he 
 Whom I lov'd best : 
 Thrice happy shee 
 With him to rest. 
 So shall I be, 
 With him I loved : 
 And hee with mee, 
 And both us blessed. 
 Love made me Poet, 
 And this I writt ; 
 My harte did doe yt 
 And not my witt. 
 
 The heir to the property which should first have been 
 hers, Lucius Gary, had been for some time in England. His 
 name is entered in the register of St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge^ and in a letter to Dr. Beale, Master of St. John's, 
 he calls himself " a St. John's man," I but the date in the 
 register is 1621, which, as he was then only eleven years 
 old, could only have been with a view to a future attendance, 
 and it is doubtful whether he was ever in residence as an 
 undergraduate at Cambridge. 
 
 It is stated in the Biographia Britannica \\ that " at first 
 he proved but a wild youth, but being sent to travel under 
 
 * Lady Tanfield left money to be given periodically to widows. In 
 1707 there is this entry in the Burgesses' Book: "The Widdows had not 
 any of the Lady Tanfield's money by reson the top of the steeple was blown 
 down and fell upon the Isle and damnified the Tomb." 
 
 t Baker's Hist, of St. John's Coll., vol. i., p. 263. 
 
 \ Life of Dr. J. Harwich, Appendix, pp. 551, 552. 
 
 Rational Theology, Tulloch, vol. i., pp. 82, 83. 
 
 || Kippis' ed., vol. iii., p. 291.
 
 WILD OATS. 25 
 
 the care of a discreet tutor, he soon shook off all levity 
 and extravagance, and became a wise, sober and prudent 
 person." The gossiping and delightful, but not invariably 
 accurate, Aubrey says of him : * " My lord in his youth 
 was very wild, and also mischievous, as being apt to 
 stabbe and doe bloudy mischiefs." 
 
 Lloyd also moralises f upon the " wildness " of his 
 youth, saying : " He that hath a spirit to be unruly before 
 the use of reason hath mettle to be active afterwards. 
 Quicksilver if fixed is incomparable ; besides that the 
 adventures, contrivances, secrets, confidence, trust, com- 
 pliance with opportunity, and the other sallies of young 
 gallants, prepare them for more serious undertakings as 
 they did this noble lord." 
 
 Lucius Gary's own son, Henry, \ said a much better 
 thing concerning the follies of youth, than Lloyd's pom- 
 pous panegyric of his father's early imprudences. When 
 remonstrated with for wishing to become a member of 
 Parliament before he had " sowed his wild oats," he 
 replied, " I may sow them in the House, where there 
 are geese enough to pick them up." 
 
 Lucius Gary was about nineteen when he came in 
 for his grandmother's property. Just before this good 
 fortune came in his way, very ill fortune befel his father. 
 
 Lord Falkland was anxious to make plantations in 
 a lawless district among the Wicklow mountains, in- 
 habitated by the sept of the Byrnes ; and he announced 
 that he had discovered a dangerous conspiracy, in which 
 the Byrnes were concerned. He declared that the best 
 method of treating such men was to seize their property 
 and convert it into plantations ; and he had Phelim Byrne 
 and his five sons arrested and lodged in Dublin Castle. || 
 
 * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 347. 
 
 t Memoirs, p. 332. + Ib., p. 333. 
 
 Hist. Eng., Professor Gardiner, vol. viii., p. 20 seq. 
 
 || S. P. O. Ireland, 27th Aug., 1628.
 
 26 FALKLANDS. 
 
 He wrote in triumph to King Charles, saying that the 
 " future peace and tranquillity of" the kingdom would be 
 greatly influenced by the suppression of this odious family. 
 
 To his surprise, the king * replied that he had received 
 a petition from the Byrnes complaining of his own 
 proceedings against them a sixth son of Phelim's was 
 then in London and that he had appointed a committee 
 of the Irish Privy Council to investigate the matter. 
 
 Among the names on this committee were those of four 
 of Falkland's greatest enemies. The committee decided 
 that the evidence upon which the Byrnes had been indicted 
 was chiefly that of condemned felons, who had saved their 
 lives by swearing to untruths which they knew would 
 be agreeable to the authorities. One witness had been 
 racked ; another had been laid, naked, upon a heated 
 gridiron. Two witnesses deposed before the committee 
 that they had been told they would be hanged unless they 
 accused Phelim Byrne. 
 
 In consequence of this inquiry, the Byrnes were set 
 at liberty, and Lord Falkland was recalled .f It is 
 very improbable that Falkland had been cognisant of the 
 illicit methods unhappily common enough in those days 
 adopted for the ruin of the Byrnes. That family bore 
 a very bad name with the government ; and the Irish 
 Council I wrote to the king saying that the information 
 which Falkland had received of them " moved your 
 Deputy being a stranger to have a wary aspect upon 
 those people for the common peace," and that they 
 
 * S. P. O. Ireland, yd Oct., 1628. 
 
 f Falkland must have had much to bear in Ireland. " Some beginning 
 to counterfeit his hand, he used to incorporate the year of his age in a knot 
 flourished beneath his name, concealing the day of his birth to himself. 
 Thus by comparing the date of the month with his own birthday (unknown 
 to such Forgers) he not only discovered many false writings that were 
 pass'd, but also deterred dishonest Cheaters from attempting the like for 
 the future." Lloyd's Memoirs, p. 331. 
 
 | S. P. O. Ireland, 28th April, 1629.
 
 A CHALLENGE. 2? 
 
 believed his only wish and object to have been " the 
 reducement " of Phelim Byrne's district " to the con- 
 formity of other civil parts." 
 
 But granting that the Byrnes may have been as bad 
 as, or even worse than, they were represented, so far as 
 the cause of their indictment was concerned, the con- 
 spiracy was not on the part of the Byrnes, but against 
 the Byrnes. The best that can be said of Falkland re- 
 specting them is that he was very injudicious in the 
 credence he gave to their accusers and in his selection of 
 agents to bring about their prosecution. 
 
 Falkland had made many enemies while Lord Deputy, 
 and his constant appeals for money, as well as his refusal 
 to assist his wife, had greatly worried the authorities in 
 England. When, therefore, he had obtained the command 
 of a company for his son, Lucius, some person in power, 
 who disliked him, contrived to get that company taken 
 away from Lucius and given to Sir Francis Willoughby. 
 
 Lucius immediately sent a Captain Rainsford * to call 
 upon Willoughby with the following courteous and good- 
 humoured challenge : f 
 
 " I doe confess you a brave gentleman and for myne 
 owne sake I would not but have my adversary be soe, but 
 I knowe no reason why, therefore, you should have my 
 breechez, which yf any brave man should have, I should 
 be fayne shortly to begg in trowses. I dowght not but 
 you will give me satisfaction with your sword, of which 
 yf you will send me the length, with tyme and place, 
 you shal be sure according to see appointment too meete." 
 
 Whether the duel was actually fought I have been 
 unable to ascertain ; + but I am inclined to think not, 
 as, in a letter to Edward, Lord Conway, Weld wrote that 
 
 * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. clxi. , No. 48. 
 
 t The White King, by W. H. Davenport Adams, vol. i., p. 237. 
 J Falkland " fought a duel before he was nineteen." The Debates on 
 the Grand Remonstrance, by John Forster, p. 175.
 
 28 FALKLANDS. 
 
 it was the challenge which " seemed to make too bold 
 with the king ; " and that on this account both Lucius 
 and Rainsford, his second, were committed to the Fleet 
 prison, and ordered to be proceeded against in the Star 
 Chamber.* Lord Falkland wrote to the king about his 
 son's imprisonment in the following terms : 
 
 " Most humbly shewing, that I had a sonne ; until I 
 lost him, in your Highness displeasure, where I cannot seek 
 him, because I have not will to find him there. Men say, 
 there is a wild young man now prisoner in the Fleet, for 
 measuring his actions by his own private fence. But now 
 that for the same your Majesties hand hath appeared in 
 the punishment, he bows and humbles himself before, and 
 to it : whether he be mine, or not, I can discern by no 
 light, but that of your royal clemency ; for only in your 
 forgiveness can I own him for mine. Forgiveness is the 
 glory of the supremest powers, and this the operation, that 
 when it is extended in the greatest measure, it converts the 
 greatest offenders into the greatest lovers, and so makes 
 purchase of the heart, an especial privilege peculiar and 
 due to Sovereign Princes. If now your Majesty will vouch- 
 safe, out of your own benignity, to become a second nature, 
 and restore that unto me which the first gave me, and 
 vanity deprived me of, I shall keep my reckoning of the 
 full number of my sons with comfort, and render the 
 tribute of my most humble thankfulness, else my weak 
 old memory must forget one." f 
 
 After being detained in the Fleet for ten days, Lucius 
 was liberated ; the king assigned him the arrears of his pay, 
 and gave him a special acknowledgment that he had not 
 lost his command through any fault of his own. 
 
 * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. clxi., No. 48. 
 
 t Cabala, ed. 1663, fol., p. 238. Biog. Brit., vol. cxi., p. 291. S. P. Dom. 
 Charles I., vol. clviii., Nos. 62 and 63. There are minute variations be- 
 tween these and that published by Cabala which I have copied. In Weld's 
 letter to Conway, already noticed, he says that Falkland's petition " passes 
 for a curious piece."
 
 ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER. 29 
 
 Having done his son a good turn, Falkland thought it 
 only fair that his son should do a good turn to him. His 
 own affairs were in a hopeless state. While at Dublin he 
 had got deeper and deeper into debt, and he was practically 
 a ruined man. Lucius had come into a large fortune. He 
 was not going to ask him for that ; indeed, if Lucius paid 
 his debts, he would only have enough left for himself. 
 
 What Falkland had determined upon was that Lucius 
 should marry a certain rich heiress, and then there would 
 be enough to pay his debts and to keep both father and 
 son, and heiress as well perhaps, in luxury. Lord Falk- 
 land is not the only father in history, private or public, who 
 has made such a plan for his son ; and the results of such 
 plans have been in most cases very similar.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MARRIAGE FOR MONEY, OR FOR LOVE ? 
 
 IF Henry, Lord Falkland, had married for money, Lucius 
 was to marry for love. The father intended his son to 
 marry a daughter of the Lord Treasurer, Richard Weston, 
 Earl of Portland ; * the son had altogether other views 
 respecting his own marriage. But before dealing with the 
 love affairs of Lucius Gary, it may be well to say something 
 of the man. 
 
 If Aubrey and Wood and Lloyd are right in saying 
 that Lucius was "wild" in his youth, a strong reaction 
 must have set in immediately after his imprisonment. 
 Such reactions, if uncommon at so early an age, sometimes 
 occur, especially when a youth falls deeply in love with a 
 girl both pretty and pious. Indeed, the studiousness of 
 Lucius Gary at the age of twenty was of a kind very likely 
 to have been due to the influence of a pretty woman of 
 serious tastes. Another cause of a change in his character 
 may have been his sudden accession to a large property. 
 Clarendon f says that his income was "above 2000 a 
 year," which would be equal to much more then than now. 
 
 But how much ? That is a very difficult question. As 
 to relative values, everything would depend upon what was 
 to be purchased. Bread was probably very little cheaper 
 than it is at present. Beef and mutton, on the other hand, 
 
 * Lives of the Friends of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, by Lady Theresa 
 Lewis, vol. i., p. 8. 
 
 t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 43.
 
 RELATIVE VALUES. 31 
 
 cost only twopence, or at most threepence, a pound. Agri- 
 cultural labourers received but about sixpence a day ; but 
 then they generally had a right to keep a cow or a sheep, 
 and perhaps a goose, on the neighbouring common, and they 
 may have been allowed to do a little land-grabbing from 
 the nearest moor or fen. The lord of the manor, again, 
 may have been able to buy a horse for what we should call 
 an " old song ; " but if he wanted to buy a silk dress for his 
 wife he would have had to pay more than we do.* I 
 have heard that a high authority, the late Mr. Bruce, con- 
 sidered the sovereign sterling to have been worth about 
 four and a half times as much in the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century as it is now. 
 
 It is said that no man ever owed more to his biographer 
 than Lucius Gary to his friend Lord Clarendon. " There 
 never was a stronger instance," says Horace Walpole,f " of 
 what the magic of words and the art of an historian can 
 effect than in his character of this lord." Yet even Claren- 
 don writes thus of the personal appearance of Lucius 
 Gary : " His presence . . . was in no degree attractive or 
 promising. His stature was low, and smaller than most 
 men ; his motion not graceful ; and his aspect so far from 
 inviting that it had somewhat of simplicity ; and his voice 
 the worst of the three, and so untuned, that instead of 
 reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody can have 
 expected music from that tongue, and sure no man was 
 less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the 
 world : but then no man sooner or more disappointed this 
 general and customary prejudice." J 
 
 Aubrey's description of him is shorter : " He was a 
 
 * I am indebted for these details to the great kindness of Professor 
 Gardiner. 
 
 t A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, by Horace 
 Walpole, 1806, vol. v., p. 80. 
 
 I The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, written by himself, ed. 
 1827, vol. i., p. 43.
 
 32 FALKLANDS. 
 
 little man, and of no great strength of body ; he had 
 blackish haire something shaggy, and I think his eies 
 black." * 
 
 To his character we will again summon Clarendon as a 
 witness. However "wild" he may have been in boyhood, 
 as Lloyd and Wood pronounced him, Clarendon assures 
 us that "he was superior to all those passions and affec- 
 tions which attend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no 
 other ambition than of knowledge, and to be reputed a 
 lover of all good men." f " He had a courage of the most 
 clear and keen temper, and so far from fear that he seemed 
 not without some appetite of danger." J Yet " he was of a 
 most incomparable gentleness, application and even sub- 
 mission to good and worthy and entire men." " In his 
 conversation he was the most cheerful and pleasant that 
 can be imagined . . . and of great gaiety in his humour, 
 with a flowing delightfulness of language ; he had so 
 chaste a tongue and ear that there was never known a pro- 
 fane or loose word to fall from him, nor in truth in his 
 company." His " rigidness was only exercised towards 
 himself: towards his friends' infirmities no man was more 
 indulgent." I! He was a man of "prodigious parts of 
 learning and knowledge," IT "of inimitable sweetness and 
 delight," ** of a " flowing and obliging humanity and good- 
 ness to mankind," and of a "primitive simplicity and integ- 
 rity of life." He had " the least pedantry and affectation 
 that ever man, who knew so much, was possessed with, of 
 what quality soever, "ff 
 
 These are only brief quotations from long paragraphs 
 
 * Letters Written by Eminent Persons and Lives of Eminent Men, by 
 John Aubrey, vol. ii., part i., p. 351. 
 
 t History of the Rebellion, bk. vii., p. 352. \ Ib., p. 357. 
 
 Ib., p. 358. || Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 50. 
 
 II History, bk. vii., p. 350. 
 
 ** It is difficult to understand Matthew Arnold's reasons for changing 
 " sweetness and delight " to " sweetness and light." Mixed Essays, p. 236. 
 ft Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 49.
 
 MARRIAGE FOR MONEY, OR FOR LOVE? 33 
 
 dilating upon the virtues of Lucius Gary ; and, after read- 
 ing them, who shall say that the Lives of the Saints are 
 exaggerated or incredible ? 
 
 Dr. Barlow wrote that Lucius Gary was " a person of 
 great wit, conspicuous for his natural perfections." * Hugh 
 Cressy, in his Epist. Apologetical (1674), calls him "the 
 greatest ornament to our nation that the last age pro- 
 duced ; " \ and Thomas Triplet, in his dedicatory epistle 
 "before Falkland's Book of Infallibility, printed in 1651," 
 says that " he was the envy of this age, and will be the 
 wonder of the next." \ 
 
 Wood says : " As for his parts, which speak him better 
 than- any Elogy, they were incomparable." 
 
 A contemporary writer, in an Elegy upon his wife, calls 
 him 
 
 The best of writing and of fighting men. || 
 
 Of modern opinions of Lucius Gary I will not offer 
 many. The pith of Horace Walpole's and Matthew Arnold's 
 I gave at starting. Professor Gardiner says : " Falkland's 
 mind in its beautiful strength as well as in its weakness 
 was essentially feminine." IT The charming and refined 
 Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton,** wrote that " honour and 
 genius elect Falkland as their own;" while the practical 
 and excellent John Forsterff wrote of his "fastidious tastes" 
 and his " impulsiveness of temper; " and in these endeavours 
 to make more clear the characteristics of Lucius Gary both 
 Lytton and Forster may almost besaid to have thrown a 
 side-light upon their own. 
 
 * Barlow's Remains, 1673, p. 324. I quote from Wood's Ath. Ox., vol. 
 i., p. 588. 
 
 t Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 587. J Ib. Ib. 
 
 || " To the memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady 
 Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland." 
 
 IT Dictionary of National Biography, vol. ix., " Lucius Gary." 
 ** Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i., p. 371. 
 ft Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, p. 173. 
 
 3
 
 34 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Lucius Gary was essentially a man of friendships ; even 
 of violent friendships. Misanthropes have maintained 
 that excessive friendship is a sign of a weak character, a 
 question into which I do not feel called upon to inquire 
 here. One of Lucius's greatest and earliest and earliest lost 
 friends was Sir Henry Morison. Of the virtues of these 
 two friends, and of the strength of their friendship, I will 
 let Ben Jonson speak, in a few extracts from his " Pindaric 
 Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that 
 Noble Pair," written apparently after Sir Henry's death : 
 
 III. 
 
 THE STROPHE, OR TURN.* 
 It is not growing like a tree 
 In bulk, doth make men better be; 
 Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, 
 To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear : 
 A lily of a day, r 
 
 Is fairer far, in May, 
 Although it fall and die that night ; 
 It was the plant and flower of light. 
 In small proportions we just beauties see; 
 And in short measures, life may perfect be. 
 # * * * * * 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE STROPHE, OR TURN. 
 And shine as you exalted are ; 
 Two names of friendship, but one star : 
 Of hearts the union, and those not by chance 
 Made, or indenture, or leased out t' advance 
 
 The profits for a time. 
 
 No pleasures vain did chime, 
 Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts, 
 Orgies of drink, or feign'd protests : 
 But simple love of greatness and of good : 
 That knits brave minds and manners, more than blood. 
 
 * " A Pindaric Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that 
 Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison." Ben Jonson's Works, 
 ed. Barry Cornwall, pp. 715, 716. " Underwoods."
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS. 35 
 
 THE ANTI-STROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN. 
 
 This made you first to know the why 
 
 You liked, then after, to apply 
 
 That liking ; and approach so one the t' other, 
 
 Till either grew a portion of the other ; 
 
 Each styled by his end, 
 
 The copy of his friend. 
 You liv'd to be the great sir-names, 
 And titles, by which all made claims 
 Unto the Virtue : nothing perfect done 
 But as a GARY or a MORISON. 
 
 THE EPODE, OR STAND. 
 
 And such a force the fair example had, 
 
 As they that saw 
 
 The good, and durst not practise it, were glad 
 
 That such a law 
 
 Was left yet to mankind ; 
 
 Where they might read and find 
 
 Friendship, indeed, was written not in words; 
 
 And with the heart, not pen, 
 
 Of two so early men 
 
 Whose lines her rolls were, and records : 
 
 Who, ere the first down bloomed on the chin, 
 
 Had sow'd these fruits and got the harvest in. 
 
 I may take this opportunity of observing that it will be 
 my lot in this work, as it has already been in several others 
 dealing with the same period, to quote a good deal of very 
 indifferent verse. "About the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century," says Dr. Johnson,* " appeared a race of 
 writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets." 
 They " were men of learning, and to show their learning 
 was their whole endeavour, but, unluckily resolving to 
 show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only 
 wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial 
 of the finger better than of the ear ; for the modulation was 
 
 *" Life of Cowley " in Chambers' Works of the English Poets, vol. vii., 
 p. 12.
 
 30 FALKLANDS. 
 
 so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by 
 counting the syllables." 
 
 This style, says Johnson, was " recommended by the 
 example of Donne," to whom, as will be seen, Falkland 
 wrote a poem, " a man of very extensive and various 
 knowledge ; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled 
 that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than 
 in the cast of his sentiments." Of their six " immediate 
 successors, of whom any remembrance can be said to 
 remain," mentioned by Dr. Johnson, three were friends of 
 Lucius Gary's, and a fourth wrote a poem to him. 
 
 Sir Henry Morison was a son of Sir Richard Morison, 
 of Tooley Park, Leicester ; and Sir Henry had a sister. 
 If Sir Henry was eulogised in verse, so also was his sister, 
 Letice, by a versifier, however, who does not appear to 
 have been remarkable either for poetical power or partiality 
 to papists.* 
 
 Show me your Legends, you, in whose bright year 
 More Saints and Martyrs then black days appear, 
 Martyrs and Saints, whose consecrated names 
 Stand shining there, as in their second flames, 
 'Mongst all your Tecla's, Bridget's, Friswid's, all 
 Your fiction-Saints, or which we true Saints call, 
 You will not find one he, or she more fit 
 To be extoll'd, or canonis'd in wit, 
 Than this departed Lady, who embalms 
 All poetry, and turns all verse to Psalms. 
 
 So excellent had been the training of "this elect lady," 
 says her biographer, that " she came not from her Nurse's 
 arms without some knowledge of the principles of Christian 
 religion. While she was very young, her obedience to her 
 Parents (which she extended also to her Aunt, who had 
 some charge over her, in her Father's house) was very exact, 
 and as she began, so she continued in this gratious, and 
 
 * " To the memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady 
 Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland."
 
 (///< <>/ Client.) //-' / t.->c^ 
 
 'I'/u 17 srtritt/ v ii/t.i.ii-/i , 
 
 in //if 'I'Mi-J.iitin {</ ) i.icintn/ .. X//X; /<///</
 
 AN " AWFUL TEMPER OF DUTY." 37 
 
 awful temper of duty and observance." As had been the 
 case with her future mother-in-law, when a child, she " was 
 oft-times at a book in her closet, when she was thought to 
 be in bed." * 
 
 " How constant she was then at her private Praiers I 
 ghesse," said her biographer, " by what I have heard from 
 the keeper of" the "house." 
 
 Let her rhyming admirer also tell us something of her 
 early years. At 
 
 The time when he begins, 
 
 To tempt us with the first assault of sins, 
 
 . . . she 
 
 Through his false paint did then the serpent see ; 
 
 Then in her cradle strangled him, whose suits 
 
 Came drest 'ith beauty of forbidden fruits. 
 
 Her youth was like her infancy, from whence 
 Began her second state of innocence. 
 
 She was very good at her lessons, particularly in the 
 study of the Bible ; but her 
 
 . . . Other Scriptures were God's creatures, where 
 She heard him spake t' her ey, as that t' her ear. 
 
 As to her general behaviour, 
 
 She did not . . . 
 
 . . . frame her smiles or order looks, 
 
 Or make her gestures pass for well-laid hooks ; 
 
 Such false court engines she bequeath'd to those, 
 
 Whose virtue is their face, and good parts their clothes. 
 
 With this pious and pretty girl, Lucius Gary fell madly 
 in love. Unfortunately, Letice Morison's face was her 
 fortune, or rather, I am very wrong in so saying ; for 
 the " riches of her piety, wisdom, quickness of wit, dis- 
 cretion, judgment, sobriety and gravity of behaviour, 
 being once perceived by Sir Lucius Gary, seemed portion 
 enough to him. These were they, he prised above worldly 
 
 * The Holy Life and Death of the Lady Falkland, p. 145.
 
 38 FALKLANDS. 
 
 inheritances and those other fading accessories, which most 
 men court." * 
 
 Not so his father. The "fading accessories" were 
 exactly what Lord Falkland wished for, and meant to 
 get, through his son's marriage with Lord Portland's 
 daughter, already mentioned, and the piety of Letice in 
 no way attracted him. Piety would not pay his debts ! 
 Therefore he was violently angry at Lucius's admiration 
 of it. 
 
 How his mother regarded Lucius's attachment is un- 
 certain. He was on excellent terms with her, and, among 
 all her children, he alone always preferred his mother to 
 his father. While she lived with her husband, she had 
 ever made it her endeavour to teach her children to love 
 her husband better than herself ; f but with Lucius she had 
 failed in this attempt. 
 
 I wish I could enliven these pages with any entertaining 
 anecdotes of the love-makings or the lovers' quarrels of 
 Lucius and Letice. Unhappily, history is silent about 
 them. Indeed, the history of the four Falklands, male and 
 female, with which I am chiefly dealing in these pages, is 
 so devoid of romantic love-making, while they themselves 
 were so proper, particular, and even prudish, that I am 
 occasionally tempted to wish that I had left them undis- 
 turbed in their family vaults. 
 
 I cannot trace so much as one love letter between Letice 
 Morison and Lucius Gary. Of Letice's letters there are 
 plenty in print, but they are not amatory ; and her letters 
 to Lucius before marriage would not have proved very 
 amusing to the general reader, if we are to judge from her 
 epistles at our disposal. Here is a specimen : " There is 
 in the soule of man an upper Region and a lower Region, 
 I mean a rational and a sensitive part. The upper and 
 rational part of the soul consists of the understanding and 
 the will, the reasonable faculties. The lower or sensitive 
 
 * The Holy Life, etc., p. 148. t The Lady Falkland, p. 14.
 
 LETICE. 39 
 
 part of the soul consists of the imagination and memory, 
 etc., the sensitive faculties of the soul, or the inward 
 senses." * 
 
 In spite of the fierce opposition of his father, Lucius 
 persevered in his suit to Letice Morison. Nor was she less 
 ready to accede to it. 
 
 Her riper years did call her to the bed 
 Of one who did her, not her dowry wed,t 
 
 says her rhyming panegyrist. 
 
 Between these curtains and this nuptial sheet, 
 Male virtue did with female virtue meet. 
 A soul with soul and mind here matcht with mind, 
 The marriage torch held by a god not blind. 
 
 Clarendon is almost as unsparing in his praise of Letice 
 as of her husband. He calls her " a lady of the most 
 extraordinary wit and judgment, and of the most signal 
 virtue and exemplary life that the age produced." J 
 
 His father's wrath at his marriage with a portionless 
 girl grieved Lucius to such an extent that, with a filial piety 
 which would have put /Eneas to the blush, or as Clarendon 
 says : " With the warm impulsiveness which was the prin- 
 cipal charm of his character, and at the same time the 
 source of his greatest errors, he offered to resign the whole 
 of ' his estate ' into his father's hands if only he might have 
 a father's love." || He even laid before his father deeds 11 
 
 * The Retvrnes of Spiritual Comfort and Grief in a Devout Soul, pp. 
 10-11. 
 
 \- " To the memory," etc. { Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 45. 
 
 His father had other worries about the same period. In May, 1631, 
 Sir Geo. Gresly wrote to Sir Thos. Puckering : " The business betwixt the 
 Lord Falkland and Sir Arthur Savage is now in agitation in the Star 
 Chamber ; and so far as the hearers can yet perceive there appears to be 
 foul carriage on both sides, and what the issue will be this term will hardly 
 determine." Court and Times of Charles I., Colbourne (1848), vol. iii., p. 
 118. 
 
 || See Hist. Eng., Prof. Gardiner, vol. viii., p. 256. 
 
 U Lodge's Portraits, ed. 1888, vol. iv., p. 132.
 
 40 FALKLANDS. 
 
 conveying to him his whole property, and only awaiting 
 signature, and he expressed a wish to live solely on his 
 father's bounty. In common decency Lord Falkland felt 
 unable to accept such an offer ; but he felt much more 
 unable to give his love. It must have been a sore contest 
 between his pride and his penury when he refused the offer 
 of his son's property ; for, probably in the same year, he 
 was imprisoned for debt. On the 4th of August, 1631, 
 Secretary Dorchester wrote to the Lord Treasurer 
 Weston : " My L d of Faulkland being a prisoner in ye 
 Duchy House in London hath written to me to move 
 
 m 
 
 his ma ty for a certayne assignem 1 of ye 10 ti ordayned 
 him in lieu of all his pretensions : whereby to recover 
 creditt, & sett himself & his estate at some liberty. 
 . . . His necessityes (God knoweth) are far from being 
 counterfeit ; & I well knowe how noble yo r L p hath bene 
 in favoring him w th his Ma ty & yf you can goe so much 
 furthr as he now desires for saving his Estate, y e worke 
 shalbe yo rs & it wilbe a worke of hon r to preserve a 
 person of hono r from ruyne." * 
 
 Miserable in mind, Sir Lucius, for he was now a 
 knight,f left his country, taking his bride with him, J to seek 
 distraction in military service in the Netherlands. This, 
 after remaining about a year in the Low Countries, he 
 failed to obtain. But we will leave him for the present to 
 observe the proceedings of his mother. 
 
 In the year of her husband's return to England, we 
 hear of the monotony of her lonely cottage life being broken 
 by a pilgrimage to St. Winifride's Well at Holywell in 
 Flintshire, in company with Lord William Howard, the 
 Earl of Shrewsbury, Sir Cuthbert Clifton and Sir John 
 
 * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. cxcviii., No. 12. 
 
 t Lodge's Portraits, vol. iv., p. 132. 
 
 \ Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 37-45. 
 
 S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. cli., No. 13, Nov. 3, 1629.
 
 AfjMEDIATRIX. 4! 
 
 Talbot. The total number of knights, ladies and gentle- 
 men, who went together on this pilgrimage, is said to have 
 been 1400, besides 150 priests. 
 
 Early in the following year (1630) she was reduced to 
 such a state of destitution as to be obliged to petition the 
 king * to put in force the order to her husband to support 
 her. The king referred the matter to the Lord Keeper 
 and others, in order that they might " settle some accord 
 for the lady's maintenance." The committee thus appointed 
 would seem to have summoned both the husband and the 
 wife to appear before it and wrangle out their differences 
 then and there, and once for all ; for we find a letter f 
 from Lady Falkland to the council begging that her per- 
 sonal appearance may be spared, as she was unwilling to 
 confront her lord. 
 
 Sometimes when things seem at their worst, they are 
 just going to mend, and so it was in this instance. The 
 charming Henrietta Maria ingratiated herself with Lord 
 Falkland, J and " was pleased to make herself a mediatrix 
 of their reconciliation." The queen, indeed, " both before 
 and after, by her royal charity, relieved " Lady Falkland, 
 " and many other ways afforded her gracious assistance 
 to her and hers." 
 
 If brought about through the medium of others, the 
 reunion between the husband and wife was none the 
 less real. For the present, nevertheless, Lady Falkland 
 continued to live in her little cottage " for the better 
 commodity of her exercising her religion," while Lord 
 Falkland lived in London, as a guest at Lord Newburgh's, 
 for just then he had no money wherewith to set up 
 an establishment in which to receive his wife. 
 
 Great as was her extremity, Lady Falkland withdrew 
 
 * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. clxiv., No. 44. 
 
 t Ib., vol. clxxxi., No. 58. 
 
 { The Lady Falkland, p. 43. Ib., p. 46.
 
 42 FALKLANDS. 
 
 her claim for support from her husband, on being recon- 
 ciled to him, " though she had not anything from him."* 
 She asked him for only one thing not money, but that 
 he would forgive his son for marrying against his will. 
 Here she met with a stern refusal. In the summer of 
 1633, Lord Falkland took a small house in the country, 
 and he invited his wife to stay there with him. He then 
 talked of living there with her permanently, and even 
 went as far as " designing a place for her chapel and 
 for her priests to live in." j- This, however, was not 
 to be just yet, and they had again separated, when a 
 summons of a very serious nature was brought in haste 
 to Lady Falkland 
 
 She was informed that her husband had been "waiting 
 on the king (then newly come out of Scotland) a-shooting 
 in Tibald's Park," when he " fell from a stand and 
 broke his leg, and instantly broke it in a second and a 
 third place with standing up at the king's coming to 
 him." I 
 
 Lady Falkland at once hastened to the bedside of her 
 husband, which was in a lodge in Theobald's Park ; 
 and she never left it while he lived. " What sleep she 
 got," " for the most part in the day-time," was " in 
 his chamber in a chair, or lying on the ground on a pallet, 
 which he made be brought in for her." 
 
 The patient was very badly managed. The king's 
 " doctor and surgeon " had royal orders to attend him " till 
 he was well." " The surgeon, undertaking the part 
 of a bone-setter, pretended to set his leg, but failing in it, 
 instead of being set, it gangrened." Then the surgeons 
 cut the leg off just above the knee, and during the operation 
 " he never changed his countenance, nor made any 
 show of pain." " In the cutting off," the surgeons " scaled 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 44. 
 
 t Ib., p. 46. J Ib., p. 46.
 
 DEATH OF FALKLAND. 43 
 
 the bone, and judging, therefore, it was more likely to 
 gangrene again than cure, they did not sear it, but 
 staunched the blood for the present with a powder, 
 not esteeming it likely he could support a new cutting 
 without dying of it." More than four-and-twenty hours 
 later hemorrhage set in when the surgeons and doctor 
 were absent at " tables." It was some time before they 
 arrived, and, when they did, they told their patient that 
 " there was no hope, and so offered no more to stop it, but 
 let him bleed to death." 
 
 During the week which elapsed between his accident 
 and his death, Lord Falkland had much conversation about 
 religion with his wife, and two or three hours before the 
 end she understood him to express a wish to see her 
 priest. 
 
 Although no priest was within reach, there seemed to 
 be reason for believing Lord Falkland to be at least a 
 Catholic in desire. One of the surgeons, perceiving the 
 intercourse between his patient and Lady Falkland, begged 
 him to profess that he died a Protestant, as otherwise, he 
 told him, " his lady being there and speaking much to him, 
 it would be reported he died a Papist. To this (which the 
 man repeated three or four times) he only still turned 
 away his head without answering him ; but, seeing he did 
 not cease to bawl the same in his ears, he said to him at 
 last, ' Pray, do not interrupt my silent meditation,' which 
 showed he could have said the other if he would." * The 
 end soon followed. 
 
 With all the miseries which had followed the marriage 
 of Sir Henry Gary with Elizabeth Tanfield, the widowed 
 Lady Falkland was able to recall the memory of her 
 husband with affection and with pleasure ; and if, as his 
 daughter puts it, " he married her only for being an heir," f 
 and treated her for many years with great unkindness, it 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 49. t Ib., p. 7.
 
 44 FALKLANDS. 
 
 should be remembered that if the " heir " brought him 
 money, she also brought him ten children to spend it on ; 
 that Lord Falkland was ever irritated and soured by 
 impecuniosity, and that Lady Falkland was very typical 
 of the woman not yet extinct who, if a saint, would try 
 a saint.
 
 45 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A LITERARY LIFE. 
 
 AT the date of his father's death Lucius Gary was living at 
 Great Tew, a place about eighteen miles from his house at 
 Burford Priory, and some sixteen miles * north-north-west 
 of Oxford. 
 
 No traces of Falkland's house at Great Tew are re- 
 maining, and there is a mere tradition that it stood a little 
 higher up the hill than that which now bears the same 
 name. Half a mile higher than the present house, the 
 ground is 620 feet above the sea ; so the position of 
 Falkland's home was very elevated for a county like 
 Oxfordshire. It has been asserted that the avenue of 
 trees, three-quarters of a mile in length, which has no 
 apparent relation to the present house, or to any road or 
 drive, must have been standing in Falkland's time ; but the 
 present vicar, f who has been very kind in affording me 
 information, doubts whether the trees can be so old. The 
 gardens of Falkland's house, he tells me, still remain, with 
 high walls, in three adjacent partitions, and are very little 
 altered. 
 
 Having returned from the Netherlands without obtain- 
 ing military employment, Falkland settled down at home 
 with his beautiful wife, and devoted his time to literature 
 and literary society. Classics were his favourite study, 
 although he avoided 
 
 * Clarendon (Hist., book vii., p. 351) says "within ten miles." If so, 
 miles must have been longer then than now. 
 t The Rev. J. P. Mallen.
 
 46 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Those looser poets, whose lascivious pen, 
 Ascribing crimes to gods, taught them to men,* 
 
 as he himself described them. He was determined to 
 perfect himself in Greek. Clarendon says: "He was 
 constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, 
 and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to 
 that end. And therefore having once resolv'd not to see 
 London, which he lov'd above all places, till he had perfectly 
 learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the 
 country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry 
 that it will not be believ'd in how short a time he was 
 master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians." f 
 
 The death of his father for a time disturbed the serenity 
 of his literary life at Great Tew. He was now Lord Falk- 
 land. " His father's death," says Clarendon, \ " brought 
 no other convenience to him but a title to redeem an 
 estate mortgaged for as much as it was worth, and for 
 which he was compelled to sell a finer seat of his own ; 
 yet it imposed a burden upon him of the title of a Viscount, 
 and an increase of expense in which he was not in his 
 nature too provident or restrained." His improvidence 
 was not, as he goes on to explain, the result of personal 
 extravagance or a love of luxury, but of his generosity and 
 his hospitality to others. " He seemed to have an estate in 
 trust for all worthy persons who stood in want of supplies 
 and encouragement." 
 
 About the time of his father's death, || he was made a 
 gentleman of His Majesty's Privy Chamber. This alone 
 may have necessitated his withdrawal from the retirement 
 of Great Tew to attend the king at Court, but it is likely 
 that the sale of the property to pay his father's debts also 
 required his presence in London. His mother's affairs 
 
 * " Falkland's lines to Sandys." Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies 
 Library, vol. iii., p. 86. 
 
 t History, book vii., p. 351. J Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 46. 
 
 Burford Priory. \\Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 586.
 
 BURFORD PRIORY. 47 
 
 again demanded attention, and he spent the winter fol- 
 lowing his father's death in London * in his mother's 
 company. 
 
 The estate which he sacrificed to pay his father's debts 
 was that of Burford Priory, which he sold to Lenthall,f who 
 had been one of the trustees of the property * under his 
 grandfather's deed, "for the sum of 7000 or thereabouts. " 
 As Wood says, it was a " stately house," as its ruins still 
 testify, although only a fragment of it remains. 
 
 Elizabeth, Lady Falkland, and her eldest son had much 
 in common. They were both literary and studious, serious, 
 impetuous, sociable, generous and unselfish. Each again 
 was plain in appearance and ungainly in manner. Lucius 
 was very fond of his mother, and, although a Protestant, he 
 was not at all prejudiced, when a young man, against his 
 mother's religion, || and " he always disputed in favour of 
 it," but said that he would not take upon himself the 
 responsibility of changing his religion until he was forty. IT 
 Lady Falkland did her best to convert him ; but as he him- 
 self once wrote, it is 
 
 Hard the soule's health to procure, 
 Vnlesse the patient doe assist the cure. ** 
 
 And he did not give his mother much assistance in 
 curing his own soul from unbelief. Like many modern 
 freeish thinkers, he was very tolerant of Catholics. He 
 
 * Die. Nat. Biog., vol. ix., p. 247. 
 
 t William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons and Keeper of 
 the Great Seal in the Rump Parliament. Wood says (Ath. Ox., vol. ii., pp. 
 306-10) : " He was a person very inconsistent and wavering in his principles, 
 of a slavish temper, a taker of all oaths. ... He minded mostly the heap- 
 ing up of riches. . . . He left behind him one only son named John, the 
 grand Braggadocio and Lyer of the age he lived in." 
 
 I Die. Nat. Biog. Article on Falkland, vol. ix. 
 
 Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 307. || The Lady Falkland, p. 56. 
 
 If " But he did not live to see four-and-thirty." Ib. 
 ** " To G. Sandys." Miscell. of the Fuller Worthies Lib., vol. iii., 
 p. 86.
 
 48 FALKLANDS. 
 
 looked at religious matters from a cool, disinterested stand- 
 point. There are always men of his type. To them, 
 Jesus Christ was a great character ; so also was Julius 
 Caesar. They consider the condition of the soul after death 
 an interesting subject, and almost equally so the question 
 whether Mars is inhabited. They know all about the 
 religions of everybody except themselves. 
 
 How far the very Protestant Letice approved of her 
 husband's toleration of Catholics we have no means of 
 ascertaining. What we do know is that in writing about 
 the consolations which Catholics professed t<3 enjoy in their 
 religion, she says : " If these consolations plentifully 
 scattered have bin, and are stil, the occasion at least of 
 confirming Papists in their errors, and of seducing Pro- 
 testants from the truth, who will not grant that the Devil is 
 the Grand Agent in them ? " * 
 
 Letice had an oratory and was fond of fasting, and she 
 prayed seven times a day ; but she was not a ritualist of 
 the period, for she objected to "outward consolation," and 
 found fault with the " Popish priests " j- for making it " a 
 chief part of their business, both in their Praters and 
 Sermons" and for their " many mimical and hystrionical 
 gestures and postures which they use for this purpose." 
 And she says, " I wish heartily there were no such 
 delusions in our Protestant Churches" \ 
 
 Although she thought that " the Devil is an Agent" in 
 the Catholic religion, she had an occasional kind word for 
 individual Catholics. " We cannot deny (though we blush 
 to say it) that many of the Popish perswasion are more 
 frequent at their devotions than we of our perswasion ordi- 
 narily are," she charitably wrote. 
 
 Letice and Elizabeth seem to have been content to 
 differ ; and, if Elizabeth saw grounds for hoping that her 
 son would become a Catholic, Letice was able to console 
 
 * Spiritual Comfort and Grief, p. 99. 
 t Ib., p. 97. J 76., p. 98.
 
 POLITICAL DISCONTENT. 49 
 
 herself with the reflection that he was still an Anglican ; 
 and, as in equity, so in religion, possession is nine points 
 of the law. 
 
 Lawrence, the next son to Lucius, and but little younger, 
 also spent the winter 1633-4 with the Dowager Lady Falk- 
 land in London. " Many of their friends (Oxford scholars 
 and others) came much to her house, and were exceeding 
 welcome to her (who always loved good company so much, 
 that the contrary was almost insupportable to her)." * 
 
 " Good company " had just at that time ample matter 
 for conversation. Just before the late Lord Falkland's 
 death, Wentworth had gone to Ireland to occupy the post 
 from which Falkland had been recalled, and his appoint- 
 ment to it was to be followed by very serious consequences. 
 Already, too, great irritation was beginning to manifest 
 itself among the trades-people, at the monopolies granted 
 to companies for the right of selling soap, starch, beer and 
 other manufactures. The nobility, on their part, were 
 irritated by an inquiry into the stretch of the royal forests 
 and by an extension of their boundaries, on the score of 
 alleged encroachments. 
 
 The city of London was annoyed by the confiscation of 
 its settlements in Ulster and a heavy fine imposed in the 
 Star Chamber, on the ground of mismanagement. The 
 maritime towns and counties were yet more annoyed, and 
 even appalled, by a writ for ship-money drawn up by Noy ; 
 while the recent appointment of Laud to be Archbishop of 
 Canterbury was making multitudes uneasy, and many 
 afraid. In consequence of the events just noticed, the 
 young Lord Falkland must have heard a great deal of 
 political conversation during the winter which he spent in 
 London. His appointment at Court afforded him many 
 opportunities of hearing the loyalist opinion on the matters' 
 then under public discussion, while his own inclinations 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 55. 
 
 4
 
 50 FALKLANDS. 
 
 must have led him to seek that of men holding very 
 opposite views. 
 
 I had almost written that Falkland was at that time 
 what would now be called a Liberal, if not a Radical ; but 
 it should be remembered that, at the period with which I am 
 dealing, the Royalists were making radical innovations, 
 while their opponents were anxious for the conservation of 
 the British Constitution in its integrity. Historians have 
 represented Falkland as a Radical at one time of his life 
 and as a turn-coat at another. It seems to me that it 
 would be possible to argue with some plausibility, that he 
 was from first to last a Conservative ; although I myself 
 am not prepared to say so much as this. 
 
 Just before Falkland left London, a new custom was 
 instituted in that capital, which, whether it made any im- 
 pression upon him or not, was destined to become a very 
 strong characteristic of its streets. This was the placing of 
 carriages " on stand " for hire, or practically the cab-stand. 
 The first man to conceive this great idea was a retired sea- 
 captain of the name of Bailey, who " erected according to 
 his ability some four hackney coaches,* put his men into 
 livery, and appointed them to stand at the Maypole in 
 the Strand, giving them instructions at what rates to carry 
 men into the several parts of the town, where all day long 
 they may be had."f Within a few months there was a 
 further innovation in the form of " another project for 
 carrying people up and down in close chairs," I i.e., sedan 
 chairs. 
 
 * By degrees, the hackney coaches began to ruin the boatmen on the 
 Thames. Taylor, the water-poet, after writing of an earlier time, added : 
 " Then upstart hill-cart coaches were to seek, 
 
 A man could scarce see twenty in a week ; 
 But now, I think, a man may daily see 
 
 More than the wherrys on the Thames can be." 
 I quote from The White King, vol. i., p. 375. 
 
 f George Garrard to Wentworth, ist April, 1634. Strafford Letters. 
 \Ib.y loth Nov., 1634.
 
 " MELANCHOLICK DISEASE." 5 1 
 
 Lord Falkland left London, and all these new-fangled 
 inventions, to retire to his quiet, old-fashioned home at 
 Great Tew. Here, he again set himself a severe course of 
 study ; * but it may be a question whether, with his taste 
 for society, he would have settled down for so long a time 
 in the country, had it not been for the retiring nature of 
 his wife. " All worldly felicities and contentments did so 
 little affect her, that there were some seemed displeased 
 at it ; and then she would attribute much of it to a 
 melancholick disease, which was then upon her." j- 
 
 A man living with a wife afflicted with " a melancholick 
 disease," were she ever so amiable and beautiful, could 
 only console himself by excess in either drinking or 
 thinking. Lucius chose the latter alternative and im- 
 mersed himself in his books. Her books and her very 
 strict religious opinions seem never to have been attractive 
 to him. To use his own words, he was one of those who 
 will not "be led by solecisms to heaven." J 
 
 Of his literary powers we learn something from his 
 contemporary, Lloyd. He was " capable of making that 
 universal inspection into things that much becomes a 
 gentleman." There was " much gall always in his ink, and 
 very sharp " was " his pen ; but even flowing and full his style 
 such as became him, whose learning was not an unsettled 
 mass of reading that whirled up and down in his head, 
 but fixed observations," etc. " His usual saying was, / 
 pity unlearned gentlemen in a rainy day." 
 
 He had " a memory retentive of all he had ever read, 
 and an understanding and judgment to apply it seasonably 
 and appositely, with the most dexterity and address." || 
 
 Falkland would not have been pleased if he had known 
 that one of his greatest posthumous admirers, Matthew 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 41. 
 
 t The Holy Life and Death, etc., p. 149. 
 
 \ Misc. of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. iii., p. 84. 
 
 Memoires, p. 332. || Life of Clarendon, vol. i.
 
 52 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Arnold, would say of him, "As a writer he scarcely 
 counts."* Even the uncharitable Aubrey, after observing 
 that " he writt not smooth verse," admits that he wrote 
 " a great deal of sense." j- 
 
 My own opinion coincides with that of Aubrey as 
 to Falkland's verse, at any rate upon the question of 
 smoothness. Yet occasionally, in his poems, a line occurs 
 which seems a forerunner of the work of that smoothest 
 of poets, Pope, who was to be born less than fifty years 
 after the death of Falkland ; and much of Falkland's 
 antithesis foreshadows Pope. 
 
 One of Falkland's best known, but not best, poems is 
 on Donne. Of Donne's verses he writes : 
 
 And that, but for the name, nor this, nor those, 
 Want anything of sermons but the prose. I 
 
 Of Donne himself, as a divine, Falkland says : 
 
 No druggist of the soul bestow'd on all 
 
 So catholiquely a curing cordiall. 
 
 Nor only in the pulpit dwelt his store, 
 
 His words work'd much, but his example more. 
 
 And again : 
 
 . . . the voice of truth, 
 
 God's conduit-pipe for grace, who chose him for 
 His extraordinary ambassador. 
 
 In a poem upon the death of " the Ladie Marquesse 
 Hamilton," are the following lines : 
 
 How sharpe a judge of all her homebread thoughts ! 
 
 How weake a censurer of fforaigne faults ! 
 
 Who could such balme for different woundes prepare ? 
 
 Soe temper insolence and calme despaire ? 
 
 Whoe taught the simple like her, or whoe drew 
 
 Like her, the learn'd to practise what they knew ? 
 
 These praises were probably not exaggerated, judging 
 
 * Mixed Essays, p. 207. t Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 351. 
 
 J Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. iii., p. 35. 
 Ib., p. 60 seq.
 
 FALKLAND'S VERSE. 53 
 
 from what Bishop Burnet says of her in his Memoirs of the 
 Duke of Hamilton* 
 Falkland grieved 
 
 To see disjoyn'd 
 Soe rare a bodie from soe pure a mind. 
 
 Again he writes of her : 
 
 Eyes of soe modest, yet soe bright a flame, 
 To see her and to love her was the same. 
 
 He had almost higher praise to bestow upon the 
 memory of Elizabeth, Countess of Huntingdon. 
 
 The chiefe perfections of both sexes joyn'd, 
 
 With neither's vice nor vanity combin'd, 
 
 Of this our age the wonder, love, and care, 
 
 The example of the following, and dispaire. 
 
 Such beauty, that from all hearts love must flow, 
 
 Such maiesty, that none durst tell her so. 
 
 A wisdome of so large and potent sway, 
 
 Rome's Senate might have wisht, her Conclave may, 
 
 Which did to earthly thoughts so seldome bow, 
 
 Alive she scarce was lesse in heaven, then now, 
 
 So voyd of the least pride, to her alone 
 
 These radiant excellencies seem'd vnknowne. 
 
 Such once there was : but let thy griefe appeare, 
 
 Reader, there is not : Huntingdon lies here. 
 
 By him who saies what he saw. 
 Falkland, t 
 
 Surely this was enough to make poor Letice jealous of 
 Lady Huntingdon's memory. 
 His poem to Grotius begins : 
 
 Our Ages wonder, by thy birth the fame 
 Of Belgia, by thy banishment the shame : 
 
 And ends : 
 
 Above the reach or stroke of fortune live, 
 
 Nor valuing what she can inflict or give ; 
 
 For low desires depresse the loftiest state, 
 
 But who lookes down on vice, lookes down on Fate. J 
 
 * Ed. 1667, p. 407. t Fuller Miscellanies, vol. Hi., p. 70. 
 
 I Ib., p. 72.
 
 54 FALKLANDS. 
 
 It contains one terrible atrocity : 
 
 From which, from all with just consent he wan, 
 The Title of the English Buchanan. 
 
 Surely this appalling line stands " the trial of the finger ' 
 if, indeed, it will stand that " better than of the ear," 
 as Dr. Johnson would have said. 
 
 In a poem to his friend, George Sandys, he exclaims : 
 
 Such is the verse thou writ'st, that who reads thine 
 
 Can never be content to suffer mine ; 
 
 Such is the verse I write, that reading mine 
 
 I hardly can beleeve I have read thine ; 
 
 And wonder that their excellence once knowne, 
 
 I nor correct, nor yet conceale, mine owne.* 
 
 I shall have occasion to make a quotation from his poem 
 on the death of Ben Jonson, later on. 
 
 The five years which he spent quietly at Great Tew 
 were the happiest of his life. Nor did he in any way live 
 as a hermit at this home in Oxfordshire. Communication 
 with his London friends "was in some degree preserved, 
 and continued by frequent letters and often visits, which 
 were made by friends from thence, whilst he continued 
 wedded to the country ; and which were so grateful to him, 
 that during their stay with him he looked upon no book, 
 except their very conversation made an appeal to some 
 book, and truly his whole conversation was one continued 
 Convivium Philosophicum, or Convivium Theologicum, 
 enlightened and refreshed with all the facetiousness of 
 wit, and good humour, and pleasantness of discourse, which 
 made the gravity of the argument itself (whatever it was) 
 very delectable." f 
 
 Lucius, Lord Falkland, figured in many characters. 
 Lloyd calls him " great in his gowne, greater in his buffe ; J 
 
 * Fuller Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 90. 
 t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 47. 
 
 J Buff leather coats were then beginning partially to supplant armour, 
 as they would to some extent protect from the edge or point of a sword and
 
 OPEN HOUSE. 55 
 
 able with his sword, abler with his pen : a knowing 
 statesman, a learned scholar, and a stout man." * My own 
 impression is that he was far more distinguished as a 
 patron of literature and art, than as a scholar, or an author, 
 or a poet, or a statesman, or a soldier. 
 
 He was ever ready to give " supplies " to men of talent 
 in needy circumstances, " as Ben Jonson and many 
 others of that time, whose fortunes required, and whose 
 spirits made them superior to, ordinary obligations;" Oh, 
 Clarendon, this is too severe ! " which yet they were 
 contented to receive from him, because his bounties were 
 so generously distributed, and so much without vanity and 
 ostentation," etc. And he adds that, when possible, Falk- 
 land contrived to assist literary men in distress without 
 letting them " know from what fountain " the assistance 
 " flowed." f 
 
 Well off as he was, these subsidies to poets and students 
 were a somewhat serious matter, considering that he had 
 several children, and, as I have already said, he had 
 lately sold his estate of Burford Priory J to pay off the 
 mortgages incurred by his father. Again, if he lived 
 quietly at his country home, he cannot have lived very 
 economically ; for he kept open house at Great Tew. 
 
 " All men of eminent parts and faculties in Oxford, 
 besides those who resorted thither from London . . . 
 found their lodgings there, as ready as in the Colleges ; 
 nor did the lord of the house know of their coming, or 
 going, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner, 
 or supper, where all still met ; otherwise, there was no 
 troublesome ceremony, or constraint to forbid men to 
 come to the house, or to make them weary of staying 
 
 were much lighter than armour. But armour continued more or less in use 
 till about the end of the century. 
 
 * State Worthies, vol. ii., p. 256. f Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 43. 
 
 J Burford Priory may have been his birthplace. See Wood's Ath. Ox., 
 vol. i., p. 586.
 
 56 FALKLANDS. 
 
 there ; so that many came thither to study in a better air, 
 finding all they could desire in his library, and all the 
 persons together, whose company they could wish, and 
 not find in any other society." * 
 
 If any mistress of a country house should honour me 
 by glancing at these pages, it may occur to her mind that 
 servants would be rather hard worked in an establishment 
 such as that just described. The difficulties connected 
 with " clean sheets," where there was a constant inter- 
 change of visitors, may not have been on exactly the 
 same footing in the earlier part of the seventeenth century 
 as in the later part of the nineteenth ; but, at best, the 
 promiscuous comings and goings, so ably described by 
 Clarendon, must have been as wearying and worrying to 
 the cooks and the housemaids as they would be embarrass- 
 ing to the hostess. 
 
 Yet what do we find ? Hard and uncertain as was 
 their work, Lady Falkland made her servants find time to 
 attend many family devotions. " Her Maids came into 
 her Chamber early every morning, and ordinarily she 
 passed about an howr with them ; In praying, and 
 catechising, and instructing them ; To these secret and 
 private praiers, the publick Morning and Evening praiers 
 of the Church, before dinner and supper ; and another 
 form, together with reading Scriptures, and singing 
 Psalms, before bed-time, were daily and constantly 
 added." f 
 
 How the poor servants had time to make the beds for 
 all the " men of eminent parts " from Oxford, or to cook 
 the dinners and suppers for all the poets and the scholars 
 and the wits who came in without any " troublesome 
 ceremony," under such conditions, it is difficult for the 
 modern domestic mind to understand. 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 48. 
 
 t The Holy Life and Death, etc., pp. 162-3.
 
 " HOWRS OF PRAIER." 57 
 
 " And so strict was " Letice " for the observing of these 
 several howrs of praier, that a charge was given her servants 
 to be frequent (if their occasions permitted) at every of 
 them : However she would not endure that any one should 
 be, one day, absent from them all ; If she observed any 
 such, she presently sent for them ; and consecrated another 
 howr of praier, there, purposely for them." 
 
 Lady Falkland's care for the souls of her servants was 
 beyond praise ; yet one cannot help pitying the poor 
 fagged-out house- or scullery-maid, when her mistress 
 found that she had escaped all the prayers of the day, 
 and " consecrated another howr of praier, there, purposely 
 for " her. By the way, where was the master of the 
 house when all these family prayers were going on ? 
 Nothing is said of his presence at them. 
 
 The wish of Letice was that, if possible, she and 
 hers should " pray with David seven times a day ; " 
 and, if not seven times with David, then " with Daniel 
 three times ; " and, if not even three times with Daniel, 
 then at least " with Levi to offer up Morning and 
 Evening sacrifice." " This she required from the busiest 
 servant in the house." * It was a pity that she had not 
 searched the Scriptures sufficiently to draw the pretty 
 obvious inference that neither David, nor Daniel, nor 
 Levi had to dust the rooms, make the fires, or peel the 
 potatoes for " men of parts." 
 
 Aubrey repeats a story f of this " good and pious lady," 
 told him by " Will. Hawes, of Trin. Coll." Hawes was a 
 friend of a man who had been Falkland's tutor, " whom he 
 respected to his dyeing days." This tutor was "a very 
 discreet gent.," and when Letice wanted "to beg anything 
 of my lord for one of her mayds, woemen, nurses, etc., she 
 would not doe it by herselfe (if she could helpe it), but 
 
 * The Holy Life and Death, etc., p. 163. 
 t Letters, vol. ii., part i., pp. 346-7.
 
 58 FALKLANDS. 
 
 putt this gent upon it, to move it to my lord." Some- 
 times "the old gent." would remonstrate, as he did, for 
 instance, when Lady Falkland wished him to persuade her 
 husband to let a farm " twenty pound per ann. under 
 value." If the old tutor refused altogether to be the 
 medium of such a request, Letice would say that in that 
 case she would make it herself, adding " it will cost me 
 but the expense of a few tears." And ''she would make 
 her words good, and this great witt (Falkland), the greatest 
 master of reason and judgment of his time, at the long 
 runne, being stormed by her teares" would yield, and "this 
 pious lady " by her pious fraud, he might have added 
 would " obtain her unreasonable desires of her poor lord." 
 If Falkland, sometimes, thus submitted to his wife, his 
 wife submitted herself to a still higher authority; for 
 Aubrey says : " My lady was (after the manner of woemen) 
 much governed by, and indulgent to, the nursery."
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FRIENDS OF FALKLAND. 
 
 THE proverb, " Know a man by his friends," is particularly 
 applicable in biography. 
 
 No friend was more devoted to Lucius, Lord Falkland, 
 than Edward Hyde, who afterwards became the first Lord 
 Clarendon.* " With Sir Lucius Cary he had a most entire 
 friendship without reserve, from his age of twenty years to 
 the hour of his death." Falkland used to begin his letters 
 to Hyde f " Dear Sweetheart." Clarendon's support of the 
 popular party in the Long Parliament, his change to the 
 Royalist side during the Civil War, his assistance in the 
 Restoration, his appointment as Lord Chancellor under 
 Charles II., his unpopularity in later years, J his splendid 
 contribution to literature in his History of the Rebellion, 
 the integrity of his character all these are too well known 
 to require description here. 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 42. 
 
 + Lives of the Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 210. 
 
 J Clarendon prosecuted Anthony Wood, and the second volume 
 of the Athence was ordered to be burnt. In a letter to Wood Sir Peter 
 Pett wrote of Clarendon : " That Lord hath given me ten thousand times 
 more trouble than he hath you. . . . You may fish out facts enow of 
 incontestable truth about old Clarendon in the Journals of the H. of Com- 
 mons and of the Lords, where perhaps I may get you leave to search 
 gratis," Aubrey's Letters, vol. i., pp. 60-66. Wood's notice of him (Ath. 
 Ox., vol. ii., pp. 532-5) is not very complimentary. He says that, while 
 Clarendon was Chancellor of Oxford, for seven years, he " did put the 
 University to more trouble than his successors afterwards did in seven- 
 teen."
 
 60 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Clarendon was only some six months older than Falk- 
 land ; another great friend was more than forty years 
 Falkland's senior. This was George Sandys, the youngest 
 son of the Archbishop of York of that name. Although 
 almost old enough to be Falkland's grandfather, he 
 had "a youthful soul in a decayed body." He "proved 
 a most accomplished gentleman, and an observant traveller, 
 who went as far as the sepulchre at Jerusalem."* I have 
 already quoted from Falkland's verses to him. As to his 
 own verses, which Falkland praised so highly, Fuller calls 
 them "spriteful, vigorous and masculine." He "most ele- 
 gantly translated Ovid's Metamorphoses into English verse." 
 Lloyd remarks that, " having seen many countries," he 
 " liked worst of any his own, and having translated many 
 good authors, was translated himself to heaven, 1643. "t 
 He was " drooping to see in England more barbarous 
 things than he had seen in Turkey." 
 
 Many as were his admirers, Sandys also had his de- 
 tractors. Of these, in his poetical address to Sandys 
 Falkland says : 
 
 To them thy eloquence would be a crime, 
 
 For eloquence with things prophane they joine, 
 
 Nor count it fit to mixe with things divine, 
 
 Like art and paintings laid upon a face 
 
 Of itselfe sweet ; which more deforme than grace, 
 
 Yet as the church with ornament is fraught, 
 
 Why may not that be too, which there is taught ? \ 
 
 Another traveller and poet among Falkland's friends 
 and, like himself, the holder of an appointment in the 
 royal household, was Thomas Carew, a younger brother 
 
 * Worthies of England, Fuller, vol. iii., p. 434. 
 
 f Memoires, p. 637. 
 
 I Grosart's Miscellanies, vol. iii. ; Falkland's Poems, pp. 83-84. 
 
 He was a " gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and Sewer in Ordinary 
 to His Majesty King Charles I., who always esteemed him as one of the 
 most celebrated wits of his courts." Biog, Brit., vol. iii., p. 235.
 
 WITS. 6 1 
 
 of Sir Matthew, the well-known Royalist in the Civil 
 War. Wood says* that he was " reckon'd among the 
 chiefest of his time for delicacy of wit and poetic fancy ; " 
 although his own great friend, Sir John Suckling, in his 
 " Session of the Poets," f unkindly declares that 
 
 His Muse was hide-bound, and the issue of s brain, 
 Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain. 
 
 Some of his verses, again, were not considered very 
 " proper." 
 
 Sir William Davenant wrote : 
 
 Thy verses are as smooth and high 
 As glory, love and wine from wit can raise. 
 
 Lord Clarendon J calls him " a person of a pleasant 
 and facetious wit," who spent his life " with less severity 
 or exactness than ought to have been;" but "died with 
 the greatest remorse for that license." 
 
 A later poet makes mention of Carew : 
 
 But for the wits of either Charles' days, 
 
 The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease ; 
 
 Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more, 
 
 (Like twinkling stars the miscellanies o'er) 
 
 One simile, that solitary shines 
 
 In the dry desert of a thousand lines, 
 
 Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page 
 
 Has sanctified whole poems for an age. 
 
 Not all his poems were either coarse or "hide-bound." 
 Some of them had the smoothness described by Dave- 
 nant and the "poetic fancy" mentioned by Wood. || The 
 following is a specimen of his work : 
 
 * Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 630. 
 
 t Poems, Plays and Remains of Sir J. Suckling, vol. i., p. 7 seq. 
 
 \ Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 36. 
 
 Pope, Satires. ist Ep. of the 2nd Bk. of Horace, " To Augustus." 
 
 || Cibber's Lives of the Poets, vol. i., p. 251.
 
 62 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Mark how the bashful morn in vain 
 
 Courts the amorous marigold 
 With sighing blasts, and weeping rain ; 
 
 Yet she refuses to unfold. 
 But when the planet of the day, 
 Approacheth with his powerful ray, 
 Then she spreads, then she receives 
 His warmer beams into her virgin leaves. 
 
 From this he draws a moral for lovers, which is un- 
 objectionable ; but his hostess at Great Tew must have 
 been careful to see that none of his more amorous sonnets 
 were left about where her servant-maids could lay their 
 hands upon them. 
 
 As little to the taste of Letice would be the already 
 quoted rhymster, who good-naturedly bantered Carew in 
 his " Session of the Poets." If Thomas Carew was amorous, 
 Sir John Suckling was not only that, but also "the 
 greatest gallant of his time, and the greatest gamester, so 
 that no shopkeeper would trust him for sixpence " * a 
 queer sort of character to be introduced to such a holy 
 household as Lady Falkland's. If Sir John, as we shall 
 presently see, rallied his host for being "so gone with 
 divinity," what may he have said, or at least what must he 
 have thought, of his hostess ? 
 
 His portrait, as drawn by Aubrey, does not give one 
 the idea of that of a lady-killer. " He was of middle 
 stature and slight strength, brisque round eie, reddish fac't, 
 and red nosed (ill liver), his head not very big, his hayre a 
 kind of sand colour, his beard [meaning, no doubt, mous- 
 taches] turn'd up naturally, so that he had a brisk and 
 gracefull looke." The same authority says that " he was 
 incomparable readie at repartying, and his witt most 
 sparkling when most sett upon and provoked." His father 
 " was but a dull fellow . . . the witt came by the mother." f 
 
 Lloyd describes his poems as " clean, sprightly and 
 
 * Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., p. 545. + Ib., p. 547.
 
 SUCKLING'S "SESSION." 63 
 
 natural." * His fame as a true poet, though not a great 
 one, might well rest alone on " Why so pale and wan, fond 
 lover ? " and " I prithee send me back my heart." Less 
 known, and of a very different nature, is the piece in 
 which reference is made to Falkland. 
 
 A SESSION OF THE POETS.t 
 
 A session was held the other day, 
 And Apollo himself was at it, they say, 
 The laurel that had been so long reserved, 
 Was now to be given to him best deserved. 
 
 Therefore the wits of the town came thither, 
 'Twas strange to see how they flocked together . . . 
 
 The first thai broke silence was good old Ben, J 
 
 Prepared before with Canary wine, 
 
 And he told them plainly he deserved the bays, 
 
 For his were called works, where others were but plays. 
 
 Apollo would not give the crown to " good old Ben " 
 because 
 
 'Twas merit, he said, and not presumption 
 Must carry't, at which Ben turned about, 
 And in great choler offered to go out. 
 
 Each poet was called up in his turn and rejected by 
 Apollo. Among others, 
 
 Hales set by himself most gravely did smile 
 To see them about nothing keep such a coil ; 
 Apollo had spied him, but knowing his mind 
 Pass'd by, and call'd Falkland that sat just behind. 
 
 But 
 
 He was of late so gone with divinity, 
 That he had almost forgot his poetry ; 
 Though to say the truth (and Apollo did know it), 
 He might have been both his priest and poet. 
 
 * Memoir es, p. 159. 
 
 t The Poems, Plays and other Remains of Sir John Suckling, vol. i., 
 p. 7. 
 
 { Ben Jonson.
 
 64 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Sir John was more sensible, if not happier, in some of 
 his prose, in which he belies his character of a gallant and 
 a gambler. Here are a few extracts from it : 
 
 Entertain no thoughts that will blush in words. 
 
 Do not ill for company, or good only for company. 
 
 Shun jests in holy things, and words in jest which you must 
 give an account of in earnest. 
 
 Live as men that shall dye, and prepare to dye as men that 
 shall live for ever.* 
 
 Lloyd was no doubt right in describing him as a man 
 better fitted to be " in a Club of Wits, or a Company of 
 Scholars, than to appear in an Army ; " and he was assuredly 
 more successful with his pen than with his sword. A long 
 and entertaining account of an unlucky escapade he had 
 with Sir John Digby f is given in a letter from Garrard to 
 Wentworth ; I but, as I have not space to quote it, I must 
 give Aubrey's short summary of what happened. It 
 was " about a mistresse or gameing, || I have forgot. Sir 
 John [Suckling] was but a slight timber'd man, and of 
 midling stature ; Sir Jo. Digby, a proper person of great 
 strength, and courage answerable, and yielded to be the 
 best swordsman of his time. Sir John [Suckling], with 
 two or three of his party, assaults Sir Jo. Digby goeing 
 into a play-house, Sir J. D. had only a lacquay with him, 
 but he flew on them like a tigre, and made them run. 
 Twas a pitty that this accident brought the blemish of 
 cowardice to such an ingeniose young sparke." 
 
 When King Charles marched against the Scots in 1639, 
 the loyal Sir John Suckling raised a troop of 100 horse, 
 which he decked so resplendently that it cost him ^I2,ooo.1f 
 These soldiers in their magnificent uniforms of white 
 doublets, scarlet coats and breeches, and hats and feathers, 
 
 * Lloyd's Memoires, pp. 161-2. f Brother to Sir Kenelm. 
 
 J Strafford Papers, Nov. 10, 1634. 
 
 Letters, vol. ii., part ii., p. 546. 
 
 || It was about the former. IF Lloyd's Memoires, p. 159.
 
 EDMUND WALLER. 65 
 
 instead of gaining renown, became the object of some 
 ridicule.* A scurrilous ballad on the subject ends : 
 
 Such a carpet knight as durst not fight, 
 For fear he should be slain a. t 
 
 There is another, attributed by some to Sir John 
 Mennis, but by a few to Sir John Suckling himself. It 
 is apparently by the same rhymster as the first ; for the 
 style is identical. Part of it is coarse and unquotable. 
 After describing rather minutely and very indelicately the 
 excuse he made for being unable to leave his tent just 
 at the particular moment at which the Scots happened to 
 be advancing to the attack, it goes on : 
 
 The colonell sent for him back agen, 
 
 To quarter him in the van a, 
 But Sir John did swear, he would not come there, 
 
 To be killed the very first man a. J 
 
 To his credit be it spoken, Suckling " was one of the 
 few who read Shakespeare " in those times. 
 
 A third amateur poet among Falkland's friends was 
 Edmund Waller. With the exception of Rogers, Waller 
 was, I believe, the richest well-known poet that ever lived 
 in England. I am at this moment writing of monetary 
 and not poetical wealth. He may have been a very 
 welcome guest at Great Tew, for his biographer, in 
 an edition of his poems, || says, " Nothing probably 
 that Waller had ever written gave him such a hold 
 upon his contemporaries as the charm of his manners 
 and conversation." He became, however, an embarrassing 
 acquaintance to Falkland a few years later. Some idea of 
 
 * Professor Gardiner discredits the charge of cowardice brought against 
 him by the rhymsters. Hist, of Eng., vol. ix., p. 311. 
 
 f'Vox Borealis, or Northern Discoverie," 1641. Printed in The White 
 King, vol. ii., p. 220. 
 
 J Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Routledge, p. 342. 
 
 See his Poems, Plays, and other Remains, p. 18. 
 
 \\Poems of Edmund Waller, ed. by G. Thorn Drury, p. 65. 
 
 5
 
 66 FALKLANDS. 
 
 the character of the man may be formed from the fact that 
 he wrote poems in praise of Charles I., Oliver Cromwell 
 and Charles II., as each in his turn came into power. 
 Charles I. was "God-like," "and yet, like woman, kind." 
 He was a "mixed Divinity of Love." When Cromwell 
 had succeeded in causing the death of this mixed divinity, 
 England, "with toil oppressed," laid her "weary head" 
 upon Cromwell's " bosom." Cromwell being gone and the 
 monarchy restored, Waller assured Charles II. that his 
 own royal worth, his youth and his splendour invaded the 
 eyes of his faithful subjects with " a flo'od of light," and 
 surprised their "spread hearts" with "great joy." 
 
 Aubrey tells us * of Waller's familiar friendship with 
 Falkland, and he sketches him as " somewhat above a 
 middle stature, thin body, not at all robust, fine thin skin, 
 his face somewhat of an olivaster, his hayre frized, of a 
 brownish colour : full eie, popping out and working : ovall 
 faced, his forehead high and full of wrinkles. His head 
 but small, braine very hott, and apt to be cholerique. ..." 
 Presently he tells us that although he was " always 
 very temperate," some one " made him damnable drunke at 
 Somerset-house, where, at the water-stayres, he fell downe 
 and had a cruel fall." We shall meet with him again. 
 
 Sir Francis Wenman was a neighbour of Falkland's in 
 Oxfordshire. f He was a good Latin scholar, and Claren- 
 don I wrote that " the sharpness of his wit " was incompar- 
 able. Clarendon has something to tell us again of another 
 of Falkland's friends, who was eventually killed in the same 
 battle which was fatal to Falkland. This was the traveller, 
 Sidney Godolphin, of whom he says: "There was never 
 so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room ; so 
 large an understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so 
 
 * Letters, vol. ii., part ii., p. 565. 
 
 t Tulloch's Rat ional Theology, vol. i., p. 108. 
 
 \ Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 51.
 
 WALTER MONTAGUE. 67 
 
 small a body ; so that the Lord Falkland used to say 
 merrily that he thought it was a great ingredient into his 
 friendship for Mr. Godolphin that he was pleased to be 
 found in his company, where he was the properer," i.e., the 
 taller, "man."* As Clarendon says in another place: " It 
 was an age in which there were many great and wonderful 
 men of that size," that is to say little men. Clarendon 
 himself was " tall and well-formed." 
 
 Walter Montague, the second son of the Earl of Man- 
 chester, was a friend, and might claim to be among the 
 poet-friends, of Falkland. Montague composed a pastoral 
 called "The Shepherd's Paradise," and in "A Session of 
 the Poets " Suckling wrote : 
 
 Wat Montague now stood forth to his trial 
 And did not so much as expect a denial ; 
 But witty Apollo asked him first of all 
 If he understood his own pastoral. 
 
 Friend as Montague was to Falkland, he was a still 
 greater friend to Falkland's mother, and, having begun 
 as a Protestant, a cavalier and a wit, he ended as a 
 Catholic, a priest and an abbot, f 
 
 An intimate friend of Montague's, Sir Kenelm Digby, 
 was also a friend of Falkland's, and a visitor at Great 
 Tew. I will give two opinions of this eccentric genius : 
 Dr. Charelton's, J that he was "a noble Person, who hath 
 built up his Reason to so transcedent a height of Know- 
 ledge, as may seem not much beneath the state of man 
 in innocence ; " and John Evelyn's " the truth is, 
 Sir Kenelm Digby was an arrant mountebank." || If I 
 may say a word as to my own opinion, it shall be this : 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 51-2. 
 
 t Of Pontois, Atk. Ox., vol. ii., " Fasti," p. 162. 
 
 { Physician to Charles I. 
 
 Prolegomena to A Ternary of Paradoxes (1650). 
 
 || Evelyn's Diary, Nov. 7th., 1651.
 
 68 FALKLANDS. 
 
 that the chief distinction between Sir Kenelm Digby 
 and Falkland was that the former never took himself 
 seriously, but was most anxious that every one else should 
 do so ; whereas the latter took himself very seriously in- 
 deed, but cared little how others took him. 
 
 Of Chillingworth,* "a little man," with "blackish hair, 
 and a Saturnine countenance," I shall have something to 
 say in a later chapter : for the present it will be enough 
 to observe that he spent much of his time at Great 
 Tew. 
 
 That curious philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, was an 
 honoured guest of Falkland's. " Lucius Gary, Lord Falk- 
 land," says Aubrey, f " was his great friend and admirer." 
 More than twenty years older than his host, and acquainted 
 with many of his host's friends, Hobbes could make him- 
 self very happy at Great Tew, whereas at other country 
 houses he used to complain that " the want of good con- 
 versation was a great inconvenience ; " J and although " he 
 conceived he could order his thinking as well perhaps " 
 in one place as in another, yet he considered a long 
 residence in the country liable to make the " under- 
 standing and invention grow mouldy." As to his writings 
 " tho' he hath an ill Name from some, and good from 
 others, yet he was a Person endowed with an excellent 
 Philosophical Soul, was a contemner of Riches, Money, 
 Envy, the World," etc. 
 
 Aubrey, while denying that he was excessively dissolute, 
 gently admits that " it is not consistent with an harmonicall 
 soule to be a woman-hater, neither had he an abhorrence 
 of good wine ; " II he also " tooke a pipe of tobacco," which 
 was rather the exception than the rule in those times. 
 " His head was of a mallet forme, approved by the 
 
 * Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., p. 286. 
 
 t Ib., part ii., p. 620. 
 
 J Ib., vol. iii., p. 610. Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 642. 
 
 || Letters, vol. iii., p. 621.
 
 HOBBES, MORLEY, SHELDEN, HAMMOND. 69 
 
 physiologers." * He had "yellowish reddish whiskers, f 
 which naturally turned up ; below he was shaved close, 
 except a little tip under his lip." " He had two kinds of 
 looks ; when he laught, was witty, and in a merry humour, 
 one could scarce see his eies : by and by when he was 
 serious and earnest, he opened his eies round his eie-lids."" 
 " He was six foote high, and something better." " He 
 seldom used any physique. He read a good deal, but 
 thought a great deal more ; " and " he was wont to say, 
 that if he had read as much as other men, he should have 
 continued still as ignorant as other men." 
 
 There were several future bishops in the Great Tew set. 
 The Calvinistic Morley, who was made Bishop of Worcester, 
 and afterwards of Winchester, "became known to the 
 world as a friend of Lord Falkland's, and that was enough 
 to raise a man's character." J He it was who, on being 
 asked what the Arminians held, replied, " All the best 
 bishoprics and deaneries in England." Earles, who, says 
 Clarendon, "was very dear to Lord Falkland," became 
 Bishop of Salisbury. His poetry and his amusing prose 
 work, Microcosmography, would be attractive to the kind of 
 men surrounding Falkland. Shelden, who was about twelve 
 years senior to Falkland, became first Bishop of London, 
 and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry Ham- 
 mond was to have been made Bishop of Worcester, had he 
 not died too soon. Yet, with so many bishop or embryo- 
 bishop friends, Falkland was no bishop-lover ! 
 
 Falkland's chaplain, Hugh Cressy, who became Canon 
 of Windsor and Dean of Laughlin through his patron's 
 influence, would probably have been made a bishop if he 
 
 * 'Letters^ vol. iii., p. 620. 
 
 t Moustaches are again meant here. Hobbes had not what are now 
 called whiskers. In his dictionary, Dr. Johnson defines whiskers as " The 
 hair growing on the cheek unshaven ; the mustachio." 
 
 \ Burnet, vol. i., pp. 321-2. 
 
 Tulloch's Rational Theology, vol. i., p. 123.
 
 7O FALKLANDS. 
 
 had not become a Catholic. After the Restoration, he was 
 appointed chaplain to Queen Catherine and lived at Somer- 
 set House; and, although "a very zealous champion of 
 the cause of the Church of Rome," his memory was 
 " revered by Protestants, as well on account of the purity 
 of his manners, and of his mild and humble deportment, 
 as for the plainness, candour and decency, with which he 
 had managed all controversies that he had been engaged 
 in." * 
 
 Another clerical friend of Falkland's was " the ever 
 memorable Hales," who was a Fellow of Eton and a 
 Prebendary of Windsor. A man who had " sharp, quick, 
 piercing and subtile wit," and was " extraordinarily kind, 
 sweet, affable, communicative, humble and meek in his 
 converse "f in short brimming over with "sweetness 
 and light " was well fitted to be a member of Lord 
 Falkland's circle.. Even his supposed heterodox lean- 
 ings would be an attraction to many of the guests at 
 Great Tew. As he himself confessed to Heylin, Laud had 
 "ferreted" him "from one hole to another, till he was 
 resolved to be orthodox and declare himself a true son of 
 the Church of England, both for doctrine and discipline," 
 in name ; but Falkland's house may have served as a 
 safety-valve for his " inner consciousness." 
 
 * Biog. Brit. (Kippis), vol. iv., p. 437. t Lloyd's Memoires.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " POETREY AND CONTROVERSIES 
 
 CONTINUING our notice of the friends of Falkland, let us 
 pass over " Thorn. Triplet, a very wity man of Ch. Ch.," * 
 and proceed to Selden, who was not only one of Falkland's 
 personal friends, but had a correspondence with him upon a 
 curious political point, which we shall notice at the proper 
 time. After quoting Burke's famous passage, in which he 
 says of the Spirit of English Freedom : " It has a pedigree 
 and illustrating forefathers. It has its bearings and its 
 ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits, its monu- 
 mental inscriptions, its records, evidences and titles," 
 John Forster states that " for collecting and producing 
 them, Selden was thrice imprisoned by James the First 
 and his son."f Lloyd says of him that he "sate a while 
 among the men at Westminster," "puzzling them in 
 their debates for the change of Church Government, and 
 deserting them in their Resolutions for it." J Aubrey has a 
 word to say of his private life. He tells us that Selden 
 became "solicitor and steward to the Earl of Kente," 
 whose wife was "an ingeniose woman." After the earl's 
 death, Selden married her ; but he never owned his 
 marriage with her "till after her death." Then comes 
 his portrait. " He was very tall, I guesse about six foot 
 high, sharp ovall face, head not very big, long nose in- 
 clining to one side, full popping eie (grey)." 
 
 * Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 587. 
 
 t The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance (1860), pp. i, 2. 
 
 \ Memoires, p. 518. Letters, vol. iii., p. 531.
 
 72 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Among all Falkland's literary friends, there was, 
 perhaps, none that he esteemed more highly than Ben 
 Jonson. It was not only for his poetry or for his learning 
 that he loved him. " The excellent Lord Falkland," says 
 Gifford, in his memoir of Jonson,* " observes that, upon 
 a near acquaintance with him, he was doubtful whether his 
 candour or his talents were the greater." In verse, Falk- 
 land says of him : 
 
 And such his judgment, so exact his test 
 As what was best in bookes, as what bookes best, 
 That had he join'd those notes his labours tooke 
 From each most praised and praise-deserving booke, 
 And could the world of that choise treasure boast, 
 It need not care though all the rest were lost : 
 And such his wit, he writ past what he quotes, 
 And his productions farre exceed his notes.t 
 
 Ben was no time-serving toady ; nor would he flatter 
 a patron in order to gain the entry to such a house as 
 Great Tew ; for Falkland says : 
 
 The rich ignorant he valued least, 
 Nor for the trappings would esteem the beast ; 
 But did our youth to noble actions raise, 
 Hoping the meed of his immortal praise. 
 
 Every one knows the history of this poet laureate ; 
 how, at one time, he was a "bricklayer,! working at 
 Lincoln's Inn, with a Trowel in his Hand, and Horace 
 in his Pocket;" how, after being severely wounded, he 
 killed a man in a duel, and, as he himself said, was 
 " brought near the gallows," although his antagonist had 
 brought a sword ten inches longer than his own. These, 
 
 * The Works ofjonson, vol. i., p. 128. 
 
 t Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. iii., p. 41 seq. 
 Falkland's " Eglogue on the Death of Ben Johnson." 
 
 \ Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets> Langbaine 
 (& Gildon), 1699, p. 77. 
 
 Works of Jonson, Gifford, p. 19.
 
 BEN JONSON. 73 
 
 and many other details of his interesting career, are 
 familiar to most readers. 
 
 It must be admitted that everybody did not hold 
 exactly Falkland's opinion of Jonson ; or possibly Falk- 
 land may have spoken the truth, but not the whole truth, 
 when expressing that opinion. Langbaine,* while declaring 
 him to have been " a jovial and pleasant companion," 
 said he was " blunt and haughty to his antagonists and 
 criticks." His contemporary, Drummond of Hawthorn- 
 den, f whom Gifford for this accuses him of being " a 
 cankered hypocrite," J says that Jonson " was a great lover 
 and praiser of himself, and a contemner and scorner 
 of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous 
 of every word and action of those about him, especially / 
 after drink, which was one of the elements he lived 
 in." Drummond also says that when he deserted the 
 Catholic Church to join the Anglican Establishment, 
 " he drank out the full cup of wine at his first communion, 
 in token of his true reconciliation." 
 
 Aubrey offended Gifford even more than Drummond 
 by his description of Ben Jonson, and Gifford calls Aubrey 
 "this maggoty- pated man," who " thought little, believed 
 much, and confused everything." 
 
 Certainly Aubrey || is not altogether complimentary in 
 his notice of Jonson. He says " he would many times 
 exceed in drinke ; canarie was his beloved liquor ; then he 
 would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly 
 perspired, then to studie." He " had one eie lower than 
 t'other and bigger, like Clun, the player. Perhaps he 
 begott Clun." Even of his writing, Aubrey says : " Twas 
 an ingeniose remarque of my Lady Hoskins that B. J. 
 never writes of love, or if he does, does it not naturally." 
 
 * Dramatick Poets, p. 77. t Folio 1711, pp. 224-6. 
 
 J Vol. i., p. 126. 76., p. 20. 
 
 || Letters, vol. ii., part ii., p. 412 seq.
 
 74 FALKLANDS. 
 
 By way of contrast, let us return once more to the 
 eulogies by Falkland : 
 
 So great his art, that much which he did write, 
 
 Gave the wise wonder, and the crowd delight. 
 
 Each sort as well as sex admir'd his wit, 
 
 The hees and shees, the boxes and the pit ; 
 
 And who lesse lik't within, did rather chuse 
 
 To taxe their judgements than suspect his muse. 
 
 How no spectator his chaste stage could call 
 
 The cause of any crime of his ; but all 
 
 With thoughts and evils purg'd and amended rise, 
 
 From th' ethicke lectures of his comedies, 
 
 Where the spectators act, and the sham'd age 
 
 Blusheth to meet her follies on the stage : 
 
 Where each man finds some light he never sought, 
 
 And leaves behind some vanitie he brought ; 
 
 Whose politicks no lesse the minds direct, 
 
 Then these the manners; nor with less effect. 
 
 When his majesticke tragedies relate 
 
 All the disorders of a tottering State, 
 
 All the distempers which on kingdomes fall 
 
 When ease, and wealth, and vice are generall , 
 
 And yet the minds against all feare assure, 
 And telling the disease, prescribe the cure.* 
 
 The question presents itself what did all these " men 
 of parts," who met at Great Tew, talk about ? To some 
 extent we may imagine from this statement of Aubrey's : f 
 
 " The studies in fashion in those days (in England) 
 were Poetrey, and Controversie with the Church of Rome." 
 
 And first with respect to " Poetrey." It might be expected 
 that, less than twenty years after the death of Shakespeare, 
 the poetical horizon would have been still resplendent with 
 the lustre of the sun so lately set ; but there is abundant 
 evidence to prove that the bards then living were much 
 more dazzled by the brilliancy of their own productions. 
 
 * Fuller Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 49 seq. 
 t Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 348.
 
 "DAMN ALL SHAKESPEARE." 75 
 
 And be it remembered that men of their generation had 
 scarcely an excuse to 
 
 Damn all Shakespeare, like th' affected fool 
 
 At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.* 
 
 Falkland's friend, Ben Jonson, it is true, called 
 Shakespeare f "Sweet Swan of Avon," and " My gentle 
 Shakespeere." He also wrote : 
 
 While I confess thy writing to be such, 
 
 As neither man, nor muse, can praise too much. 
 
 And again : " He was not for an age but for all time." 
 Yet when some one observed that Shakespeare often had 
 said that he " never blotted out a line in his life," I Ben 
 Jonson remarked that he wished " he had blotted out a 
 thousand." 
 
 Jonson's contemporary, Fuller, || says of Shakespeare: 
 " His learning was very little. . . . Many were the wit- 
 combats between him and Ben Jonson," and he says that 
 Jonson was " far higher in learning ; " but, comparing the 
 two men to a big ship and a little ship, he adds that Shake- 
 speare " could turn with all tides, tack about and take 
 advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and 
 invention." 
 
 Malone says that " Ben Jonson was ready enough on 
 all occasions to depreciate and ridicule Shakespeare," IT and 
 that he himself always thought with indignation of the 
 tastelessness of the scholars of the second quarter of the 
 seventeenth century, in preferring Ben Jonson to Shake- 
 speare.** 
 
 Gifford quotes a story of Gildon's, ff that Hales, who 
 
 * Pope's Satires, " Epistle to Augustus." t " Underwoods," No. 12. 
 J Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., part ii., p. 539. 
 
 After all, many profound admirers of Shakespeare might admit almost 
 as much. 
 
 || Worthies of England, vol. iii., pp. 284-5. ^ Vol. xv., p. 557. 
 ** Vol. ii., p. 618. ft Works ofjonson, p. cclix. ; Gildon, p. 17.
 
 76 FALKLANDS. 
 
 was a great admirer of Shakespeare, got up "a disqui- 
 sition " upon me question whether " the poets of antiquity " 
 were superior to Shakespeare, before a jury composed of 
 Falkland, Suckling, "and all the persons of quality that 
 had wit and learning," and that the decision was unani- 
 mously in favour of Shakespeare. 
 
 The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher were those most 
 commonly acted before the Court of Charles I.,* and when 
 Shakespeare's plays were performed before Charles II. they 
 had been previously adapted to the taste of his Court by Sir 
 John Suckling's friend, Sir William Davenant, f who had 
 " marred and mangled with an unsparing hand." I 
 
 In Falkland's time masques were more popular than 
 plays. During the winter which Falkland spent in 
 London with his mother, he probably witnessed a magni- 
 ficent masque " set before their Majesties by the gentlemen 
 of the Inns of Court," which was estimated to cost between 
 ^4000 and ^5ooo. 
 
 In dismissing the subject of the " Poetrey " of the great 
 part of Falkland's time, it may be said that it is chiefly 
 remarkable for what a certain writer has termed its " op- 
 pressive wit and subtilty." We will now turn our attention 
 to the other topic then fashionable " Controversie with the 
 Church of Rome." 
 
 On the latter point, Falkland's tastes were quite in the 
 fashion. His inclinations in a Catholic direction had 
 apparently been directed by "the conversation of his 
 mother and the company he met at her house, having 
 before believed but little." II These inclinations were 
 
 * The White King, vol. ii., p. 72. 
 
 t His father kept the Crown Tavern at Oxford. He succeeded Jonson 
 as poet laureate in 1637. Ath. Ox., vol. ii., pp. 411-412. 
 
 J The White King, vol. ii., p. 97. 
 
 Strafford Letters, Garrard to Wentworth, 6th Dec., 1632, and 27th 
 Feb., 1633. 
 
 || The Lady Falkland, p. 56.
 
 SOCINIANISM. 77 
 
 checked by his " meeting a book by Socinus ; " and 
 then, once more, he " believed but little." Aubrey says * 
 that Falkland " was so far at last from setting on the 
 Romish Church, that he setled and rested in the Polish 
 (I meane Socinianisme). He was the first Socinian in 
 England ; and Dr. Cressey . . . told me, at Sam Cow- 
 per's (1669), that he himself was the first that brought 
 Socinus's bookes ; shortly after, my Lord comeing to him, 
 and casting his eis on them, would needs presently borrow 
 them to peruse ; and was so extremely taken and satisfied 
 with them, that from that time was his conversion." 
 
 Now Wood states f the exact contrary. " While he 
 lived, and especially after his Death, he was esteemed by 
 many a Socinian . . . but one [Cressy, in his Epist. Apolo- 
 getical, says a footnote] that knew him very well, doth 
 (though a zealous Papist) clear him from being guilty of 
 any such matter." 
 
 As to this " matter," Professor Gardiner may well be 
 heard. J " The term Socinianism is at present applied to a 
 certain doctrine on the second person of the Trinity. In 
 Falkland's time, as appears from Cheynell's Rise, Growth 
 and Danger of Socinianism (1643), it was rather a habit of 
 applying reason to questions of revelation which led up to 
 that special doctrine as its most startling result." 
 
 No man influenced Falkland's religious opinions more 
 than Chillingworth. He was eight years older than 
 Falkland, and was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. 
 After becoming a Catholic, || and afterwards returning to 
 
 * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 348. t Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 587. 
 
 J Die. Nat. Bio., vol. ix., " Falkland." 
 
 " Mr. William Chillingworth . . . was his intimate and beloved 
 favourite, and was most commonly with my Lord " (Falkland). Aubrey's 
 Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 349. 
 
 || Fuller says (Worthies of England, vol. in., p. 24) that he " in some 
 sort was conciled to the Church of Rome;" and Miss Cary (The Lady- 
 Falkland, p. 64) writes " if ever he were a sound Catholic."
 
 78 FALKLANDS. 
 
 the Anglican Church,* he wrote " a Book against the 
 Papists ... for his Service he was rewarded with the 
 Chancellorship of the Church of Salisbury ... in the 
 Month of July, 1638, and about the same time with 
 the Mastership of Wygstan's Hospital." Just before he 
 deserted the Catholic Church, Dr. Juxon, afterwards 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, -f- wrote to Laud, saying that 
 Chillingworth was " ambitious to be Laud's convert," and 
 that in Juxon's own opinion " all his motives " were 
 " not spiritual, protest he never so much." 
 
 It is with his relations to the Falkland family that we 
 have to do ; and first it is necessary to say that the Dowager 
 Lady Falkland's four daughters, who were living with her, 
 determined, without their mother's knowledge, to become 
 Catholics. J Lord Newburgh, " who was always very kind 
 to them and careful of them, as being a true friend to their 
 father's memory," hearing of their intention, went to the 
 king and induced him to command Secretary Coke to 
 issue an order to Lady Falkland to send her daughters to 
 their brother's house and charge. 
 
 On receiving this mandate Lady Falkland went at once 
 to the king, and begged to keep her children. Charles 
 then sent to Falkland, who humbly prayed to be excused 
 from the odious office of jailer to his own sisters. The 
 result was a delay in the affair, and meanwhile, through a 
 fear that they might be removed and carefully kept out of 
 reach of any priest, the four girls were received into the 
 Church a good deal sooner than they would have been 
 otherwise. 
 
 About this time Mr. Chillingworth was a constant 
 visitor at Lady Falkland's house. Elizabeth, Lady Falk- 
 
 * Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 42. Wood says that he returned to the Anglican 
 Church, " as some say," not finding " that respect which he expected," in 
 the Catholic Church. 
 
 t S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccxiv., No. 49 (igth March, 1632). 
 
 t The Lady Falkland, p. 61 seq.
 
 CHILLINGWORTH. 79 
 
 land, was one of those excellent women who regard the 
 friend that reproves them as, of all friends, the best and 
 the most faithful. Chillingworth was exceedingly faithful 
 to her in this respect, so much so that he had "gained 
 from her the esteem of a saint, for his so free reproving 
 her."* Thus writes Lady Falkland's daughter, who 
 adds that, later on, when he was again a professed 
 Protestant, " after bragging of his own great charity, he did 
 affirm he had dissembled himself a Catholic one half-year 
 for their sakes,"f that is to say, for the sake of the four 
 Miss Carys. 
 
 He talked confidentially to the four girls, and expressed 
 his opinion that his young friends had unquestionably been 
 received into the Church " too hastily." J They would make 
 better Catholics if " they were to go back, that by a more 
 thorough inquiry they might make a more immovable 
 resolution ; " and he showed them a letter from Archbishop 
 Laud, "containing a paper of motives for further con- 
 sideration of religion." 
 
 It is more than probable that Chillingworth was 
 keeping Laud informed of all that was going on in the 
 Falkland family ; or that at the least he was doing 
 so through the medium of Lord Newburgh; for Laud 
 wrote to the king, || saying that he had learned from New- 
 burgh that " Mrs. Ann and Mrs. Elizabeth Carye, two 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 63. 
 
 t Aubrey says (Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 285) "Sir Wm. Davenant 
 (poet laureate) told me that notwithstanding this doctor's [Chillingworth's] 
 great reason, he was guiltie of the detestable crime of treachery. " 
 
 { The Lady Falkland, p. 65. Ib., p. 67. 
 
 || S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. cclxxii., No. 29. (2oth July, 1634.) It will 
 be observed that the date of this letter was two years and two months later 
 than that of Juxon to Laud, saying that Chillingworth was anxious to be 
 Laud's convert ; so there can be little doubt that he had left the Catholic 
 Church some time before he tried to use his influence with the Miss Carys, 
 pretending to be still a Catholic. Moreover, Wood (A th. Ox., vol. ii., p. 42) 
 says he became an Anglican again in 1631.
 
 80 FALKLANDS. 
 
 daughters of the late Lord Falkland," recently " reconciled 
 to the Church of Rome, not without the practice of the 
 ladye, their mother," * " meet with some things there which 
 they cannot digest, and are willing to be taken off again by 
 any fair way. . . . But the greatest thing I fear, is that 
 the mother will still be practising, and do all she can to 
 hinder. These are therefore humbly to pray your majesty 
 to give me leave to call the old lady into the High Com- 
 mission if I find cause so to do. And farther, as I was so, 
 so am I still, an earnest suitor, that she might be com- 
 manded from Court, where, if she live, she is as like to 
 breed inconvenience to yourself as any other. I write 
 without passion in this, but with the knowledge which I 
 have of her mischievous practising." 
 
 Lady Falkland " had no suspicion " f of Chillingworth, 
 until a Protestant friend, Lord Craven, warned her " that 
 he was no Catholic," and even then she did not believe it. 
 Not long afterwards, however, she was thoroughly con- 
 vinced. Chillingworth was then her guest, and one night 
 she overheard him telling one of her daughters that the 
 Catholic religion was "founded on lies and maintained on 
 them." I 
 
 Soon after his consequent expulsion from Lady Falk- 
 land's house, Chillingworth went to pay a visit to his friend, 
 her son, at Great Tew, whither her two youngest sons had 
 gone from their school. There, to his mother's intense 
 annoyance, Falkland appointed Chillingworth tutor to his 
 young brothers. The pedagogue began their course of 
 studies by laying down " for a first principle that there 
 was not any certainty in matters of religion." || 
 
 * After referring to the order sent through Secretary Coke that the girls 
 should be sent to their brother, Laud says : " The lady trifled out all these 
 commands, pretended her daughters' sickness, till now they are sick indeed, 
 yet not without hope of recovery. " 
 
 t The Lady Falkland, p. 70. \ Ib., p. 76. 
 
 Ib., p. 80. || Ib., p. 81.
 
 CONFIDENT OF NOTHING." 8 1 
 
 That this was Chillingworth's opinion is confirmed by 
 Clarendon,* who says Chillingworth " contracted such 
 irresolution and habit of doubting, that by degrees he grew 
 confident of nothing, and a sceptic, at least, in the great 
 mysteries of religion." This is strenuously denied by other 
 writers ; f but Father Knott, the Jesuit, takes Clarendon's 
 view, or even a stronger one, saying that Chillingworth, 
 finding " the profession of the Catholic religion not suiting 
 to his desires and designs," " fell upon Socinianism, that is 
 no religion at all." J 
 
 The author of The Lady Falkland, who was clearly one 
 of those daughters of Lady Falkland who were constantly 
 with Chillingworth, affirms that he said " it was true he 
 believed there was one God AND three persons, as there 
 were 3, 100, 1000, 10,000 persons (men or angels), but 
 that he never said he believed one God IN three persons ;" 
 and that he bid " Protestants (at the table before all) to 
 take Transubstantiation or deny the Trinity, he having as 
 good and the same arguments against one as they against 
 the other." 
 
 Falkland's religious sympathies with Chillingworth are 
 undoubted ; yet among the Sidney Papers\\ there is a state- 
 ment in a letter, which imports that Chillingworth and 
 Falkland had a controversy upon Socinianism, the former 
 defending and the latter attacking it, and that Falkland 
 confuted his antagonist. If this be true, it was probably a 
 mere friendly argument, with a view to elucidating the 
 subject, rather than a real warfare of words. 
 
 When Chillingworth " undertook the defence of Mr. 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 62-3. 
 
 fSee Biog. Brit., Kippis' edition, vol. iii., footnotes to pp. 508-517. 
 \A Direction to N. N., Being an Admonition to Mr. Chillingworth to 
 attend to his own Arguments, by Fr. E. Knott, S.J. 
 Pp. Qi-2. 
 \\Sidney Papers, vol. ii., p. 669 ; Biog. Brit., vol. iii., p. 517. 
 
 6
 
 82 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Potter's book against the Jesuits," * says Bishop Barlow, f 
 " he was almost continually at Tew with my Lord " (Falk- 
 land), where the "benefit he had by my Lord's company, 
 and rational discourse, was very great ; " and in his library 
 were books of which Chillingworth had never heard " till 
 my Lord shewed him the books and the passages in them, 
 which were significant and pertinent to the purpose. So 
 that it is certain, most of those ancient authorities which 
 Mr. Chillingworth makes use of, he owes, first to my Lord 
 of Falkland's learning, . . . and next to his civility and 
 kindness." 
 
 If Falkland helped Chillingworth in what, as we have 
 seen, Aubrey calls " controversie with the Church of Rome," 
 it is pretty certain that Chillingworth assisted Falkland in 
 the same occupation. In 1635 Falkland's friend, Walter 
 Montague, in a letter to his father, announced his con- 
 version, whereupon Falkland wrote a reply. In Professor 
 Gardiner's opinion, J " the peer owed more to the scholar 
 than he gave." 
 
 Falkland's mother joined in his controversy with Mon- 
 tague. " She writ something against his answer, taking 
 notice in the beginning of it of the fulfilling of his prophecy 
 who said he came ' not to bring peace, but the sword ' 
 (Matt, x.) ; the son being here against his father " 
 (Montague's letter, as I have said, had been addressed to 
 his father, the Earl of Manchester), " and the mother against 
 the son, where his faith was in question, which paper was 
 the best thing she ever writ." Falkland himself admitted 
 its ability. || 
 
 My own copy of Falkland's Discourse of the Infallibilitie 
 of the Church of Rome (1646) consists of only 17 pages, 
 
 'Potter's book was in reply to Charity Mistaken, by Father E. Knott, 
 S.J., mentioned above. 
 
 t Genuine Remains, p. 329 ; Biog. Brit., Kippis, vol. iii., p. 296. 
 
 J Hist. Eng., vol. viii., p. 260. 
 
 The Lady Falkland, p. 114. || Ib.
 
 FALKLAND'S DISCOURSE. 83 
 
 which are followed by an essay of 186 pages from another 
 hand, entitled, " A view of some Exceptions which have 
 been made by a Romanist to Lord Falkland's Dis- 
 course," etc. Of Falkland's Discourse Dr. Tulloch says : 
 " While professedly arguing against the infallibility of the 
 Church of Rome, his argument is equally valid against the 
 Prelatic sacerdotalism which had more or less oppressed 
 England since ; " and again, " His plea against infalli- 
 bility is really a plea in favour of freedom of religious 
 opinion." * In short, as Chillingworth professed to have as 
 strong, and very similar, arguments against the doctrine of 
 the Trinity as against the doctrine of Transubstantiation ; 
 so Falkland, in attacking the infallibility of the Catholic 
 Church, virtually attacked the claim of authority in any 
 Church and in all Churches. 
 
 * Rational Theology, vol. i., pp. 167-9.
 
 8 4 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 STEALING ONE'S OWN. 
 
 Two years after the death of her husband, the Dowager 
 Lady Falkland, partly owing to her endeavours to make a 
 comfortable home for her children, partly to her inju- 
 dicious generosities, and partly to " those entangling 
 businesses in which she had dealt, and always been a 
 loser," " was brought to the last extremity." * 
 
 She had concealed her poverty as much as possible 
 from her children. Having sold her bed, she locked the 
 door of her room so that they should not observe that it 
 was missing. But, at last, her financial condition could no 
 longer be hidden, and she was driven to the extremity of 
 writing to ask her eldest son to give her pecuniary as- 
 sistance and to take his sisters to Great Tew. This he 
 hastened to do, and, in spite of his mother's religion, his 
 good wife, Letice, was " ever rather furthering than 
 hindering " him in helping her. 
 
 It was exceedingly distressing to Lady Falkland to 
 reflect that her daughters would be again thrown into con- 
 tact with Chillingworth ; but this could not be avoided. 
 Being now alone, she lived in a very simple and economical 
 manner, always going " a-foot," and even discarding widow's 
 raiment and " wearing anything that was cheapest and 
 would last longest." f Best of all, " she from this time 
 gave over clean all those entangling businesses in which 
 she dealt." She got into temporary trouble, however, 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 85. t Ib., p. 86.
 
 HOLYWELL. 85 
 
 through another "business," which, if not entangling, was 
 dangerous. On 2ist February, 1637, Archbishop Laud, 
 in the Account of his Province to the King, wrote : " There 
 is a great resort of Recusants to Holy- Well ; * and " 
 " this summer the Lady Falkland and her company came 
 as Pilgrims thither ; f who were the more observed, because 
 they travelled on Foot,and Dissembled neither their Quality, 
 nor their Errand. And this Boldness of theirs is of very ill 
 construction among your Majesty's People. My humble 
 Suit to your Majesty is, that whereas I complained of this 
 in open Council in your Majesty's presence, you would 
 now be graciously pleased, that the Order then resolved 
 on for her Confinement may be put in execution." In 
 the margin was written in the king's hand : " C. R. Itt 
 is done." 
 
 If Lady Falkland was put into "confinement," she 
 was soon out of it again. Her period of economy had 
 the effect of making her somewhat better off, and 
 then she became anxious to get her daughters back 
 again. One of them, Magdalena, soon returned, Lady 
 Falkland's very intimate friend, the Duchess of Bucking- 
 ham, " being pleased to undertake to provide for that 
 daughter of hers."J The girl brought news of her little 
 brothers. One of these boys was named Patrick, and the 
 other, afterwards when he became a monk, was re-named 
 Placid. They had an " extraordinary desire ... to see 
 themselves Catholics," and for this reason they refused to go 
 to the Established Church, " though they should be never 
 so much whipped for it," and they endeavoured to observe 
 days of fasting and abstinence even when this entailed on 
 them the " extremity of hunger, they not being let to eat 
 most fasting meats as unwholesome for children." 
 
 Falkland and Letice were very strict disciplinarians. 
 
 * Wharton's History of the Troubles of Arch. Laud, p. 545. 
 
 t Her former pilgrimage to the same place has been mentioned already. 
 
 \ The Lady Falkland, p. 87. Ib.
 
 86 FALKLANDS. 
 
 They had two sons of their own named Lucius and Henry, 
 and of the latter, Lloyd says * that he had " a strict educa- 
 tion (for no man was ever harder bred)." Falkland's 
 young brothers, therefore, would be certain to be kept in 
 order, and Mr. Chillingworth, as their tutor, would be 
 instructed on no account to spare the rod. 
 
 The Dowager Lady Falkland was very anxious to get 
 the boys away from the influence of Chillingworth, and she 
 wrote to her eldest son, urging him to send them to some 
 school abroad. When he demurred, she assured him that 
 unless he would send them to her, she would take them 
 from him. From her own point of view, Lady Falkland had 
 good cause to fear not only Chillingworth's but also her 
 eldest son's influence over her two younger sons ; for one 
 of her daughters f writes that he " was wont to say " the 
 Church taught things "contrary to reason (of which he 
 counted the Trinity chiefly so)." 
 
 Although she had not the money to pay the cost of 
 bringing her boys in comfort to London, Lady Falkland 
 was determined to get them there by some means. J For 
 this purpose she hired a couple of horses and a couple of 
 men, one of whom was known by everybody at Great Tew, 
 while the other, who was her own servant, was known to no 
 one at that time in the house. 
 
 One day Lady Falkland's servant presented himself at 
 Great Tew and asked for the elder Miss Cary to whom he 
 gave a letter, addressed in an unknown feminine hand. 
 When the girl took the missive from the servant, " Mr. 
 Chillingworth (who always pried very narrowly) was just 
 behind her . . . and looked over her shoulder when she 
 opened it." If he had stood where he was a little longer, 
 he would have observed that the letter was from the 
 recipient's mother, directing her daughters to deliver their 
 little brothers into the hands of the bearer of the letter and 
 
 * State Worthies, vol. ii., p. 259. t The Lady Falkland, p. 93. 
 
 } Ib., p. 95. Ib., p. 97.
 
 ESCAPE OF THE BOYS. 8? 
 
 those of a man who would be somewhere near him. The 
 very elaborate plot, as she proposed it, could only have 
 succeeded " if everybody in the house would stand still in 
 the place she supposed them till all was done." This was 
 quite in keeping with the usual plans and designs of the 
 Dowager Lady Falkland, which her daughters well knew, 
 so they exercised their own ingenuity. 
 
 If I dwell too long and too minutely upon the details 
 of this comparatively unimportant adventure, my apology 
 must be that the minor details of the past are rarer than 
 the major, and that they often help to illustrate the life of 
 the period in which they have occurred. 
 
 Letice, Lady Falkland, was to go up to London 
 on business of her own in three days, and was to take her 
 sisters-in-law with her. Thinking that the morning " of 
 their departure (when some bustle in the house would 
 better hide it) " would be the best time for the escape 
 of their brothers, the Miss Carys, the night before they 
 were to start, asked for a holiday for the boys, for the 
 next day, in order " that it might be the longer before 
 they were missed." They then showed "a desire to be 
 called very early, which one of their little brothers (by 
 agreement) undertook to do at three o'clock, that the boys 
 might have occasion to do that avowedly which, considering 
 the wakefulness of Mr. Chillingworth * (which was well 
 known to them), within whose chamber they lay, could 
 not possibly be done by stealth." f 
 
 " Rising at three with as much noise as they could," the 
 boys went to call their sisters. As soon as she was dressed, 
 one of the girls took them downstairs and saw them " safe 
 out of all the courts of the house, without being descried 
 by any." 
 
 * Chillingworth's " only unhappiness proceeded from his sleeping 
 too little and thinking too much ; which sometimes threw him into violent 
 fevers." Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 59. 
 
 t The Lady Falkland, p. 98.
 
 88 FALKLANDS. 
 
 The boys, who were then somewhere about ten or 
 eleven years old,* ran " all alone that mile (it being 
 not yet light) to meet men that were entirely strangers 
 to them," and not with an appearance " apt to encourage 
 the children to have any confidence in them." 
 
 Before they reached their deliverers, they had to pass 
 through the village. No one was about at that hour ; but 
 the dogs, hearing the patter of the boys' feet in the still- 
 ness of the night, or rather the early morning, began to 
 bark,f and a window or two were thrown open by disturbed 
 sleepers. This made the little fugitives " fain to hide them- 
 selves behind bushes " " till all was quiet again." 
 
 Having found the men, they were placed on the horses, 
 and they reached Oxford without further adventure. 
 When they passed through that town, fearing lest that 
 dreadful mob of volunteer mounted police known as the 
 hue-and-cry should arrive in pursuit from Great Tew, the 
 men made the lads dismount. One man led one horse 
 through the streets. The hats and the cloaks were taken 
 off the boys to make them appear to be natives of the place, 
 and they were told to keep the horses just in sight, but to 
 stroll along by themselves as if they had nothing to do with 
 them. The other servant followed at some distance in 
 their rear, mounted on the other horse. The traffic in 
 those times would be so slight that strange faces would 
 attract attention, even in a town like Oxford. 
 
 About noon they reached Abingdon. There they 
 met, by appointment, a man with a boat and a pair of 
 oarsmen, who were to take them by water all the way to 
 London. Unluckily, both the rowers were very drunk, too 
 much so to start on their voyage ; therefore the boys 
 were hidden by the owner of the boat. After supper, 
 the owner, the two servants, and the tipsy boatmen, 
 quarrelled, and, in the confusion, people outside learned 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 126. t Ib. t p. 99.
 
 ABINGDON. 89 
 
 that the children were on a secret journey. Hearing 
 of this, the constable came to take them ; but, as he 
 happened to be " an old acquaintance and gossip " of the 
 proprietor of the boat, he was satisfied when told that their 
 mother had sent for them. It was probable, however, that 
 he would be less easy to pacify the next morning, especi- 
 ally as "one that resorted much to" Falkland's house 
 lived near Abingdon ; so, for this reason, although the 
 rowers were still but half sober, it was determined to start 
 with the boys " at ten o'clock at dark night, with water- 
 men not only not able to row, but ready every minute to 
 overturn the boat with reeling and nodding." By good 
 luck, however, the boys eventually arrived in London. 
 
 At Great Tew, as the boys had been given a holiday, 
 little was thought about them till dinner time,* which 
 would most likely be about twelve, or even eleven o'clock. 
 When they did not then appear, Falkland " sent instantly 
 all about after them, but, soon judging that was to no 
 purpose," he made sure that they had been carried off by 
 emissaries from his mother ; and he despatched a messen- 
 ger on horseback to his wife, " there being more hope she 
 might recover them in London." 
 
 As soon as she received her husband's letter, in London, 
 Letice "acquainted my Lord Newburgh ; he, the Council 
 table (whereof himself was one)." 
 
 While Letice, Lady Falkland, was putting the autho- 
 rities on the scent of the two lads, Elizabeth, Lady Falk- 
 land, was endeavouring to put them off it. Overjoyed at 
 the safe arrival of her boys, after many adventures, mis- 
 haps and discomforts, " she was fain to put them in some 
 private places in London, often removing them ; and for 
 to be able to pay for their diet and lodging, as also, 
 through the enlarging of her family (her daughters being 
 come to her too), she and her household were constrained, 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 100.
 
 90 FALKLANDS. 
 
 for the time she stayed in town, to keep more Fridays in 
 a week than one." 
 
 On receiving Lord Newburgh's information, the Council 
 was not idle. It summoned Lady Falkland to appear 
 before it, and while she was present, it despatched officials 
 to search for the boys in her own house, where, of course, 
 they were not to be found. 
 
 The mother * freely acknowledged that she had sent 
 for her children, which she claimed to have a perfect right 
 to do ; and she stated that she had warned her son of her 
 intention. The boys, she said, had come willingly, walking 
 a mile by themselves to meet her servants. She objected 
 to their being under the tutorship of Mr. Chillingworth, 
 and as to " why, she would give my Lord of Canter- 
 bury a further account when he should please to demand 
 it" 
 
 My Lord of Canterbury, having used Chillingworth 
 as a spy upon her daughters, did not press her on this 
 point. 
 
 "It is against the law to send boys to foreign 
 seminaries," said one of the Lords of the Council. 
 
 " I shall be obliged if you will prove that mine have 
 been sent to any such place," was her reply. She was, 
 indeed, rather anxious that they should suppose the lads 
 to have already gone to the Continent ; so she added : 
 " To send them abroad is not against the law." 
 
 " Yes, it is ! " said one of the Council. And he showed 
 her some orders to officers of various ports, commanding 
 them to let none pass without a license. 
 
 " As I am not an officer, those do not concern me," 
 she answered. " If the officers have allowed my sons 
 to pass without licenses, question and blame them, not 
 me." 
 
 " Do you wish to teach us the law ? " asked a judge. 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 101, seq.
 
 BEFORE THE COUNCIL. 91 
 
 "Being a judge's daughter, I am not wholly ignorant 
 of it," was her rejoinder. 
 
 " Tell us the name of the man who took your children 
 across the sea," said a lord. 
 
 " I know it not," replied Lady Falkland, with perfect 
 truth ; as no one had yet done so. 
 
 " You are not likely to have trusted your boys to 
 the charge of a man you did not know," said the lord 
 pettishly. 
 
 She was then informed that they " referred her to 
 my Lord Chief Justice Bramston" by their warrant ; and, 
 in case she gave him no satisfaction, she was, by the same 
 warrant, committed to the Tower. 
 
 This was serious. Having presented herself, in some 
 trepidation, to " my Lord Chief Justice Bramston," she 
 was received very courteously. He asked her a few 
 questions, very similar to those put to her by the Council, 
 and presently wished her good-morning. " She desired to 
 know how she was to be conveyed to the Tower, to which 
 she stood committed, if he were not satisfied." 
 
 For the present, said the Lord Chief Justice, she might 
 return to her home, and he offered to order his own 
 carnage to take her there. 
 
 Soon afterwards, he sent for her daughters ; but when 
 they came he was busy, and he told his secretary to 
 inform them that they need not wait ; but that, if he 
 wanted them, he would send his carriage for them. For- 
 tunately, " they never heard more from him." 
 
 Meanwhile their brothers* " were all the while in London 
 (being about three weeks)," Lady Falkland "neither having 
 money to send them over, nor being able to find any that 
 would carry them." Eventually, through the kindness of the 
 Benedictines and the charity of the Jesuits, the boys were 
 taken to France and placed in the school of a Benedictine 
 convent at Paris. Both boys became Catholics as they had 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 101 seq.
 
 92 FALKLANDS. 
 
 intended, and altogether six of her children professed her 
 own religion. 
 
 As I shall have little, if any, occasion to mention them 
 again, I will say here that Placid became a Benedictine 
 monk, under that name his baptismal name I know not ; 
 that Patrick also took the habit, but threw it " off within 
 the year, not being able to bear the kind of diet which the 
 rules enjoined," * after which he became a rolling stone, 
 and eventually wrote Trivial Poems and Triolets, which 
 were republished in 1819 by Sir Walter Scott. It has 
 been represented that Patrick became a Protestant ; but, 
 so far as I can make out, he gave up " religion," i.e., the 
 monastic life, and not the Catholic religion. Three of Lady 
 Falkland's daughters, including Anne, who had been Maid 
 of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, became Benedictine 
 nuns at the convent at Cambray ; and in 1652 Anne was 
 selected to lead a colony of nuns from Cambray to Paris, 
 where she was kindly received by her late queen and 
 mistress, j- 
 
 Hearing that his mother was once more in extreme 
 poverty, Falkland determined to settle something upon 
 her, and intimated that he should like to meet her and 
 talk the matter over, although " they were yet at much 
 difference about the stealing away her little sons, which 
 had also been much increased on both sides by letters," 
 as disputes of all sorts are ever apt to be. 
 
 On this the Dowager Lady Falkland went to Great 
 Tew " without other ceremony than sending to him for his 
 coach." Fortunately " he took this so well that upon her 
 coming they were soon good friends." 
 
 The Dowager, however, partially concealed her extreme 
 impecuniosity from Falkland, for, knowing but too well 
 " the torture and slavery of debt," she was "apprehensive 
 of occasioning it to her son, whose estate she saw to be 
 
 * Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii., p. 538. 
 t The Lady Falkland, p. 187.
 
 DEATH OF ELIZABETH, LADY FALKLAND. 93 
 
 not well able to bear more than it was already charged 
 withal." * 
 
 Having helped her with money, he accompanied her to 
 a more comfortable house. There he left her with an easy 
 conscience, but ill-health then befel her. " Catching one cold 
 upon another " had the effect of converting a cough which 
 she had had for more than twenty years into confirmed 
 consumption. 
 
 Hearing of his mother's condition, Falkland " came to 
 town (with his wife)." f He was " advertised " by others of 
 the necessities which his mother had hidden from him, her 
 reticence on the subject having been "out of the much 
 sense she had of his decreasing estate and great charge," 
 and he determined to relieve them. For this purpose, he 
 " took order with his mother-in-law, intreating her to see 
 all provided for" his own mother "that she should need, 
 which she did, being most kindly careful of her." J Letice 
 was also very good to her. But the end was approaching. 
 
 Elizabeth, Lady Falkland, died in October, 1639, and 
 was buried, by Her Majesty's permission, in the Queen's 
 own chapel. 
 
 Popular at Court, beloved by the Queen, alternately 
 persecuted, petted and punished by the King, Elizabeth, 
 Lady Falkland, was a curious mixture of virtues and 
 failings, and her life, in its fortunes and misfortunes, 
 presented as many contrasts as her character. Short, fat, 
 plain, || and ill-dressed, she was one of those unconven- 
 tional beings whose unconventionalities are privileged. IF 
 She was exceedingly clever, deeply read, fluent and 
 delightful in conversation, and brilliant in repartee. Yet 
 she was absent to a degree which was as embarrassing to 
 her friends as it was disastrous to her interests, and she was 
 eccentric almost to the verge of occasional aberration. 
 She was gentle, humble and unselfish ; she was genuinely 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. no. f/6.,p. in. J/6., p. m. 
 
 Ib., p. 86. || Ib., p. 7. H Ib., p. 115.
 
 94 FALKLANDS. 
 
 devout and exceptionally charitable ; but she was some- 
 times irritating in her amiability and provoking in her 
 piety. She was one of those women who do the right 
 thing in the wrong way. With her unbounded generosity 
 she combined unbridled impulsiveness and lamentable want 
 of judgment. With a magnificent memory, she was 
 extremely forgetful. And her honesty itself was almost 
 a vice ; for she was too free in expressing her own 
 opinion, too ready to tell anything that was asked of her, 
 and too confiding in the honesty of others. One thing, 
 however, is certain, that, in the words of her daughter, she 
 had "a most hearty goodwill to God and His service ; " * 
 and to use words of much higher origin, she seems to have 
 loved her God with all her heart and her neighbour as 
 herself. 
 
 * The Lady Falkland, p. 116.
 
 ELIZABETH, WIFE OF HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND. 
 From the Tanfield Monument, Burford. 
 
 [Taunt & Co., Oxford, Photo.
 
 95 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FROM PEACE TO WAR. 
 
 Two years before the death of Falkland's mother, occurred 
 that of his old friend, Ben Jonson. Falkland gave vent to 
 his feelings in verse. His " Eglogue on the Death of Ben 
 Johnson* between Melybseus and Hylas" is too long to be 
 quoted here in extenso, and a portion of it has already been 
 given. In these verses, he not only raises his own lament, 
 but calls on everybody else to lament also. 
 
 So Johnson dead, no pen should plead excuse : 
 
 For elegies, howle all who cannot sing, 
 
 For tombes, bring turfe who cannot marble bring. 
 
 Let all their forces mix, joyne verse to rime, 
 
 To save his fame from that invader, Time ; 
 
 Whose power, though his alone may well restraine, 
 
 Yet to so wisht an end no care is vaine ; 
 
 And Time, like what our brookes act in our sight, 
 
 Oft sinkes the weightie and upholds the light ; 
 
 Besides, to this, thy paines I strive to move, 
 
 Less to expresse thy glory than thy love, t 
 
 Falkland tells us in this elegy how various English 
 monarchs valued Ben Jonson : 
 
 * Although always now spelt without an h, Jonson's name contained it 
 sometimes, formerly. 
 
 f Miscellanies of the Fuller Library, vol. iii., p. 49. " An Eglogue on 
 the Death of Ben Johnson between Melybaeus and Hylas." From " Jonsonus 
 Virbius." See letter to Dr. Duppa in Private Memoirs of Sir Kenelm 
 Digby, p. liii.
 
 96 FALKLANDS. 
 
 How great Eliza,* the retreate of those 
 
 Who weak and injured, her protection chose, 
 
 Her subjects' joy, the strength of her allies, 
 
 The fear and wonder of her enemies, 
 
 With her judicious favours did infuse 
 
 Courage and strength into his younger muse ; 
 
 How learned James, whose praise no end shall finde, 
 
 Declared great Johnson worthiest to receive 
 The garland which the Muses' hands did weave, 
 And though his bounty did sustain his dayes, 
 Gave a more welcome pension in his praise ; 
 How mighty Charles, amidst that weighty care 
 In which three kingdomes as their blessings share, 
 Whom as it tends with ever watchfull eyes ; 
 That neither power may force nor art surprise, 
 So bounded by no shore, grasps all the maine, 
 And farre as Neptune claimes, extends his reigne ; 
 Found still some time to heare and to admire 
 The happy sounds of his harmonious lire, 
 And oft hath left his bright exalted throne, 
 And to his Muse's feet combined his own : 
 As did his queen, whose person so disclosed, 
 A brighter nimph than any part imposed, 
 When she did joine by an harmonious choise, 
 Her graceful motions to his powerfull voice. 
 
 With all this praise of "mighty Charles," and his 
 grasp of the "maine," Falkland's name appeared the same 
 year in the Hertfordshire list of defaulters for ship-money. f 
 It is possible, Professor Gardiner suggests, J that as it does 
 not also appear in the arrears for Oxfordshire, his Hertford- 
 shire ship-money may have been left unpaid through an 
 oversight ; yet his speech against ship-money proves that 
 he had no inclination towards its payment. It was in 
 the same year that Falkland's acquaintance and perhaps 
 
 * Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 t S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccclxxv., No. 106. 
 
 J Die. Nat. Biog., vol. ix., " Falkland." 
 
 Rushworth, iv., p. 86.
 
 HOLLAND'S HORSE. 97 
 
 friend, John Hampden, having refused to pay ship-money, 
 had judgment given against him, after a long trial. 
 
 In the face of his resolve to spend the life of a student, 
 in the retirement of Great Tew, surrounded by " men of 
 parts," and to devote himself to theology and literature, 
 Falkland was becoming more and more of a politician, and 
 every day a stronger adherent to what would now be 
 called the Liberal party. 
 
 He was none the less a sound Royalist. His quarrel 
 was neither with king nor with monarchy, but with the 
 King's advisers, and with the outrageous prerogatives 
 claimed by them on behalf of the monarchy. His loyalty 
 was proved a few months before his mother's death, when 
 the King's army advanced against the Scots, by his taking 
 a part in that expedition under Lord Holland, General of 
 the Horse.* 
 
 Falkland's warlike enterprise was the signal, or at least 
 the opportunity, for an outburst of remonstrance from the 
 poets. Edmund Waller thus sang of his friend's departure 
 for battle : 
 
 Brave Holland leads, and with him Falkland goes, 
 
 Who hears this told, and does not straight suppose 
 
 We send the graces and the Muses forth 
 
 To civilise and to instruct the North ! 
 
 Not that these ornaments make swords less sharp ; 
 
 Apollo bears as well his bow as harp. 
 
 Ah, noble friend ! with what impatience all 
 That know thy worth, and know how prodigal 
 Of thy great soul thou art (longing to twist 
 Bays with that ivy which so early kissed 
 Thy youthful temples), with what horror we 
 Think on the blind events of war and thee ! 
 To fate exposing that all-knowing breast 
 Among the throng, as cheaply as the rest ; 
 Where oaks and brambles (if the copse be burned) 
 Confounded lie, to the same ashes turned. t 
 
 * Lodge's Portraits, vol. iv., p. 133. 
 
 t The Poems of Edmund Waller, edited by G. Thorn Drury,pp. 75 and 76. 
 
 7
 
 98 FALKLANDS. 
 
 The remainder of the poem relates rather to the war 
 in which he was engaging, than to Falkland himself. 
 
 The young poet Cowley, who had written his " Love's 
 Riddle " when a boy at school, and dedicated it to Sir 
 Kenelm Digby, now, at the age of twenty-one, wrote a 
 poem in honour of Lord Falkland's going to the wars : 
 
 Great is thy charge, O North ! be wise and just, 
 
 England commits her Falkland to thy trust ; 
 
 Return him safe ; Learning would rather choose 
 
 Her Bodley or her Vatican to lose : 
 
 All things that are but writ or printed there, 
 
 In his unbounded breast engraven are. 
 
 There all the sciences together meet, 
 
 And every art does all her kindred greet, 
 
 Yet jostle not, nor quarrel ; but as well 
 
 Agree as in some common principle.* 
 
 A few lines further on, Cowley describes the forced 
 introduction of the learned and sedentary Falkland into 
 public life : 
 
 And this great prince of knowledge is by Fate 
 Thrust into th' noise and business of a state. 
 All virtues, and some customs of the court, 
 Other men's labour, are at least his sport ; 
 Whilst we, who can no action undertake, 
 Whom idleness itself might learned make ; 
 Who hear of nothing, and as yet scarce know, 
 Whether the Scots in England be or no ; 
 Pace dully on, oft tire, and often stay, 
 Yet see his nimble Pegasus fly away. 
 'Tis Nature's fault, who did them partial grow, 
 And her estate of wit on one bestow ; 
 Whilst we, like younger brothers, get at best 
 But a small stock, and must work out the rest, 
 How could he answer't, should the state think fit 
 To question a monopoly t of wit ? 
 
 * Cowley's Poems. The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to 
 Cowper, by Alex. Chalmers, vol. vii., p. 68. 
 
 f Monopolies of various manufactures were at that time causing great 
 dissatisfaction.
 
 A VOLUNTEER. 99 
 
 Such is the man whom we require, the same 
 We lent the North ; untouch'd, as is his fame, 
 He is too good for war, and ought to be 
 As far from danger, as from fear he's free. 
 Those men alone (and those are useful too) 
 Whose valour is the only art they know 
 Were for sad wars and bloody battles born ; 
 Let them the state defend, and he adorn. 
 
 In these verses, says Dr. Johnson,* " there are, as 
 there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some striking 
 thoughts, but they are not well wrought," a criticism with 
 which I think most of my readers will agree. 
 
 As was to be expected, Letice was even more distressed 
 at her husband's departure for the war than were the 
 poets ; but her biographer considered that she benefited 
 from it in soul. " Her proficiency and progress " in 
 religious perfection " I shal account from the time, when 
 her prosperity began to abate ; when her dear Lord, 
 and most beloved Husband, that he might be like Zebulon 
 (a student helping the Lord against the mighty Judg. v. 
 14), went from his Book and Pen, to his Sword and 
 Spear."f 
 
 Falkland joined Holland's horse only in the capacity 
 of a volunteer ; for Lord St. Albans wrote to Windebank 
 from Berwick : " My brother of Essex arrived here upon 
 Good Friday night, accompanied by volantiers, but not 
 many of quality besides Lord Falkland and Lord Garrat. 
 We have yet met with no enemies but what are constant 
 to this place, snow, hail and violent northern winds, which 
 keep back the main part of our victuals and munition. " J 
 
 Indeed, so far as Falkland's hand-to-hand fighting with 
 enemies was concerned, Waller, Cowley and Letice need 
 not have been uneasy. This is what happened on the 
 
 * Cowley's Poems, p. 24. 
 
 t The Holy Life and Death, etc., pp. 150-1. 
 
 J S. P. Dow. Charles I., vol. ccccxvii., No. 92, i4th April
 
 100 FALKLANDS. 
 
 only occasion on which the Earl of Holland and his horse 
 confronted the foe. 
 
 It was on a hot and dusty 3rd of June. Holland's 
 3000 infantry were weary and footsore, his 1000 horse 
 pretty fresh.* News had arrived that a large force of the 
 Scots had been established at Kelso, within the ten-mile 
 limit on which the king had proclaimed they were not 
 to encroach, a proclamation which they had agreed to 
 respect.f 
 
 Charles ordered Holland to attack their entrenchments 
 with his cavalry and drive them out. " The Earl of Holland 
 drew his sword, as other commanders did, with intention 
 and order to charge ; but the nearer they went, the more 
 the Scottish troops increased." J 
 
 As an eye-witness wrote : " On each side appeared 
 wings of foot and horse." 
 
 Holland sent a trumpeter to ask them what they were 
 doing there. They replied by asking him a similar question, 
 and by recommending him to go " bock again." 
 
 This kindly advice of the enemy Holland " found to be 
 most expedient ; " || and " the event was a fair and safe re- 
 treat, without loss of a man," IT or " a blow given." ** In 
 less than a fortnight, the Treaty of Berwick was signed 
 and hostilities were at an end. 
 
 To tell the truth the gravest danger to which the cavalry 
 joined by Lord Falkland were exposed was from their own 
 men. " A trooper of the Earl of Holland's, with ill order- 
 ing his pistol, shot his next neighbour in the brains, being 
 a young gent of quality of Lincolnshire, who died upon the 
 place." " Our soldiers are so disorderly that they shoot 
 bullets through our own tents. The King's tent was shot 
 through once and Sir John Borough's twice. The Earl of 
 
 *S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccccxxiii., No. 21 ; Coke to Windebank. 
 t Ib., No. 49. I Ib., No. 49 ; Weckherlin to Conway. 
 
 Ib., No. 29 ; Edward Norgate. || Ib., No. 49. 
 
 IT 76., No. 29. **/&., No. 21.
 
 FROM WAR TO POLITICS. IO1 
 
 Westmoreland's brother being in bed, had his bed-tent and 
 curtains shot through thrice." * 
 
 If Falkland returned to the delightful repose of Great 
 Tew, with Letice and the " wits " from Oxford as his com- 
 panions, it was not to be for long. His five quiet years of 
 rural student life, or perhaps of that particular form of 
 luxurious indolence now known as " cultured leisure," the 
 serenity of which was only broken by " repartying," as 
 Aubrey called it, were at an end. 
 
 The spirit of unrest was upon him, and having left the 
 library for the battlefield, he was now about to leave the 
 battlefield for the House of Commons. 
 
 The question naturally presents itself, why should 
 Falkland have relinquished the literary life, so suited to 
 his tastes, for warfare with either word or sword? Can 
 it be that, while Elizabeth, wife of the first Lord Falk- 
 land, irritated him with her injudicious excellence, Letice, 
 the wife of the second Lord, bored him with hers ? I ask 
 this question, but I do not feel in a position to give it a 
 definite answer. A woman of whom a versifier could 
 write : 
 
 Show me one Lady like to this ; who stil 
 Was so precise, t 
 
 may have wearied a husband of exceptionally broad opinions, 
 until he was glad to avail himself of any opportunity to 
 escape from a home oppressed by her somewhat prudish 
 petticoat-government. Possibly, again, he may have ob- 
 served that his friends, the " wits," were becoming a little 
 shy of the hostess's austerity, at Great Tew. " Her strict- 
 ness," says her biographer, "was exemplary in keeping the 
 fasts of the Church, and such days as were appointed for 
 solemn humiliation : young and old, noble and mean, free 
 and bond, in her family, must observe them duly ; the 
 
 * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccccxxiii., No. 16 ; Edward Norgate. 
 t " To the memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady 
 Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland."
 
 IO2 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Ninivites were her patern, both for outward and inward 
 humiliation." * How can this sort of thing have suited 
 such men as Suckling and Carew, or Ben Jonson ? 
 
 A few months after Falkland's return from Scotland, it 
 was determined to summon a Parliament in England, after 
 an interval of eleven years of arbitrary government, for the 
 sole purpose of voting supplies.f 
 
 The elections were held in the following March, and 
 Lord Falkland was returned as member of Parliament for 
 Newport, in the Isle of Wight. The change, from the fresh 
 air and gardens of Great Tew, to London, cannot have been 
 altogether pleasant when we reflect that about that time it 
 was written "all the Houses about Piccadilly" are " found 
 to be great nuisances, & much foul the Springs of Water 
 which pass by those Houses to Whitehall & to the 
 City."} 
 
 Falkland's first experience of parliamentary life was 
 a very remarkable one. The Short Parliament, as it 
 is called, sat for only three weeks ; and Professor 
 Gardiner says, " as far as actual results were concerned 
 it accomplished nothing at all. For all that, its work was 
 as memorable as that of any Parliament in our history." 
 The most noteworthy speech made during its session was 
 that of Pym. 
 
 John Pym, the son of a Somersetshire squire, || had 
 been a gentleman commoner at what is now Pembroke 
 College, Oxford, and afterwards he studied law. His 
 parliamentary career had begun in the reign of James I., 
 who considered him " a man of an ill-tempered spirit ; " 
 but he f was " a person of good language, voluble tongue, 
 
 * Holy Life and Death, etc., p. 165. 
 
 t The king had appealed to the citizens to lend him 100,000 at 8 per 
 cent, in vain. 6\ P. Dom. Charles /., vol. cccl., No. 88. 
 I Strafford Letters and Despatches, p. 150. 
 Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 117. 
 || Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 36. IT Ib.
 
 PYM. 103 
 
 and considerable knowledge of the common law." * He 
 had had the audacity to oppose the omnipotent royal 
 favourite, Buckingham, and shortly before the meeting 
 of the Short Parliament he was known to have been 
 in active correspondence with the Scotch Covenanters. 
 Immediately before the elections he " rode about the 
 country to promote elections of the puritanical brethren 
 to serve in Parliament." f 
 
 In a speech of two hours' length Pym opened the 
 campaign against the oppression of the people. He was 
 respectful to the Crown, but severe upon the conduct of 
 its ministers, and he enumerated and described the acts 
 of the government, which he maintained to have been 
 illegal. Falkland was greatly impressed by this speech. 
 
 In spite of the demands of the King, it became evident 
 that the Parliament would not vote money for the support 
 of a war against the Scots, and, at a meeting of the Privy 
 Council convened at the unusual hour of six o'clock in the 
 morning, a dissolution was decided upon. 
 
 The impression left upon Falkland's mind by this 
 short parliamentary experience was " such a reverence 
 for Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they 
 could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the king- 
 dom, or that the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the 
 intermission of them. And from the unhappy and un- 
 reasonable dissolution of that Convention, he harboured, it 
 may be, some jealousy and prejudice to the Court, towards 
 which he was not before immoderately inclined." J 
 
 * Lord Lytton wrote (Miscell., vol. i., p. 320) : " Pym was, in fact, not 
 only the most popular man at that time in England, but, perhaps, as a 
 practical statesman, the ablest and most effective. . . . He was free from 
 the formal affectations of the Puritans in his manners as in his dress. He 
 was proverbially gallant to women ; and tempers so disposed are generally 
 hearty and genial in their intercourse with men. He was careless in money 
 matters, and it is perhaps to his honour that he died in embarrassed circum- 
 stances." 
 
 f Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 36. } Clarendon's Hist., vol. i., p. 247.
 
 104 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Having raised ^300,000, chiefly by a voluntary loan, 
 the King sent an army to Scotland. In August the Scots 
 invaded England, defeated Lord Conway at Newburn, and 
 advanced into Yorkshire. The King summoned a Council 
 of peers at York, and, in the hall of the Deanery, in 
 September, he announced the issue of writs for a Parlia- 
 ment to meet on the 3rd of November.* 
 
 The Speaker of the new House of Commons was Lent- 
 hall, to whom Falkland had sold his property of Burford 
 Priory. Whatever may have been his faults, he was pro- 
 bably the first Speaker of the House of Commons who 
 recognised that the duties of that office were to keep in 
 order the members, not to influence their decisions. f 
 
 On the nth of November Pym rose from his seat in 
 the House of Commons and moved that the doors should 
 be locked, and he immediately called upon an Irish 
 member J to bear witness to the treasonable intentions 
 of Strafford ; and, after a somewhat rambling debate, a 
 committee was named to prepare a " charge against the 
 Earl of Strafford." 
 
 The accusation was very rapidly and rather incon- 
 clusively drawn up. It was probably on this occasion 
 that Falkland for the first time addressed the House of 
 Commons. He " was very well known to be far from 
 having any kindness for " Strafford. Strafford had oc- 
 cupied the post from which Falkland's father had been 
 ousted, and Falkland cherished a "memory of some 
 unkindness, not without a mixture of injustice, from him 
 towards his father." Besides this, Strafford was the very 
 personification of the policy which Falkland had 
 entered Parliament to oppose. Yet when it was moved 
 " That the Earl of Strafford be forthwith impeached of 
 
 * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 207. t/6., p. 220. 
 
 J Sir John Clotworthy, one of the Ulster settlers. He it was who 
 teased Archbishop Laud, on the scaffold, with questions about his soul. 
 Clarendon's Hist. Reb., bk. iii., p. 174.
 
 IMPEACHMENT OF STRAFFORD. IO5 
 
 High Treason," a resolution that met with " unusual appro- 
 bation and consent from the whole House," * Falkland 
 " modestly desired the House to consider ' whether it 
 would not suit better with the gravity of their proceedings, 
 first to digest many of those particulars which had been 
 mentioned by a Committee, before they sent up to accuse 
 him? declaring himself to be abundantly satisfied that 
 there was enough to charge him.' ' 
 
 This suggestion was resisted by Pym, who went to the 
 Bar of the House of Lords, just after Strafford had entered 
 it, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, and, as a mes- 
 senger from the Commons, he impeached him " of High 
 Treason, and several other heinous crimes and misde- 
 meanours." 
 
 Falkland is often quoted as an instance of a man who 
 began his political life as an ardent Radical, and ended it 
 as a Royalist and, in some sort, a Conservative ; but, in 
 this respect, what was he in comparison with Strafford ? 
 In his youth Strafford's " intimate friends and associates 
 thought it wisdom to shun his conversation, so forward he 
 was in taxing the motions of the King and State. . . . 
 Not without a malignant humour and a repugnant spirit," 
 he " always withstood the King's profit." f And this was 
 the man who afterwards strained the royal prerogative to 
 breaking point. 
 
 Lord Falkland's second occasion of addressing the 
 House was on a subject which became the foundation of 
 the impeachment of another high officer of the Crown. 
 On 7th December, it was moved that the impost of ship- 
 money was illegal. Small in stature, weak in voice, and 
 unimpressive in appearance, Falkland, by his speech on 
 this question, suddenly placed himself among the most 
 prominent parliamentary speakers of that period. His 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist. Reb., bk. iii., p. 174. 
 
 t Stratford Characterised, Tract, 1641 ; Harleian Miscell., vol. iv., 
 p. 47.
 
 106 FALKLANDS. 
 
 vehemence, fire and indignation made up for what was 
 wanting in his presence and his utterance. 
 
 He began by saying : 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, I rejoice very much to see this day ; 
 and the want hath not lain in my affections, but in my 
 lungs." * He believed his cause to be a strong one. " No 
 undigested meat can lie heavier upon the stomach than 
 this unsaid would have lain on my conscience," said he. 
 The judges, who had been appointed to ensure the security 
 of the nation's goods, had forgotten that they were "judges, 
 and neither philosophers nor politicians," and, " in an 
 extra-judicial manner," they had given it as their opinion 
 that the King had a right to impose " the tax of ship- 
 money," on the plea of " mighty and imminent dangers 
 in the most serene, quiet, and halcyon days that could 
 possibly be imagined ; a few contemptible pirates being 
 our most formidable enemies." "All men else saw" the 
 law, except the judges. 
 
 These unjust judges "had allowed to the King the sole 
 power in necessity, and the sole judgment of necessity, and 
 by that enabled him to take " from his people " zvhat he 
 would, when he would, and how he would." Yet, in doing 
 this, they had most of all injured the cause of the king. 
 " A most excellent prince had been most infinitely abused." 
 He felt it his duty to direct his attack more especially 
 against one person, who had " been a most admirable 
 solicitor," but made " a most abominable judge." This 
 man had given back, " with his breath," that which " our 
 ancestors had purchased for us " with " so large an 
 expense of their time, their ease, their treasure and their 
 blood." Indeed, he seemed to have striven "to make our 
 grievances immortal, and our slavery irreparable, lest any 
 part of our posterity might want occasion to curse him." 
 To announce that this was Finch, the Lord Keeper, would 
 "be to tell them no news." 
 
 * Nalson's Collections, vol. i., p. 654 seq.
 
 IMPEACHMENT OF FINCH. IO? 
 
 Falkland was supported by Hyde, and orders were 
 given to draw up a charge against Finch. Before the day 
 on which the matter was to be settled, Finch requested to 
 be heard in the House of Commons, and on 2ist Dec. he 
 appeared there, where he was received with due honour ; * 
 but his defence did nothing in his favour, and after 
 speeches by Pym and Hyde, the vote for his impeachment 
 was carried almost, if not quite, unanimously. The same 
 night Finch fled to the Hague. 
 
 In the middle of January, f Goodwin, Falkland and 
 others carried the articles of impeachment against Finch 
 to the Lords. When they had been read, Falkland said 
 the Lord Keeper's whole " life appears a perpetual warfare 
 (by mines and by battery, by battle and by stratagem) 
 against our fundamental laws, which (by his own confession) 
 several conquests had left untouched against the excellent 
 constitution of this kingdom . . . and this with such un- 
 fortunate success, that, as he always intended to make our 
 ruin a ground of his advancement, so his advancement 
 the means of our further ruin." I 
 
 Finch's treason was " as well against the King as against 
 the Kingdom ; for whatever is against the whole is un- 
 doubtedly against the head." The Lord Keeper, however, 
 had fled, and, said Falkland, " I will spend no words . . . 
 in accusing the ghost of a departed person, whom his crimes 
 accuse more than I do, and his absence accuseth no less 
 than his crimes." 
 
 On the 2Oth of January, Lyttleton was appointed Lord 
 Keeper in the place of Finch. 
 
 * Hist. Eng., Gardiner, vol. ix., p. 246. t 1641. 
 
 J Nalson's Collections, vol. i., pp. 725-6.
 
 io8 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 
 
 FALKLAND'S severity towards Finch and Strafford was, as 
 Clarendon says, " contrary to his natural gentleness and 
 temper;" but "he was so rigid an observer of established 
 laws and rules that he could not endure the least breach or 
 deviation from them, and thought no mischief so intolerable 
 as the presumption of Ministers of State to break positive 
 rules for reasons of State." This may be said to have 
 been the foundation of Falkland's policy at this juncture. 
 
 Strong as was the antagonism towards Strafford and 
 Finch, the public dislike of the bishops was even greater. 
 In November, 1640, Falkland's friend, Lord Digby, said in 
 a speech : " Doth not every Parliament-man's heart rise to 
 see the prelates thus usurp to themselves the grand pre- 
 eminence of Parliament ? " * 
 
 On the nth of December, a violent petition for Church 
 reform and the abolition of Episcopacy, signed by 15,000 
 Londoners, was presented in the House of Commons. A 
 week later, on the motion of Pym, a messenger was sent to 
 the House of Lords to impeach Archbishop Laud of high 
 treason. 
 
 On the 8th of February (1641), there was a debate 
 in the House of Commons on the question whether the 
 Londoners' petition, demanding the abolition of Episcopacy, 
 should be referred to a committee. 
 
 The third speaker, on this occasion, was Falkland. 
 
 * Harleian Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 442.
 
 FALKLAND AND LAUD. 109 
 
 Falkland, if some of his friends were bishops, was not 
 an admirer of their order, and " he had unhappily con- 
 tracted some prejudice to" that most aggressive bishop 
 of the day, Archbishop Laud ; although he revered Laud's 
 "learning."* When he rose to speak in the debate, he 
 accused the bishops of having " brought in superstition 
 and scandal under the titles of reverence and decency." 
 " While masses have been a security," he exclaimed, " a 
 conventicle hath been a crime ; and, which is yet more, 
 the conforming to ceremonies hath been more exacted than 
 the conforming to Christianity." The bishops appeared to 
 make it their business " not to keep men from sinning, 
 but to confirm them. ... It seemed their work was to 
 try how much of a Papist might be brought in without 
 Popery, and to destroy as much as they could of the 
 Gospel without bringing themselves into danger of being 
 destroyed by the law. . . . Some have laboured to bring 
 in an English, though not a Roman, Popery ; I mean not 
 only the outside and dress of it, but equally absolute, a 
 blind dependence of the people upon the clergy, and have 
 opposed the Papacy beyond the seas that they might settle 
 one beyond the water." He was thinking of Lambeth 
 Palace. These bishops had " found a way to reconcile 
 the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England." 
 
 He admitted "that bishops may be good men;" but, 
 he added, " let us give good men good rules." Again, 
 he professed himself unwilling to see an ancient office, such 
 as that of a bishop, " abolished upon a few days' debate." 
 Before rooting " up this ancient tree, as dead as it " 
 appeared, he wished to try " topping off the branches." 
 And, in any severity towards the bishops, he would 
 " distinguish between those who have been carried away 
 by the stream, and those who have been the stream that 
 carried them." f 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p, 356. 
 t Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 53 seq.
 
 IIO FALKLANDS. 
 
 Much in the same strain as Falkland, Digby desired to 
 clip the wings of the bishops, without joining in their 
 extinction ; and, at this time, the policy of the two men 
 was almost identical. 
 
 With all his virulence towards the clergy, Pym said, or 
 is reported to have said, " that he thought it was not the 
 intention of the House to abolish either Episcopacy or 
 the Book of Common Prayer, but to reform both wherein 
 offence was given to the people." * This is an important 
 statement, which should be borne in mind when we have 
 to consider Falkland's line of action and so-called change 
 of policy a little later. 
 
 Pym, Hampden, St. John and Holies were on one side 
 in the dispute, Falkland, Digby, Hyde, Colepepper, Selden, 
 Hopton and Waller on the other. Professor Gardiner 
 says : " Slight as the difference might be between those 
 who took opposite sides on that day, their parting gave 
 the colour to the English political life which has dis- 
 tinguished it ever since, and which has distinguished 
 every free government which has followed in the steps 
 of our forefathers. It was the first day on which two 
 parties stood opposed to one another in the House of 
 Commons, not merely on some incidental question, but 
 on a great principle of action which constituted a 
 permanent bond between those who took one side or the 
 other." f 
 
 The real source of disagreement between Falkland's 
 party and Pym's party so far as there was any con- 
 sisted in the favour felt by the latter towards the Puritans, 
 and the fear of them felt by the former. Both sides feared 
 the bishops ; but Falkland's feared the Puritans even more 
 than the bishops. 
 
 A description of these debates was given by an eminent 
 
 * A yust Vindication, Bagshaw (1660), 518, i, 2. 
 t Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 281.
 
 " POOR CANTERBURIE." 1 1 1 
 
 Puritan.* " The week before last," he wrote, " there was 
 a great commotion in the Lower House when the petition 
 of London came to be considered. My Lord Digbie and 
 Viscount Falkland, with a prepared companie about them, 
 laboured, by premeditat speeches, and hott disputts, to 
 have that petition cast out of the House without a hearing, 
 as craving the root out of Episcopacie against so manie 
 established lawes. The other partie was as prepared ; 
 yet they contested together, from eight a'cloack till six 
 at night." The hours of sitting in the House, it will be 
 perceived, were very different then from what they are 
 now. 
 
 In another letter he describes the difference between 
 Falkland's and Pym's parties.f " How this matter will 
 goe, the Lord knowes : all [are] for the erecting of a kind 
 of Presbyteries, and for bringing down the Bishops in all 
 things, spirituall and temporall, so low as can be done with 
 any subsistence ; bot their utter abolition, which is the 
 onlie aime of the most godlie, is the knott of the question ; 
 we must have it cutted by the axe of prayer : God, we 
 trust, will doe it." 
 
 Again of a later speech of Falkland's, Bailie writes: 
 " The Viscount Falkland as yow may read . . . did de- 
 claime most acutelie, as we could have wished, against 
 the corruption of Bishops ; bot [his] conclusion was the 
 keeping of a limited Episcopacie." How strong the anti- 
 episcopal feeling was at the time may be inferred from 
 his adding : " As for poor Canterburie he is so contemptible 
 that all cast him by out of their thoughts." J 
 
 Even with their friends, bishops were at that time out 
 of favour, as must be apparent to readers of Laud's Diary ; 
 and Falkland said " that those who hated the Bishops, 
 
 * Letters and Journals of Robert Bailie, Principal of the University of 
 Glasgow, 28th February, 1641. 
 
 t Ib., p. 303. J Ib., p. 307. 
 
 Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, Forster, p. 282.
 
 112 FALKLANDS. 
 
 hated them worse than the devil, and they who loved them, 
 loved them not so well as their dinners." * 
 
 For a time, however, the agitation against the bishops 
 was eclipsed by the excitement aroused by the trial of 
 Strafford. 
 
 There was great irritation in the House of Commons 
 when it became known that the House of Lords had 
 consented to Strafford's request for a little time in which 
 to prepare his defence. Falkland rose to rebuke this ill- 
 feeling against the Upper House. " The Lords," said he, 
 " have done no more than they conceive to be necessary 
 in justice." It would be only to assist the cause of 
 Strafford " to jar with the Upper House, or to retard 
 their own proceedings." f 
 
 " I went to London," says John Evelyn, " to heare 
 and see the famous tryall of the Earl of Strafford, who 
 on 22nd March before had been summon'd before both 
 Houses of Parliament, and now appear'd in Westminster 
 Hall, which was prepar'd with scaffolds for the Lords 
 and Commons, who together with the King, Queene, 
 Prince, and flower of the Noblesse, were spectators and 
 auditors of the greatest malice and the greatest inno- 
 cency that ever met before so illustrious an assembly." J 
 
 On that, the opening day, the proceedings were merely 
 formal ; but the trial dragged on until the loth of April, 
 when it was adjourned without any appointment for its 
 renewal, owing to the quarrels between the Lords and the 
 Commons. Charles and Strafford were delighted, and 
 probably thought that the whole prosecution would thus 
 fall through. " The King laughed, and the Earl of 
 
 * This was said later, when the Root-and- Branch Bill was in Com- 
 mittee, and even those who opposed the Bill were not sufficiently 
 earnest in the matter to be in their places in the House at dinner-time. 
 
 t D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS., clxii., p. 229; Gardiner's Hist., vol. 
 ix., p. 292. 
 
 } Evelyn's Diary, p. 24, ed. " Chandos Classics."
 
 EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD. 113 
 
 Strafford was so well pleased therewith that he would not 
 hide his joy." * Vain indeed were their joy and their 
 laughter. 
 
 The Commons returned to their own House in an irritable 
 temper, and the younger Vane immediately committed the 
 act for which he has been so much blamed by posterity. 
 He publicly presented a copy of certain very private notes 
 which he had found in his father's study. This evidence 
 told strongly against Strafford, and a Bill of Attainder was 
 brought in against him. 
 
 The debate on this Bill extended over several days. 
 Falkland sided with Pym in favouring the Bill, while 
 Lord Digby, who had been with Falkland in the debate 
 upon Episcopacy, now strongly opposed the Bill which 
 Falkland was supporting. 
 
 According to certain evidence,f when it came to the 
 question of the actual execution of Strafford, Falkland 
 appears to have relented, and to have again placed himself 
 beside Lord Digby ; but this is doubtful. Falkland was 
 humane and merciful ; but he was not the man to spare one 
 whom he considered guilty of death, to please the king. 
 
 The Strafford tragedy was soon over. Evelyn thus 
 describes it: " I2th May. I beheld on Tower Hill the 
 fatal stroke which severed the wisest head in England 
 from the shoulders of the Earl of Strafford ; whose crime 
 coming under the cognizance of no human law, a new one 
 was made, not to be a precedent, but his destruction ; to 
 such exorbitancy were things arrived. "J 
 
 Such was not the opinion of Falkland. 
 
 Meanwhile, the question of Episcopacy had not lain 
 
 * D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS., clxiii., fol. 27. 
 
 f " And now began the first breach among themselves, for the Lord 
 Falkland, the Lord Digby and divers other able men were for the sparing of 
 his life and gratifying the King, and not putting him on a thing so displeas- 
 ing him." ReliquicE Baxtcriance, p. 19. 
 
 J Evelyn's Diary, p. 24. 
 
 8
 
 1 14 FALKLANDS. 
 
 dormant. A short Bill was brought in " to take away the 
 Bishops' Votes in Parliament ; and to leave them out in 
 all Commissions of the Peace, or that had relation to any 
 Temporal Affairs." * 
 
 " When the Bill was put to the question, Mr. Hyde (who 
 was from the beginning known to be an Enemy to it) said : 
 ' It was changing the whole Frame and Constitution of 
 the Kingdom, and of the Parliament itself; ' and he ended 
 his speech by protesting that, if the Bishops were turned 
 out of the House of Lords, ' there was Nobody who could 
 pretend to represent the Clergy, and yet they must be 
 bound by their determinations.' " f 
 
 Beside Hyde, sat Falkland. If either of the pair came 
 into the House alone, a thing which rarely happened, 
 " everybody left the place for him that was absent." No 
 two members of the House of Commons were so insepar- 
 able or so much of the same mind. Yet now, Hyde had 
 scarcely sat down when Falkland " suddainly stood up, and 
 declar'd himself ' to be of another Opinion ; and that, as 
 he thought, the thing itself to be absolutely necessary for 
 the Benefit of the Church, which was in so great Danger ; 
 So he had never heard, that the Constitution of the King- 
 dom would be Violated by the Passing that Act ; and that 
 He had heard many of the Clergy protest That they could 
 not acknowledge that they were represented by the 
 Bishops.' " As to the bishops themselves, they sat and 
 had votes in the House of Lords, and if they did not like 
 the Bill when it should be sent to the Upper House, they 
 could, if they pleased, " reject it. And so with some 
 Facetiousness " Falkland " concluded ' For the Passing 
 the Act.' " 
 
 " The House was so marvellously Delighted to see the 
 Two inseparable Friends Divided in so important a point," 
 continues Clarendon, " that they could not contain from a 
 kind of Rejoycing ; and the more, because they saw Mr. 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iii., p. 234. t Ib., p. 235.
 
 THE ROOT-AND-BRANCH BILL. 11$ 
 
 Hyde was much surprised with the Contradiction ; as in 
 truth he was, having never discovered the least inclination 
 in the other towards such a Compliance." 
 
 It is difficult to understand Clarendon's surprise, in the 
 face of Falkland's invectives against the bishops in his 
 speech of the previous month. Yet how was it that " My 
 dear Sweetheart " had not communicated his opinions, on 
 such an important subject, to his best friend, before rising 
 to gainsay him in the presence of their mutual enemies ? 
 
 The latter " entertain'd an imagination and Hope that 
 they might work the Lord Falkland to a farther Concurrence 
 with them." * Falkland, however, declared some time after- 
 wards that he had been assured by Hampden, " that if the 
 Bill might pass, there would be nothing more attempted to 
 the Prejudice of the Church : which he thought, as the World 
 then went, would be no ill composition." f 
 
 There can be little doubt that, friends as they were> 
 Falkland and Hyde were never of one mind respecting the 
 bishops, the latter regarding them as serviceable officials, 
 and the former as, at best, a necessary evil. Falkland was 
 probably of opinion that the world would have been better 
 without bishops ; but there they were, and they were a very 
 ancient institution. With all their faults, again, bishops, 
 like other institutions, might be reformed. Their total 
 suppression was not imperative. One of Falkland's political 
 principles, as he himself expressed it, was that " where it is 
 not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change." J 
 
 The grand result of the petition of the 1 5,000 Londoners 
 was the introduction of the so-called Root-and-Branch Bill 
 for the extirpation of Episcopacy. On this point I venture 
 to think that Falkland has been unjustly blamed for "de- 
 serting his party." It is true that during the very eventful 
 year of 1641, his opinions underwent certain modifications. 
 But it was a year of shiftings and veerings and turnings, 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iii., p. 236. t/i. 
 
 J Tulloch's Rational Theology, vol. i., p. 168.
 
 1 16 FALKLANDS. 
 
 both in circumstances and in men. If Falkland changed, so 
 also, and much more, did Pym and likewise Hampden. 
 We have just seen how Hampden had once assured Falk- 
 land that, if the bishops were deprived of their seats in the 
 Lords, and the power of holding secular offices, nothing 
 further would be attempted against the interests of the 
 Established Church. Pym, in the Short Parliament, had 
 spoken of the King and of his office in terms of high respect; 
 and Bagshaw bears witness * that at one time he contem- 
 plated a reform only, and not the abolition of Episcopacy. 
 
 Falkland's first ideal, on entering political life, appears 
 to have been a Constitutional Monarchy, "a. Monarchy 
 without a Strafford, and a Church without a Laud. "I By 
 the middle of May, 1641, these objects had been attained. 
 The King was in the power of the Parliament, and not the 
 Parliament in the power of the King ; Strafford was be- 
 headed, Laud was a prisoner in the Tower. Here, having 
 got as much as he wanted, Falkland stopped. Pym went 
 on. If Falkland afterwards took a step or two backwards 
 in the direction of autocracy, Pym never paused in his 
 onward march until he had reached revolution. 
 
 As to the relative positions of Falkland and Hampden, 
 Lady Theresa Lewis rightly describes them in saying : 
 " Hampden flowed on with the stream which had swept 
 away so much impurity, Lord Falkland withdrew from the 
 force of the current, and in a few months they found them- 
 selves standing on opposite banks, henceforth to view the 
 same scene from different points."^ 
 
 Just before the end of May the Root-and-Branch 
 party were in a minority in the House of Commons ; || but 
 when, on the 27th, the Lords, while they decided to ex- 
 clude clergymen from nearly all secular functions, deter- 
 
 * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 281, and ib., footnote, 
 t Lytton's Miscell. Prose Works, vol. i., p. 373. 
 J Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 72. 1641. 
 
 || Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 679.
 
 CHARLES SENDS FOR HYDE. 117 
 
 mined to allow the bishops to retain their seats in Parlia- 
 ment, the Commons were infuriated, with the result that 
 they listened much more tolerantly, if not more readily, 
 than they would otherwise have done to a Bill introduced 
 by Sir Edward Dering, " For the utter abolishing and 
 taking away of all Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors 
 and Commissaries, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, 
 Prebendaries, Chapters and Canons, and all other under 
 officers." * This was the celebrated " Root-and-Branch 
 Bill." 
 
 There was a fierce debate. Falkland spoke, and he 
 " compared the Root-and-Branch Bill, for its thorough- 
 going violence, to a total massacre of men, women and 
 children." f 
 
 The second reading was carried by a majority of twenty- 
 seven ; but the further progress of the Bill was slow and 
 chequered. In June it went into Committee, Hyde being 
 appointed chairman. 
 
 In the same month, or somewhere about that time, J 
 Charles sent for Hyde, to the great astonishment of that 
 lawyer and statesman. The King complimented him on 
 his loyalty to the Established Church, and this was the 
 beginning of intimate relations between the future Lord 
 Clarendon and Charles I., which were to have results of 
 the highest importance, not only to Hyde, but also to 
 Falkland. 
 
 In June Charles determined upon an expedition to 
 Scotland, chiefly in hopes of obtaining support against the 
 Parliamentary party in the South of England. At the end 
 of July he announced his intention of starting thither on 
 the pth of August. Both Houses agreed in an endeavour 
 to prevent his departure, and, in the House of Commons, 
 it was on a motion of Falkland's that he was requested to 
 defer it. 
 
 * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 66-7. 
 
 t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 382. J Ib., p. 387. 
 
 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS., clxiv., fol. 26.
 
 Il8 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Falkland's motion was carried on Saturday, the /th. 
 The King had arranged to start on the Monday following. 
 On receiving the petition of the Parliament, the only con- 
 cession he made was to put off his journey till Tuesday. 
 On the morning of that day he appeared in Parliament 
 and passed some Bills. Then he started for the North in 
 a bad temper, leaving his Parliament in a worse. 
 
 Four days Rafter Charles had left London, the Parlia- 
 ment, which was exceedingly suspicious of the King's 
 intentions and movements, appointed a Committee of 
 Defence, as it was called ; and Falkland was placed on 
 it. This so-called " Defence " was practically against any 
 arbitrary attack upon the privileges of the subject by the 
 King, who, it was feared, might raise an army in the North. 
 In short, the forming of the Committee was the first pre- 
 paration for the civil war which was so soon to follow, and 
 the Committee might be called the nucleus of an army 
 which Falkland was to oppose later on. 
 
 At the end of August it was quite clear that there was 
 no longer any danger from the King's Northern expedi- 
 tion ; and, on 8th September, "both Houses Adjourn'd 
 themselves till the middle of the October following ; by 
 which time they presumed the King would be return'd 
 from Scotland ; having sat from the time they were first 
 convened, which was about nine months (longer than 
 ever Parliaments had before continued together in one 
 Session)."* 
 
 During those nine months the Commons had "con- 
 tinued together " in more ways than one. Never since 
 they rose have the members co-operated for certain ends, 
 without regard to party, friendship, or enmity, in the same 
 manner. Falkland and Hyde, Pym and Hampden, what- 
 ever their differences on some points, worked steadily 
 together for the overthrow of the Star Chamber and the 
 Court of High Commission, and to bring about the aban- 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist. Eng., book iii., p. 282.
 
 THE RECESS. 119 
 
 donment by the King of the custom of raising taxes 
 without consent of the Parliament. 
 
 It is a curious historical and political fact that, just 
 when members of Parliament seemed most of one mind, 
 the strife of party was about to break forth with the 
 fiercest fury. The comparatively peaceful session which 
 ended in August, 1641, was, as it were, the calm before 
 the crash of Parliamentary thunder which was to follow, 
 and since then has, at intervals, followed again and again. 
 
 Much mischief is often made during a recess ; and it 
 may be that on this occasion the fires of discord were 
 enkindled. What Falkland did in it we know not. 
 Possibly he may have gone down to Great Tew and 
 filled it, as of old, with " men of parts ; " but it would be 
 almost safe to say we do know that he would not 
 go down to the Isle of Wight to address his constituents, 
 which seems to be the only form of holiday-making 
 recognised in these days for members of Parliament.
 
 I2O 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A POLITICAL TRIO. 
 
 WITH the single exception already noticed, Falkland and 
 Hyde worked together in politics, so long as they were 
 both alive ; and, in the course of the year 1641, they 
 took a third politician into their close confidence. 
 
 This was Sir John Colepepper, who had the credit 
 of having been a warrior in foreign parts. Unlike the 
 courtly civilian and lawyer, Hyde, and still more unlike 
 the refined and cultivated Falkland, " he was of a rough 
 nature;"* and "he might very well be thought a man 
 of no good breeding ; having never sacrificed to the muses, 
 or conversed in any polite company." f " Sure no man less 
 appeared a courtier," and he was remarkable for " ungrace- 
 fulness in his mien and motion." | 
 
 " He had been engaged in many quarrels and duels ; 
 wherein he still behaved himself very signally." Under 
 this rough and bellicose exterior, Colepepper was " a man 
 of sharpness and parts, and volubility of language ; " and, 
 although he was " proud and ambitious, and very much 
 disposed to improve his fortune, which he knew well 
 how to do," he would never stoop " to any corrupt ways." 
 He also had this advantage one sometimes possessed by 
 the rough and the rude that " he was believed to speak 
 with all plainness and sincerity." 
 
 Neither Hyde nor Falkland had "had the least ac- 
 quaintance with" Colepepper "before the Parliament ;" || 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 106. f Ib-t P- IO 7- 
 
 J Ib., p. 106. Ib., p. 107. || Ib., p. 104.
 
 COLEPEPPER. 121 
 
 and even when they discovered that his policy was the 
 same as their own, although they made him their political 
 ally and confidant, "they rarely conferred" with him, 
 except " in the agitation of business ; their natures being 
 nothing like." 
 
 This trio, Falkland, Hyde and Colepepper, played a 
 very important part in the politics and history of 1641-3. 
 In studying that period, one is occasionally tempted to add 
 Digby and call it a quartette ; but this cannot be done 
 quite satisfactorily. 
 
 On the meeting of Parliament there was great excite- 
 ment at the news of a plot, or a rumoured plot, to seize 
 two Scottish peers in Edinburgh, and it increased the 
 distrust of the King. When the subject was mentioned 
 in the House of Commons, Falkland expressed his in- 
 credulity and suggested that Scotch affairs should be left to 
 the Scotch Parliament* The House was not pleased with 
 Falkland for thus speaking lightly of what it considered a 
 most serious subject. It was pretended that other lords, 
 and perhaps the Parliament itself, might be in danger. 
 Measures were taken for protection, and 100 men of the 
 Westminster Trained Bands were ordered to be on guard, 
 night and day, in Palace Yard. 
 
 The Root-and-Branch Bill was dropped soon after the 
 opening of Parliament, and within a month a Bill was in- 
 troduced in its stead, depriving " Bishops of their Votes in 
 Parliament, and disabling all in Holy Orders from the 
 exercise of all temporal Jurisdiction and Authority." 
 
 On this occasion, to the chagrin of Pym and his party, 
 Falkland joined with Hyde in opposing this new attack 
 upon the bishops. Hampden taunted him upon having 
 changed his opinions. Falkland retorted " that he had 
 formerly been persuaded by that worthy gentleman to 
 believe many things which he had since found to be untrue ; 
 that, therefore, he had changed his opinion in many par- 
 
 * D'Ewes's Diary, Harl., MSS., clxiv., fol. 2416.
 
 122 FALKLANDS. 
 
 ticulars, as well as to things and persons." * His expression 
 of a change in opinion as to persons was evidently in- 
 tended to apply to Hampden himself. 
 
 Hyde opposed the Bill on the ground that it interfered 
 with the constitution of the House of Lords : f Falkland 
 refused to countenance it because he believed its rejection 
 by the Peers to be inevitable. Even now, when together 
 resisting an attack upon Episcopacy, they were not quite 
 of one mind about their reasons for doing so. 
 
 On the 3Oth of October, Pym revealed what he 
 looked upon as a second plot of the King's. What had 
 been dreaded was about to happen. Charles, he said, was 
 secretly raising an army for his own support. 
 
 Two days later news arrived that there was a rebellion 
 in Ireland. The King obtained a promise from the Scottish 
 Parliament to send troops to help to put it down. To this 
 Falkland raised objections on the ground that the Scotch 
 army might become dangerously powerful in its influence 
 upon England.]: 
 
 In Pym's eyes, again, the chief danger of the Irish 
 Rebellion was that an army must be raised to crush it ; 
 and that, if such an army were to have as its officers parti- 
 sans of the King, he would be able to make use of it 
 eventually to bring physical force to bear upon the Parlia- 
 ment. Pym moved that the King should be urged to re- 
 move the evil counsellors then surrounding him, and to 
 " take such as might be approved by Parliament ; " and 
 that, unless he would agree to this, the Houses of Parliament 
 should not consider themselves bound to give him any 
 assistance in Ireland. 
 
 It might appear that Pym and Falkland were exactly 
 agreed on this matter ; but although Pym's proposal un- 
 derwent several modifications and alterations, it irritated 
 Falkland, Hyde and a like-minded minority, which began 
 
 * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 70. 
 
 t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 37. J Ib., p. 55.
 
 THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE. 123 
 
 to assume the form of a small but distinctly Royalist party 
 in the House of Commons. The position of that minority 
 was this. They mistrusted and feared the proceedings of 
 the King's advisers, they even feared and mistrusted those 
 of the King himself ; but they were loyal to the principle 
 of monarchy, whereas Pym and his party were not. 
 
 Perceiving this, and fearing that the Commons could 
 no longer be trusted to present one cohesive front against 
 all autocratic action on the part of the King, Pym and his 
 followers fell back upon the support of the people. 
 
 On the 8th of November was read in the House of 
 Commons that important document, the Grand Remon- 
 strance, which contained a long list of iniquities, or pre- 
 tended iniquities, which had been perpetrated by the evil 
 counsellors of the King since the beginning of his reign, 
 and another list of the good works of the existing Parlia- 
 ment ; it complained that the bishops were endeavouring 
 to frustrate all the Parliament's efforts of reform, and it 
 begged that a synod " of the most grave, pious, learned and 
 judicious divines of this island, assisted with some from 
 foreign parts professing the same religion with" them, 
 should " consider of all things necessary for the peace and 
 good government of the Church." 
 
 It was intended that the debate upon the Remon- 
 strance should take place on the 2Oth of November, and 
 its friends expected that debate to be merely formal. Its 
 opponents, however, asked for further delay. The hour, 
 they pleaded, was late. It was only midday ; but at that 
 period the House met early in the morning. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, who, says Clarendon, "at that time 
 was little taken notice of,"* said to Falkland : 
 
 " Why would you have the debate put off? " 
 
 " There will not be time enough," replied Falkland ; 
 " for sure it will take some debate." 
 
 Cromwell replied that it would be a very short one. 
 
 *Hist. Reb. t bk. iv., p. 311.
 
 124 FALKLANDS. 
 
 The next morning the debate was " entered upon about 
 Nine of the Clock," and " it continued all that day." * 
 Falkland complained that the Remonstrance dealt too 
 severely with the bishops and the Arminians.f Hyde 
 admitted the statements of facts in the Remonstrance, but 
 was not prepared to join in all its inferences. Colepepper 
 said that such a Remonstrance ought not to have been 
 drawn up without the concurrence of the Lords, and that 
 to issue it among the populace would be " dangerous to the 
 public peace." 
 
 The light of the short November day faded. J Candles 
 were brought in, an unusual proceeding at that time ; and, 
 as there appears to have been no special provision for 
 artificial light in the House of Commons, the debate was 
 probably conducted in semi-darkness. At twelve o'clock 
 at night it still continued. "Very many withdrew them- 
 selves out of pure faintness and disability to attend the 
 conclusion." 
 
 At last there was a division. The Remonstrance " was 
 carried in the Affirmative, by Nine Voices, and no more." || 
 
 It was then moved that the Remonstrance should be 
 printed.^! Hyde at once protested, on the ground that to 
 do so in the manner proposed, namely, to send it out as an 
 appeal to the people, without first sending it to the Lords 
 for their concurrence, would be illegal. Hyde had scarcely 
 spoken when " Jeffery Palmer (a Man of great reputation, 
 and much esteem'd in the House) stood up, and made the 
 same motion for himself," and not for himself only, but 
 for "all the rest." ** 
 
 At these words most of the angry minority rose to 
 their feet. "All, all," they cried. 
 
 * Hist. Reb., bk. iv. , p. 312. 
 t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 75. 
 J Ib. Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 312. 
 
 || Ib. But the majority was eleven, according to the Journals of the 
 House of Commons, vol. ii., p. 322. 
 
 IT Ib., p. 312. ** Ib.
 
 A DISTURBANCE IN THE COMMONS. 125 
 
 Hats were waved in the air, and drawn swords flashed 
 in the dim light of the flickering candles. " I thought," 
 wrote one who was present, " we had all sat in the valley 
 of the shadow of death," and he expected every moment 
 that, " like Joan's and Abner's young men," they would 
 catch " at each other's locks," and sheathe their " swords in 
 each other's bowels." * 
 
 Happily, Hampden kept his head. With the greatest 
 calmness he quietly inquired how Palmer could possibly 
 know what was passing in other men's minds, or venture 
 to take upon himself to speak in the name of the whole 
 House without having first consulted it. The distraction 
 caused by this practical question was the means of avert- 
 ing an imminent catastrophe such as never had, nor since 
 then has, occurred in the House of Commons. f 
 
 " The House by degrees being quieted, They all con- 
 sented, about Two of the Clock in the Morning, to ad- 
 journ till Two of the Clock the next Afternoon."! 
 
 As the members were leaving the House, Falkland 
 found himself beside Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 " Well, Cromwell," said Falkland, " Has there been any 
 Debate ? " 
 
 " Another time," replied Cromwell, " I will take your 
 word." Then he "whispered him in the Ear, with some 
 asseveration : 'If that Remonstrance had been rejected, 
 I would have sold all I had in the morning, and left 
 England, never to see it again ; and I know many other 
 honest men who had made the same resolution.' " 
 
 Two days after the Grand Remonstrance had been voted, 
 the King returned from Scotland. || His reception was loyal 
 enough ; but its pleasure was counteracted by the prescnta- 
 
 * Sir Ph. Warwick's Memoirs, p. 222. 
 
 t I am not forgetting the disgraceful scrimmage which took place in 
 that assembly within recent memory. 
 
 I Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 312. Ib. 
 
 || 25th Nov., 1641. Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 86.
 
 126 FALKLANDS. 
 
 tion of the Remonstrance on the ist of December, at Hamp- 
 ton Court.* 
 
 Charles was beginning to realise the necessity of 
 counsellors who would be likely to save him from the 
 dangers which were obviously impending. More than 
 a month earlier, Nicholas had advised him to consider the 
 capabilities of Falkland as an adviser. On the 2Qth 
 of October he had ended a letter : " I may not forbeare 
 to let yo r Ma tie know, that the Lo : ffalkland, S r Jo 
 Strangewishe, Mr. Waller, Mr. Ed. Hide, and Mr. 
 Holbourne, and diverse others, stood as Champions in 
 maynten'ce of yo r Prerogative and shewed for it unaunswer- 
 able reason and undenyable p e sedents, whereof yo r Ma tie 
 shall doe well to take some notice (as yo r Ma tie shall thinke 
 best) for their encouragm't." f 
 
 At about the same time that Charles received the Re- 
 monstrance, a reply to it, written by Hyde, and previously 
 seen by no one except Falkland, "from whom," as Hyde 
 said, "nothing ever was concealed," was placed in his 
 hands. J 
 
 Charles became aware of the necessity of having a party, 
 or, if not a party, at least a few individuals, to represent his 
 interests in the House of Commons ; and, to this end, much 
 as he disliked doing so, he felt driven to the expedient of 
 making one or two " parliament men," as they were then 
 called, his officers and counsellors. For this purpose he 
 " resolved to call the Lord Falkland, and S r John Cole- 
 pepper ... to his Council ; and to make the former 
 Secretary of State . . . and the latter Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. . . . They were Both of great Authority in the 
 
 *25th Nov., 1641. Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 86. 
 
 t Evelyn's Correspondence, vol. ii. 
 
 J Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 85-6. 
 
 Hyde was offered office at this period ; but refused it with the under- 
 standing that he was to act in concert with Falkland and Colepepper, and 
 to advise the king unofficially.
 
 THE KING SENDS FOR FALKLAND. I2/ 
 
 House ; neither of them of any relation to the Court." *f 
 " And therefore what they said made the more Impression ; 
 and They were frequent Speakers. The Lord Falkland 
 was wonderfully beloved by all who knew him, as a man of 
 Excellent Parts, of a Wit so Sharp, and a Nature so Sincere, 
 that nothing could be more Lovely." 
 
 The King, says Clarendon, "was more easily persuaded 
 to bestow those Preferments . . . than the Lord Falkland 
 was to accept that which was designed to him. No man 
 could be more surprised than He was, when the first Inti- 
 mation was made to him of the King's purpose." J The 
 offer of royal patronage was not to his taste ; for he had no 
 " Veneration for the Court, but only such Loyalty to the 
 King as the Law required from him. And he had naturally 
 a Wonderful Reverence for Parliaments . . . and it was 
 only his Observation of the Disingenuity, and want of 
 Integrity in this Parliament, which lessened that Reverence 
 to it, and had disposed him to cross, and oppose Their 
 designs." 
 
 A very short time previously, Falkland had feared, and 
 endeavoured to guard against, the evil use of power by the 
 King, and he made use of the Parliament as a means. Now 
 he yet more feared the evil use of power by the Parliament, 
 and there seemed to be a possibility of using the King as a 
 means to guard against it. Both authorities, each of which 
 ought to have been doing good, were doing evil : to choose 
 between them, therefore, was a choice of evils ; to try to 
 reconcile them and to lead both to do good was the best 
 object at which a politician could then aim ; and the offer 
 now made to Falkland by the King might possibly enable 
 him to reach it. 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 340. 
 
 t From this it would appear that Falkland must have resigned his 
 appointment of " Gent of his Majesty's Privy Chamber," which he had 
 received, says Wood, "about the time of his Father's Death." Ath. Ox., 
 vol. i., p. 580. 
 
 } Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 340.
 
 128 FALKLANDS. 
 
 On the other hand, the question may have presented 
 itself whether an attempt to be friends with the King as 
 well as the Parliament might not render him an enemy to 
 both ? and whether his effort to influence each at the same 
 time might not have the result of his losing all influence 
 with either ? No wonder that he hesitated ! 
 
 Another difficulty which lay in the way of his taking 
 office was that he was " totally unacquainted with business." 
 He feared, too, that his late opposition to Pym's party in 
 the House would now be interpreted into a deliberate 
 attempt to " render himself gracious to the Court." * He 
 dreaded yet more lest the King should expect from him a 
 servile " Submission and Resignation of himself and his 
 own reason to his Commands." Even the thought of the 
 respect with which, in his interviews with the King, he 
 would be expected to receive orders, of which possibly he 
 might personally disapprove, terrified him ; for " he was so 
 severe an Adorer of Truth, that he could as easily have 
 given himself leave to Steal as to Dissemble ; " and he con- 
 sidered allowing another person to imagine that he would 
 do anything which he had in his heart resolved not to do, 
 " a more mischievous kind of Lying, than a positive aver- 
 ring what could be most easily contradicted." 
 
 " It was a most difficult task to Mr. Hyde," who had 
 more influence over him than anybody else, " to persuade 
 him to submit to this purpose of the King's chearfully." The 
 argument which eventually prevailed was " the great Benefit 
 that probably would redound to the King and the Kingdom, 
 by his accepting such a Trust in such a general Defection." 
 The Commons had perpetually implored the King to put 
 away his evil counsellors and to take in their place men 
 approved by themselves. Was Falkland to refuse to act 
 as one of such, on the very first occasion of the King's 
 exhibiting an inclination to accede to their wishes on this 
 point? 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 341.
 
 LYTTON, WALPOLE AND FORSTER ON FALKLAND. 1 29 
 
 Nevertheless, his acceptance of the office was " to the 
 no small displeasure of the Governing Party, which could 
 not dissemble their indignation ; " and " they took all op- 
 portunities to express their dislike." 
 
 Falkland has been much blamed for taking office under 
 Charles by later writers also. I will first let others argue 
 the case. Forster * calls him " far more of an apostate than 
 StrafTord, for his heart was really with the Parliament from 
 the first, which Stratford's never was, and never to the end 
 did he sincerely embrace" the Royalist cause. And he 
 says : " His convictions never ceased to be with the 
 opinions which the Parliament represented, though his 
 personal habits, his elegant pursuits, his fastidious tastes, 
 his thorough-going sense of friendship, and even his shyness 
 of manner and impatient impulsiveness of temper, made 
 him an easy prey to the persuasive arts that seduced him 
 to the service of the King." f 
 
 Walpole is no less severe upon him. " When he aban- 
 doned Hampden and that party because he mistrusted 
 the extent of their designs, did it justify," he asks, "his 
 going over to the King ? With what I will not say, con- 
 science but with what reason could he, who had been 
 so sensible of grievances, lend his hand to restore the 
 authority from whence those grievances flowed ? . . . Could 
 not Lord Falkland have done more service to the State by 
 remaining with them and checking their attempts and 
 moderating their Councils, than by offering his sword and 
 his abilities to the King ? " J 
 
 No better reply could be made to Forster's attack 
 on Falkland than that of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. 
 " Falkland no doubt, from the first to the last, was a 
 lover of liberty ; but of liberty as her image would 
 present itself to the mind of a scholar and to the heart 
 
 * Debates on the Grand Remonstrance. t P. 173. 
 
 I Royal Authors (1806), vol. v., pp. 81-2. 
 Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i., p. 372. 
 
 9
 
 1 30 FALKLANDS. 
 
 of a gentleman. It was no proof of apostasy from the cause 
 of liberty that he thought a time had come when liberty 
 was safer on the whole with King Charles than with ' King 
 Pym.'" 
 
 Moreover, if Falkland never " sincerely embraced " 
 the Royalist cause, why should Forster blame him ? He 
 had always professed loyalty to the King ; but he 
 had objected to the abuses of the King's powers and 
 privileges ; and on the same principle, when the Parlia- 
 ment abused its powers and privileges, he again objected. 
 If there was any apostasy at all, it was on the part of 
 the Parliament from the principles of the British Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 As to Walpole's objections, did Falkland abandon 
 Hampden, or Hampden Falkland ? I have already given 
 Falkland's evidence that Hampden had at least abandoned 
 an important position which he had promised Falkland 
 to maintain. Then Falkland had professed that the 
 grievances, of which he " had been so sensible," had 
 " flowed " not from the King, but from the bad counsellors 
 of the King ; so surely his own acceptance of office, as 
 a counsellor of the King, was not to " restore the authority 
 from whence those grievances flowed," but to do exactly 
 the contrary. And it is difficult to see the force of Wai- 
 pole's argument that Falkland " could have done more 
 service to the State by ... moderating " the counsels of 
 the Commons than by moderating the counsels of the King. 
 
 When a politician, while firmly keeping his ground, 
 finds that the men who used to stand beside him have 
 wandered away from it, while some of his former opponents 
 have moved in his own direction and are now near him, 
 if not surrounding and supporting him, it is not he that 
 is the apostate, the renegade, or the changeling.* 
 
 * " fickle changelings and poor discontents 
 
 That gape and rub the elbow at the news 
 Of hurly-burly innovation." Shakespeare.
 
 TO "STIR OR MOVE HTS HAT." 131 
 
 But to stand absolutely immovable in the tempest of 
 political life is impossible. So long as a public man resists 
 the forces which constantly strive to drive him headlong 
 in this direction or in that, he cannot fairly be blamed 
 if he now and then slightly alters his attitude, according 
 to the vicissitudes of the times and the variations of 
 circumstances. 
 
 It would be easy to give some modern examples of 
 politicians who have acted much in this manner, under 
 somewhat similar conditions ; but I refrain from so doing 
 lest I should render my writing polemical. I always as- 
 sume my reader's ability to be great, as I know mine to 
 be small ; therefore I merely put down some of the results 
 of my researches, leaving it to my readers to illustrate them 
 from the rich fountains of their own memories and imagina- 
 tions, and to draw their own wise inferences. 
 
 I will end this chapter by giving a little story, charac- 
 teristic of Falkland, in his parliamentary life, mentioned by 
 Clarendon.* "Falkland," says he, "was of a most incom- 
 parable gentleness, application and even submission to good, 
 and worthy, and entire Men ; " but he " was adversus malos 
 injucundus, and was so ill a dissembler of his dislike, and 
 disinclination to ill Men, that it was not possible for such 
 not -to discern it." On one occasion a certain "most 
 popular " member of the House had done a service to it, 
 and it was moved that " the Speaker might, in the name 
 of the whole House, give him thanks ; and then, that 
 every Member might, as a testimony of his particular 
 acknowledgment, stir or move his hat towards him." This 
 was "not order'd ; " yet "very many did " it. Falkland 
 thought " little of the service, less of the person, and least 
 of all of him for having stooped " to accept such a " re- 
 compence," therefore, "instead of moving his hat," he 
 " stretched both his Armes out, and clasped his hands 
 
 * Hist., book vii., p. 358.
 
 132 FALKLANDS. 
 
 together upon the Crown of his hat, and held it close 
 down to his head, that all Men might see, how odious " it 
 was to him to see " that flattery " paid to a member of the 
 House of Commons.
 
 133 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FROM THE COMMONS TO THE COURT. 
 
 COLDLY as Falkland accepted the honour offered to him 
 by the king, his new office obliged him to enter Court life 
 for a second time. In connection with this an unpleasant 
 story must be noticed, even if it be not credited. 
 
 The entertaining, but scandal-loving and scandal- 
 mongering Aubrey * tells us that he had " been well 
 informed, by those that best knew him [Falkland], and 
 knew intrigues behind the curtains (as they say)," that 
 there existed a certain " M ris - Moray, a handsome lady 
 at Court, who was his mistresse, and whom he loved 
 above all creatures." 
 
 It would, of course, be as difficult as it would be dis- 
 agreeable to believe this accusation against a man of such 
 a tremendous reputation for integrity and virtue as Lucius 
 Cary, Viscount Falkland, the husband of a beautiful and 
 pious wife ; but, painful as it may be to mention this story, 
 a notice of Falkland would be incomplete without it. 
 
 Nor are Aubrey's the only pages in which reference is 
 made to it ; for it appears also in Clarendon's, although he 
 merely refers to it in order to refute it. He states that 
 " those who did not know him " spoke of " a violent passion 
 he had for a noble lady ; . . . but they who knew either 
 the lord or the lady, knew well that neither of them was 
 capable of an ill imagination. She was of the most un- 
 spotted, unblemished virtue, and never married ; of an ex- 
 
 * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350.
 
 134 FALKLANDS. 
 
 traordinary talent of mind, but of no alluring beauty. . . . 
 Lord Falkland had an extraordinary esteem of her, and 
 exceedingly loved her conversation ... for she was in 
 her understanding and discretion, and wit, and modesty, 
 above most women." And Clarendon presently implies 
 that Falkland must have been beyond suspicion of infidelity, 
 because " he was so kind withal to his wife, whom he knew 
 to be an excellent person." 
 
 Clarendon's defence had better be accepted as final, and 
 it may be invidious to observe that the knowledge of his 
 wife's being " an excellent person " does not invariably keep 
 a husband in the path of perfection ; that clever women, 
 even when they possess " no alluring beauty," sometimes 
 make men fall in love with them ; or that it is a very 
 dangerous thing for a married man to drift into an un- 
 anticipated flirtation with an attractive woman, whose con- 
 versation he " exceedingly loves," over the subject of virtue. 
 
 If Letice was satisfied, why should not we be ? As the 
 poet sang of her : 
 
 She 
 Had only of Her self a jealousie.t 
 
 Let the subject drop ! Possibly Letice may have made 
 the same remark about it to Falkland. She would not be 
 the first, or the last, wife to make it to her husband, after a 
 disagreeable conversation about a similar subject. Falkland 
 himself wrote very severely of 
 
 Those who make wit their curse, who spend their brain, 
 Their time, and art in looser verse, and gain 
 Damnation and a mistres, till they see 
 How constant that is, how inconstant she. J 
 
 Let us sincerely hope that Falkland did not " gain 
 damnation and a mistres ! " 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 202. 
 
 t "An Elegie, Written to Some Ladies of these Times." 
 \ Miscell. of the Fuller Worthies Lib., " To George Sandys," vol. iii., 
 p. 83.
 
 BLUNT AND SHARP TO THE KING. 135 
 
 Falkland's personal relations to Charles I. are a matter of 
 interest. A minister who had persistently found fault with the 
 King's favourite counsellors and the policy which he liked 
 best was not likely to be a favourite with a very autocratic 
 monarch ; on the other hand, so literary and cultivated a 
 courtier as Falkland would share many tastes in common 
 with a king who prided himself upon his cultivation and 
 his appreciation of literature. 
 
 Whatever may have been Charles's treatment of Falk- 
 land, Falkland was never very effusive or affectionate 
 towards Charles. Clarendon tells us that, although " very 
 compliant" to the weaknesses of other men, with the 
 King Falkland " did not practise that condescension, but 
 contradicted him with more bluntness and by sharp 
 sentences ; and in some particulars (as of the Church) to 
 which the King was in conscience most devoted : and of 
 this His Majesty often complained ; and cared less to 
 confer with him in private, and was less persuaded by him 
 than his affairs, and the other's great parts and wisdom 
 would have required, though he had no better opinion of 
 any man's sincerity and fidelity towards him." * 
 
 So far as the Court was concerned, there was a great 
 change in the month following that in which Falkland 
 accepted office. The Queen left England ; and, although 
 she took a considerable part in English affairs by means of 
 letters, she did not return to this country for some time. 
 
 The three political partners, Falkland, Hyde and Cole- 
 pepper, had a "great familiarity and friendship with" 
 Lord Digby, who " was much trusted by the king." f But 
 although Falkland had "a free conversation" with Digby, 
 and felt much " kindness " towards him, he " lived with 
 more Frankness towards" Hyde and Colepepper than to- 
 wards Digby. It might seem that Digby would have been 
 more of a man to his taste than the other two. He " was 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 105. 
 t Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 343.
 
 136 FALKLANDS. 
 
 a Man of very Extraordinary Parts by Nature and Art, 
 and had surely as good and excellent an Education as any 
 Man of that Age in any Country : a Graceful and Beauti- 
 ful Person ; of great becomingness in his Discourse (save 
 that sometimes he seem'd a little affected), and of so 
 Universal a Knowledge, that he never wanted a Subject 
 for a Discourse." * Like Falkland, he had formerly "con- 
 tracted a prejudice and ill-will to the Court ; " and, in the 
 early days of the Long Parliament, like Falkland, again, he 
 had joined Pym and Hampden's party, " with a Passion 
 and an Animosity equal to theirs." 
 
 But when, like Falkland, Digby had grown " weary of 
 their violent Councils," and had perceived that they were 
 rushing into a policy in which he could not follow them, 
 he did what Falkland did not do : " he made private and 
 secret offers of service to the King." 
 
 Digby had a wide knowledge of " the greatest affairs, 
 but" he was "the unfittest Man alive to conduct them, 
 having an Ambition and Vanity Superior to all his other 
 Parts, and a Confidence in himself which sometimes in- 
 toxicated him." Falkland, Hyde and Colepepper were all 
 aware of his feelings ; but Falkland " looked upon his 
 Infirmities with more Seventy than the other Two 
 did." 
 
 Falkland was sworn a Privy Councillor on Sunday, 2nd 
 January, 1642. Immediately afterwards, the Government 
 which he had joined was to be brought into trouble through 
 the advice of his friend, Lord Digby. 
 
 It was discovered that at a secret conference the Parlia- 
 mentary leaders had determined to impeach the Queen for 
 conspiring against the public liberties and holding intelli- 
 gence with the Irish rebels.f Digby recommended the 
 King to impeach the would-be impeachers, and on 2nd 
 January, Herbert, the Attorney General, charged with 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 343. 
 t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 128.
 
 IMPEACHMENT OF THE FIVE MEMBERS. 137 
 
 treason Lord Kimbolton in the Lords, and Pym, Hampden, 
 Holies, Hazlerigg and Stroade in the Commons. 
 
 It is a matter of history that Charles, who had already 
 the Commons as enemies, made enemies of the Lords also 
 by endeavouring to arrest the five members in his own 
 name, instead of trusting the matter to them. He was 
 very fond of putting responsibility upon his ministers ; but 
 he only acted upon their advice when he felt inclined. In 
 his impeachment of Kimbolton and the five members, he 
 was adopting measures to which Falkland and Colepepper 
 " were absolute strangers, and which they perfectly de- 
 tested." * Perhaps they ought at once to have resigned 
 office ; but if Falkland erred in not doing so, his motives 
 are above suspicion. 
 
 On the Monday the House of Commons deputed Falk- 
 land, Colepepper and two others to wait on the King and 
 inform him that his action amounted to a breach of privi- 
 lege ; and on Tuesday, " Lord Faulkland reported "f what 
 the King had said. Charles had asked them whether the 
 " House did expect an answer." They replied that they 
 were not commissioned to say anything on that point. 
 Then he told them, as private persons, that he would send 
 one to the House in the morning. 
 
 What followed is but too well known.J That "Afternoon 
 his Majesty came in Person to the House of Commons, and 
 having Seated himself in the Speaker's Chair he " demanded 
 that the five impeached members should be delivered up to 
 him, found that they had left the House before he entered 
 it, and had to retire discomfited, having perpetrated one of 
 the greatest of his many acts of indiscretion and folly. 
 
 It will have been observed that the evening before he 
 had allowed Falkland to leave his presence under the 
 impression that he was going to send a formal answer to 
 the House, and gave him no hint whatever of any in- 
 
 * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 128. 
 
 fNalson's Collections, vol. ii., p. 816. \Ib,, p. 820.
 
 138 FALKLANDS. 
 
 tention to appear there in person, although Falkland was 
 one of his Privy Councillors. Lord Digby, says Clarendon,* 
 "was the only person who gave the Counsel" that the King 
 should himself go to the House. 
 
 "There was not any one Action," says Nalson, "of 
 which the Faction made greater advantage, then his 
 Majesties coming to the House in Person to demand the 
 five Members ; the Faction blew the whole Nation into a 
 blaze, with their Out-cries upon it," etc. f 
 
 Such an act greatly compromised the position of Falk- 
 land on the very threshold of his new office. He had 
 accepted one of the most important posts, as a servant of 
 the King, in order to counteract Charles's former foolish 
 actions, and to substitute wise counsel for the foolish advice 
 of his late counsellors. On a Sunday he became a Privy 
 Councillor ; on the following Tuesday the King made him- 
 self a laughing-stock for an action so foolish as to put all 
 his previous foolish actions into the shade, and so ill-advised 
 as to hurry the country to the brink of civil war. 
 
 The unfortunate fact that the King's adviser in the 
 matter was a personal friend of Falkland's may, or may 
 not, have been commonly known : if it was not, Falkland 
 himself may have been suspected of being the counsellor. 
 In either case his position was odious. Within eight days 
 the King had practically fled to Hampton Court, and Pym 
 was again in the House of Commons with an army at his 
 back. Definite preparations for civil war were now being 
 made on both sides. 
 
 Meanwhile a semblance of peace was kept up, and the 
 King and his Parliament were supposed to be governing the 
 country in concert on constitutional principles. J Charles 
 commanded Falkland, Colepepper and Hyde " to meet 
 constantly together, and consult upon his affairs, and con- 
 duct them the best way they could in Parliament, and to 
 
 * Hist., book iv., p. 358. t Collections, vol. ii., p. 820. 
 
 J Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 101-2.
 
 PLOT TO ARREST THE TRIO. 139 
 
 give him constant advice what he was to do, without which, 
 he declared again very solemnly, he would make no step 
 in the Parliament." 
 
 It was all very well for Charles to tell them to conduct 
 his affairs in Parliament for the best, when an enormous 
 majority in that Parliament " took all opportunities to 
 express their dislike of Them, and to Oppose anything 
 they Proposed to Them." * 
 
 Because Hyde " had larger accommodation in the 
 house where he lived in Westminster than either of the 
 others had, the meetings at night were for the most part 
 with him." f Of the three, Hyde was the most hated by 
 the Commons.} " They imputed to him the disposing of 
 Lord Falkland to serve the Court, and the Court to receive 
 his service." 
 
 In thus serving the Court, Falkland was unhappy from 
 the first, as well he might be, seeing that the climax 
 of disasters began just as he took office. He " had 
 a presaging spirit that the king would fall into great 
 misfortune ; and he often said to his friend," Hyde, " that 
 he chose to serve the king because honesty obliged him 
 to it ; but that he foresaw his own ruin by doing it." 
 
 Early in March, Colepepper was privately informed 
 that there was a plot to seize himself, Falkland and Hyde 
 when all three were in the House together. The arrange- 
 ment was that some one should move an inquiry as to 
 the persons who were guilty of advising the King in his 
 late evil deeds, and some one else was to rise, at once, 
 and name these;, three, who were to be there and then 
 arrested and sent to the Tower. After the receipt of this 
 intelligence, the trio took good care never to be all in 
 the House together at the same time. || 
 
 The Commons were especially suspicious of Hyde. 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 340. 
 
 t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 102. J Ib., p. 103. 
 
 $ Ib., p. 104. || Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 105.
 
 140 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Towards the end of March he went down to his country 
 house. His absence was immediately noticed and danger 
 seemed to be brewing. Falkland wrote * to warn him, in 
 a letter beginning as usual " Dear Sweetheart." After in- 
 forming him of the remarks that had been made at his 
 non-attendance, he wrote : "I told them that you had, 
 this good while, great inclinations to the stone,f so that 
 if you sat above an hour or two at a time, it put you to 
 much pain, which had made you attend the House so 
 seldom, and yet allowed you to be at a committee some- 
 times, which sits but a little time, and which had carried 
 you now for a turn into the country, to try how air and 
 riding would mend you." But it was " moved (which was 
 ordered accordingly) that the House should order you 
 to attend to-morrow morning. I thought fit to let you 
 know it, that you may rise at three of the clock to-morrow, 
 and be here time enough if you please. You know I never 
 take upon me to counsel, nor will add any more than 
 that I am, 
 
 " Sweetheart, y r most affe* humble servant, 
 
 " Falkland." 
 
 In March, the King went to York. On the 23rd he 
 summoned certain peers to attend him there, as he wished 
 to keep Easter with great state. On hearing this, the 
 House of Lords determined to prevent it, and commanded 
 all its members to remain in London and attend to their 
 parliamentary duties. 
 
 Early in April, many of the Royalist peers ceased 
 going to the House of Lords. There were troubles and 
 difficulties and threatenings on every side ; and the 
 position of Falkland and the Ministers of the Crown 
 grew more embarrassing day by day, while their influence 
 in the House of Commons was rapidly diminishing. 
 
 * Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii., p. 141. 
 
 t Clarendon lived till more than thirty years later.
 
 AN ODIOUS OFFICE. 141 
 
 If Falkland found his master's enemies difficult to deal 
 with, he did not find his master himself easy to serve. 
 Charles determined to deprive the Earls of Essex and 
 Holland of their office of Chamberlain and Groom of the 
 State for siding somewhat with the Parliament. Falkland 
 and Hyde * advised that they should be left in office, with 
 the hope of preventing them from taking an open part 
 against the King ; but the latter's wrath with Essex and 
 the Queen's indignation against Holland rendered all advice 
 useless. 
 
 Charles ordered Lord Keeper Lyttleton to go to the two 
 earls and demand the Staff from the one and the Key from 
 the other. Lyttleton " had not the Courage to undertake 
 it ; " and he persuaded Falkland to make his excuses to 
 the King. Charles accepted them ; but he calmly shifted 
 the disagreeable duty from the shoulders of Lyttleton to 
 those of Falkland. 
 
 This " harsh Office," says Clarendon, " might have been 
 more Naturally and as Effectually perform'd by a Gentle- 
 man Usher," j- and it was particularly odious to Falkland 
 because "he had always receiv'd great Civilities" from 
 both of the earls. J " However, he would make no excuse, 
 being a very punctual and exact Person in the perform- 
 ance of his Duty." 
 
 Falkland went to the House, where he met both earls 
 on the point of entering it, and gave them the royal 
 message. They very civilly asked him to give them half 
 an hour to confer together ; and shortly afterwards they 
 sent to ask him to meet them in Sir Thomas Cotton's 
 garden, " a place where the Members of both Houses used 
 frequently to walk." There they delivered up the Staff 
 and Key without saying much, and he " carried them to 
 his Lodging." 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., pp. 475-6. -f- Ib., p. 477. 
 
 I It will be remembered that Falkland had served under Holland in the 
 expedition against the Scots.
 
 142 FALKLANDS. 
 
 It may as well be said here that, some time afterwards, 
 the King " was very much unsatysfy'd with the Lord 
 Keeper Littleton," * himself. His refusal to perform what 
 " the King had enjoyn'd him with reference to the Earls of 
 Essex and Holland (before mentioned) " had not been 
 forgotten, and he had " courted that Party of both Houses." 
 Charles now commanded Falkland to go to Lyttleton 
 and " require the Seal from him ; in which the King was 
 very positive." Apart from the unpleasantness of demand- 
 ing the Seal from the Lord Keeper, there were very strong 
 reasons for not offending him and for keeping him in 
 office ; and, with very great difficulty, Falkland and Hyde 
 induced the King to relent so far as to substitute an order 
 to Lyttleton to bring the Great Seal to him at York and 
 attend him there, for a command to yield it to a messenger ; 
 and thus the matter was smoothed over and the loyalty of 
 Lyttleton retained. 
 
 In May, in addition to his English difficulties, Falkland 
 was worried by a complaint from the French Ambassador,f 
 who came to him and declared that the English Ambassa- 
 dor at Vienna had promised to Austria the assistance of 
 England against all her enemies, for the restitution of the 
 Palatinate. The King was very angry, and Falkland was 
 involved in a diplomatic squabble. But it was clear that 
 bloodshed at home would soon leave no time for foreign 
 wranglings. 
 
 At the end of May there was a stream of loyal noble- 
 men and gentlemen on their way to join the King at York. 
 Hyde went first to Ditcheley, uncertain whether to go 
 North, until Falkland heard that he was to be impeached for 
 high treason, and entrusted his brother-in-law with a letter, 
 urging him to hurry off to York with all possible speed. 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 568. 
 
 t S. P. O. Dom. Charles I., ccccxc., No. 55 ; Nicholas to Roe, i8th 
 May, 1642.
 
 THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS. 143 
 
 On the 2nd of June the famous Nineteen Propositions 
 were sent by the Houses of Parliament to the King. 
 " They claimed sovereignty for Parliament in every par- 
 ticular." They "carried with them an abrogation of the 
 existing constitution," and they included provisions which 
 reduced the King to humble servitude to the Commons ; 
 for no peer subsequently created was to be allowed to sit 
 in the House of Lords, unless the Commons, as well as the 
 Peers, consented to his doing so. It is most unfair to 
 accuse Falkland of changing his politics, because he repu- 
 diated the Nineteen Propositions with horror. 
 
 The Propositions caused a regular panic among the 
 cavaliers in London ; and the result was a general exodus 
 of loyally inclined people from that city. Falkland re- 
 mained until comparatively few were left ; but it soon 
 became clear that he was in a position of imminent 
 peril. Clarendon says * that less than a fifth of the 
 Peers remained at Westminster, and that he did not 
 believe " there was near a Moiety of the House of Com- 
 mons who continued there." 
 
 At last Falkland determined to leave London and join 
 the King ; so, accompanied by Colepepper, he started for 
 York. 
 
 * History, book v., p. 647.
 
 144 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WITH THE ROYAL STANDARD. 
 
 IT must have been with a sad heart that Falkland finally 
 broke off all relations with the Parliament and started on 
 an expedition concerning which he had the gloomiest fore- 
 bodings. The mournfulness of that unhappy year was 
 increased to him by the death of his brother, Lorenzo,* 
 who was killed in the wars in Ireland, at the Battle of the 
 Swords, t 
 
 We occasionally hear in our own day of a proposition that 
 members of Parliament should be paid. How much better 
 it would be to follow the example which was set in the 
 times of which I am writing, when, instead of paying M.P.'s 
 anything, the Government fined them 100 for absence 
 from London and deprived them of their seats. J This, 
 however, was with the object of preventing them from 
 joining the King, and many members were arrested on their 
 way North, and committed to prison. 
 
 Happily, Falkland and his companion reached York in 
 safety. On his arrival he sought Hyde, and the first meet- 
 ing of the two friends was marred by a little disagreement. || 
 Falkland had expected the already prepared answer to the 
 Nineteen Propositions to have been printed; Hyde had with- 
 held it, and Falkland was both irritated and disappointed ; 
 
 *S. P. Dom. Charles I., cccclxxxviii., No. 75. 
 
 t Life of Lady Falkland, p. 185. 
 
 I Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 648. 
 
 % Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. no. \\Ib., PP- no-in.
 
 THE FORTY-FIVE PEERS. 145 
 
 but, when Hyde explained the technical reasons for which 
 he had kept back the reply,* Falkland's vexation was 
 turned upon himself for his own inadvertence in its prepa- 
 ration, and he was at once reconciled to his " Dear Sweet- 
 heart." The MS. of the answer, slightly altered, was sent 
 to the printers that night. 
 
 The all-important question now became " was there 
 to be war?" Would the Parliament fight? Would the 
 King fight ? Falkland and his friends were all for peace. 
 On the 1 3th of June, the King issued a declaration to those 
 assembled at York, accompanied by an assurance that he 
 did not intend to make use of them in a war against the 
 Parliament, unless in self-defence. Forty-five Peers, in- 
 cluding Falkland, replied by signing a promise to defend 
 his person, crown and prerogatives. A couple of days 
 later, Charles made an even stronger declaration of his 
 determination not to fight and called upon his Council and 
 all his nobility to bear witness to this protest on his part. 
 
 On this, Falkland, the aforesaid forty-four Peers, and 
 some others, signed a document, in which they said : 
 " We . . . being here upon the place and Witnesses of his 
 Majesty's frequent and earnest Declarations and Pro- 
 fessions of his abhorring all designs of making War upon 
 his Parliament, and not seeing any colour of Preparations 
 or Counsels that might reasonably beget the belief of any 
 such Designs, do profess before God, and testify to all the 
 World, that we are fully perswaded that his Majesty hath 
 no such intention." j- 
 
 Falkland, nor Falkland alone, has been severely 
 censured for signing this declaration. Even some of his 
 admirers have considered his doing so a blot upon his 
 reputation. 
 
 It appears to me that there is a good deal to be said in 
 his defence. I admit that, before the very eyes of Falk- 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 130. 
 
 t Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 655. 
 
 10
 
 146 FALKLANDS. 
 
 land, an army was being collected and put into readiness ; 
 but if, as a precaution against burglars, I provide myself 
 with a revolver, or if, on going for a walk on a dark night, 
 I take in my hand a thick stick, it is not with the slightest 
 wish to shoot or to fight with any person or persons what- 
 soever. But I may have heard it reported that burglars 
 and tramps are in the neighbourhood, and should a burglar 
 enter my house and demand the key of my plate-chest, or 
 were a tramp to try to rob me of my watch, I should cer- 
 tainly wish to be in a position to defend myself; and, if I 
 did so, the tramp or the burglar would not be justified in 
 calling me a sanctimonious humbug and a breaker of vows, 
 if on the previous Sunday I had joined in the invocation 
 of the Litany : " From battle, etc., good Lord, deliver us." 
 
 Although Falkland and his allies professed "before God" 
 that they believed the King had no intention of "making war 
 upon his Parliament," they did not profess to believe that 
 he had any intention to submit tamely if his Parliament 
 were to make war upon him, a contingency which was 
 at that time by no means improbable. The declaration of 
 Falkland and his co-signatories amounted to no more than 
 saying: "We believe, before God, that if the Parliament 
 leaves the King alone, the King will leave the Parliament 
 alone. If not well then, of course, not." 
 
 So far as the actual position of affairs was affected by 
 the Peers' declaration, it is admirably summed up by Pro- 
 fessor Gardiner. " The immediate effect of the protestation 
 of the Peers was absolutely nothing. No war was ever 
 staved off by the declarations of both parties that they 
 intend to stand on the defensive, if it were only because 
 neither party is ever of one mind with the other upon the 
 limits which separate the defensive from the offensive." * 
 
 A week after f the signing of the protestation, forty- 
 three lords and gentlemen at York voluntarily agreed " to 
 assist His Majestic in defence of His Royall Person, the 
 
 * Hist., vol. x., p. 205. t 22nd June, 1642.
 
 STAINED WITH THE CHARMS OF " RHETORICK." 147 
 
 two Houses of Parliament, the Protestant Religion, etc.," * 
 by paying for the cost of a certain number of horses for 
 three months, at the rate of half a crown a day each. At 
 the foot of the agreement were the signatures with the 
 number of horses guaranteed by each party to it, beginning 
 with " The Prince, 200." There was considerable variety 
 in the numerals. Several promised 100, but 60, 50 and 40 
 were more usual, and "Lord Faulkland's " name has the 
 smallest number after it 20. 
 
 For the reasons which I have given above, I humbly 
 submit that Horace Walpole had no need to pretend 
 charity and intend sarcasm, when he wrote : " Falkland's 
 signing the declaration that he did not believe the King 
 intended to make war on the Parliament, and at the same 
 time subscribing to levy twenty horses for his Majesty's 
 service, comes under a description, which, for the sake of 
 the rest of his character, I am willing to call great infatua- 
 tion." f 
 
 The other side was professing peaceful intentions just 
 as much as the King's, with certainly no greater sincerity. 
 A tract, printed about the same time, begins : " Although 
 the charms of rhetorick have stained your Majesty's de- 
 clarations, answers, proclamations, speeches and messages 
 with all the gall and opposition that possibly could be 
 infused to exasperate us into the nature of bad subjects, 
 yet we are resolved to depart from nothing that may oblige 
 and court your Majesty to continue our gracious King." J 
 Oh, yes ! The excellent Roundheads were quite as pro- 
 fuse in their professions to " depart from nothing " that 
 would ensure peace, as were the Cavaliers ; and they were 
 at the same time arming themselves just as busily. 
 
 * Copy of the document in Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 119, foot- 
 note. 
 
 t Royal and Noble Authors, vol. v., p. 83. 
 
 I Vox Populi, " Or the People's humble Discovery of their own Loyalty 
 and his Majesty's Ungrounded Jealousy" (1642). Harleian Miscell., vol. 
 vii., p. 453.
 
 148 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Early in July, the Commons resolved upon immediately 
 raising an army of 10,000 men; and on the nth both 
 Lords and Commons declared that the King had actually 
 begun hostilities.* The next day Essex was appointed 
 commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary army. Falkland's 
 and Hyde's intention of endeavouring to keep Essex on 
 the Royalist side had been frustrated by the wilfulness of 
 the King. All those who assisted the King were now de- 
 clared by the Parliament to be traitors ; so there was no 
 longer any room for compromise. Twice before, when he 
 went to the Netherlands soon after his marriage, and when 
 he went to Scotland with Holland's horse, Falkland had 
 sought for fighting and been unable to get it. Now that 
 he wished for peace, he could not get it ; and, when he did 
 not want fighting, fighting was to be forced in his way. 
 
 In June, Charles had issued " commissions of array," f 
 directing the trained bands to obey officers of his own 
 appointment. His right had been questioned in Parlia- 
 ment. In the debate upon the matter, Falkland's friend, 
 Selden, who was considered by the King to be " well dis- 
 posed to his Service," \ to the disgust of the Royalists, 
 "declared himself very positively and with much sharpness 
 against the Commission of Array, as a thing expressly 
 without any Authority of Law." When the King heard of 
 this, "he was much troubled." Falkland stood by his 
 former ally and companion, and he asked the King's per- 
 mission to write him " a friendly letter " of remonstrance, 
 requesting an explanation of his conduct. 
 
 Selden " answer'd this Letter very frankly " to Falkland. 
 He gave his reasons for believing himself to be technically 
 quite correct in his legal objections ; but, said he, the Par- 
 liament was about to introduce an " Ordinance for the 
 Militia ; " and " he did acknowledge that he had been 
 
 * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 211. 
 
 t Ib., p. 202. 
 
 I Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 667. Ib.
 
 ERECTION OF THE ROYAL STANDARD. 149 
 
 more inclin'd to make that discourse in the House against 
 the Commission, that he might with the more freedom 
 argue against the Ordinance. . . . And so, upon the day 
 appointed for the Debate of their Ordinance ... he ap- 
 plied all his Faculties to the convincing them of the illegality 
 and monstrousness of it, by Arguments at least as clear and 
 demonstrable." Unfortunately for Selden and the Royalists, 
 " his confidence deceived him." The Commons now re- 
 fused to be influenced by his reasoning. "He had satisfied 
 them very well, when he Concurr'd with them in Judge- 
 ment ; but his Reasons were weak, when they crossed their 
 Resolutions." * 
 
 On the 22nd of August f King Charles erected the royal 
 standard at Nottingham, while hats were thrown into the 
 air amidst loud cries of " God save King Charles and hang 
 up the Roundheads." J 
 
 Even then, Falkland and his allies, Hyde and Cole- 
 pepper, sought for peace. They wished the King had 
 remained at York, and they advised him to return 
 thither ; but he would not listen to them. Then they 
 proposed "that his Majesty would send a Message to the 
 Parliament, with some overture to incline them to a 
 Treaty." At this the King was mightily offended, and 
 broke up the Council ; but, nothing daunted, " they 
 renew'd the same advice with more earnestness " the 
 following day, and at last he yielded. Colepepper and 
 three others were the bearers of the message. As is well 
 known, this peaceful overture was rejected. It " was 
 indeed receiv'd with Insolence and Contempt." || 
 
 Falkland and his two friends were still striving to 
 avert a civil war ; for they believed the King's chances 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 667. t 1642. 
 
 J Gardiner's Hist., vol. x., p. 220. 
 
 Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 7. Clarendon does not mention him- 
 self, Falkland or Colepepper ; but there can be little doubt whom he means 
 by " They about the King " in this instance. || Ib.
 
 1 50 FALKLANDS. 
 
 of success in one to be " desperate," therefore another 
 message was drawn up. On the one hand, the Parliament 
 had declared those who assisted the King to be traitors ; 
 on the other, the King had declared Essex and all who 
 assisted him to be traitors ; Charles now promised that, 
 if the Parliament would revoke its Declaration, he also 
 would revoke his, and " take down Our Standard." * 
 
 On this occasion he chose as his legate " the Lord 
 Falkland, his Principal Secretary of State." Falkland 
 went up to London, entered the House, delivered the 
 royal message, and then retired.f In addition to this 
 public duty, he had been ordered J to inform the Parlia- 
 mentary leaders, in private, that Charles was prepared to 
 agree to a reformation of the State religion and to any- 
 thing else which they " could reasonably desire." All to 
 no purpose ! After waiting two days in London he was 
 entrusted with a very unsatisfactory reply to take back to 
 his King. 
 
 About this time the impetuous Prince Rupert arrived 
 in England to give his assistance to his uncle, King 
 Charles, in the case of any fighting. It might have been 
 expected that Falkland would have had much in common 
 with this Prince. One of his biographers calls Rupert 
 " an artist, a philosopher and a statesman . . . the bravest 
 among the brave ; honest among knaves, reproached as 
 pure by profligates ; " and he declares that " his character 
 forms the best type of the Cavaliers." Much of what he 
 says of him might truthfully be applied to Falkland. Yet, 
 as we shall see presently, the two men, instead of feeling 
 drawn towards one another, were usually in antagonism. 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 12. 
 
 t Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 125. 
 
 I Die. of Nat. Biog., vol. ix., p. 250, and D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MS., 
 164, fol. 3146. 
 
 Eliot Warburton in his Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, 
 p. 13.
 
 A "SERVILE ROUT." 151 
 
 The Parliamentary army was at Northampton, and the 
 Parliament itself was having everything its own way in 
 London. On the last day of August it abolished stage- 
 plays and, on the first day of September, bishops. 
 
 Charles's army was presently upon the move ; but 
 Essex had placed garrisons in the line of towns between 
 Northampton and Worcester, in order to prevent him 
 from marching upon London. 
 
 The royal army marched from Nottingham to Shrews- 
 bury, where it was well received by the inhabitants 
 and the neighbouring gentry. Much as Falkland had 
 dreaded the war, and small as were his hopes of the 
 King's success, when at Y;crk and Nottingham, he ap- 
 pears to have somewhat changed his mind and to have 
 been a little more sanguine after the skirmish at Powick 
 Bridge, on 27th September ; tor he predicted in a letter * 
 that the rebellion would soon come to an end ; because the 
 army of Essex was composed to a great extent of " tailors, 
 embroiderers, or the like." Such was a common description 
 ot the Parliamentary army, and a rhymster, in some verses 
 on Falkland's own death, wrote of 
 
 The dul, mechanick, rude, 
 
 Hali beast, half man, Fox-tinker multitude. 
 
 Say, O ye Coblers, Weavers, Tinkers, you 
 
 Whose second trade is war and Preaching ; who 
 
 New prentices oth' field (O servile rout I) 
 
 Have there against your Prince your time serv'd out, etc. f 
 
 Falkland does not seem to have realised the power of a 
 well-led army of tailors. 
 
 After remaining at Shrewsbury for nearly three weeks, 
 the King advanced towards London ; " never less baggage 
 attended a Royal Army, there being not one Tent, and 
 very few Waggons belonging to the whole Train." J 
 
 * Die. of Nat. Biog., vol. ix., p. 250. 
 
 t " To the Memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady 
 Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland." 
 
 | Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 41.
 
 152 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Some days had the army been on the march, when 
 there was " discover'd an unhappy jealousy and division 
 between the principal Officers, which grew quickly into a 
 perfect Faction between the Foot and the Horse." * 
 
 Lord Lindsay was " General of the whole Army ; " but 
 Prince Rupert, soon after his arrival in this country, was 
 made General of the Horse. Rupert was excessively 
 sensitive about his authority and his position in the army, 
 and, possibly at his own suggestion, in his commission 
 " there was a clause inserted . . . exempting him from 
 receiving Orders from any Body but from the King him- 
 self." Therefore the "General of the whole Army" had 
 now only the infantry under his command. 
 
 The King's army had been wandering about for some 
 days in search of the enemy without result, when one night, 
 after Charles had gone to bed, news was brought to him of 
 its actual position. He at once called for Falkland and 
 gave him some directions for Prince Rupert to be conveyed 
 verbally. Falkland went to Rupert and delivered the 
 orders. " His Highness took it very ill," says Clarendon, 
 " and expostulated with the Lord Falkland for giving him 
 Orders. He could not have directed his passion against 
 any Man who would feel or regard it less." f 
 
 " It is my office," said Falkland, " to signify what the 
 King bids me ; which I shall always do. Your Royal 
 Highness, in neglecting it, neglects the King." 
 
 Charles was not a master who could be trusted to stand 
 by his servants when they faithfully performed disagree- 
 able duties ; and very shortly after Rupert had refused to 
 obey an order from the King received through Falkland, 
 instead of being in disgrace, Rupert was in the highest 
 favour, and Charles followed his advice, " rejecting the 
 opinion of the General." 
 
 The first regular engagement between the Royal and 
 the Parliamentary troops took place at Edgehill, and, on 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., pp. 42-3. t Ib., p. 43.
 
 EDGEHILL. 153 
 
 the morning before the battle, Charles wrote the following 
 letter to Rupert,* which shows that he was acting on his 
 suggestions : 
 
 " The King to P ce Rupert. 
 " Nephew 
 
 " I have given order as you have desyred ; 
 so I dont know but all the foot and cannon will bee at Egge- 
 hill betymes this morning, where you will also find 
 
 " Your loving oncle and 
 
 " Faithful frend, Charles R. 
 
 "4 o'clock this Sonday morning." f 
 
 That night, Falkland, with his friends, Hyde and Cole- 
 pepper, was quartered with the general (Lindsay), in the 
 village of Culworth. + As soon as the order came for the 
 army to assemble at Edgehill, Lindsay, Falkland and 
 Colepepper hastened to the scene of action ; but a royal 
 command was sent to Hyde to retire with the Prince of 
 Wales and the Duke of York to the top of the hill and 
 to remain there during the battle. It might have been 
 better if Falkland also, as Secretary of State, had remained 
 a mere looker-on ; but he was anxious to take part in the 
 battle and was attached to Wilmot's horse. 
 
 Although the Royalist army was so early in the field, it 
 was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon when the action 
 began. Wilmot's horse made a grand charge, but followed 
 the retreating enemy " with Spurs and loose Reins " || too 
 far, and thus became separated from the rest of their sup- 
 
 * Memoirs of Prince Rupert. 
 
 t "About twelve of the clock, Prince Rupert sent the King word that 
 the Body of the Rebels' Army was within seven or eight Miles ... on 
 the edge of Warwickshire ; and that it would be in his Majesty's power, if he 
 thought fit, to Fight a Battle the next day." Clarendon's Hist., book iv. 
 p. 44. 
 
 I Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 129-30. 
 
 23rd Oct., 1642. || Clarendon's Hist., vol. vi., p. 48.
 
 154 FALKLANDS. 
 
 ports. In this exploit Falkland saw plenty of fighting, and 
 Clarendon says : " In all such actions Lord Falkland forgot 
 that he was Secretary of State, and desired to be where 
 there would probably be most to do." 
 
 At the end of the charge, Falkland observed that a 
 body of the enemy's horse remained intact, and he asked 
 Wilmot's permission to lead a charge against it. 
 
 " My Lord," replied Wilmot, " we have got the day, and 
 let us live to enjoy the fruit of it." * 
 
 Wilmot may have disliked a suggestion from a civilian ; 
 or he may have considered Falkland too impetuous ; but, 
 as it turned out, it would have been better to break up 
 this small body of cavalry, for it " did terrible execution " 
 a little later, when Wilmot's horse had got out of touch with 
 the main body of the King's forces. Indeed, it very nearly 
 captured the King himself, with his two sons, and it slew a 
 number of his men, including Lord Lindsay, the commander- 
 m-chief. f 
 
 Not being allowed to lead a charge against the unbroken 
 foe, Falkland followed the rout ; and in this, says Claren- 
 don, " he was like to have incurr'd great Peril, by interpos- 
 ing to save those who had thrown away their Armes, and 
 against whom, it may be, others were more fierce for their 
 having thrown them away ; so that a Man might think, he 
 came into the Field chiefly out of Curiosity to see the face 
 of Danger, and Charity to prevent the shedding of Blood." J 
 
 Edgehill was one of those battles which are at first 
 claimed as victories by both the belligerents, and after- 
 wards prove to have been won by neither. " Night, the 
 Common Friend to weary'd and dismay'd Armies, parted " 
 the Cavaliers and Roundheads. Charles " with his whole 
 Forces himself spent the Night in the Field, by such a 
 fire as could be made of the little wood and bushes which 
 grew thereabouts." It was "a very cold Night," with "a 
 
 * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 130. t/4., pp. 130-1. 
 
 J Hist., book vii., p. 357.
 
 PETITION FROM THE PARLIAMENT. 155 
 
 terrible frost," and " there was no shelter of either Tree or 
 Hedge." As to the King's poor soldiers, they were " with- 
 out any refreshment of Victual," and those "who stragled 
 into the Villages for relief, were knocked in the head by 
 the Common People." * 
 
 Reports came in that the " enemy was gone ; but when 
 the Day appear'd, the contrary was discover'd ; for then 
 they were seen standing in the same posture and place in 
 which they Fought, from whence the Earl of Essex, wisely, 
 never suffer'd them to stir all the Night." Wisely, too, 
 " he caused all manner of Provisions, with which the 
 Country supplied him plentifully, to be brought thither 
 to " his men " for their refreshment." f 
 
 Clarendon calculated the killed in the battle " by the 
 Testimony of the Ministers, and others of the next Parish, 
 who took care of the Burying of the Dead," to have been 
 "above five thousand." There was to be no more killing, 
 however, on the day following the engagement. The two 
 armies " only look'd one upon another the whole day," 
 and, in the evening, each retired, the King to his former 
 quarters, and Essex to Warwick Castle. 
 
 During the succeeding days, while Essex moved on to 
 Worcester, the King marched to Banbury, Woodstock, 
 Oxford and Reading. The news of his having arrived so 
 far on his way towards London created great alarm in the 
 Metropolis. The Parliament, " whilst the king was at 
 Nottingham and Shrewsbury . . . gave orders magis- 
 terially lor the war, but now it was come to their own 
 doors, they took not that delight in it." J The Houses, 
 therefore, sent a messenger to the King, requesting " a safe 
 conduct from his Majesty for a Committee of Lords and 
 Commons, to attend his Majesty with an humble Petition 
 from his Parliament." Falkland wrote in reply to Lord 
 Grey de Waike, Speaker of the House of Lords, " that 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., pp. 49-50. t Ib., p. 50. 
 
 J Ib., p. 76- 8 Ib. t P- 7-
 
 156 FALKLANDS. 
 
 his Majesty hath now sent (which I have enclosed) a 
 safe conduct" for those named by the Parliament, with 
 the exception of " Sir John Evelin, of Wilts." This ex- 
 ception caused a little delay, and the King advanced to 
 Colebrook ; but five days later, the petitioners arrived and 
 presented their address. 
 
 Clarendon appears to have thought * that, if the King 
 had now retired to Reading, peace might very possibly 
 have been secured, and that Windsor Castle would most 
 likely have been placed at his disposal by the Parliament, 
 while he was in treaty with it Even to have remained 
 inactive at Colebrook till he heard again from the Parlia- 
 ment, as the King intended, might have admitted of a con- 
 tinuance of the inclination and negotiations for peace ; but 
 all was spoiled by the headstrong Prince Rupert, who was 
 as anxious to promote the war as Falkland was to prevent 
 it. 
 
 Rupert had given a willing ear " to the Vulgar Intelli- 
 gence every Man receiv'd from his Friends in London " as 
 to the terror "his Name gave to the Enemy ,"f and the 
 number of people in the city who were filled with loyalty 
 to the King ; so, foolishly supposing " that if his Army 
 drew near, no resistance would be made," he took it upon 
 himself, " without any direction from the King," to advance 
 " with the Horse and Dragoons to Hounslow," on the very 
 morning after the representatives of the Parliament had 
 returned to London ; and having perpetrated this most 
 unjustifiable piece of imprudence, he had the impertinence 
 to send " to the King to desire him that the Army might 
 march after " him. As matters then stood Charles found 
 this to be of " absolute necessity," as Essex was now at 
 hand, and if the Royalist army had been divided, either 
 part of it might have been surrounded, or at least cut off 
 from the other. 
 
 An immediate advance on Charles's part to join Rupert 
 
 * Hist., book vi., pp. 73-4. t Ib,
 
 BATTLE OF BRENTFORD. 157 
 
 was therefore imperative, and the result was the assault 
 and taking of Brentford, " after a very warm Service," a 
 victory which " prov'd not all fortunate to his Majesty." 
 For a messenger had actually been despatched by the 
 Parliament to propose an armistice to the King. Naturally 
 this emissary expected to find Charles ready to receive 
 him and the overtures of which he was the bearer, with 
 open arms and a pacific spirit. What he actually found 
 was that the King was in the midst of an exceptionally 
 sanguinary battle, apparently of his own seeking. Can we 
 wonder at the man hastening back to London after seeing 
 this without fulfilling his errand ? 
 
 On the messenger's return thither, and recounting his 
 experiences, Charles was loudly censured as a monster of 
 " Treachery, Perfidy and Blood," * and, for the moment, all 
 hope of peace appeared to be at an end. 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 75.
 
 158 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WITH THE COURT AT OXFORD. 
 
 THE King went to Hampton Court, and thence to Oatlands, 
 where a royal declaration a declaration which almost 
 amounted to an apology was drawn up by Falkland,* 
 and sent to the Parliament. In reply to the accusations 
 made against Charles for attacking Brentford while the 
 negotiations for peace were in progress, it says : " The Earl 
 of Essex being before possessed of all the other avenues to 
 his army, by his forces at Windsor, Acton and Kingston, 
 was a more strange introduction to peace than for his 
 Majesty not to suffer himself to be cooped up on all sides, 
 because a treaty had been mentioned, which was so really 
 and so much desired by his Majesty, that this proceeding 
 seems to him purposely by some intending to divert (which 
 it could not do) that his inclination. That his Majesty had 
 no intention to master the City by so advancing, besides 
 his profession, which (how meanly soever they seem to 
 value it) he conceives a sufficient argument . . . may 
 appear by his not pursuing his victory at Brainford.f . . . 
 His Majesty wonders that his soldiers should be charged 
 with thirsting after blood, who took above five hundred 
 prisoners in the very heat of the fight, his Majesty having 
 since dismissed all the common soldiers. . . . And his 
 Majesty intends to march to such a distance from his city 
 of London as may take away all pretence of apprehension 
 from his army." Then, it continued, the King would be 
 
 * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 135-8. t Brentford.
 
 WINTER QUARTERS AT OXFORD. 159 
 
 prepared either to receive suggestions of terms for a peace, 
 " or to end the pressures and miseries which his subjects 
 (to his great grief) suffer through this war by a present 
 battle." 
 
 Charles retired to Reading, and a little later * he took up 
 his quarters for the winter at Oxford. Declarations and 
 replies continued to pass between Falkland, on behalf of the 
 King, and the Parliament ; but the unhappy attack upon 
 Brentford had shattered public confidence, and nothing 
 came of them. 
 
 Of the condition of Falkland at this time, Clarendon 
 gives so excellent a description that I am tempted to quote 
 from it at considerable length. 
 
 " From the Entrance into this unnatural War, his 
 natural chearfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a 
 kind of sadness and dejection of Spirit stole upon him, 
 which he had never been used to." f Then after stating 
 that, at first, Falkland believed a great battle would 
 before long decide the war one way or the other, and 
 compel the defeated side to submit to any terms offered 
 by the victor, Clarendon says that Falkland " resisted 
 these indispositions " to depression ; but that " after the 
 King's return from Brentford, and the furious resolutions 
 of the two Houses not to admit any Treaty of Peace, those 
 indispositions " gradually increased until he had acquired 
 " a perfect habit of unchearfulness ; and He who had been 
 exactly easy and affable to all men . . . and held any 
 cloudiness and less pleasantness of the visage a kind of 
 rudeness and incivility, became on a sudden less com- 
 municable and very sad, pale, and extremely affected with 
 the Spleen." A great change, again, took place at this 
 time in his dress, which hitherto he had " always minded 
 with more neatness, industry, and expence than is usual to 
 so great a Soul." Now " he became not only incurious but 
 too negligent " in his toilet. In his manner there was a 
 
 Nov., 1642. t Clarendon's Hist., book vii., pp. 357-8.
 
 160 FALKLANDS. 
 
 still more marked alteration. He, who had always been 
 so remarkable for his courteous suavity, became so quick, 
 sharp, and severe, that "there wanted not some men (strangers 
 to his nature and disposition) who believ'd him proud and 
 imperious." 
 
 When " there was any Overture, or hope of Peace, he 
 would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous 
 to press anything which he thought might promote it." 
 
 Falkland had been famed for being a brilliant and 
 entertaining companion. Now he would sit moodily 
 " among his friends," and " after a deep silence, and frequent 
 sighs," " with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word 
 Peace, Peace ; and would passionately profess, that the very 
 agony of the War, and the view of the calamities and 
 desolation, the Kingdom did and must endure, took his 
 sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." 
 So anxious was he for an end of the war, that it was 
 said he was an advocate for peace at any price, an assertion 
 which Clarendon calls "a most unseasonable Calumny." * 
 
 While some of the Royalists brought this unjust charge 
 against him, the Roundheads were even more bitter against 
 him than against the out-and-out supporters of the policy 
 of King Charles. 
 
 During one of the negotiations for peace, the Parlia- 
 mentary General had orders, under certain conditions, " to 
 declare Pardon to those that will withdraw from the King, 
 except " Falkland and nine others.f Had he been captured, 
 Falkland's head would not have been worth a month's 
 purchase. One great obstacle in the way of Falkland's 
 pacific endeavours was the promise extracted from the 
 King by the Queen, that he would never make peace un- 
 less by her interposition and mediation. She wished the 
 kingdom to be indebted to her for that blessing if it ever 
 came. \ 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 359. 
 
 t Whitelock's Memorials of the English Affairs, etc., p. 62. 
 
 J Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 149 seq.
 
 
 
 LETICE, WIFE OF Lucius, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND.
 
 WINTER AT OXFORD. l6l 
 
 Although the Queen was abroad, it is probable, nay 
 almost certain, that many of the ladies of the Court must 
 have been at Oxford while Charles spent the winter there ; 
 and we may piously believe that Falkland consoled himself, 
 in his sadness and dejection, by discussing " virtue " with 
 " M ris Moray," whom, as Aubrey tells us, " he loved above 
 all creatures." Yet it may be more charitable to imagine 
 that he spared a little time to traverse the few miles which 
 lay between Oxford and his home at Great Tew, and that 
 he had in his beautiful Letice's 
 
 Week-day Temple been, 
 Her consecrated closet ; and there seen 
 This Lady on her knees, whilst with her eyes 
 She climb'd the stars, and did invade the skies.* 
 
 At least, let us hope that no ugly and exaggerated 
 rumours reached her ears of her husband's affection for 
 his friend, whom Clarendon described as " of no al- 
 luring beauty," f and Aubrey as " a handsome lady." J 
 I thus earnestly hope, because " when faults were 
 evident," Letice " would reprove with a great deal of 
 power." 
 
 Falkland, at this time, appears to have stayed usually 
 at Oxford, and his home duties had to give way to those of 
 the Court and the Kingdom. 
 
 On one occasion, whilst he was at Oxford, Charles had 
 been speaking very favourably of Hyde to Falkland, when 
 he suddenly remarked upon Hyde's peculiar style in 
 writing, and said that " he should know anything written 
 by him if it were brought to him by a stranger amongst a 
 multitude of writings by other men." || Falkland, who 
 was doubtless well aware that Hyde was fond of amusing 
 himself by counterfeiting the literary and the oratorical 
 
 * " To the Memory of, etc., the Lady Letice." 
 t Life, vol. i., p. 202. \ Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350. 
 
 The Holy Life and Death of the Lady Falkland, p. 182. 
 || Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. ipi-2. 
 II
 
 1 62 FALKLANDS. 
 
 styles of others, observed that, intimate as he was, and long 
 had been, with Hyde, he often mistook his manuscript for 
 that of others, as his style and line of "argument" fre- 
 quently varied. 
 
 " I will lay you an angel," replied Charles, " that, let the 
 argument be what it may, you shall never bring me a sheet 
 of paper of Hyde's writing without my discovering it to 
 be his." 
 
 Falkland accepted the bet. Shortly afterwards he, as 
 usual, took the reports of the political speeches made in 
 London to show the King. Charles looked through them 
 and specially noticed one by Lord Pembroke, saying that 
 he should not have thought that Pembroke could have 
 made a speech at such length, "though," added he, "every 
 word was so much his own that nobody else could make 
 it." 
 
 Now this happened to be a counterfeit composition of 
 Hyde's. As there were other people in the room, Falkland 
 only whispered " in the King's ear" a word or two implying 
 that the work was Hyde's, " which," says Clarendon, " his 
 Majesty in the instant apprehended, blushed, and put his 
 hand into his pocket, and gave him the angel, saying he 
 had never paid a wager more willingly, and was very merry 
 upon it." 
 
 There was another piece of by-play between Falkland 
 and the King which was not quite so " merry." Charles 
 was dispirited, as well he might be, and Falkland wished 
 to distract and amuse him. 
 
 I will give Wellwood's description* of what occurred. 
 " The King being at Oxford during the Civil Wars, went 
 one day to see the public library, where he was shewed 
 among other books a Virgil nobly printed and exquisitely 
 bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would 
 
 * Memoirs of the Most Material Transactions in England for the Last 
 Hundred Years Preceding the Revolution, by James Wellwood, M.D., pp. 
 90-2.
 
 SOXTES VIRGILIAN&. 163 
 
 have his Majesty make a tryal of his fortune by the Sortes 
 Virgiliance, an usual thing of Augury some ages past, 
 made by opening a Virgil. Whereupon, the King opening 
 the Book, the Period which happened to come up was 
 part of Dido's imprecation against ^Eneas. sEneid. Dry- 
 den thus translates : 
 
 Oppress'd with Numbers in th' unequal Field, 
 His Men discourag'd, and himself expell'd, 
 Let him for Succour sue from Place to Place, 
 Torn from his Subjects, and his Son's Embrace, etc. 
 
 JEneid, iv. 
 
 It is said King Charles seem'd concerned at this acci- 
 dent ; the Lord Falkland, who observed it, would likewise 
 try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping he might 
 fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his 
 case, and thereby divert the King's thoughts from any 
 impression the other might make upon him." But 
 the first step into a quicksand is usually followed by 
 another still deeper. " The place Lord Falkland stumbled 
 upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other 
 had been to the King's ; being the following expressions 
 of Evander, upon the untimely death of his son Pallas. 
 ALneid, lib. xi. Non h<zc y O Palla, dederas promissa 
 parenti, etc., thus translated by Mr. Dryden : 
 
 Pallas ! thou hast fail'd thy plighted Word, 
 To fight with Caution, not to tempt the Sword : 
 
 1 warn'd thee, but in vain ; for well I knew, 
 What Perils youthful Ardour would pursue : 
 That boiling blood would carry thee too far ; 
 Young as thou wert in Dangers, raw to War ! 
 O curst essay of Arms, disastrous Doom, 
 Prelude of bloody Fields, and Fights to come." 
 
 One can easily imagine the decision with which Falk- 
 land would shut that Virgil and put it back in its place on 
 the shelf.
 
 1 64 FALKLANDS. 
 
 But Falkland and his royal master had plenty of occu- 
 pation within the regions of fact without wandering fruit- 
 lessly or worse among the realms of fancy. Charles could 
 not but increase in his appreciation of the ability of his 
 Secretary of State. The King, says Lloyd, "valued him 
 because he understood his Parts and Services in the Treaty 
 at Oxford, where he was eminent for two things : the con- 
 tinuing of Propositions and the concealing of Inclinations." 
 And he adds that Falkland was one of those wise coun- 
 sellors that " adviseth the best by supposing the worst." * 
 
 About the end of December a temporary friction dis- 
 turbed the unanimity of the three allies, Falkland, Hyde 
 and Colepepper. By the death of Sir Charles Caesar, the 
 Mastership of the Rolls became vacant.f The post had 
 been already promised to Colepepper, and he had intended 
 to accept it, yet still to retain the Chancellorship of the 
 Exchequer. Falkland, who had a very high opinion of 
 the ability and power of Hyde, strongly recommended the 
 King to make Hyde Chancellor of the Exchequer when 
 Colepepper became Master of the Rolls. Charles took his 
 advice, offered the Exchequer to Hyde, and Hyde accepted 
 it 
 
 Colepepper was very angry ! It was difficult for him to 
 say very much ; but he looked a great deal ; and he 
 marked his dissatisfaction by delaying to surrender his 
 patent of the Chancellorship. This annoyed Falkland, 
 who, together with Lord Digby, remonstrated with 
 Colepepper very warmly upon the subject, and called the 
 attention of the King to his unwarrantable tenacity of 
 his first office. Then, "grudgingly and as of necessity," 
 Colepepper gave up his patent, and Hyde succeeded him, 
 was sworn a member of the Privy Council, and was 
 knighted. 
 
 In January, 1643, Falkland gladly sent safe conducts to 
 
 * Lloyd's Memoires, p. 333. 
 
 t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 169.
 
 THE SCOTCH COMMISSIONERS. 165 
 
 the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke and Salisbury,* 
 who were appointed by the Parliament to present some 
 petitions with a view to peace. Unhappily nothing came 
 of them. The already-mentioned promise, made by the 
 King to the Queen, was, in Clarendon's opinion, the chief 
 obstacle to the acceptance of the terms offered by the 
 Parliament. " The expectation of her arrival at Oxford 
 was the reason that the King so much desired the pro- 
 longation of the treaty," he says ; and he states that 
 Charles " saw with her eyes and determined by her judg- 
 ment ; and did not only pay her this adoration, but 
 desired that all men should know that he was swayed by 
 her, which was not good for either of them." 
 
 This must have been simply exasperating to Falkland, 
 although the Queen had been an excellent friend to his 
 mother, as well as to his sister, who was one of her maids- 
 of-honour. Falkland and the best of the King's coun- 
 sellors were sincerely desirous for peace ; so also, is there 
 every reason to believe, were the representatives of the 
 Parliament ; but Charles feared his wife, hoped that she 
 would be the means of bringing him foreign assistance, 
 listened to the suggestions of unofficial friends who wished 
 for fighting, and kept vacillating, changing his mind, and 
 going back from his word. Can it be wondered at that 
 Falkland " contradicted him with more bluntness and 
 sharp sentences " ? 
 
 Now and then the relations between Charles and Falk- 
 land were considerably strained. On one occasion some 
 Scotch Commissioners came to Oxford and presented to 
 the King a long petition against the Church government 
 and the bishops, f Charles called his Council together 
 and informed its members that he intended to reply to 
 each objection contained in the petition and to explain at 
 full length to the Commissioners the doctrine of the divine 
 
 * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 149. 
 t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 190 seq.
 
 1 66 FALKLANDS. 
 
 rights of Episcopacy. Falkland was quite willing that the 
 petition should be refused ; but he protested against 
 Charles's proposal to inflict his theological views upon 
 the petitioners ; and he explained to him, " with a little 
 quickness of wit (as his notions were always sharp, and 
 expressed with notable vivacity)," that his doctrine, his 
 theology and his arguments, however excellent in them- 
 selves, were altogether beside the purpose. At this the 
 King became " warmer than he used to be," i.e., he flew into 
 a passion, and he accused Falkland of " want of affection for 
 the Church." Then he pettishly declared most positively 
 " that he would have the substance of what he had said, 
 or of the like nature, digested into his answer ; with 
 which reprehension all sat very silent, having never 
 undergone the like before." 
 
 Hyde, who was a man of tact, managed to pacify him, 
 whereupon he yielded to Falkland's advice, and " vouch- 
 safed to make some kind of excuse for the passion he had 
 spoken with." 
 
 Falkland's anxieties and worries were beginning to tell 
 upon his health, and he was rapidly losing all hopes of 
 bringing about a peace. In April * he wrote to Roe : 
 
 "If my health were not so ill, with all my business 
 to boot, I should not hope to be excused for being so slow 
 in giving you thanks for twb so great favours. I heartily 
 wish we were able to make use of any good inclinations 
 to us beyond the sea, and perhaps they are the kinder 
 because they find it safe to be so whilst we are as we are, 
 that is, unable to take them at their words and make use 
 of their kindness. . . . My desire of peace and my opinion 
 of the way to it agree wholly with yours, and I wish 
 the second followed but both sides must then contribute 
 that the first might be obtained, and I might then have 
 occasion to congratulate with the kingdom too." f 
 
 An unpleasant episode, which took place while the 
 
 * 1643. t S. P. O. Dom. Charles I., ccccxvii., No. 65.
 
 WALLER'S PLOT. 167 
 
 King was at Oxford, was brought about by an old friend 
 of Falkland's. 
 
 Edmund Waller, the poet, had become a member 
 of Parliament, and, like Falkland, he had thrown in his 
 lot with the popular party without yielding to any in his 
 respect for the King. In the debate upon the Ecclesiastical 
 Petitions, in 1641, he had sided, for the most part, with 
 Falkland, and he was in conflict with Pym in the following 
 November.* When Charles raised his standard at Not- 
 tingham, Waller remained in the House of Commons ; 
 but he is stated to have sent the King " 1000 broad 
 pieces." f He was among the commissioners sent to 
 Oxford to endeavour to arrange a peace ; and Charles, 
 on receiving him, said : 
 
 " Mr. Waller, though the last, you are not the worst in 
 our favour." 
 
 In London, Waller was one of " the principal Persons 
 employed, and trusted to give advertisement to, and 
 correspond with, the King's Ministers at Oxford," with 
 a view to peace. J He " held constant Intelligence and 
 Intercourse with the Lord Falkland." He held it, however, 
 by means of messages. " Out of the cautiousness of 
 his own Nature," he " never writ a word." Waller's 
 brother-in-law, a man named Tomkins, who was employed 
 with him in the negotiations for peace, and, like him, was 
 inclined to be much more loyal to the King .than the 
 Parliament intended, was not so cautious, and " sometimes 
 writ to the Lord Falkland," with the result that his writings 
 fell into the hands of his employers, that he was tried, 
 and that he was hanged " on a Gibbet, by his own House 
 in Holborn," " with all circumstances of severity, and 
 cruelty." || 
 
 But to return to Waller. He "by Messengers signified 
 
 * Introduction to Poems of E. Waller, ed. by G. Thorn, 1893, p. xxxvi. 
 t Ib., p. xxxviii. { Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 254. 
 
 Ib., p. 258. ||/6.
 
 1 68 FALKLANDS. 
 
 to" Falkland "that the Number of those who desired 
 Peace, and abhor'd the proceedings of the Houses, was 
 very considerable in London ; " and that they were re- 
 solved "to declare and manifest themselves." * Falkland 
 " always return'd Answer, that they should expedite those 
 Expedients, as soon as might be, for that delays made the 
 War more difficult to be restrain'd." This is apparently 
 all that Falkland had very directly and personally to do 
 with Waller in the matter, f 
 
 Waller would seem to have sent messages, and even 
 spoken to other courtiers, both male and female, about 
 a plan which he was maturing. After cautiously, and 
 indirectly, negotiating with Falkland with a view to Falk- 
 land's main object Peace, he clumsily formed a plan 
 which effectually defeated that object. That plan was the 
 well-known Waller's Plot, which, says Whitelock, was " To 
 surprise the City Militia, and some Members of Parlia- 
 ment, and to let in the King's Forces to surprise the City 
 and to dissolve the Parliament." J 
 
 The result is but too well known. Waller was arrested 
 on the 3ist of May. || He was paralysed with fear and 
 made an abject fool of himself. Clarendon says : " Mr. 
 Waller was so confounded with Fear and Apprehension, 
 that he confess'd whatever he had said, heard, thought, or 
 seen ; all that he knew himself, and all that he suspected 
 of others . . . what such and such Ladies of great Honour 
 . . . had spoke to him in their chambers," etc. 11 Again, 
 D'Ewes says that at the bar of the House, " after a low 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 258. 
 
 t Professor Gardiner says that Falkland " conducted the secret cor- 
 respondence with the London partakers in Waller's plot, but it is im- 
 possible now to say whether he did so as a mere matter of duty, or because 
 he considered that all was fair against enemies who were also rebels.'' 
 Die. Nat. Biog., vol. ix., " Falkland." 
 
 J Memorials of the English Affairs, etc., p. 70. 
 
 Introduction to Poems of E. Waller, p. xlv. 
 
 || 1643. 1f Hist., book vii., p. 253.
 
 DISPUTE WITH COLEPEPPER. 169 
 
 reverence made, he spake expressing in his very t6ne and 
 gesture the lowest degree of a dejected spirit." * He was 
 fined ;io,ooo and banished from the country, j- It is 
 reported that he spent ,30,000 in bribery. J 
 
 The disastrous result of Waller's foolish plot drove 
 Falkland to despair. History does not inform us whether 
 it was any consolation to him to hear of his own wife's wish 
 " that lawful authority could vote it fit, that not only the 
 second Fridays, but also the last Wednesdays in every 
 Moneth, should be kept solemnly throughout the land ; 
 that our Fasts were doubled, as wel as our troubles." But 
 both friend and foe seemed to be conspiring to prevent 
 that " Peace, Peace " for which he longed so ardently. 
 
 War was being carried on, in June, in four different 
 districts. For a time, the Royalists had a certain measure 
 of success. Falkland's former friend, John Hampden, was 
 defeated, on the Parliamentary side, and mortally wounded 
 at Chalgrove Field, on the i8th ; the Fairfaxes were beaten 
 by the King's troops at Atherton [| Moor, near Bedford, on 
 the 3Oth ; and, on the I3th of July, the Parliamentary 
 army in the west was defeated at Roundaway Down. 
 After this, Bristol was taken and sacked by Prince Rupert. 
 
 Subsequently to the taking of Bristol came the dispute 
 between Prince Rupert and the Marquis of Hertford ; and 
 the King left Oxford for Bristol, to inquire into the matter, 
 taking with him Falkland, Hyde, Colepepper and the Duke 
 of Richmond. 
 
 At Bristol, there was once more a difference of opinion 
 between Falkland and Hyde, on the one side, and 
 Colepepper on the other. Bristol " was the only port of 
 trade within the king's quarters, which was like to yield 
 a considerable benefit to the king, if it were well managed ; 
 
 * I quote from the Introduction to Waller's Poems, p. Iv. 
 t Ib., p. Ivii. J Ib., p. Ivi. 
 
 The Holy Life and Death, etc., p. 165. 
 || Now spelt Adwalton.
 
 170 FALKLANDS. 
 
 and the direction thereof belonged entirely to " * the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer ; but when Hyde, as such, 
 sent " to the officers of the customs to be informed of the 
 present state of trade, he found that some treaty was made, 
 and order given it by Mr. Ashburnham, a groom of the 
 bed-chamber, who, with the assistance and advice of 
 Sir John Colepepper, had prevailed with the King to assign 
 that province to him, as a means to raise a present sum of 
 money for the supply of the army." 
 
 Hyde " took very heavily " this interference with his 
 office, and Falkland, who was enraged at it, " expostulated 
 with the King with some warmth ; and more passionately 
 with Sir John Colepepper and Mr. Ashburnham, f as a 
 violation of the friendship they professed to the chancellor, 
 and an invasion of his office ; which no man bears easily." 
 His scoldings were effective. Both Colepepper and Ash- 
 burnham " were ashamed of it, and made some weak 
 excuses of incognitance and inadvertence." Charles, again, 
 " discerned the mischief that would ensue, if there should 
 be an apparent schism amongst those he so entirely 
 trusted," and he made a sort of apology. There is good 
 reason for believing that the King was somewhat afraid 
 of his Secretary of State. 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 197 seq. 
 
 t In Ashburnham' s Narrative, by a late Lord Ashburnham, Mr. 
 Ashburnham's conduct in this matter is defended, pp. 15-29. Friends of 
 Clarendon, vol. i., p. 147.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BATTLE AND DEATH. 
 
 THE patching-up of the quarrel between Rupert and Hert- 
 ford caused a delay which prevented the royal troops from 
 taking full advantage of the capture of Bristol. There was 
 considerable difference of opinion among the King's advisers 
 as to what it would be best to do next. On the one part 
 it was urged that, as Gloucester, which was so near, " was 
 the only Garrison the Rebels had between Bristol and 
 Lancashire ... if it could be recover'd, his Majesty would 
 have the River of Severn entirely within his commands ; " * 
 on the other it was contended that " all these motives were 
 not . . . worth the engaging his Army in a doubtful 
 siege, "f 
 
 The garrulous Aubrey has an unkind thing to say of 
 Falkland on this subject : 
 
 "In the civill warres," Falkland's "advice was very 
 unlucky to his Majestic, in perswading him (after the 
 victory of Rowndway Downe, and the taking of Bristowe J) 
 to sitt down before Gloucester. ... It so broke and 
 weakened the king's armys, that it was y e procataretique 
 [sic] cause of his ruine." 
 
 If it be doubtful how far Falkland was responsible for 
 the siege of Gloucester, it is certain that the result of that 
 siege was disastrous. Clarendon says that from the " perti- 
 nacious defence of that place," "the Parliament had time 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 312. t/6., p. 313. 
 
 J Bristol. Letters, vol. ii., part i., pp. 349-350.
 
 172 FALKLANDS. 
 
 to recover their broken Forces, and more broken Spirits ; 
 and may acknowledge to this rise the greatness to which 
 they afterwards aspired." * 
 
 The Royalist army before Gloucester was large ; but 
 "materials requisite for a Siege " f were wanting ; and so 
 also was money. Trenches were dug, and Falkland insisted 
 in going into them. " He delighted to visit the Trenches, 
 and nearest approaches, and to discover what the Enemy 
 did." I The "senseless scandal," that he was in favour of 
 peace at any price, had stung him to the quick, and he was 
 determined to show that, if he wished for peace, it was not 
 from cowardice. 
 
 Hyde remonstrated. Going into the trenches, said he to 
 Falkland, " Is so much beside the duty of your place, that 
 it may be understood rather to be against it." 
 
 "My Office," replied Falkland, "cannot take away 
 the privilege of my age ; and a Secretary in War may be 
 present at the greatest secret of danger." || Then he added, 
 seriously, " It concerns me to be more active in enterprises 
 of hazard, than other men ; that all may see that my impa- 
 tience for peace proceeds not from pusillanimity, or fear 
 to adventure my person." 
 
 The King returned to Oxford, where he met the Queen, 
 who had lately come back to England. Falkland seems to 
 have gone there with him ; for we read of his good offices 
 with Charles being requested by Hyde for Lord Hertford in 
 a dispute with Prince Maurice. The King, however, was so 
 confirmed in his nepotism that he refused " to put a publick 
 disobligation and affront upon his Nephew." 1T 
 
 To add to Falkland's troubles, his friend, " M ris - Moray," 
 was at this time extremely ill, hopelessly so in fact, with 
 
 * Hist., book vii., p. 344. t/ft., p. 341. 
 
 } /&., p. 359. He was only thirty- three. 
 
 || Alas that he should have made this lame pun ! 
 H Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 340.
 
 RELIEF OF GLOUCESTER. 173 
 
 consumption. Aubrey writes * of his " griefe " at her illness 
 and subsequent death, uncharitably adding, " nullum mag- 
 num ingenium sine mixtura dementiae." 
 
 Towards the end of August the Earl of Essex j- marched 
 out of London to the relief of Gloucester, and he compelled 
 the King's troops " to raise the Siege in more disorder and 
 distraction, than might have been expected," on 5th Sep- 
 tember. Thence Essex went, taking " advantage of a dark 
 night, and having sure Guides," to Cirencester, where he 
 surprised and took two regiments of the King's horse, besides 
 a quantity of stores and provisions, which " the King's 
 Commisaries " had " neglected to remove after the siege 
 was raised, and so most sottishly left it for the Relief of 
 the Enemy." J 
 
 Sottish neglect to remove stores was not the only bad 
 management on the part of the King's officers. No scouts 
 appear to have been posted to keep an eye upon the pro- 
 ceedings of the enemy. Utterly unaware that the siege of 
 Gloucester had been raised by the troops of Essex, Charles 
 "lay at Sudley-Castle . . . within eight miles of Gloucester," 
 and it may be assumed that Falkland was with him, " watch- 
 ing when that Army would return, which, they conceiv'd, 
 stayed rather out of Despair than Election." When he 
 discovered what Essex had done, and how he had given 
 him the slip, the King " endeavour'd, by expedition and 
 diligence, to recover the advantage which the supine negli- 
 gence of those he trusted had robbed him of." 
 
 If Aubrey's assertion that the siege of Gloucester was 
 of Falkland's advising be true, when the news of the failure 
 of that siege arrived Falkland must have been intensely 
 chagrined. His administration had been unsuccessful in 
 politics, his stratagem had now failed in warfare. Aubrey 
 states || that " superfine discoursing politicians " attributed 
 
 * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350. 
 
 t Clarendon's Hist., book vii., pp. 343-4- J Ib., p. 345. 
 
 Ib., p. 344. || Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350.
 
 1/4 FALKLANDS. 
 
 his subsequent desperate and imprudent action at the 
 battle of Newbury "to his discontent for the unfortunate 
 advice given to his master aforesaid." 
 
 Immediate action had to be taken. Charles placed 
 himself at the head of the infantry, while Rupert took 
 the lead of the nearly 5000 horse, and the army 
 " march'd Day and Night over the hills, to get between 
 London and the Enemy before they should be able to get 
 out of those enclosed deep Countrys, in which they were 
 engaged between narrow Lanes, and to entertain them with 
 Skirmishes till the whole Army should come up." * 
 
 One night Prince Rupert received a report that the 
 enemy was not far in front of him. A halt had been 
 made, and on going to the King's quarters, he found him 
 playing piquet, f He told Charles his news, and 
 obtained his permission to press on with his cavalry 
 through the night. Hastening to avail himself of it, he 
 marched not only throughout the remaining hours of 
 darkness, but through those of the dawn and of the day. 
 Eventually he fell on Essex as he was passing over 
 Auburn Chase and expecting to enter Newbury. Byron's 
 division, to which Falkland was attached, J repulsed the 
 Parliamentary troops, which retreated to Hungerford, so 
 that the King's army reached Newbury before it. 
 
 On this occasion Prince Rupert unquestionably did 
 the King a great service. Owing to his gaining a clear 
 road to Newbury, the royal troops were enabled to obtain 
 comfortable quarters in that town, while the greater part of 
 the Parliamentary army was shelterless, on a very wet 
 night, and with very little food. Better still, Charles had 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 345. 
 
 t Memoirs of Prince Rupert, vol. i., p. 288 seq, 
 
 I It is not certain, however, that he was with it on Auburn Chase. 
 
 The First and Second Battles of Newbury, by Walter Money, 2nd ed., 
 1884, p. 35. Hungerford Park had been granted by Queen Elizabeth to 
 Essex's father, who was beheaded in 1601. P. 33, footnote.
 
 NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE. 175 
 
 obtained a position, very difficult to attack, between 
 Essex's army and London. Rupert * recommended a 
 passive resistance ; but, for once, Charles listened to other 
 advisers. 
 
 That night f Falkland J slept at the house of a Mr. 
 Head, in Cheap Street, Newbury, a house now known as 
 No. i Falkland Place. Mr. Money states that " early 
 next morning, by his express wish, the sacrament ! was 
 administered to" Falkland "by Dr. Twisse, the then 
 Rector of Newbury, in the presence of Mr. Head and his 
 whole family, who attended at Lord Falkland's special 
 request." This tradition, which has been handed down 
 in the Head family, from which Mr. Money H is him- 
 self descended, is some evidence against the assertions 
 that Falkland was a Socinian, at any rate in the modern 
 sense of the word. Dr. Twisse, it may be observed, was a 
 Puritan.** 
 
 In both camps, religious exercises were in full practice 
 very early on that damp September morning. Among 
 the Royalist soldiers, Dr. Jeremy Taylor ff is said to have 
 been exhorting to " Holy Living and Dying." Nor were 
 the Roundheads less occupied with their religion. In one 
 
 * Memoirs of Prince Rupert, p. 292 seq. 
 
 t igth September, 1643. 
 
 { First and Second Battles of Newbury, p. 95. 
 
 The late Mr. " Tom " Hughes, author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, 
 often mentioned the fact of one of his ancestors, Adam Head, having been 
 the host of Falkland on the night preceding the battle of Newbury. 
 
 || Another writer says : " Being convinced that an engagement on the 
 next day was inevitable, and being strongly impressed with the presentiment 
 that it would be attended with a fatal result to himself, he determined, in 
 order to be fully prepared for the event, to receive the sacrament." The 
 History of Newbury and its Environs (1839), pp. 17-18. The author of this 
 book was Mr. Hughes of Donnington Priory, who was an intimate friend of 
 Sir Walter Scott, and the father of Mr. " Tom " Hughes. 
 
 *[ I am much indebted to Mr. Money for information which he most 
 courteously and kindly afforded me on this subject. 
 
 ** First and Second Battles, etc., p. 29. tt Ib., p. 38.
 
 1 76 FALKLANDS. 
 
 part of the Parliamentary army " ascended the hum of some 
 psalm, invoking God, as of old, to strike for his chosen 
 people, and to smite the enemy ; " * in another, the pious 
 Puritan soldiers were murdering a poor woman whom 
 they happened to find upon a plank in some water, be- 
 cause they considered this sure and sufficient evidence that 
 she was a witch. j- After certain preliminaries, they " im- 
 mediately discharged a Pistoll underneathe her eare, at 
 which she strait sunke downe and dyed, leaving her 
 legacy of a detested carcasse to the wormes, her soule 
 we ought not to judge of." 
 
 Essex was unlikely to remain inactive. Whether on 
 the defensive or the offensive, the Royalist troops were 
 pretty certain to be engaged in a great battle that day ; 
 and Falkland was prepared for it. When he was dressing 
 that morning, he " called for a clean shirt, and being asked 
 the reason of it, answered that if he were slain in the Battle, 
 they should not find his Body in foul Linen." J 
 
 As soon as the mists cleared away on the morning 
 of the 2Oth September, Essex's army, with its red, blue 
 purple, and grey uniforms, relieving the black and 
 brown of their armour and the tan of their " buffe coats," 
 was seen to be drawn up on some rising ground, of 
 considerable length and height, opposite Newbury. Its 
 position was little more than a mile from the town, on 
 its western, or south-western side, and the ground occupied 
 was chiefly heath or common. Between the town and 
 a hill to the south, called Bigg's Hill, and also intersecting 
 the hills, was an area of low-lying land, kncfrn as Wash 
 Common, or The Wash. 
 
 * Hampshire : its Early and Later History. Two lectures delivered 
 by the Earl of Carnarvon in 1857 at the Basingstoke Mechanics' Institution. 
 
 t A Most Certain Strange and True Discovery of a Witch, printed by 
 John Hammond, 1643. 
 
 \ Memorials of the English Affairs, etc., Whitelock, p. 73. 
 
 The London train-bands wore red, Lord Saye-and-Sele's men blue, 
 Lord Brooke's purple, and Meyrick's grey. Lord Carnarvon's lecture.
 
 GLOOMY FOREBODINGS. 177 
 
 The royal army should have remained passive, await- 
 ing the attack of Essex ; but " the precipitate Courage 
 of some young Officers, who had good Commands, and 
 who unhappily always undervalued the Courage of the 
 Enemy," induced the King " to put the whole to the 
 hazard of a Battle," * and to advance from the town. Not 
 only did he make this blunder, but also that of marching 
 in the wrong direction, going too far south, instead of 
 securing the rounded spurs of the hills to the west, which 
 commanded the low ground between the town and Wash 
 Common.f Byron admits that an error and " a most gross 
 and absurd one " had been committed on the Royalist side, 
 " in not viewing the ground, though we had day enough 
 to have done it, and not possessing ourselves of those 
 hills above the town," etc. J 
 
 Falkland proceeded to the battle with Lord Byron's 
 regiment of horse. His friends implored so important a 
 civil officer as the Secretary of State not " to go into the 
 Fight, as having no call to it, and being no Military 
 Officer." But Falkland replied : 
 
 " I am weary of the times. I foresee much misery 
 coming to my country, and I believe I shall be out of 
 it ere night." 
 
 Byron's horse, and Falkland with them, made an early 
 start. In Byron's own account, he says : " My brigade of 
 horse was to have the van, and about five in the morning 
 I had to march towards a little hill full of enclosures, 
 which the enemy (through the negligence before-mentioned) 
 had possessed himself of and had brought up two small 
 field-pieces and was bringing more." This hill " was full 
 of enclosures and extremely difficult for horse service." || 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 347. 
 f Two Battles of New bury, p. 42. 
 \ Byron's account of the battle. 
 
 Memorials of the English Affairs, etc., Whitelock, p. 73. 
 || I quote from Two Battles of Newbury, p. 44. 
 12
 
 1/8 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Although it was impossible for him to dislodge the enemy 
 under such circumstances, his advance served the purpose 
 of covering the deployment to the left of the remainder of 
 the King's army. 
 
 Unable to operate on the enclosed ground under the 
 fire of the enemy's artillery, and being no longer required 
 to cover the movements of the right wing of his own army, 
 Byron took his cavalry round the flank of the line of 
 battle, until he came to the first open ground admitting of 
 a charge, which was where the Wash Common intersected 
 the hills, about the middle of the Royalist line. 
 
 It was here that the battle was hottest. The King's 
 artillery placed on some rising ground, to the left, afforded 
 some little support to the royal cavalry in their advance ; 
 but the enemy were in great force on the slope in front, 
 and they had placed guns on the heights above. 
 
 The engagement had now become general. 
 
 Then "spur and sword" was the battle word, and we made the 
 
 helmets ring, 
 
 Shouting like madmen all the while " For God and for the King ! " 
 And though they snuffled psalms, to give the rebel dogs their due, 
 Where the roaring shot poured thick and hot they were stalwart 
 
 men and true.* 
 
 The variety of weapons which were now at work would 
 surprise modern soldiers. There were pikes and halbuts j- 
 of many shapes ; there were swords, there were bows and 
 arrows ; J and among the fire-arms, there were muskets, 
 harquebuses, and horsemen's pistols. 
 
 * A song called " The Old Cavalier." 
 
 + The stock of the musket was also considered a valuable weapon. 
 " When musketeers have spent their powder, and come to blows, the butt- 
 end of their musket may do the enemy more hurt than these despicable 
 swords, which most musketeers wear at their sides." Sir James Turner in 
 his Pallas Armata (1670-1), chap. v. 
 
 { That very year, Essex issued a document " stirring up all well-affected 
 people by benevolence " to raise companies of archers. Grose's Military 
 Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 273. 
 
 Cross-bows had gone out of use, ib., p. 305 ; so also had shields, or 
 practically, ib., p. 308.
 
 WEAPONS. 179 
 
 Desperately dangerous things were those fire-arms, to 
 friend as well as to foe. " The match is very dangerous 
 . . . where soldiers run hastily in fight to the budge-barrel,* 
 to refill their bandeliers," f said a contemporary writer. 
 One defensive weapon must not be forgotten, as Falkland 
 must have seen it in plenty in cavalry charges. This 
 was the swyn feather, J a light pole, four feet long, with 
 a sharp iron spike six inches in length at each end, one 
 of which was stuck in the ground, while the other was 
 pointed towards the enemy. Behind these, the musketeers 
 fired. Where a musket-rest was used, one of its forks was 
 sharpened for the same purpose. 
 
 It was against infantry fire || that Falkland, at the head 
 of Byron's horse, was to advance. In the time of Charles I., 
 a musket barrel IF was four feet in length, and its bullets 
 were ten to the pound. Such bullets would not be open 
 to the objection made to some in our own day, that they 
 are so small as to go through a man without " stopping 
 him ; " although the armour then worn by cavalry was 
 supposed to be at least " arquebus proof," ** and even 
 harquebus bullets only ran seventeen to the pound, ff 
 
 * I.e., powder-barrel. 
 
 t The Earl of Orrery in his Treatise on the Art of War (1677). 
 
 J See the descriptions of swyn feathers in Meyrick's Critical Inquiry, 
 p. 104. 
 
 Meyrick, in his Critical Inquiry, vol. iii., p. 113, thinks that musket- 
 rests were probably abandoned about the beginning of the Civil Wars ; 
 Hewitt, in his Ancient Armour, vol. iii., p. 744, says, that they did " not 
 appear to be dying away" till 1671. Very possibly they may have been 
 used at Newbury. 
 
 || In the days of Elizabeth, if not in those of Charles I., fire-arms do 
 not seem to have carried so far as bows and arrows. Archers were to carry 
 24 arrows, and " 8 of them to be lighter than the residue, to gall or 
 astoyne the enemye with the hailshot of light arrows, before they have 
 come within the danger of the harquebuss shot." Grose, vol. ii., p. 272. 
 
 If Hewitt's Ancient Armour and Weapons, vol. iii., p. 715. " 
 ** Meyrick's Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour, vol. iii., p. 101. 
 ft Hewitt.
 
 180 FALKLANDS. 
 
 The uniforms and the armour in the field of NeWbury 
 varied even more than the weapons ; but it only concerns 
 us to inquire what was worn by the cavalry. 
 
 Cavalry in those days consisted of three kinds. " The 
 first or principall troop of horsemen," says Markham, "for 
 the generality are now called cuirassiers or pistoliers, and 
 these men ought to be of the best degree."* It is almost 
 certain that such would be the men led by Falkland. They 
 carried pistols with barrels twenty-six inches long, and 
 they were completely in armour, except below the knee.f 
 The officers J wore a coloured buckram shirt, with silk em- 
 broidery, as a sort of kilt, over their armour, about the 
 loins, and a coloured sash ; and even lieutenants carried 
 truncheons. It was probably thus apparelled that Falk- 
 land went into action on the field of Newbury. 
 
 Behind the cuirassiers would come the " second sort . . . 
 called hargobusiers or carbines," who " ought to be the best 
 of the first inferior degree, that is to say, of the best yeo- 
 men or best serving men." They carried carbines three 
 feet three inches in length, and they were in armour ; but 
 only so low as the waist. "The last sort of which our 
 horse troops are composed are called dragoons." || These 
 were "a kind of footmen on horsebacke." They were 
 armed with "a faire dragon," IF a short carbine, "of 16 
 inches the barrell and full musquet bore ; " and their only 
 armour was a helmet, but they had "a good buffe coat, 
 with deepe skirts." ** 
 
 Such, we may take it, were the types of cavalry before 
 which Falkland rode, in the charge over Wash Common 
 
 * Souldier's Accidence, 1645. 
 
 t Meyrick's Critical Inquiry, vol. iii., p. 99. Much of the armour used 
 in the reign of Charles I. was black, ib., p. 87. 
 \ Ib., p. 102. 
 
 Markham's Souldier's Accidence. \\ Ib. 
 
 IT A Brief Treatise of War, etc., by W. T., 1649, Harleian MS., Brit 
 Mus., No. 6000. 
 
 ** Souldier's Accidence.
 
 A GAP IN A FENCE. l8l 
 
 towards the rising ground occupied by the Parliamentary 
 infantry. 
 
 The enemy " had lined the Hedges on both sides with 
 Musqueteers," * while, on the height in front, their guns 
 were firing grape upon the advancing cavalry, f Falkland, 
 who " was very chearful . . . put himself into the first 
 rank " and " rode at the head of the charge." J 
 
 The cavalry were now approaching enclosed land be- 
 yond the Common. The infantry immediately in front 
 were out of sight, but they could be heard calling out 
 " Horse ! Horse ! " "I advanced with these two regi- 
 ments " [of cavalry], says Sir John Byron, " and com- 
 manded them to halt while I went to view the ground." 
 He found that "the enemy's foot were drawn up" in a 
 large field " enclosed with a high quick hedge." The men 
 were standing at some distance from the only entrance 
 into the field, a gap in the fence through which only 
 one horse could pass at a time, "and that not without 
 difficulty ; " and they were ready to concentrate their fire 
 upon this one spot on the moment at which any horseman 
 should try to pass through it. 
 
 Dangerous as was the attempt, Byron determined 
 to try to get his cavalry through this gap a proceeding 
 which has been too exclusively attributed to Falkland 
 but, before doing so, he gave orders to his men to make 
 "the gapp wide enough." While he was giving these 
 orders his "horse was shott in the throat with a musket 
 bullet and his bit broken in his mouth so that " he " was 
 forced to call for another horse." 
 
 " In the meanwhile my Lord Falkland," who very 
 likely may have thought that Byron had been intending 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 359. 
 t Two Battles of Newbury, p. 46. 
 { Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 359. 
 
 I describe most of the rest of the story from Sir John Byron's own 
 account. See First and Second Battles of Newbury, p. 58.
 
 1 82 FALKLANDS. 
 
 to lead his regiment through the narrow opening, when his 
 horse was shot at its entrance, and perhaps did not even 
 hear the order to widen the gap, " (more gallantly than 
 advisedly) spurred his horse through the gapp." He had 
 scarcely done so when " both he and his horse " were 
 struck by bullets, his own wound being somewhere between 
 the lower part of his chest and the saddle. 
 
 Poets lamented his first appearance on a battlefield ; 
 let a poet bewail his last : 
 
 See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just.* 
 
 Beside the fallen warrior lay his horse, also killed.f 
 
 Alas ! that, while the novelist's work usually ends with 
 a brilliant marriage, the end of the biographer's should be 
 in the dark shadow of death. 
 
 Aubrey calls Falkland "madly guilty of his own 
 death ; " J modern writers have said as much. Macaulay 
 says that he "at last rushed desperately on death, as 
 the best refuge in such miserable times ; " and the ablest 
 historian of the Stuart period goes so far as to state that his 
 death was " scarcely distinguishable from suicide." || 
 
 In the face of such authorities, I venture to submit 
 that, on the evidence which I have produced, his conduct 
 at the last was at least consistent with an intention to 
 do his duty and to act the part of a brave soldier, however 
 imprudently and impetuously that intention may have been 
 carried out. And what was there more of desperation 
 in Falkland's conduct than in Rupert's in the same battle? 
 " Rupert, with followers as fearless as himself, rode reck- 
 lessly through the storm of bullets, up to the very points 
 
 * Pope, in his Essay on Man, ep. iv. 
 
 t " Both he and his horse were immediately killed." Sir John Byron. 
 
 I Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350. Worse still, he says that he sought it 
 in his despair at the loss of " Mris. Moray." 
 
 Essays, " Nugent's Memorials of Hampden." 
 
 || Professor Gardiner in his article on Falkland in the Die. of Nat. 
 Biog., vol. ix.
 
 WAS DEATH SOUGHT OR UNSOUGHT? 183 
 
 of the pikes, charging on until their horses recoiled from 
 the human wall." * 
 
 Much has been made of the elaborate preparation in his 
 dress in case he should be "slain in the battle," and of his 
 saying he believed he should " be out of it " i.e., his 
 country " ere night." But it had been almost certain that 
 a great battle would be fought that day, and, in Falkland's 
 depressed spirits, he was likely enough to have gloomy 
 forebodings concerning it. When the Victory was going 
 into action in the battle of Trafalgar, one of the captains, 
 who was just leaving the flagship for his own, wished 
 Nelson success. " God bless you," replied Nelson, as he 
 shook his hand, "I shall never speak to you again." f 
 But this is no evidence that Nelson either sought death or 
 intended a moral suicide. 
 
 Even if I be wrong in my belief that Falkland's death 
 was in no sense suicidal, and if he wilfully threw away a 
 valuable life, let us hope, at least, that 
 
 Betwixt the saddle and the ground, 
 He mercy sought and mercy found. 
 
 I will readily admit that it may be said of Falkland's 
 last charge " c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre ; " 
 but I believe that he rode towards that deadly hawthorn 
 hedge in the same admirable spirit which, many genera- 
 tions later, animated the brave fellows who fell in hundreds 
 as they tried to reach the infinitely more deadly Russian 
 guns in the valley of Balaklava. 
 
 We have nothing further to do here with the fatal but 
 undecided battle Newbury, to which an end was put by 
 darkness alone ; or with the more than 5000 dead bodies, 
 said to have been left on its field, to supply antiquarians 
 with " objects of interest " in bones, armour, weapons and 
 even rings, centuries later. 
 
 * Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, Warburton, p. 293. 
 t Mahan's Life of Nelson, vol. ii., p. 385.
 
 1 84 FALKLANDS. 
 
 But one body we must not forget. That of Falkland 
 was missing on the morning after the battle, and Prince 
 Rupert sent the following letter to Essex : 
 
 " We desire to know from the Earl of Essex, whether 
 he have the Viscount Falkland, Captain Bertue * and 
 Sergt. Major Wilshire prisoners, or whether he have their 
 dead bodies, and if he have, that liberty may be granted to 
 their servants to fetch them away. 
 
 " Given under my hand at Newbery this 2ist Sept., 1643. 
 
 "Rupert."f 
 
 " Stript, trod upon and mangled," J says Aubrey, the 
 body of Falkland, which he himself had so expressly 
 wished to be found decorously dressed in the event of his 
 death, " could only be identified by one who waited upon 
 him in his chamber," by a slight personal peculiarity. 
 
 Laid upon one of the king's chargers, Falkland's body 
 was taken into Newbury and placed in the Town Hall. 
 The next day it was carried to Oxford, and the day follow- 
 ing that to his home at Great Tew, where his faithful and 
 virtuous Letice was bitterly bewailing his loss. 
 
 The simple record : 
 
 The 23rd Day of September, A.D., 1643, The 
 Right Honourable Sir Lucius Gary, Knight, 
 Lord Viscount Falkland, 
 And Lord of the Manor of Great Tew, 
 Was Buried here, || 
 
 in the register of the parish church, bears testimony to his 
 burial ; but no tomb marks the spot. Lucius Gary, however, 
 required no monument of stone or marble. Historians, 
 
 * H. Bertie, brother of the Earl of Lindsay. 
 
 t Two Battles of Newbury, p. 93. J Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 346. 
 
 " A certain mole his lordship had upon his neck," says Aubrey. 
 
 || I am indebted for a good deal of information respecting the Gary's, 
 Great Tew, and Burford, to the Rev. W. H. Hutton, Vice-Principal of St. 
 John's College, Oxford.
 
 DEATH OF FALKLAND. 185 
 
 poets and writers of romance have vied with one another 
 in their endeavours to 
 
 raise 
 [him] Statues, made and built of praise.* 
 
 Lady Falkland did not survive her husband two years 
 and a half. She died of consumption in February, 1646 ; 
 but not before she had suffered another heavy sorrow in 
 the death of her son Lorenzo. Some of her letters were 
 published after her death, under the title of The Retvrnes of 
 Spiritual Comfort and Grief in a Devout Soul, prefaced by 
 some quaint and curious verses, of which the following is one, 
 recommending her letters "to some Ladies of these Times " : 
 
 Had You been e're so well as to be sick 
 Of spirituall diseases, and were quick 
 With the souls issue, Virtue, till you grew 
 Big with devotion, and were Born anew : 
 You then would hold the Casuists as Dear, 
 As in your other Labours, Midwives are. 
 Then you'd prefer these Cordiall Letters, 'bove 
 All flattering-love-Epistles, which doe prove, 
 When read by th' sober and judicious eie, 
 But handsome lies, and pretty blasphemie. 
 And are to these no more Canonicall 
 Than if with Balzac you compare Saint Paul. 
 
 If any readers of this book should so far mistake me 
 as to imagine that they detect a tone of derision in certain 
 things which I have said concerning Letice, Lady Falkland, 
 I would hasten to assure them that it was not Letice, but 
 those who panegyrised her, that provoked upon my face 
 a respectful smile. Let me add that I hope I have not 
 allowed her to bore my readers so much as I suspect she 
 bored her husband. 
 
 Of one other lady a word must be said. " M ris Moray," f 
 who, says Aubrey, was Falkland's " mistresse," J " died the 
 
 * " To the Memory of ... Vi-Countesse Falkland." " Her Husband's 
 Death." 
 
 + Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350. { Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 202.
 
 1 86 FALKLANDS. 
 
 same day, and, as some computed it, in the same hour," * 
 as Falkland. Concerning this romance, if romance it be, 
 I will be silent. 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to follow the career of the 
 second Lord Falkland's children ; but I cannot conclude 
 without mentioning two things about them. The first is 
 that his son Henry, who eventually succeeded to the title, 
 sold his father's library that library, in which, says 
 Clarendon, " all men of eminent parts and faculties in 
 Oxford " f were able to find " all the books they could 
 desire " for the price of " a horse and mare." J Well ! 
 I think I could name a horse and a mare, sold within the 
 last few years, whose joint prices would have been sufficient 
 to purchase one of the finest private libraries in England. 
 
 The second story I have to tell of Falkland's sons 
 relates to the elder and much more brilliant brother. Sir 
 Henry Martin, formerly Judge of Arches, was in great 
 danger of suffering the fate of some of the other judges of 
 Charles I. ; but this Lord Falkland " saved his life by witt, 
 saying, ' Gentlemen, jee talke here of making a sacrifice ; 
 it was old lawe, all sacrifices were to be without spot or 
 blemish ; and now you are going to make an old rotten 
 rascall a sacrifice.' This witt tooke in the house and saved 
 his life." 
 
 It is interesting to learn from this ancient anecdote that 
 the aptitude of the House of Commons to be both influ- 
 enced by, and consumed with laughter at, a poor joke is no 
 new thing. 
 
 Lucius Gary was one of the many distinguished men who 
 have inherited more of their mother's characteristics and 
 talents than of their father's. Like his mother, he was a 
 
 * According to Aubrey, she died before him ; but Clarendon is most 
 likely to be right. 
 
 t Life, vol. i., p. 48. \ Wood's Ath. Ox., " Lucius Gary," etc. 
 
 Aubrey's Letters, vol. Hi., p. 435 ; see also Lloyd's Memoires, p. 333.
 
 A GLORIOUS FAILURE. 187 
 
 reader, a writer and a minor poet. He had much of her 
 generosity and impetuosity ; but the conventionality in- 
 herited from his father to a great extent counteracted any 
 tendencies to eccentricity that he may have received from 
 his mother. Both mother and son were very lovable 
 characters, and honest, upright, unworldly and unselfish 
 to the highest degree. Both, again, shared this in common, 
 that they were to some extent, and in their own different 
 positions, brilliant failures. 
 
 Certain failures are to be preferred to certain successes ; 
 and there have been statesmen and soldiers who have suc- 
 ceeded, whose names and doings are less remembered and 
 less respected than those of Falkland, who has been fre- 
 quently said to have failed in both capacities. 
 
 In forming a judgment upon the characters of history, 
 the times in which they lived, their surroundings, those 
 they had to rule, or to be ruled by, their opportunities, 
 and the crucial hours, political, military, social, or revolu- 
 tionary, through which they had to pass, ought to receive 
 careful consideration ; and no one can fairly deny that in 
 each of these particulars Lucius, second Lord Falkland, 
 was exposed to many difficulties and dangers. 
 
 I have called Falkland a failure. But, after all, did he 
 fail ? Unquestionably he failed in attaining the ends for 
 which he laboured, while he was yet living. In their 
 ultimate attainment, however, or at least in the attainment 
 of some of them, his efforts were crowned with success. 
 
 No writer has expressed this better than Edward 
 Bulwer, Lord Lytton. He says : " Could Falkland look 
 from his repose on England now, would not Falkland say, 
 ' This is what I sought to make my country ! This is the 
 throne which I would have reconciled to parliamentary 
 freedom ; this is the Church that I would have purified 
 from ecclesiastical domination over secular affairs and 
 intolerant persecution and rival sects. To make England 
 such as I see it now, I opposed the framers of the Grand
 
 1 88 FALKLANDS. 
 
 Remonstrance and the Nineteen Propositions; and 
 England as seen now is the vindication of my policy and 
 the refutation of Pym's.' " * 
 
 Falkland did not live to see his policy appreciated at 
 its real value ; but did his contemporary, Shakespeare, 
 live to see his poetry appreciated at its real value ? And 
 who shall say that Shakespeare was a failure? 
 
 If in nothing else, Falkland succeeded in throwing 
 a fresh light upon public life. At a period when courts 
 and governments were hotbeds of corruption ; when royal 
 favour was infinitely preferred to integrity ; when no man 
 dared to stand alone ; when to admit an error was to 
 ensure failure, and when culture was considered effeminacy, 
 Falkland showed by his own example that it was possible 
 to be an ardent statesman without greed for money, pre- 
 ferment or power ; that a courtier need not be a flatterer ; 
 that, on occasion, a politician ought to remain stationary 
 while his influential colleagues hurry forward, that a mis- 
 take should be rectified, and that mildness and gentleness 
 of manner are not incompatible with indomitable and even 
 desperate physical courage. 
 
 Falkland has often been called a weak man. Weak- 
 ness is a title easily earned ; so also is that of strength. 
 An exceptionally comprehensive mind may perceive so 
 many arguments both for and against a given course, as 
 to pause, and pause wisely, in forming a decision, whereas 
 a mind of narrow reach may be blind to all reasons for 
 hesitation and display a rash rapidity of decision which 
 may easily be mistaken for strength of character. 
 
 I have already referred to the many objective dis- 
 advantages to which Falkland was exposed. His chief 
 subjective disadvantage may have been the superabun- 
 dance of his endowments, his tastes and his inclina- 
 tions. Where a "flowing and obliging humanity ,"f an 
 
 * Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i., p. 385. 
 t Clarendon, Hist., book vii., p. 350.
 
 VIEWS. 1 89 
 
 eager desire for the "hottest service"* in battle, " sweej;- 
 ness and light, "f an "aptness to stabbe and doe bloudy 
 mischiefs," J a "good inclination" towards the Catholic 
 Church, || a still stronger inclination towards Socinianism, 
 the spirit of Radicalism, the practice of Royalism, and 
 humour as well as melancholy, were all striving tumult- 
 uously for the mastery, his foes may be said, in 
 scriptural language, to have been those of his own house- 
 hold. 
 
 The family which we have been studying was remarkable 
 for the divergent " views " prevailing among its members. 
 Diversity of opinion would not appear to be conducive 
 to harmony in the domestic circle ; yet, in England, where 
 more faiths, or un faiths, may be found in one family than 
 in any other country, except America, the happiness of its 
 homes is one of its leading characteristics. 
 
 I hope I have adduced sufficient evidence in the fore- 
 going pages to prove that such varieties of belief are no 
 novelty among husbands and wives, or sons and mothers. 
 A little reflection upon that evidence may possibly lead to 
 the conclusion that, while it is undoubtedly well to marry 
 a very religiously-minded woman, it is also well to make 
 sure, in the first place, that her religious opinions are the 
 same as one's own, in the second, that they are likely 
 remain so, and, in the third, that one's own are likely to 
 to remain the same as hers. And beyond this inference, 
 the story of the Falklands during the first half of the 
 seventeenth century invites a good deal of moralising, 
 religious, political and social. Great as is the temptation 
 to embark upon it, such an undertaking would obviously 
 
 * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 201. 
 t Matthew Arnold's Mixed Essays, p. 236. 
 J Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 347. 
 The Lady Falkland, p. 56. 
 
 || Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii. , part i. , p. 348. " He was the first Socinian 
 in England."
 
 190 FALKLANDS. 
 
 be beset with many difficulties. Happily, Lucius, Viscount 
 Falkland, has suggested an escape from them in his sage 
 observation that " Nothing were easier than not to write." * 
 It may be unfortunate that I did not remember these 
 words of wisdom at the beginning, instead of at the end of 
 my book ; but who can be responsible for the freaks of 
 memory? and, if this recollection has been late in its 
 awakening, it may at least be " better late than never." 
 
 * Misc. Fuller Worthies, vol. iii., p. 79, " To George Sandys."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABINGDON, 88-9. 
 
 Armour in use at time of Battle of New- 
 
 bury, 1 80. 
 
 Army, Parliamentary, 148. 
 Ashburnham, 170. 
 Atherton (Adwalton), 169. 
 
 BAILEY, Capt., 50. 
 
 Bailie, Robert, in seq. 
 
 Barrett, 21. 
 
 Beale, Dr., 24. 
 
 Berwick, Treaty of, 100. 
 
 Bigg's Hill, 176 seq. 
 
 Borough, Sir John, 100. 
 
 Bramston, Lord Chief Justice, 91. 
 
 Brentford, Battle of, 157. 
 
 Bristol, 169. 
 
 Buckingham, Duchess of, 21, 85. 
 
 Duke of, 18, 103. 
 Burford, 2, 45, 46, 47, 55. 
 
 Church, Tanfield monument in, 
 
 23-4- 
 
 Byrnes, Sept of, 25 seq. 
 Byron's Horse, 174 seq. ; his account of 
 
 the battle, 177 seq. 
 
 CAESAR, Sir Charles, 164. 
 Carew, Thos. , 60 seq. 
 Gary, Anne, 79, 92. 
 
 Elizabeth, 79. 
 
 Henry, son of 2nd Lord Falkland, 
 25, 85, 186. 
 
 Gary, Lawrence, son of ist Lord Falk- 
 land, 8, 49, 144. 
 
 Gary, Lawrence or Lorenzo, son of 2nd 
 Lord Falkland, 185. 
 
 Gary, Lucius, son of 2nd Lord Falkland, 
 85, 186. 
 
 Gary, Magdalena, 85 seq. 
 
 Patrick, 85 seq. , 92. 
 
 Placid, 85 seq. , 92. 
 Cavalier, The Old, a song, 178. 
 Charles, King, the ist, 15, 26 ; sends for 
 
 Hyde, 117 ; sends for Falkland and 
 Colepepper, 126 ; the five members, 
 137 seq. ; goes to York, 140. See 
 also Falkland, Lucius, 2nd Vis- 
 count. Also frequent mention. 
 Chillingworth, 68, 77 seq. , 84, 86. And 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 59 ; 
 opposed in Commons by Falkland, 
 114 ; summoned by king, 117 ; fond 
 of imitating style of others, 161 ; 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, 164 ; 
 dispute with Colepepper, 169 seq. 
 Also frequent mention. 
 
 Clifton, Sir Cuthbert, 40. 
 
 Clun, the player, 73. 
 
 Coke, Secretary, 18. 
 
 Colebrook, 156. 
 
 Colepepper, 120 seq. ; Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, 126 ; Master of the 
 Rolls, 164 ; dispute with Falkland 
 and Hyde, 169. Also frequent 
 mention. 
 
 Conway, Secretary. See Killultagh, 21. 
 
 Edward, Lord, 27. 
 Cowley, 98. 
 
 Cozens, Dr., 16, 19. 
 Craven, Lord, 80. 
 Cressy, Hugh, 69, 77. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 123 seq. 
 Culworth, 153. 
 
 DAVENANT, Sir William, 76. 
 
 Debate on Grand Remonstrance, 123 
 
 seq. 
 
 Denbigh, Lady, 16 seq. 
 Digby, Lord, 108, 135 seq. And frequent 
 
 mention. 
 Digby, Sir John, 64. 
 
 Sir Kenelm, 67-8. 
 Donne, Dr., 36, 52. 
 Dryden, 163. 
 
 Duel, 27. 
 
 EDGEHILL, Battle of, 153 seq. 
 
 Essex, Earl of, deprived of office, 141, 
 
 155 seq. , 173. Much about him in 
 
 last chapter. 
 
 Evelin, Sir John, of Wilts, 156. 
 Everard, Father Dunstan, 17, 18. 
 
 FALKLAND, Elizabeth, Lady, youth and 
 marriage, 2 seq. ; prisoner under 
 mother-in-law, 6 ; religious diffi- 
 culties, 7 ; as a disciplinarian, 8 ; 
 tries to improve Irish industries, 14 ; 
 return to England, 15 ; received
 
 INDEX. 
 
 into the Church, 18 ; reconciliation 
 with husband, 41 seq. ; death of 
 husband, 43 ; relations to Chilling- 
 worth, 78 seq. ; kidnaps her own 
 sons, 86 ; goes to Great Tew, 92 ; 
 death, 93. 
 
 Falkland, Henry, ist Viscount, marriage, 
 2 ; expedition to Holland and taken 
 prisoner to Spain, 6 ; Master of 
 Queen's Jewels, 6 ; further honours, 
 9 ; made a viscount, n ; claims 
 wreckage, n ; literary pursuits, 12 ; 
 Lord-Deputy in Ireland, 12 ; policy 
 there, 13 ; letter to king, 28 ; wishes 
 to marry his son to daughter of 
 Earl of Portland, 30 ; anger at his 
 son's marriage with Letice Mori- 
 son, 38 seq. ; imprisoned for debt, 
 40 ; reconciled to his wife, 41 ; 
 accident, 42 ; death, 43. 
 
 Falkland, Letice, Lady, 36 seq. , 51 ; 
 obliges her servants to attend many 
 devotions, 56 seq. ; endeavours to 
 find her young brothers-in-law, 89 ; 
 her strictness, 101 ; in relation to 
 Mrs. Moray, 134 ; could reprove 
 with power, 161 ; death, 185. 
 
 Falkland, Lucius, 2nd Viscount, birth, 
 8; education, 13; St. John's Coll. , 
 Camb. , 24 ; challenges Willoughby, 
 27 ; descriptions of, 31 seq. , 39 ; 
 marriage, 39 ; offers whole estate 
 to father, 39 ; goes to Holland, 40 ; 
 sells Burford Priory, 47 ; winters 
 with mother in London, 47 ; early 
 political views, 50 ; poems, 52 seq. ; 
 defaulter for ship-money, 96 ; joins 
 Holland's horse and goes against 
 Scots, 97 seq. ; possibly bored by 
 wife, 101 ; elected M. P. for New- 
 port, 102 ; first speech, 104 ; im- 
 peachment of Finch, 105 seq. ; 
 speech against bishops, 109 seq. ; 
 attitude as to Strafford's trial and 
 execution, 104-5 an d 112-13 ; op- 
 poses Hyde in Commons, 114 ; 
 opposes king's going to Scotland, 
 117 ; put on Committee of De- 
 fence, 118 ; opposes new bill against 
 bishops, 121 ; differs more and 
 more from Pym, 122 ; king asks 
 him to become Secretary of State, 
 126 seq. ; his conduct in consenting 
 discussed, 126 seq. ; scandalous 
 story about Mrs. Moray, 133 ; his 
 attitude towards the king, 135 ; 
 plot to seize Falkland, Hyde and 
 Colepepper, 139 ; letter to Hyde, 
 140 ; joins king at York, 144 ; tiff 
 with Hyde, 146 ; correspondence 
 with Selden, 148 ; goes to London 
 to try to negotiate a peace, 150 ; at 
 Edgehill, 153 seq. ; writes to Lord 
 Grey de Warke, 155 ; his quasi- 
 
 apology for battle of Brentford, 158 ; 
 manner and dress during the war, 
 159 ; not to be pardoned by the 
 Parliament, 160 ; wins a bet from 
 the king, 161-2 ; sortcs Virgilianet, 
 162 seq. ; opposes the king about 
 the Scotch Commissions, 166 ; letter 
 to Roe, 166 ; anger with Colepep- 
 per, 170 ; question of his respon- 
 sibility for siege of Gloucester, 
 171 ; exposes himself too much in 
 trenches, 172 ; receives communion 
 night before battle of Newbury, 175 ; 
 will fight in a clean shirt, 176 ; 
 death, 182 ; register in Great Tew 
 Church, 184, 
 
 Finch, Lord Keeper, impeachment of, 
 106. 
 
 Five members, impeachment of, 136-7. 
 
 Forty-five peers, declaration of, 145. 
 
 GARRAT, Lord, 99. 
 Gloucester, siege of, 171 seq. 
 Great Tew, 45, 54, 184. 
 Grey de Warke, Lord, 155. 
 Grotius, 53. 
 
 HALES, 70. 
 
 Hamilton, Lady, 52. 
 
 Hammond, Henry, 69. 
 
 Hampden, no, 115, 116 ; death, 169. 
 
 Hawes, W., 57. 
 
 Head, 175. 
 
 Hertford, Marquis of, 169. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 68 seq. 
 
 Holborn, 167. 
 
 Holland, his horse, 97 seq. ; deprived of 
 office, 141. 
 
 Holies, no. 
 
 Holywell, 40, 85. 
 
 Home, Lord and Lady, 12 ; death of 
 Lady, 16. 
 
 Hopton, no. 
 
 Horses for king, certain number guaran- 
 teed by Falkland and others, 147. 
 
 Hoskins, Lady, 73. 
 
 Hounslow, 156. 
 
 Howard, Lord William, 40. 
 
 Huntingdon, Lady, 53. 
 
 Hutton, Rev. W. H., 184, footnote. 
 
 Hyde, Edward. See Clarendon. 
 
 IRISH Rebellion, 122. 
 
 JAMES, King, the ist, 12, 15. 
 
 John's, St., College, Cambridge, 24. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 35, 09. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 6, 34 ; description of, 72 
 
 seq. ; death and elegy, 95 seq. 
 Juxon, Dr., 78. 
 
 KENTE, Lord, 71. 
 
 Killultagh, Lord (afterwards Lord Con- 
 way), 21, 22.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 193 
 
 Kimbolton, Lord, impeached, 136-7. 
 Knott, Father, 81. 
 
 LAUD, Archbishop, 49, 85, 90, 109, in. 
 
 Lenthall, 47, 104. 
 
 Lindsay, Lord, "General of the whole 
 
 Army," 152; killed, 154. 
 Lyttleton, Lord Keeper, 107, 142. 
 
 MALLEN, Rev. J. P., 45, footnote. 
 
 Money, Mr., 175. 
 
 Montague, Walter, 67, 82. 
 
 Moray, Mrs., 133 seq., 161, 172 seq., 
 
 185-6. 
 
 Morison, Sir Henry, 34 seq. 
 Morley, Bishop of Winchester, 69. 
 
 NEALE, Dr., 8. 
 Newburgh, Lord, 78, 89. 
 Newbury, 174 seq. 
 Nicholas, letter of, 126. 
 Nineteen Propositions, 143. 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 165. 
 Nottingham, 149, 151. 
 
 OATLANDS, 158. 
 Ormonde, Lord, 17, 18, 20. 
 Oxford, 88 seq., 159 seq. 
 
 PALMER, Jeffery, 124-5. 
 
 Pembroke, Lord, 165. 
 
 Perron, Cardinal, 23. 
 
 Pettinger, Father Dunstan, 18. 
 
 Philip of Spain, 5. 
 
 Piccadilly, 102. 
 
 Portland, Lord, Richard Weston, Lord 
 
 Treasurer, 30. 
 Poulter, Bessie, 20, 23. 
 Pym, John, 102. Also frequent mention 
 
 afterwards. 
 
 QUEEN Henrietta Maria, 41, 92, 93, 135, 
 165. 
 
 RAINSFORU, Capt., 27. 
 
 Reading, 159. 
 
 Remonstrance, The Grand, 123 seq. 
 
 Richmond, Duke of, 169. 
 
 Roe, Falkland's letter to, 166. 
 
 Root -and-Branch Bill, 11$ seq. ; dropped, 
 
 121. 
 
 Roundaway Down, 169. 
 Royal Standard erected at Nottingham, 
 
 149. 
 Rupert, Prince, 150, 152-3; imprudent 
 
 action, 156 ; dispute with Hertford, 
 
 169 ; checks Essex's progress, 174 ; 
 
 letter to Essex, 184. And elsewhere. 
 
 SALISBURY, Earl of, 165. 
 
 Sandys, George, 54, 60. 
 
 Scotch Commissioners, 165. 
 
 Sedan chairs, 50. 
 
 Selden, 71, no, 148. 
 
 Shakespeare, opinions of, in Falkland's 
 
 time, 74 seq. 
 
 Shelden, Archbishop of Canterbury, 69. 
 Ship-money, Falkland a defaulter for, 
 
 96. 
 
 Shrewsbury, Earl of, 40. 
 Shrewsbury, Royal Army at, 151. 
 Socinianism, 77. And elsewhere. 
 Sortes Virgiliance, 162 seq. 
 Stands for hackney coaches, 50. 
 Strafford (Wentworth), 49, 104^., 108 
 
 seq. ; trial, 112; execution, 113. 
 Suckling, Sir John, 62 seq. 
 Sudley Castle, 173. 
 Symondes, J. , 4. 
 
 TALBOT, Sir John, 40. 
 
 Tanfield, Sir Lawrence, 2 seq. ; alters 
 
 his will, ii ; death, 15. 
 Tanfield, Lady, 21 ; death of, 23. 
 
 - Monument, 23-4. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 175. 
 Theobald's Park, 42. 
 Tomkins, 167. 
 Tooley Park, 36. 
 Triplet, 71. 
 Twisse, Dr., 175. 
 
 VALUES, relative, of ji at different 
 
 times, 30 seq. 
 Vane, 113. 
 
 Velasco, Don L. de, 6. 
 Vox populi, 147. 
 
 WALLER, Edmund, 65 seq., 97, no ; 
 
 plot, 167 seq. 
 Warwick Castle, 155. 
 Wash Common, 176 seq. 
 Weapons in use at time of Falkland's 
 
 death, 179 seq. 
 Welsted, 12, 19. 
 Wellwood, 162. 
 Wenman, Sir Francis, 66. 
 Wentworth. See Strafford. 
 Willoughby, Sir F., 27. 
 Wilmot's horse, 153. 
 Windsor Castle, 156. 
 Witchcraft, trial for, 4 seq. 
 Witch, a woman killed as a, 175. 
 
 ZOUCH, Lord, ii.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THELIFEOFSIRKENEUDIGBY. 
 
 BY ONE OF HIS DESCENDANTS. 
 
 WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
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