The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
-------*--------
Return to Index
Gernoun : or whisker (some say, moustache): an appellation given to a branch of the Barons of Montfichet or Montfiquet (see p. 266). "About 1050 Robert surnamed Guernon, Baron of Montfiquet, witnessed a charter of Duke William (Gall. Christ, xi., Instr. 229). He had issue, 1. William de Montfichet, who died s. p. when the barony descended on the son of his brother: 2. Robert Guernon, or Gernon, who held a great barony in Essex, &c. in 1086. From his eldest son, William de Montfichet, descended the Barons Montfichet; the younger branches retained the name of Gernon. Alured Gernon, the brother of William de Montfichet, had estates in Essex and Middlesex 1130 (Rot. Pip.) Matthew, his son, witnessed a charter of William de Montfichet five years later (Mon. i. 803). Ralph, his son, in 1165, held a fief from Montfichet, Essex, and was granted Bakewell, Derbyshire, by Richard I. (Testa de Nevill). He had Ralph Gernon, founder of Lees Priory, Essex; father of William Gernon, who had two sons: 1. Ralph, ancestor of a line of Gernons frequently mentioned in Essex, Suffolk, and Derby, and which long continued; 2. Geoffrey, surnamed de Cavendish, from his residence at Cavendish in Suffolk. This Geoffrey was grandfather to Sir John Cavendish, Chief Justice temp. Richard II., and ancestor to the Dukes of Newcastle, Devonshire, &c. The identity of the family of Cavendish with that of Gernon in the Eastern Counties appears in all the old heralds' visitations, where the two names bear indiscriminately the same arms, and the account of the descent of this family given by Collins, which has been disputed, appears to be perfectly authentic."—The Norman People. There is, however, some difficulty in explaining why the name of Cavendish (or, as it was then called, Candish) was originally assumed; for it is certain that the manor of Cavendish-Overhall only came into the possession of the Chief Justice through his marriage with the heiress of John de Odingseles. Yet it seems equally proved that his younger brother, who was seated at Grimston in the same county, always bore the name of Cavendish. Grimston appears to have been the seat of their father Roger, and Geoffrey, the grandfather, "was wrote of Moor-hall in the Peak in co. Derby."
Chief Justice Cavendish had a tragic end. He was beheaded in the market place of Bury, during an insurrection in 1382, the rebels "being the more incensed against him, for that his son John, an esquire of the King's house, had killed Wat Tyler at Smithfield."[1] The sixth in descent from him, William, a London mercer, sold Cavendish Overhall in 1569. But long before this, another William Cavendish (uncle to the last) had built up the greatness of this house, that, like so many others, rose on the ruins of the monasteries. He was a younger brother, who obtained an appointment as Gentleman Usher of the Chamber to Cardinal Wolsey, and became one of his favourite and best-trusted servants;—a faithful servant, too, who did not desert his fallen master, but abode with him loyally to the very end. The King, "pleased with his honesty and truth," then took him into his own household, and in 1546 named him Treasurer of his Chamber. He had been one of the Royal Commissioners appointed to receive the surrenders of the religious houses, and was loaded with their spoils; yet, as regarded his fortunes, by far the most successful venture of his life was his marriage with the famous Bess of Hardwick. He was a mature widower with six surviving daughters, and she, a beautiful young widow and the heiress of Hardwick, when she became his third wife. She brought him "a hopeful number of sons and daughters," whose advancement and aggrandizement became the great object of her existence. From the very first she had set her mind steadily on money-getting; and the story of her success affords another instructive proof—if more were needed—of the irresistible power of a dominant will. All around her bowed to its sovereign ascendancy. According to the custom of the time, she had been a mere child—barely fourteen—when she was first married, and her husband died soon after; yet he had lived long enough to secure to her and her heirs all his worldly possessions, She induced her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, to sell all his lands in the Southern counties, in order to buy property in Derbyshire, where her own friends and kindred lived, and to commence a great manor house at Chatsworth, which he did not live to finish. She next married Sir William St. Lo, of Tormarton in Gloucestershire, Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth, and Grand Butler of England, first stipulating that the whole of his estates should be settled on her, to the exclusion, not only of his brothers, but of his own daughters; and when she was for the third time left a widow, she captivated George Earl of. Shrewsbury, "whom she brought to terms of the greatest honour and advantage to herself and children." Not only did she require a large jointure, but she insisted that her daughter Mary should be married to his eldest son, and her own son Henry to his daughter Lady Grace. Thus, each successive marriage brought greater wealth and higher honours to this grasping and intriguing woman; yet her lot as Countess of Shrewsbury was not without its thorns. She and her husband had the charge of Mary Queen of Scots during seventeen years; and though for a long time she was on friendly and familiar terms with the unhappy prisoner who was called her guest, entertaining her with Court gossip and various scandalous tales of Queen Elizabeth, yet in the end the license of her tongue took a different direction. She became jealous of Mary's influence over her husband; and the domestic peace at Sheffield came to a violent end. "The children took part with their mother, the father stood by his duty to the lady in his charge; and, as a final touch to family dissensions, the Countess informed the world that Mary Stuart had admitted her husband to too close an intimacy, and was about to become a mother.
"The fury of the Queen of Scots at a false accusation, the fiery peremptoriness with which she insisted that the Countess should either prove her charge or do penance for slander, contrasts curiously with her anxiety to prevent too close a scrutiny into the murder of Darnley. The offending Countess was examined before the Privy Council, and was made to acknowledge upon her knees that she had lied."—Froude. Lord Shrewsbury was finally separated from her in 1585,[2] and perhaps it was owing to these disagreeable reminiscences that, on his death in 1590, she refrained from taking a fifth husband, but lived a widow for the remaining seventeen years of her life, "in absolute power and plenty," occupied in building three great houses at Chatsworth, Hardwick, and Oldcotes.[3] Her eldest son left no children by Lady Grace Talbot, but each of the two others became the founder of a Dukedom. One of her daughters, married to the Earl of Lennox, was the mother of the ill-fated Lady Arabella Stuart; and in honour of this royal connection, her second son William was created Lord Cavendish of Hardwick by James I., 1605. She had given him, as her favourite child, a greater fortune than had fallen to his elder brother's share; and on the death of the latter he united both in 1616. Two years afterwards, he was advanced to the Earldom of Devonshire. It is remarkable that he should have taken the old Courtenay title, for I cannot find that either he or any of his belongings ever had the slightest connection with the co. of Devon. The second Earl, a courtier and a prodigal, whose house "appeared like a prince's court rather than a subject's," left at his death his son a minor, and his widow burdened with the care of an estate that was "loaded with debt, and charged and complicated with near thirty law-suits." But she extricated herself gallantly from her difficulties; for she managed to pay off the debt, and prosper in all her law business, so that Charles I. once said to her in jest, "Madam, you have all my judges at your disposal." She was in every way a remarkable woman; distinguished not only as an able and active politician who worked hard for the Restoration, but as the patroness of the wits and poets of the age, who used to congregate at her house. "Waller read his verses there, and William Earl of Pembroke wrote a volume of poems in her praise, published afterwards, and dedicated to her by Donne."—Lysons. "She never affected the title of a wit; carried no snares in her tongue; and as she was never known to speak evil of any, so neither would she endure to hear of it, from any, of others." Her grandson was the first of seven successive Dukes of Devonshire. He had taken part vehemently with Lord Russell in opposing Charles II.'s government, gave evidence at his trial in his behalf, and was among the first to declare himself for the Prince of Orange. He officiated as Lord High Steward at the coronation of William and Mary, received the Garter in the same year, and was created a Duke in 1694.
The other Cavendish Dukedom, which had become extinct three years before, was granted for military service. Bess of Hardwick's third son, Sir Charles Cavendish, of Welbeck Abbey in Notts,[4] had married Catherine, sole heir of Cuthbert, seventh and last Lord Ogle, who brought him her father's barony and great Northumbrian estate: and their eldest son successively bore the titles of Baron Ogle of Bothal, Viscount Mansfield, Baron Cavendish of Bolsover, Earl of Ogle, and Earl, Marquess, and Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was the dashing Cavalier commander who first raised the Royal standard in the North, and, planting it on the battlements of Tynemouth Castle, manned and fortified Newcastle. Thence—in the very depth of winter—he fought his way to York at the head of his new levies, routing the rebels in every direction. He fully maintained the reputation thus gained, most of all by his splendid defence of York against three several armies of English and Scots. But after the fatal day of Marston Moor, he sheathed his sword and went abroad; men said, in consequence of a misunderstanding with Prince Rupert. He had lost nearly three parts of a million sterling during the Civil War; and after the Restoration received a Dukedom as some compensation for his sufferings in the Royal cause. Though so intrepid and successful a soldier, the natural bent of his mind was towards literature; and he wrote a Book of Horsemanship, that, as Horace Walpole tells us, made him familiar as an author "to those who scarce knew any other." But he adds, that though "he was a man extremely well known from the course of life into which he was forced, yet he would soon have been forgotten in the walk of fame he chose for himself. Though amorous in poetry and music, as Lord Clarendon says, he was fitter to break Pegasus for a manege, than to mount him on the steeps of Parnassus. Of all the riders of that steed, perhaps there have not been a more fantastic couple than his Grace and his faithful Duchess, who was never off her pillion." This was his second wife, Margaret Lucas, "the authoress of thirteen folios, of whom he is reported to have said, in answer to a compliment on her wisdom, 'Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing.' She was surrounded night and day with young ladies, who were to wake up at moment's notice to take down her Grace's conceptions."—Dean Stanley.
Her husband died in 1676, having reached the good old age of eighty-four, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey, where a costly monument commemorates "the loyal Duke of Newcastle." His first wife had been an heiress, by whom he left one surviving son, Henry, second Duke; who, again, had (besides five daughters) an only son, the last heir of his house. This young Earl of Ogle, on whom rested so many hopes and expectations, was matched very early in life with the greatest heiress in England, Lady Elizabeth Percy, dowered with six ancient baronies, and the whole of the territory that had been held by the Earls of Northumberland. The estate that was his by birthright was one of the largest in the country; and with two such inheritances merged into one, the prospect of earthly grandeur opened before him would have gladdened the covetous heart of old Bess of Hardwick. But this fair promise was blighted almost as soon as it dawned. The poor boy destined to so exceptional a lot died the year after his marriage, leaving a child-widow of fifteen; and when his father followed him to the grave in 1691, every one of the new-born honours of the family expired, and the old barony of Ogle fell into abeyance between five sisters. The two elder ones, Elizabeth, first Duchess of Albemarle and then Duchess of Montagu, and Frances, Countess of Breadalbane, were both childless; and the third, Margaret, the wife of John Holies, Earl of Clare, was thus constituted sole heir. Her husband, created in 1694 Marquess of Clare and Duke of Newcastle, was "considered the richest subject that had been in the kingdom for some ages." But here again the male line failed. Their only child was Henrietta Countess of Oxford; and she, in her turn, had but one daughter, Lady Margaret Harley, celebrated by Prior as "My noble, lovely little Peggy," on whom the whole splendid heritage ultimately devolved. She brought it to William Bentinck, second Duke of Portland, whom she married in 1734.
Three other still existing titles have been granted to the Cavendishes. The elder brother of the first Earl of Devonshire left an illegitimate son, to whom he gave Doveridge Hall "with a suitable estate" in Derbyshire. One of his descendants, Sir Henry Cavendish, married an Irish heiress, who was created in 1792 Baroness Waterpark, in the co. of Cork, with remainder to her heirs male. Again, Lord George Cavendish, second son of the fourth Duke and his richly-endowed wife Lady Charlotte Boyle (see vol. iii. p. 18) received her father's title of Earl of Burlington in 1831. He had himself married a lady of great wealth, and—to judge from her portrait—of even greater beauty, the only child of Charles Compton, seventh Earl of Northampton, and devised a part of her possessions, and the superb mansion of Burlington House (now pulled down) to their fourth son, Charles Compton Cavendish, created Lord Chesham in 1858. The title of Burlington was merged in the same year, when Lord George's grandson, the second Earl, succeeded to the Dukedom of Devonshire.
"Brave Walworth, Knight, Lord Mayor, y* slew
Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes;
The King therefore did give in lieu
The dagger to the City arms."
But the sword on the shield of the Corporation of London—the ensign of the patron saint of the City, St. Paul—was not added at that time; and though the old Corporation seal was broken up during the mayoralty of Sir William, the new one was provided on April 17th, 1381, whereas the Wat Tyler incident only took place on June 15th of the same year. The Phillpots of Porthgwidden in Cornwall claim the deed for their ancestor, Sir John Philipot, who was one of the knights made on that occasion. Fuller and Stowe, however, both affirm that the blow was struck by John Candish or Cavendish, one of the esquires in attendance on Richard II.: and Froissart (who transforms Candish into Sandwich) adds that he was dubbed for the feat.