I. WILLIAM CAVENDISH, duke of Newcastle (1592-1676), eldest surviving son of Sir Charles Cavendish and of Catherine, daughter of Cuthbert, Lord Ogle, and grandson of Sir William Cavendish and "Bess of Hardwick," was born in 1592 and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. On the occasion of the creation of Prince Henry as prince of Wales in 1610 he was made a knight of the Bath, subsequently travelled with Sir Henry Wotton, then ambassador to the duke of Savoy, and on his return married his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of William Basset of Blore, Staf fordshire, and widow of Henry Howard, 3rd son of the earl of Suffolk. His fortune was immense, and he several times enter tained James I. and Charles I. with great magnificence at Wel beck and Bolsover. In 162o he was created Viscount Mansfield, in 1628 earl of Newcastle, and in 1629 the barony of Ogle was restored to his mother, this title, together with an estate of £3,000 per annum, descending to him. In 1638 he was made governor of the prince of Wales, and in 1639 a privy councillor. When the Scottish war broke out he assisted the king with a loan of I io,000 and a troop of volunteer horse, consisting of 120 knights and gentlemen. In 1641 he was implicated in the Army Plot, and in consequence withdrew for a time from the court. He was sent by Charles on Jan. II, 1642 to seize Hull, but was refused ad mittance. When the king declared open war, Newcastle was given the command of the four northern counties, and had the power conferred on him of making knights. He maintained troops at his own expense, and having occupied Newcastle kept open com munications with the queen, and despatched to the king his for eign supplies. In Nov. 1642 he advanced into Yorkshire, raised the siege of York, and compelled Fairfax to retire after attacking him at Tadcaster. Subsequently his plans were checked by the latter's recapture of Leeds in Jan. 1643, and he retired to York. He escorted the queen, who returned from abroad in February, to York, and subsequently captured Wakefield, Rotherham and Sheffield, though failing at Leeds, but his successes were once more ravished from him by Fairfax. In June he advanced again, defeated the Fairfaxes at Adwalton Moor on June 30, and ob tained possession of all Yorkshire except Hull and Wressel Castle. He might now have joined the king against Essex, but continued his campaign in the north, advancing into Lincolnshire to attack the eastern association, and taking Gainsborough and Lincoln.
Thence he returned to besiege Hull, and in his absence the force which he had left in Lincolnshire was defeated at Winceby by Cromwell on Oct. 11, 1643, which caused the loss of the whole county. On Oct. 27,.1643 he was created a marquis. Next year his position was further threatened by the advance of the Scots. Against prevailing numbers he could do little but harass and cut off supplies. He retreated to York, where the three armies of the Scots, Fairfax and Manchester surrounded him. On July I, Rupert raised the siege, but on the next day threw away his success by engaging the three armies in battle, contrary to New castle's desire, at Marston Moor. After this disaster, notwith standing the entreaties of the king and the remonstrances of Rupert, Newcastle immediately announced his intention of aban doning the cause and of quitting England. He sailed from Scar borough accompanied by a considerable following, including his two sons and his brother, resided at Hamburg from July 1644 to Feb. 1645, and removed in April to Paris, where he lived for three years. There he married as his second wife Margaret (see
below), daughter of Sir Thomas Lucas of St. John's, Colchester. He left in 1648 for Rotterdam with the intention of joining the prince of Wales in command of the revolted navy, and finally took up his abode at Antwerp, where he remained till the Restoration. In April 165o he was appointed a member of Charles II.'s privy council, and in opposition to Hyde advocated the agreement with the Scots. In Antwerp he established his famous riding-school, exercised "the art of manage," and published his first work on horsemanship, Methode et invention nouvelle de dresser les che vaux (1658, 2nd ed., 1747; translated as A General System of Horsemanship, I743)• At the Restoration Newcastle returned to England, and suc ceeded in regaining the greater part of his estates, though burdened with debts, his wife estimating his total losses in the war at 303. He was reinstated in the offices he had filled under Charles I.; was invested in 1661 with the Garter which had been bestowed upon him in 165o, and was advanced to a dukedom on March 16, 1665. He retired, however, from public life and occupied himself with his estate and with his favourite pursuit of training horses. He established a racecourse near Welbeck, and published another work on horsemanship, A New Method and Extraordinary Inven tion to Dress Horses and Work them according to Nature . . . (1667). He wrote also several comedies, The Country Captain and The Varietie The Humorous Lovers and The Trium phant Widow (1677). With Dryden's assistance he translated Moliere's L'Etourdi •as Sir Martin Mar-All (1688). He con tributed scenes to his wife's plays, and poems of his composition are to be found among her works ; and he was the patron of Jon son, Shirley, Davenant, Dryden, Shadwell and Flecknoe, and of Hobbes, Gassendi and Descartes. He died on Dec. 25, 1676, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. By his first wife he had ten children, of whom one son, Henry, survived him, and became 2nd duke of Newcastle, dying in 1691 without male issue; the title then became extinct.
His second wife, Margaret, duchess of Newcastle (c. 1625-73), had been maid of honour to Henrietta Maria. The duchess culti vated literary composition with exuberant fervour, and kept a bevy of maids of honour obliged to be ready at all hours "to register her Grace's conceptions." Walpole speaks of her as a "fertile pedant." She published Philosophical Fancies (1653); Poems and Fancies (1653) ; The World's Olio (1655) ; Nature's Picture drawn by Fancie's Pencil to the Life, which includes an autobiography (16S6); Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655); Orations (1662) Plays (1662) ; Sociable Letters (1664) ; Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666) ; Letters and Poems (1676).
The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, by Margaret, duchess of Newcastle, has been edited by C. H. Firth (i886) ; it was criticized by Pepys as "the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle writ by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an ass to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him," but on the other hand eulogized by Charles Lamb as a work for which "no casket is rich enough, no case sufficiently durable to honour and keep soft such a jewel." See also La Duchesse et le Duc de Newcastle, by Emile Montegut (1895). The duchess's Select Poems were edited by Brydges in 1813, and her Autobiography in 1814. The latter, edited by Lower, was published with her Life of the Duke of Newcastle in 1872.