styled 1626-28 Ld.Cavendish; suc. fa. 20 June 1628 (a minor) as 3rd earl of DEVONSHIRE.
First sat 13 Apr. 1640; first sat after 1660, 21 May 1660; last sat 29 Aug. 1678
b. 10 Oct. 1617, 1st s. of William Cavendish†, 2nd earl of Devonshire, and Christian (1595–1675), da. of Edward Bruce, Ld. Kinloss [S], and Baron Bruce of Kinloss [S]. educ. St John’s, Camb. matric. 1631–2, MA 1637; travelled abroad (France and Italy, with Thomas Hobbes) 1634–7.1 m. 4 Mar. 1639, Elizabeth (1619–89), da. of William Cecil, 2nd earl of Salisbury, 2s. (1 d.v.p.), 1da. KB 1 Feb. 1626. d. 23 Nov. 1684; will 25 July 1683–21 Nov. 1684, pr. 10 Apr. 1685.2
Commr. Board of Trade 1669–72.3
Ld. lt. Derbys. 1638–42, 1660–d.; commr. array, Leics. 1642; steward, Tutbury, Derbys. 1660–d., High Peak, Derbys. 1661–d.4
FRS 1663.
Associated with: Hardwick Hall, Derbys.; Chatsworth, Derbys.; Latimers, Bucks.;5 Roehampton House, Surr. 1650–d.6
Likenesses: oils on canvas, Anthony Van Dyck, 1638, Chatsworth, Derbys.; oils on canvas, studio of Peter Lely, c.1660, National Trust, Hardwick Hall, Derbys.
William Cavendish inherited the earldom of Devonshire, with its extensive estates in Derbyshire, as a minor, when his father, a notorious rake and spendthrift of the Jacobean and Caroline court (as well as the first pupil of Thomas Hobbes), died young from, as it has been delicately expressed, ‘indulgence in good living’. At his death the Devonshire estate was in tatters. It, and the education of the ten-year-old 3rd earl, were entrusted to the care of the dowager countess, Christian Bruce. During her long widowhood until her death in January 1675, she managed to put the estates back in order for her son and became renowned for her hospitality and patronage of men of letters, as well as for her fervent royalism.7 The young earl remained devoted to her throughout his life and it was commented in the 1650s (admittedly by a hostile writer) that ‘everyone perceives that he dares not eat or drink but as she appoints’.8
The young earl reached his majority in 1638, when he returned from the continent, and was promptly appointed lord lieutenant of Derbyshire; he married the following year. He first sat in the House in the Short Parliament, but in the spring of 1642, after having been ousted from his office of lord lieutenant by the Militia Ordinance, he left Parliament to join the king at York, where he was one of the signatories of the declaration that the king did not intend to make war on his Parliament.9 On 9 July 1642 Parliament ordered his arrest and imprisonment for his intention to put the commission of array into effect, and eleven days later he was formally expelled from the House of Lords. Upon this, and in contrast to his younger brother, the royalist war hero Charles Cavendish, Devonshire fled the country, and his lands were sequestered by Parliament. He returned in 1645, compounded with Parliament for £5,000, and had his delinquency and sequestration of estates discharged by the House of Lords on 10 Dec. 1645. He spent the remainder of the 1640s and 1650s lying low and managing his estate, first from his house at Latimers, Buckinghamshire, and then from Roehampton House in Surrey, which his mother had purchased in 1650.10
Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, considered Devonshire to be one of the ‘lords with the king’ when drawing up his list of members of the Convention House of Lords, but the earl was not able to take his seat until the ordinance of 20 July 1642 expelling him from the House was vacated on 4 May 1660. Even then, it was not until 21 May that he first sat in the House again, after an absence of almost 20 years. He came to 46 per cent of the meetings of the Convention and was named to only two select committees, one of which was that established on 26 May to consider means to ensure the safety of the restored king.
In the summer interval Devonshire was given back his old post as lord lieutenant of Derbyshire, and was also made steward of Tutbury and High Peak. Throughout the remainder of his life he was more active in his local role, with an interest which could stretch into south Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, than he was in Westminster politics.11 He exercised a considerable influence over the Derbyshire elections for the Cavalier Parliament, and he was able to ensure that his eldest son, William Cavendish, styled Lord Cavendish (later duke of Devonshire), was selected to represent the county, as well as his close friend the former royalist commander John Frescheville, later Baron Frescheville.12
Devonshire came to 78 per cent of the sittings of the first two sessions (1661–2 and spring 1663) of the Cavalier Parliament, and was named to 11 select committees across the two sessions. On 9 June 1661 his uncle Thomas Bruce, Baron Bruce of Whorlton, registered his proxy with him for the remainder of the session. Devonshire failed to distinguish himself sufficiently to allow Wharton to predict what side he would take in the attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, in July 1663. He was present at all but four of the meetings of the brief session of spring 1664, but was not appointed to any committees. He was then absent for the entirety of the next four sessions from November 1664 to July 1667, although he did register his proxy with James Butler, earl of Brecknock (and duke of Ormond [I]), on 2 Nov. 1664 for the session of winter 1664–5. Two years previously he had established a close friendship and connection with the Irish lord lieutenant when Cavendish had married (with a £6,000 portion) Lady Mary Butler, Ormond’s daughter.13
Devonshire took part in the first few weeks of the session of autumn 1667, then left the House before the debates over the impeachment of Clarendon were under way, but returned to attend regularly in early 1668, when he was named to 11 committees. He first sat in the House for the following session on 4 Nov. 1669 and proceeded to attend another 25 of that session’s 36 sittings, during which he was named to two committees, one of them the large one considering the decay of trade. On 13 Nov., about a week after he first sat, Henry Grey, earl of Stamford, registered his proxy with him.
Devonshire was in the House for the first few weeks of the session of early 1670, when he was appointed to six committees, but on 16 Mar. 1670, after he had been away from the House for two days, he registered his proxy with his cousin and friend Robert Bruce, earl of Ailesbury. This was vacated on 22 Mar. when Devonshire returned to the House for that one day. By this time Ailesbury himself was not sitting in the House, and on 25 Mar. Devonshire registered his proxy with Arthur Capell, earl of Essex. This in turn was vacated when Devonshire returned to the House on 9 Apr. 1670, only a few days before the summer adjournment. After the session had resumed later that year, he did not appear again until 21 Feb. 1671, to attend only eight sittings in late February and early March 1671 before leaving the House for the session.
Devonshire’s erratic attendance can probably be attributed to his frequent illnesses, and in February 1672 it was confidently reported that ‘Lord Devonshire is very likely to die’.14 He put the lie to such predictions (as he was often to do) when he proceeded to sit in 90 per cent of the meetings of the House, with 17 nominations to select committees, in the first session of spring 1673, but then he was absent again for the entirety of the following two sessions of autumn 1673 and early 1674, and at a call of the House on 12 Jan. 1674 was formally excused because he was ‘sick’. He soon recovered again, and for the controversial session of spring 1675 he was in the House for all but one of its meetings, and was nominated to four select committees. He may have come out of concern over the Non-Resisting Test bill, for the author of A Letter from a Gentleman of Quality singled him out as one of ‘those great lords’ who gave ‘countenance and support … to the English interest’ by opposing the bill (although his name does not appear on any of the protests signed against that measure).15
Devonshire was absent for the autumn 1675 session, but registered his proxy with Ailesbury on 14 Oct. 1675. Despite his absence, he played a key role in the dramatic vote on an address to the king requesting the dissolution of Parliament which closed the session on 20 November. Of the peers present that day, those voting for the motion were in a majority but the not contents held more proxies; when those were added to the total the division was found to be exactly equal, at 48 votes each. At that point, Ailesbury suddenly came into the House and, although he had heard nothing of the debate, it was left to him, still holding Devonshire’s proxy, to cast the deciding votes. His adherence to James Stuart, duke of York, who on this occasion was making common cause with the Country lords for the motion, might have tipped him in that direction, but in the end he brought his two votes against it, giving the court a thin majority of two.16
Devonshire was present in Westminster again in the summer of 1676 and was summoned to the court of the lord high steward for the trial of Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, whom he found not guilty.17 He was again absent for the long session of 1677–8, registering his proxy with Ailesbury on 9 Feb. 1677. He did manage to come to 72 per cent of the sittings of the session of May–July 1678, with 13 committee nominations, and his last ever sitting in the House was on a day of prorogation, 29 Aug. 1678. For the last session of the Cavalier Parliament, in the autumn of 1678, he registered his proxy with Ailesbury again, on 22 October.18 On 27 Dec. 1678 two of Devonshire’s servants formally attested to the House that Devonshire ‘being lame of the gout, is not able to take so great a journey as to come up’, and from that session onward Devonshire was consistently excused from the business of the House because of his gout and other illnesses.
Just because Devonshire was now too ill to attend the House does not mean that he was politically disengaged. He was kept informed of events in Westminster and abroad by regular newsletters delivered to him at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. Over 100 of these newsletters, from a variety of different sources and in many different hands, survive in the Chatsworth archive, and there are also over 75 handwritten copies of the texts of various votes, orders and addresses emanating from Parliament. Significantly, they all date from after September 1678, precisely the time when Devonshire stopped travelling to Westminster himself.19 Both Francis Bickley and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography characterize Devonshire as politically inactive and write of his ‘political indifference’, yet it would appear from his existing archive that during the tumultuous years of 1678–81 he was avidly consuming newsletters of foreign and domestic news every two or three days.20 His sources included both paid official newsletter-writers, such as Richard Allsop, and his own friends and colleagues based in Westminster, such as Sir John Gell‡, Devonshire’s receiver of rents for the honour of Tutbury.21
In addition, from as early as 1665 Devonshire may have been leaning on his Derbyshire associates in Parliament – John Milward, Anchitell Grey, Sir John Gell and John, Baron Frescheville – to provide him with detailed notes of proceedings in the houses during his frequent bouts of illness and incapacity. It is highly probable that the two principal parliamentary diaries of debates in the Commons during the reign of Charles II – those of John Milward‡ for 1666–8 and of Anchitell Grey‡ for 1667–94 – were collected (at least initially) for Devonshire. Both Milward and Grey were members of Parliament for Derbyshire constituencies (Milward for the county and Grey for the borough of Derby, both returned at by-elections in 1665) and were also deputy lieutenants under the leadership of Devonshire. Milward was close to Devonshire, and compiled a letter-book in his role as deputy lieutenant which reveals that Devonshire frequently consulted him on the administration of the county. The letter-book may even have been made for the benefit of Devonshire himself, as it bears on its spine the title ‘Earl of Devonshire’s Letter Book, 1660–66’, although the compiler was clearly Milward.
Anchitell Grey appears to have had a favoured status with Devonshire as a trusted deputy lieutenant, and as early as October 1660 Grey was expressing to his brother-in-law Lord Bruce (Bruce’s wife was Grey’s sister) that his business in the county was ‘to attend my Lord Devonshire’s commands’ and that ‘the noble favours his lordship has heaped upon me, [oblige] me to a great acknowledgment’. Devonshire strongly urged Grey to stand for knight of the shire when a vacancy in the country representation arose in 1665, but Grey made it clear that he would rather stand for the borough of Derby, one of whose sitting members, Roger Allestry‡, was on the point of death.22
In the spring of 1677 Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, marked Devonshire as ‘worthy’, but this view was probably belied by Devonshire’s constant reliance on Ailesbury as his proxy. Ailesbury voted consistently with Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), and the court throughout the last months of 1678. In one of his working lists Danby appears to have included Devonshire among ‘opposition lords’, but in other lists calculating his supporters and opponents during his impeachment hearings in 1679, and for his petition for bail in the Parliament of 1681, the lord treasurer included him among his absent supporters, and in 1679 appears to have assigned Devonshire’s friend Frescheville to win him over more firmly to Danby’s cause.23 Frescheville, one of Danby’s most constant supporters in the House, was a former royalist and a Derbyshire landowner, deputy lieutenant and justice of the peace, who in 1680 was to sell the reversion of his own estate of Staveley to the earl for £2,600 and to whose widow Devonshire was to leave a bequest in his will.24 He may have added to the earl’s steady stream of newsletters with his own thoughts on parliamentary proceedings. One letter of his from 13 Mar. 1677 survives, in which Frescheville promised that through him Devonshire would have ‘a better account’ of the House’s debates surrounding the address to the king for war against France ‘than any other absent Lord’. Frescheville ended his letter by beseeching Devonshire not to ‘believe anything which is written to you from the duke of Ormond or your cousin Ailesbury concerning my lord’, a comment which concisely reveals Devonshire’s other major political correspondents at this time.25
Devonshire bequeathed Ailesbury £1,000 in his will and the two cousins do appear to have been particularly close. Their link was Christian, dowager countess of Devonshire, Devonshire’s mother, who from 1646 lived with her brother Baron Bruce of Whorlton at his house at Ampthill and there encouraged her young nephew in his royalist views, later maintaining and strengthening them through letters to him after her move to Roehampton in 1650. Lord Bruce, later earl of Ailesbury, maintained a frequent correspondence with both Christian and her son Devonshire throughout the 1650s and thereafter, in which the cousins exchanged gossip as well as advice on how to run a county as a lord lieutenant (as Ailesbury was lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire).26 For his part, Ailesbury constantly encouraged Devonshire to take a more active political role, and in a letter of 24 Feb. 1677 reproved him for predicting (incorrectly, as it transpired) his own imminent death and wished that ‘God grant you health and strength to make many journeys to serve your King, your country and your friends. Without flattery I must say that the life of such a person as yourself is a national concern.’27 Ailesbury was anxious for Devonshire’s involvement in Parliament in the more fraught days of 1680, when Devonshire had not registered his proxy, and wrote to him on 6 Nov. 1680, just before the House’s vote on the Exclusion bill, that ‘Your Lordship is wanted much here. Although the Lords upon the call of the House were pleased to excuse you, yet they will surely require the attendance of their members, when so important affairs are depending.’28
The marriages of Devonshire’s two surviving children, Anne to John Cecil, styled Lord Burghley (later 5th earl of Exeter), and William, Lord Cavendish to Mary Butler, daughter of the duke of Ormond, brought him into marriage alliances with both the Cecil and the Butler houses. Although Devonshire was already married to another Cecil, Elizabeth, daughter of the 2nd earl of Salisbury, this family connection does not appear to have played as important a role in his life as that with Ormond. The close friendship between Devonshire and Ormond is suggested by numerous incidents. In June 1666 Devonshire and Ailesbury agreed to enter into a bond for a debt owed by Ormond.29 The two earls later hosted him in turn at their houses at Ampthill and Chatsworth in August 1670 as Ormond made his way to Ireland.30 Devonshire also offered his house at Chatsworth as the place for a tense meeting between Ormond and his fellow Irish grandee Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, to discuss the bad relations between Ormond and Burlington’s brother Roger Boyle‡, earl of Orrery [I].31 On another occasion Ormond stayed for a period at Chatsworth while en route to Ireland to take up the lord lieutenancy there, and Devonshire then accompanied him to his embarkation at Chester.32
Another peer who appears to have been close to Devonshire was his second cousin Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle. When Newcastle’s heir, Henry Cavendish, styled Lord Ogle, died on 1 Nov. 1680, Ailesbury condoled the loss with Devonshire, assuring Devonshire that ‘I am sure none next to his nearest relations hath a greater sense of the noble lord’s loss’.33 In 1682 Devonshire acted as the middleman trying fruitlessly to negotiate the terms of a proposed marriage between Ormond’s grandson James Butler, 2nd Baron Butler of Moore Park (better known as Lord Ossory [I], and later 2nd duke of Ormond), and Catherine, one of Newcastle’s daughters.34 Ailesbury, Ormond and Newcastle were the three ‘noble friends’ to whom Devonshire made special bequests in his will of 1683.
Ormond and Devonshire were bound by their shared concern over the behaviour of William, Lord Cavendish, who is probably ‘my lord’ mentioned in Frescheville’s letter of 1677. By that year Cavendish had become, according to a foreign observer, ‘the most dissolute man in London’.35 He was also one of the foremost members of the Country party in the Commons, taking positions against the court and James Stuart, duke of York, which appear to have perturbed both Devonshire and Ormond. Cavendish and his partner William Sacheverell‡ were returned for Derbyshire for all three Exclusion Parliaments without opposition, but it does not appear that Devonshire exerted himself in these elections on his son’s behalf. Indeed in September 1680, just before the convening of the second Exclusion Parliament, Leoline Jenkins‡ and Sidney Godolphin, later earl of Godolphin, hatched a plot whereby the king would press Devonshire to pay Lord Cavendish’s mounting debts and increase his allowance so that Cavendish would be tempted to return ‘to his duty … to the king as well as to his father’.36
In September 1681 Devonshire wrote to Ormond telling him that he had paid one of his son’s debts of £1,500, but that that still did not seem to satisfy the young rake, who would not provide his father with a statement of his other debts:
I wish he would apply himself to what your Grace intimates, the providing for his family and to serve his King and country. He acquaints me not at all with his intentions, and I humbly beseech your Grace to enquire whether I have omitted anything to obtain his good opinion …. I am sure his ill behaviour towards me gives me greater grief and trouble than my infirmities can bear.37
Devonshire was alarmed when he heard the following year that Ormond was proposing to pay £6,000 of Cavendish’s debts,
which I will never suffer to be paid by any but myself, and humbly beg my lord not to assist him till he make an entire submission and pay me thanks for what I have done already, and renew his last engagement, which is the least I can expect of him.38
Cavendish never did submit to any of his paternal figures – father, father-in-law or king – and was later a leading promoter of William of Orange’s descent on England in 1688 and one of William III’s principal courtiers and supporters. That was when he was already 4th earl (and soon to be duke) of Devonshire, for the 3rd earl, plagued by illness since the late 1670s, finally succumbed and died in his mother’s old residence of Roehampton House in Surrey on 23 Nov. 1684. His will, originally written in July 1683, but with codicils composed right up to the time of his death, assigned his wife, the earl of Ailesbury and his son-in-law as his executors and further appointed Cavendish and Ormond to be overseers. He bequeathed about £28,000 in individual bequests, provided for about £3,000 in annuities, and gave to his wife, children and grandchildren 2,500 ounces of plate and numerous paintings and pieces of jewellery. The main beneficiaries were his widow, Elizabeth, his daughter, Anne, countess of Exeter, and his numerous grandchildren by both Lady Exeter and Lord Cavendish, particularly Cavendish’s daughter Elizabeth (a portion of £10,000) and his younger son Henry, who received estates in Leicestershire. His own heir, Lord Cavendish, is virtually unnamed among his bequests in this extensive will, apart from a stern injunction to provide for his younger sons and not to sell the jewellery that Devonshire intended as heirlooms. This may reflect the falling-out that the two had suffered over Cavendish’s political activities and mounting debts in the last years of Devonshire’s life, but it is more likely to be due to Cavendish’s existing secure position, amply provided for by the inheritance of the entailed Devonshire estates, which the 3rd earl had protected, consolidated and expanded so effectively during his life.
C.G.D.L.- 1 W. Kennet, Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish (1737), 11; F. Bickley, The Cavendish Family, 45.
- 2 TNA, PROB 11/379.
- 3 CSP Dom. 1668–9, p. 224.
- 4 Bickley, Cavendish Family, 60.
- 5 VCH Bucks. iii. 209.
- 6 Lysons, Environs of London, i. 430–3.
- 7 T. Pomfret, The Life of the Right Honourable and religious Lady Christian, late countess dowager of Devonshire (1685); Bodl. Carte 214, f. 145.
- 8 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 101.
- 9 Bickley, Cavendish Family, 45; Kennet, Memoirs, 12.
- 10 CSP Dom. 1663–4, p. 150; Bickley, Cavendish Family, 54.
- 11 Add. 34306; Eg. ch. 2441–2; CSP Dom. 1664–5, pp. 18, 20, 24, 33, 47, 409, 449; HMC Ormonde, n.s. vii. 64; TNA, C181/7, pp. 437, 458, 487, 558.
- 12 HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 187.
- 13 Bodl. Carte 32, f. 131; Carte 215, f. 385.
- 14 Verney ms mic. M636/25, Sir R. to E. Verney, 15 Feb. 1672.
- 15 Timberland, i. 157.
- 16 CSP Dom. 1675–6, pp. 413–14; HEHL, Ellesmere ms 8418.
- 17 HEHL, Ellesmere ms 8419; State Trials, vii. 157–8.
- 18 Bodl. Carte 81, f. 364.
- 19 Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, 1/A–H (Newsletters), 2 (General Correspondence).
- 20 Bickley, Cavendish Family, 60; Oxford DNB (‘William Cavendish, 3rd earl of Devonshire’).
- 21 Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, 2, R. Allsopp to Devonshire (and other lords), 26 Nov. 1678; Devonshire Collection, 1/G (letters of Sir John Gell).
- 22 Milward Diary, x, xv; Add. 34306; WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/480, 481, 537, 538; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 162–3, 174; HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 187, 189.
- 23 HMC 14th Rep. IX, 425.
- 24 CSP Dom. 1664–5, pp. 18, 24, 33.
- 25 Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, 2, Frescheville to Devonshire, 13 Mar. 1677.
- 26 WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/408–661; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 156–61.
- 27 Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, 2, Ailesbury to Devonshire, 24 Feb. 1677.
- 28 Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, 2, Ailesbury to Devonshire, 6 Nov. 1680.
- 29 Bodl. Carte 34, f. 702; Carte 50, f. 46; Carte 145, ff. 289–91; Carte 215, ff. 273–4.
- 30 Verney ms mic. M636/24, H. Verney and Dr. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 18 and 22 Aug. 1670; Bodl. Carte 216, f. 33.
- 31 HMC Ormonde, n.s. iv. 246–51; NLI, ms 2364, pp. 253–60 (letter 3779).
- 32 CSP Dom. 1677–8, pp. 278, 312.
- 33 Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection, Group 2, Ailesbury to Devonshire, 6 Nov. 1680.
- 34 HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 378–80, 386–7; vii. 105–6; Add. 75360, Sir J. Reresby to Halifax, 5 and 19 July 1682.
- 35 L. Magalotti, Relazione, ed. Middleton, 117.
- 36 CSP Dom. 1680–1, pp. 37, 39.
- 37 HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 161.
- 38 Ibid. 380.