George Cavendish, our biographer, was the elder of the two sons of Thomas Cavendish, Clerk of the Pipe in the Exchequer, and of Alice, the daughter and heiress of John Smith, of Padbrook Hall, in Suffolk. George Cavendish, born about 1500, entered Wolsey's service as gentlemanusher in 1527 or earlier. Wolsey, after his fall, regretting he had not in the days of his power done more for Cavendish, said: "Now that I see this gentleman (i.e. Cavendish) how faithful, how diligent, and how painful since the beginning of my trouble he hath served me, abandoning his own country, his wife and children, his house and family, his rest and quietness, only to serve me, and remembering that I have nothing to reward him for his honest merits, grieveth me not a little."1 On Wolsey's death in 1530, the king was willing to take him into his own service as gentleman-usher,2 as he had been so loyal a servant to Wolsey, but Cavendish preferred to go back to his old home in the country, and to his wife, Margery, daughter of William Kemp, of Spainhall, in Essex, and niece of Sir Thomas More, there to live a quiet country life till, in 1561 or 1562, he died. George Cavendish held the manor of Cavendish Overhall: he had two sons, to the elder of whom, William, he in 1558 granted the manor in exchange for a yearly payment of twenty marks. This son William also had a son William, who was a mercer in London, and had so little pride in his inheritance that he sold Cavendish to strangers. We know nothing of further descendants.

Though from the direct line of our biographer no famous posterity sprang, from that of his younger brother, William Cavendish, who was knighted by Henry VIII., and built the great house at Chatsworth, with the wealth that fell to him from the dissolution of the monasteries, came the great family of the Cavendishes, who have played a conspicuous part in English history from that day to this. Sir William Cavendish's second son was created Earl of Devonshire in 1618.

Our biographer was a loyal son of the Church; he shrank

1 See p. 72, 11. 12-20. 2 See p. 93, 11. 20-23. 3 See p. 94, l. 13, 1. 25.

from the thought of the dissolution of the monasteries; he disliked Anne Boleyn, who had been the indirect cause of Wolsey's fall, and clung to the old ways, hating the Reformation. It would have needed courage to set forth a biography so favourable to Wolsey during the remainder of Henry VIII.'s reign or in Edward VI.'s, for its purport would have been so unpopular, that the author might have brought down on his own head some of the malignity which still tinged most men's judgment of Wolsey. And that Cavendish was somewhat timorous or worldly wise appears in his denial to the Council of any knowledge of Wolsey's dying words.1 But when Queen Mary came to the throne, Cavendish plucked up heart to write his reminiscences of his early manhood in his Life of Wolsey. From comparing two references in the book, it is clear that the life was written between 25th July 1554 and 17th February 1557. It at once aroused interest, and the manuscript was freely copied. More than twelve such manuscript copies still exist. The book was first printed in Charles I.'s reign, but this edition and those that followed were imperfect, being published for party purposes, with omissions and additions. It was not till the eighteenth century that a trustworthy edition from a good manuscript was produced.

Till early in the nineteenth century, it was supposed that William Cavendish, not the elder brother, George, had written the Life of Wolsey. But the researches of the Rev. Joseph Hunter, who in 1814 published a pamphlet to answer the query, "Who wrote Cavendish's Life of Wolsey?" established George's authorship beyond a doubt.

Cavendish's work has reached a far wider circle than that which has read his biography of Wolsey, for Shakespeare read one of the manuscripts, and, moved by the greatness of Wolsey's Lucifer-like fall, took it as the subject for his historical play, Henry VIII. Often, as in parts of the great 1 See Cavendish's Life of Wolsey by S. W. Singer. Second edition, 1827, p. 401.

2 lb. pp. 102, 402.

passage where he puts the lesson of the fall of Wolsey into Wolsey's own mouth in an imaginary speech to Cromwell, Shakespeare paraphrases Cavendish-1

"Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

Love thyself last cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not :

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,

Thou fall'st a blessed martyr. Serve the king;

And, -Prithee, lead me in :

There take an inventory of all I have,

To the last penny: 'tis the king's my robe,

And my integrity to heaven, is all

I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!

Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal

I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age

Have left me naked to mine enemies."

Cavendish's own judgment of Wolsey finds voice in Shakespeare's summary of his character, when he makes Griffith say to Queen Katharine :— 2

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading :
Lofty and sour to them that lov'd him not ;
But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.
And though he were unsatisfied in getting,
(Which was a sin,) yet in bestowing, madam,
He was most princely: ever witness for him
Those twins of learning, that be raised in you,
Ipswich and Oxford! one of which fell with him,
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;
The other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and still so rising,

That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue."

1 Henry VIII., act iii., scene 2. Compare p. 87, 11. 20-28. 2 lb. act iv., scene 2.