HOW many Peakrells or scions of old Peak families have worn the satin tippet of a Chief Baron of the Exchequer, or the taffata tippet of a justice of Queen's Bench? A Bakewell, Bradbury, Bradshawe, Cokayne, Manners, Vernon, Cavendish, Foljambe. How many have had their necks encircled with the gold collar of Lord Mayor? Two Batemans, one Bradbury, one Cavendish, two Cokaynes. How many have borne upon their shoulders the epaulets of an Admiral? One Cavendish, two Eyres, one Vernon. How many have buckled just below the knee that little bit of blue velvet edged with gold, which is the most coveted honour in Europe? Ten Manners and nine Cavendishes. Each Duke of Devonshire has held this knighthood; the first Duke of Rutland did not. Above all, how many have enriched our literature with the labours of their researches, their classical and philosophical studies? These gentlemen shall have particular mention elsewhere; suffice it now to notice the memorabilia of one noble family. We do not assume for a moment that the answers we have given to such questions as must have arisen in the minds of many students are accurate, but we assert that they have an approximate accuracy, which is deserving of being tested. These are questions which should not be difficult to answer, yet is it so.

On the site of princely Chatsworth stood the homestead of Chetal, the Saxon, who was lord of the manor before the Norman Conquest; the ancient name of Chetesvorde (or, as Lysons says it should be, Chetelsvorde) bearing evidence of such a fact. Could we have known Lysons we would have submitted that this was simply the omission of the letter “1” by that dexterous scribe whose penmanship still excites curiosity after eight hundred years. Some three centuries subsequent to the Norman subjugation, there arose the half stone and timber residence of the Leches,^[1] which Sir William Cavendish purchased from the Agards^[2] about 1556-7, and evidently pulled down to build the edifice of which there is a painting extant. Some two years before the glorious Revolution (1687), the design by Talmon for the present Palace of the Peak was accepted by the fourth Earl of Devonshire. Of its splendour and the rare collection of works of art within its halls and corridors, we do not intend to make one observation, though we may briefly refer to the exquisite carvings in the Chapel, so long attributed to Grinling Gibbons, as it is time the public mind was disembued of an error which arose from the egotistical assumption of that eighteenth century pedant, Horace Walpole.

Many of us associate the Cavendishes with the Peak only from the time when our famous Bess, then a comely lass, persuaded her husband, Sir William (who had already been married twice, and father of eight children), to dispose of his Suffolk estates and settle in Derbyshire. This would simply be about three hundred and thirty years! but Edmondson's Baronagium adds on three centuries to this, in clear and succinct characters, which must be of particular interest to those who dwell within a radius of ten miles from Bakewell, if not to the whole of historical students.

Robert de Gernon = Temp. of William I.

Matthew = Hodierna Sacville.

Ralph = Sister of Sir William Brews.

^[3] Ralph =
d. 1248.

William = Elianor.
d. 1259.

^[4] Geoffrey =
Second son.

Roger = Heiress of John Potkins, Lord of Cavendish,
d. 1328.          County Suffolk.
All the descendants took the name of Cavendish.

Sir John = Alice.
39 Edward III., Chief Justice of King's
Bench. 4 Richard II., Chancelor of Cambridge.
Killed same year by the mob at Bury.

^[5] Sir John = Joan Clopton.
In the King's bodyguard. Knighted V
for slaying Wat Tyler, 1379. Whence the noble family of Cavendish.

Moor Hall, the ancestral home of the De Gernons, stood somewhere near to the junction of the Stannage and Sheldon roads, or within a mile from Bakewell Church. We believe there are men yet living who can remember some gable or vestige of the building. We do not envy those whose minds allow them to pull down such venerable and historical edifices. Although some of the splendour of the illustrious family of Cavendish must be attributed to their union with the heiresses of the Potkins and Hardwickes, it should be added, in fairness, that they are singularly free from such unions (as a noble house), as we can only trace three others during six hundred years - the Righleys, of York; Hoskins, of Middlesex; and Boyles, Earls of Burlington.

Chatsworth House, having weathered two centuries, is certainly among the old Halls of the county, and the most magnificent of them, too; but from so many writers having made it a theme for their muse, we should not have mentioned it, only that we wish to direct attention to a fact that tends to make an illustrious and honoured Derbyshire family still more Derbyshire, and because we believe we can cite an association of the edifice which will possess some degree of freshness, and which should be treasured up as a touching incident of a noble heart. Moreover there are memorabilia of the Cavendish family which the compilers have ignored. We all know that the Earl of Devonshire, who built Chatsworth House, was created a Duke by William III., in 1694; but we may not all be aware that the second Duke married Rachael Russel, daughter of the English patriot; neither may we all remember that this lady's sister, Catherine, married John Manners, second Duke of Rutland. Thus the two sisters were wives of noblemen whose estates were in contiguity, but the singular incident tinged with pathos lies in the fact of both ladies being, in the month of November, 1711, in child-bed, when the Duchess of Rutland lost her life, though her child was the future Viscountess Galway. Old Lady Russel (who had just lost her son, the Duke of Bedford), “after seeing this daughter in her coffin, went to the Duchess of Devonshire, from whom it was necessary to conceal the fact, when assuming the appearance of cheerfulness in answer to her daughter's inquiries as to her sister's state, said, ‘I have seen your sister out of bed to-day’.”

Among those ancient oaks of the old park at the back of Chatsworth House (saplings, perchance, when Thomas Leche was physician or leech to Edward III.), one almost expects to meet with the shade of Master Chetal, in his roc and mantil and breche, looking for his domicile. If the first De Ferrars had been a draughtsman as well as a land surveyor, he might have endeared himself to future generations by giving us rough sketches (as marginal notes of his great book) of those Saxon gentlemen of the Peak, such as Godric, of Beeley; Levenot, of Edensor; and Chetal, of Chatsworth; or anyway of their homesteads; as it is, we only know their names, the particular manors of which they were lords, and that they were fifteen in number. How the estates of these men were pickings simply for the De Ferrars and Peverells is seen at a glance:-

BEFORE THE CONQUEST.	AT THE SURVEY.	MANORS.
Caschin............	Peverell.......................	Eyam.
Chetal..............	De Ferrars...................	Chatsworth, Gratton, and moiety of Hartle.
Colle................	De Ferrars...................	Youlgreave.
Colne...............	De Ferrars....................	Longstone.
Ernvi................	Royal Demesne............	Hucklow.
Godric..............	Royal Demesne............ (Stanton to De Ferrars.)	Beeley, moiety of Stanton.
Gurneburn......... Hundine............	Peverell.......................	Castleton
Levine...............	Peverell....................... (Winster to De Ferrars.)	Glossop, Bradwell, moiety of Winster.
Levenot.............	De Ferrars...................	Edensor, Middleton-by-Youlgreave.
Levenot............. Leuric................	Fitzhubert....................	Hathersage.
Lewin................	Peverell......................	Hazelbadge, Litton.
Raven................	De Ferrars..................	Moiety of Stanton, moiety of Winster.
Swain................	Royal Demesne...........	Abney.
Siward...............	Royal Demesne...........	Wormhill.

No wonder the De Ferrars founded Tutbury Priory, or the Peverells so richly endowed Lenton! One feature of the Peak lands is very curious - in their having had at least thirty-five different families of the aristocracy for lords since the Conquest; that there should have been a period, when, with the exception of the Foljambes and Vernons, the landlords were exclusively baronial; yet at the present moment there are virtually only two houses holding coronets, the Manners and the Cavendishes, though true, the Howards still hold Glossop, the Cowpers the mesne Manor of Over Haddon; and the Curzons Litton. Of the other thirty-one of the old aristocratic lords of the Peak, there are only seven that are even represented in the Peerage now - Boyle, Bridgeman, Grey, Needham, Shirley, Savile, Talbot; while the only Peak families, proper, who hold coronets, are the noble houses of Cavendish, Needham, Manners, Vernon, Milnes. At the dissolution of the Monasteries the Talbots came in for the lion's share of the lands in the Peak, but how curiously the vicissitudes of this family verify the aphorism of Burke is marvellous: No son succeeded father in the Earldom of Shrewsbury for almost two centuries; the Earl, who was Bess of Hardwicke's last husband, was considered the richest subject of Queen Elizabeth, but, forsooth, when he died, his will could scarce find an executor from poverty. His successor had three daughters, and thus the breaks began, which continued to within almost living memory. The mention of Bess brings us back to Chatsworth.

Apart from her marvellous character, the career of this famous lady is a study, if only taken historically. The age in which she lived was the most extraordinary, perchance, in a decade of centuries, and she seemed to be the link that joined the extremities of the age. She had one idea which never forsook her through life, the union of two things: bricks and mortar to yield grandeur, of human beings to yield wealth. She was a girl when Henry VIII. found that a sharp axe suited his ends better than a Divorce Court, and when he was reigning as a despot. Then she was busy with her own marriages, and she was yet planning the alliance of huge blocks of marble and stone when James I. found he was not allowed to play first fiddle in an English Parliament. As a girl, she married a boy, whose early death gave her his wealth; as a young widow, she flung her cap at an old gentleman of Suffolk, and wheedled him over to Derbyshire; again a widow, she bamboozled the children of her third husband out of their patrimony; again a widow, she mated with the senior Earl and richest noble of the realm, and got good Queen Bess to confirm her judgment in allowing him a description of pocket money. She came in for her brother's estates - for wealth, from the Barlows, Cavendishes, Loos, and Talbots. She mated her son, Henry, of Tutbury, with his step-sister, Grace Talbot; while her step-son, Gilbert, of Shrewsbury, was married to her daughter Mary. Having other daughters, she aspired to blood Royal, and wedded one to Lord Lennox, of the house of Stuart; and then offered to buy the wardship of young Lord Wharton as a desirable match for another. On her monument, in the Church of All Saints, Derby, we would point out an untruth, which makes her the mother of three sons and three daughters. Every student of genealogy knows she had eight children; of whom five were girls.

This lady was perfectly aware what she was doing when she went to “The Black Fryars in London”, on the 3rd November, 1541, as Elizabeth Barlow, widow, née Hardwicke, and came away Mrs. Cavendish. Her husband had been one of the Commissioners through whose hands the sequestered property of the monasteries had passed; he had given great satisfaction to Henry VIII. by his forcing the Orders into surrender, and got several good slices of land as a recompense; he had just been made Auditor of the Court of Augmentation, accompanied with other grants of land in Herts. “formerly belonging to the dissolved monasteries”. In 1546 he was knighted, made a Privy Councillor, and Treasurer of the King's Chamber. On the accession of Edward VI. he came in for further recognition of Royal pleasure; when Mary came to the Throne, he veered round from Protestant to Catholic, and was appointed her Royal Treasurer. Then it was that Bess coaxed him into converting his Suffolk estates into money, and purchasing fresh ones in Derbyshire. Sir William has been said, by innumerable writers, to have been usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and to have written his life. Thanks to the Rev. Joseph Hunter, we know differently. Hunter adduced evidence (extremely ingenious and not to be controverted) which overthrows the statement altogether. He directs attention to a sentence in the book, and then clinches it with a well-known fact. The sentence is uttered by Wolsey, wherein he says that the writer left “wife and family and home to serve me”. Wolsey died in 1530. At that time Sir William was not married to his first wife, Mary Bostock, and his first child was not born till 1534, so that he could not have left wife and family. There are other items of considerable interest which are all in confirmation. Sir William had an elder brother, Richard, who had gone forth from their London residence in the Parish of St. Albans, Wood Street, and became usher to Wolsey, to whose influence Sir William owed his introduction to Court. Their father was Clerk of the Pipe. It is well known that, when Wolsey fell, Richard Cavendish clung to him in his adversity, and never left him till he expired in Leicester Abbey. In that very year Sir William was one of the Commissioners of the Crown to demand the surrender of the Church lands. Yet Burke, Dod, Forster, and other writers of Peerages, will persist in asserting that Sir William was the usher and faithful servant of the Cardinal: Could he have been in the death chamber at Leicester Abbey and at Shene Abbey at the same time, demanding it to knuckle under? The two events occurred together, and it is a historical fact that he put the Abbot of Shene through his facings. Richard came back to Court just to receive from Henry VIII. “six of Wolsey's best cart horses, with a cart to carry his stuff and five marks for his cost homewards; also ten pounds of unpaid wages, and twenty pounds for a reward”, and then he retired to his manor at Cavendish Overkill, in Suffolk. He is known never to have sought further Court favour, never to have abjured the old faith, but to have given himself up to literature. His ambition seems to have been crushed by two events - the disgrace of Wolsey, and the execution of his wife's uncle, Sir Thomas More. Since Hunter's ingenious evidence it has been dug out that he compiled the life of his master in 1557, and that many copies in manuscript were sold before it ever reached the press. The screw of necessity must have pinched, for he sold his manor for a few pounds and passed away. All record of his line after the third generation is lost. What a contrast the two brothers present! Richard shrinking before the first blow of adversity, without one effort to benefit by his great master's degradation, preferring a provincial oblivion to the prospect of Royal favour and a coronet; William lending himself as a ready instrument to further the ends of a rapacious monarch, and receiving, without one qualm of conscience, moieties of the spoil he had helped to filch; one clinging to old rituals and old memories the other using prayer book or breviary as policy demanded.

There have been several members of this noble family who have distinguished themselves by their scientific researches and contributions to our literature. The discoveries of Henry, the celebrated chemist, who “probably uttered fewer words in the course of his life than any man who lived to four score years, not at all excepting the Monks of La Trappe”; who held no communication with his female domestics but wrote his orders and left them on the table, and who left a fortune of one million one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, we shall notice when we come to enumerate the famous literary and scientific Peakrells. There is a scion of this house to whom a debt of gratitude is due from the nation at large - and will be due from all future generations - that not one in ten of even educated men know anything about or have even heard. Let us explain. Sir Henry Cavendish, second baronet and father of the first Lord Waterpark, was Member of Parliament for Lostwithal, in Cornwall. Many of us have read and believed that the Parliament from 10th May, 1768, till 13th June, 1774, was one wherein the proceedings were never reported, as in history it is termed “The Unreported Parliament”. If we recall the names of some of its famous members, we shall then understand the importance of such a fact. There was Burke, with the mantle of Demosthenes upon him; Sheridan, Thurlow, Fox, Blackstone, and a coterie of orators that were never before nor since within the walls of St. Stephen's; there was the great Chatham, with his last sentences foretelling we should lose America by a ridiculous and futile taxation; there was the Granville Ministry, flinging the Member for Middlesex into the Tower for an expression of opinion, and the judges of England declaring they had no power to do so. Now the speeches uttered in this Parliament, which for “splendour of diction” were never surpassed, were more ably reported than any previous ones had ever been, and this by Henry Cavendish. This gentleman was an adept at the Gurney system of shorthand, writing with marvellous rapidity, and thus these reports are valuable, if only from their accuracy. But where are they? In the British Museum, and consist of forty-eight quarto volumes of manuscripts. Why they have never been printed and the world had the benefit it is very difficult to conceive.

Most visitors to Chatsworth come away with the idea that they have seen exquisite carving by Grinling Gibbons. Even in spite of the challenge of Lysons, and evidence produced by Cox and Jewitt, writers will persist in recapitulating this egregious blunder. Can any living man point to any proof of any work in Chatsworth being by Gibbons? We say proof that will stand powder and shot. Lysons said truthfully that no one had ever heard of Gibbons ever having been at Chatsworth, or doing any work for Chatsworth, until egotistical Walpole walked in one day and pronounced the carvings to be by Gibbons; this was more than half a century after the erection of Chatsworth, and during this period no one had heard the name of Gibbons mentioned as the carver. As Professor Jewitt said, those who have hitherto considered the carvings as the work of Gibbons “will, perhaps, learn, with some little surprise, that they are the creations of the genius of Watson”. Most of us have seen the marvellous pen over the door of the dining-room leading to the South Gallery. Walpole was in ecstacy over this, and pronounced it to be Gibbons, a thousand times over. This pen was the work and present of Watson to the first Duke. If Walpole had simply shown himself an egregious ass, it would have been of no consequence, but, unfortunately, he has robbed an artist, equally as skilled as Gibbons, of his fame, and propagated a falsehood, which better men than himself have believed as a truth. Again, the original memoranda of Watson, written almost two hundred years ago, some of which we have seen, leave no doubt but that the exquisite carvings in Chatsworth House, so justly admired, were the work of his hands.

Why one of the cleverest carvers in wood and stone that ever existed should not have had a biographer to tell us something about his career is very easy of explanation; but why the injustice of assigning his work to another should not have been thoroughly exposed we cannot understand. The original memoranda of Watson, or some of them, are extant, wherein are the entries of the work executed; the agreement of price to be paid for the work, and the time taken for its completion. The wrong done to this artist, and the blunder which accompanied the wrong, can be clearly charged to Horace Walpole, Lord Orford, but unfortunately such a monstrous error recapitulated by millions of tongues during the last six generations of men has become gospel, and only such outspoken asserters of the truth as Lysons, Dr. Cox, and Professor Jewitt have dared to challenge the falsehood. Is it not astonishing, says the celebrated author of the Magna Britannica, that “No writer before Lord Orford published his Anecdotes of Painting ever spoke of the works of Gibbons at Chatsworth”, the presumption being against it, “whilst there is no proof for it”. If these masterpieces had been the work of Gibbons would they have remained in statu quo for fifty years to be discovered by an old gossip from Strawberry Hill; whose opinion once given must betaken as a good Catholic would the infallibility of the Pope? But let us come to proof: There is a volume of artists' receipts still preserved by the noble family of Cavendish, in which can be found the signatures of those men whose genius was called into acquisition to give to Chatsworth its splendour. Is there one of Grinling Gibbons there? No! a thousand times no. There is a description of Chatsworth by Dr. Leigh, published in 1700, “soon after all the principal apartments were finished”, and while Watson was still adding to the exterior masonry his beautiful conceptions, but no mention of Gibbons. There is Mackey's tour through England in 1724, “the result of actual observation”, but (when speaking of the works of art in Chatsworth) there is not a syllable about Gibbons, which seems to intimate, says Lysons, “that the carving was not then shown as his work”. There is the Memoirs of the Cavendishes by Dr. Kennett, written in 1737, in which there is another description of Chatsworth, but not a word about Gibbons. Walpole speaks pointedly and enthusiastically about the pen, and says that no one but Gibbons could have executed such a masterpiece. We know positively that this assertion is a falsehood. When we confront the believers in Walpole's judgment with such a fact we are told exultantly that there is an entry in the volume of artists' receipts of fourteen pounds fifteen shillings paid to Thomas Lobb, the carpenter, for cases which conveyed some carved work, statues, and pictures from London, and that the carvings were by Gibbons. Very good! This is your turn, now our turn. Show us the entry of the amounts paid to Gibbons for them, and which amounts would be of four figures or thousands if the work were his. These people forget that Gibbons, as a lad, asked a hundred guineas for a small carving when he was unknown^[6] and living in a slum at Deptford. Would the large amounts which Gibbons - a veritable worshipper of gold - have demanded from the first Duke of Devonshire for such work have had no entry? Again, the assertions of Walpole recoil upon him and make him a laughing-stock when tested by a logical statement of facts: Gibbons must have worked incognita, or the discovery of Walpole was no discovery whatever; Gibbons worked gratuitously or there would be some entry in the volume of receipts; Gibbons must have possessed the power of being in two places at once, as it can be clearly shown that he could not have been at Chatsworth, nor have done work for Chatsworth during the particular time when the carving was actually done. On the assertions of Walpole, the biographer of Gibbons (Cunningham) based his facts (so far as Chatsworth is concerned), and says with a flourish, “had the masterpieces of Chatsworth been Watson's Watson would not have remained in Derbyshire to lead an obscure life and be buried with a doggrel epitaph”. Mark how assumption is supplemented by ignorance: Watson, from the expiration of his apprenticeship with Mr. Oakley in London, till he was cut off in his fifty-third year, was almost entirely employed by the noble family of Cavendish, hence he was bound by his agreements (copies of which are extant) to remain in Derbyshire. Watson has not received justice from the hands of those who even wished to do him justice. Both Rhodes and Glover say that he received munificent remuneration for his work. If these writers had made any of the poor fellow's agreements into a multiplication sum they would have found that the sum realised anything but munificent remuneration: We find the quotient in some cases fivepence per hour, and in many fourpence. Indeed, when the man worked by the day he was satisfied with three shillings and tenpence.^[7] This would indeed be munificent payment. Take any item from his agreements and see if we exaggerate. Here is one: “And the said Samuel Watson doth hereby further agree to carve the modillions and roses in the intabliture of the north front, every modillion and rose at the rate of ten shillings both together”.

“All the wood carving in England”, says Cunningham, “fades away before that of Gibbons at Chatsworth”. Stop! Let us reason logically. Shew us the proof for the words “that of Gibbons”. No, you cannot; you are reasoning from false premises, from the assertions of Walpole, which remain uncorroborated. First it was asserted, after Walpole had pronounced his infallible judgment, that Gibbons worked at Chatsworth. This has long been exploded. Then Watson was said to have been an assistant of Gibbons (Walpole says so), but this is so flagrant that it almost provokes bad language. In the Memoranda of Watson there is no mention of Gibbons, and he is most particular in stating for whom he was working and how long the work took.^[8] A characteristic of the Watsons for generations was to be satisfied with what they were without ambition to benefit by the marvellous gifts with which nature endowed them. Gibbons, when scarcely in his teens, asked Evelyn (when that courtier found him in a Deptford slum) the large sum we have stated for a piece of carving he was working at; Watson, as a staid man, asked only five pounds for a Corinthian capital. There is a large sympathy goes out for Watson, not only from the cruel robbery of his fame, but from his modesty in not recognising his wondrous talent, and from his sufferings from what we should term a bronchial disease, which cut him off so soon after his inimitable work at Chatsworth was finished.

Notes