say; but that they were high-handed, tactless and overbearing persons is tolerably clear. Sir Lawrence died in 1625, and Lady Tanfield four years later. The only surviving child of their marriage was a daughter, Elizabeth, who in 1600 had become the wife of Sir Henry Cary, afterwards the first Viscount Falkland. For reasons to be explained presently, Lady Falkland had quarrelled with her parents and had been disinherited. Consequently, on the death of Lady Tanfield, the whole of the Oxfordshire estates, said by Clarendon to have been worth some two thousand a year, passed by settlement to Lucius Cary. Elizabeth Tanfield, as from her parentage we should expect, was a woman of strong character and remarkable ability. Her memory has been preserved mainly perhaps owing to the fact that she became, early in her married life, a convert to Roman Catholicism;1 but it is by no means unworthy of record on other grounds. She was born at Burford in 1585, and there she spent her childhood until, at the age of fifteen, she was married to Sir Henry Cary. From babyhood she seems to have been addicted to learning, especially to the study of languages. "When she was but four or five years old," so runs the Life, "they put her to learn French, which she did about five weeks, and, not profiting at all gave it over: after, of herself, without a teacher, whilst she was a child she learned French, Spanish and Italian; she learned Latin in the same manner. ... Hebrew she likewise about the same time learned with very little teaching. . . . She then learned also of a Tran 1 A life of Elizabeth Tanfield, the first Lady Falkland, was printed in 1861 from a MS. in the Archives of the Department of the North in Lille, having been removed thither from the Convent of the English Benedictine Nuns at Cambray. It was written by one of her four daughters, and corrected by her son, Patrick Cary. It has been modernised-but uncritically-by Lady Georgiana Fullerton. sylvanian his language; but never finding any use of it, forgot it entirely." as the years went on. Of her childhood there are many stories recorded by her daughter illustrative of her shrewd wit, her rare acumen, and above all her devotion to the pursuit of learning. "She frequently," says her daughter, "read all night, so as her mother was fain to forbid her servants to let her have candles; which command they turned to their own profit, and let themselves be hired by her to let her have them, selling them to her at half a crown a piece, so was she bent to reading; and she not having money so free, was to owe it to them." The sequel proves not only her zeal but her improvidence and her honesty. "In this fashion was she in debt £100 before she was twelve years old, which with two hundred more for the little bargains and promises she paid on her wedding day." She failed to develop habits of business During her husband's rule in Ireland she interested herself greatly in the foundation of industrial schools in Dublin. Nothing that kindly zeal could do to ensure their success was lacking, but it is none the less an indisputable fact that they proved a failure. Lady Falkland, in retrospect, attributed the failure to the baleful Protestant influences brought to bear upon the children. Her filial biographers, though not less ardent in their Catholicism than their mother, suggest another possible reason. "Others thought it rather that she was better at contriving than executing, and that too many things were undertaken at the very first, and that she was fain (having little choice) to employ either those that had little skill in the matters they dealt in, or less honesty; and so she was extremely cozened, which she was most easily, though she were not a little suspicious in her nature, but chiefly the ill order she took for paying money 1 Life, p. 7. in this (as in all other occasions) having the worst memory in such things in the world; and wholly trusting to it (or them she dealt with), and never keeping any account of what she did, she was most subject to pay the same things often (as she hath had it confessed to her by some that they have in a small matter made her pay them the same thing five times in five days) neither would she suffer herself to be undeceived by them that stood by and saw her do it frequently, rather suspecting they said it out of dislike of her designs and to divert her from them." In his devotion to learning, in his philanthropy, in his probity, and in his generous superiority to monetary considerations, as, indeed, in much else, Lucius was essentially his mother's son. In the year 1600, when a girl of fifteen, Elizabeth Tanfield was married by her parents to a man whom she scarcely knew, and whom for some years after her marriage she rarely met. Henry Cary was a man of considerable distinction, but of unequal fortune. A soldier, a courtier, a pro-consul and a poet, he played in his life many parts, and all of them with tolerable but incomplete success. At the age of sixteen he was sent, according to that incomparable gossip Anthony Wood, to Exeter College, Oxford,' where "by the help of a good tutor he became a most accomplished gentleman. 'Tis said (in the Worthies of England by Thomas Fuller) that during his stay in the University of Oxford his chamber was the rendezvous of all the eminent 1 Mr. Beaven has raised a doubt as to the accuracy of Wood's statement. Henry Carey (or Cary), son of Sir Robert, and afterwards second Earl of Monmouth, was undoubtedly at Exeter College, having matriculated 7th June, 1611. The Rector of Exeter, who has kindly made search, informs me that there is no documentary evidence of Henry Cary, first Lord Falkland, having been at Exeter, but he points out that owing to the state of the College books this affords no presumption against the truth of Wood's statement, and it is noteworthy that both Henry Carys sent sons to Exeter. |