ARTHUR, LORD CAPEL.

LORD CLARENDON has drawn the public character of this admirable person with a knowledge so intimate, and an affection so sincere, and with such strength and exquisite sweetness of expression, that he who might be arrogant enough to add a single touch to so masterly a picture, could not but infringe on its truth and weaken its effect. I shall therefore relate little more than the mere circumstances of his life, and the simple detail will be found to furnish one of the brightest ornaments on the page of English history.

He was the only son of Sir Henry Capel, by his first wife, Theodosia, sister to Henry Montague, Earl of Manchester. His father died, having scarcely reached the prime of life, and he was bred under the care of his grandfather, Sir Arthur Capel, of Hadham, in Hertfordshire, whom at length he succeeded in the inheritance of a vast fortune, which had been gained in trade, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, by his ancestor Sir William Capel, a junior descendant from a respectable gentleman's family in Suffolk. He was at that time completing, at Clare Hall, in Cambridge, an education in which he afterwards proved that no pains had been spared, either by his friends or himself. His first entrance into life displayed, with a mild but incessant brightness, those qualities which, even in the best men, seldom appear during the fever of youth but in irregular and uncertain flashes. He sat down at his superb seat in Hertfordshire in the spirit of a prince and of a philosopher. His hospitality, and his charity to

the poor, though scarcely equalled by those of any other English subject, were supported as much by his prudence as by his wealth and his inclination. He was distinguished by a quiet and unostentatious piety, and the excellent moral dispositions which belonged to his nature were polished to the last degree by that dignified generosity of conduct in which we find the true meaning of the word honour. It is scarcely then necessary to say that he was exemplary in all the domestic relations of life. His mind was powerful, and the clearness and acuteness of his judgment were equalled by the activity of his observation. He had read much, and thought more, and wrote with an elegant and forcible conciseness which bespoke at once the gentleman and the scholar. Such was Arthur Capel when about twenty-five years old, and on the eve of the unhappy war between the King and the Parliament.

Thus qualified and recommended, he was chosen, without opposition, to represent the county of Hertford in the Parliament which met on the thirteenth of April, 1640. He immediately joined the 'popular party, which then comprised many real patriots, and, on the third day after he had taken his seat, delivered to the House a petition from the freeholders of his county, remonstrating against the abuses of the star chamber and high commission courts, ship-money, and other imposts of doubtful legality, which happened to be the first of the great number about that time presented on the same subjects. That Parliament was dissolved on the fifth of the succeeding month, and he was re-elected by his neighbours, with the same unanimity, to the next, which assembled on the third of November following, in which he heartily supported the measures which were at first proposed for the fair and wholesome circumscription of the power of the crown. In this spirit, like many other honest men at that time, he went one step too far, and unwarily suffered a spirit of vengeance against past errors to grow out of his dissatisfaction with the present. He voted for the attainder of the Earl of Strafford; and the keen sense which in cooler moments arose in his mind of the

injustice of that measure, and of the execution that followed, which he fully acknowledged in the hour of his death, joined to a clear judgment that enough had been before done, or fully prepared, to secure to the nation the enjoyment of the utmost degree of liberty consistent with its peace and welfare, he quitted a party which he beheld already intoxicated with a first taste of blood, and intent only upon new sacrifices and new systems.

The accession to the royal cause of a commoner in every way of so high consideration was peculiarly gratifying to the King, who immediately acknowledged his obligation. On the sixth of August, 1641, Capel was advanced to the dignity of a Baron, by the title of Lord Capel, of Hadham, in Herts. He strove for some months in the House of Peers, with equal spirit and moderation, to stem the torrent; and, finding all his efforts ineffectual, took leave for ever of that assembly, with the solemn assertion that "the King's Majesty had granted so much for the ease and security of the kingdom, that they who asked more intended the disturbance of it." He now joined Charles at York, where, on the fifteenth June, 1642, he signed, with the other nobles and statesmen there, a declaration testifying their firm conviction that the King had no intention to make war on his Parliament, and engaged himself to raise one hundred horse for his Majesty's service and security. Early in the following year, the King sent him to Shrewsbury, with the commission of Lieutenant General of Shropshire, Cheshire, and North Wales, where he collected a formidable body of horse and foot, and afforded considerable relief to the brave garrison of Chester, by keeping the Parliament forces, under Sir William Brereton, employed at Natnwich. Charles was about that time devising, with much anxiety, some method of disposing of the Prince of Wales, so as to provide at once for the security of his person, and to allay the jealousies which had been entertained of a design to send him privately, to the Queen, in France. To forward these views, he nominated a council for the direction of all matters relating to the Prince, consisting of six of his most trusty servants, of whom Lord Capel

was one and the one most trusted, and this appointment drew him from his military services. Upon his receiving it he raised at his own expense a regiment of horse, and another of foot, for the Prince's standing guard, and had the King's commission to command them; and the various duties of his new charge left him little room for the performance of any other during the four succeeding years. He was, however, one of the commissioners for the King at the treaty of Uxbridge.

In the summer of 1645, the Prince being then in the west of England, Capel, who, with Lord Colepeper, attended him there, had a considerable share in the direction in the campaign in those parts, where Waller and Cromwell commanded for the rebels; but the King's affairs in that quarter having taken an unfavourable turn, owing rather to differences among his commanders than either to any signal defeat or to disaffection in the country, the Prince was obliged to retire gradually towards the coast of Cornwall, and at length put to sea. He landed on the isle of Scilly, and, having remained there for six weeks, at the end of which he was joined by Capel, they sailed together to Jersey. The fatal battle of Naseby occurred just at this period, and the miserable King left Oxford privately, and fled towards Scotland. The Queen, who had been long anxious that her son should reside with her in France, now urged it with the most vehement importunity, but was resisted by Capel, whose gallant spirit could not endure the flight of the heir-apparent while a ray of hope remained. At length the Prince himself determined to depart, and Capel remained in Jersey, waiting for orders from the King, of whose situation he was in a great measure ignorant, and who was now in fact a prisoner in the hands of the Scots, and prevented by them from communicating with his servants.

In 1647, while he resided in Jersey, the House of Commons passed a vote for the sale of his estates, to raise money for the service in Ireland, and he went to Paris to ask the Prince's permission to return home on that occasion. He came by the way of Zealand, and having compounded for his lands with the rebel

government, retired to his mansion at Hadham, to meditate at leisure on the few chances which might yet exist of rendering service to the royal cause. The King, who had been lately sold by the Scots to his subjects, and who since that monstrous event had been capriciously hurried from place to place, was soon after brought to Hampton-court, where Cromwell, with some design of policy which has never been understood, permitted to him, for some time, the free access of his friends. Capel was among the first to seize the opportunity: he waited on his Majesty there for the last time, and made that final engagement which he soon after sealed with his blood. "To the Lord Capel," says Clarendon, speaking of his conversation on that day with the King, "his Majesty imparted all his hopes and all his fears; and what great overtures the Scots had again made to him; and that he did really believe that it could not be long before there would be a war between the two nations, in which the Scots promised themselves an universal concurrence from all the presbyterians in England, and that, in such a conjuncture, he wished that his own party would put themselves in arms, without which he could not expect great benefit by the success of the other; and, therefore, desired Capel to watch such a conjuncture, and draw his friends together, which he promised to do effectually."

Capel entered into these designs with the greatest warmth, and commenced immediately a correspondence with the leaders of the King's party, if it deserved to be so called, in Scotland. He passed the latter part of the winter of 1647, and the following spring, in arranging with them the detail of their proposed invasion of England, and in preparing for a levy of forces in his own county of Hertford. He wrote to Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon, whom he had left in Jersey, to apprise him that all was ready for the projected enterprise, and to request him to recall the Prince to that island, in order that his Royal Highness might be in readiness there to pass over into England, on receiving the news of those successes which he had fondly anticipated. In the latter end of May, 1648, he appeared in arms, and marched