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Sir John Vanbrugh; liW II OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO SIR JOHN VANBRUGH. VOL. I. and Seven hundred andfifty copies printedfor England America. No. SIR JOHN VANBRUGH EDITED BY W. C. WARD IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I. LONDON LAWRENCE & BULLEN 16 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1893 London ; Henderson 6s Spalding, Limited, Marylebone Lane, If. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Page INTRODUCTION ix THE RELAPSE ; OR VIRTUE IN DANGER i >Esop 151 THE PROVOK'D WIFE 269 INTRODUCTION. WHAT authentic intelligence we possess of the birth and parentage of Sir John Vanbrugh is derived mainly from three sources : the first, an account furnished by himself, in 1714, to the Earl of Suffolk and Bindon, Deputy Earl Marshal, on the occasion of his claiming the right to bear the arms of his the family ; second, the scanty information collected by his colleague in the College of Arms, Peter Le Neve ;* the third, certain parish registers in London and Chester. Of the last two sources of information, unexplored by previous biographers of the dramatist, I have made considerable use in the following pages. The first, already familiar to students of Vanbrugh, supplied Mark Noble with the particulars published in his History of the College of Arms, London, 1804. From Vanbrugh's own account it appears that he was of Flemish extraction, and "that before the persecution of the Flemish by the Duke of Alva, Governor of the Spanish Nether- his lived in Flanders that lands, family near Ghent, ; Giles Vanbrug, quitting his native country for the enjoyment of the reformed religion, retired to England, and having been bred a merchant, settled as such in London, in the parish of St. *See Le Neve's Pedigrees of the Knights made by King Charles II., &c. Harleian Society's Publications, 1873. Le Neve was created Norroy King of Arms in 1704, in which year Vanbrugh was made Clarenceux. b x INTRODUCTION. Stephen, Walbrook, where he continued until his death in 1646, and having purchased a vault in the church, was buried in it."* The Vanbrugh family seems to have been both ancient and " honourable. John Baptist Gramay in his Antiquitys of West Flanders, in his discourse of the City of Ipres, Chapter 2d, says that the praetorship of that town was possest by severall eminent knights, amongst whom he names John Van Brugghe in the year 1383.'^ Le Neve states explicitly what Noble implies, that Giles Vanbrugh fled from Flanders during Alva's persecu- tion that between and It is difficult ; is, 1567 1573. to reconcile this statement with the fact that a son was born to him some sixty years later. We may suppose, on the one hand, carried into when a mere infant that he was England ; or, on the other, that the actual date of his emigration was much later than that assigned. The latter conjecture seems to be supported by Le Neve's assertion, that Giles Vanbrugh was " made denison by King James ist by letters patent." Whatever, then, may have been the date of his migration, Giles Vanbrugh resided in the parish of St. Stephen, Walbrook, and followed the occupation of a merchant. In 1628 he was " churchwarden of St. Stephen's : Gillis Van Brugg Churt- warden," he writes himself in the parish register. In September of the same year was born his eldest son, William. A second son was born in April, 1631, who was baptized by his father's name, Giles, and who became the father of John Vanbrugh, the dramatist. * History of the College of Arms, p. 355. The family vault of the Vanbrughs was under the north aisle of St. Stephen's : no vestige of it now remains. Giles Vanbrugh was there buried, according to the entry in the parish register, on the zist of June, 1646. fLe Neve. I have the entries from copied following the register of St. Stephen's : " 1628. 25 September, was Baptized Willem the sonn of Gillis Van Brug " and Mary his wyffi" Gyles the sonn of Gyles Vanbrugh marchaunt & INTRODUCTION. xi Of Giles Vanbrugh the elder I find no farther record. Giles the younger married, not later than the winter of 1659-60, Elizabeth, fifth and youngest daughter and co-heiress of Sir Dudley Carleton. Dorothy Carleton, the second daughter of Sir Dudley, was already the wife of William Vanbrugh, who had, it appears, succeeded to his father's business in Walbrook.* The name and arms of this William Vanbrugh are engraved in the frontispiece to Thomas Fuller's Pisgah-Sight of Palestine (1650), together with the names and arms of the other " " Maecenases, whose benevolent hands had contributed to the safe delivery of that work to the public. The inscription in " Fuller is Gulielmo Van Brugs t Mercatori." The arms " Gules, on a fess, Or, three barulets, vert, a Lyon issuant arg. Crest, demy Lyon arg. issuant from a bridge composed of three arches reversed Or"J were subsequently (in 1714) claimed and borne by Sir John Vanbrugh as those of his family. The family into which the sons of the Walbrook merchant married was of some note in the diplomatic circle. Their father-in-law was nephew to a more famous Sir Dudley Carleton, who had filled with distinction, under Charles I., the Margarett his wyfe was Baptyzed the 27th apryll 1631." The discrepancy in the wife's name I cannot account for: possibly Giles Vanbrugh was twice married. * In Burke's Landed Gentry, Le Neve, and elsewhere, Dorothy Carleton is mentioned as the wife of William Vanbrugh. On the other hand, the register of St Stephen's contains two entries (of January i, 1657-8, and July 6, 1659) recording the baptisms respectively of William and Dudley, sons of "William Vanbrugg merchant and Mary his wife." The fourth daughter of Sir Dudley Carleton was named Mary. The name of Dorothy occurs in the Vanbrugh family, the brothers, William and Giles, each having a daughter of that name. t The name was very variously spelt. We find Van Brug, Vanbrug, Vanbrugg, Vanbrugh, Vanburgh, Vanbrough, Vamburg, Vanbrook, Vanbroge, &c. Sir John himself, in such autographs as I have seen, spelt his name "Vanbrugh." JLeNeve. b 2 xii INTRODUCTION. posts of Ambassador to Holland, and principal Secretary of State. His faithful services, and advocacy of the King's cause in Parliament, were rewarded by Charles with a peerage. In May, 1626, Sir Dudley was created Baron Carleton of Imber- court, near Esher, in Surrey; and in July, 1628, Viscount Dorchester. But he did not live to assist his master in the time of his greatest need. He died in February, 1632, and if we may credit Cowley, among whose juvenile compositions may be found an elegy on his death, " The Muses lost a Patron by his Fate, Vertue a Husband, and a Prop the State." Dorchester left but a small estate, of the value of not more than a and the a an ,700 year ; heir, posthumous child, dying infant, the manor and residence of Imbercourt, which, together with the title, had been bestowed upon the deceased statesman, became the property of his nephew, the Sir Dudley Carleton whose daughters, Dorothy and Elizabeth, were married to William and Giles Vanbrugh. This Carleton, also, figured in public life. He acted as substitute for his uncle during the ambassador's absences from his post at the Hague, discharging that trust with diligence and capacity.* He was knighted in 1626 was the in in ; King's Resident Holland 1630, as appears Dorchester's will and by ; was appointed Clerk of the Council in 1637. Thenceforward, history knows no more of Sir Dudley Carleton, except that, in 1649, he conveyed the property of Imbercourt to one Mr. Knipe.t For some years after his marriage Giles Vanbrugh resided in the parish of St. Nicholas Aeons, in the city of London. In this parish was born, in the month of January, 1664, his son * Kippis's Biographia Britannica. Manning and Bray's History of Surrey, voL L, p. 459*. INTRODUCTION. xiii John, the future dramatist, and the subject of this memoir. The following are the exact words of the entry, copied by myself from the register of St. Nicholas Aeons : "John Vanbrugh the sonn of Giles Vanbrugh and Elizabeth his wife was Christned the 24 of January in the house by Mr. John Meriton. 1663" i.e., 1664, N.s. "The house" is, of course, Giles Vanbrugh's : two of John Vanbrugh's sisters, Dorothy and Lucy, were similarly christened in their father's house. Mr. John Meriton was the rector of St. Nicholas Aeons.* The youngest child of Giles Vanbrugh, whose name appears in the register of St. Nicholas, is a daughter Elizabeth who was born on the 7th of January, 1665, Between this date and the autumn of 1667, when entries respecting the family begin to appear in the register of Holy Trinity, Chester, there is a blank which we are left to supply as well as we can, by inference. It is tolerably certain, however, that in this interim Giles Van- brugh was made the father of two more children. No other period can well be assigned for the births of Anna Maria and Carleton, to say nothing of the strong presumption afforded by Mrs. Vanbrugh's extreme punctuality in these matters. Meanwhile, from the absence of farther entries in the register St. that that of Nicholas, we gather Giles had quitted parish ; and it seems but a reasonable conjecture, that dread of the plague had driven him, with his young family, altogether from London in the spring of 1665. He ultimately settled in *I am indebted to Mr.
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