PETERBOROUGH PETERBOROUGH PETERBOROUGH BY WILLIAM STEBBING 1L.onb.on MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1890 'f'lte r(y11t ojtmu.!ltttion and reprodudlon i• rturud CONTENTS CHAPTER I I'AOE ANCESTRY-EARLY LIFE 1 CHAPTER II COURT FAVOUR-CADALS-DISGR.!.CE 16 CHAPTER III COMMAND IN SPAIN-HISTORICAL EVIDENCES . 45 CHAPTER IV CAPTURE OF BARCELONA 59 CHAPTER V WAR IN VALENCIA 73 CHAPTER VI RELIEF 011' BARCELONA • 90 CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAOE DIVIDED CouNCILS-PETERBOROUGH.LEaVEs SPAIN. 105 CHAPTER VIII wAB HE AN IMPOSTOR 1 138 CHAPTER IX RETURN-VINDICATION-DIPLOMaCY 156 CHAPTER X CoNsoLATIONS oF HIS LEISURE-THE END 192 CHAPTER I ANCESTRY-EARLY LIFE Foa the sixty years of his active career Peterborough was an enigma to his contemporaries. He has remained an enigma to posterity for ·a century and a half since. Never has a character or a memory been more pel ted by writers of authority with contradictory epithets and attributes of praise and blame. He was, we have been told, a man of no true judgment and less virtue. His head was extremely hot, and confused with indigested schemes. A friend declared that his eminent talents were dashed with something restless and capricious in his nature. He was vainglorious, and without common sense. He was wayward, selfish, and ungovernable. Sometimes he would stoop to be a knave. He had a morbid craving for novelty and excitement. He was addicted to frivolous and fickle amours. He loved to preach in coffee-houses, and would play the fool as a ship's chaplain. He would filch away the credit due to others as patriots, and dress himself in borrowed plumes as a soldier. It has even been boldly asserted that in war he showed himself a coward, a liar, and a thief. On the. other hand, he has been extolled by authors holding no retainer as biographers, as a kind friend, a 1E; B 2 PETERBOROUGH CHAP. magnanimous enemy, an able diplomatist, a gifted­ orator, one of ~hose men of careless wit and negligent grace who scatter without troubling themselves to re­ claim a thousand witty sayings and verses, a bad econo­ mist for himself, a good and disinterested economist for the State, a general of brilliant invention, and of a courage which rose to the height of fabulous heroism, at once a sagacious and cautious strategist and an audacious moss-trooper. All air and fire, he is described as turning life into a wild romance; as one of the phenomena pro­ duced by Nature once in the revolution of centuries to show to ordinary men what she can do in a fit of prodigality. A bitter woman summed him up as a man who to vileness of soul had joined a sort of krught­ errantry. An enthusiastic admirer fondly pictured him ~s a hangdog he dearly loved, and the ramblingest lying rogue on earth. - Here-are a few specimens of invective and applause culled from a most abundant anthology. The object of the present sketch is to enable modern readers to pick and choose for themselves. Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Mon­ mputh, Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon, Baron Beauchamp and Mordaunt, was descended from a Norman family. It had allied itSelf with many other ancient and noble -houses; having the gift of attracting heiresses. In the early days of the Plantagenets it had acquired by marriage Turvey in Bedfordshire, where it received the licence of Edward the First to enclose a park. Its re­ presentative· was created Lord Mordaunt of Turvey in 1532. 'The splendid domain of Drayton in Northampton­ shire had come to him by marriage. The fourth Baron, a r HIS UNCLE 3 Roman Catholic, was imprisoned for alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. His son, who turned Protest­ ant, married the only child and heiress of Lord Howard of Effingham, eldest son of the conqueror of the Spanish Armada. The marriage gave him the revenues of the Reigate Priory and other estates. Charles the First created him Earl of Peterborough in 1627; but for .some slight at Court he .embraced the cause of the Parliament, which he served as Master-General of the Ordnance. He died in 1642. His political opinions were not embraced by his two sons, Henry, second Earl of Peterborough, and John. Clarendon names both as engaged in Lord Holland's rising. of July, 1648, and as ho,ving accepted commissions from him. John's youth renders it probable that the statement should have been limited to the elder brother. Henry escaped to the Netherlands. Subsequently he was allowed to return and compound for his property. He owed the indulgence to the exertions of his wife, Lady Penelope O'Brien. After the Restoration, in 1662, when Portugal ceded Tangier, he was commissioned to receive the keys and was appointed governor. Generally, though he found leisure to assist in the .compilation of a learned family history, he was in close attendance upon Charles. He was the only courtier at hand when the King was struck down by his fatal fit. Con­ version to Catholicism had earned him the confidence of James also. As his trusted friend he negotiated the marriage with Mary of Modena. Throughout the short reign of James he enjoyed great influence, and was enabled to avenge himself at law for published sarcasms on his secession to Rome. He paid for his ascendancy 4 PETERBOROUGH CHAP. at the Revolution, when he was impeached and sent to the Tower. He was a fitter object of punishment for his subservience to power than of the s.cornful compaS.. sion ·Lord Macaulay extends to him as an old dotard. There is no evidence that the tried counsellor of Charles and James ever verged upon imbecility. His brother John, to whom Clarendon ascribes parts and great vigour of mind, nearly had his career cut short in 1658. Lord Ormond alarmed Cromwell by a visit' to London in that year to concert a Royalist insurrec­ tion. John Mordaunt was supposed to be a leading conspirator, 1md was brought before the Protector for examination. He denied all knowledge of Ormond's movements, but two days after corroborative testimony was obtained. He was arrested, with several others, and arraigned before a special court under the presidency of John Lisle. Like his brother, only still more signally, he was indebted to the love and energy of his bride, Elizabeth, co-heiress of Thomas Carey, younger son of the Earl of Monmouth. Clarendon describes her as a young and beautiful lady, of a very loyal spirit and · notable vivacity of wit and humour. Evelyn thought her the most virtuous lady in the world, a blessed creature, one that loved and feared God exemplarily, munificent and charitable. He relates, and she with more particularity has explained in her diary, how she spirited away a principal witness, and bribed several of the twenty judges. John was acquitted by the casting vote of Lisle, who acknowledged himself under many obligations to the prisoner's Parliamentarian mother, and "would not say he was guilty, but bade him ask his OWn conscience whether he were or not." He was I HIS FATHER 5 sent back to the Tower; but Cromwell, fearing the odium of a second trial for the same offence, finally per­ mitted him to go abroad. His narrow escape did not frighten hlm into repose. The register of Fulham Church boasts that he was np in arms for the King the next year, and was declared a traitor by the Rump Parliament. Towards the end of June, 1659, he had come secretly over from Brussels and took part in a futile nsmg. He hid in London. On the return, however, of the expelled members of the House of Commons he emerged and was exceedingly active. Some conspicuous politicians and officers, for instance Ingoldsby and Huntington, were brought over bJJ: hlm to the Royalist side. According to Clarendon, whom Evelyn corro­ borates, he was known to be entirely trusted by the King. He was created by patent on July lOth, 1659, Baron Mordaunt of Reigate and Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon. Sir John Grenville and he conveyed messages between Charles at Brussels and Monk, the House of Cqmmons, and the City of London. For a letter from Charles, of which they were the bearers, they were voted by the Corporation a gift of £300 to buy each of them a ring. It was Mordaunt who introduced Monk to Charles at Canterbury on May 26th. His devotion was rewarded by an amount of royal favour whlch, though in 'Clarendon's estimation inferior to hls merits, brought upon him the especial jealousy and spite of less fortunate Cavaliers. He was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey and Constable of Windsor Castle. For his conduct in the latter capacity towards a Captain William Taylor, or Tayleur, he narrowly escaped impeachment by the House of Commons in 1666-67. Taylor had an office and 6 PETERBOROUGH CHAP. rooms in Windsor Castle. The Constable ejected and imprisoned him. Taylor alleged that his crime was the resistance of a daughter to the Constable's gross violence. The House of Commons discussed the matter passion­ ately, but a prorogation interrupted the proceedings, and through the King's influence, as was supposed, they were not resumed. If, as .Andrew Marvell took for granted and Pepys inclined to believe, he were guilty, he otherwise bore for his age an honourable reputation. His contemporaries saw no absurdity in the sumptuous monument in Fulham Church, with which his sorrowing widow honoured his memory. He was the father of Charles Mordaunt. The history of the house indicates a continuous determination not to be obscure, a clear conviction that the Mordaunts had inherited a prerogative to conduct affairs of State, not without the attendant emoluments, and an acquiescence of successive generations in their right.