The Second Book 69 



command me, were it to sacrifice my life, I shall most obedi- 

 ently perform it ; for I have no other will, but your Majesty's 

 pleasure.' 



Thus he kissed his Majesty's hand, and went the next day 

 into Nottinghamshire, to his manor-house called Welbeck ; 

 but when he came there, and began to examine his estate, and 

 how it had been ordered in the time of his banishment, he 

 knew not whether he had left anything of it for himself or 

 not, till by his prudence and wisdom he informed himself the 

 best he could, examining those that had most knowledge 

 therein. Some lands, he found, could be recovered no further 

 than for his life, and some not at all ; some had been in the 

 rebels' hands, which he could not recover, but by his Highness 

 the Duke of York's favour, to whom his Majesty had given 

 all the estates of those that were condemned and executed 

 for murdering his Royal Father of blessed memory, which by 

 the law were forfeited to his Majesty ; whereof his Highness 

 graciously restored my Lord so much of the land that formerly 

 had been his, as amounted to ^730 a year 1 . And though my 

 Lord's children had their claims granted, and bought out the 

 life of my Lord, their father, which came near upon the third 

 part, yet my Lord received nothing for himself out of his 

 own estate, for the space of eighteen years, viz. during the 

 time from the first entering into war, which was June 11, 

 1642, till his return out of banishment, May 28, 1660. For 

 though his son Henry, now Earl of Ogle, and his eldest daugh- 

 ter, the now Lady Cheiny, did all what lay in their power to 

 relieve my Lord their father, and sent him some supplies of 

 moneys at several times when he was in banishment, yet that 

 was of their own, rather than out of my Lord's estate ; for 

 the Lady Cheiny sold some few jewels which my Lord, her 

 father, had left her, and some chamber-plate which she had 

 from her grandmother, and sent over the money to my Lord, 

 besides ^1000 of her portion ; and the now Earl of Ogle did 



1 The grant restoring these lands is amongst the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum 

 (No. 2551). The King grants to Newcastle three manors sold under the Common- 

 wealth and bought by regicides, viz. Sibthorpe in Nottinghamshire, purchased by 

 Edward Whalley ; certain lands in the said county in Carcolston, purchased by Colonel 

 Hacker ; and the Granges of Kirby Woodhouse and Annesley Woodhouse, purchased 

 by Gilbert Millington. The grant is dated September 5, 1660. 



The Duchess omits to mention that on Sept. 13, 1660, Charles II gave his assent to 

 a private Act ' for restoring to Wiliam, Marquis of Newcastle, all his Honours, Manors, 

 Lands, and Tenements in England, whereof he was in possession on the 20th day 

 of May 1640, or at any time since '. This Act, however, would not touch lands sold 

 or mortgaged by Newcastle himself. 



