104 The Life of William, Duke of Newcastle 



Besides these two, there was another small entertainment 

 which my Lord prepared for his late Majesty, in his own 

 park at Welbeck, when his Majesty came down, with his two 

 nephews, the now Prince Elector Palatine, and his brother 

 Prince Rupert, into the Forest of Sherwood ; which cost him 

 fifteen hundred pounds. 



And this I mention not out of a vain glory, but to declare 

 the great love and duty my Lord had for his gracious King 

 and Queen, and to correct the mistakes committed by some 

 historians, who, not being rightly informed of those entertain- 

 ments, make the world believe falsehood for truth. But, as I 

 said, they were made before the wars, when my Lord had the 

 possession of a great estate ; and wanted nothing to express 

 his love and duty to his sovereign in that manner ; whereas 

 now he should be much to seek to do the like, his estate being 

 so much ruined by the late Civil Wars, that neither himself 

 nor his posterity will be able so soon to recover it. 



8. His Education 



His education was according to his birth ; for as he was 

 born a gentleman, so he was bred like a gentleman l . To 

 school learning he never showed a great inclination ; for 

 though he was sent to the University, and was a student of 

 St. John's College in Cambridge, and had his tutors to instruct 

 him ; yet they could not persuade him to read or study much, 

 he taking more delight in sports, than in learning ; so that 



i In Nature's Pictures, by Fancy's Pencil the Duchess describes the education of her 

 day (pp. 273, 333. e &- l6 5 6 ). In The Tale of a Traveller she thus sketches a boy's bring- 

 ing up : ' His education, in the first place, was to learn the horn-book, from that his 

 primer, and so the Bible, by his mother's chambermaid or the like. But after he came 

 to ten years old or thereabouts, he was sent to a free school, where the noise of each 

 scholar's reading aloud did drown the sense of what they read, burying the knowledge 

 and understanding in the confusion of many words, and several languages ; yet was 

 whipt for not learning by their tutors, for their ill teaching them, which broke and weak- 

 ened their memories with the over heavy burthens, striving to thrust in more learning 

 than could be digested or kept in the brain. . . . After some time he was sent to the 

 University, there continuing from the years of fourteen to the years of eighteen ; at 

 last considering with himself that he was buried to the world and the delights therein, 

 conversing more with the dead than the living, in reading old authors, and that little 

 company he had, was only at prayers, and meat ; wherein the time of the one was taken 

 up in devotion, the other in eating, or rather fasting ; for their prayers were so long, 

 and their commons so short, that it seemed rather an humiliation and fasting, than an 

 eating and thanksgiving. But their conversation was a greater penance than their 

 spare diet ; for their disputations, which are fed by contradictions, did more wrack 

 the brain, than the other did gripe the belly, the one filling the head with vain opinions 

 and false imaginations, for want of the light of truth, as the other with wind and rude 

 humours, for want of a sufficient nourishment. Where upon these considerations he 

 left the University.* 



