The Third Book 113 



in the art of weapons (in which he has a method beyond all 

 that ever were famous in it, found out by his own ingenuity and 

 practice) he never taught anybody but now the Duke of Buck- 

 ingham, whose guardian he hath been, and his own two sons. 

 The rest of his time he spends in music, poetry, architecture, 

 and the like. 



16. Of Ms Pedigree 



Having made promise in the beginning of the first Book 

 that I would join a more large description of the pedigree 

 of my noble Lord and husband to the end of the history of his 

 life, I shall now discharge myself ; and though I could derive 

 it from a longer time, and reckon up a great many of his ances- 

 tors, even from the time of William the Conqueror, he being 

 descended from the most ancient family of the Gernouns, 

 as Camden relates in his Britannia, in the description of 

 Derbyshire 1 ; yet it being a work fitter for heralds, I shall 

 proceed no further than his grandfather, and show you only 

 those noble families which my Lord is allied to by his birth. 



My Lord's grandfather, by his father (as is formerly men- 

 tioned), was Sir William Cavendish, Privy-Counsellor and 

 Treasurer of the Chamber to King Henry the Eighth, Edward 

 the Sixth, and Queen Mary ; who married two wives 2 . By 

 the first he had only two daughters ; but by the second, 

 Elzabeth, who was my Lord's grandmother, he had three 



You showed like Perseus upon Pegasus, 

 Or Castor mounted on his Cyllarus ; 

 Or what we hear our home-born legends tell, 

 Of bold Sir Bevis and his Arundel ; 

 Nay, so your seat his beauties did endorse, 

 As I began to wish myself a horse ; 

 And surely, had I but your stable seen 

 Before, I think my wish absolved had been, 

 For never saw I yet the Muses dwell, 

 Nor any of their household, half so well. 

 So well ! as when I saw the floor and room, 

 I looked for Hercules to be the groom ; 

 And cried, Away with the Ca?sarian bread ! 

 At these immortal mangers Virgil fed. 



1 Camden's Britannia, p. 491, ed. 1695. See also Collins* Peerage, ed. Brydges, i 

 303. 



2 Sir William Cavendish married (1) Margaret, daughter of Edmund Bostock, of 

 Cheshire, who died in 1540 ; (2) Elizabeth, daughter offeThomas Parker, of Posling- 

 ford, Suffolk ; (3) Elizabeth Hardwick, August 20, 1547. See Sir William Cavendish's 

 biographical notes in Collins' Historical Collections, p. 10. Elizabeth Hardwick mar- 

 ried Robert Barley, of Barley in Derbyshire ; she was then fourteen, and her first husband 

 died in 1532. She herself died on the 13th of February 1607, about the age of eighty- 

 seven. Her will and epitaph are both printed by Collins. 



Q 



