Читать книгу The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne онлайн

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ssss1 This was the Blore near Ashbourne, and not the Blore near Blore Heath (also in Staffordshire), where the battle of that name was fought.

Elsewhere the Duchess is condescending enough to say that “his first wife was a very kind, loving and Virtuous Lady,” which, in most cases, might be taken to mean about the worst that one lady could politely say of another.

Collins states that Cavendish’s first wife, who, by the way, was the widow of the first Earl of Suffolk, “brought him a yearly inheritance of £2400, besides a jointure for life of £800 per ann. and between six and seven thousand pounds in money”. Something over £3000 a year in those days would be the equivalent of more than £10,000 in ours, and Cavendish seems to have inherited some of his celebrated grandmother’s talent for falling in love upon a sound financial basis. His Duchess writes:—

“After My Lord was married, he lived, for the most part, in the country, and pleased Himself and his neighbours with Hospitality, and such delights as the Country afforded; onely now and then he would go up to London for some short time to wait on the King”.