Welbeck Academy

Last updated
Welbeck Abbey as a background, from A General System of Horsemanship by Newcastle, engraving after Abraham van Diepenbeeck. WELBECK Paragon un Barbe.jpg
Welbeck Abbey as a background, from A General System of Horsemanship by Newcastle, engraving after Abraham van Diepenbeeck.

The Welbeck Academy or Welbeck Circle is a name that has been given to the loose intellectual grouping around William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the first half of the 17th century. It takes its name from Welbeck Abbey, a country house in Nottinghamshire that was a Cavendish family seat. [1] Another term used is Newcastle Circle. [2] The geographical connection is, however, more notional than real; and these terms have been regarded also as somewhat misleading. [3] [4] Cavendish was Viscount Mansfield in 1620, and moved up the noble ranks to Duke, step by step; "Newcastle" applies by 1628.

Contents

Newcastle was a royalist exile in continental Europe in the latter part of the First English Civil War and the Interregnum. He then returned to England and lived to 1676. His life shows many instances of cultural and intellectual patronage.

Science and mathematics

One of Francesco Fanelli's popular equestrian small bronzes Francesco Fanelli - Cupid with a Bow on Horseback - Walters 54146.jpg
One of Francesco Fanelli's popular equestrian small bronzes

A scientific interest was optics. The group involved in these studies included Charles Cavendish (William's brother), Thomas Hobbes, Robert Payne and Walter Warner. [2] This core "academy" group was disrupted when Newcastle took on responsibility for the Prince of Wales, in 1638. At a later point John Pell was in Newcastle's service. [3] [5]

Charles Cavendish's circle included Henry Bond, Richard Reeve or Reeves the instrument-maker, John Twysden and John Wallis. He was a patron of William Oughtred. [6]

Literature and the arts

Newcastle in the 1630s became a major patron to Ben Jonson. [7] His second wife was Margaret Cavendish, née Lucas, the writer. Newcastle was called "our English Maecenas" by Gerard Langbaine the Younger; [8] he was a patron after the Restoration to both John Dryden and Thomas Shadwell. [9] Other writers he supported included William Davenant, William Sampson, James Shirley and John Suckling. [8] He bought sculptures by Francesco Fanelli for Welbeck. [10]

In exile

William Cavendish. William Cavendish, 1st duke of Newcastle.jpg
William Cavendish.

As a consequence of the royalist defeat at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, Newcastle and some of his entourage went into exile. He returned to England only with the Restoration of 1660. Initially he went to Hamburg. [11] By 1645 Newcastle was in Paris: his circle had contacts in Marin Mersenne and Claude Mydorge, whom Charles Cavendish had met in France at least 15 years earlier. [12] [6] In France Newcastle met and married that year Margaret Lucas who was with the exiled court of Queen Henrietta Maria. She studied with Charles Cavendish, and became a writer on natural philosophy, initially a proponent of atomism. Besides Hobbes, who joined them in Paris, the Cavendishes knew at this period René Descartes, Kenelm Digby, and Christiaan Huygens. [13] [14] Much of the latter part of their exile was spent at Antwerp; [11] there, though in debt, they lived in the Rubenshuis. [15] Other associations were with Walter Charleton who came to know Margaret Cavendish (not necessarily abroad, since she returned to England for a time), [16] and William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton. [17]

Relationship with Hobbes

Hobbes was employed by another branch of the Cavendish family (the Devonshire Cavendishes, who owned Chatsworth House). His association with Welbeck started at a date that is not completely clear. It was certainly by 1631, when he was tutor to a different Earl of the same name, William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire. [18] But possibly Hobbes had met Mansfield (as he then was) by 1627, on a tour of the Peak District, according to surviving poems (his own and by Richard Andrews), as related by Noel Malcolm. [19] Hobbes himself claimed he had been in discussion with the Cavendish brothers by 1630; by 1636 he was engaging in a scientific correspondence with Newcastle. [20] A manuscript work from the Cavendish group of this period, the so-called Short Tract on First Principles, is considered by Malcolm to be by Payne though very much influenced by the issues Hobbes was addressing at the time, and his approach. But the work has also been attributed to Hobbes himself, by scholars from Ferdinand Tönnies (who christened it) onwards. [21]

Notes

  1. ↑ Tom Sorell (26 January 1996). The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Cambridge University Press. p. 22. ISBN   978-0-521-42244-4 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  2. 1 2 A. P. Martinich, Hobbes: A Biography, pp. 98–102.
  3. 1 2 Noel Malcolm; Jacqueline A. Stedall (10 February 2005). John Pell (1611-1685) and His Correspondence With Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician. Oxford University Press. p. 90. ISBN   978-0-19-856484-3 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  4. ↑ Noel Malcolm (11 November 2004). Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN   978-0-19-927540-3 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  5. ↑ Feingold, Mordechai. "Payne, Robert". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37837.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. 1 2 Andrew Pyle (editor), The Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Cavendish, Charles, p. 165.
  7. ↑ Ted-Larry Pebworth (2000). Literary circles and cultural communities in Renaissance England. University of Missouri Press. pp. 96–7. ISBN   978-0-8262-1317-4 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  8. 1 2 S. P. Cerasano; Marion Wynne-Davies (1998). Readings in renaissance women's drama: criticism, history, and performance, 1594-1998. Routledge. p. 249. ISBN   978-0-415-16442-9 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  9. ↑ James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and his World (1987), p. 224.
  10. ↑ George Vertue (1849). Anecdotes of painting in England: with some account of the principal artists, and incidental notes on other arts. Also, a catalogue of engravers who have been born or resided in England. H. G. Bohn. p. 399. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  11. 1 2 Andrew Pyle (editor), The Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Cavendish, William, p. 168.
  12. ↑ Ted-Larry Pebworth (2000). Literary circles and cultural communities in Renaissance England. University of Missouri Press. p. 94. ISBN   978-0-8262-1317-4 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  13. ↑ Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle; Susan James (28 August 2003). Political Writings. Cambridge University Press. p. 11. ISBN   978-0-521-63350-5 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  14. ↑ Andrew Pyle (editor), The Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Cavendish, Margaret, p. 166–7.
  15. ↑ Emma L. E. Rees (2003). Margaret Cavendish: gender, genre, exile. Manchester University Press. p. 37. ISBN   978-0-7190-6072-4 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  16. ↑ Andrew Pyle (editor), The Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Charleton, Walter, p. 169–75.
  17. ↑ Anita, McConnell. "Brereton, William". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39679.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  18. ↑ Stephen Gaukroger (2006). The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685. Oxford University Press. p. 283. ISBN   978-0-19-929644-6 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  19. ↑ Noel Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War: An unknown translation by Thomas Hobbes (2010), p. 10.
  20. ↑ Quentin Skinner (16 September 2002). Visions of Politics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 5–6. ISBN   978-0-521-89060-1 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  21. ↑ Noel Malcolm (11 November 2004). Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford University Press. pp. 139–. ISBN   978-0-19-927540-3 . Retrieved 3 April 2012.

Related Research Articles

Thomas Hobbes English philosopher (1588–1679)

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne English poet and philosopher, 1623–1673

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was an English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and playwright. Being related to royalists, she spent some of the English Civil War in France. She wrote in her own name in a period when most women writers remained anonymous.

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle 17th-century English soldier, courtier, and arts patron

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne, KG, KB, PC was an English courtier and supporter of the arts. He was a renowned horse breeder, as well as being patron of the playwright Ben Jonson, and the intellectual group known as the Welbeck Circle.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1667.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1645.

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire 17th century English soldier, nobleman and politician

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, was an English soldier, nobleman, and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1661 to 1684 when he inherited his father's peerage as Earl of Devonshire. He was part of the "Immortal Seven" group that invited William III, Prince of Orange to depose James II of England as monarch during the Glorious Revolution, and was rewarded with the elevation to Duke of Devonshire in 1694.

John Pell (mathematician) British 17C. mathematician

John Pell was an English mathematician and political agent abroad.

Sir Noel Robert Malcolm, is an English political journalist, historian and academic. A King's Scholar at Eton College, Malcolm read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and received his doctorate in history from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Fellow and College Lecturer of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before becoming a political and foreign affairs journalist for The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph.

John Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle British peer

John Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, KG, PC was an English peer.

Henry Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Newcastle

Henry Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, KG, PC, styled Lord Cavendish until 1676, and Viscount Mansfield from 1676, was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1676, and then inherited the dukedom.

Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland British duchess

Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, Duchess of Portland was a British aristocrat, styled Lady Margaret Harley before 1734, Duchess of Portland from 1734 to her husband's death in 1761, and Dowager Duchess of Portland from 1761 until her own death in 1785.

<i>The Blazing World</i> 17th century prose work by Margaret Cavendish

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, better known as The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a forerunner of science fiction. It can also be read as a utopian work.

Charles Cavendish (Nottingham MP) 17th-century English soldier, courtier, and arts patron

Sir Charles Cavendish was an English aristocrat, Member of Parliament for Nottingham, and patron.

Walter Warner (1563–1643) was an English mathematician and scientist.

George Aglionby (c.1603–1643) was an English Royalist churchman, nominated in 1643 as Dean of Canterbury. He was a member of the Great Tew intellectual circle around Lucius Cary, and a friend and correspondent of Thomas Hobbes.

Christian Cavendish, Countess of Devonshire

Christian(a) Cavendish, Countess of Devonshire (1595-1675) was an influential Anglo-Scottish landowner and royalist.

The Battle of Leeds took place during the First English Civil War on 23 January 1643, when a Parliamentarian force attacked the Royalist garrison of Leeds, Yorkshire. The attack was partly dictated by the need to maintain local support for the Parliamentarian cause; the Earl of Newcastle had recently shifted the balance of power in Yorkshire in the Royalists' favour with the addition of his 8,000-strong army, and sent one of his commanders, Sir William Savile to capture Leeds. The West Riding of Yorkshire relied on the cloth trade, and Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax sent his son, Sir Thomas Fairfax to bolster the defences of nearby Bradford, before agreeing to his request to attack Leeds.

The Great Tew Circle was a group of clerics and literary figures who gathered in the 1630s at the manor house of Great Tew, Oxfordshire in southern England, and in London.

Robert Payne (1596–1651) was an English cleric and academic, known also as a natural philosopher and experimentalist. He was associated with the so-called Welbeck Academy by his position as chaplain to William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Newcastle. The position also brought him a close friendship with Thomas Hobbes.

William Burdon (1764–1818) was an English academic, mineowner and writer.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.