Richard Cavendish (died c. 1601) of

Trimley St Martin Trimley St. Martin is a parish and village that lies between the rivers Orwell and the Deben, on the long narrow tongue of land from Ipswich to Felixstowe referred to as the Colneis Hundred. The village, and its neighbour Trimley St. Mary, are ...

, Suffolk, and of

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...

was an English courtier and politician. He was a

Member Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

(MP) of the

Parliament of England The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England from the 13th century until 1707 when it was replaced by the Parliament of Great Britain. Parliament evolved from the great council of bishops and peers that advised ...

for Denbigh Boroughs in 1572 and 1584.

Life

He was the second son of Sir Richard Gernon, alias Cavendish, by his wife Beatrice Gould, and was a native of Suffolk. He was for some time a member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In 1568 and 1569 Cavendish was engaged in conveying to

Mary, Queen of Scots Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567. The only surviving legitimate child of James V of S ...

letters and tokens to further her marriage with

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, ( Kenninghall, Norfolk, 10 March 1536Tower Hill, London, 2 June 1572) was an English nobleman and politician. Although from a family with strong Roman Catholic leanings, he was raised a Protestant. He was ...

; in 1569 the earls of Shrewsbury and Huntingdon in the latter year tried to capture Cavendish and prevent the circulation of his writings. He then appeared as a witness against the Duke of Norfolk at his trial on 16 January 1572, when the duke reproached him. To the parliament which met 8 May 1572 he was returned for Denbigh Boroughs, in opposition to the wishes of the

Earl of Leicester Earl of Leicester is a title that has been created seven times. The first title was granted during the 12th century in the Peerage of England. The current title is in the Peerage of the United Kingdom and was created in 1837. Early creatio ...

. He was created M.A. of the university of Cambridge on 15 February 1573; the grace for his degree stated that he had studied for 28 years at Cambridge and Oxford. He was a second time returned for Denbigh to the parliament which assembled on 23 November 1585. In 1587 a conflict occurred, later taken to be of constitutional importance in relation to the

royal prerogative The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege and immunity, recognized in common law and, sometimes, in civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy, as belonging to the sovereign and which have become widely vested in th ...

. Cavendish had suggested to the Queen that it was in her power to create a new office for making out all writs of ''

supersedeas A supersedeas bond (often shortened to ''supersedeas''), also known as a defendant's appeal bond, is a type of surety bond that a court requires from an appellant who wants to delay payment of a judgment until an appeal is over. This is a featu ...

'' in the

Court of Common Pleas A court of common pleas is a common kind of court structure found in various common law jurisdictions. The form originated with the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, which was created to permit individuals to press civil grievances against one ...

; and she granted the post to him for a number of years. The court resisted and obstructed the Queen; the lord chancellor reported the proceedings to the Queen, who avoided the potential collision between the prerogative and the law, by allowing the matter to drop. Cavendish may have died in 1601: in that year a monument to his memory "promised and made by Margaret, countess of Cumberland", was erected to his memory in the south aisle of

Hornsey Hornsey is a district of north London, England in the London Borough of Haringey. It is an inner-suburban, for the most part residential, area centred north of Charing Cross. It adjoins green spaces Queen's Wood and Alexandra Park to the ...

Church, Middlesex.

Works

Cavendish was the author of: * A Translation of Euclid into English. * ''The Image of Natvre and Grace, conteyning the whole course and condition of Mans Estate. Written by Richard Caundishe'', London, John Day, n.d. and 1574, dedicated to "those who, through simplicitie of conscience and lacke of true knowledge, embrace the doctrine of the papistes". A poem in the ''Paradyse of Dayntie Devises'' has been ascribed to

Thomas Cavendish Sir Thomas Cavendish (1560 – May 1592) was an English explorer and a privateer known as "The Navigator" because he was the first who deliberately tried to emulate Sir Francis Drake and raid the Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and retu ...

the circumnavigator, his nephew, as well as to Richard Cavendish.

References

;Attribution 16th-century births 1601 deaths People from Suffolk Coastal (district) People from Nottinghamshire Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707) for constituencies in Wales English MPs 1572–1583 English MPs 1584–1585 Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge {{Wales-pre1707-MP-stub