Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/291

 came hither.’ He had long been on friendly terms with his namesake and distant kinsman, the Earl of Strafford (letters in the Strafford Letters, 24 Oct. 1632 and 31 Jan. 1633); and on 10 May 1641 was ordered by the lords to convey to Strafford the news of the royal assent to the bill of attainder; he also attended him to the scaffold. In 1642 he became colonel of a regiment of horse, was probably with Charles at Edgehill, and sat in the Oxford parliament from January 1644. During this year he was one of the most prominent royalist generals, being of a ‘plain and practical temper,’ and famous for ‘obliging the souldiery’. With 150 horse he successfully surprised Abingdon by night on 29 May 1644, but was forced to retreat and lost his prisoners (, viii. 45;, Hist. Disc. p. 32). On 29 June he led a charge of cavalry ‘with great fury’ against Waller on the west bank of the Cherwell at Cropredy Bridge; and, after ‘making a stand under a great ash,’ charged a second time and drove Waller back over the bridge (, viii. 44–6). His brigade was sent to Cornwall, and on 30 Aug. he attempted unsuccessfully to stop the flight of Essex's horse near Fowey; but on the next day pursued Sir William Balfour with five hundred men (, pp. 71–4;, Great Civil War, i. 466–7). He helped to relieve Portland Castle on 14 Oct. (, p. 104), and on 27 Oct. he commanded the cavalry on the left wing at the second battle of Newbury; he ‘charged through and through’ the enemy, and saved the king's guard; but his horse fell (, p. 113), and he was captured ‘by a lieutenant of Colonel Berkley's’ (, i. 323). An order for his exchange, 31 March 1645, did not take effect, and he remained a prisoner either in the Tower or on bail till 1648. He was permitted to stay at Bath with his son-in-law, Lord Lovelace, or elsewhere for long intervals; but it is difficult to understand how he came to be in Colchester during the siege in 1648; a proposal to exchange him ‘for one of the committee in Colchester’ on 19 Aug. (, ii. 384) seems to indicate that he was still on bail. He was allowed bail for three months in September 1648, and it is not known how his imprisonment terminated.

He next appears in April 1650 in attendance on Charles at Beauvais, where he threatened to cane any one who called him a presbyterian (Cal. Clarendon State Papers, ii. 54). He went with Charles to Scotland on 12 June 1650, and he and his son were required on 17 Oct. ‘to depart Scotland for refusing to take the covenant’ (, iii. 250). He commanded a regiment of cavalry at the battle of Worcester on 3 Sept. 1651, and by a charge in the street gave the prince time to escape; he himself was captured on 13 Sept. at Woodcote, Shropshire, and committed to the Tower, with Hamilton, Derby, and Lauderdale. An order was made on 17 Sept. that he should be tried with them on 29 Oct., but he escaped the death sentence by some accident. Lloyd says that one of the judges having left the room for a few minutes, Lord Mordaunt, influenced by the prayers of Lady Lovelace, gave a casting vote in his favour. The parliament (6 Nov.) refused to try him again; he was, however, kept a close prisoner in the Tower till about the middle of 1656. When released he may have retired to Lord Lovelace's house at Water Eaton, near Oxford. Nettlestead had been sold in 1643; his encumbered estates had been sequestrated at the commencement of the war, and his fine assessed at 2000l. He and his son were said to owe 100,000l., and the adjustment of the claims of the encumbrancers by the county committees of Bedfordshire and Middlesex was not completed till 1655, when practically the whole of his landed property was leased or sold to his creditors (see Cal. State Papers, Committee for Advance of Money i. 153, Committee for Compounding iii. 2156–68).

At the Restoration he reappeared, and on 29 May 1660 led a band of three hundred noblemen ‘in his plain gray suit’ (, l.c.). He was made captain of the gentlemen pensioners on 20 June, and received the command of a troop of horse on 1 Sept. 1662. Evelyn writes that at a review of four thousand guards in Hyde Park on 4 July 1663 ‘the old Earl of Cleveland trail'd a pike, and led the right-hand file in a foote company commanded by the Lord Wentworth his son, a worthy spectacle and example, being both of them old and valiant souldiers.’ An act to enable him to sell settled land for the benefit of his creditors was passed in 1660, and another granting extension of time on 18 Jan. 1667; these were revised in 1690, though his daughter-in-law had paid off large sums by careful management at Toddington. Cleveland died on 25 March 1667, and was buried at Toddington. Lloyd says that he attributed his strength of constitution to his habit of smoking a hundred pipes a day, ‘which he learnt in Leagures’ (i.e. camps). Clarendon describes him as ‘a man of signal courage and an excellent officer upon any bold