two to their place of hiding, and betrayed them to the government. The man received a reward of 20l. with a recommendation to the admiralty for employment, but he had to wait many months for his ‘blood money,’ which was not paid till the November after the execution. Capel was again arrested, and on Thursday, 8 March 1648–9, ‘in a thin house, hardly above sixty there,’ the question was put to the vote whether the Duke of Hamilton, the Earls of Holland and Norwich (Goring), Capel, and Sir John Owen were to live or die. Owen was spared, Goring escaped by the casting vote of Speaker Lenthall, the other three were condemned, and all were beheaded next morning. To the last Capel behaved with that magnanimity and heroism which had marked his whole career. He received the last consolations of religion at the hands of Dr. George Morley, afterwards bishop of Winchester, who wrote an account of his last hours in a letter which was published in 1654; but inasmuch as there was reason to fear that Dr. Morley's well-known opinion might expose him to insult if he showed himself before the people at the last, Capel would not allow him to be present on the scaffold. There, says Bulstrode, ‘he behaved much after the manner of a stout Roman. He had no minister with him, nor showed any sense of death approaching, but carried himself all the time … with that boldness and resolution as was to be admired. He wore a sad-coloured suit, his hat cocked up, and his cloak thrown under one arm; he looked towards the people at his first coming up, and put off his hat in manner of a salute; he had a little discourse with some gentlemen, and passed up and down in a careless posture.’ John, son of Francis Quarles the poet, seems to have been present at the execution, and wrote ‘An Elegy or Epitaph’ upon the occasion, which was printed shortly afterwards.
Capel was buried at Hadham, where may still be read the inscription on his monument: ‘Hereunder lieth interred the body of Arthur, Lord Capel, Baron of Hadham, who was murdered for his loyalty to King Charles the First, March 9th, 1648.’ Capel married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Charles Morrison of Cashiobury, Hertfordshire, and by her had five sons and four daughters. At the Restoration Arthur [q.v.] , his eldest son, was created Earl of Essex, a title which had become extinct by the death of Robert Devereux, the last earl, 14 Sept. 1646. By one of those strange instances of retributive justice which are not rare in history, the son of the murdered man succeeded to the honours of him who had benefited most by the spoliation of his father's lands, and from him the present Earl of Essex is lineally descended.
[Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 250, 698; Carlyle's Cromwell; Bulstrode's Memoirs; Devereux's Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex, ii. 366, 462; Sanderson's Hist. of the Reign of Charles I; Collins's Peerage of England, iii. 474; Rushworth's Historical Collections, pt. iii. vol. i. p. 21, and vol. viii. p. 1272.]
CAPEL, ARTHUR, Earl of Essex (1631–1683), was born in January 1631 (information kindly given by the present Lord Essex), and was the eldest son of Arthur, lord Capel [q. v.] of Hadham, who was executed in 1649. His mother was Elizabeth Morrison. Of his early years nothing appears to be known, though from a letter of 13 June 1643 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. 143) he appears to have then been at Shrewsbury fighting for the king. It is stated by Burnet (i. 396) that his education was neglected by reason of the civil wars, but that when he reached manhood he made himself master of the Latin tongue, and learned mathematics and all the other parts of learning. From a letter in 1681 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 451) he appears to have had some connection with Balliol College, for he then subscribed to the purchase of a large silver bowl for the common-room. His correspondence during his residence in Ireland, preserved in the ‘Essex Papers’ (Stow Collection, Brit. Mus.), is that of a man of considerable literary cultivation. The language is simple but scholarly, and the style is singularly clear, dignified, and unaffected. His letters also display an intimate knowledge of law and of constitutional questions. Chauncy (Antiquities of Hertfordshire) describes him as handsome, courteous, and temperate, a strong opponent of arbitrary power, temperate in diet, and a lover of his library. Evelyn says that ‘he is a sober, wise, judicious, and pondering person, not illiterate beyond the rate of most noblemen in this age, very well versed in English historie and affaires, industrious, frugal, methodical, and every way accomplished’ (18 April 1680). Essex was never a wealthy man; his estate had been sequestrated under the Commonwealth, and was compounded for at 4,706l. 7s. 11d. (Collins, Peerage). While lord-lieutenant of Ireland he more than once mentions the pay of his office as being of importance to his private interests (Essex Papers). And Evelyn tells us that while there he ‘considerably augmented his estate, without reproach’ (18 April 1680). At the Restoration he was made Viscount Malden and Earl of Essex (20 April 1661), with remainder first to his brother Henry [q. v.] and his male heirs, and
