Queen Anne retained in his office, as lord high steward, William Duke of Devonshire. This nobleman, “a patriot among the men, a Corydon among the ladies,”[399] had officiated at her Majesty’s coronation, as he had done at that of William and Mary,—where his stately deportment and handsome person, as in costly attire he bore the regal crown, eclipsed the sickly monarch, lowly in stature, behind whom he walked, whilst his daughter bore Queen Mary’s train. Whilst a boy, he had borne the royal train, with three other noble youths, at a similar ceremonial, when Charles the Second ascended the throne. Yet, though descending from a stock devoted to the Stuarts, and though his grandmother, the celebrated Countess of Devonshire, was instrumental in the Restoration, the high-minded peer became, upon conviction, a strenuous supporter of that liberty and of those rights upon which the second James so largely encroached. He voted for the bill of exclusion, and spoke boldly, though always with politeness and temper, upon that famous measure. At the trial of his friend Lord Russell, when it was almost deemed criminal to be a witness in behalf of the illustrious prisoner, Lord Cavendish, with the Earl of Anglesea, Mr. Howard, Tillotson, and Burnet, gave his testimony to the honour, the prudence, and good life of the distinguished sufferer. When he found that the doom of Russell was inevitable, he sent him a message, entreating to be allowed to change cloaks with him, and to remain in the prison whilst Russell should make his escape. The noble refusal of the generous offer is well known. It was Cavendish’s sad office to attend his beloved, and more than ever honoured friend, to the last; to solace the wretched Lady Russell, and bear the last message of affection from the noblest of beings to one who merited all his love. In the court, and in the senate, Lord Cavendish displayed the gallant qualities which had been manifested in the prison of Lord Russell. Insulted in the precincts of the court by Colonel Culpeper, a creature of King James’s, he retaliated by dragging the offending party out of the presence-chamber, and caning him on the head. For this act he was prosecuted and fined 5000_l._ But Cavendish, then Earl of Devonshire, chose rather to go to the King’s Bench prison, than to pay a fine which he thought exorbitant. He escaped to Chatsworth, where, in the midst of difficulties occasioned by loans in the former earl’s time to the exiled family never repaid, and aggravated by Lord Cavendish’s own rash castigation of Culpeper, his energetic mind framed a plan for remodelling the venerable pile in which he had sought security. The famous waterworks, the gardens, pictures, statues, and a great portion of the modernised structure, were the result of this nobleman’s magnificent taste and profuse expenditure.[400] His splendour and liberality were guided by an economy as essential to the peer who wishes to retain his independence, as to the peasant.