His attention to the meanest of his guests was such, that when he gave an entertainment, he would send for the groom-porter to inquire if he, and all of the same degree, had received due provision. His love of liberty was shown in a favourite saying of his, “that the deer in his park were happier than subjects under a tyrannical king:” or, as he expressed the same sentiments in his own poetry— “O despicable state of all that groan Under a blind dependency on one! How far inferior to the herds that range, With native freedom, o’er the woods and plains!”[401] But whilst the noble Cavendish detested that tyranny under the effects of which Russell had perished, and the whole British nation had suffered, in the properties and safety of its subjects, during the reign of James the Second, his well-conditioned mind cherished the elevating sentiments of loyalty, where loyalty was justly due. That bond of social union he prized, as every rightly thinking man must prize it, as an auxiliary to freedom, and a rallying point for the sincere, and the well-intentioned of all political opinions, however opposed on other points. The character of Lord Cavendish affords an illustration of the truth, that it is perfectly consistent with the lover of liberty, and the advocate of the subject’s right, to cherish the most ardent zeal for the maintenance of regal authority, and to feel the strongest personal attachment to the sovereign. Far from being one of those who, in the unsettled state of the government, desired that its disarranged elements might settle into a republic, the Earl of Devonshire, though he signed the association to invite William the Third to England, was the first of the nobility to step forward to protect the person of the Princess Anne, whom he guarded with a loyal and chivalric zeal which has been already described.