Background
He built a mansion on the site of Bolsover Castle, bought by his father (also called Sir Charles Cavendish). His work on the house, to a design by John Smythson (son of Robert Smythson), was never completed.
He built a mansion on the site of Bolsover Castle, bought by his father (also called Sir Charles Cavendish). His work on the house, to a design by John Smythson (son of Robert Smythson), was never completed.
He was the younger brother of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was knighted by James I in 1619. He was Member of Parliament for Nottingham in 1624 and 1628, and sat in the Short Parliament of 1640. On 23 January 1623-1624, he was returned to parliament for the borough of Nottingham.
He was also returned for the same place to the third parliament of Charles I on 18 February 1627-1628, and to the Short parliament on 30 March 1640.
He behaved with great gallantry in several actions, particularly distinguishing himself at the Battle of Marston Moor. His group of intellectual acquaintances has been called the Welbeck Circle, after the family home Welbeck Abbey.
lieutenant has also been called the "Newcastle Circle" after the elder brother’s title. Because the Cavendishes were royalist émigrés of the 1640s, the centre of this circle moved to Paris, where it took on the form of a salon.
lieutenant grew around Thomas Hobbes and John Pell, with Sir Kenelm Digby joining in Paris, and also included William Petty.
Cavendish knew Pell from the Welbeck period, along with the mathematicians Walter Warner and Robert Payne. He supported William Oughtred and knew John Wallis. From early travels in France, he knew Marin Mersenne and Claude Mydorge.
Later he met René Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and Pierre Gassendi.
He accordingly repaired to England in the beginning of November with Lady Newcastle. They stayed in Southwark and afterwards in lodgings at Covent Garden, in great poverty.
The proceedings in regard to his estates were not completed at the time of his death. He was buried at Bolsover in the family vault on 4 February
Short Parliament; Happy Parliament.