[Sidenote: That the writer's name was George.]
On the former point the evidence is wholly external. It lies in a small compass; but it is of great weight. It consists in the testimony of all the ancient manuscripts which bear any title of an even date with themselves[34]: and in that of the learned herald and antiquary Francis Thinne, a contemporary of the author's, who, in the list of writers of English history which he subjoined to Hollinshead's Chronicle, mentions "George Cavendish, Gentleman Vsher vnto Cardinal Woolseie, whose life he did write."
[Sidenote: Four circumstances of the author's condition discovered in the work.]
Now to our second point. Four circumstances of the author's situation are discovered to us in the work itself: viz. that his life was extended through the reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. and Queen Mary; that while he was in the Cardinal's service he was a married man, and had a family: that he was in but moderate circumstances when he composed this memoir; and that he retained a zeal for the _old profession_ of religion. If we find these circumstances concurring in a George Cavendish, it is probable we have found the person for whom we are in search.
Scanty as is the information afforded us concerning a simple esquire of the days of the Tudors, it will probably be made apparent that these circumstances do concur in the person to whom my Lord Herbert ascribes the work. Men of little celebrity in their lives, and whose track through the world cannot be discovered by the light of history, are sometimes found attaining a faint and obscure "life after death" in the herald's visitation books and the labours of the scrivener. Those rolls of immortality are open to every man. They transmit to a remote posterity the worthless and the silly with as much certainty as the name of one who was instinct with the fire of genius, and whom a noble ambition to be good and great distinguished from the common herd of men. It is in these rolls only that the name of George Cavendish of Glemsford is come down to us: he forms a link in the pedigree: he is a medium in the transmission of manorial property.
[Sidenote: Obscurity of George Cavendish a presumption in his favour.]