Lucius Cary 2d Viscount Falkland

Lucius Cary Falkland, 2d Viscount , 1610?-1643, English statesman and literary figure. He entered Parliament in 1640, where he opposed the exaction of ship money and spoke in favor of the attainder of the earl of Strafford . However, he objected to the abolition of the episcopacy and in 1642 became an adviser to Charles I. He represented the king in attempts to make peace with Parliament in Sept., 1642, and was with Charles at Edgehill and the siege of Gloucester. In despair at the prospect of the civil war continuing, he is supposed to have deliberately allowed himself to be killed at the battle of Newbury. A poet in his own right, Falkland was also a liberal patron of many of his literary contemporaries.

Bibliography: See biography by J. A. R. Marriott (1907); study by K. Weber (1940).

Falkland, Lucius Cary, second Viscount (1610–43), a famous Royalist, ‘a man learned and accomplished, the centre of a circle which embraced the most liberal thinkers of his day’ ( J. R. Green). The circle at the village of Great Tew, near Oxford, included Jonson, Suckling, Sandys, Earle, Godolphin, and Chillingworth; also Clarendon, who draws a memorable portrait of him. Falkland wrote verses and theological works (Discourses of Infallibility and a Reply, 1660).

Falkland, Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount [S] (1610–43). Falkland was educated in Ireland, where his father was viceroy, but settled at Great Tew, outside Oxford. This became, in the words of Clarendon, ‘a university bound in a lesser volume’. Elected to Parliament in 1640, Falkland condemned arbitrary rule, but opposed radical change. In January 1642 he accepted office as secretary of state, in the vain hope of closing the gap between the king and Parliament. This ‘incomparable young man’, as Clarendon called him, found a welcome death in battle in September 1643.