Falkland, LUCIUS CARY, VISCOUNT, was born most probably at Burford, Oxfordshire, in 1610, son of Sir Henry Cary, himself of literary tastes and a friend of Ben Jonson. His father, created Viscount Falkland in the Scottish peerage in 1620, was the well-meaning but unfortunate lord-deputy of Ireland from 1622 to 1629; his mother was learned in languages and in the Fathers, was an early friend of Chillingworth, and, while still a girl, became a convert to the Catholic faith, though she did not avow it for twenty years. Lucius went to Ireland with his parents, and had his education at Trinity College, Dublin, succeeded to his maternal grandfather's property at nineteen, according to Clarendon, and soon after married, to his lasting happiness, Letice, daughter of Sir Richard Morrison. But the marriage irritated his father, who had been ambitious of a more splendid match, and moreover seems to have been displeased at the descent of his father-in-law's property to his son. With that instinctive unselfishness, linked with impulsive temper, so characteristic of his nature, Lucius at once offered, but to no purpose, to give up all claim upon the estate; he next crossed to Holland to volunteer into the service of the young republic, but soon returned to devote himself to his studies, especially of Greek. His father's death in 1633 gave him the title, and for a time he lived with his mother and listened dutifully to all her anxious arguments for his conversion. But his rational temper could not find rest in her summary solution of his questionings, and ere long, guided by the resistless intellect of Chillingworth, he reached conclusions as alien, in their large tolerance, to Puritanism as to Papistry. He soon settled down in his house at Tew, in Oxfordshire, to a severe course of study, and to that convivium philosophicum or convivium theologicum which the loving pen of Clarendon thirty years after described with so peculiar a charm. Hither came constantly the brightest intellects of the university, but sixteen miles distant, as well as the poets and wits from London. In the group of closest intimacy Clarendon enumerates Sheldon, Morley, Hammond, Earle, and Chillingworth, and to these we may add John Hales and the historian himself—great writer and constant friend. There is hardly another picture in our literary history so attractive as that of this 'university in a purer air' under the oaks and lines of Tew, and of the Tuscanian disputations there of Falkland, Hales, and Chillingworth, three friends united by so warm a friendship, yet unlike in everything save supremacy of intellect, little-ness of stature, and largeness of charity. To this period belong Falkland's pleasing but not striking poems, which were edited by A. B. Grosart in 1871. His Disseourses of Infallibility, and the longer Reply to the Answer thereto, are a truer index to what lay closest to his heart.
For some years high thinking entirely occupied Falkland's mind, but in 1639 we find him offering his sword for service against the Scots, and actually accompanying Essex's expedition as a volunteer. After his return he sat in the Short Parliament for Newport in the Isle of Wight, and was again returned to the Long Parliament for the same place. Here he distinguished himself by his ardour and eloquence in behalf of constitutional liberty, which he felt to be endangered by the high-handed absolutism of Laud and Strafford. Although his innate love of fairness and justice impelled him at first to demand delay in the impeachment of the latter until the charges made could be fully inquired into, he both spoke and voted with the majority on the third reading of the bill of attainder. He took the same part in the question of ship-money, and vigorously attacked the real illegalities of Finch, the Lord-keeper; but, though he assailed the bishops' claims to divine right, he refused to support the abolition of Episcopacy, while willing enough at first to exclude the bishops from the House of Lords. But the popular party moved too fast for his wise and temperate patriotism, and, in his alarm at the threatening domination of a no less intolerant Presbyterianism, he found himself compelled to resist the second Bishops Exclusion Bill.
At the commencement of 1642, after much persuasion, he accepted the secretaryship of state, although he evidently mistrusted the character of the king, and had no share in the counsels of the queen and the inner party that really ruled his actions. It was characteristic of the man that he refused to make use of spies or to open letters; and, as was to be expected, we find him active in the last ineffectual efforts to bridge the ever-widening breach betwixt the Court and the Commons. When the inevitable war broke out he gave his sword loyally to the king, but his heart sank within him to see his much-loved country bleeding in civil strife. There is no more touching figure in our history than this large-hearted patriot in his last few months of life, so real yet romantic is the pathos that enshrines him. Already the shadow of death hung over him, and Clarendon tells us, in the most famous passage of the History, how, his cheerfulness and vivacity gone, and even his customary carefulness in his dress abandoned, 'sitting amongst his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the words "Peace, peace," and would passionately profess that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart.' On the morning of the battle of Newbury, 20th September 1643, he knew that the hour for which he longed had come. He was cheerful beyond his wont, and put on clean linen as if for a banquet. Placing himself in the front rank of Sir John Byron's regiment, he rode forward to meet his death at a gap in the hedge where the enemy's bullets flew thickest. 'Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four and thirtieth year of his age, having so much despatched the business of life that the oldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocence: and who-soever leads such a life need not care upon how short warning it be taken from him.'
See Clarendon, both in the History and the Life; also S. R. Gardiner's History. There is no better account of Falkland than that in chap. 3 (vol. i.) of Tulloch's Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century (1872). See also the characteristically urbane yet irritating essay by Matthew Arnold (Nineteenth Century, March 1877), with the sufficient reply by Goldwin Smith (Contemporary Review, April 1877); and that by Lord Carnarvon in the Fortnightly Review for November 1882, based on his speech delivered at the unveiling of a granite memorial at Newbury, 9th September 1878.