His manner of dealing with a strike was a summary one.  The wages of the excavators of the tunnels were fifteen shillings a week regularly, sunshine or rain; but the men thought their rich employer could afford them an increase, so they struck.

“You can strike as long as you like,” was the message sent by the Duke, “it does not matter to me if the work is never done.”

This cool attitude had its effect, the strike was at an end, and the tunnelling proceeded.

One reason given for planning the tunnels was that when he first desired to withdraw himself from observation he tried to close the public rights of way over the estate.  This brought him into collision with the powers that be, and he compromised matters to his own satisfaction by making the underground roadways.  His cynicism was rich.

“Here have I had provided for you at enormous expense a clean pathway underground, lighted with gas too, and you will persist in walking above ground,” was his salute to some astounded visitors.  The idea that they should prefer the sunshine, the delightful woodland scenery and sweet-smelling scents wafted over Welbeck in summer-time, to the gaseous tunnels, as if they were rabbits having natural affinities to the burrows of the earth, was one only worthy of a ducal misanthropist.

He was “The Invisible Prince,” he liked to take men unawares, he enjoyed a grim joke at their expense, though whether he ever showed signs of merriment, at least in after life, is not so much in the memories of those who knew him, as his eccentricities.  He is more associated with the character of an ogre and a cynic who shunned his fellow-men, yet there are some of his employees still living who give him a good word as a kind and considerate master.

There have been various reasons put forth to account for his withdrawal from the society of his peers.  It was said that he was smitten with leprosy, that he had an incurable skin desease; then that his love affairs had gone awry when he was a young man, with the result that he became a woman-hater, then a hater of mankind generally.

The Duke was moody and uncertain in his temper.  Sometimes he would pass pedestrians in the park without noticing them; at other times strangers would be astonished to hear a shabby old ogre break out at them in profane language because of their intrusion upon his domains, and they would be still more astonished when making complaints about the conduct of this disreputable person, to find that it was the Duke himself.

At that time the use of a traction-engine in agriculture was somewhat of a novelty, and because it was different from the appliances generally used by farmers, was a recommendation to the Duke.

It was nine o’clock one night when he said to his haymakers:  “Take the carts home and bring another load with the engine.”

“Excuse me, your Grace,” said one, “If the engine is made of steel and iron I’m not.  I’m tired out.”