Lucius Cary Falkland, viscount, an English politician and man of letters, born at Burford, Oxfordshire, in 1610, killed Sept. 20, 1643. His father. Sir Henry Cary, who was made Viscount Falkland in the peerage of Scotland in 1620, held various offices under James I. Lucius was educated at Trinity college, Dublin, and at St. John's college, Cambridge, and at the age of 19 inherited the estate of his grandmother, wife of Chief Baron Tanfield, worth more than £2,000 per annum. He afterward married and settled at Great Tew, near Oxford, and in 1633 became Lord Falkland by the death of his father. In his country life he had for his associates learned men from Oxford and London, and was distinguished for hospitality and considerate benevolence. Falkland wrote both in prose and verse. He studied theology deeply, published a Discourse of the Infallibility of the Church of Rome," and was the author of other works, now little known. He was chosen a member of the short parliament in April, 1640, for Newport, Isle of Wight, and afterward of the long parliament, and shared deeply in the determination to establish the government on a constitutional basis. He was a strenuous advocate of the bill of attainder, even when it was opposed by Pym and Hampden, who preferred proceeding by impeachment.

He moved the impeachment of the lord keeper Finch. He distinguished himself in the attacks that were made on ship money, and on the judges who had pronounced the levying of it legal, and in those which were directed against the church. But suddenly, without apparent cause, he left the reform party, and he who had said the bishops were stark mad, and therefore should he sent to Bedlam, was soon heard to complain that they who hated the bishops hated them worse than the devil, and they who loved them did not love them so well as their dinners. In the memorable debate on the grand remonstrance, Falkland was the second speaker, following Hyde, and against the remonstrance. His course on this occasion, with his earlier opposition to the abolition of the church, led the king to make him the offer. of the post of secretary of state, which he accepted. Of .the exact part which Falkland had in the government scarcely anything is known, but he and his two associates in the administration, Colepeper and Hyde, received marks of hostility in the commons. He wrote the royal answer to the parliament's 19 propositions, then joined the king at York, and signed his declaration that he did not mean to make war on the parliament.

Shortly afterward Falkland was removed from the commons, and placed on the list of those whom the parliamentary commander was ordered to exclude from mercy. He behaved with gallantry at the battle of Edgehill, and had his advice been taken the king would have won a complete victory. In some negotiations that followed, he labored earnestly for peace. The campaign of 1643 was for a long time favorable to the king, and Falkland accompanied him to Bristol, and thence to the siege of Gloucester. The advance of the parliamentary army compelled the king to raise the siege. In the first battle of Newbury Falkland placed himself at the head of Sir John Byron's regiment. Receiving an order to charge a body of foot, he advanced between hedges lined with musketeers, and received a ball in the stomach, from which he died instantly. The body was found the next day, and buried in Great Tew church. He left a wife and three sons. Among the best works which treat of him is Forster'sHistorical and Biographical Essays" (London, 1858).