The Project Gutenberg eBook, Travels in England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth; with Fragmenta Regalia, by Paul Hentzner, et al, Edited by Henry Morley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Travels in England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth; with Fragmenta Regalia Author: Paul Hentzner Editor: Henry Morley Release Date: May 10, 2015 [eBook #1992] [This file was first posted in April 22, 1999] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELS IN ENGLAND DURING THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH; WITH FRAGMENTA REGALIA***
Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Co. edition by Jane Duff and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
DURING
THE
REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH
BY
PAUL HENTZNER.
WITH
FRAGMENTA REGALIA;
Or, Observations on Queen Elizabeth’s Times and
Favourites.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS &
MELBOURNE.
1892.
Queen Elizabeth herself, and London as it was in her time, with sketches of Elizabethan England, and of its great men in the way of social dignity, are here brought home to us by Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton.
Paul Hentzner was a German lawyer, born at Crossen, in Brandenburg, on the 29th of January, 1558. He died on the 1st January, 1623. In 1596, when his age was thirty-eight, he became tutor to a young Silesian nobleman, with whom he set out in 1597 on a three years’ tour through Switzerland, France, England, and Italy. After his return to Germany in 1600, he published, at Nuremberg, in 1612, a description of what he had seen and thought worth record, written in Latin, as “Itinerarium Germaniæ, Galliæ, Angliæ, Italiæ, cum Indice Locorum, Rerum atque Verborum.”
Horace Walpole caused that part of Hentzner’s Itinerary which tells what he saw in England to be translated by Richard Bentley, son of the famous scholar, and he printed at Strawberry Hill two hundred and twenty copies. In 1797 “Hentzner’s Travels in England” were edited, together with Sir Robert Naunton’s “Fragmenta Regalia,” in the volume from which they are here reprinted, with notes by the translator and the editor.
Sir Robert Naunton was of an old family with large estates, settled at Alderton, in Suffolk. He was at Cambridge in the latter years of Elizabeth’s reign, having entered as Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, and obtained a Fellowship at Trinity Hall. Naunton went to Scotland in 1589 with an uncle, William Ashby, whom Queen Elizabeth sent thither as Ambassador, and was despatched to Elizabeth’s court from Scotland as a trusty messenger. In 1596–7 he was in France, and corresponded with the Earl of Essex, who was his friend. After the fall of Essex he returned to Cambridge, and was made Proctor of the University in 1601, three years after Paul Hentzner’s visit to England. Then he became Public Orator at Cambridge, and by a speech made to King James at Hinchinbrook won his Majesty’s praise for Latin and learning. He came to court in the service of Sir James Overbury, obtained the active friendship of George Villiers Duke of Buckingham, and was sworn as Secretary of State on the 8th January, 1617. The king afterwards gave Naunton the office of Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries.
Sir Robert Naunton wrote his recollections of the men who served Queen Elizabeth when he was near the close of his own life. It was after 1628, because he speaks of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester, as dead, and before 1632, because he speaks of Sir William Knollys living as the only Earl of Banbury. He was created Earl of Banbury in 1626, and died in 1632. The “Fragmenta Regalia” were first published in 1641, after Sir Robert’s death. They were reprinted in 1642 and 1653, since which date they have appeared in various collections. There was a good edition of them in 1870 among the very valuable “English Reprints” for which we are indebted to Professor Edward Arber.
H. M.
We arrived at Rye, a small English seaport. Here, as soon as we came on shore, we gave in our names to the notary of the place, but not till he had demanded our business; and being answered, that we had none but to see England, we were conducted to an inn, where we were very well entertained; as one generally is in this country.
We took post-horses for London: it is surprising how swiftly they run; their bridles are very light, and their saddles little more than a span over.
Flimwell, a village: here we returned our first horses, and mounted fresh ones.
We passed through Tunbridge, another village.
Chepstead, another village: here, for the second time, we changed horses.
London, the head and metropolis of England: called by Tacitus, Londinium; by Ptolemy, Logidinium; by Ammianus Marcellinus, Lundinium; by foreigners, Londra, and Londres; it is the seat of the British Empire, and the chamber of the English kings. This most ancient city is in the county of Middlesex, the fruitfullest and wholesomest soil in England. It is built on the river Thames, sixty miles from the sea, and was originally founded, as all historians agree, by Brutus, who, coming from Greece into Italy, thence into Africa, next into France, and last into Britain, chose this situation for the convenience of the river, calling it Troja Nova, which name was afterwards corrupted into Trinovant. But when Lud, the brother of Cassibilan, or Cassivelan, who warred against Julius Cæsar, as he himself mentions (lib. v. de Bell. Gall.), came to the crown, he encompassed it with very strong walls, and towers very artfully constructed, and from his own name called it Caier Lud, i.e., Lud’s City. This name was corrupted into that of Caerlunda, and again in time, by change of language, into Londres. Lud, when he died, was buried in this town, near that gate which is yet called in Welsh, Por Lud—in Saxon, Ludesgate.
The famous river Thames owes part of its stream, as well as its appellation, to the Isis; rising a little above Winchelcomb, and being increased with several rivulets, unites both its waters and its name to the Thame, on the other side of Oxford; thence, after passing by London, and being of the utmost utility, from its greatness and navigation, it opens into a vast arm of the sea, from whence the tide, according to Gemma Frisius, flows and ebbs to the distance of eighty miles, twice in twenty-five hours, and, according to Polydore Vergil, above sixty miles twice in twenty-four hours.
This city being very large of itself, has very extensive suburbs, and a fort called the Tower, of beautiful structure. It is magnificently ornamented with public buildings and churches, of which there are above one hundred and twenty parochial.
On the south is a bridge of stone eight hundred feet in length, of wonderful work; it is supported upon twenty piers of square stone, sixty feet high and thirty broad, joined by arches of about twenty feet diameter. The whole is covered on each side with houses so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street, not at all of a bridge.
Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed on iron spikes: we counted above thirty.
Paulus Jovius, in his description of the most remarkable towns in England, says all are obscured by London: which, in the opinion of many, is Cæsar’s city of the Trinobantes, the capital of all Britain, famous for the commerce of many nations; its houses are elegantly built, its churches fine, its towns strong, and its riches and abundance surprising. The wealth of the world is wafted to it by the Thames, swelled by the tide, and navigable to merchant ships through a safe and deep channel for sixty miles, from its mouth to the city: its banks are everywhere beautified with fine country seats, woods, and farms; below is the royal palace of Greenwich; above, that of Richmond; and between both, on the west of London, rise the noble buildings of Westminster, most remarkable for the courts of justice, the parliament, and St. Peter’s church, enriched with the royal tombs. At the distance of twenty miles from London is the castle of Windsor, a most delightful retreat of the Kings of England, as well as famous for several of their tombs, and for the ceremonial of the Order of the Garter. This river abounds in swans, swimming in flocks: the sight of them, and their noise, are vastly agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course. It is joined to the city by a bridge of stone, wonderfully built; is never increased by any rains, rising only with the tide, and is everywhere spread with nets for taking salmon and shad. Thus far Paulus Jovius.
Polydore Vergil affirms that London has continued to be a royal city, and the capital of the kingdom, crowded with its own inhabitants and foreigners, abounding in riches, and famous for its great trade, from the time of King Archeninus, or Erchenvinus. Here the kings are crowned, and solemnly inaugurated, and the council of the nation, or parliament, is held. The government of the city is lodged, by ancient grant of the Kings of Britain, in twenty-four aldermen—that is, seniors: these annually elect out of their own body a mayor and two sheriffs, who determine causes according to municipal laws. It has always had, as indeed Britain in general has, a great number of men of learning, much distinguished for their writings.
The walls are pierced with six gates, which, as they were rebuilt, acquired new names. Two look westward:
1. Ludgate, the oldest, so called from King Lud, whose name is yet to be seen, cut in the stone over the arch on the side; though others imagine it rather to have been named Fludgate, from a stream over which it stands, like the Porta Fluentana at Rome. It has been lately repaired by Queen Elizabeth, whose statue is placed on the opposite side. And,
2. Newgate, the best edifice of any; so called from being new built, whereas before it was named Chamberlain gate. It is the public prison.
On the north are four:
1. Aldersgate, as some think from alder trees; as others, from Aldericius, a Saxon.
2. Cripplegate, from a hospital for the lame.
3. Moorgate, from a neighbouring morass, now converted into a field, first opened by Francetius [14] the mayor, A.D. 1414.
4. And Bishopsgate, from some bishop: this the German merchants of the Hans society were obliged by compact to keep in repair, and in times of danger to defend. They were in possession of a key to open or shut it, so that upon occasion they could come in, or go out, by night or by day.
There is only one to the east:
Aldgate, that is, Oldgate, from its antiquity; though others think it to have been named Elbegate.
Several people believe that there were formerly two gates (besides that to the bridge) towards the Thames.
1. Billingsgate, now a cothon, or artificial port, for the reception of ships.
2. Dourgate, vulgo Dowgate, i.e., Water-gate.
The cathedral of St. Paul was founded by Ethelbert, King of the Saxons, and being from time to time re-edified, increased to vastness and magnificence, and in revenue so much, that it affords a plentiful support to a bishop, dean, and precentor, treasurer, four archdeacons, twenty-nine prebendaries, and many others. The roof of this church, as of most others in England, with the adjoining steeple, is covered with lead.
On the right side of the choir is the marble tomb of Nicholas Bacon, with his wife. Not far from this is a magnificent monument, ornamented with pyramids of marble and alabaster, with this inscription:
Sacred to the memory of
Sir Christopher Hatton, son of William, grandson of John, of the most ancient family of the Hattons; one of the fifty gentlemen pensioners to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth: Gentleman of the privy chamber; captain of the guards; one of the Privy Council, and High Chancellor of England, and of the University of Oxford: who, to the great grief of his Sovereign, and of all good men, ended this life religiously, after having lived unmarried to the age of fifty-one, at his house in Holborn, on the 20th of November, A.D. 1591.
William Hatton, knight, his nephew by his sister’s side, and by adoption his son and heir, most sorrowfully raised this tomb, as a mark of his duty.
On the left hand is the marble monument of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and his lady: and near it, that of John, Duke of Lancaster, with this inscription:
Here sleeps in the Lord, John of Gant, so called from the city of the same name of Flanders, where he was born, fourth son of Edward the Third, King of England, and created by his father Earl of Richmond. He was thrice married; first to Blanche, daughter and heiress of Henry Duke of Lancaster; by her he received an immense inheritance, and became not only Duke of Lancaster, but Earl of Leicester, Lincoln, and Derby, of whose race are descended many emperors, kings, princes, and nobles. His second wife was Constance, who is here buried, daughter and heiress of Peter, King of Castile and Leon, in whose right he most justly [17] took the style of King of Castile and Leon. She brought him one only daughter, Catherine, of whom, by Henry, are descended the Kings of Spain. His third wife was Catherine, of a knight’s family, a woman of great beauty, by whom he had a numerous progeny; from which is descended, by the mother’s side, Henry the Seventh, the most prudent King of England, by whose most happy marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Edward the Fourth, of the line of York, the two royal lines of Lancaster and York are united, to the most desired tranquillity of England.
The most illustrious prince, John, surnamed Plantagenet, King of Castile and Leon, Duke of Lancaster, Earl of Richmond, Leicester, and Derby, Lieutenant of Aquitain, High Steward of England, died in the twenty-first year of Richard II., A.D. 1398.
A little farther, almost at the entrance of the choir, in a certain recess, are two small stone chests, one of which is thus inscribed:
Here lies Seba, King of the East Saxons, who was converted to the faith by St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, A.D. 677.
On the other:
Here lies Ethelred, King of the Angles, son of King Edgar,
On whom St. Dustan is said to have denounced vengeance, on his coronation day, in the following words:—“Inasmuch as thou hast aspired to the throne by the death of thy brother, against whose blood the English, along with thy infamous mother, conspired, the sword shall not pass from thy house! but rage all the days of thy life, afflicting all thy generation, till thy kingdom shall be translated to another, whose manner and language the people under thee knoweth not. Nor shall thy sin be done away till after long chastisement, nor the sin of thy mother, nor the sin of those men who assisted in thy wicked council.”
All which came to pass as predicted by the saint; for after being worsted and put to flight by Sueno King of the Danes, and his son Canute, and at last closely besieged in London, he died miserably A.D. 1017, after he had reigned thirty-six years in great difficulties.
There is besides in the middle of the church a tomb made of brass, of some Bishop of London, named William, who was in favour with Edward, King of England, and afterwards made counsellor to King William. He was bishop sixteen years, and died A.D. 1077. Near this is the following inscription:
Virtue survives the funeral.
To the memory of
Thomas Linacre, an eminent physician, John Caius placed this monument.
On the lower part of it is this inscription in gold letters:
Thomas Linacre, physician to King Henry VIII., a man learned in the Greek and Latin languages, and particularly skilful in physick, by which he restored many from a state of languishment and despair to life. He translated with extraordinary eloquence many of Galen’s works into Latin; and published, a little before his death, at the request of his friends, a very valuable book on the correct structure of the Latin tongue. He founded in perpetuity in favour of students in physick, two public lectures at Oxford, and one at Cambridge. In this city he brought about, by his own industry, the establishing of a College of Physicians, of which he was elected the first president. He was a detester of all fraud and deceit, and faithful in his friendships; equally dear to men of all ranks: he went into orders a few years before his death, and quitted this life full of years, and much lamented, A.D. 1524, on the 29th of October.
There are many tombs in this church, but without any inscriptions. It has a very fine organ, which, at evening prayer, accompanied with other instruments, is delightful.
In the suburb to the west, joined to the city by a continual row of palaces belonging to the chief nobility, of a mile in length, and lying on the side next the Thames, is the small town of Westminster; originally called Thorney, from its thorn bushes, but now Westminster, from its aspect and its monastery. The church is remarkable for the coronation and burial of the Kings of England. Upon this spot is said formerly to have stood a temple of Apollo, which was thrown down by an earthquake in the time of Antoninus Pius; from the ruins of which Sebert, King of the East Saxons, erected another to St. Peter: this was subverted by the Danes, and again renewed by Bishop Dunstan, who gave it to a few monks. Afterwards, King Edward the Confessor built it entirely new, with the tenth of his whole revenue, to be the place of his own burial, and a convent of Benedictine monks; and enriched it with estates dispersed all over England.
In this church the following things are worthy of notice:
In the first choir, the tomb of Anne of Cleves, wife of Henry VIII., without any inscription.
On the opposite side are two stone sepulchres: (1) Edward, Earl of Lancaster, brother of Edward I.; (2) Ademar of Valence, Earl of Pembroke, son of Ademar of Valence. Joining to these is (3) that of Aveline, Countess of Lancaster.
In the second choir is the chair on which the kings are seated when they are crowned; in it is enclosed a stone, said to be that on which the patriarch Jacob slept when he dreamed he saw a ladder reaching quite up into heaven. Some Latin verses are written upon a tablet hanging near it; the sense of which is:
That if any faith is to be given to ancient chronicles, a stone of great note is enclosed in this chair, being the same on which the patriarch Jacob reposed when he beheld the miraculous descent of angels. Edward I., the Mars and Hector of England, having conquered Scotland, brought it from thence.
The tomb of Richard II. and his wife, of brass, gilt, and these verses written round it:
Perfect and prudent, Richard, by right the Second,
Vanquished by Fortune, lies here now graven in stone,
True of his word, and thereto well renound:
Seemly in person, and like to Homer as one
In worldly prudence, and ever the Church in one
Upheld and favoured, casting the proud to ground,
And all that would his royal state confound.
Without the tomb is this inscription:
Here lies King Richard, who perished by a cruel death, in the year 1369.
To have been happy is additional misery.
Near him is the monument of his queen, daughter of the Emperor Wenceslaus.
On the left hand is the tomb of Edward I., with this inscription:
Here lies Edward I., who humbled the Scots. A.D. 1308.
Be true to your engagements.
He reigned forty-six years.
The tomb of Edward III., of copper, gilt, with this epitaph:
Of English kings here lieth the beauteous flower
Of all before past, and myrror to them shall sue:
A merciful king, of peace conservator,
The third Edward, &c.
Besides the tomb are these words:
Edward III., whose fame has reached to heaven. A.D. 1377.
Fight for your country.
Here is shown his sword, eight feet in length, which they say he used in the conquest of France.
His queen’s epitaph:
Here lies Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III. Learn to live. A.D. 1369.
At a little distance, the tomb of Henry V., with this legend:
Henry, the scourge of France, lies in this tomb. Virtue subdues all things. A.D. 1422.
Near this lies the coffin of Catherine, unburied, and to be opened by anyone that pleases. On the outside is this inscription:
Fair Catherine is at length united to her lord. A.D. 1437.
Shun idleness.
The tomb of Henry III., of brass, gilt, with this epitaph:
Henry III., the founder of this cathedral. A.D. 1273. War is delightful to the unexperienced.
It was this Henry who, one hundred and sixty years after Edward the Confessor had built this church, took it down, and raised an entire new one of beautiful architecture, supported by rows of marble columns, and its roof covered with sheets of lead, a work of fifty years before its completion. It has been much enlarged at the west end by the abbots. After the expulsion of the monks, it experienced many changes; first it had a dean and prebendaries; then a bishop, who, having squandered the revenues, resigned it again to a dean. In a little time, the monks with their abbot were reinstated by Queen Mary; but, they being soon ejected again by authority of parliament, it was converted into a cathedral church—nay, into a seminary for the Church—by Queen Elizabeth, who instituted there twelve prebendaries, an equal number of invalid soldiers, and forty scholars; who at a proper time are elected into the universities, and are thence transplanted into the Church and State.
Next to be seen is the tomb of Eleanor, daughter of Alphonso King of Spain, and wife of Edward I., with this inscription:
This Eleanor was consort of Edward I.
A.D. 1298. Learn to die.
The tomb of Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VII.
In the middle of this chapel is the shrine of St. Edward, the last King of the Saxons. It is composed of marble in mosaic: round it runs this inscription in letters of gold:
The venerable king, St. Edward the Confessor,
A heroe adorned with every virtue.
He died on the 5th of January, 1065,
And mounted into Heaven.
Lift up your hearts.
The third choir, of surprising splendour and elegance, was added to the east end by Henry VII. for a burying-place for himself and his posterity. Here is to be seen his magnificent tomb, wrought of brass and marble, with this epitaph:
Here lies Henry VII. of that name, formerly King of England, son of Edmund, Earl of Richmond, who, ascending the throne on the twenty-second day of August, was crowned on the thirtieth of October following at Westminster, in the year of our Lord 1485. He died on the twenty-first of April, in the fifty-third year of his age, after a reign of twenty-two years and eight months wanting a day.
This monument is enclosed with rails of brass, with a long epitaph in Latin verse.
Under the same tomb lies buried Edward VI., King of England, son of Henry VIII. by Jane Seymour. He succeeded to his father when he was but nine years old, and died A.T. 1553, on the 6th of July, in the sixteenth year of his age, and of his reign the seventh, not without suspicion of poison.
Mary was proclaimed queen by the people on the 19th of July, and died in November, 1558, and is buried in some corner of the same choir, without any inscription.
Queen Elizabeth.
Here lies Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., sister of King Edward V., wife of Henry VII., and the glorious mother of Henry VIII. She died in the Tower of London, on the eleventh of February, A.D. 1502, in the thirty-seventh year of her age.
Between the second and third choirs in the side-chapels, are the tombs of Sebert, King of the East Saxons, who built this church with stone: and
Of Margaret of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., grandmother of Henry VIII.; she gave this monastery to the monks of Winbourne, [27] who preached and taught grammar all England over, and appointed salaries to two professors of divinity, one at Oxford, another at Cambridge, where she founded two colleges to Christ and to John His disciple. She died A.D. 1463, on the third of the calends of July.
And of Margaret, Countess of Lenox, grandmother of James VI., King of Scotland.
William of Valance, half-brother of Henry III.
The Earl of Cornwall, brother of Edward III.
Upon another tomb is an honorary inscription for Frances, Duchess of Suffolk. The sense of it is,
That titles, royal birth, riches, or a large family, are of no avail:
That all are transitory; virtue alone resisting the funeral pile.
That this lady was first married to a duke, then to Stoke, a gentleman;
And lastly, by the grave espoused to Christ.
The next is the tomb of Lord Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, whose lady composed the following Greek and Latin verses, and had them engraved on the marble:—
How was I startled at the cruel feast,
By death’s rude hands in horrid manner drest;
Such grief as sure no hapless woman knew,
When thy pale image lay before my view.
Thy father’s heir in beauteous form arrayed
Like flowers in spring, and fair, like them to fade;
Leaving behind unhappy wretched me,
And all thy little orphan-progeny:
Alike the beauteous face, the comely air,
The tongue persuasive, and the actions fair,
Decay: so learning too in time shall waste:
But faith, chaste lovely faith, shall ever last.
The once bright glory of his house, the pride
Of all his country, dusty ruins hide:
Mourn, hapless orphans; mourn, once happy wife;
For when he died, died all the joys of life.
Pious and just, amidst a large estate,
He got at once the name of good and great.
He made no flatt’ring parasite his guest,
But asked the good companions to the feast.
Anne, Countess of Oxford, daughter of William Cecil, Baron Burleigh, and Lord Treasurer.
Philippa, daughter and co-heiress of John, Lord Mohun of Dunster, wife of Edward, Duke of York.
Frances, Countess of Sussex, of the ancient family of Sidney.
Thomas Bromley, Chancellor to Queen Elizabeth.
The Earl of Bridgewater, [29] Lord Dawbney, Lord Chamberlain to Henry VII., and his lady.
And thus much for Westminster.
There are many other churches in this city, but none so remarkable for the tombs of persons of distinction.
Near to this church is Westminster Hall, where, besides the Sessions of Parliament, which are often held there, are the Courts of Justice; and at stated times are heard their trials in law, or concerning the king’s patrimony, or in chancery, which moderates the severity of the common law by equity. Till the time of Henry I. the Prime Court of Justice was movable, and followed the King’s Court, but he enacted by the Magna Charta that the common pleas should no longer attend his Court, but be held at some determined place. The present hall was built by King Richard II. in the place of an ancient one which he caused to be taken down. He made it part of his habitation (for at that time the Kings of England determined causes in their own proper person, and from the days of Edward the Confessor had their palace adjoining), till, above sixty years since, upon its being burnt, Henry VIII. removed the royal residence to Whitehall, situated in the neighbourhood, which a little before was the house of Cardinal Wolsey. This palace is truly royal, enclosed on one side by the Thames, on the other by a park, which connects it with St. James’s, another royal palace.
In the chamber where the Parliament is usually held, the seats and wainscot are made of wood, the growth of Ireland; said to have that occult quality, that all poisonous animals are driven away by it; and it is affirmed for certain, that in Ireland there are neither serpents, toads, nor any other venomous creature to be found.
Near this place are seen an immense number of swans, who wander up and down the river for some miles, in great security; nobody daring to molest, much less kill any of them, under penalty of a considerable fine.
In Whitehall are the following things worthy of observation:—
I. The Royal Library, well stored with Greek, Latin, Italian and French books; amongst the rest, a little one in French upon parchment, in the handwriting of the present reigning Queen Elizabeth, thus inscribed:—
To the most high, puissant, and redoubted prince,
Henry VIII. of the name, King of England, France
and Ireland, Defender of the Faith;
Elizabeth, his most humble daughter.
Health and obedience.
All these books are bound in velvet in different colours, though chiefly red, with clasps of gold and silver; some have pearls and precious stones set in their bindings.
II. Two little silver cabinets of exquisite work, in which the Queen keeps her paper, and which she uses for writing boxes.
III. The Queen’s bed, ingeniously composed of woods of different colours, with quilts of silk, velvet, gold, silver, and embroidery.
IV. A little chest ornamented all over with pearls, in which the Queen keeps her bracelets, ear-rings, and other things of extraordinary value.
V. Christ’s Passion, in painted glass.
VI. Portraits: among which are, Queen Elizabeth, at sixteen years old; Henry, Richard, Edward, Kings of England; Rosamond; Lucrece, a Grecian bride, in her nuptial habit; the genealogy of the Kings of England; a picture of King Edward VI., representing at first sight something quite deformed, till by looking through a small hole in the cover which is put over it, you see it in its true proportions; Charles V., Emperor; Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, and Catherine of Spain, his wife; Ferdinand, Duke of Florence, with his daughters; one of Philip, King of Spain, when he came into England and married Mary; Henry VII., Henry VIII., and his mother; besides many more of illustrious men and women; and a picture of the Siege of Malta.
VII. A small hermitage, half hid in a rock, finely carved in wood.
VIII. Variety of emblems on paper, cut in the shape of shields, with mottoes, used by the mobility at tilts and tournaments, hung up here for a memorial.
IX. Different instruments of music, upon one of which two persons may perform at the same time.
X. A piece of clock-work, an Ethiop riding upon a rhinoceros, with four attendants, who all make their obeisance when it strikes the hour; these are all put into motion by winding up the machine.
At the entrance into the park from Whitehall is this inscription:—
The fisherman who has been wounded, learns, though late, to beware;
But the unfortunate Actæon always presses on.
The chaste virgin naturally pitied:
But the powerful goddess revenged the wrong.
Let Actæon fall a prey to his dogs,
An example to youth,
A disgrace to those that belong to him!
May Diana live the care of Heaven;
The delight of mortals;
The security of those that belong to her! [34]
In this park is great plenty of deer.
In a garden joining to this palace there is a jet d’eau, with a sun-dial, which while strangers are looking at, a quantity of water, forced by a wheel which the gardener turns at a distance, through a number of little pipes, plentifully sprinkles those that are standing round.
Guildhall, a fine structure built by Thomas Knowles. Here are to be seen the statues of two giants, said to have assisted the English when the Romans made war upon them: Corinius of Britain, and Gogmagog of Albion. Beneath upon a table the titles of Charles V., Emperor, are written in letters of gold.
The government of London is this: the city is divided into twenty-five regions or wards; the Council is composed of twenty-four aldermen, one of whom presides over every ward. And whereas of old the chief magistrate was a portreeve, i.e., governor of the city, Richard I. appointed two bailiffs; instead of which King John gave a power by grant of choosing annually a mayor from any of the twelve principal companies, and to name two sheriffs, one of whom to be called the king’s, the other the city’s. It is scarce credible how this city increased, both in public and private buildings, upon establishing this form of government. Vide Camden’s “Britannia,” Middlesex.
It is worthy of observation, that every year, upon St. Bartholomew’s Day, when the fair is held, it is usual for the mayor, attended by the twelve principal aldermen, to walk in a neighbouring field, dressed in his scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, to which is hung a golden fleece, [36a] and besides, that particular ornament [36b] which distinguishes the most noble order of the garter. During the year of his magistracy, he is obliged to live so magnificently, that foreigner or native, without any expense, is free, if he can find a chair empty, to dine at his table, where there is always the greatest plenty. When the mayor goes out of the precincts of the city, a sceptre, a sword, and a cap, are borne before him, and he is followed by the principal aldermen in scarlet gowns, with gold chains; himself and they on horseback. Upon their arrival at a place appointed for that purpose, where a tent is pitched, the mob begin to wrestle before them, two at a time; the conquerors receive rewards from the magistrates. After this is over, a parcel of live rabbits are turned loose among the crowd, which are pursued by a number of boys, who endeavour to catch them, with all the noise they can make. While we were at this show, one of our company, Tobias Salander, doctor of physic, had his pocket picked of his purse, with nine crowns du soleil, which, without doubt, was so cleverly taken from him by an Englishman who always kept very close to him, that the doctor did not in the least perceive it.
The Castle or Tower of London, called Bringwin, and Tourgwin, in Welsh, from its whiteness, is encompassed by a very deep and broad ditch, as well as a double wall very high. In the middle of the whole is that very ancient and very strong tower, enclosed with four others, which, in the opinion of some, was built by Julius Cæsar. Upon entering the tower, we were obliged to quit our swords at the gate and deliver them to the guard. When we were introduced, we were shown above a hundred pieces of arras belonging to the Crown, made of gold, silver, and silk; several saddles covered with velvet of different colours; an immense quantity of bed-furniture, such as canopies, and the like, some of them most richly ornamented with pearl; some royal dresses, so extremely magnificent as to raise any one’s admiration at the sums they must have cost. We were next led into the Armoury, in which are these particularities:—Spears, out of which you may shoot; shields, that will give fire four times; a great many rich halberds, commonly called partisans, with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances, covered with red and green velvet, and the body-armour of Henry VIII.; many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horses in horse-fights; the lance of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon, the one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made of wood, which the English has at the siege of Boulogne, in France. And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded, they struck a terror into the inhabitants, as at the appearance of artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannon of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart; thirty-six of a smaller; other cannon for chain-shot; and balls proper to bring down masts of ships. Cross-bows, bows and arrows, of which to this day the English make great use in their exercises; but who can relate all that is to be seen here? Eight or nine men employed by the year are scarce sufficient to keep all the arms bright.
The Mint for coining money is in the Tower.
N.B.—It is to be noted, that when any of the nobility are sent hither, on the charge of high crimes, punishable with death, such as treason, &c., they seldom or never recover their liberty. Here was beheaded Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII., and lies buried in the chapel, but without any inscription; and Queen Elizabeth was kept prisoner here by her sister, Queen Mary, at whose death she was enlarged, and by right called to the throne.
On coming out of the Tower, we were led to a small house close by, where are kept variety of creatures, viz.—three lionesses; one lion of great size, called Edward VI. from his having been born in that reign: a tiger; a lynx; a wolf excessively old—this is a very scarce animal in England, so that their sheep and cattle stray about in great numbers, free from any danger, though without anybody to keep them; there is, besides, a porcupine, and an eagle. All these creatures are kept in a remote place, fitted up for the purpose with wooden lattices, at the Queen’s expense.
Near to this Tower is a large open space; on the highest part of it is erected a wooden scaffold, for the execution of noble criminals; upon which, they say, three princes of England, the last of their families, have been beheaded for high treason; on the bank of the Thames close by are a great many cannon, such chiefly as are used at sea.
The next thing worthy of note is the Royal Exchange, so named by Queen Elizabeth, built by Sir Thomas Gresham, citizen, for public ornament and the convenience of merchants. It has a great effect, whether you consider the stateliness of the building, the assemblage of different nations, or the quantities of merchandise. I shall say nothing of the hall belonging to the Hans Society; or of the conveyance of water to all parts of the town by subterraneous pipes, nor the beautiful conduits and cisterns for the reception of it; nor of the raising of water out of the Thames by a wheel, invented a few years since by a German.
Bridewell, at present the House of Correction; it was built in six weeks for the reception of the Emperor Charles V.
A Hall built by a cobbler and bestowed on the city, where are exposed to sale, three times in a week, corn, wool, cloth, fruits, and the like.
Without the city are some theatres, where English actors represent almost every day tragedies and comedies to a very numerous audiences; these are concluded with excellent music, variety of dances, and the excessive applause of those that are present.
Not far from one of these theatres, which are all built of wood, lies the royal barge, close to the river. It has two splendid cabins, beautifully ornamented with glass windows, painting, and gilding; it is kept upon dry ground, and sheltered from the weather.
There is still another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other; and it sometimes happens that they are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men, standing circularly with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them because of his chain; he defends himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his reach and are not active enough to get out of it, and tearing the whips out of their hands and breaking them. At these spectacles, and everywhere else, the English are constantly smoking tobacco; and in this manner—they have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the farther end of which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder, and putting fire to it, they draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils like funnels, along with it plenty of phlegm and defluxion from the head. In these theatres, fruits, such as apples, pears, and nuts, according to the season, are carried about to be sold, as well as ale and wine.
There are fifteen colleges within and without the city, nobly built, with beautiful gardens adjoining. Of these the three principal are:—
I. The Temple, inhabited formerly by the Knights Templars; it seems to have taken its name from the old temple, or church, which has a round tower added to it, under which lied buried those Kings of Denmark that reigned in England.
II. Gray’s Inn. And,
III. Lincoln’s Inn.
In these colleges numbers of young nobility, gentry, and others, are educated, and chiefly in the study of physic, for very few apply themselves to that of the law; they are allowed a very good table, and silver cups to drink out of. Once a person of distinction, who could not help being surprised at the great number of cups, said, “He should have thought it more suitable to the life of students, if they had used rather glass, or earthenware, than silver.” The college answered, “They were ready to make him a present of all their plate, provided he would undertake to supply them with all the glass and earthenware they should have a demand for; since it was very likely he would find the expense, from constant breaking, exceed the value of the silver.”
The streets in this city are very handsome and clean; but that which is named from the goldsmiths who inhabit it, surpasses all the rest; there is in it a gilt tower, with a fountain that plays. Near it, on the farther side, is a handsome house built by a goldsmith and presented by him to the city. There are besides to be seen in this street, as in all others where there are goldsmiths’ shops, all sorts of gold and silver vessels exposed to sale, as well as ancient and modern medals, in such quantities as must surprise a man the first time he sees and considers them.
Fitz-Stephen, a writer of English history, reckoned in his time in London one hundred and twenty-seven parish churches, and thirteen belonging to convents; he mentions, besides, that upon a review there of men able to bear arms, the people brought into the field under their colours forty thousand foot and twenty thousand horse. Vide Camden’s “Britannia,” Middlesex.
The best oysters are sold here in great quantities.
Everybody knows that English cloth is much approved of for the goodness of the materials, and imported into all the kingdoms and provinces of Europe.
We were shown, at the house of Leonard Smith, a tailor, a most perfect looking-glass, ornamented with gold, pearl, silver, and velvet, so richly as to be estimated at five hundred ecus du soleil. We saw at the same place the hippocamp and eagle stone, both very curious and rare.
And thus much of London.
Upon taking the air down the river, the first thing that struck us was the ship of that noble pirate, Sir Francis Drake, in which he is said to have surrounded this globe of earth. On the left hand lies Ratcliffe, a considerable suburb: on the opposite shore is fixed a long pole with ram’s-horns upon it, the intention of which was vulgarly said to be a reflection upon wilful and contented cuckolds.
We arrived next at the royal palace of Greenwich, reported to have been originally built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and to have received very magnificent additions from Henry VII. It was here Elizabeth, the present Queen, was born, and here she generally resides, particularly in summer, for the delightfulness of its situation. We were admitted, by an order Mr. Rogers had procured from the Lord Chamberlain, into the presence chamber, hung with rich tapestry, and the floor, after the English fashion, strewed with hay, [46] through which the Queen commonly passes on her way to chapel. At the door stood a gentleman dressed in velvet, with a gold chain, whose office was to introduce to the Queen any person of distinction that came to wait on her; it was Sunday, when there is usually the greatest attendance of nobility. In the same hall were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, a great number of Councillors of State, officers of the Crown, and gentlemen, who waited the Queen’s coming out; which she did from her own apartment when it was time to go to prayers, attended in the following manner:—
First went gentlemen, barons, earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly dressed and bareheaded; next came the Chancellor, bearing the seals in a red silk purse, between two, one of whom carried the Royal sceptre, the other the sword of state, in a red scabbard, studded with golden fleurs de lis, the point upwards: next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar); she had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table; her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry; and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels. As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another, whether foreign Ministers, or those who attended for different reasons, in English, French, and Italian; for, besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, and the languages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling; now and then she raises some with her hand. While we were there, W. Slawata, a Bohemian baron, had letters to present to her; and she, after pulling off her glove, gave him her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels, a mark of particular favour. Wherever she turned her face, as she was going along, everybody fell down on their knees. [49] The ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white. She was guarded on each side by the gentlemen pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, next the hall where we were, petitions were presented to her, and she received them most graciously, which occasioned the acclamation of “Long Live Queen Elizabeth!” She answered it with “I thank you, my good people.” In the chapel was excellent music; as soon as it and the service were over, which scarce exceeded half an hour, the Queen returned in the same state and order, and prepared to go to dinner. But while she was still at prayers, we saw her table set out with the following solemnity:—
A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth which, after they had both kneeled three times with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table, and, after kneeling again, they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a countess), and along with her a married one, bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three times in the most graceful manner, approached the table and rubbed the plates with bread and salt with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little while, the yeomen of the guards entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the lady taster gave to each of the guard a mouthful to eat of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettledrums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who, with particular solemnity, lifted the meat off the table, and conveyed it into the Queen’s inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the ladies of the Court.
The Queen dines and sups alone with very few attendants, and it is very seldom that anybody, foreigner or native, is admitted at that time, and then only at the intercession of somebody in power.
Near this palace is the Queen’s park, stocked with deer. Such parks are common throughout England, belonging to those that are distinguished either for their rank or riches. In the middle of this is an old square tower, called Mirefleur, supposed to be that mentioned in the romance of “Amadis de Gaul;” and joining to it a plain, where knights and other gentlemen use to meet, at set times and holidays, to exercise on horseback.
We left London in a coach, in order to see the remarkable places in its neighbourhood.
The first was Theobalds, belonging to Lord Burleigh, the Treasurer. In the gallery was painted the genealogy of the Kings of England; from this place one goes into the garden, encompassed with a ditch full of water, large enough for one to have the pleasure of going in a boat and rowing between the shrubs; here are great variety of trees and plants, labyrinths made with a great deal of labour, a jet d’eau, with its basin of white marble, and columns and pyramids of wood and other materials up and down the garden. After seeing these, we were led by the gardener into the summer-house, in the lower part of which, built semicircularly, are the twelve Roman emperors in white marble, and a table of touchstone; the upper part of it is set round with cisterns of lead, into which the water is conveyed through pipes, so that fish may be kept in them, and in summer-time they are very convenient for bathing. In another room for entertainment, very near this, and joined to it by a little bridge, was an oval table of red marble. We were not admitted to see the apartments of this palace, there being nobody to show it, as the family was in town, attending the funeral of their lord. [53]
Hoddesdon, a village.
Ware, a market town.
Puckeridge, a village; this was the first place where we observed that the beds at inns were made by the waiters.
Camboritum, Cantabrigium and Cantabrigia, now called Cambridge, a celebrated town, so named from the river Cam, which after washing the western side, playing through islands, turns to the east, and divides the town into two parts, which are joined by a bridge, whence its modern name—formerly it had the Saxon one of Grantbridge. Beyond this bridge is an ancient and large castle, said to be built by the Danes: on this side, where far the greater part of the town stands, all is splendid; the streets fine, the churches numerous, and those seats of the Muses, the colleges, most beautiful; in these a great number of learned men are supported, and the studies of all polite sciences and languages flourish.
I think proper to mention some few things about the foundation of this University and its colleges. Cantaber, a Spaniard, is thought to have first instituted this academy 375 years before Christ, and Sebert, King of the East Angles, to have restored it A.D. 630. It was afterwards subverted in the confusion under the Danes, and lay long neglected, till upon the Norman Conquest everything began to brighten up again: from that time inns and halls for the convenient lodging of students began to be built, but without any revenues annexed to them.
The first college, called Peter House, was built and endowed by Hugh Balsam, Bishop of Ely, A.D. 1280; and, in imitation of him, Richard Badew, with the assistance of Elizabeth Burke, Countess of Clare and Ulster, founded Clare Hall in 1326; Mary de St. Paul, Countess of Pembroke, Pembroke Hall in 1343; the Monks of Corpus Christi, the college of the same name, though it has besides that of Bennet; John Craudene, Trinity Hall, 1354; Edmond Gonville, in 1348, and John Caius, a physician in our times, Gonville and Caius College; King Henry VI., King’s College, in 1441, adding to it a chapel that may justly claim a place among the most beautiful buildings in the world. On its right side is a fine library, where we saw the “Book of Psalms” in manuscript, upon parchment four spans in length and three broad, taken from the Spaniards at the siege of Cadiz, and thence brought into England with other rich spoils. Margaret of Anjou, his wife, founded Queen’s College, 1448, at the same time that John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, built Jesus College; Robert Woodlarke, Catherine Hall; Margaret of Richmond, mother of King Henry VII., Christ’s and St. John’s Colleges, about 1506; Thomas Audley, Chancellor of England, Magdalen College, much increased since both in buildings and revenue by Christopher Wray, Lord Chief Justice; and the most potent King Henry VIII. erected Trinity College for religion and polite letters—in its chapel is the tomb of Dr. Whitacre, with an inscription in gold letters upon marble; Emanuel College, built in our own times by the most honourable and prudent Sir Walter Mildmay, one of Her Majesty’s Privy Council; and lastly, Sidney College, now first building by the executors of the Lady Frances Sidney, [56] Countess of Sussex.
We must note here that there is certain sect in England called Puritans; these, according to the doctrine of the Church of Geneva, reject all ceremonies anciently held, and admit of neither organs nor tombs in their places of worship, and entirely abhor all difference in rank among Churchmen, such as bishops, deans, &c.; they were first named Puritans by the Jesuit Sandys. They do not live separate, but mix with those of the Church of England in the colleges.
Potton, a village.
Ampthill, a town; here we saw immense numbers of rabbits, which are reckoned as good as hares, and are very well tasted.
We passed through the towns of Woburn, Leighton, Aylesbury, and Wheatley.
Oxonium, Oxford, the famed Athens of England; that glorious seminary of learning and wisdom, whence religion, politeness, and letters, are abundantly dispersed into all parts of the kingdom. The town is remarkably fine, whether you consider the elegance of its private buildings, the magnificence of its public ones, or the beauty and wholesomeness of its situation, which is on a plain, encompassed in such a manner with hills, shaded with wood, as to be sheltered on the one hand from the sickly south, and on the other from the blustering west, but open to the east, that blows serene weather, and to the north, the preventer of corruption, from which, in the opinion of some, it formerly obtained the appellation of Bellositum. This town is watered by two rivers, the Cherwell and the Isis, vulgarly called the Ouse; and though these streams join in the same channel, yet the Isis runs more entire and with more rapidity towards the south, retaining its name till it meets the Thame, which it seems long to have sought, at Wallingford; thence, called by the compound name of Thames, it flows the prince of all British rivers, of whom we may justly say, as the ancients did of the Euphrates, that it both sows and waters England.
The colleges in this famous University are as follows:—
In the reign of Henry III., Walter Merton, Bishop of Rochester, removed the college he had founded in Surrey, 1274, to Oxford, enriched it, and named it Merton College; and soon after, William, Archdeacon of Durham, restored, with additions, that building of Alfred’s now called University College; in the reign of Edward I., John Baliol, King of Scotland, or, as some will have it, his parents, founded Baliol College; in the reign of Edward II., Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, founded Exeter College and Hart Hall; and, in imitation of him, the King, King’s College, commonly called Oriel, and St. Mary’s Hall; next, Philippa, wife of Edward III., built Queen’s College; and Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, Canterbury College; William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, raised that magnificent structure called New College; Magdalen College was built by William Wainflete, Bishop of Winchester, a noble edifice, finely situated and delightful for its walks; at the same time, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, that great encourager of learning, built the Divinity School very splendidly, and over it a library, to which he gave an hundred and twenty-nine very choice books, purchased at a great price from Italy, but the public has long since been robbed of the use of them by the avarice of particulars: Lincoln College; All Souls’ College; St. Bernard’s College; Brazen-Nose College, founded by William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, in the reign of Henry VII.; its revenues were augmented by Alexander Nowel, Dean of St. Paul’s, London; upon the gate of this college is fixed a nose of brass; Corpus Christi College, built by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester—under his picture in the College chapel are lines importing that it is the exact representation of his person and dress.
Christ’s Church, the largest and most elegant of them all, was begun on the ground of St. Frideswide’s Monastery, by Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal of York, to which Henry VIII. joined Canterbury College, settled great revenues upon it, and named it Christ’s Church; the same great prince, out of his own treasury, to the dignity of the town and ornament of the University, made the one a bishoprie, and instituted professorships in the other.
Jesus College, built by Hugh Price, Doctor of Laws.
That fine edifice, the Public Schools, was entirely raised by Queen Mary, and adorned with various inscriptions.
Thus far of the colleges and halls, which for the beauty of their buildings, their rich endowments, and copious libraries, excel all the academies in the Christian world. We shall add a little of the academies themselves, and those that inhabit them.
These students lead a life almost monastic; for as the monks had nothing in the world to do but when they had said their prayers at stated hours to employ themselves in instructive studies, no more have these. They are divided into three tables: the first is called the Fellows’ table, to which are admitted earls, barons, gentlemen, doctors, and Masters of Arts, but very few of the latter—this is more plentifully and expensively served than the others; the second is for Masters of Arts, Bachelors, some gentlemen, and eminent citizens; the third for people of low condition. While the rest are at dinner or supper in a great hall, where they are all assembled, one of the students reads aloud the Bible, which is placed on a desk in the middle of the hall, and this office every one of them takes upon himself in his turn. As soon as grace is said after each meal, every one is at liberty either to retire to his own chambers or to walk in the College garden, there being none that has not a delightful one. Their habit is almost the same as that of the Jesuits, their gowns reaching down to their ankles, sometimes lined with fur; they wear square caps. The doctors, Masters of Arts, and professors, have another kind of gown that distinguishes them. Every student of any considerable standing has a key to the College library, for no college is without one.
In an out-part of the town are the remains of a pretty large fortification, but quite in ruins. We were entertained at supper with an excellent concert, composed of a variety of instruments.
The next day we went as far as the Royal Palace of Woodstock, where King Ethelred formerly held a Parliament, and enacted certain laws. This palace, abounding in magnificence, was built by Henry I., to which he joined a very large park, enclosed with a wall; according to John Rosse, the first park in England. In this very palace the present reigning Queen Elizabeth, before she was confined to the Tower, was kept prisoner by her sister Mary. While she was detained here, in the utmost peril of her life, she wrote with a piece of charcoal the following verse, composed by herself, upon a window shutter:—
“O Fortune! how thy restless wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit!
Witness this present prison whither fate
Hath borne me, and the joys I quit.
Thou causedest the guilty to be loosed
From bands wherewith are innocents enclosed;
Causing the guiltless to be strait reserved,
And freeing those that death had well deserved:
But by her envy can be nothing wrought,
So God send to my foes all they have thought.
A.D., M.D.L.V.”“Elizabeth, Prisoner.”
Not far from this palace are to be seen, near a spring of the brightest water, the ruins of the habitation of Rosamond Clifford, whose exquisite beauty so entirely captivated the heart of King Henry II. that he lost the thought of all other women; she is said to have been poisoned at last by the Queen. All that remains of her tomb of stone, the letters of which are almost worn out, is the following:—
“ . . . Adorent,
Utque tibi detur requies Rosamunda precamur.”
The rhyming epitaph following was probably the performance of some monk:—
“Hic jacet in tumbâ Rosamundi non Rosamunda,
Non redolet sed olet, quæ redolere solet.”
Returning from hence to Oxford, after dinner we proceeded on our journey, and passed through Ewhelme, a royal palace, in which some alms-people are supported by an allowance from the Crown.
Nettlebed, a village.
We went through the little town of Henley; from hence the Chiltern Hills bear north in a continued ridge, and divide the counties of Oxford and Buckingham.
We passed Maidenhead.
Windsor, a royal castle, supposed to have been begun by King Arthur, its buildings much increased by Edward III. The situation is entirely worthy of being a royal residence, a more beautiful being scarce to be found; for, from the brow of a gentle rising, it enjoys the prospect of an even and green country; its front commands a valley extended every way, and chequered with arable lands and pasturage, clothed up and down with groves, and watered by that gentlest of rivers, the Thames; behind rise several hills, but neither steep nor very high, crowned with woods, and seeming designed by Nature herself for the purpose of hunting.
The Kings of England, invited by the deliciousness of the place, very often retire hither; and here was born the conqueror of France, the glorious King Edward III., who built the castle new from the ground, and thoroughly fortified it with trenches, and towers of square stone, and, having soon after subdued in battle John, King of France, and David, King of Scotland, he detained them both prisoners here at the same time. This castle, besides being the Royal Palace, and having some magnificent tombs of the Kings of England, is famous for the ceremonies belonging to the Knights of the Garter. This Order was instituted by Edward III., the same who triumphed so illustriously over John, King of France. The Knights of the Garter are strictly chosen for their military virtues, and antiquity of family; they are bound by solemn oath and vow to mutual and perpetual friendship among themselves, and to the not avoiding any danger whatever, or even death itself, to support, by their joint endeavours, the honour of the Society; they are styled Companions of the Garter, from their wearing below the left knee a purple garter, inscribed in letters of gold with “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” i.e., “Evil to him that evil thinks.” This they wear upon the left leg, in memory of one which, happening to untie, was let fall by a great lady, passionately beloved by Edward, while she was dancing, and was immediately snatched up by the King, who, to do honour to the lady, not out of any trifling gallantry, but with a most serious and honourable purpose, dedicated it to the legs of the most distinguished nobility. The ceremonies of this Society are celebrated every year at Windsor on St. George’s Day, the tutelar saint of the Order, the King presiding; and the custom is that the Knights Companions should hang up their helmet and shield, with their arms blazoned on it, in some conspicuous part of the church.
There are three principal and very large courts in Windsor Castle, which give great pleasure to the beholders: the first is enclosed with most elegant buildings of white stone, flat-roofed, and covered with lead; here the Knights of the Garter are lodged; in the middle is a detached house, remarkable for its high tower, which the governor inhabits. In this is the public kitchen, well furnished with proper utensils, besides a spacious dining-room, where all the poor Knights eat at the same table, for into this Society of the Garter, the King and Sovereign elects, at his own choice, certain persons, who must be gentlemen of three descents, and such as, for their age and the straitness of their fortunes, are fitter for saying their prayers than for the service of war; to each of them is assigned a pension of eighteen pounds per annum and clothes. The chief institution of so magnificent a foundation is, that they should say their daily prayers to God for the King’s safety, and the happy administration for the kingdom, to which purpose they attend the service, meeting twice every day at chapel. The left side of this court is ornamented by a most magnificent chapel of one hundred and thirty-four paces in length, and sixteen in breadth; in this are eighteen seats fitted up in the time of Edward III. for an equal number of Knights: this venerable building is decorated with the noble monuments of Edward IV., Henry VI., and VIII., and of his wife Queen Jane. It receives from royal liberality the annual income of two thousand pounds, and that still much increased by the munificence of Edward III. and Henry VII. The greatest princes in Christendom have taken it for the highest honour to be admitted into the Order of the Garter; and since its first institution about twenty kings, besides those of England, who are the sovereigns of it, not to mention dukes and persons of the greatest figure, have been of it. It consists of twenty-six Companions.
In the inward choir of the chapel are hung up sixteen coats-of-arms, swords, and banners; among which are those of Charles V. and Rodolphus II., Emperors; of Philip of Spain; Henry III. of France; Frederic II. of Denmark, &c.; of Casimir, Count Palatine of the Rhine; and other Christian princes who have been chosen into this Order.
In the back choir, or additional chapel, are shown preparations made by Cardinal Wolsey, who was afterwards capitally punished, [68] for his own tomb; consisting of eight large brazen columns placed round it, and nearer the tomb four others in the shape of candlesticks; the tomb itself is of white and black marble; all which are reserved, according to report, for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth; the expenses already made for that purpose are estimated at upwards of £60,000. In the same chapel is the surcoat [69] of Edward III., and the tomb of Edward Fynes, Earl of Lincoln, Baron Clinton and Say, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and formerly Lord High Admiral of England.
The second court of Windsor Castle stands upon higher ground, and is enclosed with walls of great strength, and beautified with fine buildings and a tower; it was an ancient castle, of which old annals speak in this manner: King Edward, A.D. 1359, began a new building in that part of the Castle of Windsor where he was born; for which reason he took care it should be decorated with larger and finer edifices than the rest. In this part were kept prisoners John, King of France, and David, King of Scots, over whom Edward triumphed at one and the same time: it was by their advice, struck with the advantage of its situation, and with the sums paid for their ransom, that by degrees this castle stretched to such magnificence, as to appear no longer a fortress, but a town of proper extent, and inexpugnable to any human force. This particular part of the castle was built at the sole expense of the King of Scotland, except one tower, which, from its having been erected by the Bishop of Winchester, Prelate of the Order, is called Winchester Tower; [70] there are a hundred steps to it, so ingeniously contrived that horses can easily ascend them; it is a hundred and fifty paces in circuit; within it are preserved all manner of arms necessary for the defence of the place.
The third court is much the largest of any, built at the expense of the captive King of France; as it stands higher, so it greatly excels the two former in splendour and elegance; it has one hundred and forty-eight paces in length, and ninety-seven in breadth; in the middle of it is a fountain of very clear water, brought under ground, at an excessive expense, from the distance of four miles. Towards the east are magnificent apartments destined for the royal household; towards the west is a tennis-court for the amusement of the Court; on the north side are the royal apartments, consisting of magnificent chambers, halls, and bathing-rooms, [71] and a private chapel, the roof of which is embellished with golden roses and fleurs-de-lis: in this, too, is that very large banqueting-room, seventy-eight paces long, and thirty wide, in which the Knights of the Garter annually celebrate the memory of their tutelar saint, St. George, with a solemn and most pompous service.
From hence runs a walk of incredible beauty, three hundred and eighty paces in length, set round on every side with supporters of wood, which sustain a balcony, from whence the nobility and persons of distinction can take the pleasure of seeing hunting and hawking in a lawn of sufficient space; for the fields and meadows, clad with variety of plants and flowers, swell gradually into hills of perpetual verdure quite up to the castle, and at bottom stretch out in an extended plain, that strikes the beholders with delight.
Besides what has been already mentioned, there are worthy of notice here two bathing-rooms, ceiled and wainscoted with looking-glass; the chamber in which Henry VI. was born; Queen Elizabeth’s bedchamber, where is a table of red marble with white streaks; a gallery everywhere ornamented with emblems and figures; a chamber in which are the royal beds of Henry VII. and his Queen, of Edward VI., of Henry VIII., and of Anne Boleyn, all of them eleven feet square, and covered with quilts shining with gold and silver; Queen Elizabeth’s bed, with curious coverings of embroidery, but not quite so long or large as the others; a piece of tapestry, in which is represented Clovis, King of France, with an angel presenting to him the fleurs-de-lis to be borne in his arms; for before his time the Kings of France bore three toads in their shield, instead of which they afterwards placed three fleurs-de-lis on a blue field; this antique tapestry is said to have been taken from a King of France, while the English were masters there. We were shown here, among other things, the horn of a unicorn, of above eight spans and a half in length, valued at above £10,000; the bird of paradise, three spans long, three fingers broad, having a blue bill of the length of half an inch, the upper part of its head yellow, the nether part of a . . . colour; [73] a little lower from either side of its throat stick out some reddish feathers, as well as from its back and the rest of its body; its wings, of a yellow colour, are twice as long as the bird itself; from its back grow out lengthways two fibres or nerves, bigger at their ends, but like a pretty strong thread, of a leaden colour, inclining to black, with which, as it has not feet, it is said to fasten itself to trees when it wants to rest; a cushion most curiously wrought by Queen Elizabeth’s own hands.
In the precincts of Windsor, on the other side the Thames, both whose banks are joined by a bridge of wood, is Eton, a well-built College, and famous school for polite letters, founded by Henry VI.; where, besides a master, eight fellows and chanters, sixty boys are maintained gratis. They are taught grammar, and remain in the school till, upon trial made of their genius and progress in study, they are sent to the University of Cambridge.
As we were returning to our inn, we happened to meet some country people celebrating their harvest home; their last load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image richly dressed, by which, perhaps, they would signify Ceres; this they keep moving about, while men and women, men and maid servants, riding through the streets in the cart, shout as loud as they can till they arrive at the barn. The farmers here do not bind up their corn in sheaves, as they do with us, but directly as they have reaped or mowed it, put it into carts, and convey it into their barns.
We went through the town of Staines.
Hampton Court, a Royal Palace, magnificently built with brick by Cardinal Wolsey in ostentation of his wealth, where he enclosed five very ample courts, consisting of noble edifices in very beautiful work. Over the gate in the second area is the Queen’s device, a golden Rose, with this motto, “Dieu et mon Droit:” on the inward side of this gate are the effigies of the twelve Roman Emperors in plaster. The chief area is paved with square stone; in its centre is a fountain that throws up water, covered with a gilt crown, on the top of which is a statue of Justice, supported by columns of black and white marble. The chapel of this palace is most splendid, in which the Queen’s closet is quite transparent, having its window of crystal. We were led into two chambers, called the presence, or chambers of audience, which shone with tapestry of gold and silver and silk of different colours: under the canopy of state are these words embroidered in pearl, “Vivat Henricus Octavus.” Here is besides a small chapel richly hung with tapestry, where the Queen performs her devotions. In her bedchamber the bed was covered with very costly coverlids of silk: at no great distance from this room we were shown a bed, the tester of which was worked by Anne Boleyn, and presented by her to her husband Henry VIII. All the other rooms, being very numerous, are adorned with tapestry of gold, silver, and velvet, in some of which were woven history pieces; in others, Turkish and American dresses, all extremely natural.
In the hall are these curiosities:
A very clear looking-glass, ornamented with columns and little images of alabaster; a portrait of Edward VI., brother to Queen Elizabeth; the true portrait of Lucretia; a picture of the battle of Pavia; the history of Christ’s passion, carved in mother-of-pearl; the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, who was beheaded, and her daughter; [76] the picture of Ferdinand, Prince of Spain, and of Philip his son; that of Henry VIII.—under it was placed the Bible curiously written upon parchment; an artificial sphere; several musical instruments; in the tapestry are represented negroes riding upon elephants. The bed in which Edward VI. is said to have been born, and where his mother Jane Seymour died in child-bed. In one chamber were several excessively rich tapestries, which are hung up when the Queen gives audience to foreign ambassadors; there were numbers of cushions ornamented with gold and silver; many counterpanes and coverlids of beds lined with ermine: in short, all the walls of the palace shine with gold and silver. Here is besides a certain cabinet called Paradise, where besides that everything glitters so with silver, gold, and jewels, as to dazzle one’s eyes, there is a musical instrument made all of glass, except the strings. Afterwards we were led into the gardens, which are most pleasant; here we saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the walls as to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding common in England.
Kingston, a market town.
Nonesuch, a royal retreat, in a place formerly called Cuddington, a very healthful situation, chosen by King Henry VIII. for his pleasure and retirement, and built by him with an excess of magnificence and elegance, even to ostentation: one would imagine everything that architecture can perform to have been employed in this one work. There are everywhere so many statues that seem to breathe so many miracles of consummate art, so many casts that rival even the perfection of Roman antiquity, that it may well claim and justify its name of Nonesuch, being without an equal; or as the post sung—
“This, which no equal has in art or fame,
Britons deservedly do Nonesuch name.”
The palace itself is so encompassed with parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks so embrowned by trees, that it seems to be a place pitched upon by Pleasure herself, to dwell in along with Health.
In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble, two fountains that spout water one round the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of their bills. In the Grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Actæon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and her nymphs, with inscriptions.
There is besides another pyramid of marble full of concealed pipes, which spurt upon all who come within their reach.
Returned from hence to London.
Britain, consisting of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, is the largest island in the world, encompassed by the ocean, the German and French seas. The largest and southern part of it is England, so named from the Angli, who quitting the little territory yet called Angel in the kingdom of Denmark, took possession here. It is governed by its own King, who owns no superior but God. It is divided into thirty-nine counties, to which thirteen in Wales were added by Henry VIII., the first who distributed that principality into counties; over each of these, in times of danger, a lord lieutenant, nominated by the King, presides with an unlimited power. Every year some gentleman, an inhabitant of the place, is appointed sheriff; his office is to collect the public moneys, to raise fines, or to make seizures, and account for it to the Treasury; to attend upon the judges, and put their sentence in execution; to empanel the jury, who sit upon facts, and return their verdict to the judges (who in England are only such of the law, and not of the fact); to convey the condemned to execution, and to dertermine in lesser causes, for the greater are tried by the judges, formerly called travelling judges of assize; these go their circuits through the counties twice every year to hear causes, and pronounce sentence upon prisoners.
As to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, after the Popes had assigned a church and parish to every priest, Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 636, began to divide England in the same manner into parishes: as it has two Provinces, so it has two Archbishops: the one of Canterbury, Primate and Metropolitan of all England; the other of York: subject to these are twenty-five bishops, viz., twenty-two to Canterbury, the remaining three to York.
The soil is fruitful, and abounds with cattle, which inclines the inhabitants rather to feeding than ploughing, so that near a third part of the land is left uncultivated for grazing. The climate is most temperate at all times, and the air never heavy, consequently maladies are scarcer, and less physic is used there than anywhere else. There are but few rivers; though the soil is productive, it bears no wine; but that want is supplied from abroad by the best kinds, as of Orleans, Gascon, Rhenish, and Spanish. The general drink is beer, which is prepared from barley, and is excellently well tasted, but strong, and what soon fuddles. There are many hills without one tree, or any spring, which produce a very short and tender grass, and supply plenty of food to sheep; upon these wander numerous flocks, extremely white, and whether from the temperature of the air, or goodness of the earth, bearing softer and finer fleeces than those of any other country: this is the true Golden Fleece, in which consist the chief riches of the inhabitants, great sums of money being brought into the island by merchants, chiefly for that article of trade. The dogs here are particularly good. It has mines of gold, silver, and tin (of which all manner of table utensils are made, in brightness equal to silver, and used all over Europe), of lead, and of iron, but not much of the latter. The horses are small but swift. Glasshouses are in plenty here.
The English are serious, like the Germans; lovers of show, liking to be followed wherever they go by whole troops of servants, who wear their masters’ arms in silver, fastened to their left arms, a ridicule they deservedly lie under. They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively, though of a thicker make than the French; they cut their hair close on the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; they are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous and thievish; above three hundred are said to be hanged annually at London; beheading with them is less infamous than hanging; they give the wall as the place of honour; hawking is the general sport of the gentry; they are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in perfection; they put a great deal of sugar in their drink; their beds are covered with tapestry, even those of farmers; they are often molested with the scurvy, said to have first crept into England with the Norman Conquest; their houses are commonly of two storeys, except in London, where they are of three and four, though but seldom of four; they are built of wood, those of the richer sort with bricks; their roofs are low, and, where the owner has money, covered with lead.
They are powerful in the field, successful against their enemies, impatient of anything like slavery; vastly fond of great noises that fill the ear, such as the firing of cannon, drums, and the ringing of bells, so that it is common for a number of them, that have got a glass in their heads, to go up into the belfry, and ring the bells for hours together for the sake of exercise. If they see a foreigner very well made, or particularly handsome, they will say, “It is a pity he is not an Englishman!”
Thomas Howard, † [84] Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Marshal of England: the duchy is extinct for rebellion, the last duke being beheaded.
Grey, † Duke of Suffolk, attainted under Queen Mary.
Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel in his mother’s right, and of Surrey by his father, son of the abovementioned Duke of Norfolk, he himself condemned for high treason, and his titles forfeited.
Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, hereditary Chamberlain of England.
Percy, Earl of Northumberland, descended from the Dukes of Brabant.
Charles Nevill, † Earl of Westmoreland, banished into Holland, and deprived of his fortunes and dignities for rebellion.
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
Grey, Earl of Kent, has but a small estate.
Stanley, Earl of Derby, and King of Man.
Manners, Earl of Rutland.
Somerset, Earl of Worcester, descended from a bastard of the Somerset family, which itself is of the royal family of the Plantagenets.
Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
Ratcliff, Earl of Sussex.
Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, of the line of York, by the mother’s side.
Bourchier, Earl of Bath.
Ambrose Sutton, † alias Dudley, Earl of Warwick, died a few years since, childless.
Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton.
Russell, Earl of Bedford.
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.
Edward Seymour, † Earl of Hertford, son of the Duke of Somerset, who was beheaded in the reign of Edward VI.
Robert Sutton, † or Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of Warwick, died a few years ago.
Robert d’Evereux, Earl of Essex, and of Ewe in Normandy, created hereditary Marshal of England in 1598.
Charles Howard, of the Norfolk family, created Earl of Nottingham, 1597, Lord High Admiral of England, and Privy Counsellor.
Fynes, Earl of Lincoln.
Brown, Viscount Montacute.
Howard, of the Norfolk family, Viscount Bindon.
Nevill, Baron Abergavenny; this barony is controverted.
Touchet, Baron Audley.
Zouch, Baron Zouch.
Peregrine Bertie, Baron Willoughby of Eresby and Brooke, Governor of Berwick.
Berkley, Baron Berkley, of the ancient family of the Kings of Denmark.
Parker, Baron Morley.
Dacre, † Baron Dacre of Gyllesland: this barony is vacant.
Dacre, † Baron Dacre of the South: he died four years since, and the barony devolved to his daughter.
Brook, Baron Cobham, Warden of the Cinque Ports.
Stafford, Baron Stafford, reduced to want; he is heir to the family of the Dukes of Buckingham, who were hereditary Constables of England.
Gray, Baron Gray of Wilton.
Scroop, Baron Scroop of Boulton.
Sutton, Baron Dudley.
Stourton, Baron Stourton.
Nevill, † Baron Latimer, died some years since without heirs male; the title controverted.
Lumley, Baron Lumley.
Blunt, Baron Montjoy.
Ogle, Baron Ogle.
Darcy, Baron Darcy.
Parker, Baron Montegle, son and heir of Baron Morley; he has this barony in right of his mother, of the family of Stanley.
Sandys, Baron Sandys.
Vaux, Baron Vaux.
Windsor, Baron Windsor.
Wentworth, Baron Wentworth.
Borough, Baron Borough, reduced to want.
Baron Mordaunt. Baron Eure.
Baron Rich. Baron Sheffield.
Baron North, Privy Counsellor, and Treasurer of the Household.
Baron Hunsdon, Privy Counsellor, and Lord Chamberlain.
Sackville, Baron Buckhurst, Privy Counsellor.
Thomas Cecil, Baron Burleigh, son of the Treasurer.
Cecil, Lord Roos, grandson of the Treasurer, yet a child: he holds the barony in right of his mother, daughter to the Earl of Rutland.
Howard † of Maltravers, son of the Earl of Arundel, not yet restored in blood.
Baron Cheyny. †
Baron Cromwell. Baron Wharton.
Baron Willoughby of Parham.
Baron Pagett, † in exile, attainted.
Baron Chandois. Baron St. John.
Baron Delaware: his ancestors took the King of France prisoner.
Baron Compton, has squandered almost all his substance.
Baron Norris.
Thomas Howard, second son of the Duke of Norfolk, Baron Audley of Saffronwalden, in his mother’s right.
William, † third son of the Duke of Norfolk, is neither a baron, nor yet restored in blood.
Thus far of noble families.
We set out from London in a boat, and fell down the river, leaving Greenwich, which we have spoken of before, on the right hand.
Barking, a town in sight on the left.
Gravesend, a small town, famous for the convenience of its port; the largest Dutch ships usually call here. As we were to proceed farther from hence by water, we took our last leave here of the noble Bohemian David Strziela, and his tutor Tobias Salander, our constant fellow-travellers through France and England, they designing to return home through Holland, we on a second tour into France; but it pleased Heaven to put a stop to their design, for the worthy Strziela was seized with a diarrhoea a few days before our departure, and, as we afterwards learned by letters from Salander, died in a few days of a violent fever in London.
Queenborough: we left the castle on our right; a little farther we saw the fishing of oysters out of the sea, which are nowhere in greater plenty or perfection; witness Ortelius in his Epitome, &c.
Whitstable; here we went ashore.
Canterbury; we came to it on foot; this is the seat of the Archbishop, Primate of all England, a very ancient town, and, without doubt, of note in the time of the Romans.
Here are two monasteries almost contiguous, namely of Christ and St. Augustine, both of them once filled with Benedictine Monks: the former was afterwards dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, the name of Christ being obliterated; it stands almost in the middle of the town, and with so much majesty lifts itself, and its two towers, to a stupendous height, that, as Erasmus says, it strikes even those who only see it at a distance with awe.
In the choir, which is shut up with iron rails, are the following monuments:—
King Henry IV., with his wife Joan of Navarre, of white marble.
Nicholas Wootton, Privy Counsellor to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, Kings and Queens of England.
Of Prince Edward, Duke of Aquitaine and Cornwall, and Earl of Chester.
Reginald Pole, with this inscription:
“The remains of Reginald Pole, Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Cardinal Chatillon.
We were then shown the chair in which the bishops are placed when they are installed. In the vestibule of the church, on the south side, stand the statues of three men armed, cut in stone, who slew Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a saint for this martyrdom; their names are adjoined—
Tusci, Fusci, Berri. [91]
Being tired with walking, we refreshed ourselves here with a mouthful of bread and some ale, and immediately mounted post-horses, and arrived about two or three o’clock in the morning at Dover. In our way to it, which was rough and dangerous enough, the following accident happened to us: our guide, or postillion, a youth, was before with two of our company, about the distance of a musketshot; we, by not following quick enough, had lost sight of our friends; we came afterwards to where the road divided; on the right it was down-hill and marshy, on the left was a small hill: whilst we stopped here in doubt, and consulted which of the roads we should take, we saw all on a sudden on our right hand some horsemen, their stature, dress, and horses exactly resembling those of our friends; glad of having found them again, we determined to set on after them; but it happened, through God’s mercy, that though we called to them, they did not answer us, but kept on down the marshy road at such a rate, that their horses’ feet struck fire at every stretch, which made us, with reason, begin to suspect they were thieves, having had warning of such; or rather, that they were nocturnal spectres, who, as we were afterwards told, are frequently seen in those places: there were likewise a great many Jack-a-lanterns, so that we were quite seized with horror and amazement! But, fortunately for us, our guide soon after sounded his horn, and we, following the noise, turned down the left-hand road, and arrived safe to our companions; who, when we had asked them if they had not seen the horsemen who had gone by us, answered, not a soul. Our opinions, according to custom, were various upon this matter; but whatever the thing was, we were, without doubt, in imminent danger, from which that we escaped, the glory is to be ascribed to God alone.
Dover, situated among cliffs (standing where the port itself was originally, as may be gathered from anchors and parts of vessels dug up there), is more famous for the convenience of its port, which indeed is now much decayed, and its passage to France, than for either its elegance or populousness: this passage, the most used and the shortest, is of thirty miles, which, with a favourable wind, may be run over in five or six hours’ time, as we ourselves experienced; some reckon it only eighteen to Calais, and to Boulogne sixteen English miles, which, as Ortelius says in his “Theatrum,” are longer than the Italian.
Here was a church dedicated to St. Martin by Victred, King of Kent, and a house belonging to the Knights Templars; of either there are now no remains. It is the seat of a suffragan to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, when the Archbishop is employed upon business of more consequence, manages the ordinary affairs, but does not interfere with the archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Upon a hill, or rather rock, which on its right side is almost everywhere a precipice, a very extensive castle rises to a surprising height, in size like a little city, extremely well fortified, and thick-set with towers, and seems to threaten the sea beneath. Matthew Paris calls it the door and key of England; the ordinary people have taken into their heads that it was built by Julius Cæsar; it is likely it might by the Romans, from those British bricks in the chapel which they made use of in their foundations. See Camden’s “Britannia.”
After we had dined, we took leave of England.
Or, Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth, her Times, and Favourites. Written by Sir Robert Naunton, Master of the Court of Wards. A.D. 1641.
To take her in the original, she was the daughter of King Henry VIII. by Anne Boleyn, the second of six wives which he had, and one of the maids of honour to the divorced Queen, Katharine of Austria (or, as the now styled, Infanta of Spain), and from thence taken to the royal bed.
That she was of a most noble and royal extract by her father will not fall into question, for on that side was disembogued into her veins, by a confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the greatest houses in Christendom: and remarkable it is, considering that violent desertion of the Royal House of the Britons by the intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the Normans, that, through vicissitude of times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the sceptre should fall again and be brought back into the old regal line and true current of the British blood, in the person of her renowned grandfather, King Henry VII., together with whatsoever the German, Norman, Burgundian, Castilian, and French achievements, with their intermarriages, which eight hundred years had acquired, could add of glory thereunto.
By her mother she was of no sovereign descent, yet noble and very ancient in the family of Boleyn; though some erroneously brand them with a citizen’s rise or original, which was yet but of a second brother, who (as it was divine in the greatness and lustre to come to his house) was sent into the city to acquire wealth, ad ædificandam antiquam domum, unto whose achievements (for he was Lord Mayor of London) fell in, as it is averred, both the blood and inheritance of the eldest brother for want of issue males, by which accumulation the house within few descents mounted, in culmen honoris, and was suddenly dilated in the best families of England and Ireland: as Howard, Ormond, Sackville, and others.
Having thus touched, and now leaving her stirp, I come to her person, and how she came to the crown by the decease of her brother and sister.
Under Edward VI. she was his, and one of the darlings of Fortune, for, besides the consideration of blood, there was between these two princes a concurrency and sympathy of their natures and affections, together with the celestial bond (confirmative religion), which made them one; for the King never called her by any other appellation but his sweetest and dearest sister, and was scarce his own man, she being absent; which was not so between him and the Lady Mary.
Under her sister [99] she found her condition much altered; for it was resolved, and her destiny had decreed it, for to set her apprentice in the school of affliction, and to draw her through that ordeal-fire of trial, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and sovereignty: which finished, Fortune calling to mind that the time of her servitude was expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered into her custody a sceptre as the reward of her patience; which was about the twenty-sixth of her age: a time in which, as for her internals grown ripe, and seasoned by adversity, in the exercise of her virtue; for, it seems, Fortune meant no more but to show her a piece of variety and changeableness of her nature, but to conduct her to her destiny, i.e., felicity.
She was of person tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well favoured, but high-nosed; of limbs and features neat; and, which added to the lustre of these external graces, of a stately and majestic comportment, participating in this more of her father than of her mother, who was of an inferior alloy, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more debonaire and affable: virtues which might well suit with majesty, and which, descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a sweeter temper, and endeared her more to the love and liking of the people, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular princess.
The atrocity of the father’s nature was rebated in her by the mother’s sweeter inclinations; for (to take, and that no more than the character out of his own mouth) He never spared man in his anger, nor woman in his lust.
If we search farther into her intellectuals and abilities, the wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and necessitated. She was learned, her sex and time considered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem and in fashion, the former ages being overcast with the mists and fogs of the Roman [101] ignorance; and it was the maxim that over-ruled the foregoing times, that Ignorance was the mother of Devotion. Her wars were a long time more in the auxiliary part, and assistance of foreign princes and states, than by invasion of any; till common policy advised it, for a safer way, to strike first abroad, than at home to expect the war, in all which she was ever felicitous and victorious.
The change and alteration of religion upon the instant of her accession to the crown (the smoke and fire of her sister’s martyrdoms scarcely quenched) was none of her least remarkable actions; but the support and establishment thereof, with the means of her own subsistence amidst so powerful enemies abroad, and those many domestic practices, were, methinks, works of inspiration, and of no human providence, which, on her sister’s departure, she most religiously acknowledged—ascribing the glory of her deliverance to God above; for she being then at Hatfield, and under a guard, and the Parliament sitting at the self-same time, at the news of the Queen’s death, and her own proclamation by the general consent of the House and the public sufferance of the people, falling on her knees, after a good time of respiration, she uttered this verse of the Psalm:
“A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris.” [102]
And this we find to this day on the stamp of her gold, with this on her silver:
“Posui Deum adjutorem meum.” [103]
Her ministers and instruments of State, such as were participes curarum, or bore a great part of the burthen, were many, and those memorable; but they were only favourites, and not minions; such as acted more by her princely rules and judgments, than by their own wills and appetites; for we saw no Gaveston, Vere, or Spencer, to have swayed alone, during forty-four years, which was a well-settled and advised maxim; for it valued her the more, it awed the most secure, it took best with the people, and it staved off all emulations, which are apt to rise and vent in obloquious acrimony even against the prince, where there is one only admitted into high administrations.
The principal note of her reign will be, that she ruled much by faction and parties, which she herself both made, upheld, and weakened, as her own great judgment advised; for I do dissent from the common and received opinion, that my Lord of Leicester was absolute and alone in her grace; and, though I come somewhat short of the knowledge of these times, yet, that I may not err or shoot at random, I know it from assured intelligence that it was not so; for proof whereof, amongst many (that could present), I will both relate a story, and therein a known truth, and it was thus: Bowyer, the Gentleman of the Black Rod, being charged by her express command to look precisely to all admissions in the Privy Chamber, one day stayed a very gay captain (and a follower of my Lord of Leicester) from entrance, for that he was neither well known, nor a sworn servant of the Queen; at which repulse, the gentleman (bearing high on my lord’s favour) told him that he might, perchance, procure him a discharge. Leicester coming to the contestation, said publicly, which was none of his wonted speeches, that he was a knave, and should not long continue in his office; and so turning about to go to the Queen, Bowyer, who was a bold gentleman and well-beloved, stepped before him, and fell at Her Majesty’s feet, relates the story, and humbly craves Her Grace’s pleasure, and in such a manner as if he had demanded whether my Lord of Leicester was King, or Her Majesty Queen: whereunto she replied (with her wonted oath, God’s-death) “My lord, I have wished you well, but my favour is not so locked up for you that others shall not participate thereof; for I have many servants unto whom I have, and will, at my pleasure, bequeath my favour, and likewise resume the same; and if you think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming; [105] I will have here but one mistress, and no master; and look that no ill happen to him, lest it be severely required at your hands:” which so quailed my Lord of Leicester, that his faint humility was, long after, one of his best virtues.
Moreover, the Earl of Sussex, then Lord Chamberlain, was his professed antagonist to his dying day; and for my Lord Hunsdown, and Sir Thomas Sackville, after Lord Treasurer, who were all contemporaries, he was wont to say of them, that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were Noli me tangere, implying that they were not to be contested with, for they were, indeed, of the Queen’s nigh kindred.
From whence, and in many more instances, I conclude that she was absolute and sovereign mistress of her graces, and that all those to whom she distributed her favours were never more than tenants-at-will, and stood on no better terms than her princely pleasure, and their good behaviour.
And this also I present as a known observation, that she was, though very capable of counsel, absolute enough in her own resolution; which was ever apparent even to her last, and in that of her still aversion to grant Tyrone [106] the least drop of her mercy, though earnestly and frequently advised thereunto, yea, wrought only by her whole Council of State, with very many reasons; and, as the state of her kingdom then stood, I may speak it with assurance, necessitated arguments.
If we look into her inclination, as it was disposed to magnificence or frugality, we shall find in them many notable considerations; for all her dispensations were so poised as though Discretion and Justice had both decreed to stand at the beam, and see them weighed out in due proportion, the maturity of her paces and judgments meeting in a concurrence; and that in such an age that seldom lapseth to excess.
To consider them apart, we have not many precedents of her liberality, nor any large donatives to particular men, my Lord of Essex’s book of parks excepted, which was a princely gift; and some more of a lesser size to my Lord of Leicester, Hatton, and others.
Her rewards chiefly consisted in grants and leases of offices, and places of judicature; but for ready money, and in great sums, she was very sparing; which, we may partly conceive, was a virtue rather drawn out of necessity than her nature; for she had many layings-out, and as her wars were lasting, so their charge increased to the last period. And I am of opinion with Sir Walter Raleigh, that those many brave men of her times, and of the militia, tasted little more of her bounty than in her grace and good word with their due entertainment; for she ever paid her soldiers well, which was the honour of her times, and more than her great adversary of Spain could perform; so that when we come to the consideration of her frugality, the observation will be little more than that her bounty and it were so woven together, that the one was [108] stained by an honourable way of sparing.
The Irish action we may call a malady, and a consumption of her times, for it accompanied her to her end; and it was of so profuse and vast an expense, that it drew near unto a distemperature of State, and of passion in herself; for, towards her last, she grew somewhat hard to please, her armies being accustomed to prosperity, and the Irish prosecution not answering her expectation, and her wonted success; for it was a good while an unthrifty and inauspicious war, which did much disturb and mislead her judgment; and the more for that it was a precedent taken out of her own pattern.
For as the Queen, by way of division, had, at her coming to the crown, supported the revolted States of Holland, so did the King of Spain turn the trick upon herself, towards her going out, by cherishing the Irish rebellion; where it falls into consideration, what the state of this kingdom and the crown revenues were then able to endure and embrace.
If we look into the establishments of those times with the best of the Irish army, counting the defeat of Blackwater, with all the precedent expenses, as it stood from my Lord of Essex’s undertaking of the surrender of Kingsale, and the General Mountjoy, and somewhat after, we shall find the horse and foot troops were, for three or four years together, much about twenty thousand, besides the naval charge, which was a dependant of the same war; in that the Queen was then forced to keep in continual pay a strong fleet at sea to attend the Spanish coasts and parts, both to alarm the Spaniards, and to intercept the forces designed for the Irish assistance; so that the charge of that war alone did cost the Queen three hundred thousand pounds per annum at least, which was not the moiety of her other disbursements and expenses; which, without the public aids, the state of the royal receipts could not have much longer endured; which, out of her own frequent letters and complaints to the Deputy Mountjoy for cashiering of that list as soon as he could, might be collected, for the Queen was then driven into a strait.
We are naturally prone to applaud the times behind us, and to vilify the present; for the concurrent of her fame carries it to this day, how loyally and victoriously she lived and died, without the grudge and grievance of her people; yet the truth may appear without detraction from the honour of so great a princess. It is manifest she left more debts unpaid, taken upon credit of her privy-seals, than her progenitors did, or could have taken up, that were a hundred years before her; which was no inferior piece of State, to lay the burthen on that house [110] which was best able to bear it at a dead lift, when neither her receipts could yield her relief at the pinch, nor the urgency of her affairs endure the delays of Parliamentary assistance. And for such aids it is likewise apparent that she received more, and that with the love of her people, than any two of her predecessors that took most; which was a fortune strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for I believe no prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, yea, of the Commons, and that stooped and declined low in presenting her person to the public view, as she passed in her progress and perambulations, and in her ejaculations of her prayers on the people.
And, truly, though much may be written in praise of her providence and good husbandry, in that she could, upon all good occasions, abate her magnanimity, and therewith comply with the Parliament, and so always come off both with honour and profit; yet must we ascribe some part of the commendation to the wisdom of the times, and the choice of Parliament-men; for I said [112a] not that they were at any time given to any violent or pertinacious dispute, the elections being made of grave and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to contest with Majesty: neither dare I find [112b] that the House was weakened and pestered through the admission of too many young heads, as it hath been of latter times; which remembers me of the Recorder Martin’s speech about the truth of our late Sovereign Lord King James, [112c] when there were accounts taken of forty gentlemen not above twenty, and some not exceeding sixteen years of age; which made him to say, “that it was the ancient custom for old men to make laws for young ones, but there he saw the case altered, and there were children in the great council of the kingdom, which came to invade and invert nature, and to enact laws to govern their fathers.” Such [113a] were in the House always, [113b] and took the common cause into consideration; and they say the Queen had many times just cause, and need enough, to use their assistance: neither do I remember that the House did ever capitulate, or prefer their private to the public and the Queen’s necessities, but waited their times, and, in the first place, gave their supply, and according to the exigence of her affairs; yet failed not at the last to attain what they desired, so that the Queen and her Parliaments had ever the good fortune to depart in love, and on reciprocal terms, which are considerations that have not been so exactly observed in our last assemblies. And I would to God they had been; for, considering the great debts left on the King, [113c] and to what incumbrances the House itself had then drawn him, His Majesty was not well used, though I lay not the blame on the whole suffrage of the House, where he had many good friends; for I dare avouch it, had the House been freed of half a dozen popular and discontented persons (such as, with the fellow that burnt the temple of Ephesus, would be talked of, though for doing mischief), I am confident the King had obtained that which, in reason, and at his first occasion, he ought to have received freely, and without condition. But pardon this digression, which is here remembered, not in the way of aggravation, but in true zeal of the public good, and presented in caveat of future times: for I am not ignorant how the genius and spirit of the kingdom now moves to make His Majesty amends on any occasion; and how desirous the subject is to expiate that offence at any rate, may it please His Majesty to make a trial of his subjects’ affections; and at what price they value now his goodness and magnanimity.
But to our purpose: the Queen was not to learn that, as the strength of the kingdom consisted in the multitude of her subjects, so the security of her person consisted and rested in the love and fidelity of her people, which she politically affected (as it hath been thought) somewhat beneath the height of her natural spirit and magnanimity.
Moreover, it will be a true note of her providence, that she would always listen to her profit: for she would not refuse the information of meanest personages, which proposed improvement; and had learned the philosophy of (hoc agere) to look unto her own work: of which there is a notable example of one Carmarthen, an under officer of the Custom House, who, observing his time, presented her with a paper, showing how she was abused in the under-renting of the Customs, and therewith humbly desired Her Majesty to conceal him, for that it did concern two or three of her great counsellors, [115] whom Customer Smith had bribed with two thousand pounds a man, so to lose the Queen twenty thousand pounds per annum; which being made known to the Lords, they gave strict order that Carmarthen should not have access to the back-stairs; but, at last, Her Majesty smelling the craft, and missing Carmarthen, she sent for him back, and encouraged him to stand to his information; which the poor man did so handsomely that, within the space of ten years, he was brought to double his rent, or leave the Custom to new farmers. So that we may take this also in consideration, that there were of the Queen’s Council which were not in the catalogue of saints.
Now, as we have taken a view of some particular motives of her times, her nature, and necessities, it is not without the text to give a short touch of the helps and advantages of her reign, which were not without [116] paroles; for she had neither husband, brother, sister, nor children to provide for, who, as they are dependants on the Crown, so do they necessarily draw livelihood from thence, and oftentimes exhaust and draw deep, especially when there is an ample fraternity royal, and of the princes of the blood, as it was in the time of Edward III. and Henry IV. For when the Crown cannot, the public ought to give honourable allowance; for they are the honour and hopes of the kingdom; and the public, which enjoys them, hath the like interest with the father which begat them; and our common law, which is the inheritance of the kingdom, did ever of old provide aids for the primogenitus [117a] and the eldest daughter; for that the multiplicity of courts, and the great charges which necessarily follow a king, a queen, a prince, and royal issue, was a thing which was not in rerum natura [117b] during the space of forty-four years, [117c] but worn out of memory, and without the consideration of the present times, insomuch as the aids given to the late and Right Noble Prince Henry, and to his sister, the Lady Elizabeth, which were at first generally received as impositions for knighthood, though an ancient law, fell also into the imputation of a tax of nobility, for that it lay long covered in the embers of division between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and forgotten or connived at by the succeeding princes: so that the strangeness of the observation, and the difference of those latter reigns, is that the Queen took up much beyond the power of law, which fell not into the murmur of people; and her successors took nothing but by warrant of the law, which nevertheless was received, through disuse, to be injurious to the liberty of the kingdom.
Now before I come to any mention of her favourites, for hitherto I have delivered but some oblivious passages, thereby to prepare and smooth a way for the rest that follows:
It is necessary that I touch on the religiousness of the other’s reign, I mean the body of her sister’s [118] Council of State, which she retained entirely, neither removing nor discontenting any, although she knew them averse to her religion, and, in her sister’s time, perverse to her person, and privy to all her troubles and imprisonments.
A prudence which was incompatible to her sister’s nature, for she both dissipated and presented the major part of her brother’s Council; but this will be of certain, that how compliable and obsequious soever she found them, yet for a good space she made little use of their counsels, more than in the ordinary course of the Board, for she had a dormant table in her own privy breast; yet she kept them together and in their places, without any sudden change; so that we may say of them that they were then of the Court, not of the Council; for whilst she amazed [119] them by a kind of promissive disputation concerning the points controverted by both Churches, she did set down her own gests, without their privity, and made all their progressions, gradations; but for that the tenents of her secrets, with the intents of her establishments, were pitched before it was known where the Court would sit down.
Neither do I find that any of her sister’s Council of State were either repugnant to her religion, or opposed her doings; Englefeild, Master of the Wards, excepted, who withdrew himself from the Board, and shortly after out of her dominions; so pliable and obedient they were to change with the times and their prince; and of them will fall a relation of recreation. Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and Lord Treasurer, had served then four princes, in as various and changeable times and seasons, that I may well say no time nor age hath yielded the like precedent. This man, being noted to grow high in her favour (as his place and experience required), was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he had stood up for thirty years together, amidst the change and ruins of so many Chancellors and great personages. “Why,” quoth the marquis, “Ortus sum e salice, non ex quercu,” i.e., “I am made of pliable willow, not of the stubborn oak.” And, truly, it seems the old man had taught them all, especially William, Earl of Pembroke, for they two were always of the King’s religion, and always zealous professors: of these it is said that being both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left them, and came on trust to the Court, where, upon the bare stock of their wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well that they got, spent, and left more than any subjects from the Norman Conquest to their own times; whereupon it hath been prettily spoken that they lived in a time of dissolution.
To conclude, then, of all the former reign, it is said that those two lived and died chiefly in her grace and favour: by the letter written upon his son’s marriage with the Lady Catherine Grey, he had like utterly to have lost himself; but at the instant of consummation, as apprehending the unsafety and danger of intermarriage with the blood royal, he fell at the Queen’s feet, where he both acknowledged his presumption, and projected the cause and the divorce together: so quick he was at his work, that in the time of repudiation of the said Lady Grey, he clapped up a marriage for his son, the Lord Herbert, with Mary Sidney, daughter to Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, the blow falling on Edward, the late Earl of Hertford, who, to his cost, took up the divorced lady, of whom the Lord Beauchamp was born, and William, now Earl of Hertford, is descended.
I come now to present them to her own election, which were either admitted to her secrets of State, or taken into her grace and favour; of whom, in order, I crave leave to give unto posterity a cautious description, with a short character or draught of the persons themselves (for, without offence to others, I would be true to myself), their memories and merits, distinguishing those of Militiæ [122a] from the Togati; [122b] and of both these she had as many, and those as able ministers, as had any of her progenitors.
It will be out of doubt that my Lord of Leicester was one of the first whom she made Master of the Horse; he was the youngest son then living of the Duke of Northumberland, beheaded primo Mariæ, [122c] and his father was that Dudley which our histories couple with Empson, and both be much infamed for the caterpillars of the commonwealth during the reign of Henry VII., who, being of a noble extract, was executed the first year of Henry VIII., but not thereby so extinct but that he left a plentiful estate, and such a son who, as the vulgar speaks it, would live without a teat. For, out of the ashes of his father’s infamy, he rose to be a duke, and as high as subjection could permit or sovereignty endure. And though he could not find out any appellation to assume the crown in his own person, yet he projected, and very nearly effected it, for his son Gilbert, by intermarriage with the Lady Jane Grey, and so, by that way, to bring it into his loins. Observations which, though they lie beyond us, and seem impertinent to the text, yet are they not much extravagant, for they must lead us and show us how the after-passages were brought about, with the dependences on the line of a collateral workmanship; and surely it may amaze a well-settled judgment to look back into these times and to consider how the duke could attain to such a pitch of greatness, his father dying in ignominy, and at the gallows, his estate confiscated for pilling and polling the people.
But, when we better think upon it, we find that he was given up but as a sacrifice to please the people, not for any offence committed against the person of the King; so that upon the matter he was a martyr of the prerogative, and the King in honour could do no less than give back to his son the privilege of his blood, with the acquiring of his father’s profession, for he was a lawyer, and of the King’s Council at Law, before he came to be ex interioribus consiliis, [124a] where, besides the licking of his own fingers, he got the King a mass of riches, and that not with hazard, but with the loss of his life and fame, for the King’s father’s sake.
Certain it is that his son was left rich in purse and brain, which are good foundations, and fuel to ambition; and, it may be supposed, he was on all occasions well heard of the King as a person of mark and compassion in his eye, but I find not that he did put up for advancement during Henry VIII.’s time, although a vast aspirer and a provident stayer.
It seems he thought the King’s reign was much given to the falling-sickness, but espying his time fitting, and the sovereignty in the hands of a pupil prince, he then thought he might as well put up, for it was the best; for having the possession of blood, and of purse, with a head-piece of a vast extent, he soon got to honour, and no sooner there but he began to side it with the best, even with the Protector, [124b] and, in conclusion, got his and his brother’s heads; still aspiring till he expired in the loss of his own, so that posterity may, by reading of the father and grandfather, make judgment of the son; for we shall find that this Robert, whose original we have now traced the better to present him, was inheritor to the genius and craft of his father, and Ambrose of the estate, of whom hereafter we shall make some short mention.
We took him now as he was admitted into the Court and the Queen’s favours, and here he was not to seek to play his part well and dexterously; but his play was chiefly at the fore-game, not that he was a learner at the latter, but he loved not the after-wit, for the report is (and I think not unjustly) that he was seldom behind-hand with his gamesters, and that they always went with the loss.
He was a very goodly person, tall, and singularly well-featured, and all his youth well-favoured, of a sweet aspect, but high-foreheaded, which (as I should take it) was of no discommendation; but towards his latter, and which with old men was but a middle age, he grew high-coloured, so that the Queen had much of her father, for, expecting some of her kindred, and some few that had handsome wits in crooked bodies, she always took personage in the way of election, for the people hath it to this day, King Henry loved a man.
Being thus in her grace, she called to mind the sufferings of his ancestors, both in her father’s and sister’s reigns, and restored his and his brother’s blood, creating Ambrose, the elder, Earl of Warwick, and himself Earl of Leicester; and, as he was ex primitis, or, of her first choice, so he rested not there, but long enjoyed her favour, and therewith what he listed, till time and emulation, the companions of greatness, resolved of his period, and to colour him at his setting in a cloud (at Conebury) not by so violent a death, or by the fatal sentence of a judicature, as that of his father and grandfather was, but, as is supposed, by that poison which he had prepared for others, wherein they report him a rare artist. I am not bound to give credit to all vulgar relations, or the libels of his time, which are commonly forced and falsified suitable to the words and honours [126] of men in passion and discontent; but what blinds me to think him no good man, amongst other things of known truth, is that of my Lord of Essex’s [127a] death in Ireland and the marriage of his lady, which I forbear to press in regard he is long since dead, and others are living whom it may concern.
To take him in the observation of his letters and writings, which should best set him off, for such as have fallen into my hands, I never yet saw a style or phrase more seemingly religious and fuller of the strains of devotion; and, were they not sincere, I doubt much of his well-being, [127b] and, I fear, he was too well seen in the aphorisms and principles of Nicholas the Florentine, and in the reaches [127c] of Cesare Borgia.
And hereto I have only touched him in his courtships. I conclude him in his lance; [127d] he was sent Governor by the Queen to the revolted States of Holland, where we read not of his wonders, for they say he had more of Mercury than he had of Mars, and that his device might have been, without prejudice to the great Cæsar, Veni, vidi, redivi.
His [128] co-rival was Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, who in his constellation was his direct opposite, for indeed he was one of the Queen’s martialists, and did her very good service in Ireland, at her first accession, till she recalled him to the Court, whom she made Lord Chamberlain; but he played not his game with that cunning and dexterity as the Earl of Leicester did, who was much the fairer courtier, though Sussex was thought much the honester man, and far the better soldier, but he lay too open on his guard; he was a godly gentleman, and of a brave and noble nature, true and constant to his friends and servants; he was also of a very ancient and noble lineage, honoured through many descents, through the title of Fitzwalters. Moreover, there was such an antipathy in his nature to that of Leicester, that, being together in Court, and both in high employments, they grew to a direct frowardness, and were in continual opposition, the one setting the watch, the other the guard, each on the other’s actions and motions; for my Lord of Sussex was of so great spirit, which, backed with the Queen’s special favour and support, [129] by a great and ancient inheritance, could not brook the other’s empire, insomuch as the Queen upon sundry occasions had somewhat to do to appease and atone them, until death parted the competition, and left the place to Leicester, who was not long alone without his rival in grace and command; and, to conclude this favourite, it is confidently affirmed that, lying in his last sickness, he gave this caveat to his friends:—
“I am now passing into another world, and I must leave you to your fortunes and the Queen’s grace and goodness; but beware of gipsy” (meaning Leicester), “for he will be too hard for you all; you know not the beast so well as I do.”
I come now to the next, which was Secretary William Cecil, for on the death of the old Marquis of Winchester he came up in his room: a person of a most subtle and active spirit.
He stood not by the way of constellation, but was wholly attentive to the service of his mistress, and his dexterity, experience, and merit therein challenged a room in the Queen’s favour which eclipsed the other’s over-seeming greatness, and made it appear that there were others steered and stood at the helm besides himself, and more stars in the firmament of grace than Ursa Major.
He was born, as they say, in Lincolnshire, but, as some aver upon knowledge, of a younger brother of the Cecils of Hertfordshire, a family of my own knowledge, though now private, yet of no mean antiquity, who, being exposed, and sent to the City, as poor gentlemen used to do their sons, became to be a rich man on London Bridge, and purchased [130a] in Lincolnshire, where this man was born.
He was sent to Cambridge, and then to the Inns of Court, and so came to serve the Duke of Somerset in the time of his Protectorship [130b] as Secretary, and having a pregnancy to high inclinations, he came by degrees to a higher conversation with the chiefest affairs of State and Councils; but, on the fall of the duke, he stood some years in umbrage and without employment, till the State found they needed his abilities; and although we find not that he was taken into any place during Mary’s reign, unless (as some say) towards the last, yet the Council several times made use of him, and in the Queen’s [131a] entrance he was admitted Secretary of State; afterwards he was made Master of the Court of Wards, then Lord Treasurer, for he was a person of most excellent abilities; and, indeed, the Queen began to need and seek out men of both guards, and so I conclude to rank this [131b] great instrument amongst the Togati, for he had not to do with the sword, more than as the great paymaster and contriver of the war which shortly followed, wherein he accomplished much, through his theoretical knowledge at home and his intelligence abroad, by unlocking of the counsels of the Queen’s enemies.
We must now take it, and that of truth, into observation that, until the tenth of her reign, the times were calm and serene, though sometimes overcast, as the most glorious sun-rising is subject to shadowings and droppings, for the clouds of Spain, and the vapours of the Holy League, began to disperse and threaten her felicity. Moreover, she was then to provide for some intestine strangers, which began to gather in the heart of her kingdom, all which had relation and correspondency, each one to the other, to dethrone her and to disturb the public tranquillity, and therewithal, as a principal mark, the Established religion, for the name of Recusant then began first to be known to the world; until then the Catholics were no more than Church-Papists, [132] but now, commanded by the Pope’s express Catholic Church, their mother, they separate themselves; so it seems the Pope had then his aims to take a true number of his children; but the Queen had the greater advantage, for she likewise took tale of her opposite subjects, their strength and how many they were, that had given their names to Baal, who [133] then by the hands of some of his proselytes fixed his bulls on the gates of St. Paul’s, which discharged her subjects of all fidelity and received faith, and so, under the veil of the next successor, to replant the Catholic religion. So that the Queen had then a new task and work in hand that might well awake her best providence, and required a muster of new arms, as well as courtships and counsels, for the time then began to grow quick and active, fitter for stronger motions than them of the carpet and measure; and it will be a true note of her magnanimity that she loved a soldier, and had a propensity in her nature to regard and always to grace them, which the Court, taking it into their consideration, took it as an inviting to win honour, together with Her Majesty’s favour, by exposing themselves to the wars, especially when the Queen and the affairs of the kingdom stood in some necessity of the soldiers, for we have many instances of the sallies of the nobility and gentry; yea, and of the Court and her privy favourites, that had any touch or tincture of Mars in their inclinations, to steal away without licence and the Queen’s privity, which had like to cost some of them dear, so predominant were their thoughts and hopes of honour grown in them, as we may truly observe in the exposition of Sir Philip Sidney, my Lord of Essex and Mountjoy, and divers others, whose absence, and the manner of their eruptions, was very distasteful unto her, whereof I can hereunto add a true and no impertinent story, and that of the last: Mountjoy, who, having twice or thrice stole away into Brittany, where, under Sit John Norris, he had then a company, without the Queen’s leave and privity, she sent a message unto him with a strict charge to the general to see him sent home.
When he came into the Queen’s presence, she fell into a kind railing, demanding of him how he durst go over without her leave. “Serve me so,” quoth she, “once more, and I will lay you fast enough for running; you will never leave till you are knocked on the head, as that inconsiderate fellow Sidney was; you shall go when I send. In the meantime, see that you lodge in the Court” (which was then at Whitehall), “where you may follow your book, read, and discourse of the wars.” But to our purpose. It fell out happily to those, and, as I may say, to these times, that the Queen during the calm time of her reign was not idle, nor rocked asleep with security, for she had been very provident in the reparation and augmentation of her shipping and ammunition, and I know not whether by a foresight of policy, or any instinct, it came about, or whether it was an act of her compassion, but it is most certain she sent no small troops to the revolted States of Holland, before she had received any affront from the King of Spain, that might deserve to tend to a breach of hostility, which the Papists maintain to this day was the provocation to the after-wars; but, omitting what might be said to this point, these Netherland wars were the Queen’s seminaries or nursery of very many brave soldiers, and so likewise were the civil wars of France, whither she sent five several armies.
They were the French scholars that inured the youth and gentry of the kingdom, and it was a militia, where they were daily in acquaintance with the discipline of the Spaniards, who were then turned the Queen’s inveterate enemies.
And thus have I taken in observation her dies Halcyonii—i.e., these years of hers which were more serene and quiet than those that followed, which, though they were not less propitious, as being touched more with the points of honour and victory, yet were they troubled and loaded ever, both with domestic and foreign machinations; and, as it is already quoted, they were such as awakened her spirits and made her cast about her to defend rather by offending, and by way of provision to prevent all invasions, than to expect them, which was a piece of the cunning of the times; and with this I have noted the causes and principium [136] of the wars following, and likewise points to the seed-plots from whence she took up these brave men and plants of honour who acted on the theatre of Mars, and on whom she dispersed the rays of her grace; who were persons, in their kinds of care, virtuous, and such as might, out of their merit, pretend interest to her favours, of which rank the number will equal, if not exceed, that of her gown-men, in recount of whom I will proceed with Sir Philip Sidney.
He was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and President of Wales, a person of great parts, and of no mean grace with the Queen; his mother was sister to my Lord of Leicester, from whence we may conjecture how the father stood up in the sphere of honour and employments, so that his descent was apparently noble on both sides; and for his education, it was such as travel and the University could afford none better, and his tutors infuse; for, after an incredible proficiency in all the spheres of learning, he left the academical for that of the Court, whither he came by his uncle’s invitation, famed after by noble reports of his accomplishments, which, together with the state of his person, framed by a natural propensity to arms, soon attracted the good opinions of all men, and was so highly praised in the esteem of the Queen, that she thought the Court deficient without him; and whereas, through the fame of his desert, he was in election for the kingdom of Pole, [138] she refused to further his preferment, it was not out of emulation of advancement, but out of fear to lose the jewel of her time. He married the daughter and sole heir of Sir Frances Walsingham, the Secretary of State, a lady destined to the bed of honour, who, after his deplorable death at Zutphen, in the Low Countries, where he was at the time of his uncle Leicester’s being there, was remarried to the Lord of Essex, and, since his death, to my Lord of St. Albans, all persons of the sword, and otherwise of great honour and virtue.
They have a very quaint conceit of him, that Mars and Mercury fell at variance whose servant he should be; and there is an epigrammatist that saith that Art and Nature had spent their excellences in his fashioning, and, fearing they could not end what they had begun, they bestowed him up for time, and Nature stood mute and amazed to behold her own mark; but these are the particulars of poets.
Certain it is he was a noble and matchless gentleman, and it may be said justly of him, without these hyperboles of faction, as it was of Cato Uticensis, that he seemed to be born only to that which he went about, vir satilis ingenii, as Plutarch saith it; but to speak more of him were to make them less.
Sir Francis Walsingham, as we have said, had the honour to be Sir Philip Sidney’s father-in-law; he was a gentleman at first, of a good house, and of a better education, and from the University travelled for the rest of his learning. Doubtless he was the only linguist of his times, how to use his own tongue, whereby he came to be employed in the chiefest affairs of State.
He was sent Ambassador to France, and stayed there Legar long in the heat of the civil wars, and at the same time that Monsieur was here a suitor to the Queen; and, if I be not mistaken, he played the very same part there as since Gondomar did here. [140a] At his return he was taken principal Secretary, and for one of the great engines of State, and of the times, high in his mistress’s (the Queen’s) favour, and a watchful servant over the safety of his mistress.
They note him to have certain courtesies and secret ways of intelligence above the rest; but I must confess I am to seek wherefore he suffered Parry [140b] to play so long as he did, hang on the hook, before he hoisted him up; and I have been a little curious in the search thereof, though I have not to do with the Arcana Regalia Imperii, for to know it is sometimes a burden; and I remember it was Ovid’s criminant error that he saw too much, but I hope these are collaterals, and of no danger.
But that Parry, having an intent to kill the Queen, made the way of his access by betraying of others, and in impeaching of the priests of his own correspondency, and thereby had access to confer with the Queen, as oftentimes private and familiar discourse with Walsingham, will not be the query of the mystery, for the Secretary might have had an end of a further discovery and maturity of the treason; but that, after the Queen knew Parry’s intent, why she would then admit him to private discourse, and Walsingham to suffer him, considering the conditions of all the designs, and to permit him to go where and whither he listed, and only under the secrecy of a dark sentinel set over him, was a piece of reach and hazard beyond my apprehension. I must again profess that I have read many of his letters, for they are commonly sent to my Lord of Leicester and of Burleigh out of France, containing many fine passages and secrets, yet, if I might have been beholding to his cyphers, they would have told pretty tales of the times; but I must now close him up, and rank him amongst the Togati, yet chief of those that laid the foundations of the French and Dutch wars, which was another piece of his fineness of the times, with one observation more, that he was one of the greatest always of the Austrian embracements, for both himself and Stafford that preceded him might well have been compared to him in the Gospel that sowed his tares in the night; so did they their seeds in division in the dark; and as it is a likely report that they father on him at his return, the Queen speaking to him with some sensibility of the Spanish designs on France: “Madam,” he answered, “I beseech you be content, and fear not; the Spaniard hath a great appetite and an excellent digestion, but I have fitted him with a bone for these twenty years that your Majesty should have no cause to doubt him, provided that, if the fire chance to slake which I have kindled, you will be ruled by me, and cast in some of your fuel, which will revive the flame.”
My Lord Willoughby was one of the Queen’s first swordsmen; he was of the ancient extract of the Bartewes, but more ennobled by his mother, who was Duchess of Suffolk. He was a great master of the art military, and was sent general into France, and commanded the second army of five the Queen had sent thither, in aid of the French. I have heard it spoken that, had he not slighted the Court, but applied himself to the Queen, he might have enjoyed a plentiful portion of her grace; and it was his saying, and it did him no good, that he was none of the reptilia, intimating that he could not creep on the ground, and that the Court was not his element; for, indeed, as he was a great soldier, so he was of a suitable magnanimity, and could not brook the obsequiousness and assiduity of the Court; and as he was then somewhat descending from youth, happily he had an animam revertendi, or a desire to make a safe retreat.
And now I come to another of the Togati, Sir Nicholas Bacon, an arch-piece of wit and of wisdom. He was a gentleman, and a man of law, and of a great knowledge therein, whereby, together with his after-part of learning and dexterity, he was promoted to be Keeper of the Great Seal, and being of kin to the Treasurer Burleigh, and [144] also the help of his hand to bring him to the Queen’s great favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, “that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;” and that, though he knew that “verus quisque suæ fortunæ faber,” was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, but I will never forgive that man that loseth himself to be rid of his jests.
He was father to that refined wit which since hath acted a disastrous part on the public stage, and of late sat in his father’s room as Lord Chancellor; those that lived in his age, and from whence I have taken this little model of him, give him a lively character, and they decipher him to be another Solon, and the Simon of those times, such a one as Œdipus was in dissolving of riddles; doubtless he was an able instrument, as it was his commendation that his head was the mallet, for it was a very great one, and therein kept a wedge, that entered all knotty pieces that come to the table.
And now again I must fall back to smooth and plane a way to the rest that is behind, but not from my purpose. There have been, about this time, two rivals in the Queen’s favour, old Sir Francis Knowles, Comptroller of the House, and Sir Henry Norris, whom she had called up at Parliament to sit with the Peers in the higher House, as, Henry Norris of Rycot, who had married the daughter and heir of the old Henry Williams of Tayne, a noble person, and to whom, in her adversity, the Queen had been committed to his safe custody, and from him had received more than ordinary observances; now, such was the goodness of the Queen’s nature, that she neither forgot the good turns received from the Lord Williams, neither was she unmindful of this Lord Norris, whose father, in her father’s time, and in the business of her brother, died in a noble cause, and in the justification of her innocency.
My Lord Norris had, by this lady, an apt issue, which the Queen highly respected, for he had six sons, and all martial and brave men: the first was William, the eldest, and father to the late Earl of Berkshire, Sir John (vulgarly called General Norris), Sir Edward, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Maximilian, men of haughty courage, and of great experience in the conduct of military affairs; and, to speak in the character of their merit, they were persons of such renown and worth as future times must, of duty, owe them the debt of an honourable memory.
Sir Francis Knowles was somewhat near in the Queen’s affinity, and had likewise no incompetent issue; for he had also William, his eldest son, and since Earl of Banbury, Sir Thomas, Sir Robert, and Sir Francis, if I be not a little mistaken in their names and marshalling; and there was also the Lady Lettice, a sister of those, who was first Countess of Essex, and after of Leicester; and those were also brave men in their times and places, but they were of the Court and carpet, and not by the genius of the camp.
Between these two families there was, as it falleth out amongst great ones and competitors of favour, no great correspondency; and there were some seeds, either of emulation or distrust, cast between them; which, had they not been disjoined in the residence of their persons, as that was the fortune of their employments, the one side attending the Court, and the other the Pavilion, surely they would have broken out into some kind of hostility, or, at least, they would entwine and wrestle one in the other, like trees circled with ivy; for there was a time when, both these fraternities being met at Court, there passed a challenge between them at certain exercises, the Queen and the old men being spectators, which ended in a flat quarrel amongst them all. For I am persuaded, though I ought not to judge, that there were some relics of this feigned that were long after the causes of the one family’s almost utter extirpation, and the other’s improsperity; for it was a known truth that so long as my Lord of Leicester lived, who was the main pillar on the one side, for having married the sister, the other side took no deep root in the Court, though otherwise they made their ways to honour by their swords. And that which is of more note, considering my Lord of Leicester’s use of men of war, being shortly after sent Governor to the revolted States, and no soldier himself, is that he made no more account of Sir John Norris, a soldier, then deservedly famous, and trained from a page under the discipline of the greatest captain in Christendom, the Admiral Castilliau, and of command in the French and Dutch Wars almost twenty years. And it is of further observation that my Lord of Essex, after Leicester’s decease, though addicted to arms and honoured by the general in the Portugal expedition, whether out of instigation, as it hath been thought, or out of ambition and jealousy, eclipsed by the fame and splendour of this great commander, never loved him in sincerity.
Moreover, and certain it is, he not only crushed, and upon all occasions quelled the youth of this great man and his famous brethren, but therewith drew on his own fatal end, by undertaking the Irish action in a time when he left the Court empty of friends, and full-fraught with his professed enemies. But I forbear to extend myself in any further relation upon this subject, as having lost some notes of truth in these two nobles, which I would present; and therewith touched somewhat, which I would not, if the equity of the narration would have permitted any omission.
Sir John Perrot was a goodly gentleman, and of the sword; and he was of a very ancient descent, as an heir to many subtracts of gentry, especially from Guy de Brain of Lawhorn; so was he of a very vast estate, and came not to Court for want and to these advancements. He had the endowments of carriage and height of spirit, had he alighted on the alloy and temper of discretion; the defect whereof, with a native freedom and boldness of speech, drew him on to a clouded sitting, and laid him open to the spleen and advantage of his enemies, of whom Sir Christopher Hatton was professed. He was yet a wise man and a brave courtier, but rough and participating more of active than sedentary motions, as being in his instillation destined for arms. There is a query of some denotations, how he came to receive the foil, and that in the catastrophe? for he was strengthened with honourable alliances and the prime friendship in Court of my Lords of Leicester and Burleigh, both his contemporaries and familiars; but that there might be (as the adage hath it) falsity in friendship: and we may rest satisfied that there is no dispute against fate, and they quit him for a person that loved to stand too much alone on his legs, of too often regress and discontinuance from the Queen’s presence, a fault which is incompatible with the ways of Court and favour. He was sent Lord-Deputy into Ireland, as it was then apprehended, for a kind of haughtiness and repugnancy in Council; or, as others have thought, the fittest person then to bridle the insolences of the Irish; and probable it is that both, considering the sway that he would have at the Board, being head in the Queen’s favour, concurred, and did alike conspire his remove and ruin. But into Ireland he went, where he did the Queen very great and many services, if the surplusage of the measure did not abate the value of the merit, as after-time found to be no paradox to save the Queen’s purse, but both herself and my Lord Treasurer Burleigh ever took for good service; he imposed on the Irish the charge for bearing their own arms, which both gave them the possession and taught them the use of weapons; which provided in the end to a most fatal work, both in the profusion of blood and treasure.
But at his return, and upon some account sent home before, touching the state of that kingdom, the Queen poured out assiduous testimonies of her grace towards him, till, by his retreat to his Castle of Cary, which he was then building, and out of a desire to be in command at home as he had been abroad, together with the hatred and practice of Hatton, then in high favour, whom he had, not long before, bitterly taunted for his dancing, he was accused for high treason, and for high words, and a forged letter, and condemned; though the Queen, on the news of his condemnation, swore, by her wonted oath, that the jury were all knaves: and they delivered it with assurance that, on his return to the town after his trial, he said, with oaths and with fury, to the Lieutenant, Sir Owen Hopton, “What! will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up as a sacrifice to the envy of my flattering adversaries?” Which being made known to the Queen, and somewhat enforced, she refused to sign it, and swore he should not die, for he was an honest and faithful man. And surely, though not altogether to set our rest and faith upon tradition and old reports, as that Sir Thomas Perrot, his father, was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and in the Court married to a lady of great honour, which are presumptions in some implications; but, if we go a little further and compare his pictures, his qualities, gesture, and voice, with that of the King, which memory retains yet amongst us, they will plead strongly that he was a surreptitious child of the blood royal.
Certain it is that he lived not long in the Tower; and that after his decease, Sir Thomas Perrot, his son, then of no mean esteem with the Queen, having before married my Lord of Essex’s sister, since Countess of Northumberland, had restitution of his land; though after his death also (which immediately followed) the Crown resumed the estate, and took advantage of the former attainder; and, to say the truth, the priest’s forged letter was, at his arraignment, thought but as a fiction of envy, and was soon after exploded by the priest’s own confession. But that which most exasperated the Queen and gave advantage to his enemies was, as Sir Walter Raleigh takes into observation, words of disdain, for the Queen, by sharp and reprehensive letters, had nettled him; and thereupon, sending others of approbation, commending his service, and intimating an invasion from Spain; which was no sooner proposed but he said publicly, in the great chamber at Dublin:—“Lo, now she is ready to * * herself for fear of the Spaniards: I am again one of her white boys,” which are subject to a various construction, and tended to some disreputation of his Sovereign, and such as may serve for instruction to persons in place of honour and command, to beware of the violences of Nature, and especially the exorbitance of the tongue. And so I conclude him with this double observation: the one, of the innocency of his intentions, exempt and clear from the guilt of treason and disloyalty, therefore of the greatness of his heart; for at his arraignment he was so little dejected with what might be alleged, that rather he grew troubled with choler, and, in a kind of exasperation, he despised his jury, though of the Order of Knighthood, and of the especial gentry, claiming the privilege of trial by the peers and baronage of the realm, so prevalent was that of his native genius and haughtiness of spirit which accompanied him to the last, and till, without any diminution of change therein, it broke in pieces the cords of his magnanimity; for he died suddenly in the Tower, and when it was thought the Queen did intend his enlargement, with the restitution of his possessions, which were then very great, and comparable to most of the nobility.
Sir Christopher Hatton came to the Court as his opposite; Sir John Perrot was wont to say, by the galliard, for he came thither as a private gentleman of the Inns of Court, in a masque: and, for his activity and person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into her favour. He was first made Vice-Chamberlain, and, shortly after, advanced to the place of Lord Chancellor. A gentleman that, besides the graces of his person and dancing, had also the endowment of a strong and subtle capacity, and that could soon learn the discipline and garb, both of the times and Court; and the truth is, he had a large proportion of gifts and endowments, but too much of the season of envy; and he was a mere vegetable of the Court that sprung up at night and sunk again at his noon.
“Flos non mentorum, sed sex fuit illa virorum.”
My Lord of Effingham, though a courtier betimes, yet I find not that the sunshine of his favour broke out upon him until she took him into the ship and made him High Admiral of England. For his extract, it might suffice that he was the son of a Howard, and of a Duke of Norfolk.
And, for his person, as goodly a gentleman as the times had any, if Nature had not been more intentive to complete his person, than Fortune to make him rich; for, the times considered, which were then active, and a long time after lucrative, he died not wealthy; yet the honester man, though it seems the Queen’s purpose was to render the occasion of his advancement, and to make him capable of more honour. At his return from the Cadiz voyage and action, she conferred it upon him, creating him Earl of Nottingham, to the great discontent of his colleague, my Lord of Essex, who then grew excessive in the appetite of her favour, and the truth is, so exorbitant in the limitation of the sovereign aspect, that it much alienated the Queen’s grace from him, and drew others together with the Admiral to a combination, to conspire his ruin; and though, as I have heard it from that party (I mean the old Admiral’s faction) that it lay not in his proper power to hurt my Lord Essex, yet he had more fellows, and such as were well skilled in the setting of the train; but I leave this to those of another age; it is out of doubt that the Admiral was a good, honest, and brave man, and a faithful servant to his mistress; and such a one as the Queen, out of her own princely judgment, knew to be a fit instrument in her service, for she was a proficient in the reading of men as well as books; and as sundry expeditions, as that aforementioned, and ’88, do better express his worth and manifest the Queen’s trust, and the opinion she had of his fidelity and conduct.
Moreover, the Howards were of the Queen’s alliance and consanguinity by her mother, which swayed her affection and bent it toward this great house; and it was a part of her natural propensity to grace and support ancient nobility, where it did not entrench, neither invade her interest; from such trespasses she was quick and tender, and would not spare any whatsoever, as we may observe in the case of the duke and my Lord of Hertford, whom she much favoured and countenanced, till they attempted the forbidden fruit, the fault of the last being, in the severest interpretation, but a trespass of encroachment; but in the first it was taken as a riot against the Crown and her own sovereign power, and as I have ever thought the cause of her aversion against the rest of that house, and the duke’s great father-in-law, Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, a person in the first rank of her affections, before these and some other jealousies made a separation between them: this noble lord and Lord Thomas Howard, since Earl of Suffolk, standing alone in her grace, and the rest in her umbrage.
Sir John Packington was a gentleman of no mean family, and of form and feature nowise disabled, for he was a brave gentleman, and a very fine courtier, and for the time which he stayed there, which was not lasting, very high in her grace; but he came in, and went out through disassiduity, drew the curtain between himself and the light of her grace, and then death overwhelmed the remnant, and utterly deprived him of recovery; and they say of him that had he brought less to her Court than he did, he might have carried away more than he brought, for he had a time of it, but was an ill husband of opportunity.
My Lord of Hunsdown was of the Queen’s nearest kindred, and, on the decease of Sussex, both he and his son successively took the place of Lord Chamberlain. He was a man fast to his prince, and firm to his friends and servants; and though he might speak big, and therein would be borne out, yet was he the more dreadful, but less harmful, and far from the practice of the Lord of Leicester’s instructions, for he was downright; and I have heard those that both knew him well and had interest in him, say merrily of him that his Latin and dissimulation were alike; and that his custom of swearing and obscenity in speaking made him seem a worse Christian than he was, and a better knight of her carpet than he could be. As he lived in a roughling time, so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers were wont to call men of their hands; of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him, yet not taken for a popular and dangerous person: and this is one that stood among the Togati, of an honest, stout heart, and such a one, that, upon occasion, would have fought for his prince and country, for he had the charge of the Queen’s person, both in the Court and in the camp at Tilbury.
Sir Walter Raleigh was one that, it seems, Fortune had picked out of purpose, of whom to make an example and to use as her tennis-ball, thereby to show what she could do, for she tossed him up of nothing, and to and fro to greatness, and from thence down to little more than to that wherein she found him, a bare gentleman; and not that he was less, for he was well descended, and of good alliance, but poor in his beginnings: and for my Lord Oxford’s jests of him for the jacks and upstarts, we all know it savoured more of emulation, and his honour than of truth; and it is a certain note of the times, that the Queen, in her choice, never took in her favour a mere viewed man, or a mechanic, as Comines observes of Lewis XI., who did serve himself with persons of unknown parents, such as were Oliver, the barber, whom he created Earl of Dunoyes, and made him ex secretis consiliis, and alone in his favour and familiarity.
His approaches to the University and Inns of Court were the grounds of his improvement, but they were rather extrusions than sieges, or settings down, for he stayed not long in a place; and, being the youngest brother, and the house diminished in his patrimony, he foresaw his destiny, that he was first to roll through want and disability, to subsist otherwise before he came to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying gather moss. He was the first that exposed himself in the land-service of Ireland, a militia which did not then yield him food and raiment, for it was ever very poor; nor dared he to stay long there, though shortly after he came thither again, under the command of the Lord Grey, but with his own colours flying in the field, having, in the interim, cast a mere chance, both in the Low Countries and in the voyage to sea; and, if ever man drew virtue out of necessity, it was he, and therewith was he the great example of industry; and though he might then have taken that of the merchant to himself,
“Per mare, per terras, currit mercator ad Indos.”
He might also have said, and truly, with the philosopher, “Omnia mea mecum porto,” for it was a long time before he could brag of more than he carried at his back; and when he got on the winning side, it was his commendation that he took pains for it, and underwent many various adventures for his after-perfection, and before he came into the public note of the world; and thence may appear how he came up per ardua:—
“Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum.”
Not pulled up by chance, nor by any great admittance; I will only describe his natural parts, and these of his own acquiring.
He had, in the outward man, a good presence, in a handsome and well-compacted person; a strong natural wit, and a better judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage; and these he had by the adjuncts of some general learning, which by diligence he enforced to a great augmentation and perfection, for he was an indefatigable reader, by sea and land, and one of the best observers, both of men and of the times; and I am somewhat confident that among the second causes of his growth there was variance between him and my Lord General Grey, in his second descent into Ireland, which drew them both over to the council-table, there to plead their own causes; where what advantage he had in the case in controversy I know not, but he had much the better in the manner of telling his tale, insomuch as the Queen and the lords took no slight mark of the man and his parts; for from thence he came to be known, and to have access to the lords; and then we are not to doubt how such a man would comply to progression; and whether or no my Lord of Leicester had then cast a good word for him to the Queen, which would have done him no harm, I do not determine; but true it is, he had gotten the Queen’s ear in a trice, and she began to be taken with his election, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands: and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all; yea, those that he relied on began to take this his sudden favour for an alarm and to be sensible of their own supplantation, and to project his, which made him shortly after sing—
“Fortune, my foe, why dost thou frown?”
So that, finding his favour declining, and falling into a recess, he undertook a new peregrination, to leave that terra infirma [165] of the court for that of the waves, and by declining himself, and by absence to expel his and the passion of his enemies; which, in court, was a strange device of recovery, but that he then knew there was some ill office done him; yet he durst not attempt to mend it, otherwise than by going aside thereby to teach envy a new way of forgetfulness, and not so much as think of him. Howsoever, he had it always in mind never to forget himself; and his device took so well that, in his return, he came in as rams do, by going backward with the greater strength, and so continued to the last, great in her favour, and captain of her guard: where I must leave him, but with this observation, though he gained much at the court, he took it not out of the Exchequer, or merely out of the Queen’s purse, but by his wit, and by the help of the prerogative; for the Queen was never profuse in delivering out of her treasure, but paid most and many of her servants, part in money, and the rest with grace; which, as the case stood, was then taken for good payment, leaving the arrears of recompense due for their merit, to her great successor, [166a] who paid them all with advantage. [166b]
Sir Foulke Greville, since Lord Brooke, had no mean place in her favour, neither did he hold it for any short time, or term; for, if I be not deceived, he had the longest lease, the smoothest time without rubs of any of her favourites; he came to the court in his youth and prime, as that is the time, or never: he was a brave gentleman, and hopefully descended from Willoughby, Lord Brooke, and admiral to Henry the Seventh; neither illiterate, for he was, as he would often profess, a friend to Sir Philip Sidney, and there are now extant some fragments of his pen, and of the times, which do interest him in the muses, and which show in him the Queen’s election had ever a noble conduct, and it motions more of virtue and judgment than of fancy.
I find that he neither sought for nor obtained any great place or preferment in court, during all his time of attendance: neither did he need it, for he came thither backed with a plentiful fortune, which, as himself was wont to say, was then better held together by a single life, wherein he lived and died a constant courtier of the ladies.
My Lord of Essex, as Sir Henry Walton notes him, a gentleman of great parts, and partly of his times and retinue, had his introduction by my Lord of Leicester, who had married his mother; a tie of affinity which, besides a more urgent obligation, might have invited his care to advance him, his fortunes being then, through his father’s infelicity, grown low; but that the son of a Lord Ferrers of Chartly, Viscount Hertford, and Earl of Essex, who was of the ancient nobility, and formerly in the Queen’s good grace, could not have room in her favour, without the assistance of Leicester, was beyond the rule of her nature, which, as I have elsewhere taken into observation, was ever inclinable to favour the nobility: sure it is, that he no sooner appeared in court, but he took with the Queen and the courtiers; and, I believe, they all could not choose but look through the sacrifice of the father on his living son, whose image, by the remembrance of former passages, was a fresh leek, the bleeding of men murdered, represented to the court, and offered up as a subject of compassion to all the kingdom.
There was in this young lord, together with a goodly person, a kind of urbanity and innate courtesy, which both won the Queen, and too much took up the people to gaze on the new-adopted son of her favour; and as I go along, it will not be amiss to take into observation two notable quotations; the first was a violent indulgence of the Queen (which is incident to old age, where it encounters with a pleasing and suitable object) towards this great lord, which argued a non-perpetuity; the second was a fault in the object of her grace, my lord himself, who drew in too fast, like a child sucking on an over uberous nurse; and had there been a more decent decorum observed in both, or either of these, without doubt, the unity of their affections had been more permanent, and not so in and out, as they were, like an instrument well tuned, and lapsing to discord.
The greater error of the two, though unwilling, I am constrained to impose on my Lord of Essex, and rather on his youth, and none of the least of the blame on those that stood sentinels about him, who might have advised better, but that like men intoxicated with hopes, they likewise had sucked in with the most of their lord’s receipts, and so, like Cæsars, would have all or none; a rule quite contrary to nature, and the most indulgent parents, who, though they may express more affection to one in the abundance of bequeaths, yet cannot forget some legacies, and distributives, and dividends to others of their begetting; and how hurtful partiality is, and proves, every day’s experience tells us, out of which common consideration they might have framed to their hands a maxim of more discretion, for the conduct and management of their new-graved lord and master.
But to omit that of infusion, and to do right to truth, my Lord of Essex, even of those that truly loved and honoured him, was noted for too bold an ingrosser, both of fame and favour; and of this, without offence to the living, or treading on the sacred grave of the dead, I shall present the truth of a passage yet in memory.
My Lord of Mountjoy, who was another child of her favour, being newly come, and then but Sir Charles Blount (for my Lord William, his elder brother, was then living) had the good fortune to run one day well at tilt, and the Queen was therewith so well pleased, that she sent him, in token of her favour, a Queen at chess in gold, richly enamelled, which his servants had the next day fastened unto his arm with a crimson ribband; which my Lord of Essex, as he passed through the Privy Chamber, espying with his cloak cast under his arm, the better to command it to the view, enquired what it was, and for what cause there fixed: Sir Foulke Greville told him, it was the Queen’s favour, which the day before, and next after the tilting, she had sent him; whereat my Lord of Essex, in a kind of emulation, and as though he would have limited her favour, said “Now I perceive every fool must have a favour.” This bitter and public affront came to Sir Charles Blount’s ear, at which he sent him a challenge; which was accepted by my lord, and they met near Marybone Park, where my lord was hurt in the thigh, and disarmed. The Queen, missing of the men, was very curious to learn the truth, but at last it was whispered out; she sware by God’s death, it was fit that some one or other should take him down and teach him better manners, otherwise there would be no rule with him; and here I note the imminution of my lord’s friendship with Mountjoy, which the Queen herself did then conjure.
Now for his fame we need not go far, for my Lord of Essex, having borne a grudge to General Norris, who had unwittingly offered to undertake the action of Brittany with fewer men than my lord had before demanded; on his return with victory, and a glorious report of his valour, he was then thought the only man for the Irish wars; wherein my Lord of Essex so wrought, by despising the number and quality of the rebels, that Norris was sent over with a scanty force, joined with the relics of the veteran troops of Britain, of set purpose, and as it fell out, to ruin Norris; and the Lord Burrows, by my lord’s procurement, sent at his heels, and to command in chief, and to convey Norris only to his government at Munster; which aggravated the great heart of the general to see himself undervalued, and undermined, by my lord and Burrows, which was, as the Proverb speaks, juvenes docere senes.
Now my Lord Burrows in the beginning of his prosecution died, whereupon the Queen was fully bent to send over my Lord Mountjoy; which my Lord of Essex utterly misliked, and opposed with many reasons, and by arguments of contempt towards Mountjoy (his then professed friend and familiar) so predominant was his desire to reap the whole honour of closing up that war, and all others; now the way being paved and opened by his own workmanship, and so handled, that none durst appear to stand in the place; at last, and with much ado, he obtained his own ends, and therewith his fatal destruction, leaving the Queen and the court, where he stood impregnable and firm in her grace, to men that long had fought and waited their times to give him a trip, and could never find any opportunity, but this of his absence, and of his own creation; and those are true observations of his appetite and inclinations, which were not of any true proportion, but hurried and transported, with an over desire, and thirstiness after fame, and that deceitful fame of popularity; and, to help on his catastrophe, I observe likewise two sorts of people that had a hand in his fall: the first was the soldiery, which all flock unto him, as it were foretelling a mortality, and are commonly of blunt and too rough counsels, and many times dissonant from the time of the court and State; the other sort were of his family, his servants and his own creatures, such as were bound by safety, and obligations of fidelity, to have looked better to the steering of that boat, wherein they themselves were carried, and not to have suffered it to fleet, and run on ground, with those empty sails of tumour of popularity and applause; methinks one honest man or other, who had but the brushing of his clothes, might have whispered in his ear, “My lord, look to it, this multitude that follows you will either devour you, or undo you; do not strive to overrule all, of it will cost hot water, and it will procure envy, and if needs your genius must have it so, let the court and the Queen’s presence by your station, for your absence must undo you.” But, as I have said, they had sucked too much of their lord’s milk, and instead of withdrawing they drew [174] the coals of his ambition, and infused into him too much of the spirit of glory, yea, and mixed the goodness of his nature with a touch of revenge, which is evermore accompanied with a destiny of the same fate. Of this number there were some of insufferable natures about him, that towards his last gave desperate advice, such as his integrity abhorred, and his fidelity forbade, amongst whom Sir Henry Walton notes, without injury, his Secretary Cuffe, as a vile man and of a perverse nature: I could also name others that, when he was in the right course of recovery, settling to moderation, would not suffer a recess in him, but stirred up the dregs of those rude humours, which, by times and his affections out of his own judgment, he thought to repose and give them a vomit. And thus I conclude this noble lord, as a mixture between prosperity and adversity, once a child of his great mistress’s favour, but a son of Bellona.
My lord of Buckhurst was of the noble house of Sackvilles, and of the Queen’s consanguinity, or as the people then called him Fill-sacks, by reason of his great wealth, and the vast patrimony left to his son, whereof in his youth he spent the best part, until the Queen, by her frequent admonitions, diverted the torrent of his profusion; he was a very fine gentleman, of person and endowments, both of art and nature, but without measure magnificent, till on the turn of his honour, and the alloy, that his yearly good counsel had wrought upon those immoderate courses of his youth, and that height of spirit inherent to his house; and then did the Queen, as a most judicious, indulgent prince, who, when she saw the man grown settled and staid, gave him an assistance, and advanced him to the treasurership, where he made amends to his house for his mis-spent time, both in the increasement of his estate and honour, which the Queen conferred upon him, together with the opportunity to remake himself, and thereby to show that this was a child that should have a share in her grace.
They much commend his elocution, but more the excellency of his pen, for he was a scholar, and a person of a quick dispatch, faculties that yet run in the blood; and they say of him, that his secretaries did little for him, by the way of indictment, wherein they could seldom please him, he was so facete and choice in his phrases and style; and for his dispatches, and for the content he gave to suitors, he had a decorum seldom put in practice, for he had of his attendance that took into a roll the names of all suitors, with the date of their first addresses; so that a fresh man could not leap over his head, that was of a more ancient edition excepting the urgent affairs of the State.
I find not that he was any way ensnared in the factions of the court, which were all his times strong, and in every man’s note, the Howards and the Cecils of the one part, and my Lord of Essex, &c., on the other, for he held the staff of the treasury fast in his hand, which made them, once in a year, to be beholden to him; and the truth is, as he was a wise man and a stout, he had no reason to be a partaker, for he stood sure in blood and in grace, and was wholly intentive to the Queen’s service; and such were his abilities, that she might have more cunning instruments, but none of a more strong judgment and confidence in his ways, which are symptoms of magnanimity, whereunto methinks this motto hath some kind of reference, Aut nunquam tentes, aut perfice. As though he would have charactered, in a word, the genius of his house, or express somewhat of a higher inclination, than lay within his compass; that he was a courtier is apparent, for he stood always in her eye and in her favour.
My Lord Mountjoy was of the ancient nobility, but utterly decayed in the support thereof, patrimony, through his grandfather’s excess, his father’s vanity in search of the philosopher’s stone, and his brother’s untimely prodigality; all of which seemed, by a joint conspiracy, to ruinate the house, and altogether to annihilate it; as he came from Oxford, he took the Inner Temple in the way to court, whither he no sooner came, but he had a pretty kind of admission, which I have heard from a discreet man of his own, and much more of the secrets of those times; he was then much about twenty years of age, brown-haired, of a sweet face, and of a most neat composure, tall in his person. The Queen was then at Whitehall, and at dinner, whither he came to see the fashion of the court, and the Queen had soon found him out, and, with a kind of an affected favour, asked her carver who he was; he answered he knew him not, insomuch that an inquiry was made, one from another, who he might be, till at length it was told the Queen, he was brother to the Lord William Mountjoy. Thus inquiry, with the eye of her majesty fixed upon him, as she was wont to do, and to daunt men she knew not, stirred the blood of the young gentleman, insomuch as his colour went and came; which the Queen observing, called unto him, and gave him her hand to kiss, encouraging him with gracious words, and new looks, and so diverting her speech to the lords and ladies, she said that she no sooner observed him but she knew there was in him some noble blood, with some other expressions of pity towards his house; and then, again demanding his name, she said, “Fail you not to come to the court, and I will bethink myself, how to do you good;” and this was his inlet, and the beginning of his grace; where it falls into consideration that, though he wanted not wit nor courage, for he had very fine attractives, as being a good piece of a scholar, yet were those accompanied with the retractives of bashfulness, and natural modesty, which, as the wave of the house of his fortune then stood, might have hindered his progression, had they not been reinforced by the infusion of sovereign favour, and the Queen’s gracious invitation; and that it may appear how he was, and how much that heretic, necessity, will work in the directions of good spirits, I can deliver it with assurance, that his exhibition was very scanty, until his brother died, which was shortly after his admission to the court; and then was it no more but a thousand marks per annum, wherewith he lived plentifully, and in a fine garb, and without any great sustentation of the Queen, during all her times.
And, as there was in nature a kind of backwardness, which did not befriend him, nor suit with the motion of the court, so there was in him an inclination to arms, with a humour of travelling and gadding abroad, which had not some wise men about him laboured to remove, and the Queen laid in her command, he would, out of his own native propension, marred his own market; for as he was grown by reading, whereunto he was much addicted, to the theory of a soldier, so was he strongly invited by his genius, to the acquaintance of the practice of the war, which were the causes of his excursions, for he had a company in the Low Countries, from whom he came over with a noble acceptance of the Queen; but, somewhat restless in honourable thoughts, he exposed himself again and again, and would press the Queen with pretences of visiting his company so often, till at length he had a flat denial; yet he struck over with Sir John Norris into the action of Britanny, which was then a hot and active war, whom he would always call his father, honouring him above all men, and ever bewailing his end; so contrary he was in his esteem and valuation of this great commander to that of his friend, my Lord of Essex; till at last the Queen began to take his digressions for contempt, and confined his residence to the court, [181] and her own presence; and, upon my Lord of Essex’s fall, so confident she was of her own princely judgment, and the opinion she had conceived of his worth and conduct, that she would have this noble gentleman and none other to bring in the Irish wars to a propitious end; for it was a prophetical speech of her own, that it would be his fortune and his honour to cut the thread of that fatal rebellion, and to bring her in peace to the grave; wherein she was not deceived: for he achieved it, but with much pains and carefulness, and not without the forces and many jealousies of the court and times, wherewith the Queen’s age and the malignity of her settling times were replete. And so I come to his dear friend in court, Secretary Cecil, whom, in his long absence, he adored as his saint, and counted him his only Mecenas, both before and after his departure from court, and during all the time of his command in Ireland; well knowing that it lay in his power, and by a word of his mouth, to make or mar him.
Sir Robert Cecil, since Earl of Salisbury, was the son of the Lord Burleigh, and, by degrees, successor of his places and favours, though not of his lands; for he had Sir Thomas Cecil, his elder brother, since created Earl of Exeter; he was first Secretary of State, then Master of the Court of Wards, and, in the last of her reign, came to be Lord Treasurer: all which were the steps of his father’s greatness, and of the honour he left to his house. For his person, he was not much beholden to Nature, though somewhat for his face, which was the best part of his outside: for his inside, it may be said, and without offence, that he was his father’s own son, and a pregnant precedent in all his discipline of state: he was a courtier from his cradle, which might have made him betimes; but he was at the age of twenty and upwards, and was far short of his after-proof, but exposed, and by change of climate he soon made show what he was and would be.
He lived in those times wherein the Queen had most need and use of men of weight; and, amongst many able ones, this was chief, as having taken his sufficiency from his instruction who begat him, the tutorship of the times and court, which were then academies of Art and Cunning. For such was the Queen’s condition, from the tenth or twelfth of her reign, that she had the happiness to stand up, whereof there is a former intimation, environed with many and more enemies, and assaulted with more dangerous practices, than any prince of her times, and of many ages before: where we must not, in this her preservation, attribute it to human power, for that in his own omnipotent providence God ordained those secondary means, as instruments of the work, by an evident manifestation of the same work, which she acted; and it was a well-pleasing work of his own, out of a peculiar care he had decreed the protection of the work-mistress, and, thereunto, added his abundant blessing upon all and whatsoever she undertook: which is an observation of satisfaction to myself, that she was in the right; though, to others now breathing under the same form and frame of her government, it may not seem an animadversion of their worth: but I leave them to the peril of their own folly, and so come again to this great minister of state and the staff of the Queen’s declining age; who, though his little crooked person could not promise any great supportation, yet it carried thereon a head and a head-piece of a vast content; and therein, it seems, Nature was so diligent to complete one and the best part about him, as the perfection of his memory and intellectuals; she took care also of his senses, and to put him in lynceos oculos, or, to pleasure him the more, borrowed of Argos, so to give unto him a prospective sight; and, for the rest of his sensitive virtues, his predecessor, Walsingham, had left him a receipt to smell out what was done in the conclave.
And his good old father was so well seen in mathematics, that he could tell you, throughout Spain, every part, every port, every ship, with its burden; whither bound, what preparations, what impediments for diversion of enterprises, counsel, and resolution; and, that we may see, as in a little map, how docible this little man was, I will present a taste of his abilities.
My Lord of Devonshire, upon certainty that the Spaniards would invade Ireland with a strong army, had written very earnestly to the Queen and to the Council for such supplies to be timely sent over, that might enable him both to march up to the Spaniard, if he did land, and follow on his prosecution without diverting his intentions against the rebels. Sir Robert Cecil, besides the general dispatch of the Council (as he often did) writ thus in private, for these two then began to love dearly:
“My lord, out of the abundance of my affection, and the care I have of your well-doing, I must in private put you out of doubt or fear, for I know you cannot be sensible, otherwise than in the way of honour, that the Spaniards will not come unto you this year; for I have it from my own, what his preparations are in all his parts, and what he can do; for, be confident, he beareth up a reputation, by seeming to embrace more than he can gripe; but, the next year, be assured, he will cast over to you some forlorn troops, which, how they may be reinforced beyond his present ability, and his first intention, I cannot, as yet, make any certain judgment; but I believe, out of my intelligence, that you may expect the landing in Munster, and, the more to distract you, in several places, as, at Kinsale, Beerhaven, and Baltimore; where, you may be sure, coming from sea, they will first fortify, and learn the strength of the rebels, before they dare take the field. Howsoever, as I know you will not lessen your care, neither your defences, whatsoever lies in my power to do you and the public service, rest thereof assured.”
And to this I could add much more, but it may (as it is) suffice to present much of his abilities in the pen, that he was his crafts-master in foreign intelligence, and for domestic affairs. As he was one of those that sat at the helm to the last of the Queen, so was he none of the least in skill, and in the true use of the compass; and so I shall only vindicate the scandal of his death, and conclude him; for he departed at St. Margaret’s, near Marlborough, at his return from Bath, as my Lord Vice-Chamberlain, my Lord Clifford, and myself, his son, and son-in-law, and many more can witness: but that the day before, he swooned on the way, and was taken out of his litter, and laid into his coach, was a truth out of which that falsehood concerning the manner of his death had its derivation, though nothing to the purpose, or to the prejudice of his worth.
Sir Francis Vere was of that ancient, and of the most noble extract of the earls of Oxford; and it may be a question whether the nobility of his house, or the honour of his achievements, might most commend him, but that we have an authentic rule:
“Nam genus et proavos et quæ nos non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco.”
For though he was an honourable slip of that ancient tree of nobility, which was no disadvantage to his virtue, yet he brought more glory to the name of Vere than he took of blood from the family.
He was, amongst all the Queen’s swordsmen, inferior to none, but superior to many; of whom it may be said, to speak much of him were the way to leave out somewhat that might add to his praise, and to forget more than would make to his honour.
I find not that he came much to the court, for he lived almost perpetually in the camp; but, when he died, no man had more of the Queen’s favour, and none less envied, for he seldom troubled it with the noise and alarms of supplications; his way was another sort of undermining.
They report that the Queen, as she loved martial men, would court this gentleman, as soon as he appeared in her presence; and surely he was a soldier of great worth and command, thirty years in the service of the States, and twenty years over the English in chief, as the Queen’s general: and he, that had seen the battle of Newport, might there best have taken him and his noble brother, [189a] the Lord of Tilbury, to the life.
My Lord of Worcester I have here put last, but not least in the Queen’s favour; he was of the ancient and noble blood of the Beauforts, and of her [189b] grandfather’s kin by the mother, which the Queen could never forget, especially where there was an incurrence of old blood with fidelity, a mixture which ever sorted with the Queen’s nature; and though there might hap somewhat in this house, which might invert her grace, though not to speak of my lord himself but in due reverence and honour, I mean contrariety or suspicion in religion; yet the Queen ever respected his house, and principally his noble blood, whom she first made Master of her Horse, and then admitted him of her Council of State.
In his youth, part whereof he spent before he came to reside at court, he was a very fine gentleman, and the best horseman and tilter of the times, which were then the manlike and noble recreations of the court, and such as took up the applause of men, as well as the praise and commendation of ladies; and when years had abated those exercises of honour, he grew then to be a faithful and profound counsellor; and as I have placed him last, so was he the last liver of all her servants of her favour, and had the honour to see his renowned mistress, and all of them, laid in the places of their rests; and for himself, after a life of very noble and remarkable reputation, and in a peaceable old age, a fate that I make the last, and none of my slightest observations, which befell not many of the rest, for they expired like unto a light blown out with the snuff stinking, not commendably extinguished, and with an offence to the standers-by. And thus I have delivered up my poor essay, or little draft of this great princess and her times, with the servants of her state and favour. I cannot say I have finished it, for I know how defective and imperfect it is, as limned only in the original nature, not without the active blessings, and so left it as a task fitter for remoter times, and the sallies of some bolder pencil to correct that which is amiss, and draw the rest up to life, than for me to have endeavoured it. I took it in consideration, how I might have dashed into it much of the stain of pollution, and thereby have defaced that little which is done; for I profess I have taken care to master my pen, that I might not err animo, [191] or of set purpose discolour each or any of the parts thereof, otherwise than in concealment. Haply there are some who will not approve of this modesty, but will censure it for pusillanimity, and, with the cunning artist, attempt to draw their line further out at length, and upon this of mine, which way (with somewhat more ease) it may be effected; for that the frame is ready made to their hands, and then haply I could draw one in the midst of theirs, but that modesty in me forbids the defacements in men departed, their posterity yet remaining, enjoying the merit of their virtues, and do still live in their honour. And I had rather incur the censure of abruption, than to be conscious and taken in the manner, sinning by eruption, or trampling on the graves of persons at rest, which living we durst not look in the face, nor make our addresses unto them, otherwise than with due regard to their honours, and reverence to their virtues.
The accomplished, the brave, and romantic Lord Herbert of Cherbury was born in this reign, and laid the foundation of that admirable learning of which he was afterwards a complete master.
[14] His name was Sir Thomas Falconer.
[17] This is not true, for her legitimacy was with good reason contested.
[27] This is a mistake; her epitaph says stipendia constituit tribus hoc coenobio monachis et doctori grammatices apud Wynbourne.
[29] Sir Giles Dawbney; he was not Earl of Bridgewater, not a Lord.
[34] This romantic inscription probably alluded to Philip II., who wooed the Queen after her sister’s death; and to the destruction of his Armada.
[36a] This probably alluded to the woollen manufacture; Stow mentions his riding through the Cloth Fair on the Eve of St. Bartholomew.
[36b] The collar of SS.
[46] He probably means rushes.
[49] Her father had been treated with the same deference. It is mentioned by Foxe in his “Acts and Monuments,” that when the Lord Chancellor went to apprehend Queen Catherine Parr, he spoke to the King on his knees. King James I. suffered his courtiers to omit it.
[53] Lord Treasurer Burleigh died August 4, 1598.
[56] She was the daughter, sister, and aunt, of Sir William, Henry, and Sir Philip Sidney.
[68] This was a strange blunder to be made so near the time, about so remarkable a person, unless he concluded that whoever displeased Henry VIII. was of course put to death.
[69] This is a mistake; it was the surcoat of Edward IV., enriched with rubies, and was preserved here till the civil war.
[70] This is confounded with the Round Tower.
[71] It is not clear what the author means by hypocaustis; I have translated it bathing-rooms; it might mean only chambers with stoves.
[73] The original is optici; it is impossible to guess what colour he meant.
[76] Here are several mistakes.
[84] Those marked with a † are extinct, or forfeited.
[91] This is another most inaccurate account: the murderers of Becket were Tracy, Morville, Britton, and Fitzurse.
[99] Queen Mary.
[101] Viz., Popish.
[102] “This is the work of the Lord, and it is wonderful in our sight.”
[103] “I have chosen God for my help.”
[105] i.e., “I will confine you.”
[106] The Irish rebel.
[108] al. not.
[110] al. horse.
[112a] al. find
[112b] al. say.
[112c] The First.
[113a] Fathers.
[113b] During Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
[113c] Charles I.
[115] Burleigh, Leicester, and Walsingham.
[116] al. were without.
[117a] The eldest son.
[117b] Existing.
[117c] In which she ruled.
[118] Mary.
[119] al. amused.
[122a] Camp.
[122b] Council.
[122c] In the first year of Queen Mary.
[124a] Of his Privy Council.
[124b] The Duke of Somerset.
[126] al. humours.
[127a] Of which you have an account hereafter in this small pamphlet.
[127b] In a future state.
[127c] The art of poisoning.
[127d] Martial state.
[128] Leicester’s.
[129] al. supported by.
[130a] An estate.
[130b] Under Edward VI.
[131a] Elizabeth’s.
[131b] Counsellors.
[132] Because notwithstanding many dissented from the Reformed Establishment in many points of doctrine, and still acknowledged the Pope’s infallibility and supremacy, yet they looked not upon these doctrines and discipline to be fundamentals, or without which they could not be saved; and, therefore, continued to assemble and baptise and communicate for the space of ten years in the Reformed Church of England.
[133] The Pope.
[136] Beginning.
[138] Poland.
[140a] Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, amused King James I. with much dissimulation.
[140b] The traitor, of whom hereafter in this collection.
[144] al. had
[165] Instability.
[166a] James I.
[166b] He dishonourably cut off this good servant’s head, and seized upon his estate.
[174] al. blew.
[181] As related before, in the account of Secretary William Cecil.
[189a] Horatio.
[189b] Elizabeth’s.
[191] Willingly.
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