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Title: Travels in England During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, and Fragmenta Regalia; Or, Observations on Queen Elizabeth, Her Times and Favourites
Author: Hentzner, Paul, Naunton, Robert, Sir
Language: English
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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.
* * * * *
TRAVELS IN ENGLAND
DURING THE
_REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH_
BY
PAUL HENTZNER.
WITH
FRAGMENTA REGALIA;
_Or_, _Observations on Queen Elizabeth’s Times and Favourites_.
By SIR ROBERT NAUNTON.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1892.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
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.
TRAVELS IN ENGLAND.
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 the 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 her 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.
A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF ENGLAND.
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.
OF THE MANNERS OF THE ENGLISH.
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!”
THE ILLUSTRIOUS FAMILIES OF ENGLAND
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.
FRAGMENTA REGALIA;
_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.
_A Major Palatii_.
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 or 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.
LEICESTER.
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_.
RADCLIFFE, EARL OF SUSSEX.
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.”
SECRETARY WILLIAM CECIL.
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.
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.
WALSINGHAM.
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.”
WILLOUGHBY.
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.
BACON.
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.
NORRIS.
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.
KNOWLES.
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.
PERROT.
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.
HATTON.
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.”
EFFINGHAM.
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.
PACKINGTON.
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.
HUNSDOWN.
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.
RALEIGH.
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}
GREVILLE.
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.
ESSEX.
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.
BUCKHURST.
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.
MOUNTJOY.
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.
ROBERT CECIL.
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.
VERE.
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.
WORCESTER.
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.
LORD HERBERT.
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.
FOOTNOTES.
{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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