FROM 1593 TO 1597. A parliament.—Haughty language of the queen.—Committal of Wentworth and other members—of Morice.—His letter to lord Burleigh.—Act to retain subjects in their due obedience.—Debates on the subsidy.—Free speeches of Francis Bacon and sir E. Hobby.—Queen's speech.—Notice of Francis Bacon—of Anthony Bacon.—Connexion of the two Bacons with Essex.—Francis disappointed of preferment.—Conduct of Burleigh towards him.—Of Fulk Greville.—Reflections.—Conversion of Henry IV.—Behaviour of Elizabeth.—War in Bretagne.—Anecdote of the queen and sir C. Blount.—Affair of Dr. Lopez.—Squire's attempt on the life of the queen.—Notice of Ferdinando earl of Derby.—Letter of the queen to lord Willoughby.—Particulars of sir Walter Raleigh.—His expedition to Guiana.—Unfortunate enterprise of Drake and Hawkins.—Death of Hawkins.—Death and character of Drake.—Letters of Rowland Whyte.—Case of the earl of Hertford.—Anecdote of Essex.—Queen at the lord keeper's.—Anecdote of the queen and bishop Rudd.—Case of sir T. Arundel. Notwithstanding all the frugal arts of Elizabeth, the state of her finances compelled her in the spring of 1593 to summon a parliament. It was four entire years since this assembly had last met: but her majesty took care to let the commons know, that the causes of offence which had then occurred were still fresh in her memory, and that her resolution to preserve It even appeared, that an apprehension lest her present necessities might embolden the parliament to treat her despotic mandates with a deference less profound than formerly, irritated her temper, and prompted her to assume a more haughty and menacing style than her habitual study of popularity had hitherto permitted her to employ. In answer to the three customary requests made by the speaker, for liberty of speech, freedom from arrests, and access to her person, she replied by her lord keeper, That such liberty of speech as the commons were justly entitled to,—liberty, namely, of aye and no,—she was willing to grant; but by no means a liberty for every one to speak what he listed. And if any idle heads should be found careless enough of their own safety to attempt innovations in the state, or reforms in the church, she laid her injunctions on the speaker to refuse the bills offered for such purposes till they should have been examined by those who were better qualified to judge of these matters. She promised that she would not impeach the liberty of their persons, provided they did not permit themselves to imagine that any neglect of duty would be allowed to pass unpunished under shelter of this privilege; and she engaged not to deny them access to her person on weighty affairs, and at convenient seasons, when she should have leisure from other important business of state. But threats alone were not found sufficient to restrain all attempts on the part of the commons to Soon after, James Morice, an eminent lawyer, who was attorney of the court of Wards and chancellor of the Duchy, made a motion for redress of the abuses in the bishops' courts, and especially of the monstrous ones committed under the High Commission. Several members supported the motion: but the queen, sending in wrath for the speaker, required him to deliver up to her the bill; reminded him of her strict injunctions at the opening of the sessions, and testified her extreme indignation and surprise at the boldness of the commons in intermeddling with subjects which she had expressly forbidden them to discuss. She informed him, that it lay in her power to summon parliaments and to dismiss them; and to sanction or to reject any determination of theirs; that she had As for Morice, he was seized by a serjeant at arms in the house itself, stripped of his offices, rendered incapable of practising as a lawyer, and committed to prison, whence he soon after addressed to Burleigh the following high-minded appeal: "Right honorable my very good lord; "That I am no more hardly handled, I impute next unto God to your honorable good will and favor; for although I am assured that the cause I took in hand is good and honest, yet I believe that, besides your lordship and that honorable person your son, I have never an honorable friend. But no matter; for the best causes seldom find the most friends, especially having many, and those mighty, enemies. "I see no cause in my conscience to repent me of that I have done, nor to be dismayed, although grieved, by this my restraint of liberty; for I stand for the maintenance of the honor of God and of my prince, and for the preservation of public justice and the liberties of my country against wrong and oppression; being well content, at her majesty's good pleasure and commandment, (whom I beseech God long to preserve in all princely felicity,) to suffer and abide much more. But I had thought that the judges ecclesiastical, being charged in the great council of the "There is fault found with me that I, as a private person, preferred not my complaint to her majesty. Surely, my lord, your wisdom can conceive what a proper piece of work I had then made of that: The worst prison had been I think too good for me, since now (sustaining the person of a public counsellor of the realm speaking for her majesty's prerogatives, which by oath I am bound to assist and maintain) I cannot escape displeasure and restraint of liberty. Another fault, or error, is objected; in that I preferred these causes before the matters delivered from her majesty were determined. My good lord, to have stayed so long, I verily think, had been to come too late. Bills of assize of bread, shipping of fish, pleadings, and such like, may be offered and received into the house, and no offence to her majesty's royal commandment (being but as the tything of mint); but the great causes of the law and public justice may not be touched without offence. Well, my good lord, be it so; yet I hope her majesty and you of her honorable privy-council will at length thoroughly consider of these things, lest, as heretofore we prayed, From the tyranny "Pardon my plain speech, I humbly beseech your honor, for it proceedeth from an upright heart and sound conscience, although in a weak and sickly body: and by God's grace, while life doth last, which I hope now, after so many cracks and crazes, will not be long, I will not be ashamed in good and lawful sort to strive for the freedom of conscience, public justice, and the liberty of my country. And you, my good lord, to whose hand the stern of this commonwealth is chiefly committed, I humbly beseech, (as I doubt not but you do,) graciously respect both me and the causes I have preferred, and be a mean to pacify and appease her majesty's displeasure conceived against me her poor, yet faithful, servant and subject." &c. In October following, the earl of Essex ventured to mention to her majesty this persecuted patriot amongst lawyers qualified for the post of attorney-general, when "her majesty acknowledged his gifts, but said his speaking against her in such manner as he had done, should be a bar against any preferment at her hands." He is said to have been kept for some years a prisoner in Tilbury castle; and whether he ever recovered his liberty may seem doubtful, since he died in February 1596, aged 48. The house of commons, unacquainted as yet with its own strength, submitted without further question By this law, any person above sixteen who should refuse during a month to attend the established worship was to be imprisoned; when, should he further persist in his refusal during three months longer, he must abjure the realm; but in case of his rejecting this alternative, or returning from banishment, his offence was declared felony without benefit of clergy. The business of supplies was next taken into consideration, and the commons voted two subsidies and four fifteenths; but this not appearing to the ministry sufficient for the exigencies of the state, the peers were induced to request a conference with the lower house for the purpose of proposing the augmentation of the grant to four subsidies and six fifteenths. The commons resented at first this interference with their acknowledged privilege of originating all money bills; but dread of the well-known consequences of offending their superiors, prevailed at length over their indignation; and first the conference, then the additional supply, was acceded to. Some debate, however, arose on the time to be allowed for the payment of so heavy an imposition; and the illustrious Francis Bacon, then member for Middlesex, enlarged upon the distresses of the people, and the danger lest the house, by this grant, should be establishing a precedent against themselves and their posterity, in a speech to which his courtly kinsman sir Robert Cecil replied In this parting harangue to her parliament, the queen, little touched by the unprecedented liberality of the supplies which it had granted her, and the passing of her favorite bill against the schismatics and recusants, animadverted in severe terms on the oppositionists, reiterated the lofty claims with which she had opened the sessions, and pronounced an eulogium on the justice and moderation of her own government. She also entered into the grounds of her quarrel with the king of Spain; showed herself undismayed by the apprehension of any thing which his once dreaded power could attempt against her; and characteristically added, in adverting to the defeat of the armada, the following energetic warning: "I am informed, that when he attempted this last invasion, some upon the sea coast forsook their towns, fled up higher into the country, and left all naked and exposed to his entrance. The appearance of Francis Bacon in the house of commons affords a fit occasion of tracing the previous history of this wonderful man, and of explaining his peculiar situation between the two great factions of the court and the influence exerted by this circumstance on his character and after fortunes. That early promise of his genius which in childhood attracted the admiring observation of Elizabeth herself, had been confirmed by every succeeding year. In the thirteenth of his age, an earlier period than was even then customary, he was entered, together with his elder brother Anthony, of Trinity college Cambridge. At this seat of learning he remained three years, during which, besides exhibiting his powers of memory and application by great proficiency in the ordinary studies of the place, he evinced the extraordinary precocity of his penetrating and original intellect, by forming the first sketch of a new system of philosophy in opposition to that of Aristotle. His father, designing him for public life, now sent him to complete his education in the house of sir Amias Paulet, the queen's ambassador in France. He gained the confidence of this able and honorable man to such a degree, as to be intrusted by him with a mission to her majesty requiring secrecy and dispatch, of which he acquitted himself with great applause. Returning to France, he engaged in several excursions through its different provinces, and diligently occupied For Anthony Bacon, the eldest of his sons by his second marriage, the lord keeper had handsomely provided by the gift of his manor of Gorhambury, and he had amassed a considerable sum with which he was about to purchase another estate for the portion of the younger, when death interrupted his design; and only one-fifth of this money falling to Francis under the provisions of his father's will, he unexpectedly found himself compelled to resort to the practice of some gainful profession for his support. That of the law naturally engaged his preference. He entered himself of Gray's Inn, and passed within its precincts several studious years, during which he made himself master of the general principles of jurisprudence, as well as of the rules of legal practice in his own country; and he also found leisure to trace the outlines of his new philosophy in a work not now known to exist in a separate state, but incorporated probably in one of his more finished productions. In 1588 her majesty, desirous perhaps of encouraging a more entire devotion of his talents to the study of the law, distinguished him by the title of her Counsel extraordinary,—an office of little emolument, though Burleigh was no philosopher, though a lover of learning, and it could not perhaps be expected that Some years before this period, Francis Bacon had become known to the earl of Essex, whose genuine love of merit induced him to offer him his friendship and protection. The eagerness with which these were accepted had deeply offended the Cecils; and their displeasure was about this time increased, on seeing Anthony Bacon, by his brother's persuasion, enlist himself under the banner of the same political leader. Anthony, whose singular history is on many accounts worthy of notice, was a man of an inquisitive and crafty turn of mind, and seemingly born for a politician. He, like his brother, had been induced to pay a visit to France, as the completion of a liberal education; and not finding himself involved in the same pecuniary difficulties, he had been enabled to make his abode in that country of much longer duration. From Paris, which he first visited in 1579, he proceeded to Bourges, Geneva, Montpelier, Marseilles, Montauban and Bordeaux, in each of which The earl had by this time learned, that there was no surer mode of recommending himself to her majesty, and persuading her of his extraordinary zeal for her service, than to provide her with a constant supply of authentic and early intelligence from the various countries of Europe, on which she kept a vigilant and jealous eye. He was accordingly occupied in establishing news-agents in every quarter, and the opportune offers of Anthony Bacon were accepted by him with the utmost eagerness. A connexion was immediately established between them, which ripened with time into so confidential an intimacy, that in 1595 the earl prevailed on Mr. Bacon to accept of apartments in Essex-house, which he continued to occupy till commanded by her majesty to quit them on the breaking out of the last rash enterprise of his patron. Struck with the boundless affection manifested by The spirit of Bacon was neither a courageous nor a lofty one. He too soon repented of his generous exertions in the popular cause, and sought to atone for them by so entire a submission of himself to her majesty, accompanied with such eloquent professions of duty, humility and profound respect, that we can scarcely doubt that a word of solicitation from the lips of Burleigh might have gained him an easy pardon. It is painful to think that any party jealousies, or any compliance with the malignant passions of his son, should so have poisoned the naturally friendly Fulk Greville was one of the few who did honor to themselves by becoming at this time the advocate of At the period when Bacon first appealed to the friendship of the lord treasurer in the letter above cited, he was already in the thirtieth year of his age, and had borne for two years the character of queen's counsel extraordinary; but to the courts of law he was so entire a stranger that it was not till one or two years afterwards that we find him pleading his first cause. It was pretty evident therefore in 1592, when he sought the office of attorney-general, that necessity alone had made it the object of his wishes; and his known inexperience in the practice of the law might reasonably justify in the queen and her ministers some scruple of placing him in so responsible a post. As a philosopher indeed, no encouragement could exceed his deserts; but this was a character which very few even of the learned of that day were capable of appretiating. Physical science, disgraced by its alliance That general "Instauration" of the sciences which the mighty genius of Bacon had projected, was a scheme too vast and too profound to be comprehended by the minds of Elizabeth and her statesmen; and as it was not of a nature to address itself to their passions and interests, we must not wonder if they should have regarded it with indifference. At this period, too, it existed only in embryo; and so little was the public intellect prepared to seize the first hints thrown out by its illustrious author, that even many years afterwards, when his system had been produced to the world nearly in a state of maturity, the general sentiment seems pretty much to have corresponded with the judgement of king James, "that the philosophy of Bacon was like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." All these considerations, however, are scarcely sufficient to vindicate the boasted discernment of Elizabeth from disgrace, in having suffered the most illustrious sage of her reign and country, who was at the same time its brightest wit and most accomplished orator, known to her from his birth, and the son of a wise and faithful servant whose memory she held in honor,—to languish in poverty and discouragement; The king of France found it expedient about this time to declare himself a convert to the church of Rome. For this change of religion, whether sincere or otherwise, he might plead, not only the personal motive of gaining possession of the throne of his inheritance, which seemed to be denied to him on other terms, but the patriotic one of rescuing his exhausted country from the miseries of a protracted civil war; and whatever might be the decision of a scrupulous moralist on the case, it is certain that Elizabeth at least had small title to reprobate a compliance of which, under the reign of her sister, she had herself set the example. But the character of the protestant heroine with which circumstances had invested her, obliged her to overlook this inconsistency; and as demonstrations cost her little, she not only indicted on the occasion a solemn letter of reproof to her ally, but actually professed herself so deeply wounded by his dereliction of principle, that it was necessary for her to tranquillize her mind by the perusal of many pious works, and the study of Boethius on consolation, which she even undertook the task of translating. Essex, whom she honored with a sight of her performance, was adroit enough to suggest to the royal author, as a principal motive of his urgency with her to restore Francis Bacon to her favor, the earnest desire which he felt that her majesty's excellent translations should be viewed by those most capable of appretiating their merits. The indignation of Elizabeth against Henry's apostasy was not however so violent as to exclude the politic consideration, that it was still her interest to support the king of France against the king of Spain; and besides continuing her wonted supplies, she soon after entered with him into a new engagement, purporting that they should never make peace but by mutual consent. Bretagne was still the scene of action to the English auxiliaries. Under sir John Norris, their able commander, they shared in the service of wresting from the Spaniards, by whom they had been garrisoned, the towns of Morlaix, Quimpercorentin and Brest; their valor was every where conspicuous; and the eagerness of the young courtiers of Elizabeth to share in the glory of these enterprises rose to a passion, which she sometimes thought it necessary to repress with a show of severity; as in the following instance related by Naunton. Sir Charles Blount, afterwards lord Montjoy, "having twice or thrice stolen away into Bretagne (where under sir John Norris he had then a company) without the queen's leave and privity, she sent a messenger 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 of reviling, demanding 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 it until you are knocked on the head, as that inconsiderate fellow Sidney was. You shall go when I send you, and in the Philip II., unable to win glory or advantage against Elizabeth in open and honorable warfare, sought a base revenge upon her by proposing through secret agents vast rewards to any who could be brought to attempt her destruction. It was no easy task to discover persons sufficiently rash, as well as wicked, to undertake from motives purely mercenary a villany of which the peril was so appalling; but at length Fuentes and Ibarra, joint governors of the Netherlands, succeeded in bribing Dr. Lopez, domestic physician to the queen, to mix poison in her medicine. Essex, whose watchfulness over the life of his sovereign was remarkable, whilst his intelligences were comparable in extent and accuracy to those of Walsingham himself, was the first to give notice of this atrocious plot. At his instance Lopez was apprehended, examined before himself, the treasurer, the lord admiral, and Robert Cecil, and committed to custody in the earl's house. But nothing decisive appearing on his first examination, Robert Cecil took occasion to represent the charge as groundless; and her majesty, sending in heat for Essex, called him "rash and temerarious youth," and reproached him for bringing on slight grounds so heinous a suspicion upon an innocent man. The earl, incensed to find his diligent service thus repaid, through the successful artifice of his enemy, quitted the presence in a paroxysm of rage, and, according to his practice on similar occasions, shut Further interrogatories, mingled probably with menaces of the torture, brought Lopez to confess the fact of his having received the king of Spain's bribe; but he persisted in denying that it was ever in his thoughts to perpetrate the crime. This subterfuge did not, however, save him from an ignominious death, which he shared with two other persons whom Fuentes and Ibarra had hired for a similar undertaking. The Spanish court disdained to return any satisfactory answer to the complaints of Elizabeth respecting these designs against her life; but either shame, or more likely the fear of reprisals, seems to have deterred it from any repetition of experiments so perilous. About two years afterwards, however, an English Jesuit named Walpole, who was settled in Spain and intimately connected with the noted father Parsons, instigated an attempt worthy of record, partly as a curious instance of the exaggerated ideas then prevalent of the force of poisons. In the last voyage of Drake to the West Indies, a small vessel of his was captured and carried into a port of Spain, on board of which was one Squire, formerly a purveyor for the queen's stables. With this prisoner Walpole, as a diligent servant of his Church, undertook to make himself acquainted; and finding him a resolute fellow, and of capacity and education above his rank, he spared no pains to convert him to popery. This step gained, Finally the worthy father presented to his disciple a packet of some poisonous preparation, which he enjoined him to take an opportunity of spreading on the pommel of the queen's saddle. The queen in mounting would transfer the ointment to her hand; with her hand she was likely to touch her mouth or nostrils; and such, as he averred, was the virulence of the poison that certain death must follow. Squire returned to England, enlisted for the Cadiz expedition, and on the eve of its sailing took the preparation and disposed of it as directed. Desirous of adding to his merits, he found means during the voyage to anoint in like manner the arms of the earl of Essex's chair. The failure of the application in both instances greatly surprised him. To the Jesuit it appeared so unaccountable, that he was persuaded Squire had deceived him; and actuated at once by the desire of punishing his defection, and the fear of his betraying such secrets of the party as had been confided to him, he consummated his villany by artfully conveying to The Jesuits are supposed to have employed more efficacious instruments for the destruction of Ferdinando earl of Derby, who died in April 1594. This nobleman had the misfortune to be grandson of Eleanor countess of Cumberland, the younger daughter of Mary queen dowager of France and sister of Henry VIII. by her second husband Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk; and although the children of lady Catherine Grey countess of Hertford obviously stood before him in this line of succession, occasion was taken by the Romish party from this descent to urge him to assume the title of king of England. One Hesket, a zealous agent of the Jesuits and popish fugitives, was employed to tamper with the earl, who on one hand undertook that his claim should be supported by powerful succours from abroad, and on the other menaced him with certain and speedy death in case of his rejecting the proposal or betraying its authors. But the earl was too loyal to hesitate a moment. He revealed the whole plot to government, and Hesket on his information was convicted of treason and suffered death. The mother of this earl of Derby died two years after. At one period of her life we find her much in favor with the queen, whom she was accustomed to attend in quality of first lady of the blood-royal; but she had subsequently excited her majesty's suspicions by her imprudent consultations of fortune-tellers and diviners, on the delicate subject, doubtless, of succession to the crown. The animosity between Elizabeth and her savage adversary the king of Spain was continually becoming more fierce and more inveterate. Undeterred by "Good Peregrine, "We are not a little glad that by your journey you have received such good fruit of amendment, especially when we consider how great a vexation it is to a mind devoted to actions of honor, to be restrained by any indisposition of body from following those courses which, to your own reputation and our great satisfaction, you have formerly performed. And therefore "Interpret this our plainness, we pray you, to an extraordinary estimation of you, for it is not common with us to deal so freely with many; and believe that you shall ever find us both ready and willing, on all occasions, to yield you the fruits of that interest which your endeavours have purchased for you in our opinion and estimation. Not doubting but when you have with moderation made trial of the successes of these your sundry peregrinations, you will find as great comfort to spend your days at home as heretofore you have done; of which we do wish you full measure, howsoever you shall have cause of abode or return. Given under our signet at our manor of Nonesuch, "Your most loving sovereign "E. R." We do not perceive the effects of this letter in the employment of lord Willoughby in any of the expeditions against Spain which ensued; but he was afterwards appointed governor of Berwick, and held that situation till his death in 1601. Sir Walter Raleigh, that splendid genius with a sordid soul, whom a romantic spirit of adventure and a devouring thirst of gain equally stimulated to activity, had unexpectedly found his advancement at court impeded, after the first steps, usually accounted the most difficult, had been speedily and fortunately surmounted. Several conspiring causes might however be assigned for this check in his career of fortune. His high pretensions to the favor of the queen, joined to his open adherence to the party of sir Robert Cecil, had provoked the hostility of Essex; who, in defiance of him, at one of the ostentatious tournaments of the day, is said to have "filled the tilt-yard with two thousand orange-tawny feathers," the distinction doubtless of his followers and retainers. He had incurred the resentment of more than one of the order of bishops, by his ceaseless and shameless solicitations of grants and leases out of the property of the Church. In Ireland, he had rendered sir William Russell the lord deputy his enemy by various demonstrations of opposition and rivalry; at court, his abilities and his first rapid successes with her majesty had stirred up "Sir Walter Raleigh was the first, as I have heard, that ventured to tack about and sail aloof from the beaten track of the schools; who, upon the discovery of so apparent an error as a torrid zone, intended to proceed in an inquisition after more solid truths; till the mediation of some whose livelihood lay in hammering shrines for this superannuated study, possessed queen Elizabeth that such doctrine was against God no less than her father's honor; whose faith, if he The business of Mrs. Throgmorton, and the disputes arising out of the sale of the captured carrack, succeeded, to inflame still more the ill-humour of the queen; and Raleigh, finding every thing adverse to him at court, resolved to quit the scene for a time, in the hope of returning with better omens, when absence and dangers should again have endeared him to his offended mistress, and when the splendor of his foreign successes might enable him to impose silence on the clamors of malignity at home. The interior of the pathless wilds of Guiana had been reported to abound in those exhaustless mines of the precious metals which filled the imaginations of the earliest explorers of the New World, and, to their ignorant cupidity, appeared the only important object of research and acquisition in regions where the eye of political wisdom would have discerned so many superior inducements to colonization or to conquest. The fabulous city of El Dorado,—which became for some time proverbial in our language to express the utmost profusion and magnificence of wealth,—was placed by the romantic narrations of voyagers somewhere in the centre of this vast country, and nothing could be more flattering to the mania of the age than the project of exploring its hidden treasures. A still more unfortunate result awaited an expedition of greater consequence, which sailed during the same year, under Hawkins and Drake, against the settlements of Spanish America. Repeated attacks had at length taught the Spaniards to stand on their defence; and the English were first repulsed from Porto Rico, and afterwards obliged to relinquish the attempt of marching across the isthmus of Darien to Panama. But the great and irreparable misfortune of the enterprise was the loss, first of the gallant sir The character of Francis Drake was remarkable not alone for those constitutional qualities of valor, industry, capacity and enterprise, which the history of his exploits would necessarily lead us to infer, but for virtues founded on principle and reflection which render it in a high degree the object of respect and moral approbation. It is true that his aggressions on the Spanish settlements were originally founded on a vague notion of reprisals, equally irreconcilable to public law and private equity. But with the exception of this error,—which may find considerable palliation in the deficient education of the man, the prevalent opinions of the day, and the peculiar animosity against Philip II. cherished in the bosom of every protestant Englishman,—the conduct of Drake appears to demand almost unqualified commendation. It was by sobriety, by diligence in the concerns of his employers, and by a tried integrity, that he early raised himself from the humble station of an ordinary seaman to the command of a vessel. When placed in authority over others, he showed himself humane and considerate; his treatment of his prisoners was With the profits of one of his earliest voyages, in which he captured the town of Venta Cruz and made prize of a string of fifty mules laden with silver, he fitted out three stout frigates and sailed with them to Ireland, where he served as a volunteer under Walter earl of Essex, and performed many brilliant actions. After the capture of a rich Spanish carrack at the Terceras in 1587, he undertook at his own expense to bring to the town of Plymouth, which he represented in parliament, a supply of spring water, of which necessary article it suffered a great deficiency; this he accomplished by means of a canal or aqueduct above twenty miles in length. Drake incurred some blame in the expedition to Portugal for failing to bring his ships up the river to Lisbon, according to his promise to sir John Norris, the general; but on explaining the case before the privy-council on his return, he was entirely acquitted by them; having made it appear that, under all the circumstances, to have carried the fleet up the Tagus would have been to expose it to damage without the possibility of any benefit to the service. By his Sir John Baskerville, who succeeded by the death of Drake to the command of the unfortunate expedition to which he had fallen a sacrifice, encountered the Spanish fleet off Cuba in an action, which, though less decisive on the English side than might have been hoped, left at least no ground of triumph to the enemy. Meantime the court was by no means barren of incident; and we are fortunate in possessing a minute and authentic journal of its transactions in a series of letters addressed to sir Robert Sidney governor of In October 1595 Mr. Whyte mentions the following abominable instance of tyranny. That the earl of Hertford had been sent for by a messenger and committed to custody in his own house, because it had appeared by a case found among the papers of a Dr. Aubrey, that he had formerly taken the opinions of civilians on the validity of his first marriage, and caused a record of it to be secretly put into the court of Arches. Whyte adds significantly, that the earl was accounted one of the wealthiest subjects in England. Soon after, his lordship was committed to the Tower; and it was said that orders were given that his son, who since the establishment of the marriage had borne the title of lord Beauchamp, should henceforth be again called Mr. Seymour. Several lawyers and other persons were also imprisoned for a short time about this matter, under what law, or pretext of law, it would be vain to inquire. Lady Hertford, though a sister of the lord admiral and nearly related to the queen, was for some time an unsuccessful suitor at court for the liberty of her lord. Her majesty however was graciously pleased to declare that "neither his life nor living should be called in question;"—as if both had been at her mercy! and though she would not consent to see the countess, she regularly sent Great uneasiness was given about this time to the earl of Essex by a book written in defence of the king of Spain's title to the English crown, which contained "dangerous praises of his valor and worthiness," inserted for the express purpose of exciting the jealousy of the queen and bringing him into disgrace. The work was shown him by Elizabeth herself. On coming from her presence he was observed to look "pale and wan," and going home he reported himself sick;—an expedient for working on the feelings of his sovereign, to which, notwithstanding the truth and honor popularly regarded as his characteristics, Essex is known to have frequently condescended. On this, as on most occasions, he found it successful: her majesty soon made him a consolatory visit; and in spite of the strenuous efforts of his enemies, this attempt to injure him only served to augment her affection and root him more firmly in her confidence. "Her majesty," says Whyte soon after, "is in very good health, and comes much abroad; upon Thursday she dined at Kew, at my lord keeper's house, (who lately obtained of her majesty his suit for one hundred pounds a year in fee-farm,) her entertainment The further Elizabeth descended into the vale of years, the stronger were her efforts to make ostentation of a youthful gaiety of spirits and an unfailing alacrity in the pursuit of pleasure; though avarice, the vice of age, mingled strangely with these her juvenile affectations. To remark to her the progress of time, was to wound her in the tenderest part, and not even from her ghostly counsellors would she endure a topic so offensive as the mention of her age: an anecdote to this effect belongs to the year 1596, and is found in the account of Rudd bishop of St. Davids given in Harrington's Brief View of the Church. "There is almost none that waited in queen Elizabeth's court and observed any thing, but can tell that it pleased her very much to seem, to be thought, and to be told that she looked young. The majesty and gravity of a sceptre borne forty-four years could not alter that nature of a woman in her: This notwithstanding, this good bishop being appointed to preach "The lord keeper Puckering, though reverencing the man much in his particular, yet for the present, to assuage the queen's displeasure, commanded him to keep his house for a time, which he did. But of a truth her majesty showed no ill nature in this, for within three days she was not only displeased at his restraint, but in my hearing rebuked a lady yet living for speaking A point of some importance to the peers of England was about this time brought to a final decision by the following circumstance. Sir Thomas, son and heir of sir Matthew Arundel of Wardour-castle, a young man of a courageous and enterprising disposition, going over to Germany, had been induced to engage as a volunteer in the wars of the emperor against the Turks; and in the assault of the city of Gran in Hungary had taken with his own hand a Turkish banner. For this and other good service, Rodolph the Second had been pleased to confer upon him the honor of count of the holy Roman empire, extending also, as usual, the title of counts and countesses to all his descendants for ever. On his return to England in the year following, the question arose whether this dignity, conferred by a foreign prince without the previous consent of his own sovereign, should entitle the bearer The peers naturally opposed a concession which tended to lessen the value of their privileges by rendering them accessible through foreign channels; and her majesty, being called upon to settle the debate, pronounced the following judgement. That the closest tie of affection subsisted between sovereigns and their subjects: that as chaste wives should fix their eyes upon their husbands alone, in like manner faithful subjects should only direct theirs towards the prince whom it had pleased God to set over them. And that she would not allow her sheep to be branded with the mark of a stranger, or be taught to follow the whistle of a foreign shepherd. And to this effect she wrote to the emperor, who by a special letter had recommended sir Thomas Arundel to her favor. The decision appears to have been reasonable and politic, and would at the time be regarded as peculiarly so in the instance of honors conferred on a catholic gentleman by a catholic prince. King James, however, created sir Thomas, lord Arundel of Wardour; and he seems to have borne in common speech, the title of count
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