CHAPTER XXIV.

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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 -332-
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her own prerogative in its rigor, and the ecclesiastical commission in all its terrors, was still inflexible.

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 -333-
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exercise their known rights and fulfil their duty to the country. Peter Wentworth, a member whose courageous and independent spirit had already drawn upon him repeated manifestations of royal displeasure, presented to the lord keeper a petition, praying that the upper house would join with the lower in a supplication to the queen for fixing the succession. Elizabeth, enraged at the bare mention of a subject so offensive to her, instantly committed to the Fleet prison Wentworth, sir Thomas Bromley who had seconded him, and two other members to whom he had imparted the business; and when the house was preparing to petition her for their release, some privy-councillors dissuaded the step, as one which could only prove injurious to these gentlemen by giving additional offence to her majesty.

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-334-
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at present called them together for the twofold purpose, of enacting further laws for the maintenance of religious conformity, and of providing for the national defence against Spain; and that these ought therefore to be the objects of their deliberations.

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-335-
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realm to be dishonorers of God and of her majesty, perverters of law and public justice, and wrong-doers unto the liberties and freedoms of all her majesty's subjects, by their extorted oaths, wrongful imprisonments, lawless subscription, and unjust absolutions, would rather have sought means to be cleared of this weighty accusation, than to shrowd themselves under the suppressing of the complaint and shadow of mine imprisonment.

"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-336-
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of the bishop of Rome, good Lord deliver us, we be compelled to say, From the tyranny of the clergy of England, good Lord deliver us.

"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.[113]

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-337-
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to regard as law the will of an imperious mistress, and passed with little opposition "An act to retain her majesty's subjects in their due obedience," which vied in cruelty with the noted Six Articles of her tyrannical father.

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-338-
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with much warmth, and of which her majesty showed a resentful remembrance on his appearing soon after as a candidate for the office of attorney-general. His cousin sir Edward Hobby also, whose speeches in the former parliament had been ill-received by certain great persons, took such a part in some of the questions now at issue between the crown and the commons, as procured him an imprisonment till the end of the sessions, when he was at length liberated; "but not," as Anthony Bacon wrote to his mother, "without a notable public disgrace laid upon him by her majesty's royal censure delivered amongst other things, by herself, after my lord keeper's speech[114]."

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.-339-
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But I swear unto you by God, if I knew those persons, or may know hereafter, I will make them know what it is to be fearful in so urgent a cause."

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-340-
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himself in the collection of facts and observations, which he afterwards threw together in a "Brief View of the State of Europe;" a work, however juvenile, which is said to exhibit much both of the peculiar spirit and of the method of its illustrious author. But the death of his father, in 1580, put an end to his travels, and cast a melancholy blight upon his opening prospects.

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 -341-
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valuable as an introduction to practice. But the genius of Bacon disdained to plod in the trammels of a laborious profession; he felt that it was given him for higher and larger purposes: yet perceiving, at the same time, that the narrowness of his circumstances would prove an insuperable bar to his ambition of becoming, as he once beautifully expressed it, "the servant of posterity," he thus, in 1591, solicited the patronage of his uncle lord Burleigh: "Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful; yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get: Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries, the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or, if one take it favorably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than a man's own; which is the thing I do greatly affect."

Burleigh was no philosopher, though a lover of learning, and it could not perhaps be expected that-342-
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he should at once perceive how eminently worthy was this laborer of the hire which he was reduced to solicit. He contented himself therefore with procuring for his kinsman the reversion of the place of register of the Star-chamber, worth about sixteen hundred pounds per annum. Of this office however, which might amply have satisfied the wants of a student, it was unfortunately near twenty years before Bacon obtained possession; and during this tedious time of expectation, he was wont to say, "that it was like another man's ground abutting upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn." He made however a grateful return to the lord treasurer for this instance of patronage, by composing an answer to a popish libel, entitled "A Declaration of the true Causes of the late Troubles," in which he warmly vindicated the conduct of this minister, of his own father, and of other members of the administration; not forgetting to make a high eulogium on the talents and dispositions of Robert Cecil,—now the most powerful instrument at court to serve or to injure. Unhappily for the fortunes of Bacon, and in some respects for his moral character also, this selfish and perfidious statesman was endowed with sufficient reach of intellect to form some estimate of the transcendent abilities of his kinsman; and struck with dread or envy, he seems to have formed a systematic design of impeding by every art his favor and advancement. Unmoved by the eloquent adulation with which Bacon sought to propitiate his regard, he took all occasions to represent him to the queen, and with some-343-
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degree of justice though more of malice, as a man of too speculative a turn to apply in earnest to the practical details of business; one moreover whose head was so filled with abstract and philosophical notions, that he would not fail to perplex any public affairs in which he might be permitted to take a lead. The effect of these suggestions on the mind of Elizabeth was greatly aggravated by the conduct of Bacon in the parliament of 1593, in consequence of which her majesty for a considerable time denied him that access to her person with which he had hitherto been freely and graciously indulged.

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-344-
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cities he resided for a considerable length of time. At the latter place he rendered some services to the protestant inhabitants at great personal hazard. In 1584 he visited Henry IV., then king of Navarre, at Bearn, and in 1586 he contracted at Montauban an intimacy with the celebrated Hugonot leader, du Plessis de Mornay. As Anthony Bacon was invested with no public character, his continued and voluntary abode in a catholic country began at length to excite a suspicion in the mind of his mother, his friends, and the queen herself, that his conduct was influenced by some secret bias towards the Romish faith;—an impression which received confirmation from the intimacies which he cultivated with several English exiles and pensioners of the king of Spain. This idea appears, however, to have been unfounded. It was often by the express, though secret, request of Burleigh that he formed these connexions; and he had frequently supplied this minister with important articles of intelligence procured from such persons, with whom it was by no means unusual to perform the office of spy to England and to Spain alternately, or even to both at the same time. At length, the urgency of his friends and the clamors of his mother, whose protestant zeal, setting a sharper edge on a temper naturally keen, prompted her to employ expressions of great violence, compelled him, after many delays, to quit the continent; and in the beginning of 1592 he returned to his native country. His miserable state of health, from the gout and other disorders which rendered him a cripple for life, prevented his encountering-345-
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the fatigues of the usual court attendance: yet he lost no time in procuring a seat in parliament; and his close connexion with the Cecils, joined to the opinion entertained of his political talents, seems to have excited a general expectation of his rising to high importance in the state. But he was not long in discovering, that for some unknown reason the lord treasurer was little his friend; and offended at the coolness with which his secret intelligence from numerous foreign correspondents was received by this minister and his son, in their joint capacity of secretaries of state, he was easily prevailed upon to address himself to Essex.

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-346-
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Anthony towards his brother, with whom he had established an entire community of interests, Essex now espoused with more warmth than ever the cause of Francis. He strained every nerve to gain for him, in 1592, the situation of attorney-general: but Burleigh opposed the appointment; Robert Cecil openly expressed to the earl his surprise that he should seek to procure it for "a raw youth;" and her majesty declared that, after the manner in which Francis Bacon had stood up against her in parliament, admission to her presence was the only favor to which he ought to aspire. She added, that in her father's time such conduct would have been sufficient to banish a man the court for life. Lowering his tone, Essex afterwards sought for his friend the office of solicitor-general; but the same prejudices and antipathies still thwarted him: and finding all his efforts vain to establish him in any public station of honor or emolument, he nobly compensated his disappointment and relieved his necessities by the gift of an estate.

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-347-
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and benevolent disposition of this aged minister, that he could bear to withhold the offices of kindness from the nephew of his late beloved wife, and the son of one of his nearest friends and most cordial coadjutors in public life. But according to the maxims of court-factions his desertion of the Bacons might be amply justified;—they had made their election, and it was the patronage of Essex which they preferred. Experience taught them too late, that for their own interests they had chosen wrong. Since the death of Leicester, the Cecils had possessed all the real power at the court of Elizabeth: they and they only could advance their adherents. Essex, it is true, through the influence which he exerted over the imagination or the affections of the queen, could frequently obtain grants to himself of real importance and great pecuniary value. But her majesty's singular caprice of temper rendered her jealous of every mark of favor extorted from the tender weakness of her heart; and she appears to have almost made it a rule to compensate every act of bounty towards himself, by some sensible mortification which she made him suffer in the person of a friend. So little was his patronage the road to advancement, that sir Thomas Smith, clerk of the council, is recorded as the solitary instance of a man preferred out of his household to the service of her majesty; and Bacon himself somewhere says, speaking of the queen, "Against me she is never positive but to my lord of Essex."

Fulk Greville was one of the few who did honor to themselves by becoming at this time the advocate of-348-
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Francis Bacon with the queen; and his solicitations were heard by her with such apparent complacency, that he wrote to Bacon, that he would wager two to one on his chance of becoming attorney, or at least solicitor-general. But Essex was to be mortified, and the influence of this generous MÆcenas was exerted finally in vain. To his unfortunate choice of a patron then, joined to the indiscreet zeal with which that patron pleaded his cause "in season and out of season," we are to ascribe in part the neglect experienced by Bacon during the reign of Elizabeth. But other causes concurred, which it may be interesting to trace, and which it would be injustice both to the queen and to Burleigh to pass over in silence.

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-349-
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with the "blind experiments" of alchemy and the deluding dreams of judicial astrology, was in possession of few titles to the respect of mankind; and its professors,—credulous enthusiasts, for the most part, or designing impostors,—usually ended by bringing shame and loss on such persons as greedy hopes or vain curiosity bribed to become their patrons.

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;-350-
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useless to herself and to the public affairs, and a burthen to his own thoughts.

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.-351-
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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 -352-
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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.'"

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-353-
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himself up in his chamber, which he refused to quit till the queen herself two or three days afterwards sent the lord admiral to mediate a reconciliation.

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,-354-
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he diligently plied him with his jesuitical arguments, and so thoroughly persuaded him of the duty and merit of promoting by any kind of means the overthrow of heresy, that Squire at length consented to bind himself by a solemn vow to make an attempt against the life of Elizabeth in the mode which should be pointed out to him:—an enterprise, as he was assured, which would be attended with little personal danger, and, in case of the worst, would assuredly be recompensed by an immediate admission into the joys of heaven.

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-355-
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the English government an intimation of the plot. Squire was apprehended, and at first denied all: "but by good counsel, and the truth working withal," according to Speed's expression, was brought to confess what could not otherwise have been proved against him, and suffered penitently for his offence. Our chronicler admires the providence which interfered for the protection of her majesty in this great peril, and compares it to the miraculous preservation of St. Paul from the bite of the viper.

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.-356-
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Not long after, the earl was suddenly seized with a violent disorder of the bowels, which in a few days carried him off; and on the first day of his illness, his gentleman of the horse took his lord's best saddle-horse and fled. These circumstances might be thought pretty clearly to indicate poison as the means of his untimely end: but although a suspicion of its employment was entertained by some, the melancholy event appears to have been more generally ascribed to witchcraft. An examination being instituted, a waxen image was discovered in his chamber with a hair of the color of the earl's drawn through the body; also, an old woman in the neighbourhood, a reputed witch, being required to recite after a prompter the Lord's Prayer in Latin, was observed to blunder repeatedly in the same words. But these circumstances, however strong, not being deemed absolutely conclusive, the poor old woman was apparently suffered to escape:—after the gentleman of the horse, or his instigators, we do not find that any search was made.

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-357-
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former failures, Philip was thought to meditate a fresh invasion either of England or of Ireland, which latter country was besides in so turbulent a state from the insurrections of native chieftains, that it had been found necessary to send over sir John Norris as general of Ulster, with a strong reinforcement of veterans from the Low Countries. The queen, on her part, was well prepared to resist and retaliate all attacks. The spirit of the nation was thoroughly roused; gallant troops and able officers formed in the Flemish school of glory, or under the banners of the Bourbon hero, burned with impatience for the signal to revenge the wrongs of their queen and country on their capital and most detested enemy. Still the conflict threatened to be an arduous one: Elizabeth felt all its difficulties; and loth to lose the support of one of her bravest and most popular captains, she addressed the following letter of recall to lord Willoughby, who had repaired to Spa ostensibly for the recovery of his health; really, perhaps, in resentment of some injury inflicted by a venal and treacherous court, of which his noble nature scorned alike the intrigues and the servility.

"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-358-
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we must now (out of our desire of your well-doing) chiefly enjoin you to an especial care to encrease and continue your health, which must give life to all your best endeavours; so we next as seriously recommend to you this consideration, that in these times, when there is such an appearance that we shall have the trial of our best and noble subjects, you seem not to affect the satisfaction of your own private contentation, beyond the attending on that which nature and duty challengeth from all persons of your quality and profession. For if unnecessarily, your health of body being recovered, you should elloign yourself by residence there from those employments whereof we shall have too good store, you shall not so much amend the state of your body, as haply you shall call in question the reputation of your mind and judgement, even in the opinion of those that love you, and are best acquainted with your disposition and discretion.

"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,-359-
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the 7th of October 1594, in the 37th year of our reign.

"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-360-
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against him the envy of a whole host of competitors. Elizabeth, who for the best reasons had an extreme dislike to any manifestations of a mercenary disposition in her servants, had been disgusted by the frequency and earnestness of his petitions for pecuniary favors. "When, sir Walter," she had once exclaimed, "will you cease to be a beggar?" He replied, "When your gracious majesty ceases to be a benefactor." So dexterous an answer appeased her for a time; and the profusion of eloquent adulation with which he never failed to soothe her ear, engaged her self-love strongly in his behalf. But to complete the ill-fortune of Raleigh, father Parsons, provoked by the earnestness with which he had urged in parliament the granting of supplies for a war offensive and defensive against Spain, had published a pamphlet charging him with atheism and impiety, which had not only found welcome reception with his enemies, but with the people, to whom he was ever obnoxious, and had even raised a prejudice against him in the mind of his sovereign. On this subject, a writer contemporary with the later years of Raleigh thus expresses himself:

"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-361-
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owed any, was grounded upon school divinity. Whereupon she chid him, who was, by his own confession, ever after branded with the name of an atheist, though a known assertor of God and providence[115]."

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.-362-
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Raleigh conceived this idea; the court and the city vied in eagerness to share the profits of the enterprise; a squadron was speedily fitted out, though at great expense; and in February 1595 the ardent leader weighed anchor from the English shore. Proceeding first to Trinidad, he possessed himself of the town of St. Joseph; then, with the numerous pinnaces of his fleet, he entered the mouth of the great river Oronoco, and sailing upwards penetrated far into the bosom of the country. But the intense heat of the climate, and the difficulties of this unknown navigation, compelled him to return without any more valuable result of his enterprise than that of taking formal possession of the land in her majesty's name. Raleigh however, unwilling to acknowledge a failure, published on his return an account of Guiana, filled with the most disgraceful and extravagant falsehoods;—falsehoods to which he himself became eventually the victim, when, on the sole credit of his assurances, king James released him from a tedious imprisonment to head a second band of adventurers to this disastrous shore.

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-363-
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John Hawkins, the kinsman and early patron of Drake, and afterwards of that great navigator himself, who fell a victim to the torrid climate, and to fatigue and mortification which conspired to render it fatal. A person of such eminence, and whose great actions reflect back so bright a lustre on the reign which had furnished to him the most glorious occasions of distinguishing himself in the service of his country, must not be dismissed from the scene in silence.

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 -364-
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exemplary, his veracity unimpeached, his private life religiously pure and spotless. In the division of the rich booty which often rewarded his valor and his toils, he was liberal towards his crews and scrupulously just to the owners of his vessels; and in the appropriation of his own share of wealth, he displayed that munificence towards the public, of which, since the days of Roman glory, history has recorded so few examples.

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 -365-
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enemies, this great man was stigmatized as vain and boastful; a slight infirmity in one who had achieved so much by his own unassisted genius, and which the great flow of natural eloquence which he possessed may at once have produced and rendered excusable. One trait appears to indicate that he was ambitious of a species of distinction which he might have regarded himself as entitled to despise. He had thought proper to assume, apparently without due authority, the armorial coat of sir Bernard Drake, also a seaman and a native of Devonshire: sir Bernard, from a false pride of family, highly resented this unwarrantable intrusion, as he regarded it, and in a dispute on the subject gave sir Francis a box on the ear. The queen now deemed it necessary to interfere, and she granted to the illustrious navigator the following arms of her own device. Sable, a fess wavy between two pole stars argent, and for crest, a ship on a globe under ruff, with a cable held by a hand coming out of the clouds; the motto Auxilio divino, and beneath, Sic parvis magna; in the rigging of the ship a wivern gules, the arms of sir Bernard Drake, hung up by the heels.

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-366-
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Flushing by several of his friends, but chiefly by Rowland Whyte, a gentleman to whom, during his absence, he had recommended the care of his interests, and the task of transmitting to him whatever intelligence might appear either useful or entertaining[116].

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-367-
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her broths in a morning, and, at meals, meat from her own trencher;—affecting, it should seem, in these trifles, to acquit herself of the promises of her special favor, with which she had a few years before repaid the splendid hospitality of this noble pair. We do not learn how long the durance of the earl continued; but it is highly probable that he was once more compelled to purchase his liberty.

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-368-
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for that meal was great and exceeding costly. At her first lighting she had a fine fan garnished with diamonds, valued at four hundred pounds at least. After dinner, in her privy-chamber, he gave her a fair pair of virginals. In her bed-chamber, he presented her with a fine gown and a juppin, which things were pleasing to her highness; and, to grace his lordship the more, she of herself took from him a fork, a spoon, and a salt, of fair agate." It must be confessed that this was a mode of "gracing" a courtier peculiarly consonant to the disposition of her majesty.

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 -369-
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before her in the Lent of the year 1596... wishing in a godly zeal, as well became him, that she should think sometime of mortality," took a text fit for the purpose, on which he treated for a time "well," "learnedly," and "respectively." "But when he had spoken awhile of some sacred and mystical numbers, as three for the Trinity, three for the heavenly Hierarchy, seven for the Sabbath, and seven times seven for a Jubilee; and lastly,—seven times nine for the grand climacterical year; she, perceiving whereto it tended, began to be troubled with it. The bishop discovering that all was not well, for the pulpit stands there vis À vis to the closet, he fell to treat of some more plausible numbers, as of the number 666, making Latinus, with which he said he could prove the pope to be Antichrist; also of the fatal number of 88,—so long before spoken of for a dangerous year,... but withal interlarding it with some passages of Scripture that touch the infirmities of age... he concluded his sermon. The queen, as the manner was, opened the window; but she was so far from giving him thanks or good countenance, that she said plainly he should have kept his arithmetic for himself. 'But I see,' said she, 'the greatest clerks are not the wisest men;' and so went away for the time discontented.

"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-370-
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scornfully of him and his sermon. Only to show how the good bishop was deceived in supposing she was so decayed in her limbs and senses as himself perhaps and other of that age were wont to be; she said she thanked God that neither her stomach nor strength, nor her voice for singing, nor fingering instruments, nor, lastly, her sight, was any whit decayed; and to prove the last before us all, she produced a little jewel that had an inscription of very small letters, and offered it first to my lord of Worcester, and then to sir James Crofts to read, and both protested bona fide that they could not; yet the queen herself did find out the poesy, and made herself merry with the standers by upon it."

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-371-
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to rank, precedence, or any other privilege in this country.

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[117].

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