Travels in England During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Part 9

WALSINGHAM.

Sir Francis Walsingham, as we have said, had the honour to be Sir Philip Sidney's father-in-law; he was a gentleman at first, of a good house, and of a better education, and from the University travelled for the rest of his learning. Doubtless he was the only linguist of his times, how to use his own tongue, whereby he came to be employed in the chiefest affairs of State.

He was sent Amba.s.sador to France, and stayed there LEGAR long in the heat of the civil wars, and at the same time that Monsieur was here a suitor to the Queen; and, if I be not mistaken, he played the very same part there as since Gondomar did here. {59} At his return he was taken princ.i.p.al Secretary, and for one of the great engines of State, and of the times, high in his mistress's (the Queen's) favour, and a watchful servant over the safety of his mistress.

They note him to have certain courtesies and secret ways of intelligence above the rest; but I must confess I am to seek wherefore he suffered Parry {60} to play so long as he did, hang on the hook, before he hoisted him up; and I have been a little curious in the search thereof, though I have not to do with the ARCANA REGALIA IMPERII, for to know it is sometimes a burden; and I remember it was Ovid's criminant error that he saw too much, but I hope these are collaterals, and of no danger.

But that Parry, having an intent to kill the Queen, made the way of his access by betraying of others, and in impeaching of the priests of his own correspondency, and thereby had access to confer with the Queen, as oftentimes private and familiar discourse with Walsingham, will not be the query of the mystery, for the Secretary might have had an end of a further discovery and maturity of the treason; but that, after the Queen knew Parry's intent, why she would then admit him to private discourse, and Walsingham to suffer him, considering the conditions of all the designs, and to permit him to go where and whither he listed, and only under the secrecy of a dark sentinel set over him, was a piece of reach and hazard beyond my apprehension. I must again profess that I have read many of his letters, for they are commonly sent to my Lord of Leicester and of Burleigh out of France, containing many fine pa.s.sages and secrets, yet, if I might have been beholding to his cyphers, they would have told pretty tales of the times; but I must now close him up, and rank him amongst the TOGATI, yet chief of those that laid the foundations of the French and Dutch wars, which was another piece of his fineness of the times, with one observation more, that he was one of the greatest always of the Austrian embracements, for both himself and Stafford that preceded him might well have been compared to him in the Gospel that sowed his tares in the night; so did they their seeds in division in the dark; and as it is a likely report that they father on him at his return, the Queen speaking to him with some sensibility of the Spanish designs on France: "Madam," he answered, "I beseech you be content, and fear not; the Spaniard hath a great appet.i.te and an excellent digestion, but I have fitted him with a bone for these twenty years that your Majesty should have no cause to doubt him, provided that, if the fire chance to slake which I have kindled, you will be ruled by me, and cast in some of your fuel, which will revive the flame."

WILLOUGHBY.

My Lord Willoughby was one of the Queen's first swordsmen; he was of the ancient extract of the Bartewes, but more enn.o.bled by his mother, who was d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk. He was a great master of the art MILITARY, and was sent general into France, and commanded the second army of five the Queen had sent thither, in aid of the French. I have heard it spoken that, had he not slighted the Court, but applied himself to the Queen, he might have enjoyed a plentiful portion of her grace; and it was his saying, and it did him no good, that he was none of the REPTILIA, intimating that he could not creep on the ground, and that the Court was not his element; for, indeed, as he was a great soldier, so he was of a suitable magnanimity, and could not brook the obsequiousness and a.s.siduity of the Court; and as he was then somewhat descending from youth, happily he had an ANIMAM REVERTENDI, or a desire to make a safe retreat.

BACON.

And now I come to another of the TOGATI, Sir Nicholas Bacon, an arch-piece of wit and of wisdom. He was a gentleman, and a man of law, and of a great knowledge therein, whereby, together with his after-part of learning and dexterity, he was promoted to be Keeper of the Great Seal, and being of kin to the Treasurer Burleigh, and {61} also the help of his hand to bring him to the Queen's great favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE SUAE FORTUNAE FABER," was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, but I will never forgive that man that loseth himself to be rid of his jests.

He was father to that refined wit which since hath acted a disastrous part on the public stage, and of late sat in his father's room as Lord Chancellor; those that lived in his age, and from whence I have taken this little model of him, give him a lively character, and they decipher him to be another Solon, and the Simon of those times, such a one as OEdipus was in dissolving of riddles; doubtless he was an able instrument, as it was his commendation that his head was the mallet, for it was a very great one, and therein kept a wedge, that entered all knotty pieces that come to the table.

And now again I must fall back to smooth and plane a way to the rest that is behind, but not from my purpose. There have been, about this time, two rivals in the Queen's favour, old Sir Francis Knowles, Comptroller of the House, and Sir Henry Norris, whom she had called up at Parliament to sit with the Peers in the higher House, as, Henry Norris of Rycot, who had married the daughter and heir of the old Henry Williams of Tayne, a n.o.ble person, and to whom, in her adversity, the Queen had been committed to his safe custody, and from him had received more than ordinary observances; now, such was the goodness of the Queen's nature, that she neither forgot the good turns received from the Lord Williams, neither was she unmindful of this Lord Norris, whose father, in her father's time, and in the business of her brother, died in a n.o.ble cause, and in the justification of her innocency.

NORRIS.

My Lord Norris had, by this lady, an apt issue, which the Queen highly respected, for he had six sons, and all martial and brave men: the first was William, the eldest, and father to the late Earl of Berkshire, Sir John (vulgarly called General Norris), Sir Edward, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Maximilian, men of haughty courage, and of great experience in the conduct of military affairs; and, to speak in the character of their merit, they were persons of such renown and worth as future times must, of duty, owe them the debt of an honourable memory.

KNOWLES.

Sir Francis Knowles was somewhat near in the Queen's affinity, and had likewise no incompetent issue; for he had also William, his eldest son, and since Earl of Banbury, Sir Thomas, Sir Robert, and Sir Francis, if I be not a little mistaken in their names and marshalling; and there was also the Lady Lettice, a sister of those, who was first Countess of Ess.e.x, and after of Leicester; and those were also brave men in their times and places, but they were of the Court and carpet, and not by the genius of the camp.

Between these two families there was, as it falleth out amongst great ones and compet.i.tors of favour, no great correspondency; and there were some seeds, either of emulation or distrust, cast between them; which, had they not been disjoined in the residence of their persons, as that was the fortune of their employments, the one side attending the Court, and the other the Pavilion, surely they would have broken out into some kind of hostility, or, at least, they would entwine and wrestle one in the other, like trees circled with ivy; for there was a time when, both these fraternities being met at Court, there pa.s.sed a challenge between them at certain exercises, the Queen and the old men being spectators, which ended in a flat quarrel amongst them all. For I am persuaded, though I ought not to judge, that there were some relics of this feigned that were long after the causes of the one family's almost utter extirpation, and the other's improsperity; for it was a known truth that so long as my Lord of Leicester lived, who was the main pillar on the one side, for having married the sister, the other side took no deep root in the Court, though otherwise they made their ways to honour by their swords. And that which is of more note, considering my Lord of Leicester's use of men of war, being shortly after sent Governor to the revolted States, and no soldier himself, is that he made no more account of Sir John Norris, a soldier, then deservedly famous, and trained from a page under the discipline of the greatest captain in Christendom, the Admiral Castilliau, and of command in the French and Dutch Wars almost twenty years. And it is of further observation that my Lord of Ess.e.x, after Leicester's decease, though addicted to arms and honoured by the general in the Portugal expedition, whether out of instigation, as it hath been thought, or out of ambition and jealousy, eclipsed by the fame and splendour of this great commander, never loved him in sincerity.

Moreover, and certain it is, he not only crushed, and upon all occasions quelled the youth of this great man and his famous brethren, but therewith drew on his own fatal end, by undertaking the Irish action in a time when he left the Court empty of friends, and full-fraught with his professed enemies. But I forbear to extend myself in any further relation upon this subject, as having lost some notes of truth in these two n.o.bles, which I would present; and therewith touched somewhat, which I would not, if the equity of the narration would have permitted any omission.

PERROT.

Sir John Perrot was a goodly gentleman, and of the sword; and he was of a very ancient descent, as an heir to many subtracts of gentry, especially from Guy de Brain of Lawhorn; so was he of a very vast estate, and came not to Court for want and to these advancements.

He had the endowments of carriage and height of spirit, had he alighted on the alloy and temper of discretion; the defect whereof, with a native freedom and boldness of speech, drew him on to a clouded sitting, and laid him open to the spleen and advantage of his enemies, of whom Sir Christopher Hatton was professed. He was yet a wise man and a brave courtier, but rough and partic.i.p.ating more of active than sedentary motions, as being in his instillation destined for arms. There is a query of some denotations, how he came to receive the foil, and that in the catastrophe? for he was strengthened with honourable alliances and the prime friendship in Court of my Lords of Leicester and Burleigh, both his contemporaries and familiars; but that there might be (as the adage hath it) falsity in friendship: and we may rest satisfied that there is no dispute against fate, and they quit him for a person that loved to stand too much alone on his legs, of too often regress and discontinuance from the Queen's presence, a fault which is incompatible with the ways of Court and favour. He was sent Lord- Deputy into Ireland, as it was then apprehended, for a kind of haughtiness and repugnancy in Council; or, as others have thought, the fittest person then to bridle the insolences of the Irish; and probable it is that both, considering the sway that he would have at the Board, being head in the Queen's favour, concurred, and did alike conspire his remove and ruin. But into Ireland he went, where he did the Queen very great and many services, if the surplusage of the measure did not abate the value of the merit, as after-time found to be no paradox to save the Queen's purse, but both herself and my Lord Treasurer Burleigh ever took for good service; he imposed on the Irish the charge for bearing their own arms, which both gave them the possession and taught them the use of weapons; which provided in the end to a most fatal work, both in the profusion of blood and treasure.

But at his return, and upon some account sent home before, touching the state of that kingdom, the Queen poured out a.s.siduous testimonies of her grace towards him, till, by his retreat to his Castle of Cary, which he was then building, and out of a desire to be in command at home as he had been abroad, together with the hatred and practice of Hatton, then in high favour, whom he had, not long before, bitterly taunted for his dancing, he was accused for high treason, and for high words, and a forged letter, and condemned; though the Queen, on the news of his condemnation, swore, by her wonted oath, that the jury were all knaves: and they delivered it with a.s.surance that, on his return to the town after his trial, he said, with oaths and with fury, to the Lieutenant, Sir Owen Hopton, "What! will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up as a sacrifice to the envy of my flattering adversaries?" Which being made known to the Queen, and somewhat enforced, she refused to sign it, and swore he should not die, for he was an honest and faithful man. And surely, though not altogether to set our rest and faith upon tradition and old reports, as that Sir Thomas Perrot, his father, was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and in the Court married to a lady of great honour, which are presumptions in some implications; but, if we go a little further and compare his pictures, his qualities, gesture, and voice, with that of the King, which memory retains yet amongst us, they will plead strongly that he was a surrept.i.tious child of the blood royal.

Certain it is that he lived not long in the Tower; and that after his decease, Sir Thomas Perrot, his son, then of no mean esteem with the Queen, having before married my Lord of Ess.e.x's sister, since Countess of Northumberland, had rest.i.tution of his land; though after his death also (which immediately followed) the Crown resumed the estate, and took advantage of the former attainder; and, to say the truth, the priest's forged letter was, at his arraignment, thought but as a fiction of envy, and was soon after exploded by the priest's own confession. But that which most exasperated the Queen and gave advantage to his enemies was, as Sir Walter Raleigh takes into observation, words of disdain, for the Queen, by sharp and reprehensive letters, had nettled him; and thereupon, sending others of approbation, commending his service, and intimating an invasion from Spain; which was no sooner proposed but he said publicly, in the great chamber at Dublin: --"Lo, now she is ready to ** herself for fear of the Spaniards: I am again one of her white boys," which are subject to a various construction, and tended to some disreputation of his Sovereign, and such as may serve for instruction to persons in place of honour and command, to beware of the violences of Nature, and especially the exorbitance of the tongue. And so I conclude him with this double observation: the one, of the innocency of his intentions, exempt and clear from the guilt of treason and disloyalty, therefore of the greatness of his heart; for at his arraignment he was so little dejected with what might be alleged, that rather he grew troubled with choler, and, in a kind of exasperation, he despised his jury, though of the Order of Knighthood, and of the especial gentry, claiming the privilege of trial by the peers and baronage of the realm, so prevalent was that of his native genius and haughtiness of spirit which accompanied him to the last, and till, without any diminution of change therein, it broke in pieces the cords of his magnanimity; for he died suddenly in the Tower, and when it was thought the Queen did intend his enlargement, with the rest.i.tution of his possessions, which were then very great, and comparable to most of the n.o.bility.

HATTON.

Sir Christopher Hatton came to the Court as his opposite; Sir John Perrot was wont to say, by the galliard, for he came thither as a private gentleman of the Inns of Court, in a masque: and, for his activity and person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into her favour. He was first made Vice-Chamberlain, and, shortly after, advanced to the place of Lord Chancellor. A gentleman that, besides the graces of his person and dancing, had also the endowment of a strong and subtle capacity, and that could soon learn the discipline and garb, both of the times and Court; and the truth is, he had a large proportion of gifts and endowments, but too much of the season of envy; and he was a mere vegetable of the Court that sprung up at night and sunk again at his noon.

"Flos non mentorum, sed s.e.x fuit illa virorum."

EFFINGHAM.

My Lord of Effingham, though a courtier betimes, yet I find not that the sunshine of his favour broke out upon him until she took him into the ship and made him High Admiral of England. For his extract, it might suffice that he was the son of a Howard, and of a Duke of Norfolk.

And, for his person, as goodly a gentleman as the times had any, if Nature had not been more intentive to complete his person, than Fortune to make him rich; for, the times considered, which were then active, and a long time after lucrative, he died not wealthy; yet the honester man, though it seems the Queen's purpose was to render the occasion of his advancement, and to make him capable of more honour. At his return from the Cadiz voyage and action, she conferred it upon him, creating him Earl of Nottingham, to the great discontent of his colleague, my Lord of Ess.e.x, who then grew excessive in the appet.i.te of her favour, and the truth is, so exorbitant in the limitation of the sovereign aspect, that it much alienated the Queen's grace from him, and drew others together with the Admiral to a combination, to conspire his ruin; and though, as I have heard it from that party (I mean the old Admiral's faction) that it lay not in his proper power to hurt my Lord Ess.e.x, yet he had more fellows, and such as were well skilled in the setting of the train; but I leave this to those of another age; it is out of doubt that the Admiral was a good, honest, and brave man, and a faithful servant to his mistress; and such a one as the Queen, out of her own princely judgment, knew to be a fit instrument in her service, for she was a proficient in the reading of men as well as books; and as sundry expeditions, as that aforementioned, and '88, do better express his worth and manifest the Queen's trust, and the opinion she had of his fidelity and conduct.

Moreover, the Howards were of the Queen's alliance and consanguinity by her mother, which swayed her affection and bent it toward this great house; and it was a part of her natural propensity to grace and support ancient n.o.bility, where it did not entrench, neither invade her interest; from such trespa.s.ses she was quick and tender, and would not spare any whatsoever, as we may observe in the case of the duke and my Lord of Hertford, whom she much favoured and countenanced, till they attempted the forbidden fruit, the fault of the last being, in the severest interpretation, but a trespa.s.s of encroachment; but in the first it was taken as a riot against the Crown and her own sovereign power, and as I have ever thought the cause of her aversion against the rest of that house, and the duke's great father-in-law, Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, a person in the first rank of her affections, before these and some other jealousies made a separation between them: this n.o.ble lord and Lord Thomas Howard, since Earl of Suffolk, standing alone in her grace, and the rest in her umbrage.

PACKINGTON.

Sir John Packington was a gentleman of no mean family, and of form and feature nowise disabled, for he was a brave gentleman, and a very fine courtier, and for the time which he stayed there, which was not lasting, very high in her grace; but he came in, and went out through disa.s.siduity, drew the curtain between himself and the light of her grace, and then death overwhelmed the remnant, and utterly deprived him of recovery; and they say of him that had he brought less to her Court than he did, he might have carried away more than he brought, for he had a time of it, but was an ill husband of opportunity.

HUNSDOWN.

My Lord of Hunsdown was of the Queen's nearest kindred, and, on the decease of Suss.e.x, both he and his son successively took the place of Lord Chamberlain. He was a man fast to his prince, and firm to his friends and servants; and though he might speak big, and therein would be borne out, yet was he the more dreadful, but less harmful, and far from the practice of the Lord of Leicester's instructions, for he was downright; and I have heard those that both knew him well and had interest in him, say merrily of him that his Latin and dissimulation were alike; and that his custom of swearing and obscenity in speaking made him seem a worse Christian than he was, and a better knight of her carpet than he could be. As he lived in a roughling time, so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers were wont to call men of their hands; of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him, yet not taken for a popular and dangerous person: and this is one that stood among the TOGATI, of an honest, stout heart, and such a one, that, upon occasion, would have fought for his prince and country, for he had the charge of the Queen's person, both in the Court and in the camp at Tilbury.

RALEIGH.

Sir Walter Raleigh was one that, it seems, Fortune had picked out of purpose, of whom to make an example and to use as her tennis-ball, thereby to show what she could do, for she tossed him up of nothing, and to and fro to greatness, and from thence down to little more than to that wherein she found him, a bare gentleman; and not that he was less, for he was well descended, and of good alliance, but poor in his beginnings: and for my Lord Oxford's jests of him for the jacks and upstarts, we all know it savoured more of emulation, and his honour than of truth; and it is a certain note of the times, that the Queen, in her choice, never took in her favour a mere viewed man, or a mechanic, as Comines observes of Lewis XI., who did serve himself with persons of unknown parents, such as were Oliver, the barber, whom he created Earl of Dunoyes, and made him EX SECRETIS CONSILIIS, and alone in his favour and familiarity.

His approaches to the University and Inns of Court were the grounds of his improvement, but they were rather extrusions than sieges, or settings down, for he stayed not long in a place; and, being the youngest brother, and the house diminished in his patrimony, he foresaw his destiny, that he was first to roll through want and disability, to subsist otherwise before he came to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying gather moss. He was the first that exposed himself in the land-service of Ireland, a militia which did not then yield him food and raiment, for it was ever very poor; nor dared he to stay long there, though shortly after he came thither again, under the command of the Lord Grey, but with his own colours flying in the field, having, in the interim, cast a mere chance, both in the Low Countries and in the voyage to sea; and, if ever man drew virtue out of necessity, it was he, and therewith was he the great example of industry; and though he might then have taken that of the merchant to himself,

"Per mare, per terras, currit mercator ad Indos."

He might also have said, and truly, with the philosopher, "OMNIA MEA MEc.u.m PORTO," for it was a long time before he could brag of more than he carried at his back; and when he got on the winning side, it was his commendation that he took pains for it, and underwent many various adventures for his after-perfection, and before he came into the public note of the world; and thence may appear how he came up PER ARDUA:-

"Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum."

Not pulled up by chance, nor by any great admittance; I will only describe his natural parts, and these of his own acquiring.