During a short period the viscount was joined in commission with the earls of Huntingdon and Shrewsbury for the safe keeping of the queen of Scots. On the breaking out of the northern rebellion, he joined the royal army with all the forces he could raise; and in reward of this forwardness in her service her majesty conferred on him the garter, and subsequently invested him, after the most solemn and honorable formof creation, with the dignity of earl of Essex, long hereditary in the house of Bourchier.
By these marks of favor the jealousy of Leicester and of other courtiers was strongly excited; but with little cause. The spirit of the earl had too much of boldness, of enterprise, of a high-souled generosity, to permit him to take root and flourish in that scene of treachery and intrigue—a court; it quickly prompted him to seek occupation at a distance, in the attempt to subdue and civilize a turbulent Irish province.
He solicited and obtained from the queen, by a kind of agreement then not unusual, a grant to himself and the adventurers under him of half of the district of Clandeboy in Ulster, on condition of his rescuing and defending the whole of it from the rebels and defraying half the expenses of the service. Great things were expected from his expedition, on which he embarked in August 1573: but sir William Fitzwilliams, deputy of Ireland, viewed the arrival of the earl with sentiments which led him to oppose every possible obstacle to his success. Probably, too, Essex himself found, on trial, the task of subduing theIrishry(as the natives of the island were then called) a more difficult one than he had anticipated. Some brilliant service, however, amid many delays and disappointments, he performed in various parts of the country; and having returned to England in 1575 to lay all his grievances before the queen, and face the court faction which injured him in his absence, he was sent back with the title of Marshal of Ireland, an appointmentwhich Leicester, for his own purposes, is said to have been active in procuring him.
Sir Henry Sidney had now succeeded Fitzwilliams as lord-deputy; and from him it does not appear that Essex had the same systematic opposition to encounter: on the contrary, having been applied to by the queen for his opinion of the expediency of granting several requests of the earl relative to this service, sir Henry advised her majesty to comply with most of them, prefacing his counsel with the following sentence: "Of the earl I must say, that he is so noble and worthy a personage, and so forward in all his actions, and so complete a gentleman wherein he may either advance your honor or service, as you may take comfort to have in store so rare a subject, who hath nothing in greater regard than to show himself such an one indeed as the common fame reporteth him; which hath been no more, in troth, than his due deserts and painful travels in the worst parts of this miserable country have deserved[78]."
Such in fact was the apparent cordiality between the deputy and the marshal, that a proposal passed for the marriage of Philip Sidney to the lady Penelope Devereux daughter of the earl: but if this friendship were ever sincere on the part of sir Henry, it was at least short-lived; for, writing a few months after Essex's death to Leicester respecting the earl of Ormond, whom the favorite regarded as his enemy, he says.... "In fine, my lord, I am ready to accord with him;but, my most dear lord and brother, be you upon your keeping for him; for, if Essex had lived, you should have found him as violent an enemy as his heart, power and cunning would have served him to have been; and for that their malice, I take God to record, I could brook neither of them both[79]."
Ireland was, during the whole of Elizabeth's reign, that part of her dominions which it cost her most trouble to govern, and with which her system of policy prospered the least. Without a considerable military force it was impossible to bring into subjection those parts of the country which still remained in a state of barbarism under the sway of native chieftains, or even to preserve in safety and civility such districts as were already reclaimed and brought within the English pale. But the queen's parsimony, or, more truly, the narrowness of her income, caused her perpetually to repine at the great expenses to which she was put for this service, and frequently to run the risk of losing all that had been slowly gained, by a sudden withdrawment, or long delay, of the necessary supplies. Her suspicious temper caused her likewise to lend ready ear to the complaints, whether founded or not, brought by the disaffected Irish against her officers. Sir Henry Sidney himself, the deputy whom she most favored and trusted, and continued longer in office than any other, supported as he was at court by the potent influence of Leicester and the steady friendship of Burleigh, had many causes offered him of vexation anddiscontent; and those who held inferior commands, and were less ably protected from the attacks of their enemies, experienced almost insupportable anxieties from counteractions, difficulties and hardships of every kind. Of these the unfortunate earl of Essex had his full share.
The hopes of improving his fortune, with which he had entered upon the service, were so far from being realized that he found himself sinking continually deeper in debt. His efforts against the rebels were by no means uniformly successful. His court enemies contrived to divert most of the succours designed him by his sovereign, and the perplexities of his situation went on accumulating instead of diminishing. The bodily fatigue which he endured in the prosecution of his designs, joined to the anguish of a wounded spirit, undermined at length the powers of his constitution, and after repeated attacks he was carried off by a dysentery in September 1576.
Essex was liberal, affable, brave and eloquent, and generally beloved both in England and Ireland. The symptoms of his disease, though such as exposure alone to the pestilential damps of the climate might well have produced, were also susceptible of being ascribed to poison; and one of his attendants, a divine who likewise professed medicine, seeing him in great pain, suddenly exclaimed, "By the mass, my lord, you are poisoned!" The report spread like wild-fire. To common minds it is a relief under irremediable misfortune to find an object for blame; and accordingly, though no direct evidence of the fact was produced,it was universally believed that some villain had administered to him "an ill drink."
As Leicester was known to be his enemy, strongly suspected of an intrigue with his wife, and believed capable of any enormity, the friends and partisans of Essex seem immediately to have pointed at him as the contriver of his death; yet I find no contemporary evidence of the imputation, except in the conduct of sir Henry Sidney on this occasion, which indicates great anxiety for the reputation of his patron and brother-in-law.
The lord-deputy was unfortunately absent from Dublin at the time of the earl of Essex's death, and before he could institute a regular examination into the manner of it, a thousand false tales had been circulated which were greedily received by the public. On his return, however, he entered into the investigation with great zeal and diligence:—the decisive test of an examination of the body was not indeed applied, for it was one with which that age seems to have been unacquainted; but many witnesses were called, reports were traced to their source and in some instances disproved, and the result of the whole was transmitted by the deputy to the privy-council in a letter which appears satisfactorily to prove that there was no solid ground to ascribe the event to any but natural causes. That the deputy himself was convinced of the correctness of this representation is seen from one of his private letters to Leicester, published long after in the "Sidney Papers."
In all probability, posterity would scarcely haveheard of this imputation on the character of Leicester, had not his marriage with the widow of Essex served as corroboration of the charge, and given occasion to the malicious comments of the author of "Leicester's Commonwealth." This union, however, was not publicly celebrated till two years afterwards; and we have no certain authority for the fact of the criminal connexion of the parties during the life of the earl of Essex, nor for the private marriage said to have been huddled up with indecent precipitation on his decease.
Walter earl of Essex left Robert his son and successor, then in the tenth year of his age, to the care and protection of the earl of Sussex and lord Burleigh; but Mr. Edward Waterhouse, a person of great merit and abilities, then employed in Ireland and distinguished by the favor both of lord Burleigh and sir Henry Sidney, had the immediate management of the fortune and affairs of the minor. Of this friend Essex is related to have taken leave in his last moments with many kisses, exclaiming, "O my Ned, my Ned, farewell! thou art the faithfulest and friendliest gentleman that ever I knew." He proved the fidelity of his attachment by attending the body of the earl to Wales, whither it was conveyed for interment, and it was thence that he immediately afterwards addressed to sir Henry Sidney a letter, of which the following is an extract.
"The state of the earl of Essex, being best known to myself, doth require my travel for a time in his causes; but my burden cannot be great when every man putteth to his helping hand. Her majesty hathbestowed upon the young earl his marriage, and all his father's rules in Wales, and promiseth the remission of his debt. The lords do generally favor and further him; some for the trust reposed, some for love to the father, other for affinity with the child, and some for other causes. All these lords that wish well to the children, and, I suppose, all the best sort of the English lords besides, do expect what will become of the treaty between Mr. Philip and my lady Penelope.
"Truly, my lord, I must say to your lordship, as I have said to my lord of Leicester and Mr. Philip, the breaking off of this match, if the default be on your parts, will turn to more dishonor than can be repaired with any other marriage in England. And I protest unto your lordship, I do not think that there is at this day so strong a man in England of friends as the little earl of Essex; nor any man more lamented than his father since the death of king Edward[80]."
Under such high auspices, and with such a general consent of men's minds in his favor, did the celebrated, the rash, the lamented Essex commence his brief and ill-starred course! The match between Philip Sidney and lady Penelope Devereux was finally broken off, as Waterhouse seems to have apprehended. She married lord Rich, and afterwards Charles Blount earl of Devonshire, on whose account she had been divorced from her first husband.
How little all the dark suspicions and sinister reports to which the death of the earl of Essex had givenoccasion, were able to influence the mind of Elizabeth against the man of her heart, may appear by the tenor of an extraordinary letter written by her in June 1577 to the earl and countess of Shrewsbury.
"Our very good cousins;
"Being given to understand from our cousin of Leicester how honorably he was not only lately received by you our cousin the countess at Chatsworth, and his diet by you both discharged at Buxtons, but also presented with a very rare present, we should do him great wrong (holding him in that place of favor we do) in case we should not let you understand in how thankful sort we accept the same at both your hands, not as done unto him but to our own self; reputing him as another self; and therefore ye may assure yourselves that we, taking upon us the debt, not as his but our own, will take care accordingly to discharge the same in such honorable sort as so well deserving creditors as ye shall never have cause to think ye have met with an ungrateful debtor." &c.
Lord Talbot, on another occasion, urged upon his father the policy of ingratiating himself with Leicester by a pressing invitation to Chatsworth, adding moreover, that he did not believe it would greatly either further or hinder his going into that part of the country.
1577 TO 1582.
Relations of the queen with France and Spain.—She sends succours to the Dutch—is entertained by Leicester, and celebrated in verse by P. Sidney.—Her visit to Norwich.—Letter of Topcliffe.—Notice of sir T. Smith.—Magical practices against the queen.—Duke Casimir's visit to England.—Duke of Anjou urges his suit with the queen.—Simier's mission.—Leicester's marriage.—Behaviour of the queen.—A shot fired at her barge.—Her memorable speech.—First visit of Anjou in England.—Opinions of privy-councillors on the match.—Letter of Philip Sidney.—Stubbs's book.—Punishment inflicted on him.—Notice of sir N. Bacon.—Drake's return from his circumnavigation.—Jesuit seminaries.—Arrival of a French embassy.—A triumph.—Notice of Fulk Greville.—Marriage-treaty with Anjou.—His second visit.—His return and death.
Aboutthe middle of the year 1576, Walsingham in a letter to sir Henry Sidney thus writes: "Here at home we live in security as we were wont, grounding our quietness upon other harms." The harms here alluded to,—the religious wars of France, and the revolt of the Dutch provinces from Spain,—had proved indeed, in more ways than one, the safeguard of the peace of England. They furnished so much domestic occupation to the two catholic sovereigns of Europe, most formidable by their power, their bigotry, and their unprincipled ambition, as effectually to precludethem from uniting their forces to put in execution against Elizabeth the papal sentence of deprivation; and by the opportunity which they afforded her of causing incalculable mischiefs to these princes through the succours which she might afford to their rebellious subjects, they long enabled her to restrain both Philip and Charles within the bounds of respect and amity. But circumstances were now tending with increased velocity towards a rupture with Spain, clearly become inevitable; and in 1577 the queen of England saw herself compelled to take steps in the affairs of the Low Countries equally offensive to that power and to France.
The states of Holland, after the rejection of their sovereignty by Elizabeth, cast their eyes around in search of another protector: and Charles IX., suffering his ambition and his rivalry with Philip II. to overpower all the vehemence of his zeal for the catholic religion, showed himself eager to become their patron. His brother the duke d'Alençon, doubtless with his concurrence, offered on certain terms to bring a French army for the expulsion of don John of Austria, governor of the Low Countries; and this proposal he urged with so much importunity, that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their utter antipathy to the royal family of France, seemed likely to accede to it, as the lightest of that variety of evils of which their present situation offered them the choice. But Elizabeth could not view with indifference the progress of a negotiation which might eventually procure to France the annexation of these important provinces; and sheencouraged the states to refuse the offers of Alençon by immediately transmitting for their service liberal supplies of arms and money to duke Casimir, son of the Elector Palatine, then at the head of a large body of German protestants in the Low Countries.
At the same time she endeavoured to repress the catholics in her own dominions by a stricter enforcement of the penal laws, and two or three persons in this year suffered capitally for their denial of the queen's supremacy[81].
These steps on the part of Elizabeth threatened to disconcert entirely the plans of the French court; but it still seemed practicable, to the king and to his brother, to produce a change in her measures; and two or three successive embassies arrived in London during the spring and summer of 1578, to renew with fresh earnestness the proposals of marriage on the part of the duke d'Alençon. The earl of Sussex and his party favored this match, Leicester and all the zealousprotestants in the court and the nation opposed it. The queen "sat arbitress," and perhaps prolonged her deliberations on the question, for the pleasure of receiving homage more than usually assiduous from both factions.
The favorite, anxious to secure his ascendency by fresh efforts of gallantry and instances of devotedness, entreated to be indulged in the privilege of entertaining her majesty for several days at his seat of Wanstead-house; a recent and expensive purchase, which he had been occupied in adorning with a magnificence suited to the ostentatious prodigality of his disposition.
It was for the entertainment of her majesty on this occasion that Philip Sidney condescended to task a genius worthy of better things with the composition of a mask in celebration of her surpassing beauties and royal virtues, entitled "The Lady of May." In defence of this public act of adulation, the young poet had probably the particular request of his uncle and patron to plead, as well as the common practice of the age; but it must still be mortifying under any circumstances, to record the abasement of such a spirit to a level with the vulgar herd of Elizabethan flatterers.
Unsatiated with festivities and homage, the queen continued her progress from Wanstead through the counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, receiving the attendance of numerous troops of gentry, and making visits in her way to all who felt themselves entitled, or called, to solicit with due humility the costly honor of entertaining her. Her train was numerousand brilliant, and the French ambassadors constantly attended her motions. About the middle of August she arrived at Norwich.
This ancient city, then one of the most considerable in the kingdom, yielded to none in a zealous attachment to protestant principles and to the queen's person; and as its remote situation had rendered the arrival of a royal visitant within its walls an extremely rare occurrence, the magistrates resolved to spare nothing which could contribute to the splendor of her reception.
At the furthest limits of the city she was met by the mayor, who addressed her in a long and very abject Latin oration, in which he was not ashamed to pronounce that the city enjoyed its charters and privileges "by her only clemency." At the conclusion he produced a large silver cup filled with gold pieces, saying, "Sunt hic centum libræ puri auri:" Welcome sounds, which failed not to reach the ear of her gracious majesty, who, lifting up the cover with alacrity, said audibly to the footman to whose care it was delivered, "Look to it, there is a hundred pound." Pageants were set up in the principal streets, of which one had at least the merit of appropriateness, since it accurately represented the various processes employed in those woollen manufactures for which Norwich was already famous.
Two days after her majesty's arrival, Mercury, in a blue satin doublet lined with cloth of gold, with a hat of the same garnished with wings, and wings at his feet, appeared under her chamber window in an extraordinarily fine painted coach, and invited her togo abroad and see more shows; and a kind of mask, in which Venus and Cupid with Wantonness and Riot were discomfited by the Goddess of Chastity and her attendants, was performed in the open air. A troop of nymphs and fairies lay in ambush for her return from dining with the earl of Surry; and in the midst of these Heathenish exhibitions, the minister of the Dutch church watched his opportunity to offer to her the grateful homage of his flock. To these deserving strangers, protestant refugees from Spanish oppression, the policy of Elizabeth, in this instance equally generous and discerning, had granted every privilege capable of inducing them to make her kingdom their permanent abode. At Norwich, where the greater number had settled, a church was given them for the performance of public worship in their own tongue, and according to the form which they preferred; and encouragement was held out to them to establish here several branches of manufacture which they had previously carried on to great advantage at home. This accession of skill and industry soon raised the woollen fabrics of England to a pitch of excellence unknown in former ages, and repaid with usury to the country this exercise of public hospitality.
It appears that the inventing of masks, pageants and devices for the recreation of the queen on her progresses had become a distinct profession. George Ferrers, formerly commemorated as master of the pastimes to Edward VI., one Goldingham, and Churchyard, author of "the Worthiness of Wales," of some legends in the "Mirror for Magistrates," andof a prodigious quantity of verse on various subjects, were the most celebrated proficients in this branch; all three are handed down to posterity as contributors to "the princely pleasures of Kennelworth," and the two latter as managers of the Norwich entertainments. They vied with each other in the gorgeousness, the pedantry and the surprisingness of their devices; but the palm was surely due to him of the number who had the glory of contriving a battle between certain allegorical personages, in the midst of which, "legs and arms of men, well and lively wrought, were to be let fall in numbers on the ground as bloody as might be." The combat was to be exhibited in the open air; but the skies were unpropitious, and a violent shower of rain unfortunately deprived her majesty of the satisfaction of witnessing the effect of so extraordinary and elegant a device.
Richard Topcliffe, a Lincolnshire gentleman employed by government to collect informations against the papists, and so much distinguished in the employment, thatTopcliffizarebecame the cant term of the day forhunting a recusant, was at this time a follower of the court; and a letter addressed by him to the earl of Shrewsbury contains some particulars of this progress worth preserving.... "I did never see her majesty better received by two counties in one journey than Suffolk and Norfolk now; Suffolk of gentlemen and Norfolk of the meaner sort, with exceeding joy to themselves and well liking to her majesty. Great entertainment at the master of the Rolls'; greater at Kenninghall, and exceeding of all sorts at Norwich.
"The next good news, (but in account the highest) her majesty hath served God with great zeal and comfortable examples; for by her council two notorious papists, young Rookwood (the master of Euston-hall, where her majesty did lie upon Sunday now a fortnight) and one Downes, a gentleman, were both committed, the one to the town prison at Norwich, the other to the county prison there, for obstinate papistry; and seven more gentlemen of worship were committed to several houses in Norwich as prisoners....for badness of belief. This Rookwood is a papist of kind, newly crept out of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was lodged at his house, Euston, far unmeet for her highness, but fitter for the black guard; nevertheless, (the gentleman brought into her majesty's presence by like device) her excellent majesty gave to Rookwood ordinary thanks for his bad house, and her fair hand to kiss; after which it was braved at. But my lord chamberlain, nobly and gravely, understanding that Rookwood was excommunicated for papistry, called him before him; demanded of him how he durst to attempt her royal presence, he, unfit to accompany any Christian person? Forthwith said he was fitter for a pair of stocks; commanded him out of the court, and yet to attend her council's pleasure, and at Norwich he was committed. And, to decypher the gentleman to the full; a piece of plate being missed in the court and searched for in his hay-house, in the hayrick such an image of our lady was there found, as for greatness, for gayness, and workmanship, I didnever see a match; and after a sort of country dances ended, in her majesty's sight the idol was set behind the people, who avoided. She rather seemed a beast raised upon a sudden from hell by conjuring, than the picture for whom it had been so often and so long abused. Her majesty commanded it to the fire, which in her sight by the country folks was quickly done, to her content, and unspeakable joy of every one, but some one or two who had sucked of the idol's poisoned milk.
"Shortly after, a great sort of good preachers, who had been commanded to silence for a little niceness, were licensed, and again commanded to preach; a greater and more universal joy to the counties, and the most of the court, than the disgrace of the papists; and the gentlemen of those parts, being great and hot protestants (almost before by policy discredited and disgraced), were greatly countenanced." The letter writer afterwards mentions in a splenetic style the envoy from Monsieur, one Baqueville a Norman, "with four or five of Monsieur's youths," who attended the queen and were "well entertained and regarded." After them, he says, came M. Rambouillet from the French king, brother of the cardinal, who had not long before written vilely against the queen, and whose entertainment, it seemed to him, was not so good as that of the others[82].
The queen was about this time deprived by death of an old and faithful counsellor, in the person of sirThomas Smith one of the principal secretaries of state. This eminent person, the author of a work "on the Commonwealth of England," still occasionally consulted, and in various ways a great benefactor to letters in his day, was one of the few who had passed at once with safety and credit through all the perils and revolutions of the three preceding reigns. His early proficiency at college obtained for Smith the patronage of Henry VIII., at whose expense he was sent to complete his studies in Italy; and he took at Padua the degree of Doctor of Laws. Resuming on his return his residence at Cambridge, he united his efforts with those of Cheke for reforming the pronunciation of the Greek language. Afterwards he furnished an example of attachment to his mother-tongue which among classical scholars has found too few imitators, by giving to the public a work on English orthography and pronunciation; objects as yet almost totally neglected by his countrymen, and respecting which, down to a much later period, no approach to system or uniformity prevailed, but, on the contrary, a vagueness, a rudeness and an ignorance disgraceful to a lettered people.
Though educated in the civil law, Smith now took deacon's orders and accepted a rectory, and the deanery of Carlisle. His principles secretly began to incline towards the reformers, and he lent such protection as he was able to those who in the latter years of Henry VIII. underwent persecution for the avowal of similar sentiments.
Protector Somerset patronized him: under hisadministration he was knighted notwithstanding his deacon's orders, and became the colleague of Cecil as secretary of state. On the accession of Mary he was stripped of the lucrative offices which he held, but a small pension was assigned him on condition of his remaining in the kingdom; and he contrived to pass away those days of horror in an unmolested obscurity.
He was among the first whom Mary's illustrious successor recalled to public usefulness; being summoned to take his place at her earliest privy-council. In the important measures of the beginning of the reign for the settlement of religion, he took a distinguished part: afterwards he was employed with advantage to his country in several difficult embassies; he was then appointed assistant and finally successor to Burleigh in the same high post which they had occupied together so many years before under the reign of Edward, and in this station he died at the age of sixty-three.
No statesman of the age bore a higher character than sir Thomas Smith for rectitude and benevolence, and nothing of the wiliness and craft conspicuous in most of his coadjutors is discernible in him. There was one foible of his day, however, from which he was by no means exempt: on certain points he was superstitious beyond the ordinary measure of learned credulity in the sixteenth century. Of his faith in alchemical experiments a striking instance has already occurred; he was likewise a great astrologer, and gave himself much concern in conjecturing what direful events might be portended by the appearance of a comet whichbecame visible in the last year of his life. During a temporary retirement from court, he had also distinguished himself as a magistrate by his extraordinary diligence in the prosecution of suspected witches. But the date of these and similar delusions had not yet expired. Great alarms were excited in the country during the year 1577 by the prevalence of certain magical practices, which were supposed to strike at the life of her majesty. There were found at Islington, concealed in the house of a catholic priest who was a reputed sorcerer, three waxen images, formed to represent the queen and two of her chief counsellors; other dealings also of professors of the occult sciences were from time to time discovered. "Whether it were the effect of this magic," says Strype, who wrote in the beginning of the eighteenth century, "or proceeded from some natural cause, but the queen was in some part of this year under excessive anguish by pains of her teeth: Insomuch that she took no rest for divers nights, and endured very great torment night and day." In this extremity, a certain "outlandish" physician was consulted, who composed on the case, with much solemnity of style, a long Latin letter, in which, after observing with due humility that it was a perilous attempt in a person of his slender abilities to prescribe for a disease which had caused perplexity and diversity of opinion among the skilful and eminent physicians ordinarily employed by her majesty, he ventured however to suggest various applications as worthy of trial; finally hinting at the expediency of having recourse to extraction on the possible failure of all other means toafford relief. How this weighty matter terminated we are not here informed; but it is upon record that Aylmer bishop of London once submitted to have a tooth drawn, in order to encourage her majesty to undergo that operation; and as the promotion of the learned prelate was at this time recent, and his gratitude, it may be presumed, still lively, we may perhaps be permitted to conjecture that it was the bishop who on this occasion performed the part of exorcist.
The efforts of duke Casimir for the defence of the United Provinces had hitherto proved eminently unfortunate; and in the autumn of 1578 he judged it necessary to come over to England to apologize in person to Elizabeth for the ill success of his arms, and to make arrangements for the future.
He was very honorably received by her majesty, who recollected perhaps with some little complacency that he had formerly been her suitor. Justings, tilts, and runnings at the ring were exhibited for his entertainment, and he was engaged in hunting-parties, in which he greatly delighted. Leicester loaded him with presents; the earl of Pembroke also complimented him with a valuable jewel. The earl of Huntingdon, a nobleman whose religious zeal, which had rendered him the peculiar patron of the puritan divines, interested him also in the cause of Holland, escorted him on his return as far as Gravesend; and sir Henry Sidney attended him to Dover. The queen willingly bestowed on her princely guest the cheap distinction of the garter; but her parting present of two golden cups, worth three hundred pounds a-piece, wasextorted from her, after much murmuring and long reluctance, by the urgency of Walsingham, who was anxious, with the rest of his party, that towards this champion of the protestant cause, though unfortunate, no mark of respect should be omitted.
The Spanish and French ambassadors repined at the favors heaped on Casimir; but in the mean time the French faction was not inactive. The earl of Sussex, whose generally sound judgement seems to have been warped in this instance by his habitual contrariety to Leicester, wrote in August 1578 a long letter to the queen, in which, after stating the arguments for and against the French match, he summed up pretty decidedly in its favor. What was of more avail, Monsieur sent over to plead his cause an agent named Simier, a person of great dexterity, who well knew how to ingratiate himself by a thousand amusing arts; by a sprightly style of conversation peculiarly suited to the taste of the queen; and by that ingenious flattery, the talent of his nation, which is seldom entirely thrown away even upon the sternest and most impenetrable natures. Elizabeth could not summon resolution to dismiss abruptly a suit which was so agreeably urged, and in February 1579 lord Talbot sends the following information to his father: "Her majesty continueth her very good usage of M. Simier and all his company, and he hath conference with her three or four times a week, and she is the best disposed and pleasantest when she talketh with him (as by her gestures appeareth) that is possible." He adds,"The opinion of Monsieur's coming still holdeth, and yet it is secretly bruited that he cannot take up so much money as he would on such a sudden, and therefore will not come so soon[83]."
The influence of Simier over the queen became on a sudden so potent, that Leicester and his party reported, and perhaps believed, that he had employed philters and other unlawful means to inspire her with love for his master. Simier on his side amply retaliated these hostilities by carrying to her majesty the first tidings of the secret marriage of her favorite with the countess of Essex;—a fact which none of her courtiers had found courage to communicate to her, though it must have been by this time widely known, as sir Francis Knowles, the countess's father, had insisted, for the sake of his daughter's reputation, that the celebration of the nuptials should take place in presence of a considerable number of witnesses.
The rage of the queen on this disclosure transported her beyond all the bounds of justice, reason, and decorum. It has been already remarked that she was habitually, or systematically, an open enemy to matrimony in general; and the higher any persons stood in her good graces and the more intimate their access to her, the greater was her resentment at detecting in them any aspirations after this state; because a kind of jealousy was in these cases superadded to her malignity, and it offended her pride that those who were honored with her favor should findthemselves at leisure to covet another kind of happiness of which she was not the dispenser. But that Leicester, the dearest of her friends, the first of her favorites, after all the devotedness to her charms which he had so long professed, and which she had requited by a preference so marked and benefits so signal,—that he,—her opinion unconsulted, her sanction unimplored, should have formed,—and with her own near relation,—this indissoluble tie, and having formed it should have attempted to conceal the fact from her when known to so many others,—appeared to her the acme of ingratitude, perfidy, and insult. She felt the injury like a weak disappointed woman, she resented it like a queen and a Tudor.
She instantly ordered Leicester into confinement in a small fort then standing in Greenwich park, and she threw out the menace, nay actually entertained the design, of sending him to the Tower. But the lofty and honorable mind of the earl of Sussex revolted against proceedings so violent, so lawless, and so disgraceful in every point of view to his royal kinswoman. He plainly represented to her, that it was contrary to all right and all decorum that any man should be punished for lawful matrimony, which was held in honor by all; and his known hostility to the favorite giving weight to his remonstrance, the queen curbed her anger, gave up all thoughts of the Tower, and soon restored the earl to liberty. In no long time afterwards, he was readmitted to her presence; and so necessary had he made himself to her majesty, or so powerful in the state, that she found it expedient insensibly torestore him to the same place of trust and intimacy as before; though it is probable that he never entirely regained her affections; and his countess, for whom indeed she had never entertained any affection, remained the avowed object of her utter antipathy even after the death of Leicester, and in spite of all the intercessions in her behalf with which her son Essex, in the meridian of his favor, never ceased to importune his sovereign.
The quarrel of Leicester against Simier proceeded to such extremity after this affair, that the latter believed his life in danger from his attempts. It was even said that the earl had actually hired one of the queen's guard to assassinate the envoy, and that the design had only miscarried by chance. However this might be, her majesty, on account of the spirit of enmity displayed towards him by the people, to whom the idea of the French match was ever odious, found it necessary, by a proclamation, to take Simier under her special protection. It was about this time that as the queen was taking the air on the Thames, attended by this Frenchman and by several of her courtiers, a shot was fired into her barge, by which one of the rowers was severely wounded. Some supposed that it was aimed at Simier, others at the queen herself; but the last opinion was immediately silenced by the wise and gracious declaration of her majesty, "that she would believe nothing of her subjects that parents would not believe of their children."
After due inquiry the shot was found to have been accidental, and the person who had been the cause ofthe mischief, though condemned to death, was pardoned. Such at least is the account of the affair transmitted to us by contemporary writers; but it still remains a mystery how the man came to be capitally condemned if innocent, or to be pardoned if guilty.
Leicester, from all these circumstances, had incurred so much obloquy at court, and found himself so coldly treated by the queen herself, that in a letter to Burleigh he offered, or threatened, to banish himself; well knowing, perhaps, that the proposal would not be accepted; while the French prince, now created duke of Anjou, adroitly seized the moment of the earl's disgrace to try the effect of personal solicitations on the heart of Elizabeth. He arrived quite unexpectedly, and almost without attendants, at the gate of her palace at Greenwich; experienced a very gracious reception; and after several long conferences with the queen alone, of which the particulars never transpired, took his leave and returned home, re-committing his cause to the skilful management of his own agent, and the discussion of his brother's ambassadors.
Long and frequent meetings of the privy-council were now held, by command of her majesty, for the discussion of the question of marriage; from the minutes of which some interesting details may be recovered.
The earl of Sussex was still, as ever, strongly in favor of the match; and chiefly, as it appears, from an apprehension that France and Spain might otherwise join to dethrone the queen and set up another in her place. Lord Hunsdon was on the same side, as wasalso the lord-admiral (the earl of Lincoln), but less warmly. Burleigh labored to find arguments in support of the measure, but evidently against his judgement and to please the queen. Leicester openly professed to have changed his opinion, "for her majesty was to be followed." Sir Walter Mildmay reasoned freely and forcibly against the measure, on the ground of the too advanced age of the queen, and the religion, the previous public conduct and the family connexions of Anjou. Sir Ralph Sadler subscribed to most of the objections of Mildmay, and brought forward additional ones. Sir Henry Sidney approved all these, and subjoined, "that the marriage could not be made good by all the counsel between England and Rome; a mass might not be suffered in the court;" meaning, probably, that the marriage rite could not by any expedient be accommodated to the consciences of both parties and the law of England.
On the whole, with the single exception perhaps of the earl of Sussex, those counsellors who pronounced in favor of the marriage in this debate, did so, almost avowedly, in compliance with the wishes of the queen, whose inclination to the alliance had become very evident since the visit of her youthful suitor; while such as opposed it were moved by strong and earnest convictions of the gross impropriety and thorough unsuitableness of the match, with respect to Elizabeth herself, and the dreadful evils which it was likely to entail on the nation. How entirely the real sentiments of this body were adverse to the step, became further evident when the council, instead of immediately obeyingher majesty's command, that they should come to a formal decision on the question and acquaint her with the same, hesitated, temporized, assured her of their readiness to be entirely guided on a matter so personal to herself, by her feelings and wishes; requested to be further informed what these might be, and inquired whether, under all the circumstances, she was desirous of their coming to a full determination. "This message was reported to her majesty in the forenoon," (October 7th 1579) "and she allowed very well of the dutiful offer of their services. Nevertheless, she uttered many speeches, and that not without shedding of many tears, that she should find in her councillors, by their long disputations, any disposition to make it doubtful, whether there could be any more surety for her and her realm than to have her marry and have a child of her own body to inherit, and so to continue the line of king Henry the eighth; and she said she condemned herself of simplicity in committing this matter to be argued by them, for that she thought, to have rather had an universal request made to her to proceed in this marriage, than to have made doubt of it; and being much troubled herewith she requested" the bearers of this message "to forbear her till the afternoon."
On their return, she repeated her former expressions of displeasure; then endeavoured at some length to refute the objections brought against the match; and finally, her "great misliking" of all opposition, and her earnest desire for the marriage, being reported to her faithful council, they agreed, after longconsultations, to offer her their services in furtherance of it, should such really be her pleasure[84].
But the country possessed some men less obsequious than privy-councillors, who could not endure to stand by in silence and behold the great public interests here at stake surrendered in slavish deference to the fond fancy of a romantic woman, caught by the image of a passion which she was no longer of an age to inspire, and which she ought to have felt it an indecorum to entertain. Of this number, to his immortal honor, was Philip Sidney. This young gentleman bore at the time the courtly office of cup-bearer to the queen, and was looking for further advancement at her hands; and as on a former occasion he had not scrupled to administer some food to her preposterous desire of personal admiration, Elizabeth, when she applied to him for his opinion on her marriage, assuredly did so in the hope and expectation of hearing from him something more graceful to her ears than the language of truth and wisdom. But Sidney had beheld with his own eyes the horrors of the Paris massacre; he had imbibed with all the eagerness of a youthful and generous mind the principles of his friend the excellent Hubert Languet, one of the ablest advocates of the protestant cause; and he had since, on his embassy to Germany and Holland, enjoyed the favor and contemplated the illustrious virtues of William prince of Orange its heroic champion.
To this sacred cause the purposed marriage mustprove, as he well knew, deeply injurious, and to the reputation of his sovereign fatal:—this was enough to decide his judgement and his conduct; and magnanimously disdaining the suggestions of a selfish and servile policy, he replied to the demand of her majesty, by a letter of dissuasion, almost of remonstrance, at once the most eloquent and the most courageous piece of that nature which the age can boast. Every important view of the subject is comprised in this letter, which is long, but at the same time so condensed in style, and so skilfully compacted as to matter, that it well deserves to be read entire, and must lose materially either by abridgement or omission. Yet it may be permitted to detach from political reasonings, foreign to the nature and object of this work, a few sentences referring more immediately to the personal character of Anjou, and displaying in a strong light the enormous unfitness of the connexion; and also the animated and affectionate conclusion by which the writer seems desirous to atone for the enunciation of so many unwelcome truths.
"These," speaking of her majesty's protestant subjects... "These, how will their hearts be galled, if not aliened, when they shall see you take a husband, a Frenchman and a papist, in whom (howsoever fine wits may find further dealings or painted excuses) the very common people well know this, that he is the son of a Jezabel of our age; that his brother made oblation of his own sister's marriage, the easier to make massacres of our brethren in belief: That he himself, contrary to his promise and all gratefulness,having his liberty and principal estate by the Hugonots' means, did sack La Charité, and utterly spoil them with fire and sword! This, I say, even at first sight, gives occasion to all truly religious to abhor such a master, and consequently to diminish much of the hopeful love they have long held to you."
"Now the agent party, which is Monsieur. Whether he be not apt to work on the disadvantage of your estate, he is to be judged by his will and power: his will to be as full of light ambition as is possible, besides the French disposition and his own education, his inconstant temper against his brother, his thrusting himself into the Low Country matters, his sometimes seeking the king of Spain's daughter, sometimes your majesty, are evident testimonies of his being carried away with every wind of hope; taught to love greatness any way gotten; and having for the motioners and ministers of the mind only such young men as have showed they think evil contentment a ground of any rebellion; who have seen no commonwealth but in faction, and divers of which have defiled their hands in odious murders. With such fancies and favorites what is to be hoped for? or that he will contain himself within the limits of your conditions?"
...."Against contempt, if there be any, which I will never believe, let your excellent virtues of piety, justice and liberality, daily, if it be possible, more and more shine. Let such particular actions be found out (which be easy, as I think, to be done) by which you may gratify all the hearts of your people. Let those in whom you find trust, and to whom you havecommitted trust, in your weighty affairs, be held up in the eyes of your subjects: Lastly, doing as you do, you shall be as you be, the example of princes, the ornament of this age, and the most excellent fruit of your progenitors, and the perfect mirror of your posterity."
Such had ever been the devoted loyalty of Philip Sidney towards Elizabeth, and so high was the place which he held in her esteem, that she appears to have imputed the boldness of this letter to no motives but good ones; and instead of resenting his interference in so delicate a matter, she is thought to have been deeply moved by his eloquence, and even to have been influenced by it in the formation of her final resolve. But far other success attended the efforts of a different character, who labored with equal zeal, equal reason, and probably not inferior purity of intention, though for less courtliness of address, to deter rather than dissuade her from the match, on grounds much more offensive to her feelings, and by means of what was then accounted a seditious appeal to the passions and prejudices of the nation.
The work alluded to was entitled "The discovery of a gaping gulf wherein England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banns by letting her see the sin and punishment thereof." Its author was a gentleman named Stubbs, then of Lincoln's Inn, and previously of Bene't College Cambridge, where we are told that his intimacies had been formed among the more learned and ingenious class of students, and where the poet Spenser hadbecome his friend. He was known as a zealous puritan, and had given his sister in marriage to the celebrated Edmund Cartwright the leader of the sect. It is probable that neither his religious principles nor this connexion were forgotten by the queen in her estimate of his offence. A furious proclamation was issued against the book, all the copies of which were ordered to be seized and burned; and the author and publisher, being proceeded against on a severe statute of Philip and Mary, which many lawyers held to be no longer in force, were found guilty, and condemned to the barbarous punishment of amputation of the right hand.
The words of Stubbs on being brought to the scaffold to undergo his sentence have been preserved, and well merit transcription. "What a grief it is to the body to lose one of his members you all know. I am come hither to receive my punishment according to the law. I am sorry for the loss of my hand, and more sorry to lose it by judgement; but most of all with her majesty's indignation and evil opinion, whom I have so highly displeased. Before I was condemned, I might speak for my innocency; but now my mouth is stopped by judgement, to the which I submit myself, and am content patiently to endure whatsoever it pleaseth God, of his secret providence, to lay upon me, and take it justly deserved for my sins; and I pray God it may be an example to you all, that it being so dangerous to offend the laws, without an evil meaning, as breedeth the loss of a hand, you may use your hands holily, and pray to God for the long preservation ofher majesty over you, whom God hath used as an instrument for a long peace and many blessings over us; and specially for his Gospel, whereby she hath made a way for us to rest and quietness to our consciences. For the French I force not; but my greatest grief is, in so many weeks and days of imprisonment, her majesty hath not once thought me worthy of her mercy, which she hath often times extended to divers persons in greater offences. For my hand, I esteem it not so much, for I think I could have saved it, and might do yet; but I will not have a guiltless heart and an infamous hand. I pray you all to pray with me, that God will strengthen me to endure and abide the pain that I am to suffer, and grant me this grace, that the loss of my hand do not withdraw any part of my duty and affection toward her majesty, and because, when so many veins of blood are opened, it is uncertain how they may be stayed, and what wilt be the event thereof.".... The hand ready on the block to be stricken off, he said often to the people: "Pray for me now my calamity is at hand." And so, with these words, it was smitten off, whereof he swoonded[85]."
In this speech, the language of which is so remarkably contrasted with those abject submissions which fear extorted from the high-born victims of the tyranny of Henry VIII., the attentive reader will discern somewhat of the same spirit which combatedpopery and despotism under the Stuarts, though tempered by that loyal attachment towards the restorer and protectress of reformed religion which dwelt in the hearts of all the protestant subjects of Elizabeth without exception.
After the execution of the more painful part of his sentence, Stubbs was further punished by an imprisonment of several months in the Tower: but under all these inflictions, his courage and his cheerfulness were supported by a firm persuasion of the goodness of the cause in which he suffered. He wrote many letters to his friends with the left hand, signing them Scævola; a surname which it was his pleasure to adopt in memory of a circumstance by which he did not feel himself to be the person dishonored. Such was the opinion entertained by Burleigh of the theological learning of this eminent person and the soundness of his principles, that he engaged him in 1587 to answer Cardinal Allen's violent book entitled "The English Justice;" a task which he is said to have performed with distinguished ability.
During the whole of the year 1580, the important question of the queen's marriage remained in an undecided state. The court of France appears to have suffered the treaty to languish, and Elizabeth, conscious no doubt that her fond inclination could only be gratified at the expense of that popularity which it had been the leading object of her policy to cherish, sought not to revive it. Various circumstances occurred to occupy public attention during the interval.
Sir Nicholas Bacon, who under the humbler title of lord keeper had exercised from the beginning of the reign the office of lord high chancellor, died generally regretted in 1579. No one is recorded to have filled this important post with superior assiduity or a greater reputation for uprightness and ability than sir Nicholas, and several well-known traits afford a highly pleasing image of the general character of his mind. Of this number are his motto, "Mediocria firma," and his handsome reply to the remark of her majesty that his house was too little for him;—"No, madam; but you have made me too big for my house." Even when, upon this royal hint, he erected his elegant mansion of Gorhambury, he was still careful not to lose sight of that idea of lettered privacy in which he loved to indulge; and the accomplishments of his mind were reflected in the decorations of his home. In the gardens, on which his chief care and cost were bestowed, arose a banqueting-house consecrated to the seven Sciences, whose figures adorned the walls, each subscribed with a Latin distich and surrounded with portraits of her most celebrated votaries; a temple in which we may imagine the youthful mind of that illustrious son of his, who "took all learning to be" his "province," receiving with delight its earliest inspiration! In his second wife,—one of the learned daughters of sir Anthony Cook, a woman of a keen and penetrating intellect, and much distinguished by her zeal for reformed religion in its austerer forms,—sir Nicholas found a partner capable of sharing his views and appreciating his character. Byher he became the father of two sons; that remarkable man Anthony Bacon, and Francis, the light of science, the interpreter of nature; the admiration of his own age, and the wonder of succeeding ones; the splendid dawn of whose unrivalled genius his father was happy enough to behold; more happy still in not surviving to witness the calamitous eclipse which overshadowed his reputation at its highest noon.
The lord keeper was esteemed the second pillar of that state of which Burleigh was the prime support. In all public measures of importance they acted together; and similar speculative opinions, with coinciding views of national policy, united these two eminent statesmen in a brotherhood dearer than that of alliance; but in their motives of action, and in the character of their minds, a diversity was observable which it may be useful to point out.
Of Burleigh it has formerly been remarked, that with his own interest he considered also, and perhaps equally, that of his queen and his country: but the patriotism of Bacon seems to have risen higher; and his conformity with the wishes and sentiments of his sovereign was less obsequiously exact. In the affair of lady Catherine Grey's title, he did not hesitate to risk the favor of the queen and his own continuance in office, for the sake of what appeared to him the cause of religion and his country. On the whole, however, moderation and prudence were the governing principles of his mind and actions. The intellect of Burleigh was more versatile and acute, that of Bacon more profound; and their parts in the great drama ofpublic life were cast accordingly: Burleigh had most of the alertness of observation, the fertility of expedient, the rapid calculation of contingencies, required in the minister of state; Bacon, of the gravity and steadfastness which clothe with reverence and authority the counsellor and judge. "He was a plain man," says Francis Bacon of his father, "direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness, and one that was of a mind that a man in his private proceedings and estate, and in the proceedings of state, should rest upon the soundness and strength of his own courses, and not upon practice to circumvent others."
After Elizabeth had forgiven his interference respecting the succession, no one was held by her in greater honor and esteem than her lord keeper; she visited him frequently, conversed with him familiarly; took pleasure in the flashes of wit which often relieved the seriousness of his wisdom; and flattered with kind condescension his parental feelings by the extraordinary notice which she bestowed on his son Francis, whose brightness and solidity of parts early manifested themselves to her discerning eye, and caused her to predict that her "little lord keeper" would one day prove an eminent man.
Great interest was excited by the arrival in Plymouth harbour, in November 1580, of the celebrated Francis Drake from his circumnavigation of the globe. National vanity was flattered by the idea that this Englishman should have been the first commander-in-chief by whom this great and novel enterprise had been successfully achieved; and both himself andhis ship became in an eminent degree the objects of public curiosity and wonder. The courage, skill and perseverance of this great navigator were deservedly extolled; the wealth which he had brought home, from the plunder of the Spanish settlements, awakened the cupidity which in that age was a constant attendant on the daring spirit of maritime adventure, and half the youth of the country were on fire to embark in expeditions of pillage and discovery.
But the court was not so easily induced to second the ardor of the nation. Drake's captures from the Spaniards had been made, under some vague notion of reprisals, whilst no open war was subsisting between the nations; and the Spanish ambassador, not, it must be confessed, without some reason, branded his proceedings with the reproach of piracy, and loudly demanded restitution of the booty. Elizabeth wavered for some time between admiration of the valiant Drake, mixed with a desire of sharing in the profits of his expedition, and a dread of incensing the king of Spain; but she at length decided on the part most acceptable to her people,—that of giving a public sanction to his acts. During the spring of 1581 she accepted of a banquet on board his ship off Deptford, conferred on him the order of knighthood, and received him into favor.
Much anxiety and alarm was about this time occasioned to the queen and her protestant subjects by the clandestine arrival in the country of a considerable number of catholic priests, mostly English by birth, but educated at the seminaries respectively foundedat Douay, Rheims, and Rome, by the king of Spain, cardinal Lorrain, and the pope, for the express purpose of furnishing means for the disturbance of the queen's government. Monks of the new order of Jesuits presided over these establishments, who made it their business to inspire the pupils with the most frightful excess of bigotry and fanaticism; and two of these friars, fathers Parsons and Campion, coming over to England to guide and regulate the efforts of their party, were detected in treasonable practices; on account of which Campion, with some accomplices, underwent capital punishment, or, in the language of his church, received the crown of martyrdom.
In order to check the diffusion among the rising generation of doctrines so destructive of the peace and good government of the country, a proclamation was issued in June 1580, requiring that all persons who had any children, wards, or kinsmen, in any parts beyond seas, should within ten days give in their names to the ordinaries, and within four months send for them home again.
Circular letters were also dispatched by the privy-council to the bishops, setting forth, that whereas her majesty found daily inconvenience to the realm by the education of numbers of young gentlemen and others her subjects in parts beyond the seas;—where for the most part they were "nourselled and nourished in papistry," with such instructions as "made them to mislike the government of their country, and thus tended to render them undutiful subjects;" &c. and intending to "take some present order therein;" aswell by prohibiting that any but such as were known to be well affected in religion, and would undertake for the good education of their children, should send them abroad; and they not without her majesty's special license;—as also, by recalling such as were at present, in Spain, France, or Italy, without such license;—had commanded that the bishops should call before them, in their respective dioceses, certain parents or guardians whose names were annexed, and bind them in good sums of money for the recall of their sons or wards within three months[86]. Many other indications of a jealousy of the abode of English youth in catholic countries, which at such a juncture will scarcely appear unreasonable, might be collected from various sources.
A friend of Anthony Bacon's sends him this warning to Bordeaux in 1583: "I can no longer abstain from telling you plainly that the injury is great, you do to yourself, and your best friends, in this your voluntary banishment (for so it is already termed).... The times are not as heretofore for the best disposed travellers: but in one word, sir, believe me, they are not the best thought of where they would be that take any delight to absent themselves in foreign parts, especially such as are of quality, and known to have no other cause than their private contentment; which also is not allowable, or to be for any long time, as you will shortly hear further; touching these limitations. In the mean time I could wish you lookedwell to yourself, and to think, that whilst you live there, perhaps in no great security, you are within the compass of some sinister conceits or hard speeches here, if not of that jealousy which is now had even of the best, that in these doubtful days, wherein our country hath need to be furnished of the soundest members and truest hearts to God and prince, do yet take delight to live in those parts where our utter ruin is threatened[87]: &c."
"The old lord Burleigh," says a contemporary, "if any one came to the lords of the council for a license to travel, would first examine him of England. And if he found him ignorant, would bid him stay at home and know his own country first[88]." A plausible evasion, doubtless, of requests with which that cautious minister judged it inexpedient to comply.
These machinations of the papists afforded a plea to the puritans in the house of commons for the enactment of still severer laws against this already persecuted sect; and Elizabeth judged it expedient to accord a ready assent to these statutes, for the purpose of tranquillizing the minds of her protestant subjects on the score of religion, previously to the renewal of negotiations with the court of France.
Simier, who still remained in England, had been but too successful in continuing or reviving the tender impressions created in the heart of the queen by the personal attentions of his master; and the Frenchking, finding leisure to turn his attention once more to this object, from which he had been apparently diverted by the civil wars which had broken out afresh in his country, was encouraged to send in 1581 a splendid embassy, headed by a prince of the blood, to settle the terms of this august alliance, of which every one now expected to see the completion. A magnificent reception was prepared by Elizabeth for these noble strangers; but she had the weakness to choose to appear before them in the borrowed character of a heroine of romance, rather than in that of a great princess whose vigorous yet cautious politics had rendered her for more than twenty years the admiration of all the statesmen of Europe. She caused to be erected on the south side of her palace of Whitehall, a vast banqueting-house framed of timber and covered with painted canvass, which was decorated internally in a style of the most fantastic gaudiness. Pendants of fruits of various kinds (amongst which cucumbers and carrots are enumerated) were hung from festoons of ivy, bay, rosemary, and different flowers, the whole lavishly sprinkled with gold spangles: the ceiling was painted like a sky, with stars, sunbeams, and clouds, intermixed with scutcheons of the royal arms; and a profusion of glass lustres illuminated the whole. In this enchanted palace the French ambassadors were entertained by the maiden queen at several splendid banquets, while her ministers were engaged by her command in drawing up the marriage articles. Meantime several of her youthful courtiers, anxious to complete the gay illusion in the imagination of theirsovereign, prepared for the exhibition of what was calleda triumph,—of which the following was the plan.
The young earl of Arundel, lord Windsor, Philip Sidney, and Fulke Greville, the four challengers, styled themselves the foster-children of Desire, and to that end of the tilt-yard where her majesty was seated, their adulation gave the name of the Castle of Perfect Beauty. This castle the queen was summoned to surrender in a very courtly message delivered by a boy dressed in red and white, the colours of Desire. On her refusal, a mount placed on wheels was rolled into the tilt-yard, and the four cavaliers rode in superbly armed and accoutred, and each at the head of a splendid troop; and when they had passed in military order before the queen, the boy who had delivered the former message thus again addressed her:—
"If the message lately delivered unto you had been believed and followed, O queen! in whom the whole story of virtue is written with the language of beauty; nothing should this violence have needed in your inviolate presence. Your eyes, which till now have been wont to discern only the bowed knees of kneeling hearts, and, inwardly turned, found always the heavenly peace of a sweet mind, should not now have their fair beams reflected with the shining of armour, should not now be driven to see the fury of desire, nor the fiery force of fury. But sith so it is (alas that it is so!) that in the defence of obstinate refusal there never groweth victory but by compassion, they are come:—what need I say more? You see them, ready in heart as you know, and able with hands, as theyhope, not only to assailing, but to prevailing. Perchance you despise the smallness of number. I say unto you, the force of Desire goeth not by fulness of company. Nay, rather view with what irresistible determination themselves approach, and how not only the heavens send their invisible instruments to aid them, (music within the mount) but also the very earth, the dullest of all the elements, which with natural heaviness still strives to the sleepy centre, yet, for advancing this enterprise, is content actively (as you shall see) to move itself upon itself to rise up in height, that it may the better command the high and high-minded fortresses.
"(Here the mount rose up in height.) Many words, when deeds are in the field, are tedious both unto the speaker and hearer. You see their forces, but know not their fortunes: if you be resolved, it boots not, and threats dread not. I have discharged my charge, which was even when all things were ready for the assault, then to offer parley, a thing not so much used as gracious in besiegers. You shall now be summoned to yield, which if it be rejected, then look for the affectionate alarm to be followed with desirous assault. The time approacheth for their approaches, but no time shall stay me from wishing, that however this succeed the world may long enjoy its chiefest ornament, which decks it with herself, and herself with the love of goodness."
The rolling mount was now moved close to the queen, the music sounded, and one of the boys accompanied with cornets sung a fresh summons to the fortress.
When this was ended, another boy, turning to the challengers and their retinue, sung an alarm, which ended, the two canons were shot off, 'the one with sweet powder and the other with sweet water, very odoriferous and pleasant, and the noise of the shooting was very excellent consent of melody within the mount. And after that, was store of pretty scaling-ladders, and the footmen threw flowers and such fancies against the walls, with all such devices as might seem fit shot for Desire. All which did continue till time the defendants came in.' These were above twenty in number, and each accompanied by his servants, pages, and trumpeters. Speeches were delivered to the queen on the part of these knights, several of whom appeared in some assumed character; sir Thomas Perrot and Anthony Cook thought proper to personate Adam and Eve; the latter having 'hair hung all down his helmet.' The messenger sent on the part of Thomas Ratcliff described his master as a forlorn knight, whom despair of achieving the favor of his peerless and sunlike mistress had driven out of the haunts of men into a cave of the desert, where moss was his couch, and moss, moistened by tears, his only food. Even here however the report of this assault upon the castle of Perfect Beauty had reached his ears, and roused him from his slumber of despondency; and in token of his devoted loyalty and inviolable fidelity to his divine lady, he sent his shield, which he in treated her to accept as the ensign of her fame, and the instrument of his glory, prostrating himself at her feet as one ready to undertake any adventures in hopeof her gracious favor.—Of this romantic picture of devoted and despairing passion the description of Amadis de Gaul at the Poor Rock seems to have been the prototype.