1559.
Meeting of parliament.--Prudent counsel of sir N. Bacon.--Act
declaratory of the queen's title.--Her answer to an address praying her
to marry.--Philip II. offers her his hand.--Motives of her
refusal.--Proposes to her the archduke Charles.--The king of Sweden
renews his addresses by the duke of Finland.--Honorable reception of the
duke.--Addresses of the duke of Holstein.--The duke of Norfolk, lord R.
Dudley, the marquis of Northampton, the earl of Rutland, made knights of
the garter.--Notices of the two last.--Queen visits the earl of
Pembroke.--His life and character.--Arrival and entertainment of a
French embassy.--Review of the London trained-bands.--Tilt in Greenwich
park.--Band of gentlemen-pensioners.--Royal progress to Dartford, Cobham
Hall, Eltham, and Nonsuch.--The earl of Arundel entertains her at the
latter place.--Obsequies for the king of France.--Death of Frances
duchess of Suffolk.--Sumptuary law respecting apparel.--Fashions of
dress.--Law against witchcraft.
In the parliament which met in January 1559, two matters personally
interesting to the queen were agitated; her title to the crown, and her
marriage; and both were disposed of in a manner calculated to afford a
just presage of the maxims by which the whole tenor of her future life
and reign was to be guided. By the eminently prudent and judicious
counsels of sir Nicholas Bacon keeper of the seals, she omitted to
require of parliament the repeal of those acts of her father's reign
which had declared his marriage with her mother null, and herself
illegitimate; and reposing on the acknowledged maxim of law, that the
crown once worn takes away all defects in blood, she contented herself
with an act declaratory in general terms of her right of succession.
Thus the whole perplexing subject of her mother's character and conduct
was consigned to an oblivion equally safe and decent; and the memory of
her father, which, in spite of all his acts of violence and injustice,
was popular in the nation and respected by herself, was saved from the
stigma which the vindication of Anne Boleyn must have impressed
indelibly upon it.
On the other topic she explained herself with an earnest sincerity which
might have freed her from all further importunity in any concern less
interesting to the wishes of her people. To a deputation from the house
of commons with an address, "the special matter whereof was to move her
grace to marriage," after a gracious reception, she delivered an answer
in which the following passages are remarkable.
"...From my years of understanding, sith I first had consideration of my
life, to be born a servitor of almighty God, I happily chose this kind
of life, in the which I yet live; which I assure you for mine own part
hath hitherto best contented myself, and I trust hath been most
acceptable unto God. From the which, if either ambition of high estate,
offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince,
whereof I have some records in this presence (as you our treasurer well
know); or if eschewing the danger of mine enemies, or the avoiding of
the peril of death, whose messenger, or rather a continual watchman, the
prince's indignation, was no little time daily before mine eyes, (by
whose means although I know, or justly may suspect, yet I will not now
utter, or if the whole cause were in my sister herself, I will not now
burden her therewith, because I will not charge the dead): if any of
these, I say, could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I
had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me; but so constant
have I always continued in this determination, although my youth and
words may seem to some hardly to agree together; yet it is most true
that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have
had in times past, or have at this present."
After a somewhat haughty assurance that she takes the recommendation of
the parliament in good part, because it contains no limitation of place
or person, which she should have regarded as great presumption in them,
"whose duties are to obey," and "not to require them that may command;"
having declared that should she change her resolution, she will choose
one for her husband who shall, if possible, be as careful for the realm
as herself, she thus concludes: "And in the end, this shall be for me
sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare, that a queen, having
reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin."
One matrimonial proposal her majesty had already received, and that at
once the most splendid and the least suitable which Europe could afford.
Philip of Spain, loth to relinquish his hold upon England, but long
since aware of the impracticability of establishing any claims of his
own in opposition to the title of Elizabeth, now sought to reign by her;
and to the formal announcement which she conveyed to him of the death of
his late wife, accompanied with expressions of her anxiety to preserve
his friendship, he had replied by an offer of his hand.
The objections to this union were so peculiarly forcible, and so obvious
to every eye, that it appears at first view almost incredible that the
proposal should have been made, as it yet undoubtedly was, seriously and
with strong expectations of success. But Philip, himself a politician,
believed Elizabeth to be one also; and he flattered himself that he
should be able to point out such advantages in the connexion as might
over-balance in her mind any scruples of patriotism, of feeling, or of
conscience. She stood alone, the last of her father's house, unsupported
at home by the authority of a powerful royal family, or abroad by great
alliances. The queen of Scots, whom few of the subjects of Elizabeth
denied to be next heir to the crown, and whose claim was by most of the
catholics held preferable to her own, was married to the dauphin of
France, consequently her title would be upheld by the whole force of
that country, with which, as well as with Scotland, Elizabeth at her
accession had found the nation involved in an unsuccessful war. The loss
of Calais, the decay of trade, the failure of the exchequer, and the
recent visitations of famine and pestilence, had infected the minds of
the English with despondency, and paralysed all their efforts.
In religion they were confessedly a divided people; but it is probable
that Philip, misled by his own zeal and that of the catholic clergy,
confidently anticipated the extirpation of heresy and the final triumph
of the papal system, if the measures of _salutary rigor_ which had
distinguished the reign of Mary should be persisted in by her successor;
and that he actually supposed the majority of the nation to be at this
time sincerely and cordially catholic. In offering therefore his hand to
Elizabeth, he seemed to lend her that powerful aid against her foreign
foe and rival without which her possession of the throne could not be
secure, and that support against domestic faction without which it could
not be tranquil. He readily undertook to procure from the pope the
necessary dispensation for the marriage, which he was certain would be
granted with alacrity; and before the answer of Elizabeth could reach
him, he had actually dispatched envoys to Rome for this purpose.
A princess, in fact, of a character less firm and less sagacious than
Elizabeth, might have found in these seeming benefits temptations not to
be resisted; the splendor of Philip's rank and power would have dazzled
and overawed, the difficulties of her own situation would have
affrighted her, and between ambition and alarm she would probably have
thrown herself into the arms, and abandoned her country to the mercy, of
a gloomy, calculating, relentless tyrant.
But Elizabeth was neither to be deceived nor intimidated. She well knew
how odious this very marriage had rendered her unhappy sister; she
understood and sympathized in the religious sentiments of the great
mass of her subjects; she felt too all the pride, as well as the
felicity, of independence; and looking around with a cheerful confidence
on a people who adored her, she formed at once the patriotic resolution
to wear her English diadem by the suffrage of the English nation alone,
unindebted to the protection and free from the participation of any
brother-monarch living, even of him who held the highest place among the
potentates of Europe.
Her best and wisest counsellors applauded her decision, but they
unanimously advised that no means consistent with the rejection of his
suit should be omitted, by which the friendship of the king of Spain
might be preserved and cultivated. Expedients were accordingly found,
without actually encouraging his hopes, for protracting the negotiation
till a peace was concluded with France and with Scotland, and finally of
declining the marriage without a breach of amity. Yet the duke de Feria,
the Spanish ambassador, had not failed to represent to the queen, that
as the addresses of his master were founded on personal acquaintance and
high admiration of her charms and merit, a negative could not be
returned without wounding equally his pride and his feelings. Philip,
however, soon consoled himself for this disappointment by taking to wife
the daughter of the king of France; and before the end of the year we
find him recommending to Elizabeth as a husband his cousin the archduke
Charles, son of the emperor Ferdinand. The overture was at this time
declined by the queen without hesitation; but some time afterwards,
circumstances arose which caused the negotiation to be resumed with
prospect of success, and the pretensions and qualifications of the
Austrian prince became, as we shall see, an object of serious
discussion.
Eric, who had now ascended the throne of Sweden, sent his brother the
duke of Finland to plead once more with the English princess in his
behalf; and the king of Denmark, unwilling that his neighbour should
bear off without a contest so glorious a prize, lost no time in sending
forth on the same high adventure his nephew the duke of Holstein. It is
more than probable that Shakespear, in his description of the wooers of
all countries who contend for the possession of the fair and wealthy
Portia[43], satirically alludes to several of these royal suitors, whose
departure would often be accounted by his sovereign "a gentle ridance,"
since she might well exclaim with the Italian heiress, "while we shut
the gate on one wooer, another knocks at the door."
[Note 43: See "The Merchant of Venice."]
The duke of Finland was received with high honors. The earl of Oxford
and lord Robert Dudley repaired to him at Colchester and conducted him
into London. At the corner of Gracechurch-street he was received by the
marquis of Northampton and lord Ambrose Dudley, attended by many
gentlemen, and, what seems remarkable, by ladies also; and thence,
followed by a great troop of gentlemen in gold chains and yeomen of the
guard, he proceeded to the bishop of Winchester's palace in Southwark,
"which was hung with rich cloth of arras, and wrought with gold and
silver and silks. And there he remained."
On the last circumstance it may be remarked, that it appears at this
time to have been the invariable custom for ambassadors and other royal
visitants to be lodged at some private house, where they were
entertained, nominally perhaps at the expense of the sovereign, but
really to the great cost as well as inconvenience of the selected host.
The practice discovers a kind of feudal right of ownership still claimed
by the prince in the mansions of his barons, some of which indeed were
royal castles or manor-houses and held perhaps under peculiar
obligations: at the same time it gives us a magnificent idea of the size
and accommodation of these mansions and of the style of house-keeping
used in them. It further intimates that an habitual distrust of these
foreign guests caused it to be regarded as a point of prudence to place
them under the secret inspection of some native of approved loyalty and
discretion. Prisoners of state, as well as ambassadors and royal
strangers, were thus committed to the private custody of peers or
bishops.
The duke of Holstein on his arrival was lodged at Somerset Place, of
which the queen had granted the use to lord Hunsdon. He came, it seems,
with sanguine expectations of success in his suit; but the royal fair
one deemed it sufficient to acknowledge his pains by an honorable
reception, the order of the garter, and the grant of a yearly pension.
Meantime the queen herself, with equal assiduity and better success than
awaited these princely wooers, was applying her cares to gain the
affections of her subjects of every class, and if possible of both
religious denominations.
On her young kinsman the duke of Norfolk, the first peer of the realm by
rank, property, and great alliances, and the most popular by his known
attachment to the protestant faith, she now conferred the distinction of
the garter, decorating with it at the same time the marquis of
Northampton, the earl of Rutland, and lord Robert Dudley.
The marquis, a brother of queen Catherine Parr, whom he resembled in the
turn of his religious opinions, had been for these opinions a great
sufferer under the last reign. On pretext of his adherence to the cause
of Jane Grey, in which he had certainly not partaken more deeply than
many others who found nothing but favor in the sight of Mary, he was
attainted of high treason, and though his life was spared, his estates
were forfeited and he had remained ever since in disgrace and suspicion.
A divorce which he had obtained from an unfaithful wife under the
ecclesiastical law of Henry VIII. was also called in question, and an
after marriage which he had contracted declared null, but it appears to
have been confirmed under Elizabeth. He was accounted a modest and
upright character, endowed with no great talents for military command,
in which he had been unsuccessful, nor yet for civil business; but
distinguished by a fine taste in music and poetry, which formed his
chief delight. From the new sovereign substantial benefits as well as
flattering distinctions awaited him, being reinstated by her in the
possession of his confiscated estates and appointed a privy-councillor.
Henry second earl of Rutland of the surname of Manners, was the
representative of a knightly family seated during many generations at
Ettal in Northumberland, and known in border history amongst the
stoutest champions on the English side. But Ettal, a place of strength,
was more than once laid in ruins, and the lands devastated and rendered
"nothing worth," by incursions of the Scots; and though successive kings
rewarded the services and compensated the losses of these valiant
knights, by grants of land and appointments to honorable offices in the
north, it was many an age before they attained to such a degree of
wealth as would enable them to appear with distinction amongst the great
families of the kingdom. At length sir Robert Manners, high sheriff of
Northumberland, having recommended himself to the favor of the
king-making Warwick and of Richard duke of Gloucester, was fortunate
enough by a judicious marriage with the daughter of lord Roos, heiress
of the Tiptofts earls of Worcester, to add the noble castle and fertile
vale of Belvoir to the battered towers and wasted fields of his paternal
inheritance.
A second splendid alliance completed the aggrandizement of the house of
Manners. The son of sir Robert, bearing in right of his mother the title
of lord Roos, and knighted by the earl of Surry for his distinguished
bravery in the Scottish wars, was honored with the hand of Anne sole
heiress of sir Thomas St. Leger by the duchess-dowager of Exeter, a
sister of king Edward IV. The heir of this marriage, in consideration
of his maternal ancestry, was advanced by Henry VIII. to the title of
earl of Rutland, never borne but by princes of the blood. His successor,
whom the queen was pleased to honor on this occasion, had suffered a
short imprisonment in the cause of Jane Grey, but was afterwards
intrusted by Mary with a military command. Under Elizabeth he was lord
lieutenant of the counties of Nottingham and Rutland, and one of the
commissioners for enforcing the oath of supremacy on all persons in
offices of trust or profit suspected of adherence to the old religion.
He died in 1563.
Of lord Robert Dudley it is only necessary here to observe, that his
favor with the queen became daily more apparent, and began to give fears
and jealousies to her best friends and wisest counsellors.
The hearts of the common people, as this wise princess well knew, were
easily and cheaply to be won by gratifying their eyes with the frequent
view of her royal person, and she neglected no opportunity of offering
herself, all smiles and affability, to their ready acclamations.
On one occasion she passed publicly through the city to visit the mint
and inspect the new coinage, which she had the great merit of restoring
to its just standard from the extremely depreciated state to which it
had been brought by the successive encroachments of her immediate
predecessors. Another time she visited the dissolved priory of St. Mary
Spittle in Bishopsgate-street, which was noted for its pulpit-cross,
where, on set days, the lord-mayor and aldermen attended to hear
sermons. It is conjectured that the queen went thither for the same
purpose; but if this were the case, her equipage was somewhat whimsical.
She was attended, as Stow informs us, by a thousand men in harness with
shirts of mail and corselets and morice-pikes, and ten great pieces
carried through the city unto the court, with drums and trumpets
sounding, and two morice dancings, and in a cart two white bears.
Having supped one afternoon with the earl of Pembroke at Baynard's
castle in Thames-street, she afterwards took boat and was rowed up and
down the river, "hundreds of boats and barges rowing about her, and
thousands of people thronging at the water side to look upon her
majesty; rejoicing to see her, and partaking of the music and sights
upon the Thames."
This peer was the offspring of a base-born son of William Herbert earl
of Pembroke, and coming early to court to push his fortune, became an
esquire of the body to Henry VIII. Soon ingratiating himself with this
monarch, he obtained from his customary profusion towards his favorites,
several offices in Wales and enormous grants of abbey-lands in some of
the southern counties. In the year 1554, the 37th of his age, we find
him considerable enough to procure the king's license "to retain thirty
persons at his will and pleasure, over and above such persons as
attended on him, and to give them his livery, badges, and cognizance."
The king's marriage with Catherine Parr, his wife's sister, increased
his consequence, and Henry on his death-bed appointed him one of his
executors and a member of the young king's council. He was actively
useful in the beginning of Edward's reign in keeping down commotions in
Wales and suppressing some which had arisen in Wiltshire and
Somersetshire. This service obtained for him the office of master of the
horse; and that more important service which he afterwards performed at
the head of one thousand Welshmen, with whom he took the field against
the Cornish rebels, was rewarded by the garter, the presidency of the
council for Wales, and a valuable wardship. He figured next as commander
of part of the forces in Picardy and governor of Calais, and found
himself strong enough to claim of the feeble protector as his reward the
titles of baron Herbert and earl of Pembroke, become extinct by the
failure of legitimate heirs. As soon as his sagacity prognosticated the
fall of Somerset, he judiciously attached himself to the rising fortunes
of Northumberland. With this aspiring leader it was an object of prime
importance to purchase the support of a nobleman who now appeared at the
head of three hundred retainers, and whose authority in Wales and the
southern counties was equal, or superior, to the hereditary influence of
the most powerful and ancient houses. To engage him therefore the more
firmly in his interest, Northumberland proposed a marriage between
Pembroke's son lord Herbert and lady Catherine Grey, which was
solemnized at the same time with that between lord Guildford Dudley and
the lady Jane her eldest sister.
But no ties of friendship or alliance could permanently engage Pembroke
on the losing side; and though he concurred in the first measures of the
privy-council in behalf of lady Jane's title, it was he who devised a
pretext for extricating its members from the Tower, where Northumberland
had detained them in order to secure their fidelity, and, assembling
them in Baynard's castle, procured their concurrence in the proclamation
of Mary. By this act he secured the favor of the new queen, whom he
further propitiated by compelling his son to repudiate the innocent and
ill-fated lady Catherine, whose birth caused her to be regarded at court
with jealous eyes. Mary soon confided to him the charge of effectually
suppressing Wyat's rebellion, and afterwards constituted him her
captain-general beyond the seas, in which capacity he commanded the
English forces at the battle of St. Quintin's. Such was the respect
entertained for his experience and capacity, that Elizabeth admitted him
to her privy-council immediately after her accession, and as a still
higher mark of her confidence named him,--with the marquis of
Northampton, the earl of Bedford, and lord John Grey, leading men of the
protestant party,--to assist at the meetings of divines and men of
learning by whom the religious establishment of the country was to be
settled. He was likewise appointed a commissioner for administering the
oath of supremacy. In short, he retained to his death, which occurred in
1570, in the 63d year of his age, the same high station among the
confidential servants of the crown which he had held unmoved through all
the mutations of the eventful period of his public life.
Naunton, in his "Fragmenta Regalia," speaking of Paulet marquis of
Winchester and lord-treasurer, who, he says, had then served four
princes "in as various and changeable season that well I may say,
neither time nor age hath yielded the like precedent," thus proceeds:
"This man being noted to grow high in her" (queen Elizabeth's) "favor,
as his place and experience required, was questioned by an intimate
friend of his, how he stood up for thirty years together amidst the
changes and reigns of so many chancellors and great personages. 'Why,'
quoth the marquis, 'ortus sum ex salice, non ex quercu.' (By being a
willow and not an oak). And truly the old man hath taught them all,
especially William earl of Pembroke, for they two were ever of the
king's religion, and over-zealous professors. Of these it is said, that
both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left
them and came on trust to the court; where, upon the bare stock of their
wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well, that
they got, spent, and left, more than any subjects from the Norman
conquest to their own times: whereunto it hath been prettily replied,
that they lived in a time of dissolution.--Of any of the former reign,
it is said that these two lived and died chiefly in the queen's favor."
Among the means employed by Pembroke for preserving the good graces of
the new queen, the obvious one of paying court to her prime favorite
Robert Dudley was not neglected; and lord Herbert, whose first marriage
had been contracted in compliance with the views of the father, now
formed a third in obedience to the wishes of the son. The lady to whom
he was thus united by motives in which inclination had probably no share
on either side, was the niece of Dudley and sister of sir Philip Sidney,
one of the most accomplished women of her age, celebrated during her
life by the wits and poets whom she patronized, and preserved in the
memory of posterity by an epitaph from the pen of Ben Jonson which will
not be forgotten whilst English poetry remains.
The arrival of ambassadors of high rank from France, on occasion of the
peace recently concluded with that country, afforded the queen an
opportunity of displaying all the magnificence of her court; and their
entertainment has furnished for the curious inquirer in later times some
amusing traits of the half-barbarous manners of the age. The duke de
Montmorenci, the head of the embassy, was lodged at the bishop of
London's, and the houses of the dean and canons of St. Paul's were
entirely filled with his numerous retinue. The gorgeousness of the
ambassador's dress was thought remarkable even in those gorgeous times.
The day after their arrival they were conducted in state to court, where
they supped with the queen, and afterwards partook of a "goodly
banquet," with all manner of entertainment till midnight. The next day
her majesty gave them a sumptuous dinner, followed by a baiting of bulls
and bears. "The queen's grace herself" stood with them in a gallery,
looking on the pastime, till six o'clock, when they returned by water to
sup with the bishop their host. On the following day they were
conducted to the Paris Garden, then a favorite place of amusement on the
Surry side of the Thames, and there regaled with another exhibition of
bull and bear baiting. Two days afterwards they departed, "taking their
barge towards Gravesend," highly delighted, it is to be hoped, with the
elegant taste of the English in public diversions, and carrying with
them a number of mastiffs, given them to hunt wolves in their own
country.
But notwithstanding all outward shows of amity with France, Elizabeth
had great cause to apprehend that the pretensions of the queen of Scots
and her husband the dauphin, who had openly assumed the royal arms of
England, might soon reinvolve her in hostilities with that country and
with Scotland; and it consequently became a point of policy with her to
animate by means of military spectacles, graced with her royal presence
and encouragement, the warlike preparations of her subjects. She was now
established for a time in her favorite summer-palace of Greenwich, and
the London companies were ordered to make a muster of their men at arms
in the adjoining park.
The employment of fire-arms had not as yet consigned to disuse either
the defensive armour or the weapons of offence of the middle ages; and
the military arrays of that time amused the eye of the spectator with a
rich variety of accoutrement far more picturesque in its details, and
probably more striking even in its general effect, than that magnificent
uniformity which, at a modern review, dazzles but soon satiates the
sight.
Of the fourteen hundred men whom the metropolis sent forth on this
occasion, eight hundred, armed in fine corselets, bore the long Moorish
pike; two hundred were halberdiers wearing a different kind of armour,
called Almain rivets; and the gunners, or musketeers, were equipped in
shirts of mail, with morions or steel caps. Her majesty, surrounded by a
splendid court, beheld all their evolutions from a gallery over the park
gate, and finally dismissed them, confirmed in loyalty and valor by
praises, thanks, and smiles of graciousness.
A few days afterwards the queen's pensioners were appointed "to run with
the spear," and this chivalrous exhibition was accompanied with such
circumstances of romantic decoration as peculiarly delighted the fancy
of Elizabeth. She caused to be erected for her in Greenwich park a
banqueting-house "made with fir poles and decked with birch branches and
all manner of flowers both of the field and the garden, as roses,
julyflowers, lavender, marygolds, and all manner of strewing-herbs and
rushes." Tents were also set up for her household, and a place was
prepared for the tilters. After the exercises were over, the queen gave
a supper in the banqueting-house, succeeded by a masque, and that by a
splendid banquet. "And then followed great casting of fire and shooting
of guns till midnight."
This band of gentlemen pensioners, the boast and ornament of the court
of Elizabeth, was probably the most splendid establishment of the kind
in Europe. It was entirely composed of the flower of the nobility and
gentry, and to be admitted to serve in its ranks was during the whole of
the reign regarded as a distinction worthy the ambition of young men of
the highest families and most brilliant prospects. Sir John Holles,
afterwards earl of Clare, was accustomed to say, that while he was a
pensioner to queen Elizabeth, he did not know _a worse man_ in the whole
band than himself; yet he was then in possession of an inheritance of
four thousand a year. "It was the constant custom of that queen,"
pursues the earl's biographer, "to call out of all counties of the
kingdom, the gentlemen of the greatest hopes and the best fortunes and
families, and with them to fill the more honorable rooms of her
household servants, by which she honored them, obliged their kindred and
alliance, and fortified herself[44]."
[Note 44: Collins's "Historical Collections."]
On this point of policy it deserves to be remarked, that however it
might strengthen the personal influence of the sovereign to enroll
amongst the menial servants of the crown gentlemen of influence and
property, it is chiefly perhaps to this practice that we ought to impute
that baseness of servility which infected, with scarcely one honorable
exception, the public characters of the reign of Elizabeth.
On July 17th the queen set out on the first of those royal _progresses_
which form so striking a feature in the domestic history of her reign.
In them, as in most of the recreations in which she at any time indulged
herself, Elizabeth sought to unite political utilities with the
gratification of her taste for magnificence, and especially for
admiration. It has also been surmised, that she was not inattentive to
the savings occasioned to her privy purse by maintaining her household
for several weeks in every year at the expense of her nobles, or of the
towns through which she passed; and it must be admitted that more than
one disgraceful instance might be pointed out, of a great man obliged to
purchase the continuance or restoration of her favor by soliciting the
almost ruinous honor of a royal visit. On the whole, however, her
deportment on these occasions warrants the conclusion, that an earnest
and constant desire of popularity was her principal motive for
persevering to the latest period of her life to encounter the fatigue of
these frequent journeys, and of the acts of public representation which
they imposed upon her.
"In her progress," says an acute and lively delineator of her character,
"she was most easy to be approached; private persons and magistrates,
men and women, country-people and children, came joyfully and without
any fear to wait upon her and see her. Her ears were then open to the
complaints of the afflicted and of those that had been any way injured.
She would not suffer the meanest of her people to be shut out from the
places where she resided, but the greatest and the least were then in a
manner levelled. She took with her own hand, and read with the greatest
goodness, the petitions of the meanest rustics. And she would frequently
assure them that she would take a particular care of their affairs, and
she would ever be as good as her word. She was never seen angry with
the most unseasonable or uncourtly approach; she was never offended with
the most impudent or importunate petitioner. Nor was there any thing in
the whole course of her reign that more won the hearts of the people
than this her wonderful facility, condescension, and the sweetness and
pleasantness with which she entertained all that came to her[45]."
[Note 45: Bohun's "Character of Queen Elizabeth."]
The first stage of the queen's progress was to Dartford in Kent, where
Henry VIII., whose profusion in the article of royal residences was
extreme, had fitted up a dissolved priory as a palace for himself and
his successors. Elizabeth kept this mansion in her own hands during the
whole of her reign, and once more, after an interval of several years,
is recorded to have passed two days under its roof. James I. granted it
to the earl of Salisbury: the lords Darcy were afterwards its owners.
The embattled gatehouse with an adjoining wing, all that remains in
habitable condition, are at the present time occupied as a farm house;
while foundations of walls running along the neighbouring fields to a
considerable distance, alone attest the magnitude, and leave to be
imagined the splendor, of the ancient edifice. Such is at this day the
common fate of the castles of our ancient barons, the mansions of our
nobles of a following age, and the palaces of the Plantagenets, the
Tudors, and the Stuarts!
From Dartford she proceeded to Cobham Hall,--an exception to the general
rule,--for this venerable mansion is at present the noble seat of the
earl of Darnley; and though the centre has been rebuilt in a more modern
style, the wings remain untouched, and in one of them the apartment
occupied by the queen on this visit is still pointed out to the
stranger. She was here sumptuously entertained by William lord Cobham, a
nobleman who enjoyed a considerable share of her favor, and who, after
acquitting himself to her satisfaction in an embassy to the
Low-Countries, was rewarded with the garter and the place of a
privy-councillor. He was however a person of no conspicuous ability, and
his wealth and his loyalty appear to have been his principal titles of
merit.
Eltham was her next stage; an ancient palace frequently commemorated in
the history of our early kings as the scene of rude magnificence and
boundless hospitality. In 1270 Henry III. kept a grand Christmas at
Ealdham palace,--so it was then called. A son of Edward II. was named
John of Eltham, from its being the place of his birth.
Edward III. twice held his parliament in its capacious hall. It was
repaired at great cost by Edward IV., who made it a frequent place of
residence; but Henry VIII. began to neglect it for Greenwich, and
Elizabeth was the last sovereign by whom it was visited.
Its hall, 100 feet in length, with a beautifully carved roof resembling
that of Westminster-hall and windows adorned with all the elegance of
gothic tracery, is still in being, and admirably serves the purposes of
a barn and granary.
Elizabeth soon quitted this seat of antique grandeur to contemplate the
gay magnificence of Nonsuch, regarded as the triumph of her father's
taste and the masterpiece of all the decorative arts. This stately
edifice, of which not a vestige now remains, was situated near Ewel in
Surry, and commanded from its lofty turrets extensive views of the
surrounding country.
It was built round two courts, an outer and an inner one, both very
spacious; and the entrance to each was by a square gatehouse highly
ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These
gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself;
but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and
garnished with variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of
excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which
ornaments, it seems, were made of _rye dough_. In modern language the
"pictures" would probably be called basso-relievos. From the eastern and
western angles of the inner court rose two slender turrets five stories
high, with lanthorns on the top, which were leaded and surrounded with
wooden balustrades. These towers of observation, from which the two
parks attached to the palace and a wide expanse of champaign country
beyond might be surveyed as in a map, were celebrated as the peculiar
boast of Nonsuch.
Henry was prevented by death from beholding the completion of this gaudy
structure, and queen Mary had it in contemplation to pull it down to
save further charges; but the earl of Arundel, "for the love and honor
he bare to his old master," purchased the place, and finished it
according to the original design. It was to this splendid nobleman that
the visit of the queen was paid. He received her with the utmost
magnificence. On Sunday night a banquet, a mask, and a concert were the
entertainments: the next day she witnessed a course from a standing made
for her in the park, and "the children of Paul's" performed a play;
after which a costly banquet was served up in gilt dishes. On her
majesty's departure her noble host further presented her with a cupboard
of plate. The earl of Arundel was wealthy, munificent, and one of the
finest courtiers of his day: but it must not be imagined that even by
him such extraordinary cost and pains would have been lavished upon his
illustrious guest as a pure and simple homage of that sentimental
loyalty which feels its utmost efforts overpaid by their acceptance. He
looked in fact to a high and splendid recompense,--one which as yet
perhaps he dared not name, but which the sagacity of his royal mistress
would, as he flattered himself, be neither tardy nor reluctant to
divine.
The death of Henry II. of France, which occurred during the summer of
this year, gave occasion to a splendid ceremony in St. Paul's cathedral,
which was rendered remarkable by some circumstances connected with the
late change of religion. This was the performance of his obsequies, then
a customary tribute among the princes of Europe to the memory of each
other; which Elizabeth therefore would by no means omit, though the
custom was so intimately connected with doctrines and practices
characteristic of the Romish church, that it was difficult to divest it,
in the judgement of a protestant people, of the character of a
superstitious observance. A hearse magnificently adorned with the
banners and scutcheons of the deceased was placed in the church; a great
train of lords and gentlemen attended as mourners; and all the
ceremonies of a real funeral were duly performed, not excepting the
offering at the altar of money, originally designed, without doubt, for
the purchase of masses for the dead. The herald, however, was ordered to
substitute other words in place of the ancient request to all present to
pray for the soul of the departed; and several reformations were made in
the service, and in the communion with which this stately piece of
pageantry concluded.
In the month of December was interred with much ceremony in Westminster
Abbey Frances duchess-dowager of Suffolk, grandaughter to Henry VII.
After the tragical catastrophe of her misguided husband and of lady Jane
Grey her eldest daughter, the duchess was suffered to remain in
unmolested privacy, and she had since rendered herself utterly
insignificant, not to say contemptible, by an obscure marriage with one
Stoke, a young man who was her master of the horse. There is a
tradition, that on Elizabeth's exclaiming with surprise and indignation
when the news of this connexion reached her ears, "What, hath she
married her horse keeper?" Cecil replied, "Yes, madam, and she says
your majesty would like to do so too;" lord Robert Dudley then filling
the office of master of the horse to the queen.
The impolicy or inutility of sumptuary laws was not in this age
acknowledged. A proclamation therefore was issued in October 1559 to
check that prevalent excess in apparel which was felt as a serious evil
at this period, when the manufactures of England were in so rude a state
that almost every article for the use of the higher classes was imported
from Flanders, France, or Italy, in exchange for the raw commodities of
the country, or perhaps for money.
The invectives of divines, in various ages of the Christian church, have
placed upon lasting record some transient follies which would otherwise
have sunk into oblivion, and the sermons of bishop Pilkington, a warm
polemic of this time, may be quoted as a kind of commentary on the
proclamation. He reproves "fine-fingered rufflers, with their sables
about their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm
mittons."--"These tender Parnels," he says, "must have one gown for the
day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter,
another for summer. One furred through, another but faced: one for the
work-day, another for the holiday. One of this color, another of that.
One of cloth, another of silk, or damask. Change of apparel; one afore
dinner, another at after: one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey. And
to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions
and strange. Yea a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose than
he should spend in a year. He which ought to go in a russet coat,
spends as much on apparel for him and his wife, as his father would have
kept a good house with."
The costly furs here mentioned had probably become fashionable since a
direct intercourse had been opened in the last reign with Russia, from
which country ambassadors had arrived, whose barbaric splendor
astonished the eyes of the good people of London. The affectation of
wearing by turns the costume of all the nations of Europe, with which
the queen herself was not a little infected, may be traced partly to the
practice of importing articles of dress from those nations, and that of
employing foreign tailors in preference to native ones, and partly to
the taste for travelling, which since the revival of letters had become
laudably prevalent among the young nobility and gentry of England. That
more in proportion was expended on the elegant luxuries of dress, and
less on the coarser indulgences of the table, ought rather to have been
considered as a desirable approach to refinement of manners than a
legitimate subject of censure.
An act of parliament was passed in this year subjecting the use of
enchantment and witchcraft to the pains of felony. The malcontent
catholics, it seems, were accused of employing practices of this nature;
their predictions of her majesty's death had given uneasiness to
government by encouraging plots against her government; and it was
feared, "by many good and sober men," that these dealers in the black
art might even bewitch the queen herself. That it was the learned bishop
Jewel who had led the way in inspiring these superstitious terrors, to
which religious animosities lent additional violence, may fairly be
inferred from the following passage of a discourse which was delivered
by him in the queen's presence the year before.... "Witches and
sorcerers within these last few years are marvellously increased within
your grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks
of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the
death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is
benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects' most
humble petition to your highness is, that the laws touching such
malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great,
their doing horrible, their malice intolerable, the examples most
miserable. And I pray God they never practise further than upon the
subject."