FROM 1593 TO 1597.
A parliament.--Haughty language of the queen.--Committal of Wentworth
and other members--of Morice.--His letter to lord Burleigh.--Act to
retain subjects in their due obedience.--Debates on the subsidy.--Free
speeches of Francis Bacon and sir E. Hobby.--Queen's speech.--Notice of
Francis Bacon--of Anthony Bacon.--Connexion of the two Bacons with
Essex.--Francis disappointed of preferment.--Conduct of Burleigh towards
him.--Of Fulk Greville.--Reflections.--Conversion of Henry
IV.--Behaviour of Elizabeth.--War in Bretagne.--Anecdote of the queen
and sir C. Blount.--Affair of Dr. Lopez.--Squire's attempt on the life
of the queen.--Notice of Ferdinando earl of Derby.--Letter of the queen
to lord Willoughby.--Particulars of sir Walter Raleigh.--His expedition
to Guiana.--Unfortunate enterprise of Drake and Hawkins.--Death of
Hawkins.--Death and character of Drake.--Letters of Rowland Whyte.--Case
of the earl of Hertford.--Anecdote of Essex.--Queen at the lord
keeper's.--Anecdote of the queen and bishop Rudd.--Case of sir T.
Arundel.
Notwithstanding all the frugal arts of Elizabeth, the state of her
finances compelled her in the spring of 1593 to summon a parliament. It
was four entire years since this assembly had last met: but her majesty
took care to let the commons know, that the causes of offence which had
then occurred were still fresh in her memory, and that her resolution to
preserve her own prerogative in its rigor, and the ecclesiastical
commission in all its terrors, was still inflexible.
It even appeared, that an apprehension lest her present necessities
might embolden the parliament to treat her despotic mandates with a
deference less profound than formerly, irritated her temper, and
prompted her to assume a more haughty and menacing style than her
habitual study of popularity had hitherto permitted her to employ. In
answer to the three customary requests made by the speaker, for liberty
of speech, freedom from arrests, and access to her person, she replied
by her lord keeper, That such liberty of speech as the commons were
justly entitled to,--liberty, namely, of aye and no,--she was willing to
grant; but by no means a liberty for every one to speak what he listed.
And if any idle heads should be found careless enough of their own
safety to attempt innovations in the state, or reforms in the church,
she laid her injunctions on the speaker to refuse the bills offered for
such purposes till they should have been examined by those who were
better qualified to judge of these matters. She promised that she would
not impeach the liberty of their persons, provided they did not permit
themselves to imagine that any neglect of duty would be allowed to pass
unpunished under shelter of this privilege; and she engaged not to deny
them access to her person on weighty affairs, and at convenient seasons,
when she should have leisure from other important business of state.
But threats alone were not found sufficient to restrain all attempts on
the part of the commons to exercise their known rights and fulfil their
duty to the country. Peter Wentworth, a member whose courageous and
independent spirit had already drawn upon him repeated manifestations of
royal displeasure, presented to the lord keeper a petition, praying that
the upper house would join with the lower in a supplication to the queen
for fixing the succession. Elizabeth, enraged at the bare mention of a
subject so offensive to her, instantly committed to the Fleet prison
Wentworth, sir Thomas Bromley who had seconded him, and two other
members to whom he had imparted the business; and when the house was
preparing to petition her for their release, some privy-councillors
dissuaded the step, as one which could only prove injurious to these
gentlemen by giving additional offence to her majesty.
Soon after, James Morice, an eminent lawyer, who was attorney of the
court of Wards and chancellor of the Duchy, made a motion for redress of
the abuses in the bishops' courts, and especially of the monstrous ones
committed under the High Commission. Several members supported the
motion: but the queen, sending in wrath for the speaker, required him to
deliver up to her the bill; reminded him of her strict injunctions at
the opening of the sessions, and testified her extreme indignation and
surprise at the boldness of the commons in intermeddling with subjects
which she had expressly forbidden them to discuss. She informed him,
that it lay in her power to summon parliaments and to dismiss them; and
to sanction or to reject any determination of theirs; that she had at
present called them together for the twofold purpose, of enacting
further laws for the maintenance of religious conformity, and of
providing for the national defence against Spain; and that these ought
therefore to be the objects of their deliberations.
As for Morice, he was seized by a serjeant at arms in the house itself,
stripped of his offices, rendered incapable of practising as a lawyer,
and committed to prison, whence he soon after addressed to Burleigh the
following high-minded appeal:
* * * * *
"Right honorable my very good lord;
"That I am no more hardly handled, I impute next unto God to your
honorable good will and favor; for although I am assured that the cause
I took in hand is good and honest, yet I believe that, besides your
lordship and that honorable person your son, I have never an honorable
friend. But no matter; for the best causes seldom find the most friends,
especially having many, and those mighty, enemies.
"I see no cause in my conscience to repent me of that I have done, nor
to be dismayed, although grieved, by this my restraint of liberty; for I
stand for the maintenance of the honor of God and of my prince, and for
the preservation of public justice and the liberties of my country
against wrong and oppression; being well content, at her majesty's good
pleasure and commandment, (whom I beseech God long to preserve in all
princely felicity,) to suffer and abide much more. But I had thought
that the judges ecclesiastical, being charged in the great council of
the realm to be dishonorers of God and of her majesty, perverters of
law and public justice, and wrong-doers unto the liberties and freedoms
of all her majesty's subjects, by their extorted oaths, wrongful
imprisonments, lawless subscription, and unjust absolutions, would
rather have sought means to be cleared of this weighty accusation, than
to shrowd themselves under the suppressing of the complaint and shadow
of mine imprisonment.
"There is fault found with me that I, as a private person, preferred not
my complaint to her majesty. Surely, my lord, your wisdom can conceive
what a proper piece of work I had then made of that: The worst prison
had been I think too good for me, since now (sustaining the person of a
public counsellor of the realm speaking for her majesty's prerogatives,
which by oath I am bound to assist and maintain) I cannot escape
displeasure and restraint of liberty. Another fault, or error, is
objected; in that I preferred these causes before the matters delivered
from her majesty were determined. My good lord, to have stayed so long,
I verily think, had been to come too late. Bills of assize of bread,
shipping of fish, pleadings, and such like, may be offered and received
into the house, and no offence to her majesty's royal commandment (being
but as the tything of mint); but the great causes of the law and public
justice may not be touched without offence. Well, my good lord, be it
so; yet I hope her majesty and you of her honorable privy-council will
at length thoroughly consider of these things, lest, as heretofore we
prayed, From the tyranny of the bishop of Rome, good Lord deliver us,
we be compelled to say, From the tyranny of the clergy of England, good
Lord deliver us.
"Pardon my plain speech, I humbly beseech your honor, for it proceedeth
from an upright heart and sound conscience, although in a weak and
sickly body: and by God's grace, while life doth last, which I hope now,
after so many cracks and crazes, will not be long, I will not be ashamed
in good and lawful sort to strive for the freedom of conscience, public
justice, and the liberty of my country. And you, my good lord, to whose
hand the stern of this commonwealth is chiefly committed, I humbly
beseech, (as I doubt not but you do,) graciously respect both me and the
causes I have preferred, and be a mean to pacify and appease her
majesty's displeasure conceived against me her poor, yet faithful,
servant and subject." &c.[113]
[Note 113: Nugae.]
* * * * *
In October following, the earl of Essex ventured to mention to her
majesty this persecuted patriot amongst lawyers qualified for the post
of attorney-general, when "her majesty acknowledged his gifts, but said
his speaking against her in such manner as he had done, should be a bar
against any preferment at her hands." He is said to have been kept for
some years a prisoner in Tilbury castle; and whether he ever recovered
his liberty may seem doubtful, since he died in February 1596, aged 48.
The house of commons, unacquainted as yet with its own strength,
submitted without further question to regard as law the will of an
imperious mistress, and passed with little opposition "An act to retain
her majesty's subjects in their due obedience," which vied in cruelty
with the noted Six Articles of her tyrannical father.
By this law, any person above sixteen who should refuse during a month
to attend the established worship was to be imprisoned; when, should he
further persist in his refusal during three months longer, he must
abjure the realm; but in case of his rejecting this alternative, or
returning from banishment, his offence was declared felony without
benefit of clergy.
The business of supplies was next taken into consideration, and the
commons voted two subsidies and four fifteenths; but this not appearing
to the ministry sufficient for the exigencies of the state, the peers
were induced to request a conference with the lower house for the
purpose of proposing the augmentation of the grant to four subsidies and
six fifteenths. The commons resented at first this interference with
their acknowledged privilege of originating all money bills; but dread
of the well-known consequences of offending their superiors, prevailed
at length over their indignation; and first the conference, then the
additional supply, was acceded to. Some debate, however, arose on the
time to be allowed for the payment of so heavy an imposition; and the
illustrious Francis Bacon, then member for Middlesex, enlarged upon the
distresses of the people, and the danger lest the house, by this grant,
should be establishing a precedent against themselves and their
posterity, in a speech to which his courtly kinsman sir Robert Cecil
replied with much warmth, and of which her majesty showed a resentful
remembrance on his appearing soon after as a candidate for the office of
attorney-general. His cousin sir Edward Hobby also, whose speeches in
the former parliament had been ill-received by certain great persons,
took such a part in some of the questions now at issue between the crown
and the commons, as procured him an imprisonment till the end of the
sessions, when he was at length liberated; "but not," as Anthony Bacon
wrote to his mother, "without a notable public disgrace laid upon him by
her majesty's royal censure delivered amongst other things, by herself,
after my lord keeper's speech[114]."
[Note 114: Birch's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 96.]
In this parting harangue to her parliament, the queen, little touched by
the unprecedented liberality of the supplies which it had granted her,
and the passing of her favorite bill against the schismatics and
recusants, animadverted in severe terms on the oppositionists,
reiterated the lofty claims with which she had opened the sessions, and
pronounced an eulogium on the justice and moderation of her own
government. She also entered into the grounds of her quarrel with the
king of Spain; showed herself undismayed by the apprehension of any
thing which his once dreaded power could attempt against her; and
characteristically added, in adverting to the defeat of the armada, the
following energetic warning: "I am informed, that when he attempted this
last invasion, some upon the sea coast forsook their towns, fled up
higher into the country, and left all naked and exposed to his
entrance. But I swear unto you by God, if I knew those persons, or may
know hereafter, I will make them know what it is to be fearful in so
urgent a cause."
The appearance of Francis Bacon in the house of commons affords a fit
occasion of tracing the previous history of this wonderful man, and of
explaining his peculiar situation between the two great factions of the
court and the influence exerted by this circumstance on his character
and after fortunes. That early promise of his genius which in childhood
attracted the admiring observation of Elizabeth herself, had been
confirmed by every succeeding year. In the thirteenth of his age, an
earlier period than was even then customary, he was entered, together
with his elder brother Anthony, of Trinity college Cambridge. At this
seat of learning he remained three years, during which, besides
exhibiting his powers of memory and application by great proficiency in
the ordinary studies of the place, he evinced the extraordinary
precocity of his penetrating and original intellect, by forming the
first sketch of a new system of philosophy in opposition to that of
Aristotle.
His father, designing him for public life, now sent him to complete his
education in the house of sir Amias Paulet, the queen's ambassador in
France. He gained the confidence of this able and honorable man to such
a degree, as to be intrusted by him with a mission to her majesty
requiring secrecy and dispatch, of which he acquitted himself with great
applause. Returning to France, he engaged in several excursions through
its different provinces, and diligently occupied himself in the
collection of facts and observations, which he afterwards threw together
in a "Brief View of the State of Europe;" a work, however juvenile,
which is said to exhibit much both of the peculiar spirit and of the
method of its illustrious author. But the death of his father, in 1580,
put an end to his travels, and cast a melancholy blight upon his opening
prospects.
For Anthony Bacon, the eldest of his sons by his second marriage, the
lord keeper had handsomely provided by the gift of his manor of
Gorhambury, and he had amassed a considerable sum with which he was
about to purchase another estate for the portion of the younger, when
death interrupted his design; and only one-fifth of this money falling
to Francis under the provisions of his father's will, he unexpectedly
found himself compelled to resort to the practice of some gainful
profession for his support. That of the law naturally engaged his
preference. He entered himself of Gray's Inn, and passed within its
precincts several studious years, during which he made himself master of
the general principles of jurisprudence, as well as of the rules of
legal practice in his own country; and he also found leisure to trace
the outlines of his new philosophy in a work not now known to exist in a
separate state, but incorporated probably in one of his more finished
productions. In 1588 her majesty, desirous perhaps of encouraging a more
entire devotion of his talents to the study of the law, distinguished
him by the title of her Counsel extraordinary,--an office of little
emolument, though valuable as an introduction to practice. But the
genius of Bacon disdained to plod in the trammels of a laborious
profession; he felt that it was given him for higher and larger
purposes: yet perceiving, at the same time, that the narrowness of his
circumstances would prove an insuperable bar to his ambition of
becoming, as he once beautifully expressed it, "the servant of
posterity," he thus, in 1591, solicited the patronage of his uncle lord
Burleigh: "Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for
though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful; yet
my health is not to spend, nor my course to get: Lastly, I confess that
I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I
have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of
two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations,
confutations and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and
auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I
hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions,
and profitable inventions and discoveries, the best state of that
province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or,
if one take it favorably, _philanthropia_, is so fixed in my mind as it
cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable
countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than a man's own; which
is the thing I do greatly affect."
Burleigh was no philosopher, though a lover of learning, and it could
not perhaps be expected that he should at once perceive how eminently
worthy was this laborer of the hire which he was reduced to solicit. He
contented himself therefore with procuring for his kinsman the reversion
of the place of register of the Star-chamber, worth about sixteen
hundred pounds per annum. Of this office however, which might amply have
satisfied the wants of a student, it was unfortunately near twenty years
before Bacon obtained possession; and during this tedious time of
expectation, he was wont to say, "that it was like another man's ground
abutting upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not
fill his barn." He made however a grateful return to the lord treasurer
for this instance of patronage, by composing an answer to a popish
libel, entitled "A Declaration of the true Causes of the late Troubles,"
in which he warmly vindicated the conduct of this minister, of his own
father, and of other members of the administration; not forgetting to
make a high eulogium on the talents and dispositions of Robert
Cecil,--now the most powerful instrument at court to serve or to injure.
Unhappily for the fortunes of Bacon, and in some respects for his moral
character also, this selfish and perfidious statesman was endowed with
sufficient reach of intellect to form some estimate of the transcendent
abilities of his kinsman; and struck with dread or envy, he seems to
have formed a systematic design of impeding by every art his favor and
advancement. Unmoved by the eloquent adulation with which Bacon sought
to propitiate his regard, he took all occasions to represent him to the
queen, and with some degree of justice though more of malice, as a man
of too speculative a turn to apply in earnest to the practical details
of business; one moreover whose head was so filled with abstract and
philosophical notions, that he would not fail to perplex any public
affairs in which he might be permitted to take a lead. The effect of
these suggestions on the mind of Elizabeth was greatly aggravated by the
conduct of Bacon in the parliament of 1593, in consequence of which her
majesty for a considerable time denied him that access to her person
with which he had hitherto been freely and graciously indulged.
Some years before this period, Francis Bacon had become known to the
earl of Essex, whose genuine love of merit induced him to offer him his
friendship and protection. The eagerness with which these were accepted
had deeply offended the Cecils; and their displeasure was about this
time increased, on seeing Anthony Bacon, by his brother's persuasion,
enlist himself under the banner of the same political leader.
Anthony, whose singular history is on many accounts worthy of notice,
was a man of an inquisitive and crafty turn of mind, and seemingly born
for a politician. He, like his brother, had been induced to pay a visit
to France, as the completion of a liberal education; and not finding
himself involved in the same pecuniary difficulties, he had been enabled
to make his abode in that country of much longer duration. From Paris,
which he first visited in 1579, he proceeded to Bourges, Geneva,
Montpelier, Marseilles, Montauban and Bordeaux, in each of which cities
he resided for a considerable length of time. At the latter place he
rendered some services to the protestant inhabitants at great personal
hazard. In 1584 he visited Henry IV., then king of Navarre, at Bearn,
and in 1586 he contracted at Montauban an intimacy with the celebrated
Hugonot leader, du Plessis de Mornay. As Anthony Bacon was invested with
no public character, his continued and voluntary abode in a catholic
country began at length to excite a suspicion in the mind of his mother,
his friends, and the queen herself, that his conduct was influenced by
some secret bias towards the Romish faith;--an impression which received
confirmation from the intimacies which he cultivated with several
English exiles and pensioners of the king of Spain. This idea appears,
however, to have been unfounded. It was often by the express, though
secret, request of Burleigh that he formed these connexions; and he had
frequently supplied this minister with important articles of
intelligence procured from such persons, with whom it was by no means
unusual to perform the office of spy to England and to Spain
alternately, or even to both at the same time. At length, the urgency of
his friends and the clamors of his mother, whose protestant zeal,
setting a sharper edge on a temper naturally keen, prompted her to
employ expressions of great violence, compelled him, after many delays,
to quit the continent; and in the beginning of 1592 he returned to his
native country. His miserable state of health, from the gout and other
disorders which rendered him a cripple for life, prevented his
encountering the fatigues of the usual court attendance: yet he lost no
time in procuring a seat in parliament; and his close connexion with the
Cecils, joined to the opinion entertained of his political talents,
seems to have excited a general expectation of his rising to high
importance in the state. But he was not long in discovering, that for
some unknown reason the lord treasurer was little his friend; and
offended at the coolness with which his secret intelligence from
numerous foreign correspondents was received by this minister and his
son, in their joint capacity of secretaries of state, he was easily
prevailed upon to address himself to Essex.
The earl had by this time learned, that there was no surer mode of
recommending himself to her majesty, and persuading her of his
extraordinary zeal for her service, than to provide her with a constant
supply of authentic and early intelligence from the various countries of
Europe, on which she kept a vigilant and jealous eye. He was accordingly
occupied in establishing news-agents in every quarter, and the opportune
offers of Anthony Bacon were accepted by him with the utmost eagerness.
A connexion was immediately established between them, which ripened with
time into so confidential an intimacy, that in 1595 the earl prevailed
on Mr. Bacon to accept of apartments in Essex-house, which he continued
to occupy till commanded by her majesty to quit them on the breaking out
of the last rash enterprise of his patron.
Struck with the boundless affection manifested by Anthony towards his
brother, with whom he had established an entire community of interests,
Essex now espoused with more warmth than ever the cause of Francis. He
strained every nerve to gain for him, in 1592, the situation of
attorney-general: but Burleigh opposed the appointment; Robert Cecil
openly expressed to the earl his surprise that he should seek to procure
it for "a raw youth;" and her majesty declared that, after the manner in
which Francis Bacon had stood up against her in parliament, admission to
her presence was the only favor to which he ought to aspire. She added,
that in her father's time such conduct would have been sufficient to
banish a man the court for life. Lowering his tone, Essex afterwards
sought for his friend the office of solicitor-general; but the same
prejudices and antipathies still thwarted him: and finding all his
efforts vain to establish him in any public station of honor or
emolument, he nobly compensated his disappointment and relieved his
necessities by the gift of an estate.
The spirit of Bacon was neither a courageous nor a lofty one. He too
soon repented of his generous exertions in the popular cause, and sought
to atone for them by so entire a submission of himself to her majesty,
accompanied with such eloquent professions of duty, humility and
profound respect, that we can scarcely doubt that a word of solicitation
from the lips of Burleigh might have gained him an easy pardon. It is
painful to think that any party jealousies, or any compliance with the
malignant passions of his son, should so have poisoned the naturally
friendly and benevolent disposition of this aged minister, that he
could bear to withhold the offices of kindness from the nephew of his
late beloved wife, and the son of one of his nearest friends and most
cordial coadjutors in public life. But according to the maxims of
court-factions his desertion of the Bacons might be amply
justified;--they had made their election, and it was the patronage of
Essex which they preferred. Experience taught them too late, that for
their own interests they had chosen wrong. Since the death of Leicester,
the Cecils had possessed all the real power at the court of Elizabeth:
they and they only could advance their adherents. Essex, it is true,
through the influence which he exerted over the imagination or the
affections of the queen, could frequently obtain grants to himself of
real importance and great pecuniary value. But her majesty's singular
caprice of temper rendered her jealous of every mark of favor extorted
from the tender weakness of her heart; and she appears to have almost
made it a rule to compensate every act of bounty towards himself, by
some sensible mortification which she made him suffer in the person of a
friend. So little was his patronage the road to advancement, that sir
Thomas Smith, clerk of the council, is recorded as the solitary instance
of a man preferred out of his household to the service of her majesty;
and Bacon himself somewhere says, speaking of the queen, "Against me she
is never positive but to my lord of Essex."
Fulk Greville was one of the few who did honor to themselves by becoming
at this time the advocate of Francis Bacon with the queen; and his
solicitations were heard by her with such apparent complacency, that he
wrote to Bacon, that he would wager two to one on his chance of becoming
attorney, or at least solicitor-general. But Essex was to be mortified,
and the influence of this generous Maecenas was exerted finally in vain.
To his unfortunate choice of a patron then, joined to the indiscreet
zeal with which that patron pleaded his cause "in season and out of
season," we are to ascribe in part the neglect experienced by Bacon
during the reign of Elizabeth. But other causes concurred, which it may
be interesting to trace, and which it would be injustice both to the
queen and to Burleigh to pass over in silence.
At the period when Bacon first appealed to the friendship of the lord
treasurer in the letter above cited, he was already in the thirtieth
year of his age, and had borne for two years the character of queen's
counsel extraordinary; but to the courts of law he was so entire a
stranger that it was not till one or two years afterwards that we find
him pleading his first cause. It was pretty evident therefore in 1592,
when he sought the office of attorney-general, that necessity alone had
made it the object of his wishes; and his known inexperience in the
practice of the law might reasonably justify in the queen and her
ministers some scruple of placing him in so responsible a post. As a
philosopher indeed, no encouragement could exceed his deserts; but this
was a character which very few even of the learned of that day were
capable of appretiating. Physical science, disgraced by its alliance
with the "blind experiments" of alchemy and the deluding dreams of
judicial astrology, was in possession of few titles to the respect of
mankind; and its professors,--credulous enthusiasts, for the most part,
or designing impostors,--usually ended by bringing shame and loss on
such persons as greedy hopes or vain curiosity bribed to become their
patrons.
That general "Instauration" of the sciences which the mighty genius of
Bacon had projected, was a scheme too vast and too profound to be
comprehended by the minds of Elizabeth and her statesmen; and as it was
not of a nature to address itself to their passions and interests, we
must not wonder if they should have regarded it with indifference. At
this period, too, it existed only in embryo; and so little was the
public intellect prepared to seize the first hints thrown out by its
illustrious author, that even many years afterwards, when his system had
been produced to the world nearly in a state of maturity, the general
sentiment seems pretty much to have corresponded with the judgement of
king James, "that the philosophy of Bacon was like the peace of God,
which passeth all understanding."
All these considerations, however, are scarcely sufficient to vindicate
the boasted discernment of Elizabeth from disgrace, in having suffered
the most illustrious sage of her reign and country, who was at the same
time its brightest wit and most accomplished orator, known to her from
his birth, and the son of a wise and faithful servant whose memory she
held in honor,--to languish in poverty and discouragement; useless to
herself and to the public affairs, and a burthen to his own thoughts.
The king of France found it expedient about this time to declare himself
a convert to the church of Rome. For this change of religion, whether
sincere or otherwise, he might plead, not only the personal motive of
gaining possession of the throne of his inheritance, which seemed to be
denied to him on other terms, but the patriotic one of rescuing his
exhausted country from the miseries of a protracted civil war; and
whatever might be the decision of a scrupulous moralist on the case, it
is certain that Elizabeth at least had small title to reprobate a
compliance of which, under the reign of her sister, she had herself set
the example. But the character of the protestant heroine with which
circumstances had invested her, obliged her to overlook this
inconsistency; and as demonstrations cost her little, she not only
indicted on the occasion a solemn letter of reproof to her ally, but
actually professed herself so deeply wounded by his dereliction of
principle, that it was necessary for her to tranquillize her mind by the
perusal of many pious works, and the study of Boethius on consolation,
which she even undertook the task of translating. Essex, whom she
honored with a sight of her performance, was adroit enough to suggest to
the royal author, as a principal motive of his urgency with her to
restore Francis Bacon to her favor, the earnest desire which he felt
that her majesty's excellent translations should be viewed by those most
capable of appretiating their merits.
The indignation of Elizabeth against Henry's apostasy was not however so
violent as to exclude the politic consideration, that it was still her
interest to support the king of France against the king of Spain; and
besides continuing her wonted supplies, she soon after entered with him
into a new engagement, purporting that they should never make peace but
by mutual consent.
Bretagne was still the scene of action to the English auxiliaries. Under
sir John Norris, their able commander, they shared in the service of
wresting from the Spaniards, by whom they had been garrisoned, the towns
of Morlaix, Quimpercorentin and Brest; their valor was every where
conspicuous; and the eagerness of the young courtiers of Elizabeth to
share in the glory of these enterprises rose to a passion, which she
sometimes thought it necessary to repress with a show of severity; as in
the following instance related by Naunton.
Sir Charles Blount, afterwards lord Montjoy, "having twice or thrice
stolen away into Bretagne (where under sir John Norris he had then a
company) without the queen's leave and privity, she sent a messenger
unto him, with a strict charge to the general to see him sent home. When
he came into the queen's presence, she fell into a kind of reviling,
demanding how he durst go over without her leave? 'Serve me so,' quoth
she, 'once more, and I will lay you fast enough for running; you will
never leave it until you are knocked on the head, as that inconsiderate
fellow Sidney was. You shall go when I send you, and in the meantime
see that you lodge in the court,' (which was then at Whitehall) 'where
you may follow your book, read and discourse of the wars.'"
Philip II., unable to win glory or advantage against Elizabeth in open
and honorable warfare, sought a base revenge upon her by proposing
through secret agents vast rewards to any who could be brought to
attempt her destruction. It was no easy task to discover persons
sufficiently rash, as well as wicked, to undertake from motives purely
mercenary a villany of which the peril was so appalling; but at length
Fuentes and Ibarra, joint governors of the Netherlands, succeeded in
bribing Dr. Lopez, domestic physician to the queen, to mix poison in her
medicine. Essex, whose watchfulness over the life of his sovereign was
remarkable, whilst his intelligences were comparable in extent and
accuracy to those of Walsingham himself, was the first to give notice of
this atrocious plot. At his instance Lopez was apprehended, examined
before himself, the treasurer, the lord admiral, and Robert Cecil, and
committed to custody in the earl's house. But nothing decisive appearing
on his first examination, Robert Cecil took occasion to represent the
charge as groundless; and her majesty, sending in heat for Essex, called
him "rash and temerarious youth," and reproached him for bringing on
slight grounds so heinous a suspicion upon an innocent man. The earl,
incensed to find his diligent service thus repaid, through the
successful artifice of his enemy, quitted the presence in a paroxysm of
rage, and, according to his practice on similar occasions, shut himself
up in his chamber, which he refused to quit till the queen herself two
or three days afterwards sent the lord admiral to mediate a
reconciliation.
Further interrogatories, mingled probably with menaces of the torture,
brought Lopez to confess the fact of his having received the king of
Spain's bribe; but he persisted in denying that it was ever in his
thoughts to perpetrate the crime. This subterfuge did not, however, save
him from an ignominious death, which he shared with two other persons
whom Fuentes and Ibarra had hired for a similar undertaking.
The Spanish court disdained to return any satisfactory answer to the
complaints of Elizabeth respecting these designs against her life; but
either shame, or more likely the fear of reprisals, seems to have
deterred it from any repetition of experiments so perilous.
About two years afterwards, however, an English Jesuit named Walpole,
who was settled in Spain and intimately connected with the noted father
Parsons, instigated an attempt worthy of record, partly as a curious
instance of the exaggerated ideas then prevalent of the force of
poisons. In the last voyage of Drake to the West Indies, a small vessel
of his was captured and carried into a port of Spain, on board of which
was one Squire, formerly a purveyor for the queen's stables. With this
prisoner Walpole, as a diligent servant of his Church, undertook to make
himself acquainted; and finding him a resolute fellow, and of capacity
and education above his rank, he spared no pains to convert him to
popery. This step gained, he diligently plied him with his jesuitical
arguments, and so thoroughly persuaded him of the duty and merit of
promoting by any kind of means the overthrow of heresy, that Squire at
length consented to bind himself by a solemn vow to make an attempt
against the life of Elizabeth in the mode which should be pointed out to
him:--an enterprise, as he was assured, which would be attended with
little personal danger, and, in case of the worst, would assuredly be
recompensed by an immediate admission into the joys of heaven.
Finally the worthy father presented to his disciple a packet of some
poisonous preparation, which he enjoined him to take an opportunity of
spreading on the pommel of the queen's saddle. The queen in mounting
would transfer the ointment to her hand; with her hand she was likely to
touch her mouth or nostrils; and such, as he averred, was the virulence
of the poison that certain death must follow.
Squire returned to England, enlisted for the Cadiz expedition, and on
the eve of its sailing took the preparation and disposed of it as
directed. Desirous of adding to his merits, he found means during the
voyage to anoint in like manner the arms of the earl of Essex's chair.
The failure of the application in both instances greatly surprised him.
To the Jesuit it appeared so unaccountable, that he was persuaded Squire
had deceived him; and actuated at once by the desire of punishing his
defection, and the fear of his betraying such secrets of the party as
had been confided to him, he consummated his villany by artfully
conveying to the English government an intimation of the plot. Squire
was apprehended, and at first denied all: "but by good counsel, and the
truth working withal," according to Speed's expression, was brought to
confess what could not otherwise have been proved against him, and
suffered penitently for his offence. Our chronicler admires the
providence which interfered for the protection of her majesty in this
great peril, and compares it to the miraculous preservation of St. Paul
from the bite of the viper.
The Jesuits are supposed to have employed more efficacious instruments
for the destruction of Ferdinando earl of Derby, who died in April 1594.
This nobleman had the misfortune to be grandson of Eleanor countess of
Cumberland, the younger daughter of Mary queen dowager of France and
sister of Henry VIII. by her second husband Charles Brandon duke of
Suffolk; and although the children of lady Catherine Grey countess of
Hertford obviously stood before him in this line of succession, occasion
was taken by the Romish party from this descent to urge him to assume
the title of king of England. One Hesket, a zealous agent of the Jesuits
and popish fugitives, was employed to tamper with the earl, who on one
hand undertook that his claim should be supported by powerful succours
from abroad, and on the other menaced him with certain and speedy death
in case of his rejecting the proposal or betraying its authors. But the
earl was too loyal to hesitate a moment. He revealed the whole plot to
government, and Hesket on his information was convicted of treason and
suffered death. Not long after, the earl was suddenly seized with a
violent disorder of the bowels, which in a few days carried him off; and
on the first day of his illness, his gentleman of the horse took his
lord's best saddle-horse and fled. These circumstances might be thought
pretty clearly to indicate poison as the means of his untimely end: but
although a suspicion of its employment was entertained by some, the
melancholy event appears to have been more generally ascribed to
witchcraft. An examination being instituted, a waxen image was
discovered in his chamber with a hair of the color of the earl's drawn
through the body; also, an old woman in the neighbourhood, a reputed
witch, being required to recite after a prompter the Lord's Prayer in
Latin, was observed to blunder repeatedly in the same words. But these
circumstances, however strong, not being deemed absolutely conclusive,
the poor old woman was apparently suffered to escape:--after the
gentleman of the horse, or his instigators, we do not find that any
search was made.
The mother of this earl of Derby died two years after. At one period of
her life we find her much in favor with the queen, whom she was
accustomed to attend in quality of first lady of the blood-royal; but
she had subsequently excited her majesty's suspicions by her imprudent
consultations of fortune-tellers and diviners, on the delicate subject,
doubtless, of succession to the crown.
The animosity between Elizabeth and her savage adversary the king of
Spain was continually becoming more fierce and more inveterate.
Undeterred by former failures, Philip was thought to meditate a fresh
invasion either of England or of Ireland, which latter country was
besides in so turbulent a state from the insurrections of native
chieftains, that it had been found necessary to send over sir John
Norris as general of Ulster, with a strong reinforcement of veterans
from the Low Countries. The queen, on her part, was well prepared to
resist and retaliate all attacks. The spirit of the nation was
thoroughly roused; gallant troops and able officers formed in the
Flemish school of glory, or under the banners of the Bourbon hero,
burned with impatience for the signal to revenge the wrongs of their
queen and country on their capital and most detested enemy. Still the
conflict threatened to be an arduous one: Elizabeth felt all its
difficulties; and loth to lose the support of one of her bravest and
most popular captains, she addressed the following letter of recall to
lord Willoughby, who had repaired to Spa ostensibly for the recovery of
his health; really, perhaps, in resentment of some injury inflicted by a
venal and treacherous court, of which his noble nature scorned alike the
intrigues and the servility.
* * * * *
"Good Peregrine,
"We are not a little glad that by your journey you have received such
good fruit of amendment, especially when we consider how great a
vexation it is to a mind devoted to actions of honor, to be restrained
by any indisposition of body from following those courses which, to your
own reputation and our great satisfaction, you have formerly performed.
And therefore we must now (out of our desire of your well-doing)
chiefly enjoin you to an especial care to encrease and continue your
health, which must give life to all your best endeavours; so we next as
seriously recommend to you this consideration, that in these times, when
there is such an appearance that we shall have the trial of our best and
noble subjects, you seem not to affect the satisfaction of your own
private contentation, beyond the attending on that which nature and duty
challengeth from all persons of your quality and profession. For if
unnecessarily, your health of body being recovered, you should elloign
yourself by residence there from those employments whereof we shall have
too good store, you shall not so much amend the state of your body, as
haply you shall call in question the reputation of your mind and
judgement, even in the opinion of those that love you, and are best
acquainted with your disposition and discretion.
"Interpret this our plainness, we pray you, to an extraordinary
estimation of you, for it is not common with us to deal so freely with
many; and believe that you shall ever find us both ready and willing, on
all occasions, to yield you the fruits of that interest which your
endeavours have purchased for you in our opinion and estimation. Not
doubting but when you have with moderation made trial of the successes
of these your sundry peregrinations, you will find as great comfort to
spend your days at home as heretofore you have done; of which we do wish
you full measure, howsoever you shall have cause of abode or return.
Given under our signet at our manor of Nonesuch, the 7th of October
1594, in the 37th year of our reign.
"Your most loving sovereign
"E. R."
* * * * *
We do not perceive the effects of this letter in the employment of lord
Willoughby in any of the expeditions against Spain which ensued; but he
was afterwards appointed governor of Berwick, and held that situation
till his death in 1601.
Sir Walter Raleigh, that splendid genius with a sordid soul, whom a
romantic spirit of adventure and a devouring thirst of gain equally
stimulated to activity, had unexpectedly found his advancement at court
impeded, after the first steps, usually accounted the most difficult,
had been speedily and fortunately surmounted. Several conspiring causes
might however be assigned for this check in his career of fortune. His
high pretensions to the favor of the queen, joined to his open adherence
to the party of sir Robert Cecil, had provoked the hostility of Essex;
who, in defiance of him, at one of the ostentatious tournaments of the
day, is said to have "filled the tilt-yard with two thousand
orange-tawny feathers," the distinction doubtless of his followers and
retainers. He had incurred the resentment of more than one of the order
of bishops, by his ceaseless and shameless solicitations of grants and
leases out of the property of the Church. In Ireland, he had rendered
sir William Russell the lord deputy his enemy by various demonstrations
of opposition and rivalry; at court, his abilities and his first rapid
successes with her majesty had stirred up against him the envy of a
whole host of competitors. Elizabeth, who for the best reasons had an
extreme dislike to any manifestations of a mercenary disposition in her
servants, had been disgusted by the frequency and earnestness of his
petitions for pecuniary favors. "When, sir Walter," she had once
exclaimed, "will you cease to be a beggar?" He replied, "When your
gracious majesty ceases to be a benefactor." So dexterous an answer
appeased her for a time; and the profusion of eloquent adulation with
which he never failed to soothe her ear, engaged her self-love strongly
in his behalf. But to complete the ill-fortune of Raleigh, father
Parsons, provoked by the earnestness with which he had urged in
parliament the granting of supplies for a war offensive and defensive
against Spain, had published a pamphlet charging him with atheism and
impiety, which had not only found welcome reception with his enemies,
but with the people, to whom he was ever obnoxious, and had even raised
a prejudice against him in the mind of his sovereign. On this subject, a
writer contemporary with the later years of Raleigh thus expresses
himself:
"Sir Walter Raleigh was the first, as I have heard, that ventured to
tack about and sail aloof from the beaten track of the schools; who,
upon the discovery of so apparent an error as a torrid zone, intended to
proceed in an inquisition after more solid truths; till the mediation of
some whose livelihood lay in hammering shrines for this superannuated
study, possessed queen Elizabeth that such doctrine was against God no
less than her father's honor; whose faith, if he owed any, was grounded
upon school divinity. Whereupon she chid him, who was, by his own
confession, ever after branded with the name of an atheist, though a
known assertor of God and providence[115]."
[Note 115: Osborne's "Introduction" to his Essays.]
The business of Mrs. Throgmorton, and the disputes arising out of the
sale of the captured carrack, succeeded, to inflame still more the
ill-humour of the queen; and Raleigh, finding every thing adverse to him
at court, resolved to quit the scene for a time, in the hope of
returning with better omens, when absence and dangers should again have
endeared him to his offended mistress, and when the splendor of his
foreign successes might enable him to impose silence on the clamors of
malignity at home.
The interior of the pathless wilds of Guiana had been reported to abound
in those exhaustless mines of the precious metals which filled the
imaginations of the earliest explorers of the New World, and, to their
ignorant cupidity, appeared the only important object of research and
acquisition in regions where the eye of political wisdom would have
discerned so many superior inducements to colonization or to conquest.
The fabulous city of El Dorado,--which became for some time proverbial
in our language to express the utmost profusion and magnificence of
wealth,--was placed by the romantic narrations of voyagers somewhere in
the centre of this vast country, and nothing could be more flattering to
the mania of the age than the project of exploring its hidden
treasures. Raleigh conceived this idea; the court and the city vied in
eagerness to share the profits of the enterprise; a squadron was
speedily fitted out, though at great expense; and in February 1595 the
ardent leader weighed anchor from the English shore. Proceeding first to
Trinidad, he possessed himself of the town of St. Joseph; then, with the
numerous pinnaces of his fleet, he entered the mouth of the great river
Oronoco, and sailing upwards penetrated far into the bosom of the
country. But the intense heat of the climate, and the difficulties of
this unknown navigation, compelled him to return without any more
valuable result of his enterprise than that of taking formal possession
of the land in her majesty's name. Raleigh however, unwilling to
acknowledge a failure, published on his return an account of Guiana,
filled with the most disgraceful and extravagant falsehoods;--falsehoods
to which he himself became eventually the victim, when, on the sole
credit of his assurances, king James released him from a tedious
imprisonment to head a second band of adventurers to this disastrous
shore.
A still more unfortunate result awaited an expedition of greater
consequence, which sailed during the same year, under Hawkins and Drake,
against the settlements of Spanish America. Repeated attacks had at
length taught the Spaniards to stand on their defence; and the English
were first repulsed from Porto Rico, and afterwards obliged to
relinquish the attempt of marching across the isthmus of Darien to
Panama. But the great and irreparable misfortune of the enterprise was
the loss, first of the gallant sir John Hawkins, the kinsman and early
patron of Drake, and afterwards of that great navigator himself, who
fell a victim to the torrid climate, and to fatigue and mortification
which conspired to render it fatal. A person of such eminence, and whose
great actions reflect back so bright a lustre on the reign which had
furnished to him the most glorious occasions of distinguishing himself
in the service of his country, must not be dismissed from the scene in
silence.
The character of Francis Drake was remarkable not alone for those
constitutional qualities of valor, industry, capacity and enterprise,
which the history of his exploits would necessarily lead us to infer,
but for virtues founded on principle and reflection which render it in a
high degree the object of respect and moral approbation. It is true that
his aggressions on the Spanish settlements were originally founded on a
vague notion of reprisals, equally irreconcilable to public law and
private equity. But with the exception of this error,--which may find
considerable palliation in the deficient education of the man, the
prevalent opinions of the day, and the peculiar animosity against Philip
II. cherished in the bosom of every protestant Englishman,--the conduct
of Drake appears to demand almost unqualified commendation. It was by
sobriety, by diligence in the concerns of his employers, and by a tried
integrity, that he early raised himself from the humble station of an
ordinary seaman to the command of a vessel. When placed in authority
over others, he showed himself humane and considerate; his treatment of
his prisoners was exemplary, his veracity unimpeached, his private life
religiously pure and spotless. In the division of the rich booty which
often rewarded his valor and his toils, he was liberal towards his crews
and scrupulously just to the owners of his vessels; and in the
appropriation of his own share of wealth, he displayed that munificence
towards the public, of which, since the days of Roman glory, history has
recorded so few examples.
With the profits of one of his earliest voyages, in which he captured
the town of Venta Cruz and made prize of a string of fifty mules laden
with silver, he fitted out three stout frigates and sailed with them to
Ireland, where he served as a volunteer under Walter earl of Essex, and
performed many brilliant actions. After the capture of a rich Spanish
carrack at the Terceras in 1587, he undertook at his own expense to
bring to the town of Plymouth, which he represented in parliament, a
supply of spring water, of which necessary article it suffered a great
deficiency; this he accomplished by means of a canal or aqueduct above
twenty miles in length.
Drake incurred some blame in the expedition to Portugal for failing to
bring his ships up the river to Lisbon, according to his promise to sir
John Norris, the general; but on explaining the case before the
privy-council on his return, he was entirely acquitted by them; having
made it appear that, under all the circumstances, to have carried the
fleet up the Tagus would have been to expose it to damage without the
possibility of any benefit to the service. By his enemies, this great
man was stigmatized as vain and boastful; a slight infirmity in one who
had achieved so much by his own unassisted genius, and which the great
flow of natural eloquence which he possessed may at once have produced
and rendered excusable. One trait appears to indicate that he was
ambitious of a species of distinction which he might have regarded
himself as entitled to despise. He had thought proper to assume,
apparently without due authority, the armorial coat of sir Bernard
Drake, also a seaman and a native of Devonshire: sir Bernard, from a
false pride of family, highly resented this unwarrantable intrusion, as
he regarded it, and in a dispute on the subject gave sir Francis a box
on the ear. The queen now deemed it necessary to interfere, and she
granted to the illustrious navigator the following arms of her own
device. _Sable, a fess wavy between two pole stars argent_, and for
crest, _a ship on a globe under ruff_, with a cable held by a hand
coming out of the clouds; the motto _Auxilio divino_, and beneath, _Sic
parvis magna_; in the rigging of the ship _a wivern gules_, the arms of
sir Bernard Drake, _hung up by the heels_.
Sir John Baskerville, who succeeded by the death of Drake to the command
of the unfortunate expedition to which he had fallen a sacrifice,
encountered the Spanish fleet off Cuba in an action, which, though less
decisive on the English side than might have been hoped, left at least
no ground of triumph to the enemy. Meantime the court was by no means
barren of incident; and we are fortunate in possessing a minute and
authentic journal of its transactions in a series of letters addressed
to sir Robert Sidney governor of Flushing by several of his friends,
but chiefly by Rowland Whyte, a gentleman to whom, during his absence,
he had recommended the care of his interests, and the task of
transmitting to him whatever intelligence might appear either useful or
entertaining[116].
[Note 116: See Sidney Papers, _passim._]
In October 1595 Mr. Whyte mentions the following abominable instance of
tyranny. That the earl of Hertford had been sent for by a messenger and
committed to custody in his own house, because it had appeared by a case
found among the papers of a Dr. Aubrey, that he had formerly taken the
opinions of civilians on the validity of his first marriage, and caused
a record of it to be secretly put into the court of Arches. Whyte adds
significantly, that the earl was accounted one of the wealthiest
subjects in England. Soon after, his lordship was committed to the
Tower; and it was said that orders were given that his son, who since
the establishment of the marriage had borne the title of lord Beauchamp,
should henceforth be again called Mr. Seymour. Several lawyers and other
persons were also imprisoned for a short time about this matter, under
what law, or pretext of law, it would be vain to inquire. Lady Hertford,
though a sister of the lord admiral and nearly related to the queen, was
for some time an unsuccessful suitor at court for the liberty of her
lord. Her majesty however was graciously pleased to declare that
"neither his life nor living should be called in question;"--as if both
had been at her mercy! and though she would not consent to see the
countess, she regularly sent her broths in a morning, and, at meals,
meat from her own trencher;--affecting, it should seem, in these
trifles, to acquit herself of the promises of her special favor, with
which she had a few years before repaid the splendid hospitality of this
noble pair. We do not learn how long the durance of the earl continued;
but it is highly probable that he was once more compelled to purchase
his liberty.
Great uneasiness was given about this time to the earl of Essex by a
book written in defence of the king of Spain's title to the English
crown, which contained "dangerous praises of his valor and worthiness,"
inserted for the express purpose of exciting the jealousy of the queen
and bringing him into disgrace. The work was shown him by Elizabeth
herself. On coming from her presence he was observed to look "pale and
wan," and going home he reported himself sick;--an expedient for working
on the feelings of his sovereign, to which, notwithstanding the truth
and honor popularly regarded as his characteristics, Essex is known to
have frequently condescended. On this, as on most occasions, he found it
successful: her majesty soon made him a consolatory visit; and in spite
of the strenuous efforts of his enemies, this attempt to injure him only
served to augment her affection and root him more firmly in her
confidence.
"Her majesty," says Whyte soon after, "is in very good health, and comes
much abroad; upon Thursday she dined at Kew, at my lord keeper's house,
(who lately obtained of her majesty his suit for one hundred pounds a
year in fee-farm,) her entertainment for that meal was great and
exceeding costly. At her first lighting she had a fine fan garnished
with diamonds, valued at four hundred pounds at least. After dinner, in
her privy-chamber, he gave her a fair pair of virginals. In her
bed-chamber, he presented her with a fine gown and a juppin, which
things were pleasing to her highness; and, to grace his lordship the
more, she of herself took from him a fork, a spoon, and a salt, of fair
agate." It must be confessed that this was a mode of "gracing" a
courtier peculiarly consonant to the disposition of her majesty.
The further Elizabeth descended into the vale of years, the stronger
were her efforts to make ostentation of a youthful gaiety of spirits and
an unfailing alacrity in the pursuit of pleasure; though avarice, the
vice of age, mingled strangely with these her juvenile affectations. To
remark to her the progress of time, was to wound her in the tenderest
part, and not even from her ghostly counsellors would she endure a topic
so offensive as the mention of her age: an anecdote to this effect
belongs to the year 1596, and is found in the account of Rudd bishop of
St. Davids given in Harrington's Brief View of the Church.
"There is almost none that waited in queen Elizabeth's court and
observed any thing, but can tell that it pleased her very much to seem,
to be thought, and to be told that she looked young. The majesty and
gravity of a sceptre borne forty-four years could not alter that nature
of a woman in her: This notwithstanding, this good bishop being
appointed to preach before her in the Lent of the year 1596... wishing
in a godly zeal, as well became him, that she should think sometime of
mortality," took a text fit for the purpose, on which he treated for a
time "well," "learnedly," and "respectively." "But when he had spoken
awhile of some sacred and mystical numbers, as three for the Trinity,
three for the heavenly Hierarchy, seven for the Sabbath, and seven times
seven for a Jubilee; and lastly,--seven times nine for the grand
climacterical year; she, perceiving whereto it tended, began to be
troubled with it. The bishop discovering that all was not well, for the
pulpit stands there _vis a vis_ to the closet, he fell to treat of some
more plausible numbers, as of the number 666, making _Latinus_, with
which he said he could prove the pope to be Antichrist; also of the
fatal number of 88,--so long before spoken of for a dangerous year,...
but withal interlarding it with some passages of Scripture that touch
the infirmities of age... he concluded his sermon. The queen, as the
manner was, opened the window; but she was so far from giving him thanks
or good countenance, that she said plainly he should have kept his
arithmetic for himself. 'But I see,' said she, 'the greatest clerks are
not the wisest men;' and so went away for the time discontented.
"The lord keeper Puckering, though reverencing the man much in his
particular, yet for the present, to assuage the queen's displeasure,
_commanded him to keep his house for a time_, which he did. But of a
truth her majesty showed no ill nature in this, for within three days
she was not only displeased at his restraint, but in my hearing rebuked
a lady yet living for speaking scornfully of him and his sermon. Only
to show how the good bishop was deceived in supposing she was so decayed
in her limbs and senses as himself perhaps and other of that age were
wont to be; she said she thanked God that neither her stomach nor
strength, nor her voice for singing, nor fingering instruments, nor,
lastly, her sight, was any whit decayed; and to prove the last before us
all, she produced a little jewel that had an inscription of very small
letters, and offered it first to my lord of Worcester, and then to sir
James Crofts to read, and both protested _bona fide_ that they could
not; yet the queen herself did find out the poesy, and made herself
merry with the standers by upon it."
A point of some importance to the peers of England was about this time
brought to a final decision by the following circumstance. Sir Thomas,
son and heir of sir Matthew Arundel of Wardour-castle, a young man of a
courageous and enterprising disposition, going over to Germany, had been
induced to engage as a volunteer in the wars of the emperor against the
Turks; and in the assault of the city of Gran in Hungary had taken with
his own hand a Turkish banner. For this and other good service, Rodolph
the Second had been pleased to confer upon him the honor of count of the
holy Roman empire, extending also, as usual, the title of counts and
countesses to all his descendants for ever. On his return to England in
the year following, the question arose whether this dignity, conferred
by a foreign prince without the previous consent of his own sovereign,
should entitle the bearer to rank, precedence, or any other privilege
in this country.
The peers naturally opposed a concession which tended to lessen the
value of their privileges by rendering them accessible through foreign
channels; and her majesty, being called upon to settle the debate,
pronounced the following judgement. That the closest tie of affection
subsisted between sovereigns and their subjects: that as chaste wives
should fix their eyes upon their husbands alone, in like manner faithful
subjects should only direct theirs towards the prince whom it had
pleased God to set over them. And that she would not allow her sheep to
be branded with the mark of a stranger, or be taught to follow the
whistle of a foreign shepherd. And to this effect she wrote to the
emperor, who by a special letter had recommended sir Thomas Arundel to
her favor. The decision appears to have been reasonable and politic, and
would at the time be regarded as peculiarly so in the instance of honors
conferred on a catholic gentleman by a catholic prince. King James,
however, created sir Thomas, lord Arundel of Wardour; and he seems to
have borne in common speech, the title of count[117].
[Note 117: Camden's Annals. Peerage, by Sir E. Brydges.]