_Or_, _Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth_, _her Times_, _and
Favourites_. _Written by_ SIR ROBERT NAUNTON, _Master of the Court of
Wards_. A.D. 1641.
To take her in the original, she was the daughter of King Henry VIII. by
Anne Boleyn, the second of six wives which he had, and one of the maids
of honour to the divorced Queen, Katharine of Austria (or, as the now
styled, Infanta of Spain), and from thence taken to the royal bed.
That she was of a most noble and royal extract by her father will not
fall into question, for on that side was disembogued into her veins, by a
confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the greatest houses in
Christendom: and remarkable it is, considering that violent desertion of
the Royal House of the Britons by the intrusion of the Saxons, and
afterwards by the conquest of the Normans, that, through vicissitude of
times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the sceptre
should fall again and be brought back into the old regal line and true
current of the British blood, in the person of her renowned grandfather,
King Henry VII., together with whatsoever the German, Norman, Burgundian,
Castilian, and French achievements, with their intermarriages, which
eight hundred years had acquired, could add of glory thereunto.
By her mother she was of no sovereign descent, yet noble and very ancient
in the family of Boleyn; though some erroneously brand them with a
citizen’s rise or original, which was yet but of a second brother, who
(as it was divine in the greatness and lustre to come to his house) was
sent into the city to acquire wealth, _ad ædificandam antiquam domum_,
unto whose achievements (for he was Lord Mayor of London) fell in, as it
is averred, both the blood and inheritance of the eldest brother for want
of issue males, by which accumulation the house within few descents
mounted, _in culmen honoris_, and was suddenly dilated in the best
families of England and Ireland: as Howard, Ormond, Sackville, and
others.
Having thus touched, and now leaving her stirp, I come to her person, and
how she came to the crown by the decease of her brother and sister.
Under Edward VI. she was his, and one of the darlings of Fortune, for,
besides the consideration of blood, there was between these two princes a
concurrency and sympathy of their natures and affections, together with
the celestial bond (confirmative religion), which made them one; for the
King never called her by any other appellation but his sweetest and
dearest sister, and was scarce his own man, she being absent; which was
not so between him and the Lady Mary.
Under her sister {99} she found her condition much altered; for it was
resolved, and her destiny had decreed it, for to set her apprentice in
the school of affliction, and to draw her through that ordeal-fire of
trial, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and sovereignty: which
finished, Fortune calling to mind that the time of her servitude was
expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered into her custody
a sceptre as the reward of her patience; which was about the twenty-sixth
of her age: a time in which, as for her internals grown ripe, and
seasoned by adversity, in the exercise of her virtue; for, it seems,
Fortune meant no more but to show her a piece of variety and
changeableness of her nature, but to conduct her to her destiny, _i.e._,
felicity.
She was of person tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well
favoured, but high-nosed; of limbs and features neat; and, which added to
the lustre of these external graces, of a stately and majestic
comportment, participating in this more of her father than of her mother,
who was of an inferior alloy, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more
_debonaire_ and affable: virtues which might well suit with majesty, and
which, descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a
sweeter temper, and endeared her more to the love and liking of the
people, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular
princess.
The atrocity of the father’s nature was rebated in her by the mother’s
sweeter inclinations; for (to take, and that no more than the character
out of his own mouth) _He never spared man in his anger_, _nor woman in
his lust_.
If we search farther into her intellectuals and abilities, the
wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of
posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety,
and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint,
all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and
necessitated. She was learned, her sex and time considered, beyond
common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but
begin to be of esteem and in fashion, the former ages being overcast with
the mists and fogs of the Roman {101} ignorance; and it was the maxim
that over-ruled the foregoing times, that _Ignorance was the mother of
Devotion_. Her wars were a long time more in the auxiliary part, and
assistance of foreign princes and states, than by invasion of any; till
common policy advised it, for a safer way, to strike first abroad, than
at home to expect the war, in all which she was ever felicitous and
victorious.
The change and alteration of religion upon the instant of her accession
to the crown (the smoke and fire of her sister’s martyrdoms scarcely
quenched) was none of her least remarkable actions; but the support and
establishment thereof, with the means of her own subsistence amidst so
powerful enemies abroad, and those many domestic practices, were,
methinks, works of inspiration, and of no human providence, which, on her
sister’s departure, she most religiously acknowledged—ascribing the glory
of her deliverance to God above; for she being then at Hatfield, and
under a guard, and the Parliament sitting at the self-same time, at the
news of the Queen’s death, and her own proclamation by the general
consent of the House and the public sufferance of the people, falling on
her knees, after a good time of respiration, she uttered this verse of
the Psalm:
“A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris.” {102}
And this we find to this day on the stamp of her gold, with this on her
silver:
“Posui Deum adjutorem meum.” {103}
Her ministers and instruments of State, such as were _participes
curarum_, or bore a great part of the burthen, were _many_, and those
_memorable_; but they were only _favourites_, and not _minions_; such as
acted more by _her_ princely rules and judgments, than by their _own_
wills and appetites; for we saw no Gaveston, Vere, or Spencer, to have
swayed alone, during forty-four years, which was a well-settled and
advised maxim; for it valued her the more, it awed the most secure, it
took best with the people, and it staved off all emulations, which are
apt to rise and vent in obloquious acrimony even against the prince,
where there is _one only_ admitted into high administrations.
_A Major Palatii_.
The principal note of her reign will be, that she ruled much by faction
and parties, which she herself both made, upheld, and weakened, as her
own great judgment advised; for I do dissent from the common and received
opinion, that my Lord of Leicester was _absolute_ and _alone_ in her
_grace_; and, though I come somewhat short of the knowledge of these
times, yet, that I may not err or shoot at random, I know it from assured
intelligence that it was not so; for proof whereof, amongst many (that
could present), I will both relate a story, and therein a known truth,
and it was thus: Bowyer, the Gentleman of the Black Rod, being charged by
her express command to look precisely to all admissions in the Privy
Chamber, one day stayed a very gay captain (and a follower of my Lord of
Leicester) from entrance, for that he was neither well known, nor a sworn
servant of the Queen; at which repulse, the gentleman (bearing high on my
lord’s favour) told him that he might, perchance, procure him a
discharge. Leicester coming to the contestation, said publicly, which
was none of his wonted speeches, that he was a knave, and should not long
continue in his office; and so turning about to go to the Queen, Bowyer,
who was a bold gentleman and well-beloved, stepped before him, and fell
at Her Majesty’s feet, relates the story, and humbly craves Her Grace’s
pleasure, and in such a manner as if he had demanded whether my Lord of
Leicester was King, or Her Majesty Queen: whereunto she replied (with her
wonted oath, _God’s-death_) “My lord, I have wished you well, but my
favour is not so locked up for you that others shall not participate
thereof; for I have many servants unto whom I have, and will, at my
pleasure, bequeath my favour, and likewise resume the same; and if you
think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming; {105} I
will have here but one _mistress_, and no _master_; and look that no ill
happen to him, lest it be severely required at your hands:” which so
quailed my Lord of Leicester, that his faint humility was, long after,
one of his best virtues.
Moreover, the Earl of Sussex, then Lord Chamberlain, was his professed
antagonist to his dying day; and for my Lord Hunsdown, and Sir Thomas
Sackville, after Lord Treasurer, who were all contemporaries, he was wont
to say of them, that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were _Noli me
tangere_, implying that they were not to be contested with, for they
were, indeed, of the Queen’s nigh kindred.
From whence, and in many more instances, I conclude that she was absolute
and sovereign mistress of her graces, and that all those to whom she
distributed her favours were never more than tenants-at-will, and stood
on no better terms than her princely pleasure, and their good behaviour.
And this also I present as a known observation, that she was, though very
capable of counsel, absolute enough in her own resolution; which was ever
apparent even to her last, and in that of her still aversion to grant
Tyrone {106} the least drop of her mercy, though earnestly and frequently
advised thereunto, yea, wrought only by her whole Council of State, with
very many reasons; and, as the state of her kingdom then stood, I may
speak it with assurance, necessitated arguments.
If we look into her inclination, as it was disposed to magnificence or
frugality, we shall find in them many notable considerations; for all her
dispensations were so poised as though Discretion and Justice had both
decreed to stand at the beam, and see them weighed out in due proportion,
the maturity of her paces and judgments meeting in a concurrence; and
that in such an age that seldom lapseth to excess.
To consider them apart, we have not many precedents of her _liberality_,
nor any large donatives to _particular_ men, my Lord of Essex’s book of
_parks_ excepted, which was a princely gift; and some more of a lesser
size to my Lord of Leicester, Hatton, and others.
Her rewards chiefly consisted in grants and leases of offices, and places
of judicature; but for ready money, and in great sums, she was very
sparing; which, we may partly conceive, was a virtue rather drawn out of
necessity than her nature; for she had many layings-out, and as her wars
were lasting, so their charge increased to the last period. And I am of
opinion with Sir Walter Raleigh, that those many brave men of her times,
and of the militia, tasted little more of her bounty than in her grace
and good word with their due entertainment; for she ever paid her
soldiers well, which was the honour of her times, and more than her great
adversary of Spain could perform; so that when we come to the
consideration of her _frugality_, the observation will be little more
than that her _bounty_ and it were so woven together, that the one was
{108} stained by an honourable way of sparing.
The Irish action we may call a malady, and a consumption of her times,
for it accompanied her to her end; and it was of so profuse and vast an
expense, that it drew near unto a distemperature of State, and of passion
in herself; for, towards her last, she grew somewhat hard to please, her
armies being accustomed to prosperity, and the Irish prosecution not
answering her expectation, and her wonted success; for it was a good
while an unthrifty and inauspicious war, which did much disturb and
mislead her judgment; and the more for that it was a precedent taken out
of her own pattern.
For as the Queen, by way of division, had, at her coming to the crown,
supported the revolted States of Holland, so did the King of Spain turn
the trick upon herself, towards her going out, by cherishing the Irish
rebellion; where it falls into consideration, what the state of this
kingdom and the crown revenues were then able to endure and embrace.
If we look into the establishments of those times with the best of the
Irish army, counting the defeat of Blackwater, with all the precedent
expenses, as it stood from my Lord of Essex’s undertaking of the
surrender of Kingsale, and the General Mountjoy, and somewhat after, we
shall find the horse and foot troops were, for three or four years
together, much about twenty thousand, besides the naval charge, which was
a dependant of the same war; in that the Queen was then forced to keep in
continual pay a strong fleet at sea to attend the Spanish coasts and
parts, both to alarm the Spaniards, and to intercept the forces designed
for the Irish assistance; so that the charge of that war alone did cost
the Queen three hundred thousand pounds per annum at least, which was not
the moiety of her other disbursements and expenses; which, without the
public aids, the state of the royal receipts could not have much longer
endured; which, out of her own frequent letters and complaints to the
Deputy Mountjoy for cashiering of that list as soon as he could, might be
collected, for the Queen was then driven into a strait.
We are naturally prone to applaud the times behind us, and to vilify the
present; for the concurrent of her fame carries it to this day, how
loyally and victoriously she lived and died, without the grudge and
grievance of her people; yet the truth may appear without detraction from
the honour of so great a princess. It is manifest she left more debts
unpaid, taken upon credit of her privy-seals, than her progenitors did,
or could have taken up, that were a hundred years before her; which was
no inferior piece of State, to lay the burthen on that house {110} which
was best able to bear it at a dead lift, when neither her receipts could
yield her relief at the pinch, nor the urgency of her affairs endure the
delays of Parliamentary assistance. And for such aids it is likewise
apparent that she received more, and that with the love of her people,
than any two of her predecessors that took most; which was a fortune
strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her
comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal
distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for I believe no
prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the
preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, yea,
of the Commons, and that stooped and declined low in presenting her
person to the public view, as she passed in her progress and
perambulations, and in her ejaculations of her prayers on the people.
And, truly, though much may be written in praise of her providence and
good husbandry, in that she could, upon all good occasions, abate her
magnanimity, and therewith comply with the Parliament, and so always come
off both with honour and profit; yet must we ascribe some part of the
commendation to the wisdom of the times, and the choice of
Parliament-men; for I said {112a} not that they were at any time given to
any violent or pertinacious dispute, the elections being made of grave
and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came
not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a
preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to
contest with Majesty: neither dare I find {112b} that the House was
weakened and pestered through the admission of too many _young heads_, as
it hath been of _latter_ times; which remembers me of the Recorder
Martin’s speech about the truth of our late Sovereign Lord King James,
{112c} when there were accounts taken of _forty_ gentlemen not above
_twenty_, and some not exceeding _sixteen_ years of age; which made him
to say, “that it was the ancient custom for old men to make laws for
young ones, but there he saw the case altered, and there were children in
the great council of the kingdom, which came to invade and invert nature,
and to enact laws to govern their fathers.” Such {113a} were in the
House always, {113b} and took the common cause into consideration; and
they say the Queen had many times just cause, and need enough, to use
their assistance: neither do I remember that the House did ever
capitulate, or prefer their private to the public and the Queen’s
necessities, but waited their times, and, in the first place, gave their
supply, and according to the exigence of her affairs; yet failed not at
the last to attain what they desired, so that the Queen and her
Parliaments had ever the good fortune to depart in love, and on
reciprocal terms, which are considerations that have not been so exactly
observed in our _last_ assemblies. And I would to God they had been;
for, considering the great debts left on the King, {113c} and to what
incumbrances the House itself had then drawn him, His Majesty was not
well used, though I lay not the blame on the whole suffrage of the House,
where he had many good friends; for I dare avouch it, had the House been
freed of half a dozen popular and discontented persons (such as, with the
fellow that burnt the temple of Ephesus, would be talked of, though for
doing mischief), I am confident the King had obtained that which, in
reason, and at his first occasion, he ought to have received freely, and
without condition. But pardon this digression, which is here remembered,
not in the way of aggravation, but in true zeal of the public good, and
presented _in caveat_ of future times: for I am not ignorant how the
genius and spirit of the kingdom now moves to make His Majesty amends on
any occasion; and how desirous the subject is to expiate that offence at
any rate, may it please His Majesty to make a trial of his subjects’
affections; and at what price they value now his goodness and
magnanimity.
But to our purpose: the Queen was not to learn that, as the strength of
the kingdom consisted in the multitude of her subjects, so the security
of her person consisted and rested in the love and fidelity of her
people, which she politically affected (as it hath been thought) somewhat
beneath the height of her natural spirit and magnanimity.
Moreover, it will be a true note of her providence, that she would always
listen to her profit: for she would not refuse the information of meanest
personages, which proposed improvement; and had learned the philosophy of
(_hoc agere_) to look unto her own work: of which there is a notable
example of one Carmarthen, an under officer of the Custom House, who,
observing his time, presented her with a paper, showing how she was
abused in the under-renting of the Customs, and therewith humbly desired
Her Majesty to conceal him, for that it did concern two or three of her
great counsellors, {115} whom Customer Smith had bribed with two thousand
pounds a man, so to lose the Queen twenty thousand pounds per annum;
which being made known to the Lords, they gave strict order that
Carmarthen should not have access to the back-stairs; but, at last, Her
Majesty smelling the craft, and missing Carmarthen, she sent for him
back, and encouraged him to stand to his information; which the poor man
did so handsomely that, within the space of ten years, he was brought to
double his rent, or leave the Custom to new farmers. So that we may take
this also in consideration, that there were of the Queen’s Council which
were not in the catalogue of saints.
Now, as we have taken a view of some particular motives of her times, her
nature, and necessities, it is not without the text to give a short touch
of the _helps_ and _advantages_ of her reign, which were _not_ without
{116} paroles; for she had neither husband, brother, sister, nor children
to provide for, who, as they are dependants on the Crown, so do they
necessarily draw livelihood from thence, and oftentimes exhaust and draw
deep, especially when there is an ample fraternity royal, and of the
princes of the blood, as it was in the time of Edward III. and Henry IV.
For when the Crown cannot, the public ought to give honourable allowance;
for they are the honour and hopes of the kingdom; and the public, which
enjoys them, hath the like interest with the father which begat them; and
our common law, which is the inheritance of the kingdom, did ever of old
provide aids for the _primogenitus_ {117a} and the eldest daughter; for
that the multiplicity of courts, and the great charges which necessarily
follow a king, a queen, a prince, and royal issue, was a thing which was
not _in rerum natura_ {117b} during the space of forty-four years, {117c}
but worn out of memory, and without the consideration of the present
times, insomuch as the aids given to the late and Right Noble Prince
Henry, and to his sister, the Lady Elizabeth, which were at first
generally received as impositions for knighthood, though an ancient law,
fell also into the imputation of a tax of nobility, for that it lay long
covered in the embers of division between the Houses of York and
Lancaster, and forgotten or connived at by the succeeding princes: so
that the strangeness of the observation, and the difference of those
latter reigns, is that the Queen took up much _beyond_ the power of law,
which fell not into the murmur of people; and her successors took nothing
but by warrant of the law, which nevertheless was received, _through
disuse_, to be injurious to the liberty of the kingdom.
Now before I come to any mention of her favourites, for hitherto I have
delivered but some oblivious passages, thereby to prepare and smooth a
way for the rest that follows:
It is necessary that I touch on the religiousness of the other’s reign, I
mean the body of her sister’s {118} Council of State, which she retained
entirely, neither removing nor discontenting any, although she knew them
averse to her religion, and, in her sister’s time, perverse to her
person, and privy to all her troubles and imprisonments.
A prudence which was incompatible to her sister’s nature, for she both
dissipated and presented the major part of her brother’s Council; but
this will be of certain, that how compliable and obsequious soever she
found them, yet for a good space she made little use of their counsels,
more than in the ordinary course of the Board, for she had a dormant
table in her own privy breast; yet she kept them together and in their
places, without any sudden change; so that we may say of them that they
were then of the Court, not of the Council; for whilst she _amazed_ {119}
them by a kind of promissive disputation concerning the points
controverted by both Churches, she did set down her own gests, without
their privity, and made all their progressions, gradations; but for that
the tenents of her secrets, with the intents of her establishments, were
pitched before it was known where the Court would sit down.
Neither do I find that any of her sister’s Council of State were either
repugnant to her religion, or opposed her doings; Englefeild, Master of
the Wards, excepted, who withdrew himself from the Board, and shortly
after out of her dominions; so pliable and obedient they were to change
with the times and their prince; and of them will fall a relation of
recreation. Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and Lord Treasurer, had
served then four princes, in as various and changeable times and seasons,
that I may well say no time nor age hath yielded the like precedent.
This man, being noted to grow high in her favour (as his place and
experience required), was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he
had stood up for thirty years together, amidst the change and ruins of so
many Chancellors and great personages. “Why,” quoth the marquis, “_Ortus
sum e salice_, _non ex quercu_,” _i.e._, “I am made of pliable willow,
not of the stubborn oak.” And, truly, it seems the old man had taught
them all, especially William, Earl of Pembroke, for they two were always
of the King’s religion, and always zealous professors: of these it is
said that being 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; whereupon it hath been prettily
spoken that they lived in a time of dissolution.
To conclude, then, of all the former reign, it is said that those two
lived and died chiefly in her grace and favour: by the letter written
upon his son’s marriage with the Lady Catherine Grey, he had like utterly
to have lost himself; but at the instant of consummation, as apprehending
the unsafety and danger of intermarriage with the blood royal, he fell at
the Queen’s feet, where he both acknowledged his presumption, and
projected the cause and the divorce together: so quick he was at his
work, that in the time of repudiation of the said Lady Grey, he clapped
up a marriage for his son, the Lord Herbert, with Mary Sidney, daughter
to Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, the blow falling on
Edward, the late Earl of Hertford, who, to his cost, took up the divorced
lady, of whom the Lord Beauchamp was born, and William, now Earl of
Hertford, is descended.
I come now to present them to her own election, which were either
admitted to her secrets of State, or taken into her grace and favour; of
whom, in order, I crave leave to give unto posterity a cautious
description, with a short character or draught of the persons themselves
(for, without offence to others, I would be true to myself), their
memories and merits, distinguishing those of _Militiæ_ {122a} from the
_Togati_; {122b} and of both these she had as many, and those as able
ministers, as had any of her progenitors.