Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Volumes I & II — 25 - Volume II, Chapter XVII. 1571-1573, part 1

From the intrigues and violences of crafty politicians and discontented nobles, we shall now turn to trace the prosperous and honorable career of a private English merchant, whose abilities and integrity introduced him to the notice of his sovereign, and whose patriotic munificence still preserves to him the respectful remembrance of posterity.

This merchant was Thomas Gresham.

Born of a family at once enlightened, wealthy and commercial, he had shared the advantage of an education at the university of Cambridge previously to his entrance on the walk of life to which he was destined, and which, fortunately for himself, his superior acquirements did not tempt him to desert or to despise.

His father, sir Richard Gresham, had been agent to Henry VIII.

for the negotiation of loans with the merchants of Antwerp, and in 1552 he himself was nominated to act in a similar capacity to Edward VI.

, when he was eminently serviceable in redeeming the credit of the king, sunk to the lowest ebb by the mismanagement of his father's immediate successor in the agency.

Under Elizabeth he enjoyed the same appointment, to which was added that of queen's merchant; and it appears by the official letters of the time, that political as well as pecuniary affairs were often intrusted to his discreet and able management.

He was also a spirited promoter of the infant manufactures of his country, several of which owed to him their first establishment.

By his diligence and commercial talents he at length rendered himself the most opulent subject in the kingdom, and the queen showed her sense of his merit and consequence by bestowing on him the honor of knighthood.

Gresham had always made a liberal and patriotic use of his wealth; but after the death of his only son, in 1564, he formed the resolution of making his country his principal heir.

The merchants of London had hitherto been unprovided with any building in the nature of a burse or exchange, such as Gresham had seen in the great commercial cities of Flanders; and he now munificently offered, if the city would give him a piece of ground, to build them one at his own expense.

The edifice was begun accordingly in 1566, and finished within three years.

It was a quadrangle of brick, with walks on the ground floor for the merchants, (who now ceased to transact their business in the middle aisle of St. Paul's cathedral,) with vaults for warehouses beneath and a range of shops above, from the rent of which the proprietor sought some remuneration for his great charges.

But the shops did not immediately find occupants; and it seems to have been partly with the view of bringing them into vogue that the queen promised her countenance to the undertaking.

In January 1571, attended by a splendid train, she entered the city; and after dining with sir Thomas at his spacious mansion in Bishopsgate-street (still remaining), she repaired to the burse, visited every part of it, and caused proclamation to be made by sound of trumpet that henceforth it should bear the name of the Royal Exchange.

Gresham offered the shops rent-free for a year to such as would furnish them with wares and wax lights against the coming of the queen; and a most sumptuous display was made of the richest commodities and manufactures of every quarter of the globe.

Afterwards the shops of the exchange became the favorite resort of fashionable customers of both sexes: much money was squandered here, and, if we are to trust the representations of satirists and comic writers, many reputations lost.

The building was destroyed in the fire of London; and the divines of that day, according to their custom, pronounced this catastrophe a judgement on the avarice and unfair dealing of the merchants and shopkeepers, and the pride, prodigality and luxury of the purchasers and idlers by whom it was frequented and maintained.

Elizabeth soon after paid homage to merit in another form, by conferring on her invaluable servant Cecil,--whose wisdom, firmness and vigilance had most contributed to preserve her unhurt amid the machinations of her implacable enemies,--the dignity of baron of Burleigh; an elevation which might provoke the envy or resentment of some of the courtiers his opponents, but which was hailed by the applauses of the people.

Before the close of the year, the death, at a great but not venerable age, of that corrupt and selfish statesman the marquis of Winchester, afforded her an opportunity of apportioning to the new dignity of her secretary a suitable advance in office and emolument, by conferring on him the post of lord-high-treasurer, which he continued to enjoy to the end of his life.

On the first of May and the two following days solemn justs were held before the queen at Westminster; in which the challengers were the earl of Oxford, Charles Howard, sir Henry Lee and sir Christopher Hatton,--all four deserving of biographical commemoration.

Edward earl of Oxford was the seventeenth of the illustrious family of Vere who had borne that title, and his character presented an extraordinary union of the haughtiness, violence and impetuosity of the feudal baron, with many of the elegant propensities and mental accomplishments which adorn the nobleman of a happier age.

It was probably to his travels in Italy that he owed his more refined tastes both in literature and in luxury, and it was thence that he brought those perfumed and embroidered gloves which he was the first to introduce into England.

A superb pair which he presented to her majesty were so much approved by her, that she sat for her portrait with them on her hands.

These gloves became of course highly fashionable, but those prepared in Spain were soon found to excel in scent all others; and the importance attached to this discovery may be estimated by the following commission given by sir Nicholas Throgmorton, then in France, to sir Thomas Chaloner ambassador in Spain:--"I pray you, good my lord ambassador, send me two pair of perfumed gloves, perfumed with orange-flowers and jasmin, the one for my wife's hand, the other for mine own; and wherein soever I can pleasure you with any thing in this country, you shall have it in recompense thereof, or else so much money as they shall cost you; provided always that they be of the best choice, wherein your judgement is inferior to none[72]."

[Note 72: "Burleigh Papers" by Haynes.

] The earl of Oxford enjoyed in his own times a high poetical reputation;

but his once celebrated comedies have perished, and two or three fugitive pieces inserted in collections are the only legacy bequeathed to posterity by his muse.

Of these, "The complaint of a lover wearing black and tawny" has ceased, in the change of manners and fashions, to interest or affect the reader.

"Fancy and Desire" may still lay claim to the praise of ingenuity, though the idea is perhaps not original even here, and has since been exhibited with very considerable improvements both in French and English, especially in Ben Jonson's celebrated song, "Tell me where was Fancy bred?"

Two or three stanzas may bear quotation.

"Where wert thou born Desire?"

"In pomp and pride of May."

"By whom sweet boy wert thou begot?"

"By Fond Conceit men say."

"Tell me who was thy nurse?"

"Fresh Youth in sugred joy."

"What was thy meat and daily food?"

"Sad sighs with great annoy."

"What had'st thou then to drink?"

"Unsavoury lovers' tears."

"What cradle wert thou rocked in?"

"In hope devoid of fears."

&c. In the chivalrous exercises of the tilt and tournament the earl of Oxford had few superiors: he was victor in the justs both of this year and of the year 1580, and on the latter occasion he was led by two ladies into the presence-chamber, all armed as he was, to receive a prize from her majesty's own hand.

Afterwards, by gross misconduct, he incurred from his sovereign a disgrace equally marked and public, being committed to the Tower for an attempt on one of her maids of honor.

On other occasions his lawless propensities broke out with a violence which Elizabeth herself was scarcely able to restrain.

He had openly begun to muster his friends, retainers and servants, to take vengeance on sir Thomas Knevet, by whom he had been wounded in a duel; and the queen, who interfered to prevent the execution of this savage design, was obliged for some time to appoint Knevet a guard in order to secure his life.

He also publicly insulted sir Philip Sidney in the tennis-court of the palace; and her majesty could discover no other means of preventing fatal consequences than compelling sir Philip Sidney, as the inferior in rank, to compromise the quarrel on terms which he regarded as so inequitable and degrading, that after transmitting to her majesty a spirited remonstrance against encouraging the insolence of the great nobles, he retired to Penshurst in disgust.

The duke of Norfolk was the nephew of this earl of Oxford, who was very strongly attached to him, and used the utmost urgency of entreaty with Burleigh, whose daughter he had married, to prevail on him to procure his pardon: "but not succeeding," says lord Orford, "he was so incensed against that minister, that in most absurd and unjust revenge (though the cause was amiable) he swore he would do all he could to ruin his daughter; and accordingly not only forsook her bed, but sold and consumed great part of the vast inheritance descended to him from his ancestors[73]."

[Note 73: "Royal and Noble Authors."

] This remarkable person died very aged early in the reign of James I. Sir Charles Howard, eldest son of lord Howard of Effingham, was at this period of his life chiefly remarkable for the uncommon beauty of his person,--a species of merit never overlooked by her majesty,--for grace and agility in his exercises, and for the manners of an accomplished courtier.

At no time was he regarded as a person of profound judgement, and of vanity and self-consequence he is said to have possessed an abundant share.

He was however brave, courteous, liberal, and diligent in affairs; and the favor of the queen admitted him in 1585 to succeed his father in the office of lord-high-admiral.

His intrepid bearing, in the year 1588, encouraged his sailors to meet the terrible Armada with stout hearts and cheerful countenances, and the glory of its defeat was as much his own as the participation of winds and waves would allow.

In consideration of this distinguished piece of service he was created earl of Nottingham; and the queen's partiality towards her relations increasing with her years, he became towards the end of the reign one of the most considerable persons at her court, where his hostility to Essex grew equally notorious with the better grounded antipathy entertained by Sussex, also a royal kinsman, against Leicester, the earlier favorite of her majesty.

The earl of Nottingham survived to the year 1624, the 88th of his age.

Sir Henry Lee was one of the finest courtiers and certainly the most complete knight-errant of his time.

He was now in the fortieth year of his age, had travelled, and had seen some military service; but the tilt-yard was ever the scene of his most conspicuous exploits and those in which he placed his highest glory.

He had declared himself the queen's own knight and champion, and having inscribed upon his shield the constellation of Ariadne's Crown, culminant in her majesty's nativity, bound himself by a solemn vow to appear armed in the tilt-yard on every anniversary of her happy accession till disabled by age.

This vow gave origin to the annual exercises of the Knights-Tilters, a society consisting of twenty-five of the most gallant and favored of the courtiers of Elizabeth.

The modern reader may wonder to find included in this number so grave an officer as Bromley lord chancellor; but under the maiden reign neither the deepest statesman, the most studious lawyer, nor the rudest soldier was exempted from the humiliating obligation of accepting, and even soliciting, those household and menial offices usually discharged by mere courtiers, nor from the irksome one of assuming, for the sake of their sovereign lady, the romantic disguise of armed champions and enamoured knights.

Sir Henry Lee, however, appears to have devoted his life to these chivalrous pageantries rather from a quixotical imagination than with any serious views of ambition or interest.

He was a gentleman of ancient family and plentiful fortune, little connected, as far as appears, with any court faction or political, party, and neither capable nor ambitious of any public station of importance.

It is an amiable and generous trait of his character, that he attended the unfortunate duke of Norfolk even to the scaffold, received his last embrace, and repeated to the assembled multitude his request that they would assist him with their prayers in his final agony.

His royal Dulcinea rewarded his fatigues and his adoration by the lieutenancy of Woodstock manor, the office of keeper of the armoury, and especially by the appropriate meed of admission into the most noble order of the Garter.

He resigned the championship at the approach of old age with a solemn ceremony hereafter to be described, died at his mansion of Quarendon in Bucks, in 1611, in his 81st year, and was interred in the parish church under a splendid tomb hung round with military trophies, and inscribed with a very long, very quaint and very tumid epitaph.

Christopher Hatton, the last of this undaunted band of challengers, was a new competitor for the smiles of royalty, and bright was the dawn of fortune and of favor which already broke upon him.

He was of a decayed family of Northamptonshire gentry, and had just commenced the study of the law at one of the inns of court, when hope or curiosity stimulated him to gain admittance at some court-festival, where he had an opportunity of dancing before the queen in a mask.

His figure and his performance so captivated her fancy, that she immediately bestowed upon him some flattering marks of attention, which encouraged him to quit his profession and turn courtier.

This showy outside and these gay accomplishments were unexpectedly found in union with a moderate and cautious temper, enlightened views, and a solid understanding; and after due deliberation, Elizabeth, that penetrating judge of men, decided, in spite of ridicule, that she could not do better than make this superlatively-excellent dancer of galliards her lord-chancellor.

The enemies of Hatton are said to have promoted this appointment in expectation of his disgracing himself by ignorance and incapacity; but their malice was disappointed; whatever he did not know, he was able to learn and willing to be taught; he discharged the duties of his high office with prudence first and afterwards with ability, and died in 1591 in possession of it and of the public esteem.

It is remarkable, considering the general predilection of the queen in favor of celibacy, that Hatton was the only one of her ministers who lived and died a bachelor.

Early in this year the king of France married a daughter of the emperor Maximilian; and Elizabeth, desirous at this time of being on the best terms both with the French and Imperial courts, sent lord Buckhurst to Paris on a splendid embassy of congratulation.

Catherine de' Medici took this opportunity of renewing proposals of marriage to the queen of England on the part of her son the duke of Anjou, and they were listened to with an apparent complacency which perplexed the politicians.

It is certainly to this negotiation, and to the intrigues of the duke of Norfolk and other nobles with the queen of Scots, that Shakespear alludes in the following ingenious and exquisite passage.

..."

Once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a _Mermaid_ on a _Dolphin_'s back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And _certain stars shot madly from their spheres_, To hear the sea-maid's music.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * That very time I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took At _a fair Vestal throned by the West_, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon, And the Imperial Votress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free."

_Midsummer Night's Dream.

_ Unfortunately for himself, the duke of Norfolk had not acquired, even from the severe admonition of a long imprisonment, resolution sufficient to turn a deaf ear to the enchantments of this syren.

His situation was indeed perplexing: He had entered into the most serious engagements with his sovereign to abstain from all further intercourse with the queen of Scots: at the same time the right of Elizabeth to interdict him an alliance so flattering to his vanity might plausibly be questioned, and the previous interchange between himself and Mary of solemn promises of marriage, seemed to have brought him under obligations to her too sacred to be dissolved by any subsequent stipulation of his, though one to which Mary herself had been compelled to become a party.

Neither had chivalrous ideas by any means lost their force in this age; and as a knight and a gentleman the duke must have esteemed himself bound in honor to procure the release of the captive princess, and to claim through all perils the fair hand which had been plighted to him.

Impressed by such sentiments, he returned to a letter of eloquent complaint which she found means to convey to him, an answer filled with assurances of his inviolable constancy; and the intrigues of the party were soon renewed with as much activity as ever.

But the vigilance of the ministry of Elizabeth could not long be eluded.

An important packet of letters written by Ridolfi, a Florentine who had been sent abroad by the party to confer with the pope and with the duke of Alva, was intercepted; and in consequence of the plots thus unfolded, the bishop of Ross, who bore the character of Mary's ambassador in England, was given into private custody.

Soon after, a servant of the duke's, intrusted by him with the conveyance of a sum of money from the French ambassador to Mary's adherents in Scotland, carried the parcel containing it to the secretary of state.

The duke's secretary was then sent for and examined.

This man, who was probably in the pay of government, not only confessed with readiness all that he knew, but produced some letters from the queen of Scots which his lord had commanded him to burn after decyphering them.

Other concurring indications of the duke's guilt appearing, he was recommitted to the Tower in September 1571. After various consultations of civilians on the extent of an ambassador's privilege, and the title which the agent of a deposed sovereign might have to avail himself of that sacred character, it was determined that the laws of nations did not protect the bishop of Ross, and he was carried to the Tower, where, in fear of death, he made full confession of all his machinations against the person and state of Elizabeth.

In the most guilty parts of these designs he affirmed that the duke had constantly refused his concurrence;--and in fact, weak and infatuated as he was, the agents of Mary seem to have found it impracticable, by all their artifices, to bring this unfortunate nobleman entirely to forget that he was a protestant and an Englishman.

He would never consent directly to procure the death or dethronement of Elizabeth; though it must have been perfectly evident to any man of clear and unbiassed judgement, that, under all the circumstances, the accomplishment of his wishes could by no other means be attained.

This affair was regarded in so very serious a light, that the queen thought it necessary, before the duke was put on his trial, to lay all the circumstances of his case before the court of France; and the parliament, which was again assembled after an interval of five years, passed some new laws for the protection of the queen's person from the imminent perils by which they saw her environed.

The illustrious prisoner was now brought before the tribunal of his brother-peers; and a perfectly fair and regular trial, according to the practices of that age, was accorded him.

Whatever his intentions might have been, his actions appear to have come clearly within the limits of treason; and the earl of Shrewsbury, as lord-high-steward for the day, pronounced upon him, with tears, a verdict of Guilty.

But the queen hesitated or deferred, from clemency or caution, to sign his death warrant, and he was remanded to the Tower under some uncertainty whether or not the last rigor of the offended laws awaited him.

The name of sir Nicholas Throgmorton was so mixed up in the confessions of the bishop of Ross, that it was perhaps an indulgent fate which had removed him some months previously from the sphere of human action.

He died at the house of the earl of Leicester, and certainly of a pleurisy;

but the malevolent credulity of that age seldom allowed a person of any eminence to quit the world without imputing the occurrence in some manner, direct or indirect, to the malice of his enemies.

It was rumored that Throgmorton had fallen a victim to the hostility of Leicester, which he was thought to have provoked by quitting the party of the earl to reconcile himself with Burleigh, his secret enemy; and the suspicion of proficiency in the art of poisoning, which had so long rested upon the favorite, obtained credit to this absurd report.

Possibly there might be more truth in the general opinion, that it was in some measure owing to the enmity of Burleigh that a person of such acknowledged abilities in public affairs, and one who had conducted himself so skilfully in various important negotiations, should never have been advanced to any considerable office of trust or profit.

But the lofty and somewhat turbulent spirit of Throgmorton himself, ought probably to bear the chief blame both of this enmity, and of his want of success at the court of a princess who exacted from her servants the exercise of the most refined and cautious policy, as well as an entire and implicit submission to all her views and wishes.

It is highly probable that she never entirely pardoned Throgmorton for giving the lie to her declarations respecting the promises made to the earl of Murray and his party, by the open production of his own diplomatic instructions.