Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Volumes I & II — 37 - Volume II. Chapter XXII. 1588-1591, part 2

The king of Scots had now for a considerable time deserved extremely well of Elizabeth.

During the whole period of the Spanish armament he had remained unshaken in his attachment to her cause, resolutely turning a deaf ear to the flattering offers of Philip II.

with the shrewd remark, that all the favor he had to expect from this monarch in case of his success against England, was that of Polypheme to Ulysses;--to be devoured the last.

A bon mot which was carefully copied into _The English Mercury_.

The ambassador to Scotland, from an unfounded opinion that the discomfited armada sought shelter in the ports of that country under the faith of some secret engagement with James, had thought it necessary to bribe him to fidelity by some brilliant promises, of which when the danger was past Elizabeth unhandsomely evaded the fulfilment;

but even on this occasion he abstained from any vehement expressions of indignation: in short, his whole demeanour towards his lofty kinswoman was that of a submissive expectant much more than of a competitor and rival prince.

True it is, that he had begun to attach to himself among her nobles and courtiers as many adherents as his means permitted; but besides that his manoeuvres remained for the most part concealed from her knowledge, they certainly carried with them no danger to her government.

The partisans of James were not, like those of his mother, the adherents also of a religious faction leagued with the foreign powers most inimical to her rule, and from whose machinations she was exposed to daily peril of her throne and life.

They were protestants and Englishmen, and many of them possessed of such strong hereditary influence or official rank, that it could never become their interest to throw the country into confusion by ill-timed efforts in favor of the king of Scots; whose cause they in fact embraced with no other view than to secure the state from commotion, and themselves from the loss of power on the event of the queen's demise.

The puritan party indeed, by whom several attempts were afterwards made in parliament to extort from the queen a settlement of the crown in James's favor, were doubtless actuated in part by discontent with the present church-establishment, and the hope of seeing it superseded under James by a presbyterian form resembling that of Scotland.

For the present, however, these religionists were sufficiently repressed under the iron rod of the High-commission court, and James had entered with them into no regular correspondence, and engaged their attachment by no promises of future indulgence or support.

On the whole, therefore, the violent jealousy with which Elizabeth continued to regard this feeble and inoffensive young king, in every point so greatly her inferior, must rather be imputed to her narrowness and malignity of temper than to any dictates of sound policy or advisable precaution; and the measures with which it prompted her were impressed accordingly with every character of spite and meanness.

She was peculiarly solicitous to prevent James from increasing his consequence by marriage, and through innumerable intrigues with his ministers and favorites she had hitherto succeeded in her object.

When he appeared to have set his mind on a union with the eldest daughter of the king of Denmark, she contrived to interpose so many delays and obstacles that this sovereign, conceiving himself trifled with, ended the affair by giving the princess in marriage to another.

To embarrass matters still more, she next proposed to James a match with the sister of the king of Navarre, a princess much older than himself, destitute of fortune, and whose brother might be influenced to protract the negotiation to any length convenient to his valuable ally the queen of England.

This proposal being declined by James, and overtures made in his name to a younger daughter of the Danish house, she again set her engines at work to thwart his wishes: but indignation and an amorous impatience for once lent to James resolution sufficient to carry his point.

Disregarding a declaration of his privy-council against the match, he instigated the citizens of Edinburgh to take up arms in his cause, and finally accomplished the sending out of a splendid embassy, by which the marriage-articles were speedily settled, and the princess conducted on board the fleet which was to convey her to Scotland.

A

violent storm having driven her for shelter into a port of Norway, the young monarch carried his gallantry so far as to set sail in quest of her; and re-conducting her, at the request of the king her father, to Copenhagen, he there passed the winter in great joy and festivity; and as soon as the season would permit, conducted his royal consort home in triumph, and crowned her with all the magnificence that Scotland could display.

Seeing the turn which matters had taken, Elizabeth now made a virtue of necessity, and dispatched a solemn embassy to express to her good brother of Scotland her hearty congratulations on his nuptials, and her satisfaction in his happy return from so adventurous a voyage.

In April 1590 died sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary of state, whose name is found in such intimate connexion with the whole domestic policy of Elizabeth during several eventful years, that his character is in a manner identified with that of the measures at this period pursued.

This eminent person, in his youth an exile for the protestant cause, retained through life so serious a sense of religion as sometimes to expose him to the suspicion of puritanism.

In his private capacity he was benevolent, friendly, and accounted a man of strict integrity: but it is right that public characters should principally be estimated by that part of their conduct in which the public is concerned; and to Walsingham as a minister the unsullied reputation of virtue and honor is not to be conceded.

Unlike that pure and noble patriot who "would have lost his life with pleasure to serve his country, but would not have done a base thing to save it," this statesman seems to have held that few base things ought to be scrupled by which his queen and country might be served.

That Walsingham was of unimpeached fidelity towards his sovereign requires no proof; that he was not stimulated by views of private emolument seems also to be satisfactorily evinced, though somewhat to the discredit of his mistress, by the load of debt incurred in his official capacity under the pressure of which he lived and died: but here our praise of his public virtue must end.

It is impossible to regard without indignation and disgust the system of artifice and intrigue which he contrived for the purpose of insnaring the persecuted and therefore disaffected catholics; and while due credit is given to his unwearied diligence and remarkable sagacity in detecting dangerous conspiracies, it cannot be doubted that the extraordinary encouragements held out by him to spies and informers,--those pests of a commonwealth,--must in numberless instances have rendered himself the dupe, and innocent persons the victims, of designing villany.

Looking even to the immediate results of his measures, it may triumphantly be demanded by the philanthropist and the sage, whether a system less artificial, less treacherous and less cruel, would not equally well have succeeded in protecting the person of the queen from the machinations of traitors, with the further and inestimable advantage of preserving her government from reproach, and the national character from degradation.

That the system of Walsingham was in the main that also of his court and of his age, is indeed true; and this consideration might in some degree plead his excuse, did it not appear that there was in his personal character a native subtilty and talent of insinuation which, aptly conspiring with the nature of his office, might truly be said to render his duty his delight:--a feature of his mind which is thus happily delineated by a witty and ingenious writer.

"None alive did better ken the secretary's craft, to get counsels out of others and keep them in himself.

Marvellous his sagacity in examining suspected persons, either to make them confess the truth, or confound themselves by denying it to their detection.

Cunning his hands, who could unpick the cabinets in the pope's conclave; quick his ears, who could hear at London what was whispered at Rome; and numerous the spies and eyes of this Argus dispersed in all places.

"The Jesuits, being outshot in their own bow, complained that he out equivocated their equivocation, having a mental reservation deeper and further than theirs.

They tax him for making heaven bow too much to earth, oft-times borrowing a point of conscience with full intent never to pay it again; whom others excused by reasons of state and dangers of the times.

Indeed his simulation (which all allow lawful) was as like to dissimulation (condemned by all good men) as two things could be which were not the same.

He thought that gold might, but intelligence could not, be bought too dear;--the cause that so great a _statesman_ left so small an _estate_, and so _public_ a person was so _privately_ buried in St. Pauls[102]."

[Note 102: Fuller's Worthies in Kent.

] The long state of infirmity which preceded the death of Walsingham, had afforded abundant opportunity for various intrigues and negotiations respecting the appointment of his successor in office.

Burleigh hoped to make the choice of her majesty fall on his son Robert; Essex was anxious to decide it in favor of the discarded Davison, who seems to have been performing some part of the functions of a secretary of state during the illness of Walsingham, though he did not venture to appear in the sight of his still-offended mistress.

No one was more susceptible of generous emotions than Essex; and it ought not to be doubted that much of the extraordinary zeal which he manifested, during two or three entire years, in the cause of this unfortunate and ill-treated man, is to be ascribed to genuine friendship: but neither must it be concealed that this struggle for the nomination of a secretary was in effect the great and decisive trial of strength between himself and the Cecils.

Several letters have been printed, written by Essex to Davison and bearing date between the years 1587 and 1590, from which a few extracts may be worth transcribing, both for the excellence of the style and the light which they reflect on the behaviour and sentiments of Elizabeth in this matter.

"I had speech with her majesty yesternight after my departure from you, and I did find that the success of my speech (although I hoped for good) yet did much overrun my expectation....

I

made her majesty see what, in your health, in your fortune, in your reputation in the world, you had suffered since the time that it was her pleasure to commit you; I told her how many friends and well-wishers the world did afford you, and how, for the most part, throughout the whole realm her best subjects did wish that she would do herself the honor to repair for you and restore to you that state which she had overthrown;

your humble suffering of these harms and reverend regard to her majesty, must needs move a princess so noble and so just, to do you right; and more I had said, if my gift of speech had been any way comparable to my love.

Her majesty, seeing her judgement opened by the story of her own actions, showed a very feeling compassion of you, she gave you many praises, and among the rest, that she seemed to please herself in was, that you were a man of her own choice.

In truth she was so well pleased with those things that she spake and heard of you, that I dare (if of things future there be any assurance) promise to myself that your peace will be made to your content and the desire of your friends, I mean in her favor and your own fortune, to a better estate than, or at least the same you had, which with all my power I will employ myself to effect."

&c. That these sanguine hopes were soon checked, appears by the following passage of a subsequent letter.

"I have, as I could, taken my opportunity since I saw you to perform as much as I promised you; and though in all I have been able to effect nothing, yet even now I have had better leisure to solicit the queen than in this stormy time I did hope for.

My beginning was, as being amongst others entreated to move her in your behalf; my course was, to lay open your sufferings and your patience; in them you had felt poverty, restraint and disgrace, and yet you showed nothing but faith and humility; faith, as being never wearied nor discouraged to do her service, humbleness, as content to forget all the burdens that had been laid upon you, and to serve her majesty with as frank and willing a heart as they that have received greatest grace from her.

To this I received no answer but in general terms, that her honor was much touched; your presumption had been intolerable, and that she could not let it slip out of her mind.

When I urged your access she denied it, but so as I had no cause to be afraid to speak again.

When I offered in them both to reply, she fell into other discourse, and so we parted."

&c. On the death of Walsingham he writes thus....

"Upon this unhappy accident I have tried to the bottom what the queen will do for you, and what the credit of your solicitor is worth.

I urged not the comparison between you and any other, but in my duty to her and zeal to her service I did assure her, that she had not any other in England that would for these three or four years know how to settle himself to support so great a burden.

She gave me leave to speak, heard me with patience, confessed with me that none was so sufficient, and would not deny but that which she lays to your charge was done without hope, fear, malice, envy, or any respects of your own, but merely for her safety both of state and person.

In the end she absolutely denied to let you have that place and willed me to rest satisfied, for she was resolved.

Thus much I write to let you know, I am more honest to my friends than happy in their cases."

&c. As the fear of giving offence to the king of Scots was one reason or pretext for the implacability of the queen towards Davison, Essex hazarded the step of writing to request, as a personal favor to himself, the forgiveness and good offices of this monarch in behalf of the man who bore the blame of his mother's death.

Nothing could be more dexterous than the turn of this letter; but what reception it found we do not discover.

On the whole, all his efforts were unavailing: the longer Elizabeth reflected on the matter, the less she felt herself able to forgive the _presumption_ of the rash man who had anticipated her final resolution on the fate of Mary.

Other considerations probably concurred; as, the apprehension which seems to have been of perpetual recurrence to her mind, of rendering her young favorite too confident and presuming by an uniform course of success in his applications to her; the habitual ascendency of Burleigh; and, probably, some distrust of the capacity of Davison for so difficult and important a post.

In conclusion, no principal secretary was at present appointed; but Robert Cecil was admitted as an assistant to his father, who resumed on this condition the duties of the office, and held it, as it were in trust, till her majesty, six years afterwards, was pleased to sanction his resignation in favor of his son, now fully established in her confidence and good opinion.

Of Davison nothing further is known;

probably he did not long survive.

Some time in the year 1590, the earl of Essex married in a private manner the widow of sir Philip Sidney, and daughter of Walsingham; a step with which her majesty did not scruple to show herself highly offended.

The inferiority of the connexion in the two articles of birth and fortune to the just pretensions of the earl, and the circumstance that the union had been formed without that previous consultation of her gracious pleasure,--which from her high nobility and favorite courtiers, and especially from those who, like Essex and his lady, shared the honor of her relationship, she expected as a homage and almost claimed as a right,--were the ostensible grounds of her displeasure.

But that peculiar compound of ungenerous feelings which rendered her the universal foe of matrimony, exalted on this occasion by a jealousy too humiliating to be owned, but too powerful to be repressed, formed without doubt the more genuine sources of her deep chagrin.

The courtiers quickly penetrated the secret of her heart;--for what vice, what weakness, can long lurk unsuspected in a royal bosom?

and it is thus that John Stanhope, one of her attendants, ventures to write on the subject to lord Talbot.

"This night, God willing, she will to Richmond, and on Saturday next to Somerset-house, and if she could overcome her passion against my lord of Essex for his marriage, no doubt she would be much quieter; yet doth she use it more temperately than was thought for, and, God be thanked, doth not strike all that she threats[103].

The earl doth use it with good temper, concealing his marriage as much as so open a matter may be: not that he denies it to any, but for her majesty's better satisfaction, is pleased that my lady shall live very retired in her mother's house.

[104]" [Note 103: It may be regarded as dubious whether this expression is to be understood literally or metaphorically.

] [Note 104: "Illustrations" by Lodge.

] On the whole, the indignation of the queen against Essex stopped very short of the rage with which she had been transported against Leicester on a similar occasion; she never even talked of sending him to prison for his marriage.

Her good sense came to her assistance somewhat indeed too late for her own dignity, but soon enough to intercept any serious mischief to the earl; and having found leisure to reflect on the folly and disgrace of openly maintaining an ineffectual resentment, she soon after readmitted the offender to the same station of seeming favor as before.

There has appeared however some ground to suspect that the queen never entirely dismissed her feelings of mortification; or again reposed in Essex the same unbounded confidence with which she had once honored him.

From a passage of a letter addressed by lord Buckhurst to sir Robert Sidney, then governor of the Brill, we learn, that in the autumn of the next year she still retained such displeasure against sir Robert for having been present at a banquet given by Essex, either on occasion of his marriage, or with a view to the furtherance of some design of his which excited her suspicion, that she could not be induced to grant him leave of absence for a visit to England.

But cares and occupations of a nature peculiarly uncongenial with the indulgence of sentimental sorrows, now claimed, and not in vain, the serious thoughts of this prudent and vigilant princess.

The low state of her finances, exhausted by no wasteful prodigalities, but by the necessary measures of national defence and the politic aid which she had extended to the United Provinces and to the French Hugonots, now threatened to place her in a painful dilemma.

She must either desert her allies, and suffer her navy to relapse into the dangerous state of weakness from which she had exerted all her efforts to raise it, or summon a new parliament for the purpose of making fresh demands upon the purses of her people; and this at the risk either of shaking their attachment, or,--a humiliation not to be endured,--seeing herself compelled to sacrifice to the importunities of the popular members some of the more oppressive branches of her prerogative; the right of purveyance for instance, or that of granting monopolies; both of which she had suffered to grow into enormous grievances.

Mature reflection discovered to her, however, a third alternative; that of practising a still stricter oeconomy on one hand, and on the other, of increasing the productiveness to the exchequer of the customs and other branches of revenue, by reforming abuses, by detecting frauds and embezzlements, and by cutting off the exorbitant profits of collectors.

This last plan, which best accorded with her disposition, was that adopted by Elizabeth.

It may be mentioned as a characteristic trait, that a few years before, she had accepted with thanks an offer secretly made to herself by some person holding an inferior station in the customs, of a full disclosure of the impositions practised upon her in that department.

She had admitted this voluntary informer several times to her presence; had imposed silence in the tone of a mistress on the remonstrances of Leicester, Burleigh, and Walsingham, who indignantly urged that he was not of a rank to be thus countenanced in accusation of his superiors; and had reaped the reward of this judicious patronage, by finding herself entitled to demand from her farmer of the customs an annual rent of forty-two thousand pounds, instead of the twelve thousand pounds which he had formerly paid.

She now exacted from him a further advance of eight thousand pounds per annum; and stimulated Burleigh to such a rigid superintendence of all the details of public oeconomy as produced a very important general result.

It was probably in the ensuing parliament that a conference being held between the two houses respecting a bill for making the patrimonial estates of accountants liable for their arrears to the queen, and the commons desiring that it might not be retrospective, the lord treasurer pithily said; "My lords, if you had lost your purse by the way, would you look back or forwards to find it?

The queen hath lost her purse."

This rigid parsimony, at once the virtue and the foible of Elizabeth, was attended accordingly with its good and its evil.

It endeared her to the people, whom it protected from the imposition of new and oppressive taxes; but, being united in the complex character of this remarkable woman with an extraordinary taste for magnificence in all that related to her personal appearance, it betrayed her into a thousand meannesses, which, in spite of all the arts of graciousness in which she was an adept, served to alienate the affections of such as more nearly approached her.

Her nobles found themselves heavily burthened by the long and frequent visits which she paid them at their country-seats, attended always by an enormous retinue; as well as by the contributions to her jewelry and wardrobe which custom required of them under the name of new year's gifts, and on all occasions when they had favors, or even justice, to ask at her hands[105].

There were few of the inferior suitors and court-attendants composing the crowd by which she had a vanity in seeing herself constantly surrounded, who did not find cause bitterly to rue the day when first her hollow smiles and flattering speeches seduced them to long years of irksome, servile, and often profitless assiduity.

[Note 105: Lists of the New Year's Gifts received by Elizabeth during many years have more than once appeared in print.

They show that not only jewels, trinkets, rich robes, and every ornamental article of dress, were abundantly supplied to her from this source, but that sets of body linen worked with black silk round the bosom and sleeves, were regarded as no inappropriate offering from peers of the realm to the maiden-queen.

The presents of the bishops and of some of the nobility always consisted of gold pieces, to the value of from five to twenty or thirty pounds, contained in embroidered silk purses.

Her majesty distributed at the same season pieces of gilt plate; but not always to the same persons from whom she had received presents, nor, apparently, to an equal amount.

] Bacon in his Apophthegms relates on this subject the following anecdote.

"Queen Elizabeth, seeing sir Edward---- in her garden, looked out at her window and asked him, in Italian, 'What does a man think of when he thinks of nothing?'

Sir Edward, who had not had the effect of some of the queen's grants so soon as he had hoped and desired, paused a little, and then made answer; 'Madam, he thinks of a woman's promise.'

The queen shrunk in her head, but was heard to say; 'Well, sir Edward, I must not confute you: Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.'

" "Queen Elizabeth," says the same author, "was dilatory enough in suits of her own nature; and the lord treasurer Burleigh, being a wise man, and willing therein to feed her humor, would say to her; 'Madam, you do well to let suitors stay; for I shall tell you, _Bis dat qui cito dat_;

if you grant them speedily, they will come again the sooner.'

" It is probable that the popular story of this minister's intercepting the very moderate bounty which her majesty had proposed to herself the honor of bestowing on Spenser, is untrue with respect to this great poet; since the four lines relating to the circumstance, "Madam, You bid your treasurer on a time To give me reason for my rhime, But from that time and that season I have had nor rhyme nor reason," long attributed to Spenser, are now known to be Churchyard's. Yet that the author of the _Faery Queen_ had similar injuries to endure, is manifest from those lines of unrivalled energy in which the poet, from the bitterness of his soul, describes the miseries of a profitless court-attendance.

Few readers will have forgotten a passage so celebrated; but it will here be read with peculiar interest, as illustrative of the character of Elizabeth and the sufferings of her unfortunate courtiers.

"Full little knowest thou that hast not tried What hell it is in suing long to bide;

To lose good days that might be better spent;

To waste long nights in pensive discontent;

To speed today, to be put back tomorrow;

To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;

To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers;

To have thy asking, yet wait many years;

To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;

To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;

To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run;

To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."

_Mother Hubbard's Tale.

_ One of the most laudable objects of the parsimony exercised by Elizabeth at this period was that of enabling herself to afford effectual aid to Henry IV.

of France, now struggling, with adverse fortune but invincible resolution, to conquer from the united armies of Spain and the League the throne which was his birthright.

In the depth of his distress, just when his Swiss and German auxiliaries were on the point of disbanding themselves for want of pay, the friendship of Elizabeth came in aid of his necessities with a supply of twenty-two thousand pounds; a sum, trifling as it may seem in modern estimation, which sufficed to rescue Henry from his immediate embarrassment, and which he frankly avowed to be the largest he had ever seen.

The generosity of his ally did not stop here; for she speedily equipped a body of four thousand men and sent them to join him at Dieppe under command of the gallant lord Willoughby.

By this reinforcement Henry was enabled to march to Paris and possess himself of its suburbs, and subsequently to engage in several other enterprises, in which he gratefully acknowledged the eminent service rendered him by the valor and fidelity of this band of English.

The next year Elizabeth, alarmed at seeing several of the ports of Bretagne opposite to her own shores garrisoned by Spanish troops, whom the Leaguers had called in to their assistance, readily entered into a new treaty with Henry, by virtue of which she sent a fresh supply of three thousand men to assist him in the recovery of this province.

Her expenses however were to be repaid by the king after the expulsion of the enemy.

Sir John Norris, the appointed leader of this force, ranked among the most eminent of Elizabeth's captains; and was also possessed of some hereditary claims to her regard, which she did not fail to acknowledge as far as the jealousy of her favorites would give her leave.

One of sir John's grandfathers was that Norris who suffered in the cause of Anne Boleyn; the other was lord Williams of Tame, to whom she had herself been indebted for so much respectful attention in the days of her greatest adversity.

She had called up his father to the house of peers, as lord Norris of Ricot; and his mother she constantly addressed by a singular term of endearment, "My own Crow."

This pair had six sons, of whom sir John was the eldest;--all, it is said, brave men, addicted to arms, and much respected by her majesty.

But an unfortunate quarrel with the four sons of sir Francis Knolles, their Oxfordshire neighbour, arising out of a tournament in which the two brotherhoods were opposed to each other, procured to the Norrises the lasting enmity of this family, which, strong both by its relationship to the queen and its close alliance with Leicester, was able to impede their advancement to stations equal to their merits.

Sir John Norris learned the rudiments of military science under the celebrated admiral Coligni, to whom in his early youth he acted as a page; and he enlarged his experience as captain of the English volunteers who in 1578 generously carried the assistance of their swords to the oppressed Netherlanders when they had rushed to arms in the sacred cause of liberty and conscience.

This gallant band particularly signalized its valor in the repulse of an assault made by don John of Austria upon the Dutch camp; a hot action in which Norris had three horses shot under him.

In 1588 he was a distinguished member of the council of war.

The expedition to Portugal in which he commanded has been already related, and its ill-success was certainly imputable to no want of courage or conduct on his part.

In the war of Bretagne he gained high praise by a skilful retreat, in which he drew off his small band of English safe and entire amid a host of foes.

We shall afterwards hear of him in a high command in Ireland.

Military glory was the darling object of the ambition of Essex; and jealous perhaps of the fame which sir John Norris was acquiring in the French wars, he prevailed upon the queen to grant him the command of a fresh body of troops destined to assist Henry in expelling the Leaguers from Normandy.

The new general was deeply mortified at being obliged to remain for some time inactive at Dieppe, while the French king was carrying his arms into another quarter, whither Essex was restrained by the positive commands of his sovereign from following him.

At length they formed in concert the siege of Rouen; but when the town was nearly reduced to extremity, an unexpected march of the duke of Parma compelled Henry to desert the enterprise.

Elizabeth made it a subject of complaint against her ally, that the English soldiers were always thrust foremost on every occasion of danger; but by themselves this perilous preeminence was claimed as a privilege due to the brilliancy of their valor; and their leader, delighted with the spirit which they displayed, encouraged and rewarded it by distributing among his officers, with a profusion which highly offended his sovereign, the honor of knighthood, bestowed by herself with so much selection and reserve.

Essex supported his character for personal courage, and indulged his impetuous temper, by sending an idle challenge to the governor of Rouen, who seems to have known his duty too well to accept it; but his sanguine anticipations of some distinguished success were baffled by a want of correspondence between the plans of Henry and the commands of Elizabeth; perhaps also in some degree by his own deficiency in the skill of a general.

He had the further grief to lose by a musket-shot his only brother Walter Devereux, a young man of great hopes to whom he was fondly attached; and leaving his men before Rouen, under the conduct of sir Roger Williams, a brave soldier, he returned with little glory in the beginning of 1592 to soothe the displeasure of the queen and combat the malicious suggestions of his enemies.

In this bloodless warfare better success awaited him.

His partial mistress received with favor his excuses; and not only restored him to her wonted grace, but soon after testified her opinion of his abilities by granting him admission into the privy-council.

The royal progress of this year in Sussex and Hampshire affords some circumstances worthy of mention.

Viscount Montacute, (now written Montagu,) a nobleman in much esteem with Elizabeth, though a zealous catholic, solicited the honor of entertaining her at his seat of Coudray near Midhurst; a mansion splendid enough to attract the curiosity and admiration of a royal visitant.

The manor of Midhurst, in which Coudray is situated, had belonged during several ages to a branch of the potent family of Bohun; thence it passed into possession of the Nevils, a race second to none in England in the antiquity of its nobility and the splendor of its alliances.

It thus became a part of the vast inheritance of Margaret countess of Salisbury, daughter of George duke of Clarence.

Coudray-house was the principal residence of this illustrious and injured lady, and it was here that the discovery took place of those papal bulls and emblematical banners which afforded a pretext to malice and rapacity to arm themselves against the miserable remnant of her days.

By the attainder of the countess, this with the rest of her estates became forfeited to the crown; but the tyrant Henry was prevailed upon to regrant it, in exchange for other lands, to the heirs of her great-uncle John Nevil marquis Montagu.

From an heir female of this branch viscount Montagu, son of sir Anthony Brown master of the horse to Henry VIII.

, derived it and his title, conferred by queen Mary.

But to the ancient mansion there had previously been substituted by his half-brother the earl of Southampton, a costly structure decorated internally with that profusion of homely art which displayed the wealth and satisfied the taste of a courtier of Henry VIII.

The building was as usual quadrangular, with a great gate flanked by two towers in the centre of the principal front.

At the upper end of the hall stood a buck, as large as life, carved in brown wood, bearing on his shoulder the shield of England and under it that of Brown with, many quarterings: ten other bucks, in various attitudes and of the size of life, were planted at intervals.

There was a parlour more elegantly adorned with the works of Holbein and his scholars;--a chapel richly furnished;--a long gallery painted with the twelve apostles;--and a corresponding one hung with family pictures and with various old paintings on subjects religious and military, brought from Battle Abbey, the spoils of which had been assigned to sir Anthony Brown as that share of the general plunder of the monasteries to which his long and faithful service had entitled him from the bounty of his master.

Amongst other particulars of the visit of her majesty at Coudray, we are told that on the morning after her arrival she rode in the park, where "a delicate bower" was prepared, and a nymph with a sweet song delivered her a cross-bow to shoot at the deer, of which she killed three or four and the countess of Kildare one:--it may be added, that this was a kind of amusement not unfrequently shared by the ladies of that age; an additional trait of the barbarity of manners.

Viscount Montagu died two years after this visit, and, to complete his story, lies buried in Midhurst church under a splendid monument of many-colored marbles, on which may still be seen a figure representing him kneeling before an altar, in fine gilt armour, with a cloak and "beard of formal cut."

Beneath are placed recumbent effigies of his two wives dressed in rich cloaks and ruffs, with chained unicorns at their feet, and the whole is surrounded with sculptured scutcheons laboriously executed with innumerable quarterings.