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GREVILLE.
Sir Foulke Greville, Since Lord Brooke, Had No Mean Place In Her
Favour, Neither Did He Hold It
For any short time, or term; for, if
I be not deceived, he had the longest lease, the smoothest time
Without rubs of any of her favourites; he came to the court in his
youth and prime, as that is the time, or never: he was a brave
gentleman, and hopefully descended from Willoughby, Lord Brooke, and
admiral to Henry the Seventh; neither illiterate, for he was, as he
would often profess, a friend to Sir Philip Sidney, and there are
now extant some fragments of his pen, and of the times, which do
interest him in the muses, and which show in him the Queen's
election had ever a noble conduct, and it motions more of virtue and
judgment than of fancy.
I find that he neither sought for nor obtained any great place or
preferment in court, during all his time of attendance: neither did
he need it, for he came thither backed with a plentiful fortune,
which, as himself was wont to say, was then better held together by
a single life, wherein he lived and died a constant courtier of the
ladies.
ESSEX.
My Lord of Essex, as Sir Henry Walton notes him, a gentleman of
great parts, and partly of his times and retinue, had his
introduction by my Lord of Leicester, who had married his mother; a
tie of affinity which, besides a more urgent obligation, might have
invited his care to advance him, his fortunes being then, through
his father's infelicity, grown low; but that the son of a Lord
Ferrers of Chartly, Viscount Hertford, and Earl of Essex, who was of
the ancient nobility, and formerly in the Queen's good grace, could
not have room in her favour, without the assistance of Leicester,
was beyond the rule of her nature, which, as I have elsewhere taken
into observation, was ever inclinable to favour the nobility:
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