And, For His
Activity And Person, Which Was Tall And Proportionable, Taken Into
Her Favour.
He was first made Vice-Chamberlain, and, shortly after,
advanced to the place of Lord Chancellor.
A gentleman that, besides
the graces of his person and dancing, had also the endowment of a
strong and subtle capacity, and that could soon learn the discipline
and garb, both of the times and Court; and the truth is, he had a
large proportion of gifts and endowments, but too much of the season
of envy; and he was a mere vegetable of the Court that sprung up at
night and sunk again at his noon.
"Flos non mentorum, sed sex fuit illa virorum."
EFFINGHAM.
My Lord of Effingham, though a courtier betimes, yet I find not that
the sunshine of his favour broke out upon him until she took him
into the ship and made him High Admiral of England. For his
extract, it might suffice that he was the son of a Howard, and of a
Duke of Norfolk.
And, for his person, as goodly a gentleman as the times had any, if
Nature had not been more intentive to complete his person, than
Fortune to make him rich; for, the times considered, which were then
active, and a long time after lucrative, he died not wealthy; yet
the honester man, though it seems the Queen's purpose was to render
the occasion of his advancement, and to make him capable of more
honour. At his return from the Cadiz voyage and action, she
conferred it upon him, creating him Earl of Nottingham, to the great
discontent of his colleague, my Lord of Essex, who then grew
excessive in the appetite of her favour, and the truth is, so
exorbitant in the limitation of the sovereign aspect, that it much
alienated the Queen's grace from him, and drew others together with
the Admiral to a combination, to conspire his ruin; and though, as I
have heard it from that party (I mean the old Admiral's faction)
that it lay not in his proper power to hurt my Lord Essex, yet he
had more fellows, and such as were well skilled in the setting of
the train; but I leave this to those of another age; it is out of
doubt that the Admiral was a good, honest, and brave man, and a
faithful servant to his mistress; and such a one as the Queen, out
of her own princely judgment, knew to be a fit instrument in her
service, for she was a proficient in the reading of men as well as
books; and as sundry expeditions, as that aforementioned, and '88,
do better express his worth and manifest the Queen's trust, and the
opinion she had of his fidelity and conduct.
Moreover, the Howards were of the Queen's alliance and consanguinity
by her mother, which swayed her affection and bent it toward this
great house; and it was a part of her natural propensity to grace
and support ancient nobility, where it did not entrench, neither
invade her interest; from such trespasses she was quick and tender,
and would not spare any whatsoever, as we may observe in the case of
the duke and my Lord of Hertford, whom she much favoured and
countenanced, till they attempted the forbidden fruit, the fault of
the last being, in the severest interpretation, but a trespass of
encroachment; but in the first it was taken as a riot against the
Crown and her own sovereign power, and as I have ever thought the
cause of her aversion against the rest of that house, and the duke's
great father-in-law, Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, a person in the
first rank of her affections, before these and some other jealousies
made a separation between them: this noble lord and Lord Thomas
Howard, since Earl of Suffolk, standing alone in her grace, and the
rest in her umbrage.
PACKINGTON.
Sir John Packington was a gentleman of no mean family, and of form
and feature nowise disabled, for he was a brave gentleman, and a
very fine courtier, and for the time which he stayed there, which
was not lasting, very high in her grace; but he came in, and went
out through disassiduity, drew the curtain between himself and the
light of her grace, and then death overwhelmed the remnant, and
utterly deprived him of recovery; and they say of him that had he
brought less to her Court than he did, he might have carried away
more than he brought, for he had a time of it, but was an ill
husband of opportunity.
HUNSDOWN.
My Lord of Hunsdown was of the Queen's nearest kindred, and, on the
decease of Sussex, both he and his son successively took the place
of Lord Chamberlain. He was a man fast to his prince, and firm to
his friends and servants; and though he might speak big, and therein
would be borne out, yet was he the more dreadful, but less harmful,
and far from the practice of the Lord of Leicester's instructions,
for he was downright; and I have heard those that both knew him well
and had interest in him, say merrily of him that his Latin and
dissimulation were alike; and that his custom of swearing and
obscenity in speaking made him seem a worse Christian than he was,
and a better knight of her carpet than he could be. As he lived in
a roughling time, so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our
fathers were wont to call men of their hands; of which sort he had
many brave gentlemen that followed him, yet not taken for a popular
and dangerous person: and this is one that stood among the TOGATI,
of an honest, stout heart, and such a one, that, upon occasion,
would have fought for his prince and country, for he had the charge
of the Queen's person, both in the Court and in the camp at Tilbury.
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