Now For His Fame We Need Not Go Far, For My Lord Of Essex, Having
Borne A Grudge To General
Norris, who had unwittingly offered to
undertake the action of Brittany with fewer men than my lord had
before demanded;
On his return with victory, and a glorious report
of his valour, he was then thought the only man for the Irish wars;
wherein my Lord of Essex so wrought, by despising the number and
quality of the rebels, that Norris was sent over with a scanty
force, joined with the relics of the veteran troops of Britain, of
set purpose, and as it fell out, to ruin Norris; and the Lord
Burrows, by my lord's procurement, sent at his heels, and to command
in chief, and to convey Norris only to his government at Munster;
which aggravated the great heart of the general to see himself
undervalued, and undermined, by my lord and Burrows, which was, as
the Proverb speaks, JUVENES DOCERE SENES.
Now my Lord Burrows in the beginning of his prosecution died,
whereupon the Queen was fully bent to send over my Lord Mountjoy;
which my Lord of Essex utterly misliked, and opposed with many
reasons, and by arguments of contempt towards Mountjoy (his then
professed friend and familiar) so predominant was his desire to reap
the whole honour of closing up that war, and all others; now the way
being paved and opened by his own workmanship, and so handled, that
none durst appear to stand in the place; at last, and with much ado,
he obtained his own ends, and therewith his fatal destruction,
leaving the Queen and the court, where he stood impregnable and firm
in her grace, to men that long had fought and waited their times to
give him a trip, and could never find any opportunity, but this of
his absence, and of his own creation; and those are true
observations of his appetite and inclinations, which were not of any
true proportion, but hurried and transported, with an over desire,
and thirstiness after fame, and that deceitful fame of popularity;
and, to help on his catastrophe, I observe likewise two sorts of
people that had a hand in his fall: the first was the soldiery,
which all flock unto him, as it were foretelling a mortality, and
are commonly of blunt and too rough counsels, and many times
dissonant from the time of the court and State; the other sort were
of his family, his servants and his own creatures, such as were
bound by safety, and obligations of fidelity, to have looked better
to the steering of that boat, wherein they themselves were carried,
and not to have suffered it to fleet, and run on ground, with those
empty sails of tumour of popularity and applause; methinks one
honest man or other, who had but the brushing of his clothes, might
have whispered in his ear, "My lord, look to it, this multitude that
follows you will either devour you, or undo you; do not strive to
overrule all, of it will cost hot water, and it will procure envy,
and if needs your genius must have it so, let the court and the
Queen's presence by your station, for your absence must undo you."
But, as I have said, they had sucked too much of their lord's milk,
and instead of withdrawing they drew {65} the coals of his ambition,
and infused into him too much of the spirit of glory, yea, and mixed
the goodness of his nature with a touch of revenge, which is
evermore accompanied with a destiny of the same fate. Of this
number there were some of insufferable natures about him, that
towards his last gave desperate advice, such as his integrity
abhorred, and his fidelity forbade, amongst whom Sir Henry Walton
notes, without injury, his Secretary Cuffe, as a vile man and of a
perverse nature: I could also name others that, when he was in the
right course of recovery, settling to moderation, would not suffer a
recess in him, but stirred up the dregs of those rude humours,
which, by times and his affections out of his own judgment, he
thought to repose and give them a vomit. And thus I conclude this
noble lord, as a mixture between prosperity and adversity, once a
child of his great mistress's favour, but a son of Bellona.
BUCKHURST.
My lord of Buckhurst was of the noble house of Sackvilles, and of
the Queen's consanguinity, or as the people then called him FILL-
SACKS, by reason of his great wealth, and the vast patrimony left to
his son, whereof in his youth he spent the best part, until the
Queen, by her frequent admonitions, diverted the torrent of his
profusion; he was a very fine gentleman, of person and endowments,
both of art and nature, but without measure magnificent, till on the
turn of his honour, and the alloy, that his yearly good counsel had
wrought upon those immoderate courses of his youth, and that height
of spirit inherent to his house; and then did the Queen, as a most
judicious, indulgent prince, who, when she saw the man grown settled
and staid, gave him an assistance, and advanced him to the
treasurership, where he made amends to his house for his mis-spent
time, both in the increasement of his estate and honour, which the
Queen conferred upon him, together with the opportunity to remake
himself, and thereby to show that this was a child that should have
a share in her grace.
They much commend his elocution, but more the excellency of his pen,
for he was a scholar, and a person of a quick dispatch, faculties
that yet run in the blood; and they say of him, that his secretaries
did little for him, by the way of indictment, wherein they could
seldom please him, he was so facete and choice in his phrases and
style; and for his dispatches, and for the content he gave to
suitors, he had a decorum seldom put in practice, for he had of his
attendance that took into a roll the names of all suitors, with the
date of their first addresses; so that a fresh man could not leap
over his head, that was of a more ancient edition excepting the
urgent affairs of the State.
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