I Find Not That He Was Any Way Ensnared In The Factions Of The
Court, Which Were All His Times
Strong, and in every man's note, the
Howards and the Cecils of the one part, and my Lord of Essex,
&C.,
on the other, for he held the staff of the treasury fast in his
hand, which made them, once in a year, to be beholden to him; and
the truth is, as he was a wise man and a stout, he had no reason to
be a partaker, for he stood sure in blood and in grace, and was
wholly intentive to the Queen's service; and such were his
abilities, that she might have more cunning instruments, but none of
a more strong judgment and confidence in his ways, which are
symptoms of magnanimity, whereunto methinks this motto hath some
kind of reference, AUT NUNQUAM TENTES, AUT PERFICE. As though he
would have charactered, in a word, the genius of his house, or
express somewhat of a higher inclination, than lay within his
compass; that he was a courtier is apparent, for he stood always in
her eye and in her favour.
MOUNTJOY.
My Lord Mountjoy was of the ancient nobility, but utterly decayed in
the support thereof, patrimony, through his grandfather's excess,
his father's vanity in search of the philosopher's stone, and his
brother's untimely prodigality; all of which seemed, by a joint
conspiracy, to ruinate the house, and altogether to annihilate it;
as he came from Oxford, he took the Inner Temple in the way to
court, whither he no sooner came, but he had a pretty kind of
admission, which I have heard from a discreet man of his own, and
much more of the secrets of those times; he was then much about
twenty years of age, brown-haired, of a sweet face, and of a most
neat composure, tall in his person. The Queen was then at
Whitehall, and at dinner, whither he came to see the fashion of the
court, and the Queen had soon found him out, and, with a kind of an
affected favour, asked her carver who he was; he answered he knew
him not, insomuch that an inquiry was made, one from another, who he
might be, till at length it was told the Queen, he was brother to
the Lord William Mountjoy. Thus inquiry, with the eye of her
majesty fixed upon him, as she was wont to do, and to daunt men she
knew not, stirred the blood of the young gentleman, insomuch as his
colour went and came; which the Queen observing, called unto him,
and gave him her hand to kiss, encouraging him with gracious words,
and new looks, and so diverting her speech to the lords and ladies,
she said that she no sooner observed him but she knew there was in
him some noble blood, with some other expressions of pity towards
his house; and then, again demanding his name, she said, "Fail you
not to come to the court, and I will bethink myself, how to do you
good;" and this was his inlet, and the beginning of his grace; where
it falls into consideration that, though he wanted not wit nor
courage, for he had very fine attractives, as being a good piece of
a scholar, yet were those accompanied with the retractives of
bashfulness, and natural modesty, which, as the wave of the house of
his fortune then stood, might have hindered his progression, had
they not been reinforced by the infusion of sovereign favour, and
the Queen's gracious invitation; and that it may appear how he was,
and how much that heretic, necessity, will work in the directions of
good spirits, I can deliver it with assurance, that his exhibition
was very scanty, until his brother died, which was shortly after his
admission to the court; and then was it no more but a thousand marks
PER ANNUM, wherewith he lived plentifully, and in a fine garb, and
without any great sustentation of the Queen, during all her times.
And, as there was in nature a kind of backwardness, which did not
befriend him, nor suit with the motion of the court, so there was in
him an inclination to arms, with a humour of travelling and gadding
abroad, which had not some wise men about him laboured to remove,
and the Queen laid in her command, he would, out of his own native
propension, marred his own market; for as he was grown by reading,
whereunto he was much addicted, to the theory of a soldier, so was
he strongly invited by his genius, to the acquaintance of the
practice of the war, which were the causes of his excursions, for he
had a company in the Low Countries, from whom he came over with a
noble acceptance of the Queen; but, somewhat restless in honourable
thoughts, he exposed himself again and again, and would press the
Queen with pretences of visiting his company so often, till at
length he had a flat denial; yet he struck over with Sir John Norris
into the action of Britanny, which was then a hot and active war,
whom he would always call his father, honouring him above all men,
and ever bewailing his end; so contrary he was in his esteem and
valuation of this great commander to that of his friend, my Lord of
Essex; till at last the Queen began to take his digressions for
contempt, and confined his residence to the court, {66} and her own
presence; and, upon my Lord of Essex's fall, so confident she was of
her own princely judgment, and the opinion she had conceived of his
worth and conduct, that she would have this noble gentleman and none
other to bring in the Irish wars to a propitious end; for it was a
prophetical speech of her own, that it would be his fortune and his
honour to cut the thread of that fatal rebellion, and to bring her
in peace to the grave; wherein she was not deceived:
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