NORRIS.
My Lord Norris Had, By This Lady, An Apt Issue, Which The Queen
Highly Respected, For He Had Six Sons, And All Martial And Brave
Men:
The first was William, the eldest, and father to the late Earl
of Berkshire, Sir John (vulgarly called General
Norris), Sir Edward,
Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Maximilian, men of haughty courage, and
of great experience in the conduct of military affairs; and, to
speak in the character of their merit, they were persons of such
renown and worth as future times must, of duty, owe them the debt of
an honourable memory.
KNOWLES.
Sir Francis Knowles was somewhat near in the Queen's affinity, and
had likewise no incompetent issue; for he had also William, his
eldest son, and since Earl of Banbury, Sir Thomas, Sir Robert, and
Sir Francis, if I be not a little mistaken in their names and
marshalling; and there was also the Lady Lettice, a sister of those,
who was first Countess of Essex, and after of Leicester; and those
were also brave men in their times and places, but they were of the
Court and carpet, and not by the genius of the camp.
Between these two families there was, as it falleth out amongst
great ones and competitors of favour, no great correspondency; and
there were some seeds, either of emulation or distrust, cast between
them; which, had they not been disjoined in the residence of their
persons, as that was the fortune of their employments, the one side
attending the Court, and the other the Pavilion, surely they would
have broken out into some kind of hostility, or, at least, they
would entwine and wrestle one in the other, like trees circled with
ivy; for there was a time when, both these fraternities being met at
Court, there passed a challenge between them at certain exercises,
the Queen and the old men being spectators, which ended in a flat
quarrel amongst them all. For I am persuaded, though I ought not to
judge, that there were some relics of this feigned that were long
after the causes of the one family's almost utter extirpation, and
the other's improsperity; for it was a known truth that so long as
my Lord of Leicester lived, who was the main pillar on the one side,
for having married the sister, the other side took no deep root in
the Court, though otherwise they made their ways to honour by their
swords. And that which is of more note, considering my Lord of
Leicester's use of men of war, being shortly after sent Governor to
the revolted States, and no soldier himself, is that he made no more
account of Sir John Norris, a soldier, then deservedly famous, and
trained from a page under the discipline of the greatest captain in
Christendom, the Admiral Castilliau, and of command in the French
and Dutch Wars almost twenty years. And it is of further
observation that my Lord of Essex, after Leicester's decease, though
addicted to arms and honoured by the general in the Portugal
expedition, whether out of instigation, as it hath been thought, or
out of ambition and jealousy, eclipsed by the fame and splendour of
this great commander, never loved him in sincerity.
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