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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