ESSEX. My Lord Of Essex, As Sir Henry Walton Notes Him, A Gentleman Of Great Parts, And Partly Of His

Times and retinue, had his introduction by my Lord of Leicester, who had married his mother; a tie of affinity

Which, besides a more urgent obligation, might have invited his care to advance him, his fortunes being then, through his father's infelicity, grown low; but that the son of a Lord Ferrers of Chartly, Viscount Hertford, and Earl of Essex, who was of the ancient nobility, and formerly in the Queen's good grace, could not have room in her favour, without the assistance of Leicester, was beyond the rule of her nature, which, as I have elsewhere taken into observation, was ever inclinable to favour the nobility: sure it is, that he no sooner appeared in court, but he took with the Queen and the courtiers; and, I believe, they all could not choose but look through the sacrifice of the father on his living son, whose image, by the remembrance of former passages, was a fresh leek, the bleeding of men murdered, represented to the court, and offered up as a subject of compassion to all the kingdom.

There was in this young lord, together with a goodly person, a kind of urbanity and innate courtesy, which both won the Queen, and too much took up the people to gaze on the new-adopted son of her favour; and as I go along, it will not be amiss to take into observation two notable quotations; the first was a violent indulgence of the Queen (which is incident to old age, where it encounters with a pleasing and suitable object) towards this great lord, which argued a non-perpetuity; the second was a fault in the object of her grace, my lord himself, who drew in too fast, like a child sucking on an over uberous nurse; and had there been a more decent decorum observed in both, or either of these, without doubt, the unity of their affections had been more permanent, and not so in and out, as they were, like an instrument well tuned, and lapsing to discord.

The greater error of the two, though unwilling, I am constrained to impose on my Lord of Essex, and rather on his youth, and none of the least of the blame on those that stood sentinels about him, who might have advised better, but that like men intoxicated with hopes, they likewise had sucked in with the most of their lord's receipts, and so, like Caesars, would have all or none; a rule quite contrary to nature, and the most indulgent parents, who, though they may express more affection to one in the abundance of bequeaths, yet cannot forget some legacies, and distributives, and dividends to others of their begetting; and how hurtful partiality is, and proves, every day's experience tells us, out of which common consideration they might have framed to their hands a maxim of more discretion, for the conduct and management of their new-graved lord and master.

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