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.
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