To Consider Them Apart, We Have Not Many Precedents Of Her
LIBERALITY, Nor Any Large Donatives To PARTICULAR Men, My Lord Of
Essex's Book Of PARKS Excepted, Which Was A Princely Gift; And Some
More Of A Lesser Size To My Lord Of Leicester, Hatton, And Others.
Her rewards chiefly consisted in grants and leases of offices, and
places of judicature; but for ready money, and
In great sums, she
was very sparing; which, we may partly conceive, was a virtue rather
drawn out of necessity than her nature; for she had many layings-
out, and as her wars were lasting, so their charge increased to the
last period. And I am of opinion with Sir Walter Raleigh, that
those many brave men of her times, and of the militia, tasted little
more of her bounty than in her grace and good word with their due
entertainment; for she ever paid her soldiers well, which was the
honour of her times, and more than her great adversary of Spain
could perform; so that when we come to the consideration of her
FRUGALITY, the observation will be little more than that her BOUNTY
and it were so woven together, that the one was {25} stained by an
honourable way of sparing.
The Irish action we may call a malady, and a consumption of her
times, for it accompanied her to her end; and it was of so profuse
and vast an expense, that it drew near unto a distemperature of
State, and of passion in herself; for, towards her last, she grew
somewhat hard to please, her armies being accustomed to prosperity,
and the Irish prosecution not answering her expectation, and her
wonted success; for it was a good while an unthrifty and
inauspicious war, which did much disturb and mislead her judgment;
and the more for that it was a precedent taken out of her own
pattern.
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