Sidney Lee

“ Vain of the influence he exercised over most women, and misled by the personal attentions paid him by the queen, he sought to rule her and thus to vanquish his rivals. For a time she played with him, as though he were a jealous lover; but she despised his political advice. On foreign affairs he imbibed ideas from the Bacons; but he formulated no policy, except one of active aggression against Spain, and of offensive alliances with the protestant powers of Europe. Physically brave, even to recklessness, he was no military tactician, and could not support a general's responsibilities. ”

“ In the spring there reached Unton's ears the report that the young Duke of Guise had spoken of Queen Elizabeth ‘impudently, lightly, and overboldly.’ He thereupon sent a challenge to the duke, proposing to meet him with whatever arms he should choose, on horseback or on foot. ‘Nor would I have you to think,’ he wrote, ‘any inequality of person between us, I being issued of as great a race and noble house every way as yourself. ”

“ He drew up an elaborate paper, in which he pointed out the evils attending facility of divorce; he declared that ‘in the greatest breaches between man and wife, reconciliation is the best; and the worthiest pains that can be spared is to bring that about.’ But on such arguments as these, and on the insufficiency of evidence, Abbot, with strange perversity, did not, at the critical moment, lay any decided emphasis. He sent to the king a statement of his views, supported by numberless irrelevant quotations from theologians of the reformation era, which only served to exasperate James. ”

“ In the rest of the piece Hazlitt has justly drawn attention to ' the awful suspense of the situations; the conflict of duties and passions; the intimate bonds that unite the characters together and that are violently rent asunder like the parting of soul and body; the solemn march of the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes over all.' Throughout, the language is as simple and natural as the sentiments depicted. ”

“ He was well read in modern literature, and was no mean classical scholar. His friend W. R., who prefixed a commendatory epistle to the 1620 edition of the 'Seneca,' is justified in his praise of his principle of translation, which prevented him, 'parrot-like,' from losing 'himself literally in a Latin Echo,' while it enabled him to express the 'meaning in our proper English elegancies and phrase.' In his 'Romances' his prose is very ornate, but its graces are of a languid order, and the modern reader finds it tedious. It is as a lyric poet that Lodge is best deserving of remembrance. ”

“ Yet his chief strength lay in the overwhelming force of his personal conviction that the church had lost its primitive purity, and that the schoolmen had contributed less to the advantage of piety or of human intelligence than the early fathers or the classics, a conviction which impressed itself on all with whom he came into close contact, stirring active antagonism in the slow-witted or self-interested, but stimulating men of Erasmus's or More's intelligence into effective thought and action. ”

“ Sir Robert Cecil wrote to Thomas Windebank on the same day, ‘a most substantial jury found him guilty of all the treasons with the applause of the world.’ But his conviction may be as fairly ascribed to political intrigue and religious prejudice as to the weight of evidence against him. ”

“ Byron also wrote of White to Dallas on 27 Aug. 1811: ‘Setting aside his bigotry, he surely ranks next Chatterton. It is astonishing how little he was known; and at Cambridge no one thought or heard of such a man till his death rendered all notice useless. For my own part I should have been proud of such an acquaintance; his very prejudices were respectable.’ But Southey's charitable judgment, which Byron echoed, has not stood the test of time. White's verse shows every mark of immaturity. In thought and expression it lacks vigour and originality. ”

“ Love of display and self-indulgence are Leicester's most striking personal characteristics. By his extravagant dress, his gluttony, and his cruel treatment of women he was best known to his contemporaries. That he was also an accomplished poisoner has been repeatedly urged against him, but the evidence is inconclusive in all the charges of murder brought against him. In politics his aim was to control and (at first) marry the queen, whose early infatuation for him decreased but never died. ”

“ It is of course untrue that Fastolf was ever the intimate associate of Henry V when prince of Wales, who was not his junior by more than ten years, or that he was an impecunious spendthrift and greyhaired debauchee. The historical Fastolf was in private life an expert man of business, who was indulgent neither to himself nor to his friends. ”

“ The early legislation of the reign respecting the prayer-book, uniformity, of service, and the formularies of the church seemed to set the Reformation on a permanent and unassailable footing. Reformers hastened to England from foreign countries, and they vied with native protestants in eulogising Edward's piety and dovotion to their doctrine, to which they pretended to attribute the religious advance. Bartholomew Traheron, writing to Bullinger of Zurich (28 Sept. 1548) , says of the king: 'A more holy disposition has nowhere existed in our time. ”

“ Abbot, ‘like a grave and a religious churchman,’ was with him to the last, and certified that he died in the true faith; but the blow was a severe one for his prospects. His grief was overwhelming; at the funeral in Westminster Abbey he preached the sermon, and his words were almost choked by his tears and ‘exceeding passion, showing the inward sorrow of his heart.’ But, in spite of her brother’s sad death, Abbot endeavoured to push on the negotiations for the marriage of the princess. On 27 Dec. 1612, he ceremonially affianced her and the elector at Whitehall. ”

“ The king was strongly in the countess’s favour, and urged Abbot to grant her suit. But Abbot took an opposite view. The countess was a niece of the Earl of Northampton, his bitterest enemy in the council chamber, and he was not therefore prejudiced in her favour. There was very scanty evidence to prove her charges against her husband, and she made admissions in cross-examination which practically invalidated all her testimony. Abbot knew the Earl of Essex to be ‘a religious nobleman,’ and tried hard to protect him from what he looked upon as the immoral persecution of his wife and her friends. ”

“ As soon as he perceived himself worsted in the struggle for the control of the queen, he proved his intellectual helplessness, and, placing himself in the hands of reckless advisers, was rapidly hurried into crime. His generosity to his friends is the best trait in his character, although beside it must be set his habitual extravagance. Sir Henry Wotton describes Essex as tall and able-bodied, stooping a little from the shoulders, and with very delicate hands. In later life he was always thoughtful and reserved, especially at meal times, and grew indifferent to matters of dress and diet. ”

“ In the autumn of the same year his aunt, Lady Russell, made a strong endeavour to detach him from Essex. The attempt was doubtless prompted by Lady Bacon, who preferred the serious demeanour of her brother-in-law Burghley to the impulsiveness and gaiety of Anthony's patron. Lady Russell told Bacon that he was too well beloved in Scotland to be a true Englishman, and that he had not only abandoned the kind old nobleman (Burghley) , but did him ill offices, not only with the earl here but in France and Scotland. ”

“ Donne, wrote of him at the time that 'his birth and youth and interest in great favours at court, and legal proximity to great possessions in the world, might justly have promised him acceptance in what family soever, or upon what person soever he had directed and placed his affections.' But Donne saw much of their married life, and insists that the inequality of their years was reduced to an evenness by the staid sobriety of their temperaments, and that they lived happily together till the lady's death in 1627. ”

“ GUY of Warwick, hero of romance, is almost wholly a creature of fiction. Dugdale and other historians of Warwickshire literally accepted as historical the series of legends respecting him, to which literary shape seems to have been first given by an Anglo-Norman poet of the twelfth century. Omitting the obviously romantic details in which the story abounds, the legends are to the following effect. Guy, the son of Siward or Seguard of Wallingford, was educated by Harald or Heraud of Arden. ”

“ Surrey and Hertford had long been pronounced enemies, and Hertford's appointment to Boulogne destroyed all hope of reconciliation. Negotiations which proved fruitless were pending at the time for the marriage of Surrey's sister, the widowed duchess of Richmond, to Hertford's brother, Sir Thomas Seymour. Surrey sarcastically denounced the scheme as a farce, and he indignantly scouted his father's suggestion that his own infant children might be united in marriage with members of Hertford's family. ”

“ On one occasion Elizabeth is said to have rewarded Blount for his skill in a tilting match with ‘a queen at chesse of gold richly enamelled, which his servant had the next day fastened on his arme with a crimson ribband.’ Essex noticed the token and angrily remarked at court to Sir Fulk Greville, ‘Now I perceive every fool must have a favour.’ The speech was reported to Blount, and a duel followed, ‘near Marybone Park,’ in which Essex was wounded. ”

“ Shortly afterwards Atslowe settled in London and was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians, and between 1569 and 1583 he filled successively most of the offices of distinction connected with the society. Among his patients Astlowe reckoned the chief noblemen of his time, and he was probably attached for some years as physician to the household of the Earl of Sussex. But he did not wholly confine himself to the practice of medicine. If not a catholic himself, he strongly sympathised with the professors of that faith, and he proved himself an ardent supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots. ”

“ Overbury was a singularly cultivated man. Ben Jonson addressed to him, before they quarrelled, a poem in which he credited him with permanently introducing into court circles a love of art and literature. The chief verse-writers vied with each other in lamenting his early death, and, after the facts of his murder became known, they bewailed his fate in many pathetic elegies. ”

“ And meanwhile the affairs of Abbot’s friend in Germany, the elector palatine, were intensifying his desire of a war not only with Spain but with the catholic powers of the empire. The elector, as the champion of protestantism on the continent, had been chosen king of Bohemia, and the emperor and the catholic princes of Germany were arrayed against him. In the most vigorous letter he ever penned, Abbot sketched the policy that England, as he thought, should at once adopt. Serious illness kept him from the council when the question of aiding the king’s son-in-law was to be discussed ”

“ In a long conversation De Quadra undertook to press on their union on condition that they should acknowledge the papal supremacy. The negotiation was kept secret from the responsible ministers, but Cecil suspected the grounds of De Quadra's intimacy with Dudley and Elizabeth, and powerful opposition soon declared itself. Dudley's personal enemies and the catholic nobles agreed that Dudley should only marry the queen at the cost of a revolution, and De Quadra wrote home that if the marriage took place Philip II would find England an easy conquest. ”

“ The legends that represent Gower as educated at Oxford, and as entering the Inner Temple, have no historical basis. His works prove him to have been a man of wide reading, who probably travelled in France in early life, and in his later years he settled down as a well-to-do country gentleman, watching with some alarm the political and social movements of his time. He was known at court, but not apparently till well advanced in years. His chief poem, ‘Confessio Amantis,’ was written (according to his own account) at the request of Richard II, to whom it was first dedicated. ”

“ At the time Abbot was holding the office of governor of the company, to which he had been elected 23 March 1623–4. Intense excitement prevailed throughout the country, and the greatest anxiety was evinced as to the steps that Abbot would take. He recognised at once the necessity of ‘pressing the matter modestly,’ in order to avoid open war with Holland; but in repeated audiences with the king and in petitions and speeches to the privy council he insisted that demand should be made of the Dutch authorities to bring the perpetrators of the outrage to justice. ”

“ Earl Rivers and the Earl of Worcester were not only intimate friends of Caxton, but translated books for his press, and Margaret, countess of Richmond, and Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex, showed him many attentions. To Richard III Caxton dedicated his ‘Order of Chivalry.’ Henry VII bade Caxton print the ‘Fayts of Arms,’ and the ‘Eneydos’ was dedicated to Arthur, prince of Wales. William, earl of Arundel, allowed him a buck every summer and a doe in winter. Sir John Fastolf eagerly purchased his books, and many rich mercers were his fastest friends. ”

“ The enthusiasm for the Virgin Mary exhibited in a few poems, very generally attributed to Breton, has led to the belief that the poet was an ardent catholic. But it is almost certain—as we state below—that the undoubtedly catholic poems ascribed to Breton were by another hand; his long intimacy with the protestant Countess of Pembroke, which probably rested mainly on common religious sentiments, the direct attacks on Romanism which figure in many of Breton's prose tracts, and his sympathetic references to the practices of the English reformed church, point in quite the opposite direction. ”

“ He argued that human conduct was to be guided by ‘all the sources of light and truth with which man finds himself encompassed,’ and that those sources of light were only in part disclosed in the Scriptures. The universe, in Hooker's view, was governed by natural law, which was not expounded at all in the Scriptures. Natural law embodies God's supreme reason, and appoints to the whole field of Nature, moral as well as physical, the means by which it works out perfection in its several parts. Natural law is ascertained and is recognised as binding by man's reason ”

“ The most remarkable characteristics of the work are its vigorous, flexible, and pure English prose, and its plea for the literary use of the 'Englyshe tonge,' as opposed to Latin or Greek, which is set forth in an introductory address 'to all gentle men and yomen of Englande.' Of translators Lord Berners, and of original writers John Tindal and Sir Thomas More, alone of preceding writers, had exhibited a comparable command of 'the speech of the common people,' and they did not always exhibit the ease which is here habitual to Ascham. ”

“ The king, who bitterly resented Peacham's remarks on himself, urged the government to test their suspicions to the uttermost. But it was needful to obtain fuller information from the silent prisoner. Although the common law did not recognise the legality of torturing a prisoner to extort a confession, it was generally admitted that torture might be lawfully applied by the privy council to a prisoner who deliberately refused to surrender information in his possession respecting a plot against the life of the sovereign or the security of the government. ”

“ When the queen complained of the armistice made by Essex with Tyrone after his repeated failures to crush the rebellion, Blount, who ‘lay hurt’ in Southampton's lodgings in Dublin Castle, strongly dissuaded Essex from returning to England with an army, but suggested to him ‘to draw forth of the army some 200 resolute gentlemen, and with those to come over, and so to make sure of the court, and so to make his own conditions.’ Blount's advice was accepted, and Blount himself seems to have arrived in London a few months after Essex. ”

“ He had inherited from his parents a strong affection for the reformed faith; Oxford, as he knew it in his undergraduate days, was a puritan stronghold, and its tutors were steeped in the theology of Calvin and St. Augustine. It was thus that Abbot became ‘stiffly principled’ in puritan doctrines, and his views, cast in a dangerously narrow mould, took from his habitually gloomy and morose temperament a fanatical colouring. A natural horror of disorder distinguished him from the extreme section of the puritans, and made the separatists detestable to him. ”

“ Lady Essex, who was well known to the queen, and interchanged gifts with her on New Year's day 1578, had long been on intimate terms with Leicester, and had stayed at Kenilworth during the festivities of 1575, while her husband was in Ireland. Early in 1578 the Duke of Anjou, now Duke d'Alençon, renewed his offer of marriage to Elizabeth, and it was seriously entertained for a second time. Astley, a gentleman of the bedchamber, reminded the queen that Leicester was still free to marry her. ”

“ Like all contemporary English officials in Ireland, he ruthlessly drove his victory home, and the Irish peasantry of Munster were handled with the utmost rigour. As soon as Ireland was pacified, Carew sought to return to England. His health was failing, and the anxieties of his office were endless, but while Elizabeth lived his request was overlooked. On Lord Mountjoy's resignation of the lord-deputyship in May 1603, Carew was allowed to retire, and Sir Henry Brouncker was promoted to the presidency of Munster. ”

“ The duke shall die like Doctor Lambe,
became the common cry of the London mob. Buckingham at once exerted all his influence to discover those who had been guilty of Lambe's murder. On 15 June two days after the event the privy council announced to the lord mayor the king's indignation at the outrage, and directed that the guilty persons should be arrested and treated with the utmost severity. ”

“ Men like the Earl of Northampton, once Lord Henry Howard, a secret papist and pensioner of Spain, did not hide their disappointment at his elevation. Similarly the bench of bishops was not without malevolent spectators of his recent successes; and among the judges with whom he was brought into close contact, Abbot found it impossible to keep on friendly terms with Sir Edward Coke. ”