Lucy Aikin - Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

But of all her relations, the one who had deserved most at her hands was Henry Carey, brother to lady Knolles, and son to Mary Boleyn, her majesty's aunt. This gentleman had expended several thousand pounds of his own patrimony in her service and relief during the time of her imprisonment, and she liberally requited his friendship at her first creation of peers, by conferring upon him, with the title of baron Hunsdon, the royal residence of that name, with its surrounding park and several beneficial leases of crown lands. He was afterwards joined in various commissions and offices of trust: but his remuneration was, on the whole, by no means exorbitant; for he was not rapacious, and consequently not importunate; and the queen, in the employments which she assigned him, seemed rather to consult her own advantage and that of her country, by availing herself of the abilities of a diligent and faithful servant, than to please herself by granting rewards to an affectionate and generous kinsman. In fact, lord Hunsdon was skilled as little in the ceremonious and sentimental gallantry which she required from her courtiers, as in the circumspect and winding policy which she approved in her statesmen. "As he lived in a ruffling time," says Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a worse Christian than he was."

Fuller relates of him the following characteristic anecdote. "Once, one Mr. Colt chanced to meet him coming from Hunsdon to London, in the equipage of a lord of those days. The lord, on some former grudge, gave him a box on the ear: Colt presently returned the principal with interest; and thereupon his servants drawing their swords, swarmed about him. 'You rogues,' said my lord, 'may not I and my neighbour change a blow but you must interpose?' Thus the quarrel was begun and ended in the same minute 37 37 "Worthies" in Herts. ."

The queen's attachment to such of her family as she was pleased to honor with her notice, was probably the more constant because there was nothing in it of excess or of blindness:—even Leicester in the height of his favor felt that he must hold sacred their claims to her regard: according to Naunton's phrase, he used to say of Sackville and Hunsdon, "that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were Noli me tangere's."

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Lord Herbert of Chirbury.

This is a word which I am utterly unable to explain; but it is thus printed in Strype's "Memorials," whence the letter is copied.

See Herbert's Henry VIII.

See Chron. of Ireland in Holinshed, pass . Collins's Peerage, by sir E. Brydges, article Viscount Leinster .

Catherine was so unguarded in her own conduct, that the lord-admiral professed himself jealous of the servant who carried up coals to her apartment.

See Lloyd's Worthies, article Pole .

See Fuller's Worthies in Surry.

Herbert.

Many years after, the earl of Kildare solemnly assured the author of the "Chronicles of Ireland" in Holinshed, that lord Leonard Grey had no concern whatever in his escape.

One extraordinary, and indeed unaccountable, circumstance in the life of the earl of Surry may here be noticed:—that while his father urged him to connect himself in marriage with one lady, while the king was jealous of his designs upon a second, and while he himself, as may be collected from his poem "To a lady who refused to dance with him," made proposals of marriage to a third, he had a wife living. To this lady, who was a sister of the earl of Oxford, he was united at the age of fifteen, she had borne him five children; and it is pretty plain that they were never divorced, for we find her, several years after his death, still bearing the title of countess of Surry, and the guardian of his orphans. Had the example of Henry instructed his courtiers to find pretexts for the dissolution of the matrimonial tie whenever interest or inclination might prompt, and did our courts of law lend themselves to this abuse? A preacher of Edward the sixth's time brings such an accusation against the morals of the age, but I find no particular examples of it in the histories of noble families.

It seems that on one occasion the queen held the hands of the princess while the lord-admiral amused himself with cutting her gown to shreds; and that, on another, she introduced him into the chamber of Elizabeth before she had left her bed, when a violent romping scene took place, which was afterwards repeated without the presence of the queen.

For the original documents relative to this affair see Burleigh Papers by Haynes, passim .

This was the second duke of the name of Brandon, who died young of the sweating sickness.

This lady is commemorated at greater length in another place, and therefore a clause is here omitted.

Strype.

Burleigh Papers by Haynes.

Hayward's Life of Edward VI.

To keep hall, was to keep "open household with frank resort to court."

Hayward's Life of Edward VI.

See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 213 et seq.

See Carte's History of England.

See Burleigh Papers by Haynes.

It is plain that Wyat is here accused of having taken arms for Jane Grey; but most wrongfully, if Carte's account of him is to be credited, which there seems no reason to disbelieve.

Fox's narrative in Holinshed.

Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials.

Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials.

Strype's Memorials.

Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials.

History of English Poetry, vol. iii.

See Nichols's "Progresses," vol. i. p. 19.

The hint of "some honorable marriage" in the above letter, has been supposed to refer to the duke of Savoy; but if the date inscribed upon the copy which is found among the Harleian MSS. be correct (April 26th 1558), this could not well be; since the queen, early in the preceding year, had declined to interfere further in his behalf.