So
That We May Take This Also In Consideration, That There Were Of The
Queen's Council Which Were Not In The Catalogue Of Saints.
Now, as we have taken a view of some particular motives of her
times, her nature, and necessities, it
Is not without the text to
give a short touch of the HELPS and ADVANTAGES of her reign, which
were NOT without {34} paroles; for she had neither husband, brother,
sister, nor children to provide for, who, as they are dependants on
the Crown, so do they necessarily draw livelihood from thence, and
oftentimes exhaust and draw deep, especially when there is an ample
fraternity royal, and of the princes of the blood, as it was in the
time of Edward III. and Henry IV. For when the Crown cannot, the
public ought to give honourable allowance; for they are the honour
and hopes of the kingdom; and the public, which enjoys them, hath
the like interest with the father which begat them; and our common
law, which is the inheritance of the kingdom, did ever of old
provide aids for the PRIMOGENITUS {35} and the eldest daughter; for
that the multiplicity of courts, and the great charges which
necessarily follow a king, a queen, a prince, and royal issue, was a
thing which was not IN RERUM NATURA {36} during the space of forty-
four years, {37} but worn out of memory, and without the
consideration of the present times, insomuch as the aids given to
the late and Right Noble Prince Henry, and to his sister, the Lady
Elizabeth, which were at first generally received as impositions for
knighthood, though an ancient law, fell also into the imputation of
a tax of nobility, for that it lay long covered in the embers of
division between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and forgotten or
connived at by the succeeding princes: so that the strangeness of
the observation, and the difference of those latter reigns, is that
the Queen took up much BEYOND the power of law, which fell not into
the murmur of people; and her successors took nothing but by warrant
of the law, which nevertheless was received, THROUGH DISUSE, to be
injurious to the liberty of the kingdom.
Now before I come to any mention of her favourites, for hitherto I
have delivered but some oblivious passages, thereby to prepare and
smooth a way for the rest that follows:
It is necessary that I touch on the religiousness of the other's
reign, I mean the body of her sister's {38} Council of State, which
she retained entirely, neither removing nor discontenting any,
although she knew them averse to her religion, and, in her sister's
time, perverse to her person, and privy to all her troubles and
imprisonments.
A prudence which was incompatible to her sister's nature, for she
both dissipated and presented the major part of her brother's
Council; but this will be of certain, that how compliable and
obsequious soever she found them, yet for a good space she made
little use of their counsels, more than in the ordinary course of
the Board, for she had a dormant table in her own privy breast; yet
she kept them together and in their places, without any sudden
change; so that we may say of them that they were then of the Court,
not of the Council; for whilst she AMAZED {39} them by a kind of
promissive disputation concerning the points controverted by both
Churches, she did set down her own gests, without their privity, and
made all their progressions, gradations; but for that the tenents of
her secrets, with the intents of her establishments, were pitched
before it was known where the Court would sit down.
Neither do I find that any of her sister's Council of State were
either repugnant to her religion, or opposed her doings; Englefeild,
Master of the Wards, excepted, who withdrew himself from the Board,
and shortly after out of her dominions; so pliable and obedient they
were to change with the times and their prince; and of them will
fall a relation of recreation. Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and
Lord Treasurer, had served then four princes, in as various and
changeable times and seasons, that I may well say no time nor age
hath yielded the like precedent. This man, being noted to grow high
in her favour (as his place and experience required), was questioned
by an intimate friend of his, how he had stood up for thirty years
together, amidst the change and ruins of so many Chancellors and
great personages. "Why," quoth the marquis, "ORTUS SUM E SALICE,
NON EX QUERCU," I.E., "I am made of pliable willow, not of the
stubborn oak." And, truly, it seems the old man had taught them
all, especially William, Earl of Pembroke, for they two were always
of the King's religion, and always zealous professors: of these it
is said that being both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they
spent what was left them, and came on trust to the Court, where,
upon the bare stock of their wits, they began to traffic for
themselves, and prospered so well that they got, spent, and left
more than any subjects from the Norman Conquest to their own times;
whereupon it hath been prettily spoken that they lived in a time of
dissolution.
To conclude, then, of all the former reign, it is said that those
two lived and died chiefly in her grace and favour: by the letter
written upon his son's marriage with the Lady Catherine Grey, he had
like utterly to have lost himself; but at the instant of
consummation, as apprehending the unsafety and danger of
intermarriage with the blood royal, he fell at the Queen's feet,
where he both acknowledged his presumption, and projected the cause
and the divorce together: so quick he was at his work, that in the
time of repudiation of the said Lady Grey, he clapped up a marriage
for his son, the Lord Herbert, with Mary Sidney, daughter to Sir
Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy or Ireland, the blow falling on
Edward, the late Earl of Hertford, who, to his cost, took up the
divorced lady, of whom the Lord Beauchamp was born, and William, now
Earl of Hertford, is descended.
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