He Was
Yet A Wise Man And A Brave Courtier, But Rough And Participating
More Of Active Than Sedentary Motions, As Being In His Instillation
Destined For Arms.
There is a query of some denotations, how he
came to receive the foil, and that in the catastrophe?
For he was
strengthened with honourable alliances and the prime friendship in
Court of my Lords of Leicester and Burleigh, both his contemporaries
and familiars; but that there might be (as the adage hath it)
falsity in friendship: and we may rest satisfied that there is no
dispute against fate, and they quit him for a person that loved to
stand too much alone on his legs, of too often regress and
discontinuance from the Queen's presence, a fault which is
incompatible with the ways of Court and favour. He was sent Lord-
Deputy into Ireland, as it was then apprehended, for a kind of
haughtiness and repugnancy in Council; or, as others have thought,
the fittest person then to bridle the insolences of the Irish; and
probable it is that both, considering the sway that he would have at
the Board, being head in the Queen's favour, concurred, and did
alike conspire his remove and ruin. But into Ireland he went, where
he did the Queen very great and many services, if the surplusage of
the measure did not abate the value of the merit, as after-time
found to be no paradox to save the Queen's purse, but both herself
and my Lord Treasurer Burleigh ever took for good service; he
imposed on the Irish the charge for bearing their own arms, which
both gave them the possession and taught them the use of weapons;
which provided in the end to a most fatal work, both in the
profusion of blood and treasure.
But at his return, and upon some account sent home before, touching
the state of that kingdom, the Queen poured out assiduous
testimonies of her grace towards him, till, by his retreat to his
Castle of Cary, which he was then building, and out of a desire to
be in command at home as he had been abroad, together with the
hatred and practice of Hatton, then in high favour, whom he had, not
long before, bitterly taunted for his dancing, he was accused for
high treason, and for high words, and a forged letter, and
condemned; though the Queen, on the news of his condemnation, swore,
by her wonted oath, that the jury were all knaves: and they
delivered it with assurance that, on his return to the town after
his trial, he said, with oaths and with fury, to the Lieutenant, Sir
Owen Hopton, "What! will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered
up as a sacrifice to the envy of my flattering adversaries?" Which
being made known to the Queen, and somewhat enforced, she refused to
sign it, and swore he should not die, for he was an honest and
faithful man. And surely, though not altogether to set our rest and
faith upon tradition and old reports, as that Sir Thomas Perrot, his
father, was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and in the Court
married to a lady of great honour, which are presumptions in some
implications; but, if we go a little further and compare his
pictures, his qualities, gesture, and voice, with that of the King,
which memory retains yet amongst us, they will plead strongly that
he was a surreptitious child of the blood royal.
Certain it is that he lived not long in the Tower; and that after
his decease, Sir Thomas Perrot, his son, then of no mean esteem with
the Queen, having before married my Lord of Essex's sister, since
Countess of Northumberland, had restitution of his land; though
after his death also (which immediately followed) the Crown resumed
the estate, and took advantage of the former attainder; and, to say
the truth, the priest's forged letter was, at his arraignment,
thought but as a fiction of envy, and was soon after exploded by the
priest's own confession. But that which most exasperated the Queen
and gave advantage to his enemies was, as Sir Walter Raleigh takes
into observation, words of disdain, for the Queen, by sharp and
reprehensive letters, had nettled him; and thereupon, sending others
of approbation, commending his service, and intimating an invasion
from Spain; which was no sooner proposed but he said publicly, in
the great chamber at Dublin: - "Lo, now she is ready to ** herself
for fear of the Spaniards: I am again one of her white boys," which
are subject to a various construction, and tended to some
disreputation of his Sovereign, and such as may serve for
instruction to persons in place of honour and command, to beware of
the violences of Nature, and especially the exorbitance of the
tongue. And so I conclude him with this double observation: the
one, of the innocency of his intentions, exempt and clear from the
guilt of treason and disloyalty, therefore of the greatness of his
heart; for at his arraignment he was so little dejected with what
might be alleged, that rather he grew troubled with choler, and, in
a kind of exasperation, he despised his jury, though of the Order of
Knighthood, and of the especial gentry, claiming the privilege of
trial by the peers and baronage of the realm, so prevalent was that
of his native genius and haughtiness of spirit which accompanied him
to the last, and till, without any diminution of change therein, it
broke in pieces the cords of his magnanimity; for he died suddenly
in the Tower, and when it was thought the Queen did intend his
enlargement, with the restitution of his possessions, which were
then very great, and comparable to most of the nobility.
HATTON.
Sir Christopher Hatton came to the Court as his opposite; Sir John
Perrot was wont to say, by the galliard, for he came thither as a
private gentleman of the Inns of Court, in a masque:
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