Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

FRAGMENTA REGALIA :

Or, Obfervations on the late Queen Elizabeth, her Times, and Favourites-Written by Sir Robert Naunton, Master of the Court of Wards. A. D. 1641.

[ocr errors]

To take her in the original, she was the daughter

of king Henry VIII. by Ann Bullen, the fecond of fix wives which he had, and one of the maids of honour to the divorced queen, Katharine of Austria, (or, as the now ftiled, Infanta of Spain) and from thence taken to the royal bed.

That she was of a most noble and royal extract by her father will not fall into question, for on that fide was difembogued into her veins, by a confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the greatest houses in Christendom: and remarkable it is, confidering that violent desertion of the Royal House of the Britons by the intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the Normans, that, through viciffitude of times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the scepter fhould fall again, and

[ocr errors]

be brought back, into the old regal line and true current of the British blood, in the perfon of her renowned grandfather, king Henry VII., together with whatsoever the German, Norman, Burgundian, Caftilian, and French, achievements, with their intermarriages, which eight hundred years had acquired, could add of glory thereunto.

By her mother she was of no fovereign defcent, yet noble and very antient in the family of Bullen; though fome erroneously brand them with a citizen's rife or original, which was yet but of a fecond brother, who (as it was divine in the greatness and luftre to come to his house) was fent into the city to acquire wealth, ad ædificandam antiquam domum, unto whofe achievements (for he was Lord Mayor of London) fell in, as it is averred, both the blood and inheritance of the eldest brother for want of iffue males, by which accumulation the houfe within few descents mounted, in culmen honoris, and was fuddenly dilated in the best families of England and Ireland; as Howard, Ormond, Sackville, and others.

Having thus touched, and now leaving her ftipe, I come to her perfon, and how the came to the crown by the decease of her brother and fifter.

Under Edward VI. fhe was his, and one of the darlings of Fortune, for, befides the confideration of blood, there was between these two princes a

concurrency and sympathy of their natures and affections, together with the celeftial bond, (confirmative religion) which made them one; for the king never called her by any other appellation but his sweetest and deareft fifter, and was fcarce his own man, fhe being abfent; which was not fo between him and the lady Mary.

Under her fifter* fhe found her condition much altered; for it was refolved, and her destiny had decreed it, for to fet her apprentice in the school of affliction, and to draw her through that Ordeal-fire of trial, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and fovereignty: which finished, Fortune calling to mind that the time of her fervitude was expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered into her cuftody a scepter as the reward of her patience; which was about the twenty-fixth of her age; a time in which, as for her internals grown ripe, and seasoned by adversity, in the exercise of her virtue; for, it seems, Fortune meant no more but to fhew her a piece of variety and changeableness of her nature, but to conduct her to her destiny, i. e. felicity.

She was of perfon tall, of hair and complection fair, and therewith well favoured, but high-nosed; of limbs and features neat; and, which added to the luftre of these external graces, of a stately and

* Queen Mary.

majestic comportment, participating in this more of her father than of her mother, who was of an inferior alloy, plaufible, or, as the French hath it, more debonaire and affable: virtues which might well fuit with majesty, and which, descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a fweeter temper, and endeared her more to the love and liking of the people, who gave her the name and fame of a moft gracious and popular princess.

The atrocity of the father's nature was rebated in her by the mother's fweeter inclinations; for (to take, and that no more than the character out of his own mouth) He never spared man in his woman in kis luft.

anger, nor

If we search farther into her intellectuals and abilities, the wheel-courfe of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and neceffitated. She was learned, her fex and time confidered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or fomewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem and in fashion, the former ages being overcaft with the mifts and fogs of the Roman ignorance; and it was the maxim that over-ruled the foregoing times,

*

• Viz. Popish.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »