honourably descended from Willoughby, Lord Brook, and admiral to Henry VII.; neither illiterate, for he was, as he would often profess, a friend to Sir Philip Sidney ; and there are of his now extant, some fragments of his poem, and of those times, which do interest him in the muses; and which shews the Queen's election had ever a noble conduct, and it motions more of virtue and judgment than of fancy. I find, that he neither sought for, or obtained, any great place or preferment in court, during all the time of his attendance; neither did he need it, for he came thither backed with a plentiful fortune, which, as himself was wont to say, was the better held together by a single life, wherein he lived and died a constant courtier of the ladies.

ESSEX.

My Lord of Essex, as Sir Henry Wotton, a gentleman of great parts, and partly of his times and retinue, observes, had his introduction by my Lord of Leicester, who had married his mother, a tie of affinity: which besides a more urgent obligation might have invited his ear to advance him, his fortune being then, and through his father's infelicity, grown low. But that the son of a Lord, Ferrers of Charley, Viscount Hartford, and Earl of Essex, who was of the ancient nobility, and formerly in the Queen's good grace, could not have a room in her favour, without the assistance of Leicester, was beyond the rule of her nature, which, as I have elsewhere taken into observation, was ever inclinable to favour the nobility. Sure it is, that he no sooner appeared in court, but he took with the

Queen and courtiers; and I believe they all could not choose, but look through the sacrifice of the father on his living son, whose image, by the remembrance of former passages, was afresh, like the bleeding of men murdered, represented to the court, and offered up as a subject of compassion to all the kingdom. * There was in this young Lord, together with a most goodly person, a kind of urbanity, or innate courtesy, which both won the Queen, and too much took upon the people, to gaze upon the new adopted son of her favour. And

* It was shrewdly suspected, that Walter Earl of Essex, father to the favourite, was poisoned by Crampton the yeoman of his bottles, and Loyd his secretary, at the instigation of Leicester, and to clear the way for his wedding the widowed countess. The accusation is thus stated in a libel called " Leicester's Ghost:"

The valiant Earl, whom absent I did wrong,
In breaking Hymeneus' holy band,
In Ireland did protract the time too long,
While some in England ingled under hand.
And at his coming homeward to this land,

He died with poison, as they say, infected
Not without cause, for vengeance I suspected.

as I go along, it were not amiss to take into observation two notable quotations; the first was a violent indulgency of the Queen (which incident to old age, where it encounters with a pleasing and suitable object) towards this Lord, all which argued a non-perpetuity; the second was a fault in the object of her grace; my Lord himself, who drew in too fast, like a child sucking on an over uberous nurse; and had there been a more decent decorum observed in both, or either of those, without doubt the unity of their affections had been more permanent, and not so in and out as they were, like an instrument ill tuned and lapsing to discord.

The greater error of the two, though unwillingly, I am constrained to impose on my Lord of Essex, or rather on his youth, and none of the least of his blame on those that stood centinels about him, who might have advised him better; but that like men intoxicated with hopes, they likewise had sucked in with the most, and of their

Lord's receipt; and so like Cæsar's, would have all or none, a rule quite contrary to nature, and the most indulgent parents, who, though they may express more affection to one in the abundance of bequests, yet cannot forget some legacies, just distributives, and dividends to others of their begetting; and how hateful partiality proves, every day's experience tells us, out of which, common consideration might have framed to their hands, a maxim of more discretion for the conduct and management of their now graced Lord and master.

But to omit that of infusion, and to do right to truth, my Lord of Essex, even of those that truly loved and honoured him, was noted for too bold an ingrosser, both of fame and favour; and of this, without offence to the living, or treading on the sacred urn of the dead, I shall present a truth and a passage yet in memory.

My Lord Mountjoy, who was another child of her favour, being newly come to court, and then but Sir Charles Blunt,