Frances Howard's mother was Catherine Knyvet, widow of the son of Lord Rich. The marriage was not a happy one. Good Thomas could govern his ship, or guide the fleet, or maybe rule the State, but the governance of woman was beyond him. There seems no doubt that the Countess of Suffolk had a great ascendancy over her husband and family and, being a woman of greedy selfishness, jumped at the bait of a Spanish pension of £1,000 a year, for which she sold her husband's secrets to the enemy.

To these parents little Frances was born, a child of rare beauty and charm. Her great-uncle Henry's pet and favourite from the earliest days, she spent much of her time under his care. He was the real head of the family, and the only person who had any hold over her mother. From the first she was spoiled by her bluff, cheery father, whilst her mother looked upon a girl child as a puppet to be adorned and decorated with costly apparel and dangled triumphantly before less fortunate mothers.

When she reached twelve years of age she was already a noted beauty, petted and admired by all around her. It was then that the devil's idea entered her mother's mind that the child might be matrimonially hypothecated for money, power, and the enrichment and security of the great Howard combine.

This comedy marriage was the prologue to the girl's tragedy. The King was eager to cement the Howard faction with the Essex faction, the more so that the great Earl of Essex had stood by his martyred mother. The present Earl, Robert Devereux, was a lad of fourteen, and it seemed good to the Howards and the boy's guardians that they should make an alliance through the child-marriage of Frances and Robert. Frances was now thirteen, and the bridegroom but a year older. Neither, of course, could be allowed any word in their destiny, and the contract for the sale and delivery of the two poor young souls was bargained and settled by

their elders. The girl was claimed to have the best nature and sweetest disposition of all her father's children; the boy had neither elegance of mind nor manners, and was heavy and dull in feature and brutish in disposition. But all this was no matter so long as the king-craft of His Majesty scented safety and quiet for himself in the alliance and the Howards were satisfied that the marriage would add new dominion to their family.

The King, too, was always glad of a wedding at his Court that he might arrange the detail and ceremonial dear to his kingly heart and spend some of that English treasure which he had so recently inherited, in masques and revels that his starved soul had dreamed of in his native poverty.

The marriage-day fixed for January 5th, we may picture to ourselves His Majesty in consultation with Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson on the mechanism, manage, and poetry of the masque that must celebrate the nuptials. How these experts received the wise fool's pedantic advice we know not, but doubtless with outward humility and gratitude, letting it interfere with the beauty and fitness of their production as little as might be.

The ceremony was indeed an affair of great wonder, though maybe we moderns, who have witnessed Victorian pantomimes and other costly shows, would have smiled at many of the quaint effects that satisfied the highest of the land three hundred years ago. Each age has its own toys, the glitter and sheen of which dazzle the eyes of their own generation and make them stare in simple wonder. At least Inigo and Ben were great artists and producers, and for aught we know could give the super-confident impresario of to-day wrinkles in the game of pantomime, since that noble art is not of to-day or yesterday or to-morrow, but has been, and will be, a joy to the unlearned of all ages.

All the world was at the wedding, and old Mr. Pory, though he had a cold which made him feel very unsociable

and desirous to keep within doors, threw it aside that he might write to his friend, Sir Robert Cotton, all about it. Inigo, Ben, and the actors, men and women, did their parts," he writes, "with great commentation. The conceit or soul of the masque was Hymen bringing in a bride and Juno, Pronuba's priest, a bridegroom, proclaiming that those two should be sacrificed to nuptial union.”

Did Pory or Devereux himself, who was a miserable victim of the terrible affairs that followed, ever look back upon this strange conceit and wonder at its prophetic insight? For the sacrifice was not only of the two beings joined in this unholy union, but of their friends and dependants, and the marriage and rejoicings and the masque were but the prologue to the tragedy that was to end in plots and murder. For from this marriage sprang a very whirlwind of sin and crime which caught up in its train many feeble, servile folk, dragged them into the net of the law and flung them hopeless on the scaffold. The blasts of it shook the good fame of great and noble men and caused a trembling of the throne itself.

But in the year of our Lord 1606, on that January evening at Whitehall, none saw those visions. The King and his guests were feasting their eyes on present marvels. The pageant was the talk of days. Who has not heard of those handsome men in crimson, and beautiful women in pure white, a galaxy unrivalled in the annals of luxury? How can we praise too highly His Majesty's clever thought that each lady should wear a head-dress of the richest herons' feathers sent by his own hawkers from Royston ? Every jewel in the country was pressed into the service of Hymen, and ropes of pearls were hired and borrowed from the city, so that it was said that the Spanish Ambassador was chagrined to present himself among such wealth and splendour.

After the masque there was a dance, at which the ambassadors and great lords and James himself and

the Queen and her ladies all took part. The little bride, in all her freshness and beauty, danced to the admiration of all beholders, and young Prince Henry, a lad of only twelve, moved to the music with studied grace and perfection. Even at that age he must have appeared a noble youth and a strange foil in the eyes of Frances to her dullard of a husband, who did not shine at these capers but stood sulkily watching, with sullen envy, what he could not perform.

The modern Solomon was well pleased with the efforts of himself and his servants. He sat huddled up in his quilted clothes on a cushioned throne in the great hall, sipping his heavy high-country wines, Frontignac or Canary, full of sensual satisfaction at the music, colour, and movements of human youth and beauty around him. He looked back at the grim cold of his drab early life in the north and maudlin tears of happiness rolled down his cheeks, mingling with the wine that overflowed from his lips. For a night, at least, he was Solomon in all his glory.

The young prince took the floor with the bride, and the crowd parted to watch the elegance and grace of their steps. He, too, was to be one of the girl's devoted servants for a while, for she threw the golden chains of her charms over the neck of every man, high or low, that frequented the Court, be he good or bad, eager or timid, willing or unwilling to do her bidding.

The dance over, bride and bridegroom were carried off to their homes by their several guardians, and within a few days the Earl of Essex went abroad to finish his education, and his young Countess lived at home with her mother or stayed with her great-uncle Henry, brightening his new mansion with her lovely presence. At every dance or masque or tournament the young Countess of Essex was the acknowledged beauty of the day, and every poetaster in the town acclaimed her in sonnet and song the brightest star in the heaven of Whitehall.

Chapter IV: Robert Carr

S

EVEN years have passed since Overbury met the Scots lad in Mr. Bruce's house and gained his love. Since then the boy had been in France in the train of the magnificent James Hay, the stories of whose extravagance and ostentation are scandal gossip to this day. The King loved Hay, poured treasure on him, made him Earl of Carlisle, and he continued in high favour with James and his son until he died, full of years, a glorious bankrupt owing £400,000 and without an acre to his name.

In this congenial service the rough chrysalis of the lowlands had changed into a golden water-fly, beautiful to behold. He was indeed a comely youth and studied in the graces of life. He is spoken of as tall, straightlimbed, strong-shouldered, smooth-faced, and fair-spoken, though he retained his Scots accent-a drawback readily discounted at the Court of Whitehall. A Scots writer

quaintly pictures him: "Fierce and gentle like the swift greyhounds of Scotch Teviotdale which doubtless is a Parish of Fairyland."

In the early days of his reign the King, despite his effeminacy and fear of weapons, took pleasure in the mock battles of the Tiltyard, where there was occasion for great display and lavish expenditure and the tinsel glory of king-craft that His Majesty revelled in at Whitehall after the lean, dour joys of his Court in Scotland.

The Tiltyard at Whitehall lay over against the Banqueting Hall to the south of the Horse Guards, and had a gate into the park, near which was the royal staircase that led to the Royal Gallery. Here, in