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: and, for his activity and person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into her favour. He was first made Vice-Chamberlain, and, shortly after, advanced to the place of Lord Chancellor. A gentleman that, besides the graces of his person and dancing, had also the endowment of a strong and subtle capacity, and that could soon learn the discipline and garb, both of the times and Court; and the truth is, he had a large proportion of gifts and endowments, but too much of the season of envy; and he was a mere vegetable of the Court that sprung up at night and sunk again at his noon.
"Flos non mentorum, sed *** fuit illa virorum."EFFINGHAM.
My Lord of Effingham, though a courtier betimes, yet I find not that the sunshine of his favour broke out upon him until she took him into the ship and made him High Admiral of England. For his extract, it might suffice that he was the son of a Howard, and of a Duke of Norfolk.
And, for his person, as goodly a gentleman as the times had any, if Nature had not been more intentive to complete his person, than Fortune to make him rich; for, the times considered, which were then active, and a long time after lucrative, he died not wealthy; yet the honester man, though it seems the Queen's purpose was to render the occasion of his advancement, and to make him capable of more honour. At his return from the Cadiz voyage and action, she conferred it upon him, creating him Earl of Nottingham, to the great discontent of his colleague, my Lord of Essex, who then grew excessive in the appetite of her favour, and the truth is, so exorbitant in the limitation of the sovereign aspect, that it much alienated the Queen's grace from him, and drew others together with the Admiral to a combination, to conspire his ruin; and though, as Ihave heard it from that party (I mean the old Admiral's faction)that it lay not in his proper power to hurt my Lord Essex, yet he had more fellows, and such as were well skilled in the setting of the train; but I leave this to those of another age; it is out of doubt that the Admiral was a good, honest, and brave man, and a faithful servant to his mistress; and such a one as the Queen, out of her own princely judgment, knew to be a fit instrument in her service, for she was a proficient in the reading of men as well as books; and as sundry expeditions, as that aforementioned, and '88, do better express his worth and manifest the Queen's trust, and the opinion she had of his fidelity and conduct.
Moreover, the Howards were of the Queen's alliance and consanguinity by her mother, which swayed her affection and bent it toward this great house; and it was a part of her natural propensity to grace and support ancient nobility, where it did not entrench, neither invade her interest; from such trespasses she was quick and tender, and would not spare any whatsoever, as we may observe in the case of the duke and my Lord of Hertford, whom she much favoured and countenanced, till they attempted the forbidden fruit, the fault of the last being, in the severest interpretation, but a trespass of encroachment; but in the first it was taken as a riot against the Crown and her own sovereign power, and as I have ever thought the cause of her aversion against the rest of that house, and the duke's great father-in-law, Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, a person in the first rank of her affections, before these and some other jealousies made a separation between them: this noble lord and Lord Thomas Howard, since Earl of Suffolk, standing alone in her grace, and the rest in her umbrage.
PACKINGTON.
Sir John Packington was a gentleman of no mean family, and of form and feature nowise disabled, for he was a brave gentleman, and a very fine courtier, and for the time which he stayed there, which was not lasting, very high in her grace; but he came in, and went out through disassiduity, drew the curtain between himself and the light of her grace, and then death overwhelmed the remnant, and utterly deprived him of recovery; and they say of him that had he brought less to her Court than he did, he might have carried away more than he brought, for he had a time of it, but was an ill husband of opportunity.
HUNSDOWN.
My Lord of Hunsdown was of the Queen's nearest kindred, and, on the decease of Sussex, both he and his son successively took the place of Lord Chamberlain. He was a man fast to his prince, and firm to his friends and servants; and though he might speak big, and therein would be borne out, yet was he the more dreadful, but less harmful, and far from the practice of the Lord of Leicester's instructions, for he was downright; and I have heard those that both knew him well and had interest in him, say merrily of him that his Latin and dissimulation were alike; and that his custom of swearing and obscenity in speaking made him seem a worse Christian than he was, and a better knight of her carpet than he could be. As he lived in a roughling time, so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers were wont to call men of their hands; of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him, yet not taken for a popular and dangerous person: and this is one that stood among the TOGATI, of an honest, stout heart, and such a one, that, upon occasion, would have fought for his prince and country, for he had the charge of the Queen's person, both in the Court and in the camp at Tilbury.
RALEIGH.
