Travels in England [28]
princes: so that the strangeness of the observation, and the difference of those latter reigns, is that the Queen took up much BEYOND the power of law, which fell not into the murmur of people; and her successors took nothing but by warrant of the law, which nevertheless was received, THROUGH DISUSE, to be injurious to the liberty of the kingdom.
Now before I come to any mention of her favourites, for hitherto I have delivered but some oblivious passages, thereby to prepare and smooth a way for the rest that follows:
It is necessary that I touch on the religiousness of the other's reign, I mean the body of her sister's {38} Council of State, which she retained entirely, neither removing nor discontenting any, although she knew them averse to her religion, and, in her sister's time, perverse to her person, and privy to all her troubles and imprisonments.
A prudence which was incompatible to her sister's nature, for she both dissipated and presented the major part of her brother's Council; but this will be of certain, that how compliable and obsequious soever she found them, yet for a good space she made little use of their counsels, more than in the ordinary course of the Board, for she had a dormant table in her own privy breast; yet she kept them together and in their places, without any sudden change; so that we may say of them that they were then of the Court, not of the Council; for whilst she AMAZED {39} them by a kind of promissive disputation concerning the points controverted by both Churches, she did set down her own gests, without their privity, and made all their progressions, gradations; but for that the tenents of her secrets, with the intents of her establishments, were pitched before it was known where the Court would sit down.
Neither do I find that any of her sister's Council of State were either repugnant to her religion, or opposed her doings; Englefeild, Master of the Wards, excepted, who withdrew himself from the Board, and shortly after out of her dominions; so pliable and obedient they were to change with the times and their prince; and of them will fall a relation of recreation. Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and Lord Treasurer, had served then four princes, in as various and changeable times and seasons, that I may well say no time nor age hath yielded the like precedent. This man, being noted to grow high in her favour (as his place and experience required), was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he had stood up for thirty years together, amidst the change and ruins of so many Chancellors and great personages. "Why," quoth the marquis, "ORTUS SUM E SALICE, NON EX QUERCU," I.E., "I am made of pliable willow, not of the stubborn oak." And, truly, it seems the old man had taught them all, especially William, Earl of Pembroke, for they two were always of the King's religion, and always zealous professors: of these it is said that being both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left them, and came on trust to the Court, where, upon the bare stock of their wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well that they got, spent, and left more than any subjects from the Norman Conquest to their own times; whereupon it hath been prettily spoken that they lived in a time of dissolution.
To conclude, then, of all the former reign, it is said that those two lived and died chiefly in her grace and favour: by the letter written upon his son's marriage with the Lady Catherine Grey, he had like utterly to have lost himself; but at the instant of consummation, as apprehending the unsafety and danger of intermarriage with the blood royal, he fell at the Queen's feet, where he both acknowledged his presumption, and projected the cause and the divorce together: so quick he was at his work, that in the time of repudiation of the said Lady Grey, he clapped up a marriage for his son, the Lord Herbert, with Mary Sidney, daughter to Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy or Ireland, the blow falling on Edward, the late Earl of Hertford, who, to his cost,
Now before I come to any mention of her favourites, for hitherto I have delivered but some oblivious passages, thereby to prepare and smooth a way for the rest that follows:
It is necessary that I touch on the religiousness of the other's reign, I mean the body of her sister's {38} Council of State, which she retained entirely, neither removing nor discontenting any, although she knew them averse to her religion, and, in her sister's time, perverse to her person, and privy to all her troubles and imprisonments.
A prudence which was incompatible to her sister's nature, for she both dissipated and presented the major part of her brother's Council; but this will be of certain, that how compliable and obsequious soever she found them, yet for a good space she made little use of their counsels, more than in the ordinary course of the Board, for she had a dormant table in her own privy breast; yet she kept them together and in their places, without any sudden change; so that we may say of them that they were then of the Court, not of the Council; for whilst she AMAZED {39} them by a kind of promissive disputation concerning the points controverted by both Churches, she did set down her own gests, without their privity, and made all their progressions, gradations; but for that the tenents of her secrets, with the intents of her establishments, were pitched before it was known where the Court would sit down.
Neither do I find that any of her sister's Council of State were either repugnant to her religion, or opposed her doings; Englefeild, Master of the Wards, excepted, who withdrew himself from the Board, and shortly after out of her dominions; so pliable and obedient they were to change with the times and their prince; and of them will fall a relation of recreation. Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and Lord Treasurer, had served then four princes, in as various and changeable times and seasons, that I may well say no time nor age hath yielded the like precedent. This man, being noted to grow high in her favour (as his place and experience required), was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he had stood up for thirty years together, amidst the change and ruins of so many Chancellors and great personages. "Why," quoth the marquis, "ORTUS SUM E SALICE, NON EX QUERCU," I.E., "I am made of pliable willow, not of the stubborn oak." And, truly, it seems the old man had taught them all, especially William, Earl of Pembroke, for they two were always of the King's religion, and always zealous professors: of these it is said that being both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left them, and came on trust to the Court, where, upon the bare stock of their wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well that they got, spent, and left more than any subjects from the Norman Conquest to their own times; whereupon it hath been prettily spoken that they lived in a time of dissolution.
To conclude, then, of all the former reign, it is said that those two lived and died chiefly in her grace and favour: by the letter written upon his son's marriage with the Lady Catherine Grey, he had like utterly to have lost himself; but at the instant of consummation, as apprehending the unsafety and danger of intermarriage with the blood royal, he fell at the Queen's feet, where he both acknowledged his presumption, and projected the cause and the divorce together: so quick he was at his work, that in the time of repudiation of the said Lady Grey, he clapped up a marriage for his son, the Lord Herbert, with Mary Sidney, daughter to Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy or Ireland, the blow falling on Edward, the late Earl of Hertford, who, to his cost,