Blount’s badge was the sun, Carey’s a burning heart, Cooke’s a hand and heart,
And Life and Death he portray’d in his show.
The three Knowles brothers bore golden boughs. A final section of the poem describes how, after the running, Sir Henry Lee, ‘knight of the Crown’, unarmed himself in a pavilion of Vesta, and petitioned the Queen to allow him to yield his ‘honourable place’ to Cumberland, to whom he gave his armour and lance, vowing to betake himself to orisons.
Segar gives a fuller account of Lee’s fantasy. He had vowed, ‘in the beginning of her happy reigne’, to present himself yearly in arms on the day of Elizabeth’s accession. The courtiers, incited by his example, had yearly assembled, ‘not vnlike to the antient Knighthood della Banda in Spaine’, but in 1590, ‘being now by age ouertaken’, Lee resigned his office to Cumberland. The ceremony took place ‘at the foot of the staires vnder her gallery-window in the Tilt-yard at Westminster’, where Elizabeth sat with the French ambassador, Viscount Turenne. A pavilion, representing the Temple of the Vestal Virgins, arose out of the earth. Within was an altar, with gifts for the queen; before the door a crowned pillar, embraced by an eglantine, and bearing a complimentary inscription. As the knights approached, ‘M. Hales her maiesties seruant’ sang verses beginning:
My golden locks time hath to siluer turned.
The vestals then gave the Queen a veil and a cloak and safeguard, the buttons of which bore the ‘emprezes’ or ‘badges’ of many nobles, friends of Lee, each fixed to an embroidered pillar, the last being ‘like the character of &c.’ Finally Lee doffed his armour, presented Cumberland, armed and horsed him, and himself donned a side-coat of black velvet and a buttoned cap of the country fashion. ‘After all these ceremonies, for diuers dayes hee ware vpon his cloake a crowne embrodered, with a certaine motto or deuice, but what his intention therein was, himselfe best knoweth.’
The Queen appointed Lee to appear yearly at the exercises, ‘to see, suruey, and as one most carefull and skilfull to direct them’. Segar dwells on Lee’s virtues and valour, and concludes by stating that the annual actions had been performed by 1 Duke, 19 Earls, 27 Barons, 4 Knights of the Garter, and above 150 other Knights and Esquires.
On 20 Nov. 1590 Richard Brakinbury wrote to Lord Talbot (Lodge, ii. 419): ‘These sports were great, and done in costly sort, to her Majesty’s liking, and their great cost. To express every part, with sundry devices, is more fit for them that delight in them, than for me, who esteemeth little such vanities, I thank God.’
P. A. Daniel (Athenaeum for 8 Feb. 1890) notes that a suit of armour in Lord Hothfield’s collection, which once belonged to Cumberland and is represented in certain portraits of him, is probably the identical suit given him by Lee, as it bears a monogram of Lee’s name.
There has been some controversy about the authorship of the verses sung by ‘M. Hales’, who was Robert Hales, a lutenist. They appear, headed ‘A Sonnet’, and unsigned, on a page at the end of Polyhymnia, and have therefore been ascribed to Peele. The evidence, though inconclusive, is better than the wanton conjecture which led Mr. Bond to transfer them to Lyly (Works, i. 410). But a different version in Rawl. Poet. MS. 148, f. 19, is subscribed ‘qd Sr Henry Leigh’, and some resemblances of expression are to be found in other verses assigned to Lee in R. Dowland, Musicall Banquet (1610), No. 8 (Bond, i. 517; Fellowes, 459). It is not impossible that Lee himself may have been the author. One of the pieces in the Ferrers MS. (vide p. 406 infra) refers to his ‘himmes & songes’. If the verses, which also appear anonymously in J. Dowland, First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597, Fellowes, 418), are really Lee’s, Wyatt’s nephew was no contemptible poet. Finally, there are echoes of the same theme in yet another set of anonymous verses in J. Dowland, Second Book of Airs (1600, Fellowes, 422), which are evidently addressed to Lee.