SIR JOHN KING.
(H.M. the King.)
PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.
(Dyce Collection.)
Mrs. Naylor Leyland owns a portrait of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, which is ascribed to Hilliard, and has a circumstantial history. It is said to have been given by the unfortunate Queen to one of her Maids of Honour on her marriage, from whom it descended to her grandson, the second and last Earl of Middleton, and thence to the present possessor. Of course, it is quite possible that this is the work of Hilliard, although most improbable that the painter ever saw her. In the case of another unfortunate lady of the period, namely, Arabella Stuart, the case is different, and he may quite well have had access to this ill-fated victim of the fears of James I.
Walpole possessed two of her, one when young, which may be that owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, representing her as a girl with a baby face. James I. and his wife were painted by him, as we have already mentioned, and one portrait of the Scottish Solomon was sold at Christie's for a very large sum. Of the courtiers of Elizabeth we have a number of well-known personages, Essex and Dudley, for example; of Drake when forty-two, in Lord Derby's Collection; and a portrait of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, Elizabeth's champion, dressed as for a tournament, in an enormous flapped hat, with a glove, the emblem of his office, fixed on the front of it. This picture is well known from the engraving by R. White.
At Kensington, in 1865, might have been seen Nicholas Harbon, Ambassador to Constantinople; Mrs. Holland, one of Elizabeth's Maids of Honour; Lord Keeper Coventry; Lady Hunsdon; and a portrait of the poet Spenser, which last is the property of Lord Fitzhardinge, and here shown.