Footnote 576: Foxe, vol. viii.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 577: Wotton to Petre, cypher: French MSS., Mary, bundle 13. State Paper Office.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 578: The Queen to Wotton: MS. France, bundle 13.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 579: Gens abominables, hérétiques et traistres villains et exécrables.—Noailles to the King, May 7: Ambassades, vol. v.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 580: Wotton to Petre, cypher: French MSS. State Paper Office, bundle 13.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 581: His death was of course attributed by the world to poison. Courtenay's birth, and the fortune which was so nearly thrust upon him, give his fate a kind of interest, and an authentic account of it may not be unwelcome.
On the 18th of September, Peter Vannes, the English resident at Venice, wrote to the queen from Padua:—
"It hath pleased Almighty God, as the Author of all goodness, and as One that doth nothing in vain, to call the Earl of Devonshire to his mercy, even about the hour, or little more or less, that I am writing of this present; and being very sorry to trouble your Highness with this kind of news, yet forasmuch as the providence of God must be fulfilled in all things, I shall somewhat touch his sickness till the hour of death. True it is that he, as I have perceived, for the avoiding all suspicion from himself, hath chosen a life more solitary than needed, saving the company of certain gentlemen, Venetians, among whom he was much made of. It chanced him upon three weeks agone, for his honest recreation, to go to a place called Lio, a piece of an island five miles from Venice, for to see his hawks fly upon a wasted ground, without any houses; and there he was suddenly taken with a great tempest of wind and rain, insomuch that his boat, called [a] gondola, could not well return to Venice: and he was fain, for his succour, to take a certain searcher's boat that by chance there arrived, and so to Venice he came, being body and legs very thinly clothed, refusing to change them with any warmer garment. And upon that time, or within few days after, as he told me, had a fall upon the stairs of his house, and after seeming to himself to be well, and finding no pain, took his journey hither unto Padua; and for the avoiding of the weariness of the water, and the labouring of horses, chose the worse way coming; and so by certain waggons called coaches, very shaking and uneasy to my judgment, came to Padua upon Saturday at night. Of whose coming being advertised, I went to visit him on the morrow after, and found him very weak; and since that time he began to appear every day worse and worse, avoiding friends' visitations; and drew himself to the counsel of two of the best physicians of this town, and entered into a continued hot ague, sometimes more vehement than at another; and as I have seen and heard, he hath been always diligently attended. I have charged his servants in your name, and as they will avoid your displeasure, that a true inventory shall be made of such small movables as he had here, and that especially all kind of writings and letters that he had either here or at Venice, shall be put in assurance, abiding for your commandment. I am now about to see the order of his burial, with as much sparing and as much honour as can be done; for the merchantmen on whom, by your Grace's commandment, he had a credit of 3 or 4 thousand crowns, are not as yet willing to disburse any money without a sufficient discharge of my Lord of Devonshire's hand, the doing whereof is past. I shall shift to see him buried as well as I can; notwithstanding, I beseech your Grace not to be discontented with me that I am at the next door to go a begging.
"My said Lord of Devonshire is dead, in mine opinion a very good Christian man; for after that I had much exhorted him to take his communion and rites of the Church as a thing most necessary, and by whose means God giveth unto His chosen people health, both bodily and ghostly, he answered me, by broken words, that he was well content so to do: and in token thereof, and in repentance for his sins, he lift up his eyes and knocked himself upon the heart; and after I had suffered him to pause a good while, I caused the Sacrament to be brought, and after the priest's godly exhortation, he forced himself to receive the blessed Communion; but his tongue had so stopped his mouth, and his teeth so clove together, that in no wise he could receive that same; and after this sort this gentleman is gone, as I do not doubt, to God his mercy.
"I shall not let to say to your Grace, that since his coming to Padua, by way of communication, he showed unto me, that it had been reported unto him that some one had said that he was better French than English, and if God did recover him and send him his health so that he might come to the knowledge of his misreporter, he was minded to try that quarrel by the sword."