The earl of Oxford enjoyed in his own times a high poetical reputation; but his once celebrated comedies have perished, and two or three fugitive pieces inserted in collections are the only legacy bequeathed to posterity by his muse. Of these, "The complaint of a lover wearing black and tawny" has ceased, in the change of manners and fashions, to interest or affect the reader. "Fancy and Desire" may still lay claim to the praise of ingenuity, though the idea is perhaps not original even here, and has since been exhibited with very considerable improvements both in French and English, especially in Ben Jonson's celebrated song, "Tell me where was Fancy bred?" Two or three stanzas may bear quotation.
"Where wert thou born Desire?"
"In pomp and pride of May."
"By whom sweet boy wert thou begot?"
"By Fond Conceit men say."
"Tell me who was thy nurse?"
"Fresh Youth in sugred joy."
"What was thy meat and daily food?"
"Sad sighs with great annoy."
"What had'st thou then to drink?"
"Unsavoury lovers' tears."
"What cradle wert thou rocked in?"
"In hope devoid of fears." &c.
In the chivalrous exercises of the tilt and tournament the earl of Oxford had few superiors: he was victor in the justs both of this year and of the year 1580, and on the latter occasion he was led by two ladies into the presence-chamber, all armed as he was, to receive a prize from her majesty's own hand. Afterwards, by gross misconduct, he incurred from his sovereign a disgrace equally marked and public, being committed to the Tower for an attempt on one of her maids of honor. On other occasions his lawless propensities broke out with a violence which Elizabeth herself was scarcely able to restrain.
He had openly begun to muster his friends, retainers and servants, to take vengeance on sir Thomas Knevet, by whom he had been wounded in a duel; and the queen, who interfered to prevent the execution of this savage design, was obliged for some time to appoint Knevet a guard in order to secure his life. He also publicly insulted sir Philip Sidney in the tennis-court of the palace; and her majesty could discover no other means of preventing fatal consequences than compelling sir Philip Sidney, as the inferior in rank, to compromise the quarrel on terms which he regarded as so inequitable and degrading, that after transmitting to her majesty a spirited remonstrance against encouraging the insolence of the great nobles, he retired to Penshurst in disgust. The duke of Norfolk was the nephew of this earl of Oxford, who was very strongly attached to him, and used the utmost urgency of entreaty with Burleigh, whose daughter he had married, to prevail on him to procure his pardon: "but not succeeding," says lord Orford, "he was so incensed against that minister, that in most absurd and unjust revenge (though the cause was amiable) he swore he would do all he could to ruin his daughter; and accordingly not only forsook her bed, but sold and consumed great part of the vast inheritance descended to him from his ancestors[73]."
This remarkable person died very aged early in the reign of James I.
Sir Charles Howard, eldest son of lord Howard of Effingham, was at this period of his life chiefly remarkable for the uncommon beauty of his person,—a species of merit never overlooked by her majesty,—for grace and agility in his exercises, and for the manners of an accomplished courtier. At no time was he regarded as a person of profound judgement, and of vanity and self-consequence he is said to have possessed an abundant share. He was however brave, courteous, liberal, and diligent in affairs; and the favor of the queen admitted him in 1585 to succeed his father in the office of lord-high-admiral. His intrepid bearing, in the year 1588, encouraged his sailors to meet the terrible Armada with stout hearts and cheerful countenances, and the glory of its defeat was as much his own as the participation of winds and waves would allow. In consideration of this distinguished piece of service he was created earl of Nottingham; and the queen's partiality towards her relations increasing with her years, he became towards the end of the reign one of the most considerable persons at her court, where his hostility to Essex grew equally notorious with the better grounded antipathy entertained by Sussex, also a royal kinsman, against Leicester, the earlier favorite of her majesty.
The earl of Nottingham survived to the year 1624, the 88th of his age.
Sir Henry Lee was one of the finest courtiers and certainly the most complete knight-errant of his time. He was now in the fortieth year of his age, had travelled, and had seen some military service; but the tilt-yard was ever the scene of his most conspicuous exploits and those in which he placed his highest glory. He had declared himself the queen's own knight and champion, and having inscribed upon his shield the constellation of Ariadne's Crown, culminant in her majesty's nativity, bound himself by a solemn vow to appear armed in the tilt-yard on every anniversary of her happy accession till disabled by age. This vow gave origin to the annual exercises of the Knights-Tilters, a society consisting of twenty-five of the most gallant and favored of the courtiers of Elizabeth. The modern reader may wonder to find included in this number so grave an officer as Bromley lord chancellor; but under the maiden reign neither the deepest statesman, the most studious lawyer, nor the rudest soldier was exempted from the humiliating obligation of accepting, and even soliciting, those household and menial offices usually discharged by mere courtiers, nor from the irksome one of assuming, for the sake of their sovereign lady, the romantic disguise of armed champions and enamoured knights. Sir Henry Lee, however, appears to have devoted his life to these chivalrous pageantries rather from a quixotical imagination than with any serious views of ambition or interest. He was a gentleman of ancient family and plentiful fortune, little connected, as far as appears, with any court faction or political, party, and neither capable nor ambitious of any public station of importance. It is an amiable and generous trait of his character, that he attended the unfortunate duke of Norfolk even to the scaffold, received his last embrace, and repeated to the assembled multitude his request that they would assist him with their prayers in his final agony. His royal Dulcinea rewarded his fatigues and his adoration by the lieutenancy of Woodstock manor, the office of keeper of the armoury, and especially by the appropriate meed of admission into the most noble order of the Garter. He resigned the championship at the approach of old age with a solemn ceremony hereafter to be described, died at his mansion of Quarendon in Bucks, in 1611, in his 81st year, and was interred in the parish church under a splendid tomb hung round with military trophies, and inscribed with a very long, very quaint and very tumid epitaph.
Christopher Hatton, the last of this undaunted band of challengers, was a new competitor for the smiles of royalty, and bright was the dawn of fortune and of favor which already broke upon him. He was of a decayed family of Northamptonshire gentry, and had just commenced the study of the law at one of the inns of court, when hope or curiosity stimulated him to gain admittance at some court-festival, where he had an opportunity of dancing before the queen in a mask. His figure and his performance so captivated her fancy, that she immediately bestowed upon him some flattering marks of attention, which encouraged him to quit his profession and turn courtier.