Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

by Lucy Aikin

After the execution of the more painful part of his sentence, Stubbs was further punished by an imprisonment of several months in the Tower: but under all these inflictions, his courage and his cheerfulness were supported by a firm persuasion of the goodness of the cause in which he suffered. He wrote many letters to his friends with the left hand, signing them Scævola; a surname which it was his pleasure to adopt in memory of a circumstance by which he did not feel himself to be the person dishonored. Such was the opinion entertained by Burleigh of the theological learning of this eminent person and the soundness of his principles, that he engaged him in 1587 to answer Cardinal Allen's violent book entitled "The English Justice;" a task which he is said to have performed with distinguished ability.

During the whole of the year 1580, the important question of the queen's marriage remained in an undecided state. The court of France appears to have suffered the treaty to languish, and Elizabeth, conscious no doubt that her fond inclination could only be gratified at the expense of that popularity which it had been the leading object of her policy to cherish, sought not to revive it. Various circumstances occurred to occupy public attention during the interval.

Sir Nicholas Bacon, who under the humbler title of lord keeper had exercised from the beginning of the reign the office of lord high chancellor, died generally regretted in 1579. No one is recorded to have filled this important post with superior assiduity or a greater reputation for uprightness and ability than sir Nicholas, and several well-known traits afford a highly pleasing image of the general character of his mind. Of this number are his motto, "Mediocria firma," and his handsome reply to the remark of her majesty that his house was too little for him;—"No, madam; but you have made me too big for my house." Even when, upon this royal hint, he erected his elegant mansion of Gorhambury, he was still careful not to lose sight of that idea of lettered privacy in which he loved to indulge; and the accomplishments of his mind were reflected in the decorations of his home. In the gardens, on which his chief care and cost were bestowed, arose a banqueting-house consecrated to the seven Sciences, whose figures adorned the walls, each subscribed with a Latin distich and surrounded with portraits of her most celebrated votaries; a temple in which we may imagine the youthful mind of that illustrious son of his, who "took all learning to be" his "province," receiving with delight its earliest inspiration! In his second wife,—one of the learned daughters of sir Anthony Cook, a woman of a keen and penetrating intellect, and much distinguished by her zeal for reformed religion in its austerer forms,—sir Nicholas found a partner capable of sharing his views and appreciating his character. By her he became the father of two sons; that remarkable man Anthony Bacon, and Francis, the light of science, the interpreter of nature; the admiration of his own age, and the wonder of succeeding ones; the splendid dawn of whose unrivalled genius his father was happy enough to behold; more happy still in not surviving to witness the calamitous eclipse which overshadowed his reputation at its highest noon.

The lord keeper was esteemed the second pillar of that state of which Burleigh was the prime support. In all public measures of importance they acted together; and similar speculative opinions, with coinciding views of national policy, united these two eminent statesmen in a brotherhood dearer than that of alliance; but in their motives of action, and in the character of their minds, a diversity was observable which it may be useful to point out.

Of Burleigh it has formerly been remarked, that with his own interest he considered also, and perhaps equally, that of his queen and his country: but the patriotism of Bacon seems to have risen higher; and his conformity with the wishes and sentiments of his sovereign was less obsequiously exact. In the affair of lady Catherine Grey's title, he did not hesitate to risk the favor of the queen and his own continuance in office, for the sake of what appeared to him the cause of religion and his country. On the whole, however, moderation and prudence were the governing principles of his mind and actions. The intellect of Burleigh was more versatile and acute, that of Bacon more profound; and their parts in the great drama of public life were cast accordingly: Burleigh had most of the alertness of observation, the fertility of expedient, the rapid calculation of contingencies, required in the minister of state; Bacon, of the gravity and steadfastness which clothe with reverence and authority the counsellor and judge. "He was a plain man," says Francis Bacon of his father, "direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness, and one that was of a mind that a man in his private proceedings and estate, and in the proceedings of state, should rest upon the soundness and strength of his own courses, and not upon practice to circumvent others."

After Elizabeth had forgiven his interference respecting the succession, no one was held by her in greater honor and esteem than her lord keeper; she visited him frequently, conversed with him familiarly; took pleasure in the flashes of wit which often relieved the seriousness of his wisdom; and flattered with kind condescension his parental feelings by the extraordinary notice which she bestowed on his son Francis, whose brightness and solidity of parts early manifested themselves to her discerning eye, and caused her to predict that her "little lord keeper" would one day prove an eminent man.

Great interest was excited by the arrival in Plymouth harbour, in November 1580, of the celebrated Francis Drake from his circumnavigation of the globe. National vanity was flattered by the idea that this Englishman should have been the first commander-in-chief by whom this great and novel enterprise had been successfully achieved; and both himself and his ship became in an eminent degree the objects of public curiosity and wonder. The courage, skill and perseverance of this great navigator were deservedly extolled; the wealth which he had brought home, from the plunder of the Spanish settlements, awakened the cupidity which in that age was a constant attendant on the daring spirit of maritime adventure, and half the youth of the country were on fire to embark in expeditions of pillage and discovery.

But the court was not so easily induced to second the ardor of the nation. Drake's captures from the Spaniards had been made, under some vague notion of reprisals, whilst no open war was subsisting between the nations; and the Spanish ambassador, not, it must be confessed, without some reason, branded his proceedings with the reproach of piracy, and loudly demanded restitution of the booty. Elizabeth wavered for some time between admiration of the valiant Drake, mixed with a desire of sharing in the profits of his expedition, and a dread of incensing the king of Spain; but she at length decided on the part most acceptable to her people,—that of giving a public sanction to his acts. During the spring of 1581 she accepted of a banquet on board his ship off Deptford, conferred on him the order of knighthood, and received him into favor.

Much anxiety and alarm was about this time occasioned to the queen and her protestant subjects by the clandestine arrival in the country of a considerable number of catholic priests, mostly English by birth, but educated at the seminaries respectively founded at Douay, Rheims, and Rome, by the king of Spain, cardinal Lorrain, and the pope, for the express purpose of furnishing means for the disturbance of the queen's government. Monks of the new order of Jesuits presided over these establishments, who made it their business to inspire the pupils with the most frightful excess of bigotry and fanaticism; and two of these friars, fathers Parsons and Campion, coming over to England to guide and regulate the efforts of their party, were detected in treasonable practices; on account of which Campion, with some accomplices, underwent capital punishment, or, in the language of his church, received the crown of martyrdom.

In order to check the diffusion among the rising generation of doctrines so destructive of the peace and good government of the country, a proclamation was issued in June 1580, requiring that all persons who had any children, wards, or kinsmen, in any parts beyond seas, should within ten days give in their names to the ordinaries, and within four months send for them home again.