Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

by Lucy Aikin

At this period, all attempts against the power and prosperity of Spain were naturally regarded with high favor and admiration; and it cannot be denied that in his long and hazardous expeditions the earl of Cumberland evinced high courage, undaunted enterprise, and an extraordinary share of perseverance under repeated failures, disappointments, and hardships of every kind. It is also true that his vigorous attacks embarrassed extremely the intercourse of Spain with her colonies; and, besides the direct injury which they inflicted, compelled this power to incur an immense additional expense for the protection of her treasure-ships and settlements. But the benefit to England was comparatively trifling; and to the earl himself, notwithstanding occasional captures of great value, his voyages were far from producing any lasting advantage; they scarcely repaid on the whole the cost of equipment; while the influx of sudden wealth with which they sometimes gratified him, only ministered food to that magnificent profusion in which he finally squandered both his acquisitions and his patrimony. None of the liberal and enlightened views which had prompted the efforts of the great navigators of this and a preceding age appear to have had any share in the enterprises of the earl of Cumberland. Even the thirst of martial glory seems in him to have been subordinate to the love of gain, and that appetite for rapine to which his loose and extravagant habits had given the force of a passion.

He had formed, early in life, an attachment to the beautiful daughter of that worthy character and rare exemplar of old English hospitality, sir William Holles, ancestor to the earls of Clare of that surname; but her father, from a singular pride of independence, refused to listen to his proposals, saying "that he would not have to stand cap in hand to his son-in-law; his daughter should marry a good gentleman with whom he might have society and friendship." Disappointed thus of the object of his affections, he matched himself with a daughter of the earl of Bedford; a woman of merit, as it appears, but whom their mutual indifference precluded from exerting over him any salutary influence. As a husband, he proved both unfaithful and cruel; and separating himself after a few years from his countess, on pretence of incompatibility of tempers, he suffered her to pine not only in desertion, but in poverty. We shall hereafter have occasion to view this celebrated earl in the idly-solemn personage of queen's champion; meantime, he must be dismissed with no more of applause than may be challenged by a character signally deficient in the guiding and restraining virtues, and endowed with such a share only of the more active ones as served to render it conspicuous and glittering rather than truly and permanently illustrious.

Henry earl of Northumberland likewise joined the fleet, on-board a vessel hired by himself. Immediately after the fatal catastrophe of his father in 1585, this young nobleman, anxious apparently to efface the stigma of popery and disaffection stamped by the rash attempts of his uncle and father on the gallant name of Percy, had seized the opportunity of embarking with Leicester for the wars of the Low Countries. He now sought distinction on another element, and in a cause still nearer to the hearts of Englishmen. The conversion to protestantism and loyalty of the head of such a house could not but be regarded by Elizabeth with feelings of peculiar complacency, and in 1593 she was pleased to confer upon the earl the insignia of the garter. He was present in 1601 at the siege of Ostend, where he considered himself as so much aggrieved by the conduct of sir Francis Vere, that on the return of this officer to England he sent him a challenge. During the decline of the queen's health, Northumberland was distinguished by the warmth with which he embraced the interests of the king of Scots, and he was the first privy-councillor named by James on his accession to the English throne. But the fate of his family seemed still to pursue him: on some unsupported charges connected with the gunpowder plot, he was stripped of all his offices, heavily fined, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment: the tardy mercy of the king procured however his release at the end of fifteen years, and he spent the remnant of his life in tranquil and honorable retirement. This unfortunate nobleman was a man of parts: the abundant leisure for intellectual pursuits afforded by his long captivity was chiefly employed by him in the study of the mathematics, including perhaps the occult sciences; and as he was permitted to enjoy freely the conversation of such men of learning as he wished to assemble around him, he became one of their most bountiful patrons.

Thomas Cecil, eldest son of the lord-treasurer, formerly a volunteer in the expedition to Scotland undertaken in favor of the regent Murray, and more recently appointed governor of the Brill in consideration of his services in the war in Flanders, also embarked to repel the invaders; as did Robert his half-brother, the afterwards celebrated secretary of state created earl of Salisbury by James I.

Robert Cecil was deformed in his person, of a feeble and sickly constitution, and entirely devoted to the study of politics; and nothing, it is to be presumed, but his steady determination of omitting no means of attracting to himself that royal favor which he contemplated as the instrument by which to work out his future fortunes, could have engaged him in a service so repugnant to his habits and pursuits, and for which the hand of nature herself had so evidently disabled him.

The earl of Oxford, in expiation perhaps of some of those violences of temper and irregularities of conduct by which he was perpetually offending the queen and obstructing his own advancement in the state, equipped on this occasion a vessel which he commanded.

Sir Charles Blount, notwithstanding the narrowness of his present fortunes, judged it incumbent on him to give a similar proof of attachment to his queen and country; and the circumstance affords an occasion of introducing to the notice of the reader one of the brightest ornaments of the court of Elizabeth.

This distinguished gentleman, now in the twenty-fifth year of his age, was the second son of James sixth lord Montjoy of the ancient Norman name of Le Blonde, corruptly written Blount. The family history might serve as a commentary on the reigning follies of the English court during two or three generations. His grandfather, a splendid courtier, consumed his resources on the ostentatious equipage with which he attended to the French wars his master Henry VIII. with whom he had the misfortune to be a favorite. His father squandered a diminished patrimony still more absurdly in his search after the philosopher's stone; and the ruin of the family was so consummated by the ill-timed prodigalities of his elder brother, that when his death without children in 1594 transmitted the title of lord Montjoy to sir Charles, a thousand marks was the whole amount of the inheritance by which this honor was to be maintained. It is needless to add that the younger brother's portion with which he set out in life was next to nothing. Having thus his own way to make, he immediately after completing his education at Oxford entered himself of the Inner Temple, as meaning to pursue the profession of the law: but fortune had ordained his destiny otherwise; and being led by his curiosity to visit the court, he there found "a pretty strange kind of admission," which cannot be related with more vivacity than in the original words of Naunton. "He was then much about twenty years of age, of a brown hair, a sweet face, a most neat composure, and tall in his person. The queen was then at Whitehall, and at dinner, whither he came to see the fashion of the court. The queen had soon found him out, and with a kind of an affected frown asked the lady carver who he was? She answered, she knew him not; insomuch that enquiry was made from one to another who he might be, till at length it was told the queen that he was brother to the lord William Mountjoy. This inquisition, with the eye of majesty fixed upon him, (as she was wont to do to daunt men she knew not,) stirred the blood of this young gentleman, insomuch as his colour went and came; which the queen observing called him unto her, and gave him her hand to kiss, encouraging him with gracious words and new looks; and so diverting her speech to the lords and ladies, she said, that she no sooner observed him but that she knew there was in him some noble blood, with some other expressions of pity towards his house. And then again, demanding his name, she said, 'Fail you not to come to the court, and I will bethink myself how to do you good.' And this was his inlet, and the beginning of his grace." It does not appear what boon the queen immediately bestowed upon her new courtier; but he deserted the profession of the law, sat in the parliaments of 1585 and 1586 as the representative of two different Cornish boroughs, received in the latter year the honor of knighthood, and soon after his present expedition appeared considerable enough at court to provoke the hostility of the earl of Essex himself. Raleigh, now high in favor, and invested with the offices of captain of the queen's guard and her lieutenant for Cornwall, had been actively engaged since the last year in training to arms the militia of that county. He had also been employed, as a member of the council of war, in concerting the general plan of national defence: but his ardent and adventurous valor prompted him to aid his country in her hour of trial on both elements, and with hand as well as head: throwing himself therefore into a vessel of his own which waited his orders, he hastened to share in the discomfiture of her insulting foe.

But it would be endless to enumerate all who spontaneously came forward to partake the perils and the glory of this ever-memorable contest; and the naval commanders of principal eminence have higher claims to our notice.

The dignity of lord-high-admiral,—customarily conferred on mere men of rank, in whom not the slightest tincture of professional knowledge was required or expected,—at this critical juncture belonged to Charles second lord Howard of Effingham, of whom we have formerly spoken, and who appears never in the whole course of his life to have been at sea but once before, and that only on an occasion of ceremony. He was every way an untried man, and as yet distinguished for nothing except the accomplishments of a courtier: but he exhibited on trial courage, resolution, and conduct; an affability of manner which endeared him to the sailors; and a prudent sense of his own inexperience, which rendered him perfectly docile to the counsels of those excellent sea-officers by whom he had the good fortune to find himself surrounded. He encouraged his crew, and manifested his alacrity in the service, by putting his own hand to the rope which was to tow his ship out of harbour; and he afterwards gave proof of his good sense and his patriotism, by his opposition to the orders which her majesty's excess of œconomy led her to issue on the first dispersion of the armada by a storm, for laying up four of her largest ships; earnestly requesting that he might be permitted to retain them at his own expense rather than the safety of the country should be risked by their dismissal. John Hawkins, one of the ablest and most experienced seamen of the age, was chiefly relied upon for the conduct of the main fleet, in which he acted as vice-admiral. For his good service he was knighted by the lord-admiral on board his own ship immediately after the action, when the like honor was bestowed on that eminent navigator Frobisher, who led into action the Triumph, one of the three first-rates which were then all that the English navy could boast.