Lord Hunsdon, the nearest kinsman of the queen, whose character has been already touched upon, died in 1596. It is related that Elizabeth, on hearing of his illness, finally resolved to confer upon him the title of earl of Wiltshire, to which he had some claim as nephew and heir male to sir Thomas Boleyn, her majesty's grandfather, who had borne that dignity. She accordingly made him a gracious visit, and caused the patent and the robes of an earl to be brought and laid upon his bed; but the old man, preserving to the last the blunt honesty of his character, declared, that if her majesty had accounted him unworthy of that honor while living, he accounted himself unworthy of it now that he was dying; and with this refusal be expired. Lord Willoughby succeeded him in the office of governor of Berwick, and lord Cobham, a wealthy but insignificant person of the party opposed to Essex, in that of lord chamberlain.
Henry third earl of Huntingdon of the family of Hastings died about the same time. By his mother, eldest daughter and coheiress of Henry Pole lord Montacute, he was the representative of the Clarence branch of the family of Plantagenet; but no pretensions of his had ever awakened anxiety in the house of Tudor. He was a person of mild disposition, greatly attached to the puritan party, which, bound together by a secret compact, now formed a church within the church; he is said to have impaired his fortune by his bounty to the more zealous preachers; and be largely contributed by his will to the endowment of Emanuel college, the puritanical character of which was now well known.
Richard Fletcher bishop of London, "a comely and courtly prelate," who departed this life in the same year, affords a subject for a few remarks. It was a practice of the more powerful courtiers of that day, when the lands of a vacant see had excited, as they seldom failed to do, their cupidity, to "find out some men that had great minds and small means or merits, that would be glad to leave a small deanery to make a poor bishopric, by new leasing lands that were almost out of lease[119];" and on these terms, which more conscientious churchmen disdained, Fletcher had taken the bishopric of Oxford, and had in due time been rewarded for his compliance by translation first to Worcester and afterwards to London. His talents and deportment pleased the queen; and it is mentioned, as an indication of her special favor, that she once quarrelled with him for wearing too short a beard. But he afterwards gave her more serious displeasure by taking a wife, a gay and fair court lady of good quality; and he had scarcely pacified her majesty by the propitiatory offering of a great entertainment at his house in Chelsea, when he was carried off by a sudden death, ascribed by his contemporaries to his immoderate use of the new luxury of smoking tobacco. This prelate was the father of Fletcher the dramatic poet.
Bishop Vaughan succeeded him, of whom Harrington gives the following trait: "He was an enemy to all supposed miracles, insomuch as one arguing with him in the closet at Greenwich in defence of them, and alleging the queen's healing of the evil for an instance, asking him what he could say against it, he answered, that he was loth to answer arguments taken from the topic-place of the cloth of estate; but if they would urge him to answer, he said his opinion was, she did it by virtue of some precious stone in possession of the crown of England that had such a natural quality. But had queen Elizabeth been told that he ascribed more virtue to her jewels (though she loved them well) than to her person, she would never have made him bishop of Chester."
Of the justice of the last remark there can be little question. In this reign, the royal pretension referred to, was asserted with unusual earnestness, and for good reasons, as we learn from a different authority. In 1597 a quarto book appeared, written in Latin and dedicated to her majesty by one of her chaplains, which contained a relation of the cures thus performed by her; in which it is related, that a catholic having been so healed went away persuaded that the pope's excommunication of her majesty was of no effect: "For if she had not by right obtained the sceptre of the kingdom, and her throne established by the authority and appointment of God, what she attempted could not have succeeded. Because the rule is, that God is not any where witness to a lie[120]." Such were the reasonings of that age.
It is probably to bishop Vaughan also that sir John Harrington refers in the following article of his Brief Notes.
"One Sunday (April last) my lord of London preached to the queen's majesty, and seemed to touch on the vanity of decking the body too finely. Her majesty told the ladies, that if the bishop held more discourse on such matters, she would fit him for heaven, but he should walk thither without a staff, and leave his mantle behind him. Perchance the bishop hath never sought her highness' wardrobe, or he would have chosen another text[121]."