On her young kinsman the duke of Norfolk, the first peer of the realm by rank, property, and great alliances, and the most popular by his known attachment to the protestant faith, she now conferred the distinction of the garter, decorating with it at the same time the marquis of Northampton, the earl of Rutland, and lord Robert Dudley.
The marquis, a brother of queen Catherine Parr, whom he resembled in the turn of his religious opinions, had been for these opinions a great sufferer under the last reign. On pretext of his adherence to the cause of Jane Grey, in which he had certainly not partaken more deeply than many others who found nothing but favor in the sight of Mary, he was attainted of high treason, and though his life was spared, his estates were forfeited and he had remained ever since in disgrace and suspicion. A divorce which he had obtained from an unfaithful wife under the ecclesiastical law of Henry VIII. was also called in question, and an after marriage which he had contracted declared null, but it appears to have been confirmed under Elizabeth. He was accounted a modest and upright character, endowed with no great talents for military command, in which he had been unsuccessful, nor yet for civil business; but distinguished by a fine taste in music and poetry, which formed his chief delight. From the new sovereign substantial benefits as well as flattering distinctions awaited him, being reinstated by her in the possession of his confiscated estates and appointed a privy-councillor.
Henry second earl of Rutland of the surname of Manners, was the representative of a knightly family seated during many generations at Ettal in Northumberland, and known in border history amongst the stoutest champions on the English side. But Ettal, a place of strength, was more than once laid in ruins, and the lands devastated and rendered "nothing worth," by incursions of the Scots; and though successive kings rewarded the services and compensated the losses of these valiant knights, by grants of land and appointments to honorable offices in the north, it was many an age before they attained to such a degree of wealth as would enable them to appear with distinction amongst the great families of the kingdom. At length sir Robert Manners, high sheriff of Northumberland, having recommended himself to the favor of the king-making Warwick and of Richard duke of Gloucester, was fortunate enough by a judicious marriage with the daughter of lord Roos, heiress of the Tiptofts earls of Worcester, to add the noble castle and fertile vale of Belvoir to the battered towers and wasted fields of his paternal inheritance.
A second splendid alliance completed the aggrandizement of the house of Manners. The son of sir Robert, bearing in right of his mother the title of lord Roos, and knighted by the earl of Surry for his distinguished bravery in the Scottish wars, was honored with the hand of Anne sole heiress of sir Thomas St. Leger by the duchess-dowager of Exeter, a sister of king Edward IV. The heir of this marriage, in consideration of his maternal ancestry, was advanced by Henry VIII. to the title of earl of Rutland, never borne but by princes of the blood. His successor, whom the queen was pleased to honor on this occasion, had suffered a short imprisonment in the cause of Jane Grey, but was afterwards intrusted by Mary with a military command. Under Elizabeth he was lord lieutenant of the counties of Nottingham and Rutland, and one of the commissioners for enforcing the oath of supremacy on all persons in offices of trust or profit suspected of adherence to the old religion. He died in 1563.
Of lord Robert Dudley it is only necessary here to observe, that his favor with the queen became daily more apparent, and began to give fears and jealousies to her best friends and wisest counsellors.
The hearts of the common people, as this wise princess well knew, were easily and cheaply to be won by gratifying their eyes with the frequent view of her royal person, and she neglected no opportunity of offering herself, all smiles and affability, to their ready acclamations.
On one occasion she passed publicly through the city to visit the mint and inspect the new coinage, which she had the great merit of restoring to its just standard from the extremely depreciated state to which it had been brought by the successive encroachments of her immediate predecessors. Another time she visited the dissolved priory of St. Mary Spittle in Bishopsgate-street, which was noted for its pulpit-cross, where, on set days, the lord-mayor and aldermen attended to hear sermons. It is conjectured that the queen went thither for the same purpose; but if this were the case, her equipage was somewhat whimsical. She was attended, as Stow informs us, by a thousand men in harness with shirts of mail and corselets and morice-pikes, and ten great pieces carried through the city unto the court, with drums and trumpets sounding, and two morice dancings, and in a cart two white bears.
Having supped one afternoon with the earl of Pembroke at Baynard's castle in Thames-street, she afterwards took boat and was rowed up and down the river, "hundreds of boats and barges rowing about her, and thousands of people thronging at the water side to look upon her majesty; rejoicing to see her, and partaking of the music and sights upon the Thames."
This peer was the offspring of a base-born son of William Herbert earl of Pembroke, and coming early to court to push his fortune, became an esquire of the body to Henry VIII. Soon ingratiating himself with this monarch, he obtained from his customary profusion towards his favorites, several offices in Wales and enormous grants of abbey-lands in some of the southern counties. In the year 1554, the 37th of his age, we find him considerable enough to procure the king's license "to retain thirty persons at his will and pleasure, over and above such persons as attended on him, and to give them his livery, badges, and cognizance." The king's marriage with Catherine Parr, his wife's sister, increased his consequence, and Henry on his death-bed appointed him one of his executors and a member of the young king's council. He was actively useful in the beginning of Edward's reign in keeping down commotions in Wales and suppressing some which had arisen in Wiltshire and Somersetshire. This service obtained for him the office of master of the horse; and that more important service which he afterwards performed at the head of one thousand Welshmen, with whom he took the field against the Cornish rebels, was rewarded by the garter, the presidency of the council for Wales, and a valuable wardship. He figured next as commander of part of the forces in Picardy and governor of Calais, and found himself strong enough to claim of the feeble protector as his reward the titles of baron Herbert and earl of Pembroke, become extinct by the failure of legitimate heirs. As soon as his sagacity prognosticated the fall of Somerset, he judiciously attached himself to the rising fortunes of Northumberland. With this aspiring leader it was an object of prime importance to purchase the support of a nobleman who now appeared at the head of three hundred retainers, and whose authority in Wales and the southern counties was equal, or superior, to the hereditary influence of the most powerful and ancient houses. To engage him therefore the more firmly in his interest, Northumberland proposed a marriage between Pembroke's son lord Herbert and lady Catherine Grey, which was solemnized at the same time with that between lord Guildford Dudley and the lady Jane her eldest sister.
But no ties of friendship or alliance could permanently engage Pembroke on the losing side; and though he concurred in the first measures of the privy-council in behalf of lady Jane's title, it was he who devised a pretext for extricating its members from the Tower, where Northumberland had detained them in order to secure their fidelity, and, assembling them in Baynard's castle, procured their concurrence in the proclamation of Mary. By this act he secured the favor of the new queen, whom he further propitiated by compelling his son to repudiate the innocent and ill-fated lady Catherine, whose birth caused her to be regarded at court with jealous eyes. Mary soon confided to him the charge of effectually suppressing Wyat's rebellion, and afterwards constituted him her captain-general beyond the seas, in which capacity he commanded the English forces at the battle of St. Quintin's. Such was the respect entertained for his experience and capacity, that Elizabeth admitted him to her privy-council immediately after her accession, and as a still higher mark of her confidence named him,—with the marquis of Northampton, the earl of Bedford, and lord John Grey, leading men of the protestant party,—to assist at the meetings of divines and men of learning by whom the religious establishment of the country was to be settled. He was likewise appointed a commissioner for administering the oath of supremacy. In short, he retained to his death, which occurred in 1570, in the 63d year of his age, the same high station among the confidential servants of the crown which he had held unmoved through all the mutations of the eventful period of his public life.