Naunton, in his "Fragmenta Regalia," speaking of Paulet marquis of Winchester and lord-treasurer, who, he says, had then served four princes "in as various and changeable season that well I may say, neither time nor age hath yielded the like precedent," thus proceeds: "This man being noted to grow high in her" (queen Elizabeth's) "favor, as his place and experience required, was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he stood up for thirty years together amidst the changes and reigns of so many chancellors and great personages. 'Why,' quoth the marquis, 'ortus sum ex salice, non ex quercu.' (By being a willow and not an oak). And truly the old man hath taught them all, especially William earl of Pembroke, for they two were ever of the king's religion, and over-zealous professors. Of these it is said, that both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left them and came on trust to the court; where, upon the bare stock of their wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well, that they got, spent, and left, more than any subjects from the Norman conquest to their own times: whereunto it hath been prettily replied, that they lived in a time of dissolution.—Of any of the former reign, it is said that these two lived and died chiefly in the queen's favor."
Among the means employed by Pembroke for preserving the good graces of the new queen, the obvious one of paying court to her prime favorite Robert Dudley was not neglected; and lord Herbert, whose first marriage had been contracted in compliance with the views of the father, now formed a third in obedience to the wishes of the son. The lady to whom he was thus united by motives in which inclination had probably no share on either side, was the niece of Dudley and sister of sir Philip Sidney, one of the most accomplished women of her age, celebrated during her life by the wits and poets whom she patronized, and preserved in the memory of posterity by an epitaph from the pen of Ben Jonson which will not be forgotten whilst English poetry remains.
The arrival of ambassadors of high rank from France, on occasion of the peace recently concluded with that country, afforded the queen an opportunity of displaying all the magnificence of her court; and their entertainment has furnished for the curious inquirer in later times some amusing traits of the half-barbarous manners of the age. The duke de Montmorenci, the head of the embassy, was lodged at the bishop of London's, and the houses of the dean and canons of St. Paul's were entirely filled with his numerous retinue. The gorgeousness of the ambassador's dress was thought remarkable even in those gorgeous times. The day after their arrival they were conducted in state to court, where they supped with the queen, and afterwards partook of a "goodly banquet," with all manner of entertainment till midnight. The next day her majesty gave them a sumptuous dinner, followed by a baiting of bulls and bears. "The queen's grace herself" stood with them in a gallery, looking on the pastime, till six o'clock, when they returned by water to sup with the bishop their host. On the following day they were conducted to the Paris Garden, then a favorite place of amusement on the Surry side of the Thames, and there regaled with another exhibition of bull and bear baiting. Two days afterwards they departed, "taking their barge towards Gravesend," highly delighted, it is to be hoped, with the elegant taste of the English in public diversions, and carrying with them a number of mastiffs, given them to hunt wolves in their own country.
But notwithstanding all outward shows of amity with France, Elizabeth had great cause to apprehend that the pretensions of the queen of Scots and her husband the dauphin, who had openly assumed the royal arms of England, might soon reinvolve her in hostilities with that country and with Scotland; and it consequently became a point of policy with her to animate by means of military spectacles, graced with her royal presence and encouragement, the warlike preparations of her subjects. She was now established for a time in her favorite summer-palace of Greenwich, and the London companies were ordered to make a muster of their men at arms in the adjoining park.
The employment of fire-arms had not as yet consigned to disuse either the defensive armour or the weapons of offence of the middle ages; and the military arrays of that time amused the eye of the spectator with a rich variety of accoutrement far more picturesque in its details, and probably more striking even in its general effect, than that magnificent uniformity which, at a modern review, dazzles but soon satiates the sight.
Of the fourteen hundred men whom the metropolis sent forth on this occasion, eight hundred, armed in fine corselets, bore the long Moorish pike; two hundred were halberdiers wearing a different kind of armour, called Almain rivets; and the gunners, or musketeers, were equipped in shirts of mail, with morions or steel caps. Her majesty, surrounded by a splendid court, beheld all their evolutions from a gallery over the park gate, and finally dismissed them, confirmed in loyalty and valor by praises, thanks, and smiles of graciousness.
A few days afterwards the queen's pensioners were appointed "to run with the spear," and this chivalrous exhibition was accompanied with such circumstances of romantic decoration as peculiarly delighted the fancy of Elizabeth. She caused to be erected for her in Greenwich park a banqueting-house "made with fir poles and decked with birch branches and all manner of flowers both of the field and the garden, as roses, julyflowers, lavender, marygolds, and all manner of strewing-herbs and rushes." Tents were also set up for her household, and a place was prepared for the tilters. After the exercises were over, the queen gave a supper in the banqueting-house, succeeded by a masque, and that by a splendid banquet. "And then followed great casting of fire and shooting of guns till midnight."
This band of gentlemen pensioners, the boast and ornament of the court of Elizabeth, was probably the most splendid establishment of the kind in Europe. It was entirely composed of the flower of the nobility and gentry, and to be admitted to serve in its ranks was during the whole of the reign regarded as a distinction worthy the ambition of young men of the highest families and most brilliant prospects. Sir John Holles, afterwards earl of Clare, was accustomed to say, that while he was a pensioner to queen Elizabeth, he did not know a worse man in the whole band than himself; yet he was then in possession of an inheritance of four thousand a year. "It was the constant custom of that queen," pursues the earl's biographer, "to call out of all counties of the kingdom, the gentlemen of the greatest hopes and the best fortunes and families, and with them to fill the more honorable rooms of her household servants, by which she honored them, obliged their kindred and alliance, and fortified herself[44]."
On this point of policy it deserves to be remarked, that however it might strengthen the personal influence of the sovereign to enroll amongst the menial servants of the crown gentlemen of influence and property, it is chiefly perhaps to this practice that we ought to impute that baseness of servility which infected, with scarcely one honorable exception, the public characters of the reign of Elizabeth.
On July 17th the queen set out on the first of those royal progresses which form so striking a feature in the domestic history of her reign. In them, as in most of the recreations in which she at any time indulged herself, Elizabeth sought to unite political utilities with the gratification of her taste for magnificence, and especially for admiration. It has also been surmised, that she was not inattentive to the savings occasioned to her privy purse by maintaining her household for several weeks in every year at the expense of her nobles, or of the towns through which she passed; and it must be admitted that more than one disgraceful instance might be pointed out, of a great man obliged to purchase the continuance or restoration of her favor by soliciting the almost ruinous honor of a royal visit. On the whole, however, her deportment on these occasions warrants the conclusion, that an earnest and constant desire of popularity was her principal motive for persevering to the latest period of her life to encounter the fatigue of these frequent journeys, and of the acts of public representation which they imposed upon her.