In the month of December was interred with much ceremony in Westminster Abbey Frances duchess-dowager of Suffolk, grandaughter to Henry VII. After the tragical catastrophe of her misguided husband and of lady Jane Grey her eldest daughter, the duchess was suffered to remain in unmolested privacy, and she had since rendered herself utterly insignificant, not to say contemptible, by an obscure marriage with one Stoke, a young man who was her master of the horse. There is a tradition, that on Elizabeth's exclaiming with surprise and indignation when the news of this connexion reached her ears, "What, hath she married her horse keeper?" Cecil replied, "Yes, madam, and she says your majesty would like to do so too;" lord Robert Dudley then filling the office of master of the horse to the queen.
The impolicy or inutility of sumptuary laws was not in this age acknowledged. A proclamation therefore was issued in October 1559 to check that prevalent excess in apparel which was felt as a serious evil at this period, when the manufactures of England were in so rude a state that almost every article for the use of the higher classes was imported from Flanders, France, or Italy, in exchange for the raw commodities of the country, or perhaps for money.
The invectives of divines, in various ages of the Christian church, have placed upon lasting record some transient follies which would otherwise have sunk into oblivion, and the sermons of bishop Pilkington, a warm polemic of this time, may be quoted as a kind of commentary on the proclamation. He reproves "fine-fingered rufflers, with their sables about their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm mittons."—"These tender Parnels," he says, "must have one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter, another for summer. One furred through, another but faced: one for the work-day, another for the holiday. One of this color, another of that. One of cloth, another of silk, or damask. Change of apparel; one afore dinner, another at after: one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey. And to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions and strange. Yea a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose than he should spend in a year. He which ought to go in a russet coat, spends as much on apparel for him and his wife, as his father would have kept a good house with."
The costly furs here mentioned had probably become fashionable since a direct intercourse had been opened in the last reign with Russia, from which country ambassadors had arrived, whose barbaric splendor astonished the eyes of the good people of London. The affectation of wearing by turns the costume of all the nations of Europe, with which the queen herself was not a little infected, may be traced partly to the practice of importing articles of dress from those nations, and that of employing foreign tailors in preference to native ones, and partly to the taste for travelling, which since the revival of letters had become laudably prevalent among the young nobility and gentry of England. That more in proportion was expended on the elegant luxuries of dress, and less on the coarser indulgences of the table, ought rather to have been considered as a desirable approach to refinement of manners than a legitimate subject of censure.
An act of parliament was passed in this year subjecting the use of enchantment and witchcraft to the pains of felony. The malcontent catholics, it seems, were accused of employing practices of this nature; their predictions of her majesty's death had given uneasiness to government by encouraging plots against her government; and it was feared, "by many good and sober men," that these dealers in the black art might even bewitch the queen herself. That it was the learned bishop Jewel who had led the way in inspiring these superstitious terrors, to which religious animosities lent additional violence, may fairly be inferred from the following passage of a discourse which was delivered by him in the queen's presence the year before.... "Witches and sorcerers within these last few years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects' most humble petition to your highness is, that the laws touching such malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great, their doing horrible, their malice intolerable, the examples most miserable. And I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject."
CHAPTER XI.
1560.
Successful campaign in Scotland.—Embassy of viscount Montacute to Spain—of sir T. Chaloner to the Emperor.—Account of Chaloner.—Letter of his respecting Dudley and the queen.—Dudley loses his wife.—Mysterious manner of her death.—Suspicion cast upon her husband.—Dudley and several other courtiers aspire to the hand of their sovereign.—Tournaments in her honor.—Impresses.—Sir W. Pickering.—Rivalry of Arundel and Dudley.