The Countess of Suffolk was, of course, an object of considerable attention. This lady was the second wife of the Chancellor, and was equally celebrated for her beauty and her rapacity. At the time of her marriage with the Earl of Suffolk she was a widow, having been united to the eldest son of Lord Rich. Her birth was not noble, but she had inherited a portion of the estate of her father, Sir Henry Knevit, a Wiltshire Knight. The Countess acquired a great ascendancy over her husband, and there is too much reason to suppose that he succumbed to the influence of her talents and her beauty, and, although he did not share in the fruits of her peculation, permitted her to indulge her avarice. So notorious were the bribes of which this lady accepted, that Lord Bacon compared her to an exchange woman who kept a shop, in which Sir John Bingley exclaimed “What do ye lack?” At length the small-pox destroyed the beauty which had been so fatal to the Countess’s peace and honour, and which had wrought much misery and disgrace to all who yielded to its influence.
But if the career of this busy female courtier were reprehensible, that of her young and beautiful daughter, the Countess of Somerset, who accompanied her mother that day, was tinged with guilt of a far deeper dye. It is difficult, in modern times, to realise to one’s mind two such women—the one availing herself of her high station and her personal attractions to enrich her family at the expense of every delicate sentiment and lofty principle; the other infuriated by a mad passion, until every womanly attribute departed, and the vengeance of a fiend alone characterised her dark career. The Countess of Somerset was, at this time, still in the bloom of her youth, being about twenty-four years of age, and the crimes which afterwards brought infamy and retribution on her, were then known only to her corrupt and remorseless heart. The Court, to use the expression of a contemporary historian, “was her nest, and she was hatched up by her mother, whom the sour breath of the age had already tainted, from whom the young lady might take such a tincture, that ease, greatness, and Court glories would more disdain and impress on her, than any way wear out and diminish.” Such was the loveliness of this guilty woman, that those who saw her face might, it has been said, “challenge nature for harbouring so wicked a heart under so sweet and bewitching a countenance:”[[67]] nor were the arts fashionable at the time forgotten; they heightened the attractions of the Countess of Somerset. “All outward adornments,” we are told, “to present beauty in her full glory, were not wanting;” among the rest, yellow starch, “the invention and foyl of jaundiced complexions, with great cut-work bands and piccadillies,” were adopted by the unhappy Lady Somerset, and were, doubtless, produced on this, as upon other festive occasions.
The Countess of Suffolk and her retinue proceeded to Magdalen College, which had been founded by Lord Chancellor Audley, the grandfather of the Earl of Suffolk.[[68]]
The youngest daughter of the Earl of Suffolk accompanied her sister and mother. This was Catherine, married to William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury. By this union long enmities between the two families of Howard and of Percy were partially reconciled; a daughter of the house of Cecil marrying eventually Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland, “whose blood,” it had been said by the Earl of Salisbury, “would not mingle in a basin,” so inborn was the hereditary hatred between the two races. This union had been one of policy alone; for the Earl of Salisbury inherited no traits of his ancestry but their titles; and his weak and abject nature revived the remembrance of only the worst parts of his father’s character; “a man,” adds Clarendon, who sums up the whole, “of no words, except in hunting and hawking.”
Lady Howard of Walden, the daughter of George Hume, Earl of Dunbar, and wife of the eldest son of the Earl of Suffolk, and Lady Howard, the wife of Thomas, Lord Howard of Charlton, his second son, completed the family array. The latter of these two ladies was a Cecil, but her claims to celebrity rest chiefly upon her being the mother of Lady Elisabeth Howard, who married the great Dryden; her two sons, Sir Robert and Edward Howard, enjoyed some portion of literary fame in their day.[[69]]
The first night’s entertainment at Cambridge was a comedy, acted by the gownsmen of St. John’s College. This was a sort of burlesque, ridiculing Sir Edward Radcliffe, the King’s physician; it proved, according to public opinion, but “a lean argument, and though it was larded with pretty shows at the beginning and end, and with somewhat too broad speech for such a presence, still it was dry.”
On the following evening there was performed in Clare Hall the famous play of “Ignoramus” a burlesque. This production was attributed to George Buggle, a Fellow of Clare Hall. It was written and spoken in Latin, nor was it even printed at the time when it agitated the polite and learned society by which its points and satire were so keenly enjoyed. The manuscript was, it appears, destroyed; and it was not until ten years after the death of its reputed author that it was thought prudent to print it, having been taken down from the mouth of the author. The design of this popular comedy was to ridicule the Common Law, and no one enjoyed the satire more than the august individual whose office it was to uphold the laws. Never, it has been said, did anything fascinate the King’s attention or suit his taste so much as this representation, and he commanded several repetitions by the same performers. “Ignoramus” was not, however, readily forgiven or forgotten by that body whom it attacked; and, whilst the King and his Court derived the most lively pleasure from its mingled invective and burlesque, the lawyers were greatly offended by its pungent satire. Successive publications afterwards appeared, taxing the justice of this attack upon the legal profession, and written with much bitterness.
During the performance of this play, the King’s attention was not, however, wholly riveted upon “Ignoramus” and his associates; among the audience in Clare Hall, George Villiers, decorated with all the care that his mother’s pride and affection could suggest, appeared, resplendent in beauty. “The King,” to use the expression of a contemporary writer, “fell into admiration of him,” so that he became confounded between his delight at the appearance of Villiers and the pleasure of the play. To both of these contending emotions, James, with his usual absence of dignity, gave a free expression. “This,” says Roger Coke, “set the heads of the courtiers at work how to get Somerset out of favour, and to bring Villiers in.”[in.”][[70]]
Ample time was permitted during the tedious performance for the King to observe the young adventurer who sought his favour, and for busy politicians to build upon the absurd partiality of the weak old King. The representation of “Ignoramus,” with its dull pedantic jests, and its personalities, long since passed away and forgotten, lasted eight hours; the second time it commenced at eight in the evening, and was not concluded until one in the morning.
The performers were chiefly Fellows of Clare Hall and of Queen’s College, and their efforts met with the greatest applause. Thus, in Bishop Corbet’s “Grave Poem,” written in 1614, to celebrate the occasion, it is said:—