When he came into the Queen’s presence, she fell into a kind railing, demanding of him how he durst go over without her leave. “Serve me so,” quoth she, “once more, and I will lay you fast enough for running; you will never leave till you are knocked on the head, as that inconsiderate fellow Sidney was; you shall go when I send. In the meantime, see that you lodge in the Court” (which was then at Whitehall), “where you may follow your book, read, and discourse of the wars.” But to our purpose. It fell out happily to those, and, as I may say, to these times, that the Queen during the calm time of her reign was not idle, nor rocked asleep with security, for she had been very provident in the reparation and augmentation of her shipping and ammunition, and I know not whether by a foresight of policy, or any instinct, it came about, or whether it was an act of her compassion, but it is most certain she sent no small troops to the revolted States of Holland, before she had received any affront from the King of Spain, that might deserve to tend to a breach of hostility, which the Papists maintain to this day was the provocation to the after-wars; but, omitting what might be said to this point, these Netherland wars were the Queen’s seminaries or nursery of very many brave soldiers, and so likewise were the civil wars of France, whither she sent five several armies.
They were the French scholars that inured the youth and gentry of the kingdom, and it was a militia, where they were daily in acquaintance with the discipline of the Spaniards, who were then turned the Queen’s inveterate enemies.
And thus have I taken in observation her dies Halcyonii—i.e., these years of hers which were more serene and quiet than those that followed, which, though they were not less propitious, as being touched more with the points of honour and victory, yet were they troubled and loaded ever, both with domestic and foreign machinations; and, as it is already quoted, they were such as awakened her spirits and made her cast about her to defend rather by offending, and by way of provision to prevent all invasions, than to expect them, which was a piece of the cunning of the times; and with this I have noted the causes and principium [136] of the wars following, and likewise points to the seed-plots from whence she took up these brave men and plants of honour who acted on the theatre of Mars, and on whom she dispersed the rays of her grace; who were persons, in their kinds of care, virtuous, and such as might, out of their merit, pretend interest to her favours, of which rank the number will equal, if not exceed, that of her gown-men, in recount of whom I will proceed with Sir Philip Sidney.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
He was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and President of Wales, a person of great parts, and of no mean grace with the Queen; his mother was sister to my Lord of Leicester, from whence we may conjecture how the father stood up in the sphere of honour and employments, so that his descent was apparently noble on both sides; and for his education, it was such as travel and the University could afford none better, and his tutors infuse; for, after an incredible proficiency in all the spheres of learning, he left the academical for that of the Court, whither he came by his uncle’s invitation, famed after by noble reports of his accomplishments, which, together with the state of his person, framed by a natural propensity to arms, soon attracted the good opinions of all men, and was so highly praised in the esteem of the Queen, that she thought the Court deficient without him; and whereas, through the fame of his desert, he was in election for the kingdom of Pole, [138] she refused to further his preferment, it was not out of emulation of advancement, but out of fear to lose the jewel of her time. He married the daughter and sole heir of Sir Frances Walsingham, the Secretary of State, a lady destined to the bed of honour, who, after his deplorable death at Zutphen, in the Low Countries, where he was at the time of his uncle Leicester’s being there, was remarried to the Lord of Essex, and, since his death, to my Lord of St. Albans, all persons of the sword, and otherwise of great honour and virtue.
They have a very quaint conceit of him, that Mars and Mercury fell at variance whose servant he should be; and there is an epigrammatist that saith that Art and Nature had spent their excellences in his fashioning, and, fearing they could not end what they had begun, they bestowed him up for time, and Nature stood mute and amazed to behold her own mark; but these are the particulars of poets.
Certain it is he was a noble and matchless gentleman, and it may be said justly of him, without these hyperboles of faction, as it was of Cato Uticensis, that he seemed to be born only to that which he went about, vir satilis ingenii, as Plutarch saith it; but to speak more of him were to make them less.
WALSINGHAM.
Sir Francis Walsingham, as we have said, had the honour to be Sir Philip Sidney’s father-in-law; he was a gentleman at first, of a good house, and of a better education, and from the University travelled for the rest of his learning. Doubtless he was the only linguist of his times, how to use his own tongue, whereby he came to be employed in the chiefest affairs of State.
He was sent Ambassador to France, and stayed there Legar long in the heat of the civil wars, and at the same time that Monsieur was here a suitor to the Queen; and, if I be not mistaken, he played the very same part there as since Gondomar did here. [140a] At his return he was taken principal Secretary, and for one of the great engines of State, and of the times, high in his mistress’s (the Queen’s) favour, and a watchful servant over the safety of his mistress.