[124] Amongst Keyes’s duties was the adjudication of all disputes and brawls amongst the palace servants, whom his attendants had the power of chastising, under his orders; but he had other offices of a more dignified nature. The State Papers contain a document, signed by the queen, and dated January 2, 1558, in which certain noblemen and gentlemen are urged to levy and arm their servants, to the number of fifty each, for the relief of Calais. These auxiliaries are to be sent to Dover, where they will be received by “Thomas Keyes, the Sergeant-Porter.”
[125] Mr. Knollys was the second son of Sir Francis Knollys and of Katherine Carey, Anne Boleyn’s niece, and therefore Elizabeth’s first cousin, as well as a relative of Mr. Keyes.
[126] In a letter of August 19, 1565; No. 102, fol. 62, in the Lansdowne MSS., British Museum.
[127] This is obscure; we do not know to what letter she alludes.
[128] This sum was derived from the estates of Ferrars-Groby and Bonville, of which, since they descended to the female heirs, she should have been co-heiress with her sister Katherine, had not Elizabeth, without the slightest justification (these lands did not come under the head of the Duke of Suffolk’s confiscated property), annexed the greater part of their income.
[129] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xxxvii., No. 11. Under date of August 20, 1565.
[130] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xxxvii., No. 13.
[131] State Papers, Elizabeth, Domestic Series, vol. xxxvii., No. 13, I.
[132] The fact that, as it would appear, Lady Mary had at some time or other used this identical piece of cloth as a cloth of state, to demonstrate her relationship to royalty, probably caused the dowager duchess to speak so disrespectfully of it.
[133] Queen Elizabeth was not then at Greenwich, being absent on one of her annual “progresses.”