[79] There was an instance of this kind, and perhaps the latest upon record in our history, in the 13th year of the queen, when “a combat was appointed to have been fought for a certain manor, and demain lands belonging thereto, in Kent.” The matter was compromised in the end. But not till after the usual forms had been observed, by the two parties: of which we have a curious and circumstantial detail in Holinshed’s Chronicles, p. 1225.
[80] Alluding to a tract, so called, by Gascoigne, an attendant on the court, and poet of that time, who hath given us a narrative of the entertainments that passed on this occasion at Kenelworth.
[81] Hence then it is that a celebrated dramatic writer of those days represents the entertainment of MASKS and SHOWS, as the highest indulgence that could be provided for a luxurious and happy monarch. His words are these;
“Music and poetry are his delight.
Therefore I’ll have Italian masques by night,
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
Like Sylvan Nymphs, my pages shall be clad:
My men, like Satyrs, grazing on the lawns,
Shall, with their goat-feet dance the antic hay:
Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian’s shape,
With hair, that gilds the water as it glides,
Crownets of pearls about his naked arms,
And in his sportful hands an olive-tree,
Shall bathe him in a spring, and there hard-by
One like Actæon, peeping through the grove,
Shall by the angry Goddess be transform’d—
Such things as these best please his Majesty.”
Marlow’s Edward II.
And how exactly this dramatist painted the humour of the times, we may see from the entertainment provided, not many years after, for the reception of King James at Althorp in Northamptonshire; where this very design of Sylvan Nymphs, Satyrs, and Actæon, was executed in a masque by B. Jonson.
[82] Whom his friend Mr. Selden characterizeth in this manner,
“Omnia carmina doctus
Et calles mythων plasmata et historiam.”
Tit. of Hon. p. 466.
[83] Sacrifices, says Plutarch, without chorusses and without music, we have known: but for poetry, without fable and without fiction, we know of no such thing. Θυσίας μὲν ἀχόρους καὶ ἀναύλους ἴσμεν· οὐκ ἴσμεν δὲ ἄμυθον οὐδὲ ἀψευδῆ ϖοίησιν. De aud. poët. vol. i. p. 16.
[84] This will be admitted, if a calculation said to have been made by themselves of their number at that time may be relied on—“They make reasoning (saith Sir Edwin Sandys in his Speculum Europæ, written in 1699) forty hundred sure catholics in England, with four hundred English Roman priests to maintain that militia,” p. 157.
[85] Mr. Camden owns that the Irish rebellion, which in the end became so dangerous, had been “encouraged by a slighting of it, and a gripple-handedness of England.” [Hist. of Eliz. B. iv.]—To the same purpose another eminent writer of that time—“Before the transmitting of the last great army, the forces sent over by Q. Elizabeth were NOT of sufficient power to break and subdue all the Irishry.” At last, however, “The extreme peril of losing the kingdom; the dishonour and danger that might thereby grow to the crown of England; together with a just disdain conceived by that great-minded queen, that so wicked and ungrateful a rebel should prevail against her, who had ever been victorious against all her enemies; did move and almost ENFORCE her to send over that mighty army.” [Sir. J. Davies, Discovery of the State of Ireland, p. 97. Lond. 1613.]