'If, Mildred, by thy care, he be sent back whom I request,
A sister good thou art to me, yea better, yea the best.
But if with stays thou keep'st him still, or send'st where seas may part,
Then unto me a sister ill, yea worse, yea none thou art.
If go to Cornwall he shall please, I peace to thee foretell;
But, Cecil, if he set to Seas, I war denounce. Farewell.'
Fortunately, thanks to the poetic skill of my friend Mr. H. G. Hewlett, I am able to give his smoother and more classical rendering of the lines:
'Mildred! if truly my sister, the best, the one of all others,
Make it thy care to send back him whom I love to my arms.
If by neglect thou withholdest thine aid, and art cause of his exile,
Wicked, the worst, wilt thou be, sister in nowise of mine.
Should he to Cornwall return, all is peace with the Cecils and kindness;
If o'er the sea he depart, count on my hatred! Farewell!'
I do not know the exact date of Dame Katherine Killigrew's death; but she was alive on the 22nd May, 1576. She was buried in the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, in the Vintry Ward of the City of London, where there is—or rather was, for the church is destroyed—'her elegant monument;' and many Greek and Latin verses were addressed to her memory by her sister Elizabeth and others. She thus wrote her own epitaph:
'Dormio nunc Domino, Domini virtute resurgam;
Et σωτῆρα meum came videbo meâ.
Mortua ne dicar, fruitur pars altera Christo:
Et surgam capiti tempore tota meo.'
By his second wife, Jael de Peigne, the friend and hostess of Isaac Casaubon, our Sir Henry left two sons, Sir Joseph and Sir Henry Killigrew, and one daughter; but nearly all traces of Sir Joseph and his sister Jane are lost, save what is interesting to the genealogist alone.
But Henry was a man of some mark. He was one of those loyal Members of the House of Commons who refused to join the Parliament against the Crown, and is described by Clarendon as 'a person of entire affections to the King,' and as commanding a troop of horse on Charles I.'s march from Shrewsbury to London in 1642.[76] The Lords Capel and Hopton were particular friends of his; and with such Royalist connexions and predilections, one is not surprised to learn that, together with Messrs. Coryton, Scawen, and Roscarroth, he was elected one of the Royal Commissioners for the County of Cornwall; and that, when Pendennis Castle was besieged, he was one of its stout defenders, remaining in it to the very last, and striving, both by sword and pen, to shake off the grip of the Roundhead bulldogs; all in vain, as we have already seen. The following letter from Lord Jermyn, who had married his cousin Katherine, serves to show, at once how sore were the straits of the besieged, and how highly their efforts were rated by Queen Henrietta Maria. (It will be remembered that Harry Jermyn was commander-in-chief of the army which marched from York to Oxford for the relief of Charles I., under the Queen, who used to style herself, 'She Majesty Generalissima over all.' It is believed that relations of too intimate a character existed between the Queen and her commander-in-chief.)
'My dear Cousin Harry,
'I have received yours, and truly do, with all the grief and respect that you can imagine to be in any body, look upon your sufferings and bravery in them; and do further assure you that the relief of so many excellent men, and preservation of so important a place, is taken into all the considerations that the utmost possibility, that can be in the Queen to contribute to either, can extend to. The same care is in the prince, from whose own hand you will particularly understand it.