derived the pet-name of Steenie, by which the new favourite was designated in the royal family. The king first noticed George Villiers, at his visit to Cambridge in 1615. Just before this time the murder of Overbury began to be whispered against Somerset, who was, in a few days, arrested with his wife, and both were conveyed to the Tower.'

The king stood on the punctilio that the queen should recommend Villiers to the office of his confidential secretary, perhaps because this office would render him a frequent witness of their domestic life, and because part of her own private correspondence would pass through the hands of this young man. Yet she demurred at the idea of being thus rendered responsible for his conduct, in the giddy career of royal favouritism she perceived he was destined to run. Experience, as she advanced towards middle life, had given her some insight into human character, and the probable results of an intoxicating prosperity. When archbishop Abbott took it upon him to obtain from the queen the required formal recommendation of Villiers to her royal spouse, she made this sensible answer:

"My lord, neither you nor your friends know what you desire. I know your master better than you all. If Villiers once gets this place, those who shall have most contributed to his preferment will be the first sufferers by him. I shall be no more spared than the rest. The king will, himself, teach him to despise us and to treat us with pride and scorn. The young proud favourite will soon fancy that he is obliged but to his own merit for his preferment."

It is, however, certain, whatever were her misgivings on the subject, that she complied with the request of the archbishop, and introduced Villiers to his first step in courthonour in the following manner:-On St. George's day, her majesty (being with prince Charles, in the privychamber,) told the king she had a new candidate for the honour of knighthood, worthy of St. George himself. She

A long series of trials took place for poisoning and witchcraft, and a horrible effusion of blood ensued of the minor agents in the murder. The malice and folly of the countess of Somerset had set a great number of atrocious agents at work; and the lieutenant of the Tower, with some of the lowest servants of that prison, were executed, yet the countess was spared, though she pleaded guilty. Somerset never would acknowledge guilt; nor would any jury, in these days, have found him guilty.

VOL. VII.

Archbishop Abbott's Journal, quoted in Kennet.

H H

then requested the prince, her son, to reach her his father's sword, which he did, drawing it out of the sheath. She advanced to the king with the sword; he affected to be afraid of her approach, with the drawn weapon; but, kneeling before him, she presented to him George Villiers, and guided the king's hand in giving him the accolade of knighthood. James, either being very awkward, or too powerfully refreshed at the festival of St. George, had nearly thrust out his new favourite's eye, with the sword, in the course of this ceremony.

Perhaps Villiers conducted himself more gratefully to the queen than she anticipated, for no traces exist of any quarrel between them. Some autograph letters are extant, in her hand, by which it appears she entered into a friendly compact with him, for the reformation of the king's unmannerly habits and personal ill-behaviour.

My kind dog, I have receased & our letter which is

verge auch to me now de verie well in Lugging the sowes cave, and fi thank you for it, and would have yow do so still upon dition that pow continue a Watch full dog to him and be

to

con

atwaies true to him, so wishing you all happines

To the vicount &

villers $

Anna 20

The truth was, king Jamie, when his animal spirits ran away with the little discretion he possessed, was wont to comport himself, according to the apt simile of sir Walter

Scott, "exceedingly like an old gander, running about and cackling all manner of nonsense." His loving queen likened him, less reverently, to a sow. And her majesty charged her protegé, George Villiers, to give his royal master some hint, imperceptible to the by-standers, when he was transgressing the bounds of what she considered kingly behaviour. Thus, Villiers was established as a sort of monitor or flapper of Laputa, to recal the dignity of the monarch, when it was going astray. He was compared, in the circle of the royal family, to a faithful dog, who lugged a sow by the ear when transgressing into forbidden grounds, and the queen facetiously called the admonitions of the favourite, "lugging the sow by the ear;" without such coarse and quaint comparison, it is very likely the admonitions would not have been graciously received. The following letter, copied from the original autograph, was written in answer to a letter of Villiers, informing queen Anne, "that, in obedience to her desire, he had pulled the king's ear till it was as long as any sow's." Some other notes, by the queen, on the same subject, follow. She seldom wrote a long letter. "My kind Dogge,

"Your letter hath bin acceptable to me. I rest already assured of your carefulness. Yowe may tell your maister that the king of Denmark hath sent me twelve fair mares, which I intend to put in Byfield Parke; where being the other day a hunting, I could find but very few deare, but great store of other cattle, as I shall tell your maister myself when I see him. I hope to meet you all at Woodstock, at the time appointed, till when I wish you all happiness and contentment.

" ANNA R.

"I thank yow for your paines taken in remembering the pailing of me parke. I will doe yow anie service I can."

QUEEN ANNE TO KING JAMES.

"I am glad that our brother's horse does please you, and that my dog Stennie does well; for I did command him that he should make your ear hang like a sow's lug, and when he comes home I will treat him better than any other dog."

Sometimes these admonitions were to remind the king of certain promises he had made for the advancement of her majesty's pecuniary interests, for she was very extravagant, and always in want of money.'

When the king was settled with a confidant of more respectability than Somerset, the queen ceased to interfere with state affairs. This is the only instance in which she had thrown her influence into the scale since her arrival in

1 Harleian MSS. fol. 6986.

.

England; her contemporaries gave her credit for considerable abilities, if she had chosen to plunge into the troubled sea of politics; she manifested more wisdom by avoiding it, and by amusing herself with her masques and festivals, which fostered the fine arts, and encouraged the talents of her two especial protegés, Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. She was a good linguist, since, in addition to the French, German, and English languages, she was an Italian scholar, for cardinal Bentivoglio, then resident as nuncio at the court of Brussels, who had visited England, mentions that she possessed this accomplishment. He praises, too, her beauty excessively, but perhaps he was no great judge of female charms, and her pictures at Hampton Court will scarcely bear out the assertion; when he speaks of her knowledge of his own elegant language, it will be allowed that is a matter on which he was fully able to decide.

The queen's bad taste in dress led her to exaggerate, rather than banish, the hideous costume prevalent in all the courts of Europe for half a century. This style of dress would have caricatured the Venus de Medicis herself, had she assumed farthingale and tête de mouton. There is a picture of this queen when dancing merrily, with a very selfsatisfied smirk, in a corner of one of the rooms at Hampton Court. A little, absurd, white beaver hat is perched at the top of her elaborately curled hair, and three little droll feathers peep over the summit. No one can look at the portrait without laughing, yet the face is rather handsome, and the design very animated; the figure seems as if it meant to dance into the midst of the room. The dress is white, with a waist five inches longer than any natural waist, and withal, she wears a farthingale so enormous that her hands, which are certainly beautiful, just rest on it, with the arms extended, and hang over the extreme verge of its rotundity. Think of a dress that would not let a woman's arms hang down by her sides, if she chose! In fact, a farthingale must have been a habitation, rather than a garment,' and must have been as troublesome to carry about as a snail-shell is to its animal. The inconveniences

1 In a trial for witchcraft, in Lancashire, Margaret Hardman, a young lady who thought herself bewitched, thus described the sort of garment she chose her familiar to provide: "I will have a French farthingale. I will have it low before, and high behind, and broad on either side, that I may lay my arms on it."

attending this ridiculous dress at last exhausted the patience of king James, who issued a formidable proclamation' against the whole costume, declaring that no lady or gentleman clad in a farthingale should come to see any of the sights or masques at Whitehall, for the future, because "this impertinent garment took up all the room in his court."

A most ridiculous incident had thus roused the legislatorial wrath of king James. At one of the masques, performed by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, in Whitehall palace, there was a great anxiety manifested by the ladies to obtain places, but unfortunately, four or five were wedged in the passage by the size of their farthingales; others pressed on, and likewise stuck fast. Thus, the way was utterly blocked up with ladies, pushing, squeezing, and remonstrating with no little din of eloquence, while the beautiful masque was played out to the king and queen almost solus. Next day, the king issued his fulmination against farthingales, and it appears, from this proclamation, that the gentlemen, willing to be of as much consequence in the world as the ladies, had padded, or wadded their garments in proportion. Mr. Chamberlayne, whose letters preserve the memory of this proclamation, expresses his satisfaction, "that it would certainly cause the extirpation of this unbecoming costume." Greatly mistaken was he, when he supposed it was in the power of a royal edict to banish a fashion, before the ladies themselves were tired of it. If the king objected to farthingales, he should have commenced by regulating the costume of her majesty, the leader of fashion, but this was an experiment he was not very likely to try. In the very face of his proclamation, the obnoxious garments continued to increase in amplitude for the remainder of his life, and very perversely went out of fashion at his funeral.

The king went early in the new year of 1616 to Newmarket, but the severe weather prevented his favourite amusements. His majesty, therefore, having nothing better to do, vented his spleen in a humorous sonnet to January, in which he says:

"But now his double face is still disposed,

With Saturn's aid, to freeze us at the fire,

The proclamation was to his own court and guests. It was not a sumptuary law, ratified by act of parliament, like those in which Elizabeth set the fashions of her subjects.