young lady Derby,' wearing about her neck and in her bosom, a dainty tablet, the queen, espying it, asked, 'What fine jewel that was?' Lady Derby was anxious to excuse shewing it; but the queen would have it. She opened it, and, finding it to be Mr. Secretary's picture, she snatched it from lady Derby's neck, and tied it upon her own shoe, and walked about with it there. Then she took it from thence, and pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time there also. When Mr. secretary Cecil was told of this, he made these verses, and caused Hales to sing them in his apartments. It was told her majesty that Mr. Secretary Cecil had rare music and songs in his chamber. She chose to hear them, and the ditty was sung." The poetry was not worth quoting; but the verses, it seems, expressed, "that he repines not, though her majesty may please to grace others; for his part, he is content with the favour his picture received." This incident took place when the royal coquette was in her seventieth year. Strange scenes are occasionally revealed when the mystic curtain, that veils the penetralia of kings and queens from vulgar curiosity, is, after the lapse of centuries, withdrawn by the minuteness of biographical research. What a delicious subject for an "H. B." caricature would the stately Elizabeth and her pigmy secretary have afforded. Cecil was, however, at that time the creature of the expecting impatient heir of his royal mistress, with whom he maintained almost a daily correspondence. One day, a packet, from king James, was delivered to him in the presence of the queen, which he knew contained allusions to his secret practices with her successor. Elizabeth's quick eye, doubtless, detected the furtive glance, which taught him to recognise that it was a dangerous missive; and she ordered him instantly to open and shew the contents of his letters to her. A timely recollection of one of her weak points saved the wily minister from detection. "This packet," said he, as he slowly drew forth his knife and prepared to cut the strings, which fastened it—“ this packet has a strange and evil smell. Surely it has not been 1 Lodge's Illustrations, vol. ii. 576. Elizabeth, eldest daughter to the earl of Oxford, by Cecil's sister, lady Anne, married the earl of Derby, 1594. As the lady was Cecil's niece, it is singular that she shewed reluctance to display her uncle's picture. ! in contact with infected persons or goods." Elizabeth's dread of contagion prevailed over both curiosity and suspicion, and she hastily ordered Cecil to throw it at a distance, and not bring it into her presence again till it had been thoroughly fumigated.' He, of course, took care to purify it of the evidences of his own guilty deeds. James I. obtained a great ascendancy in the councils of Elizabeth during the last years of her life, although the fact was far from suspected by the declining queen, who, all the while, flattered herself that it was she who, from the secret recesses of her closet, governed the realm of Scotland, and controlled the actions of her royal successor. The circumstance of his being her successor, however, gave James that power in his reversionary realm of England, of which, he afterwards boasted to the great Sully, the ambassador from France, telling him, "that it was he who actually governed England for several years before the death of Elizabeth, having gained all her ministers, who were guided by his directions in all things." Even Harrington, dearly as he loved his royal mistress, shewed signs and tokens of this worship paid to the rising sun, when he sent a jewel in the form of a dark-lantern, as a new year's gift to James, signifying that the failing lamp of life waxed dim with the departing queen, and would soon be veiled in the darkness of the tomb. The queen still took pleasure, between whiles, in witnessing the sports of young people. It is noted in the Sidney papers, "that on St. Stephen's day, in the afternoon, Mrs. Mary," some maiden of the court, "danced before the queen two galliards, with one Mr. Palmer, the admirablest dancer of this time; both were much commended by her majesty ; then she (Mrs. Mary) danced with him a coranto. The queen kissed Mr. William Sidney in the presence, as she came from the chapel; my lady Warwick presented him.” Elizabeth's correspondence with lord Mountjoye is among the extravaganzas of her private life. He was her deputy in Ireland, the successor of Essex, formerly a rival favourite, and was forced to assume, like his predecessor and Raleigh, the airs of a despairing lover of the queen, whenever he had any point to carry with her, either for his public or private interest. His letters generally begin with, "Dear Sove Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland. reign," "Sacred Majesty," "Sacred and dear Sovereign;" his phraseology, though very caressing, is not so fulsome as that of Essex, nor so audacious, in its flights of personal flattery, as that of Raleigh; however, considering that Elizabeth was nearly seventy, and Mountjoye, a handsome man of fiveand-thirty, the following passage must have been difficult of digestion, written on some reverse in Ireland, for which he anticipated blame at court: "This, most dear sovereign, I do not write with any swelling justification of myself. If any impious tongue do tax my proceedings, I will patiently bless it, that by making me suffer for your sake—I that have suffered for your sake a torment above all others, a grieved and despised love." 1 Elizabeth answered this deceitful effusion with the following absurd billet: THE QUEEN TO LORD MOUNTJOYE. "O what melancholy humour hath exhaled up into your brain from a full fraughted heart that should breed such doubt-bred upon no cause given by us at all, never having pronounced any syllable upon which such a work should be framed! There is no louder trump that may sound out your praise, your hazard, your care, your luck, than we have blasted in all our court, and elsewhere, indeed! Well, I will attribute it to God's good providence for you, that (lest all these glories might elevate you too much) he hath suffered (though not made) such a scruple to keep you under his rod, who best knows we have more need of bits than spurs. Thus 'valeant ista amara; ad Tartaros eat melancholia!' "Your sovereign, E. R." "Endorsed in the hand of Robert Cecil :- A copy of her majesty's letter, lest you cannot read it,' then in lord Mountjoye's hand, 'received in January, at Arbracken.' It is by lady Southwell, one of queen Elizabeth's ladies immediately about her person, that the melancholy marvels attending her death are recorded. This narrative is still in existence in the original MSS. the costume of place, time, and diurnal routine, render it a precious document. After making every allowance for the marvellousness of the writer, it evidently depicts the departure of a person unsettled in religion, and uneasy in conscience. The deceiver was, in reality, passionately in love with Penelope, lady Rich, the beautiful sister of Essex. ? It seems the letter was an autograph, but so illegible, being written but a few weeks before the queen's death, that her secretary was obliged to copy it that its sense might be comprehended. It is at Stonyhurst, endorsed by the hands of Persons. "The relation of the lady Southwell of the late Queen's) death, po. Aprilis, 1607." "Her majesty," says lady Southwell, "being in very good health one day, sir John Stanhope, vice-chamberlain, and sir Robert Cecil's dependent and familiar, came and presented her majesty with a piece of gold, of the bigness of an angel, full of characters, which he said an old woman in Wales had bequeathed to her (the queen) on her deathbed, and thereupon he discoursed how the said testatrix, by virtue of the piece of gold, lived to the age of 120 years, and in that age having all her body withered and consumed, and wanting nature to nourish her she died, commanding the said piece of gold to be carefully sent to her majesty, alleging further, that as long as she wore it on her body she could not die. The queen in confidence took the said gold, and hung it about her neck." This fine story has crept very widely into history, and even into ambassadors' despatches; but the genealogy of the magic piece of gold, has never before been duly defined. There can be little doubt, that Elizabeth and her minister were absurd enough to accept the talisman, but its adoption was followed by a general breaking up of her constitution, instead of its renewal. "Though she became not suddenly sick, yet she daily decreased of her rest and feeding, and within fifteen days,' continues lady Southwell, "she fell downright ill, and the cause being wondered at by my lady Scrope, with whom she was very private and confidant, being her near kinswoman, her majesty told her, (commanding her to conceal the same), that she saw one night her own body exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire.' This vision was at Whitehall, a little before she departed for Richmond, and was testified by another lady, who was one of the nearest about her person, of whom the queen demanded, 'Whether she was not wont to see sights in the night?' telling her of the bright flame she had seen." This is a common deception of the sight, in a highly vitiated state of bile; but, in the commencement of the 17th century, educated individuals were as ignorant of physiology as infants of three years old of the present day; these imaginative vagaries are very precious, as proofs of the gradual progress of knowledge, and its best result, wisdom. The next anecdote, however, goes far beyond all our present discoveries in optics: "Afterwards, in the melancholy of her sickness reign," "Sacred Majesty," "Sacred and dear Sovereign;" his phraseology, though very caressing, is not so fulsome as that of Essex, nor so audacious, in its flights of personal flattery, as that of Raleigh; however, considering that Elizabeth was nearly seventy, and Mountjoye, a handsome man of fiveand-thirty, the following passage must have been difficult of digestion, written on some reverse in Ireland, for which he anticipated blame at court: "This, most dear sovereign, I do not write with any swelling justification of myself. If any impious tongue do tax my proceedings, I will patiently bless it, that by making me suffer for your sake—I that have suffered for your sake a torment above all others, a grieved and despised love."1 Elizabeth answered this deceitful effusion with the following absurd billet: THE QUEEN TO LORD MOUNTJOYE. “O what melancholy humour hath exhaled up into your brain from a full fraughted heart that should breed such doubt-bred upon no cause given by us at all, never having pronounced any syllable upon which such a work should be framed! There is no louder trump that may sound out your praise, your hazard, your care, your luck, than we have blasted in all our court, and elsewhere, indeed! Well, I will attribute it to God's good providence for you, that (lest all these glories might elevate you too much) he hath suffered (though not made) such a scruple to keep you under his rod, who best knows we have more need of bits than spurs. Thus 'valeant ista amara; ad Tartaros eat melancholia!' "Your sovereign, E. R." "Endorsed in the hand of Robert Cecil :'-' A copy of her majesty's letter, lest you cannot read it,' then in lord Mountjoye's hand, 'received in January, at Arbracken.'" It is by lady Southwell, one of queen Elizabeth's ladies immediately about her person, that the melancholy marvels attending her death are recorded. This narrative is still in existence in the original MSS. the costume of place, time, and diurnal routine, render it a precious document. After making every allowance for the marvellousness of the writer, it evidently depicts the departure of a person unsettled in religion, and uneasy in conscience. 1 The deceiver was, in reality, passionately in love with Penelope, lady Rich, the beautiful sister of Essex. ? It seems the letter was an autograph, but so illegible, being written but a few weeks before the queen's death, that her secretary was obliged to copy it that its sense might be comprehended. It is at Stonyhurst, endorsed by the hands of Persons. "The relation of the lady Southwell of the late Queen's) death, po. Aprilis, 1607." |