Travels in England During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Part 7

We set out from London in a boat, and fell down the river, leaving Greenwich, which we have spoken of before, on the right hand.

Barking, a town in sight on the left.

Gravesend, a small town, famous for the convenience of its port; the largest Dutch s.h.i.+ps usually call here. As we were to proceed farther from hence by water, we took our last leave here of the n.o.ble Bohemian David Strziela, and his tutor Tobias Salander, our constant fellow-travellers through France and England, they designing to return home through Holland, we on a second tour into France; but it pleased Heaven to put a stop to their design, for the worthy Strziela was seized with a diarrhoea a few days before our departure, and, as we afterwards learned by letters from Salander, died in a few days of a violent fever in London.

Queenborough: we left the castle on our right; a little farther we saw the fis.h.i.+ng of oysters out of the sea, which are nowhere in greater plenty or perfection; witness Ortelius in his Epitome, &c.

Whitstable; here we went ash.o.r.e.

Canterbury; we came to it on foot; this is the seat of the Archbishop, Primate of all England, a very ancient town, and, without doubt, of note in the time of the Romans.

Here are two monasteries almost contiguous, namely of Christ and St.

Augustine, both of them once filled with Benedictine Monks: the former was afterwards dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, the name of Christ being obliterated; it stands almost in the middle of the town, and with so much majesty lifts itself, and its two towers, to a stupendous height, that, as Erasmus says, it strikes even those who only see it at a distance with awe.

In the choir, which is shut up with iron rails, are the following monuments:-

King Henry IV., with his wife Joan of Navarre, of white marble.

Nicholas Wootton, Privy Counsellor to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, Kings and Queens of England.

Of Prince Edward, Duke of Aquitaine and Cornwall, and Earl of Chester.

Reginald Pole, with this inscription:

"The remains of Reginald Pole, Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury."

Cardinal Chatillon.

We were then shown the chair in which the bishops are placed when they are installed. In the vestibule of the church, on the south side, stand the statues of three men armed, cut in stone, who slew Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a saint for this martyrdom; their names are adjoined -

Tusci, Fusci, Berri. {18}

Being tired with walking, we refreshed ourselves here with a mouthful of bread and some ale, and immediately mounted post-horses, and arrived about two or three o'clock in the morning at Dover. In our way to it, which was rough and dangerous enough, the following accident happened to us: our guide, or postillion, a youth, was before with two of our company, about the distance of a musketshot; we, by not following quick enough, had lost sight of our friends; we came afterwards to where the road divided; on the right it was down- hill and marshy, on the left was a small hill: whilst we stopped here in doubt, and consulted which of the roads we should take, we saw all on a sudden on our right hand some hors.e.m.e.n, their stature, dress, and horses exactly resembling those of our friends; glad of having found them again, we determined to set on after them; but it happened, through G.o.d's mercy, that though we called to them, they did not answer us, but kept on down the marshy road at such a rate, that their horses' feet struck fire at every stretch, which made us, with reason, begin to suspect they were thieves, having had warning of such; or rather, that they were nocturnal spectres, who, as we were afterwards told, are frequently seen in those places: there were likewise a great many Jack-a-lanterns, so that we were quite seized with horror and amazement! But, fortunately for us, our guide soon after sounded his horn, and we, following the noise, turned down the left-hand road, and arrived safe to our companions; who, when we had asked them if they had not seen the hors.e.m.e.n who had gone by us, answered, not a soul. Our opinions, according to custom, were various upon this matter; but whatever the thing was, we were, without doubt, in imminent danger, from which that we escaped, the glory is to be ascribed to G.o.d alone.

Dover, situated among cliffs (standing where the port itself was originally, as may be gathered from anchors and parts of vessels dug up there), is more famous for the convenience of its port, which indeed is now much decayed, and its pa.s.sage to France, than for either its elegance or populousness: this pa.s.sage, the most used and the shortest, is of thirty miles, which, with a favourable wind, may be run over in five or six hours' time, as we ourselves experienced; some reckon it only eighteen to Calais, and to Boulogne sixteen English miles, which, as Ortelius says in his "Theatrum,"

are longer than the Italian.

Here was a church dedicated to St. Martin by Victred, King of Kent, and a house belonging to the Knights Templars; of either there are now no remains. It is the seat of a suffragan to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, when the Archbishop is employed upon business of more consequence, manages the ordinary affairs, but does not interfere with the archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Upon a hill, or rather rock, which on its right side is almost everywhere a precipice, a very extensive castle rises to a surprising height, in size like a little city, extremely well fortified, and thick-set with towers, and seems to threaten the sea beneath. Matthew Paris calls it the door and key of England; the ordinary people have taken into their heads that it was built by Julius Caesar; it is likely it might by the Romans, from those British bricks in the chapel which they made use of in their foundations. See Camden's "Britannia."

After we had dined, we took leave of England.

FRAGMENTA REGALIA

OR, OBSERVATIONS ON THE LATE QUEEN ELIZABETH, HER TIMES, AND FAVOURITES. WRITTEN BY Sir Robert Naunton, MASTER OF THE COURT OF WARDS. A.D. 1641.

To take her in the original, she was the daughter of King Henry VIII. by Anne Boleyn, the second of six wives which he had, and one of the maids of honour to the divorced Queen, Katharine of Austria (or, as the now styled, Infanta of Spain), and from thence taken to the royal bed.

That she was of a most n.o.ble and royal extract by her father will not fall into question, for on that side was disembogued into her veins, by a confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the greatest houses in Christendom: and remarkable it is, considering that violent desertion of the Royal House of the Britons by the intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the Normans, that, through vicissitude of times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the sceptre should fall again and be brought back into the old regal line and true current of the British blood, in the person of her renowned grandfather, King Henry VII., together with whatsoever the German, Norman, Burgundian, Castilian, and French achievements, with their intermarriages, which eight hundred years had acquired, could add of glory thereunto.

By her mother she was of no sovereign descent, yet n.o.ble and very ancient in the family of Boleyn; though some erroneously brand them with a citizen's rise or original, which was yet but of a second brother, who (as it was divine in the greatness and l.u.s.tre to come to his house) was sent into the city to acquire wealth, AD AEDIFICANDAM ANTIQUAM DOMUM, unto whose achievements (for he was Lord Mayor of London) fell in, as it is averred, both the blood and inheritance of the eldest brother for want of issue males, by which acc.u.mulation the house within few descents mounted, IN CULMEN HONORIS, and was suddenly dilated in the best families of England and Ireland: as Howard, Ormond, Sackville, and others.

Having thus touched, and now leaving her stirp, I come to her person, and how she came to the crown by the decease of her brother and sister.

Under Edward VI. she was his, and one of the darlings of Fortune, for, besides the consideration of blood, there was between these two princes a concurrency and sympathy of their natures and affections, together with the celestial bond (confirmative religion), which made them one; for the King never called her by any other appellation but his sweetest and dearest sister, and was scarce his own man, she being absent; which was not so between him and the Lady Mary.

Under her sister {19} she found her condition much altered; for it was resolved, and her destiny had decreed it, for to set her apprentice in the school of affliction, and to draw her through that ordeal-fire of trial, the better to mould and fas.h.i.+on her to rule and sovereignty: which finished, Fortune calling to mind that the time of her servitude was expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered into her custody a sceptre as the reward of her patience; which was about the twenty-sixth of her age: a time in which, as for her internals grown ripe, and seasoned by adversity, in the exercise of her virtue; for, it seems, Fortune meant no more but to show her a piece of variety and changeableness of her nature, but to conduct her to her destiny, I.E., felicity.

She was of person tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well favoured, but high-nosed; of limbs and features neat; and, which added to the l.u.s.tre of these external graces, of a stately and majestic comportment, partic.i.p.ating in this more of her father than of her mother, who was of an inferior alloy, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more DEBONAIRE and affable: virtues which might well suit with majesty, and which, descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a sweeter temper, and endeared her more to the love and liking of the people, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular princess.

The atrocity of the father's nature was rebated in her by the mother's sweeter inclinations; for (to take, and that no more than the character out of his own mouth) HE NEVER SPARED MAN IN HIS ANGER, NOR WOMAN IN HIS l.u.s.t.

If we search farther into her intellectuals and abilities, the wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and necessitated. She was learned, her s.e.x and time considered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem and in fas.h.i.+on, the former ages being overcast with the mists and fogs of the Roman {20} ignorance; and it was the maxim that over-ruled the foregoing times, that IGNORANCE WAS THE MOTHER OF DEVOTION. Her wars were a long time more in the auxiliary part, and a.s.sistance of foreign princes and states, than by invasion of any; till common policy advised it, for a safer way, to strike first abroad, than at home to expect the war, in all which she was ever felicitous and victorious.

The change and alteration of religion upon the instant of her accession to the crown (the smoke and fire of her sister's martyrdoms scarcely quenched) was none of her least remarkable actions; but the support and establishment thereof, with the means of her own subsistence amidst so powerful enemies abroad, and those many domestic practices, were, methinks, works of inspiration, and of no human providence, which, on her sister's departure, she most religiously acknowledged--ascribing the glory of her deliverance to G.o.d above; for she being then at Hatfield, and under a guard, and the Parliament sitting at the self-same time, at the news of the Queen's death, and her own proclamation by the general consent of the House and the public sufferance of the people, falling on her knees, after a good time of respiration, she uttered this verse of the Psalm:

"A DOMINO FACTUM EST ISTUD, ET EST MIRABILE IN OCULIS NOSTRIS." {21}

And this we find to this day on the stamp of her gold, with this on her silver:

" POSUI DEUM ADJUTOREM MEUM." {22}

Her ministers and instruments of State, such as were PARTICIPES CURARUM, or bore a great part of the burthen, were MANY, and those MEMORABLE; but they were only FAVOURITES, and not MINIONS; such as acted more by HER princely rules and judgments, than by their OWN wills and appet.i.tes; for we saw no Gaveston, Vere, or Spencer, to have swayed alone, during forty-four years, which was a well-settled and advised maxim; for it valued her the more, it awed the most secure, it took best with the people, and it staved off all emulations, which are apt to rise and vent in obloquious acrimony even against the prince, where there is ONE ONLY admitted into high administrations.

A MAJOR PALATII

The princ.i.p.al note of her reign will be, that she ruled much by faction and parties, which she herself both made, upheld, and weakened, as her own great judgment advised; for I do dissent from the common and received opinion, that my Lord of Leicester was ABSOLUTE and ALONE in her GRACE; and, though I come somewhat short of the knowledge of these times, yet, that I may not err or shoot at random, I know it from a.s.sured intelligence that it was not so; for proof whereof, amongst many (that could present), I will both relate a story, and therein a known truth, and it was thus: Bowyer, the Gentleman of the Black Rod, being charged by her express command to look precisely to all admissions in the Privy Chamber, one day stayed a very gay captain (and a follower of my Lord of Leicester) from entrance, for that he was neither well known, nor a sworn servant of the Queen; at which repulse, the gentleman (bearing high on my lord's favour) told him that he might, perchance, procure him a discharge. Leicester coming to the contestation, said publicly, which was none of his wonted speeches, that he was a knave, and should not long continue in his office; and so turning about to go to the Queen, Bowyer, who was a bold gentleman and well-beloved, stepped before him, and fell at Her Majesty's feet, relates the story, and humbly craves Her Grace's pleasure, and in such a manner as if he had demanded whether my Lord of Leicester was King, or Her Majesty Queen: whereunto she replied (with her wonted oath, G.o.d'S- DEATH) "My lord, I have wished you well, but my favour is not so locked up for you that others shall not partic.i.p.ate thereof; for I have many servants unto whom I have, and will, at my pleasure, bequeath my favour, and likewise resume the same; and if you think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming; {23} I will have here but one MISTRESS, and no MASTER; and look that no ill happen to him, lest it be severely required at your hands:" which so quailed my Lord of Leicester, that his faint humility was, long after, one of his best virtues.

Moreover, the Earl of Suss.e.x, then Lord Chamberlain, was his professed antagonist to his dying day; and for my Lord Hunsdown, and Sir Thomas Sackville, after Lord Treasurer, who were all contemporaries, he was wont to say of them, that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were NOLI ME TANGERE, implying that they were not to be contested with, for they were, indeed, of the Queen's nigh kindred.

From whence, and in many more instances, I conclude that she was absolute and sovereign mistress of her graces, and that all those to whom she distributed her favours were never more than tenants-at- will, and stood on no better terms than her princely pleasure, and their good behaviour.

And this also I present as a known observation, that she was, though very capable of counsel, absolute enough in her own resolution; which was ever apparent even to her last, and in that of her still aversion to grant Tyrone {24} the least drop of her mercy, though earnestly and frequently advised thereunto, yea, wrought only by her whole Council of State, with very many reasons; and, as the state of her kingdom then stood, I may speak it with a.s.surance, necessitated arguments.