16 QUEEN ELIZABETH. By statesman, wit, philosopher, and sage, The master-spirits of a giant age. There leans the Bard who sang by Avon's tide; There frown the chiefs who marred the Armada's pride. But Time and Grief have changed the Lion Queen; The dying monarch clasps her throbbing head. The one prized ring that sparkles on her hand; When Love and Essex swayed their witching power. And woman's treacherous friendship, sealed his fate, And yet thou doom'dst him to a traitor's grave; It was in the great gallery, built by her father at Whitehall, that Elizabeth received the deputation from Parliament which humbly and respectfully "moved her grace to marriage;" and hence also it was that she proceeded in procession, in 1559-60, to meet her first Parliament. "On Wednesday, Jan. 25," writes Holinshed, "the Parliament began, the Queen's Majesty riding in her parliament robes, from her Palace of Whitehall to the Abbey Church of Westminster, with the Lords Spiritual and Temporal attending her, likewise in their parliament robes." THE TILT YARD AT WHITEHALL. 17 Elizabeth, like her father, took an especial delight in the Tilt Yard. Here, in 1581, when the Commissioners arrived in England to treat concerning her projected marriage with the Duc d'Anjou, Elizabeth entertained her illustrious guests with one of the most magnificent tournaments that had ever been held in England. She herself was seated in the gallery overlooking the Tilt Yard, "called," writes Holinshed, "and not without reason, the castle or fortress of perfect Beauty." Among the defenders of the castle of Beauty we find the Queen's devoted champion, Sir Henry Lee, that gallant Knight of the Garter whose vow it had been to present himself armed at the Tilt Yard at Whitehall on the 27th of November of every year till disabled by age. The challengers of Beauty's fortress personating the four foster-children of Desire, were the Earl of Arundel, the Lord Windsor, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Fulke Greville. This "amorous foolery," as it is styled by Pennant, commenced with the challengers summoning the fortress to surrender in a "delectable song," commencing with the following verses : "Yield, yield, O yield, you that this fort do hold, Yield, yield, O yield ;—trust not to beauty's pride; Claims but to gain his due ;—yield, yield, O yield!" The fortress, however, refusing to surrender, "two cannon were fired off-one with sweet powder, and the other with. sweet water—and after there were store of pretty scaling ladders, and then the footmen threw flowers and such fancies against the walls, with all such devices as might seem shot from Desire." Suddenly, while this pleasant VOL. II. 2 18 ELIZABETH'S FONDNESS FOR MASQUES. siege was being carried on, the defenders of Beauty, clad in sumptuous apparel, entered the lists, and attacking the challengers and their partisans, a regular "tourneie" took place, in which Sir Henry Lee "brake his six staves," and many others "jousted right valiantly," till twilight separated the combatants. "These courtly triumphs," as they are described by Holinshed-"set forth with the most costlie braverie and gallantness"-were continued the following day, concluding with a fantastic pageant in which the challengers made their submission to the Queen, and expressed their sense of their own "degeneracy and unworthyness in making violence accompany Desire." Elizabeth retained her taste for these splendid buffooneries to the close of her long life. Even when she had entered upon her sixty-seventh year, and when her heart was professedly in the bloody tomb of her beloved Essex, we find her taking a prominent part in a masque given by Lord Cobham at Blackfriars, on the occasion of Lord Herbert's marriage with a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. "The Herberts, every Cock-pit day, Do carry away, The gold and glory of the day." Being, in the course of the evening, "wooed to dance" by a masque who personated Affection-" Affection!" she exclaimed bitterly. "Affection is false!" And yet we find the royal lady, though with wrinkled face, little eyes, hooked nose, and black teeth, as Hentzner describes her at this time, actually rising up and dancing. "Her Majesty is very well," writes another contemporary; "this day she appoints to see a Frenchman do feats in the Conduit Court. To-morrow she hath commanded the bears, the bull, and the * Lodge's "Illustrations." HENTZNER'S VISIT TO ENGLAND. 19 ape to be baited in the Tilt Yard; upon Wednesday she will have solemn dancing."* Such was the extraordinary woman who could admirably direct the affairs of a great monarchy at one moment, and yet attend a bull-bait or dance a minuet the next; she who could sign the deathwarrant of a sister-queen, or of a beloved favourite, with the same pen with which she had previously translated a play of Euripides or an oration of Isocrates. To Hentzner, the German traveller who visited England at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the palace of Whitehall appeared to be a "truly royal" one. The royal library, he says, was well stored with Greek, Latin, Italian and French books, and among the rest was a little French work, upon parchment, written in Elizabeth's own hand, and addressed to her father.† Hentzner's further description of Whitehall is chiefly confined to a catalogue of curiosities to be seen in the various apartments. They consisted principally of embroidered quilts, silver cabinets containing writing materials, the passion of our Saviour in painted glass, a chest containing the Queen's jewellery, a piece of clockwork surmounted by an Ethiopian riding on a rhinoceros, and other fantastic articles, the names of which are not worth transcribing. It was from the orchard at Whitehall, where the Lords of the Council had assembled after the breath quitted the body of Elizabeth, that they despatched a messenger to James the First, acquainting him of his accession to the English throne. At the same time he was proclaimed King 'Sydney Papers." + To the most high, puissant, and redoubted Prince, Henry VIII. of the name, King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith ; Elizabeth, his most humble daughter, health and obedience." Hentzner's "Journey to England," p. 29. 20 AMUSEMENTS OF JAMES THE FIRST. in front of the palace by Sir Robert Cecil. His arrival at Whitehall took place on the 7th of May, 1603, a few days after which we find him conferring the honour of knighthood in the garden of the palace on the principal law officers, his gentlemen-ushers, and others. Among the former was the great Lord Bacon. The tastes and amusements introduced at Whitehall by the Scottish monarch differed widely in general from the chivalrous pastimes and amusements which had distinguished the court of his predecessor. "The King," writes Sir Anthony Weldon, "would come forth after supper to see pastimes and fooleries,. in which Sir Edward Zouch, Sir George Goring, and Sir John Finett were the chief and master-fools and surely this fooling got them more than any other's wisdom, far above them in desert. Zouch's part was to sing bawdy songs and tell bawdy tales, Finett to compose these songs. Then were a set of fiddlers brought up on purpose for this fooling; and Goring was master of the game of fooleries, sometimes presenting David Droman and Archie Armstrong on the back of the other fools, to tilt one at the other, till they fell together by the ears: sometimes the property was presented by them in antic dances. But Sir J. Millisent, who was never known before, was commended for notable fooling, and so was, indeed, the best extemporary fool of them all." These buffooneries, however, were in a great degree redeemed by the more refined taste of the King's consort, Anne of Denmark, under whose patronage were represented at Whitehall those magnificent masques, many of them the productions of Ben Jonson, which, we are told, made "the nights more costly than the days." During the reign of James the First there occurred more than one incident tending to throw an interest over the |