Chamber; and in November received his sentence. of fine and imprisonment, was again committed to the Tower in the same month, released after nine days' confinement, and was received by James with kindness in less than two months from his release. Thus neither the proceedings against the Earl, nor the conduct of the King, evinced any public resentment against the former. The large fine, too, was mitigated by the King to seven thousand pounds, but not before he had caused an examination, by a committee, into the state of his embarrassments, which he had grievously represented to His Majesty. The misfortunes of Suffolk, however, did not end here. His heir, the Lord Howard de Walden, was captain of the band of pensioners, and a younger son was attached to the Prince's household. James, with all his evident predilection for Suffolk, thought it consistent, under the circumstances, that the sons should be visited for the sins of the father; and he therefore ordered Suffolk to prevail on them, by his influence, to relinquish their employments. Suffolk entreated the King most earnestly not to insist on so cruel a measure against his innocent sons, aggravated by imposing on their father the unnatural task of advising, even compelling, them to a course that must lead to their ruin. But the King was inexorable. The Earl therefore addressed to him the following letter: MOST GRATIOUS SOVERYN,-Your princly favour in delevirng me and my wyfe out of the Tower, must and shall ever be acknowledged by us with all humble thanks; and now be pleased to geve me leave to be an humble suitor to Your Majesty that out of the tender compassion of Your pryncely hart, you wil be pleased to cast your eye upon the meserable estate of your dystressed, afflycted and owld servant, now brought into fear of recovery of your Majesty's favour; and so wretched my case ys as the lytle hope that remayned in me to lyve in Your Memory was my two Sonns' servyse to Your gratious self and the Prince. Yt is now required of me to impose upon them the resygnation of their places, which, wyth all humyleytie I beseech you to geve me leave to say, I wolde sooner use my power over them to wyll them to bury themselves quycke, than by any other way than in forcement to geve up their places of servyse, which onely remayns to me to be either my dying comfort, or my lyving torment. Besydes they are now past my government, being both married, and have children; only I have a paternall care of them, which I most humbly beseech your best judging Majesty respectyvely to way how unhappy I must of necessyty think myself yf I should be the perswader of that mysfortune to my chyldren that ther chyldren within a few years wolde curse me for, either lyving or dead. Upon all thes just considerations, most Gratious Master, geve me leave to turn my cruell and unnaturall part of perswading them to yeld to that for which I should detest myself to my humblyest desyer, upon the knees of my hart to begg humbly of Your Majesty that whatsoever favor you have ever had to me for any servyse done, that Your Majesty wyl be pleased to spare the ruyn of these two young men, whom I find so honestly dysposed in ther desyer of spending ther fortunes and lyves in Your Majesty's and your pryncely sonn's servyse, as yf your displeasure be not fully satisfyed with what I have suffered already, that you lay more upon me, and spare them. I have written to my Lord of Buckyngham to be my mediator to Your Majesty in this behalfe, which I assure myself he will nobly performe, as well as he hath formerly done, in being my means to Your Majesty in obtaining this great begunn favor. To conclude with my prayer to God that your Majesty may ever find the same zeale and love to your person in whomsoever you shall employ that my hart's sole affection dyd, and ever shall carry unto you; which God knows was and ys more to your Majesty then to my wyfe and children, and all other worldly things; which God measure to me according unto the truth, as Your Majesty's humble subject and servaunt, Weldon, a slanderous writer of this age, accuses the Countess of receiving bribes for her assistance in procuring the peace so advantageous to Spain ; and says that Audley End, that great and famous structure, had its foundation in Spanish gold. 66 Weldon," says Mr. Lodge, "well knew that the Earl derived his means of building that palace, once the glory of the county of Essex, and still, in its present state of curtailment, a magnificent mansion, from the sale of estates in the north of England, then annually let for ten thousand pounds. The building of Audley End is said to have cost one hundred and ninety thousand."+ Notwithstanding the foregoing humble expostu *This and another letter are stated to be found in the Harleian Collection. † Lodge. lation, the King still persisted; and to mark more strongly his displeasure, proceeded to something so severe, that both these young men were virtually compelled to resign their respective appointments; after which the King, having carried his point, immediately restored them both. The Earl of Suffolk was twice married: by the first marriage he had no children; the second wife was the widow of a son of Lord Rich, a celebrated beauty, by whom he had eight sons and two daughters; the younger of the latter was the notorious Frances, the wife of Essex, from whom she was divorced, and then married Carr, the favourite of James I., who created him Earl of Somerset, who, with his infamous wife, were tried, convicted, banished, and disgraced, for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. The Earl of Suffolk died at his house at Charing Cross, on the 28th of May, 1626, and was interred at Walden in Essex. GEORGE CLIFFORD, EARL OF CUMBERLAND. 1586 To 1598. GEORGE CLIFFORD was the son of Henry, second Earl of that family, whose ancestor is supposed to have come into England with William the Conqueror. His grandfather, Henry, was advanced to the dignity of Earl of Cumberland in the year 1525. George, the third and last Earl, and the thirteenth peer in regular descent, was born in the year 1558, and educated at Peter House, in the University of Cambridge, where he applied himself closely to the study of mathematics and astronomy, which probably gave him a taste for navigation; and to that succeeded those great enterprises, for which he became distinguished, and which, at an early period of his life, attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth. It appears that, in the year 1586, then in the twenty-eighth year of his age, he was employed as one of the peers who sat in judgment on Mary Queen of Scots.* About that time it was the fashion for young noblemen and sous of great * Camden. |