By her mother she was of no sovereign descent, yet noble and very ancient in the family of Bullen; 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 lustre to come to his house) was sent into the city to acquire wealth, ad ædificandam antiquam domum, unto whose atchievements (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 accumulation 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 stipe, I come to her person, and how she came to the crown by the decease of her brother and sister. Under Edward the Sixth, 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 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 fashion 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 scepter, 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 shew 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 lustre of these external graces, of a stately and majestick comportment, participating 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 iking 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 lust'. If we search further into her intellectuals and abilities, the wheels Queen Mary, 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 sex and time considered, beyond common belief: for, letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem, and in fashion, the former ages being overcast with the mists and fogs of the Roman 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 assistance 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 felicious 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 subsistance amidst so powerful enemies abroad, and those many domestick 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 God 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 publick 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 ||. And this we find to this day on the stamp of her gold, with this on her silver: Posui Deum adjutorem meum §. 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 appetites; 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. viz. Popish. + See Manley's State of Europe, printed 1689, in a subsequent volume, A MAJOR PALATII. THE principal 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 disassent 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 assured 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 staid 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 publickly, 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, God's-death) my Lord, I have wished you well, but my favour is not so locked up for you, that others shall not participate 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 *; 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 Sussex, 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 tehants 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 *i e. I will confine you. ever apparent even to her last, and in that of her still aversion to grant Tyrone 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 assurance, necessitated arguments. If we look into her inclination as it was disposed to magnificence or frugality, we shall find in them many notable considerations, for all her dispensations were so poised, as though discretion and justice had both decreed to stand at the beam, and see them weighed out in due proportion, the maturity of her paces and judgments meeting in a concurrence; and that in such an age that seldom lapseth to excess. To consider them a-part, we have not many precedents of her liberality, nor any large donatives to particular men; my Lord of Essex's Book of Parks excepted, which was a princely gift; and >some more of a lesser size, to my Lord of Leicester, Hatton, and others t. Her rewards chiefly consisted in grants and leases of offices, and places of judicature, but for ready money, and in great sums, she was very 'sparing; which we may partly conceive, was a virtue rather drawn out of necessity than her nature; for she had many layings-out, and as her wars were lasting, so their charge increased to the last period. And I am of opinion with Sir Walter Rawleigh, that those many brave men of her times, and of the militia, tasted little more of her bounty, than in her grace and good word with their due entertainment; for she ever paid her soldiers well, which was the honour of her times, and more than her great adversary of Spain could perform; so that, when we come to the consideration of her frugality, the observation will be little more, than that her bounty and it were so woven together, that the one was stained by an honourable way of sparing. The Irish action we may call a malady, and a consumption of her times; for it accompanied her to her end; and it was of so profuse and vast an expence, that it drew near unto a distemperature of state, and of passion in herself; for, towards her last, she grew somewhat hard to please, her armies being accustomed to prosperity, and the Irish prosecution not answering her expectation, and her wonted success; for, it was a good while an unthrifty and inauspicious war, which did much disturb and mislead her judgment; and, the more, for that it was a precedent taken out of her own pattern. For, as the queen, by way of division, had, at her coming to the crown, supported the revolted states of Holland, so did the King of Spain turn the trick upon herself, towards her going out, by cherishing the Irish rebellion; where it falls into consideration, what the state of this kingdom, and the crown revenues, were then able to endure and embrace. If we look into the establishments of those times with the best of the Irish army, counting the defeatures of Blackwater, with all the prece dent expences, as it stood from my Lord of Essex's undertaking of the surrender of Kingsalé, and the General Mountjoy; and, somewhat after, + See her last speech in vol. 11. p. 352. The Irish Rebel, tal. not. we shall find the horse and foot troops were, for three or four years together, much about twenty-thousand, besides the naval charge, which was a dependant of the same war, in that the queen was then forced to keep in continual pay a strong fleet at sea, to attend the Spanish coasts and parts, both to alarm the Spaniards, and, to intercept the forces, designed for the Irish assistance; so that the charge of that war alone did cost the queen three-hundred-thousand pounds per annum, at least, which was not the moiety of her other disbursements and expences; which, without the publick aids, the state of the royal receipts could not have much longer endured; which, out of her own frequent letters and complaints to the deputy Mountjoy, for cashiering of that list as soon as he could, might be collected, for the queen was then driven into a strait. We are naturally prone to applaud the times behind us, and to vilify the present; for, the concurrent of her fame carries it to this day, how loyally and victoriously she lived and died, without the grudge and grievance of her people; yet the truth may appear without retraction, from the honour of so great a princess. It is manifest, she left more debts unpaid, taken upon credit of her privy-seals, than her progenitors did, or could have taken up, that were an hundred years before her; which was no inferior piece of state, to lay the burthen on that house*, which was best able to bear it at a dead lift, when neither her receipts could yield her relief, at the pinch, nor the urgency of her affairs endure the delays of parliamentary assistance. And, for such aids, it is likewise apparent, that she received more, and that with the love of her people, that any two of her predecessors, that took most; which was a fortune strained out of the subjects, through the plausibility of her comportment, and (as I would say, without offence) the prodigal distribution of her grace to all sorts of subjects; for, I believe, no prince living, that was so tender of honour, and so exactly stood for the preservation of sovereignty, was so great a courtier of the people, yea, of the commons, and that stooped and declined low in presenting her person to the publick view, as she passed in her progress and perambulations, and in her ejaculations of her prayers on the people. And, truly, though much may be written in praise of her providence, and good husbandry, in that she could, upon all good occasions, abate her magnanimity, and therewith comply with the parliament, and so always come off both with honour and profit; yet must we ascribe some part of the commendation, to the wisdom of the times, and the choice of parliament-men; for 1 said † not, that they were at any time given to any violent or pertinacious dispute; the elections being made of grave and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the house with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the publick good, and rather to comply, than to contest with majesty, neither dare I find t, that the house was weakened and pestered, through the admission of too many young heads, as it hath been of latter times; which remembers me of the Recorder Martin's speech, about the truth of our late sovereign lord, al. Say. *al, Horse. + al. Find, |