fasten on me; and, above all things, I fear them, because they have been for men in England.

F. Why, I prithee, whither wilt thou fly in this distress?

S. I know not whither, unless I shall do, as the fool said he would, put on a clean shirt and drown myself.

F. Then what will become of thy soul?

S. Psha, I will have a pardon from the pope before I do it.

F. That was well thought on indeed; but hark, I prithee, what dost thou think of the pope's imperious government? Dost thou think it to be lawful according to the commands of God?

S. Faith, I cannot tell; but I had a little pity and compunction rose the other day in my stomach towards the protestants, but they were presently down again; I hope it is the right way.

F. I hope so too; for, if it be not, I protest we are in the wrong way, and a wrong way will lead us to a wrong place, and that wrong place will not yield us half the delight we expect; wherefore it behoves us to take heed what we do, and, for all the pox, look to ourselves.

S. As you think, so think I; for certainly we are guided by some wandering planet; for such sudden changes in such great personages, as I have seen many, stand for example to confirm their assertion to be true. But, faith, methinks I could even love the English heretical religion; what musick hath transformed me froin myself? Where is now the pride of our ancient religion, that it is thus turned topsyturvey? What, have we lost our boasted freedom? What unknown desires are these which invade and take possession of my frighted soul? Are all those virtuous objects, which I heretofore perceived in our Roman religion, vanished? Have I stood the shocks of so many fierce wars for religion sake, stopped mine ear against all Syren notes that heresy ever sung? To draw my barque of faith (that with wonder hath kept a constant and honoured course in this channel of my religion) to be carried into the gulf of a continual heresy: But now, methinks, I feel my soul return again, and answer: I will first with mine own hands dig up a grave to bury the momental heap of all my years, before I will change my plighted faith unto the church of Rome.

F. Well said at last; in troth, I was afraid that the beast of Rome had been some kin to a stag, and had used to shed her horns; but thank God it is no worse.

S. If I have offended, at the worst, to die is a full period to calamity.

F. But is there nothing to be felt after death? Dost thou think that thou thus singest a requiem to thy soul before thou diest? I prithee, consider, and tell me what thou thinkest on it?

S. Why, I have heard, that there is a place called the Elysian fields, where those that have done well shall rest in peace. I have heard again, that our English hereticks hold, that there is only a heaven and a hell: those that do well shall enjoy the joys of heaven, and those that do ill shall feel the torments of hell: but our pope makes us believe that there is a purgatory; but, faith, I cannot tell what to think of it.

F. Well, farewel, brother, I protest, I persuade myself that the world is almost at its end, for I fear it is buzzed abroad in England, that the monuments of the kingdom shall all be pulled down, and crosses, of which, I have heard, that Abington and Cheapside crosses excel all: also, there must be no organs, to the utter undoing of all singing men. But, brother, farewel; the news you hear, I pray, inform me of.

S. I will; farewel, farewel.

FRAGMENTA REGALIA:

OR,

OBSERVATIONS ON THE LATE QUEEN ELISABETH,
HER TIMES AND FAVOURITES,

Written by Sir Robert Naunton, Master of the Court of
Wards.

Printed Anno Dom. 1641, Quarto, containing forty-nine Pages.

To take her in the original, she was the daughter of King Henry the

Eighth, by Ann Bullen, 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 stiled Infanta of Spain) and from thence taken to the royal bed.

That she was of a most noble 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 scepter 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 the Seventh, together with whatsoever the German, Norman, Burgundian, Castilian, and French atchievements, with their intermarriages, which eight-hundred years had acquired, could add of glory thereunto.

H S

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 wheel

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 itt, 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 acces sion 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 stayed 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.
This is ihe work of the Lord, and it is wonderful in our sight.
I have chosen God for my help.

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 contempora ries; 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