From Westminster, the 22nd of May, 1559.

To our very good Lord, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord President of the Queen's Majesty's Council in the North Parts.

*Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, was a son of Robert Bacon, of Drinkston in Suffolk, a gentleman of a very ancient family in that county, by Isabella, daughter of John Cage, of Pakenham. He was born at Chiselhurst in Kent, and educated at Cambridge, and became eminent in the profession of the law in the reign of Henry VIII. He held the offices of Solicitor of the Court of Augmentations, and Attorney to the Court of Wards, under that Prince; from whom he afterwards obtained a grant of certain manors belonging to the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, which are still possessed by his family. He had no further promotion till the accession of Elizabeth, when his family connection with Cecil contributed perhaps as much as his own fame to procure her favour to him. She appointed him to preside at the disputation held in her first year between the principal men of the two religions, and gave him the custody of the great seal; uniting, for the first time, the power and dignity of the office of Chancellor to the title of Lord Keeper. This extensive authority, however, was soon abridged; for in 1564, being suspected of having favoured some popular arguments for the succession of the house of Grey, he fell into disgrace, and was forbad to appear at Court, or to interfere in any public affairs except those of the Chancery, where he continued to preside, with an unblemished reputation, till his death.

Sir Nicholas Bacon died at his house near Charing Cross, called York Place, Feb. 20, 1579, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral; having been twice married: first to Jane, daughter of William Fernely, of West Creting in Suffolk, who brought him three sons (of whom Nicholas, the eldest, was the first Baronet created upon the invention of that title) and three daughters; se

No. III.

(Talbot Papers, Vol. E. fol. 29.)

SIR ROBERT DUDLEY

TO THE EARL OF SHREWSBURY.

My good Lord,

WHERE my servants, bringers hereof unto you, are such as are players of interludes; and, for the same, have the license of divers of my Lords here, under their seals and hands, to play in divers shires within the realm under their authorities, as may amply appear unto your Lordship by the same license; I have thought, among the rest, by my letters to beseech your good Lordship's conformity to them; likewise that they may have your hand and seal to their license for the like liberty in

condly, to Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gidea Hall in Essex, by whom he had two sons; Anthony; and Francis, afterwards the famous Lord Verulam.

+ Sir Richard Sackville, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, and Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer ; father to the first Earl of Dorset. He died April 21, 1566.

Sir Edward Rogers, of Cannington in the county of Somerset, Knight, son and heir of George Rogers, of Luppitt in Devonshire, a younger son of the family of Rogers, of Bradford in Wiltshire. This gentleman, who fled into France to avoid the persecution in the late reign, probably owed his promotion in this merely to his steady adherence to the Protestant persuasion, for he seems to have been otherwise a man of no consequence. He was sworn of Elizabeth's Privy Council at her accession, and was appointed Comptroller of the Household on the death of Sir Thomas Parry, in December, 1560. He married Mary, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Lisle, of the ancient Lisles of Hampshire, and had issue Sir George, who married Jane, daughter and heir of Edmund Winter, of Clyffe, in that county, and died in 1582. Stowe records that Henry Rogers, Esq., one of Sir Edward's descendants, gave £5000 towards the rebuilding of Aldermary Church, in London, after the fire.

Yorkshire; being honest men, and such as shall play none other matters, I trust, but tolerable and convenient; whereof some of them have been beard here already before divers of my Lords. For whom I shall have good cause to thank your Lord, and to remain your Lordship's to the best that shall lie in my little power. And thus I take my leave of your good Lordship. From Westminster, the

of June, 1559.

Your good Lordship's assured,

R. DUDLEY.*

Sir Robert Dudley, fifth son of John, late Duke of Northumberland. As some passage of this extraordinary person's public conduct appears on almost every page of the history of this reign, and because it will be necessary to make several detached observations on his many letters in this collection, I shall say little of him here, except with regard to some circumstances of his private life which are not generally known. He had been included in the attainder of his family, but was restored in blood by Queen Mary, who appointed him, when a very young man, Master of the Ordnance at the siege of St. Quintin. Elizabeth overwhelmed him with dignities; giving him the Garter, while a Commoner; creating him Baron of Denbigh, and Earl of Leicester; and investing him with the order of St. Michael, which the King of France, by way of compliment, had requested her to confer on two of her subjects. He was likewise Master of the Horse, Steward of the Household, Chancellor of Oxford, Ranger of the Forests south of Trent, and Captain-general of the English forces in the Netherlands; and, as though the great ancient offices of his country were not sufficient for the gratification of his ambitious temper, a patent was preparing at the time of his death for one before unheard of -the Queen's Lieutenant in the government of England and Ireland. He was distinguished by the elegance of his manners, and the profuseness of his expenses, and affected a great degree of piety, and a strict purity of conduct. To these plausible appearances, though unpossessed of either wisdom or virtue, he owed the maintenance of his power to the last, against a strong party at Court, and even against the Queen herself, who would gladly have pulled him down when those motives which doubtless produced her first favours to him had lost their force. The most material circumstances of his political history never appeared to public

No. IV.

(Talbot Papers, Vol. E. fol. 53.)

LORDS OF THE COUNCIL TO LORD TALBOT.*

AFTER our most hearty commendations to your good Lordship. Where the Queen's Majesty pre

view, for he was the darkest character of his time, and delighted in deriving the success of his schemes from the operation of remote causes, and the agency of obscure instruments. It is highly probable that the Queen of Scots, and the Duke of Norfolk, were sacrificed to this crooked sort of policy; a conjecture which tends to wipe out somewhat, though, alas! but little, of the bloody stain which those enormities have left on Elizabeth's memory.

He married, first, Anne, daughter and heir to Sir John Robsart (for a particular account of whose murder, and the suspicions that fell on her husband, see Ashmole's History of Berks): secondly, Douglas, daughter of William Lord Howard of Effingham, and widow of John Lord Sheffield, by whom he had a son, Sir Robert, who will be frequently mentioned in the papers of the next reign. But soon after, having conceived a violent passion for Lettice, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys, and widow of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose late death had been attended by strong indications of foul play, he wedded her, and disowned his former marriage, and its unfortunate offspring. Douglas submitted patiently, and lived for some time in the obscurity which suited her disgraced character, till Leicester having attempted to take her off by poison, she married Sir Edward Stafford of Grafton, in hopes of shielding herself against the Earl's future malignity by affording him in her own conduct a presumptive evidence in favour of his allegations. All the curious circumstances relating to this double bigamy may be found in Dugdale's Warwickshire. Touched, however, at last with remorse, he left his great estates to his brother, Ambrose Earl of Warwick, only for life, and gave the inheritance to Sir Robert, who wandered abroad till his father's death, when he returned, and challenged his right to his family dignities; which being denied, he determined to quit for ever a country in which he had experienced so much injustice. To complete this long scene of iniquity, James I. seized the estates by virtue of Mary's statute of fugitives; but, in order to avoid the odium which so tyrannical an act justly merited, obliged Sir Ro

* This nobleman, George Lord Talbot, succeeded to the Earldom on the death of his father, Earl Francis, on the 21st of September following.

sently, by her most honorable letters, commits unto you a special charge of great importance, tending to the necessary service of the realm for defence of the same against certain attempts of the French, lately disclosed though not published; and with her Highness's said letters, there are addressed a certain number of particular letters to divers persons within that county of Derby, of good livelihood, to will them with all speed to make ready certain horsemen, and to send them to Newcastle, so as the same may be there by the day appointed in your letters from her Majesty; we have thought meet, besides the matter contained in her Majesty's letters, to signify part of our minds for the furtherance of the same service.

First, you shall do well to send for the Sheriff, and some other of the principal in every quarter of the shire, and confer with them how this charge and service may be best performed; and use their helps therein. And if any of the same shall be appointed by her Majesty to send out any, you shall procure them to make haste with their charge, for the better example of others.

If you shall understand that some are appointed to find horses for demi-lances, and shall not have meet horses for that purpose for lack of stature; rather than to hinder the service you shall give commandment that if they can set forth a

bert to consent to a nominal sale of them to Henry Prince of Wales, at one third of their value, and even that was never paid. Thus this great property was unjustly drawn back to the same source from which, with so little merit, it had been originally derived.