THE NIMPS SONG AND JOY THAT CUPID IS GONE. "Hark, hark! how Philomel, Whose notes no air can parallel; She descants still on chastity; The diapason of her tone is 'Cupid's gone.' Let him go! let him go! with his quiver and his bow." In the course of the masque a concert was performed, considered unrivalled. Twelve young ladies as nymphs entered, dressed all in white, their hair hanging down their necks, adorned with jewels, necklaces on their heads, and coronets of artificial flowers, with a puff of tinsie rising in the midst. They paced towards her majesty, and, after the first strain of the violins, commenced dancing "Anna Regina" in letters. That is, as they stood or moved, linked hand in hand, they formed a figure which constantly presented to the eyes of the beholder the queen's written name. Their second dance was "Jacobus Rex," in compliment to the king; then Carolus P., for prince Charles, "with many excellent figures falling off, devised by Mr. Ounslo, tutor to Ladies' Hall," who was doubtless a most exalted personage that night, in his own opinion. The ballet having ended, master Richard Browne,' the heir of Sayes Court, Deptford, who had acted Diana in the masque, presented to her majesty, with a flourishing speech, her two god-daughters, young mistress Anne Sandilands and young mistress Anne Chaloner, who had danced in the ballets, and were among the scholars at Ladies' Hall. They brought the queen gifts of their needlework, one offering a pattern of acorns, and the other of rosemary, the initials of which were the same as her majesty's name "Anna Regina." The girls then retired, making their honours and obeisances, two by two, squired by master Richard Browne, otherwise Diana. Such is the earliest notice of a boarding-school to be found among the memorials of English costume. Schools of the kind had, at this epoch, succeeded the ancient convents, where the young females of this country were formerly educated. Ladies' Hall was evidently the most recherché of the kind; it was situated near the court at Greenwich, where the queen had her god-daughters, and perhaps her wards, educated under her own eye. There are some traces of the modern dancing-master's ball to be found in this description. In modern times, however, a whole boarding-school of young ladies, if honoured by the patronage of majesty, would never have been chaperoned to the foot of the throne by a great boy dressed as Diana! 1 His daughter, the heiress of Sayes Court, married the illustrious John Evelyn. There is reason to suppose, from a passage in Evelyn's diary, that the parents, or near relatives of sir Richard Browne, kept this ladies' school. 2 The MSS. from which Mr. Nichols printed this masque, was found in the library of Sayes Court, written, it is supposed, by sir Richard Browne. (Nichols' Progresses of James I., vol. iii. p. 283.) Sir Richard Browne was afterwards one of the most elegant cavaliers at the court of Charles I. Sir Francis Bacon, who had been newly installed as lord-keeper,' was the person who governed England in the king's absence. He excited great wrath among the nobility left at court, by the regal airs he gave himself; many ran to tell tales to the queen, but this was of no avail, for the great Bacon was very evidently a favourite with her majesty. They complained that he took possession of the king's own lodging, gave audience in the great banqueting-house, and if any privy-councillors sat too near him, bade them "know their distance," to their infinite indignation; secretary Winwood was so enraged, that he took himself away, and would not enter his presence. He complained, withal, to the queen, and wrote an angry despatch to the king, " imploring him to make haste back, for his seat was already usurped, and he verily believed Bacon fancied himself king." "I remember," continues sir Antony Weldon, who relates this anecdote in his satirical gossip, "king James reading this letter to us on his progress, and both the king and we were very merry." As for queen Anne, she did her best to make peace between the belligerents, and asked Bacon, in a friendly manner, "Why he and secretary Winwood could not agree?" 66 "I know not, madam," replied the great philosopher, with simplicity, excepting it be that he is very proud, and so am I.”2 The candour of this reply pleased the queen. As to the king, when he returned, in September, he silenced all the tale-bearers who had made malicious observations on Bacon's conduct, by bearing witness," that he had, while exercising the power which had been viewed so invidiously, never spoken ill of any one, or endeavoured, either by word or letter, to prejudice him or Villiers against a living creature." 993 It was about the time of the king's return from Scotland, that apprehensions were first entertained that the queen's life would be a short one, and the expression used would indicate that her loss would be felt as an evil. "The queen is somewhat crazy (sickly) again; they say it is the gout, though the need of her welfare makes the world fearful." Soon after," the queen continues still indisposed, and though she would fain lay all her infirmities upon the gout, yet her physicians fear an ill habit through her whole constitution." 4 In her notes written to the king, about this time, she often alludes to bodily malady; yet, at the same time, she dwells on her favourite amusements of hunting or of hawking. All her letters are dateless. The following seems written just before king James returned from Scotland : The lord-chancellor is now a movable minister, who goes out of office with his party. Till the revolution, he was seldom removed but by death or impeachment. If he pleaded infirmity, a lord-keeper of the great seal was appointed to act for him as long as he lived. "Letter of Chamberlayne to sir Dudley Carleton, October 11th, 1617. James has been most unjustly charged with persecuting lord Bacon, by displacing him when his miserable dereliction from integrity, in his office of lordchancellor, was discovered. But those who look steadfastly into the facts of the case (see State Trials) will be convinced, that if James was to blame, it was for over-indulgence to this "greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind." 'Letters of Chamberlayne to sir Dudley Carleton, Oct. 18 and 25, 1617. "My heart, QUEEN ANNE TO KING JAMES. "I crave pardon that I have not sooner answered your m(ajesty's) letter. You shall not feare the paine in my fingers: you shall find them will (well) enough for you when you come home. "I think it long to see my Gerfaulkon flie, which I hope to see when I shall have the honore to kisse your m(ajesty's) handes. Yours, "ANNA R." 1 The next billet to her royal spouse was evidently written during her long sojourn at Oatlands, whither she went for the recovery of her health, in the autumn of the year that the king returned from Scotland: QUEEN ANNE TO KING JAMES. "My heart, "I desire your majestie to pardon that I have not answered your majestie sooner upon your letters, because I would knowe the truth of the park at Ottelands, as I understand there is near forty grossi beastiami, of divers kinds, that devours my deere, as I will tell your majesty at mieting; whereas, your majestie wolde have me to meete you at Witthall. I am content, but I feare som inconveniens in my leggs, which I have not felt hier. So, kissen your majestie's hands, I rest your ANNA R."2 The court intelligence, at the new year, 1617-18, thus spoke ominously of the queen's health: "Her majesty is not well-they say she languisheth, whether with melancholy, or sickness, or what not; yet is she still at Whitehall, being scant able to remove." 3 Three years previously, her physicians had treated her for a confirmed state of dropsy, and now this disease made an attack on her which threatened to be fatal. She removed to Somerset House, to be out of the bustle of the carnival, Shrovetide being kept nearly as riotously at the court of James, as it is at present on the Continent. In the midst of the mad revelry, the king was taken ill with the gout in his knees; some rantipole knights of his bedchamber, sir George Goring, sir Thomas Badger, sir Edward Zouch, and others, tried to amuse him by acting some little burlesque plays, called "Tom-a-Bedlam," "The Tinker," and "The Two Merry Milkmaids." But the gout and the cold weather pinched the king, and nothing could put him in a good humour. "He reproved his knights for ribaldry"-not without reason; "called their little burlesque plays (probably the same as modern farces) mad stuff, and was utterly unmanageable by his masculine attendants." The poor sick queen was forced to make several journeys from Somerset House, to see him while he was confined to his bed, and at last took him away with her to Theobalds, where he had better nurses than his rantipole knights, and soon recovered the proper use of his limbs and of his temper. 1Original in the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh. It is printed here in the queen's orthography. 'The original is in the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh. This little familiar letter is transcribed, according to the queen's spelling, from the fac-simile published by the Maitland Club. 8 Birch MSS., 4174. Queen Anne continued to decline during the summer: as the autumn wore on, she suffered much with a cough, accompanied by bleeding of the lungs, so that she was one night nearly suffocated in her sleep, and her physicians were sent for in great haste. She removed from Oatlands, and remained at Hampton Court, where illness made her more infirm. The king, when not confined by sickness himself, went to see her twice and often thrice every week. She evidently had not the least idea of her danger, and did not lack flatterers to persuade her she was convalescent. Sick as she was, she was not so completely absorbed in her own sufferings as to forget her old protegé, sir Walter Raleigh, in his extremity, who made a last earnest appeal to her compassion, in verse: the words he addressed to her are as follows: "Then unto whom shall I unfold my wrong, Be justly termed the empress of Britons: Who should have mercy, if a queen has none!" These lines conclude with a passionate exhortation to- Save him whose thoughts no treason ever tainted!"" This appeal induced the queen to make one of her last efforts in state affairs, by way of an earnest intercession to save him from the block. Even those who weigh the actual deeds of this brilliant man in the unerring scales of moral justice, and who fix their attention on the fact which occasioned the execution of his long-delayed sentence, will wish that the pleadings of Anne of Denmark had been heeded, and that the following letter had met with the attention it deserved. "My kind Dog, THE QUEEN TO THE Marquis of BUCKINGHAM? -If I have any power or credit with you, I pray you let me have a trial of i at this time, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the king, that sir Water Raleigh's life may not be called in question. If you do it so that the soccer answer my expectation, assure yourself that I will take it extraordinary kindly at your hands, and rest one that wisheth you well, and desires you to contine stili (as you have been, a true servant to your master, ASSA R Notwithstanding this intercession. Raleigh was beheaded on the 293 of October, 1618, soon after it was made. He suffered death omsensibly on the sentence which we have seen passed on him in 1603, but he was respited through the entreaties of the queen and prince Heary. There was something extremely repulsive in this posting him to death for a crime for which he had virtually been forgiven His real crime and one of great magnitude it certainly was had been committed in the preceding year, when he had employed an expedition entrusted to him for the purpose of discovery, in a cruel acart on an mofending solony belonging to a nation at peace with England. King James had not the moral courage to bring the perpetrator of this outrage to trial, because his people had not made a sufficient advance in moral justice to consider such piratical descents on struggling colonists in their true light. But James, whose peaceful policy had first opened for over-populated England those safety-valves called colonies, felt how severely Spain could retaliate Raleigh's aggression on the English settlements, beginning, under his auspices, to stud the coasts of North America and the West Indies. The nineteenth century has made sufficient progress in moral rectitude and statistic wisdom, to blame equally Raleigh's crime, and the illegal and shuffling mode of inflicting his punishment. How the queen received the news of the death of the man she had so many years protected, is not known. Her own life drew near its close. She was in great danger throughout the month of December. "Nevertheless," says a contemporary writer, "she cannot fail to do well who has every one's good wishes. The king went to stay at Hampton Court with her, on St. Thomas's day, and the physicians spoke doubtfully of her recovery; but I cannot think," adds the courtly correspondent, "the case desperate, as she was able to attend to a long sermon, preached by the bishop of London, in her inner chamber. Yet, I hear the greedy courtiers already plot for leases of her lands, and who shall have the keeping of Somerset House, and the rest who shall share her implements and moveables, just as if they were about to divide a spoil. I hope they may come as short as they who reckoned on dividing the bearskin; yet we cannot be out of fear till we see her past the top of May hill." But she never saw the month of May. The king was very anxious that she should dispose, by will, of the immense property she had invested in jewels, which he was afraid she would dispose of out of the kingdom. It is probable she meant to bequeath some of it to her daughter Elizabeth, the wife of the count Palatine, who was involved in the deepest distress, by the assumption her husband had made of the crown of Bohemia. It is certain she had laid aside a casket full of most valuable jewels for the queen of Bohemia; and as she was anxiously expecting the arrival of her brother, the king of Denmark, he was probably the medium to whom she meant to consign them. King James had travelled from London to Hampton Court, to see his dying wife, thrice every week during the winter. He was now laid up with a severe fit of illness, at Royston, which many persons thought would have been fatal. His illness was aggravated by the prospect of losing a partner, with whom he had spent the best days of his life; and though they had, like most married persons, some matrimonial wrangJing, yet he had never given her a rival, and was decidedly (as we have given ample proof) the most indulgent of husbands. He was very anxious that the queen should exercise her privilege of making a will, not on account of anything he might gain, because, if she died intestate, her property must have fallen to himself, but her majesty had two favourite attendants, Danish Anna, and a Frenchman, 'Birch's MSS. (British Museum), 4174. |