AMBURLIAD

INTRODUCTION,

The present volume, Part XII, brings the Calendar of the Cecil MSS. to the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

The Calendar, so far as it has proceeded, is in the main exhaustive of the letters and papers which form the collection, although unfortunately, owing to various causes, there are many omissions, chiefly before the year 1595. But these omissions, with notices of a great number of undated papers, will be made good by the succeeding part of this Calendar, which will consist of an appendix to all that has gone before, covering the whole period to the date of Queen Elizabeth's death.

The Queen. Although this volume extends over the last fifteen months of the Queen's reign, it yields singularly little directly concerning her personal history. The allusions to her employments, her projected movements and casual appearances in public, are but few. A progress to the West of England was planned in the summer of 1602, which was to include the city of Bristol in its itinerary, but it was not carried out, "to the disappointment," as was suggested, (p. 358) "of no one but her maids of honour." In August, one of the wet months of the year, she was at Oatlands. On a day in October (p. 439), Fulke Greville reports to Cecil that she had been abroad in her coach, and in the evening was a little troubled with pain in the face, "but, God be thanked! is now free." She was out again in her coach a few days later (p. 445). The first allusion to the beginning of her final illness occurs on March 9th, 1603, just a fortnight before her death. Sir Robert Cecil then informs his co-secretary, who was abroad (p. 668):

It is very true that her Majesty hath of late for eight or nine days been much deprived of sleep, which you know was ever wont to moisten her body, and whenever she lacked it, she was ever apt to be impatient. This continuance for nine or ten days decays her appetite somewhat, and drieth her body much, wherein though she be free from sickness in stomach or head, and in the day catcheth sleep, yet I cannot but affirm unto you that, if this should continue many months, it promiseth no other than a falling into some great weakness or consumption which would hardly be recovered in old age; other peril, I assure you, there is not.

He writes to the same effect to the agent in Scotland (p. 667):—

Till within these 10 or 12 days I never saw other show of sickness in the Queen than such as is proper to age. Now her Majesty is free from any peril, but because all flesh is subject to mortality, I must confess to you that she hath been so ill disposed as I am fearful that the continuance of such accidents should bring her Majesty to future weakness and danger of that I hope mine eyes shall never see. Although she hath good appetite,

and neither cough nor fever, yet she is troubled with a heat in her breasts and dries in her mouth and tongue, which keeps her from sleep, greatly to her disquiet. This is all, whatsoever you hear otherwise. She never kept her bed, but was, within these three days, in the garden. Shortly after this, a letter from the Privy Council was circulated on the subject of the Queen's illness, and efforts were made to stop the spreading of rumours (p. 699). On the 20th, the Privy Council communicated with those peers who had not been personally called into consultation. The only reference to the supreme event appears to be in a letter from Fulke Greville to Cecil (p. 702): "I send to know how you do after your toilsome day."

To the last, in the eyes, or at any rate in the expressions of her courtiers, the Queen kept her almost divine attributes. The Earl of Rutland, an exile at his own Belvoir Castle, "draws on," so he says, "a wearisome life, being still denied the sight of that sun which only can give me comfort " p. 289). The Lord Keeper, held by two grim gaolers, gout and melancholy, moans that though he might entertain hope of freedom from the first, for the other, he must despair of relief "until I may hear a sweet, heavenly voice say unto me, Valeant amara ista; eat melancholia ad Tartaros!" (p. 583.) That voice was stilled for ever on Thursday, the 24th of March, the last day of the year 1602 according to the style of chronology then in use in England.

Sir Robert Cecil. The natural expectation that there should be a considerable number of letters which may be classed as personal to Sir Robert Cecil in contradistinction from those connected with his duties in his high offices of state, is met to a fair extent in this volume. His country seat, the "paradise " (p. 187) of Theobalds, and the improvements in the park there, are the subject of lengthy correspondence, notably concerning certain works for bringing a "river" through the park. Of the house itself, Sir John Harington penned a rhapsodical description (p. 188):

When I beheld the summer room I thought of a verse in Aryosto's enchantments :

But which was strange, where erst I left a wood
A wondrous stately palace now there stood;

and the sight of it enchanted me so as I think the room not to be matched, if you will put two verses more of Aryosto to the chamber in the same canto :

And unto this a large and lightsome stair
Without the which no room is truly fair.

Sir Robert's son William was in residence there in August 1602 and lady visitors are reported as coming to see the beauties of the place (p. 319).

Sir Robert himself was the recipient of many presents, varying in kind from Worcester cheeses and partridges and pheasants, dead and alive, to horses. One of the last mentioned sort came to him from the Governor of Boulogne. The volume tells of four urban communities which approached