knew that this great King whose vertues were so many as they cannot find sufficient room in this small Treatise was before his marriage here provided of a Son to inherit his great Kingdom in case there had been issue by Queen Mary which issue nevertheless of hers should have enjoyed the Burgundian Provinces a great accession to his Crown and free from the inconvenience before mentioned And all other particulars were so well provided for in that business as there appeared little intermixture of the Nations in the government during the Queens life and no inconvenience at all upon her death For Edward Lord North he continued in good favour all the time of Philip and Mary for he held his Counsellourship and was powerfull with the Queen to obtain grace for others as may appear by the restitution in bloud of a person very highly descended and wrought by his mediation which also could not but be a matter of good profit to him And now this Queens reign not affording more matter relating to the subject of this discourse I must not leave untouched a reflexion indiscreetly cast upon this noble person by Mr. Fox in his Acts and Monuments which is this He saith that he himself spake with a Woman who told him that near the expected time of Queen Mary's delivery for she conceived her self to be with Child and the whole Kingdom was possessed with such an expectation the Lord North and another Lord came to her and would have prevailed with her to part with a child of hers newly born but that she utterly refused it and this Mr. Fox conceiveth to have been desired as a supposititious Child for the Queen The design it self is so unprobable either to have been truly such or to have been carried on by a person of so much honour and wisedom as it needeth little answer for the Queen her self was too vertuous and religious in her way to admit of such a thought Neither if there had been such an intention could it possibly have been concealed being the concernment of so great Princes and Nations And questionless the succeeding Queen would never have cast the least honour or placed any trust upon this Lord or his Son Roger Lord North whom she made a Privy-Counsellour and near officer about her if she had given the least credit to that Calumny It is therefore a wonder that Mr. Fox should insert in his History so trivial a thing and casting so great a Scandal having received it from a mean person in an extrajudicial way who perhaps might be hired to the affirmation for certainly he could not have found a more ready way to abate the credit of his other Narrations But however it was concerning Queen Mary's conception whether it were only fancied by her or in it self real with an abortion following it is certain that she lived not long after for she fell presently into a deep sadness of spirit and ended her days in the year 1558 having reigned but a short time and very unhappily even in her own opinion for she thought the loss of Calais which was the last footing of our Nation in France to be an irreparable blemish to her government yet was there much bloud shed at home for Religion which better might have deserved her sorrow but she according to the Prophecy of our blessed Saviour thought she did God good service in it She was a Princess very eminent for Vertue and Piety but too flexible a weakness incident to her sex which is not so fit to govern in publick matters referring almost all to others but especially in matters of Religion to her Prelates These she should have considered as too much interested and over-violent in things tending to their own power and greatness The subjects of a Tyrant who manageth his own affairs prove for the most part not so unhappy as of those of a mild Prince who putteth the whole care of Government upon some choice instruments for they become many Tyrants in stead of one and being of a more servile condition are usually steered by more sordid ends Yet is the Prince himself answerable for their faults and so certainly was this Queen and the rather because in respect of her engagement to uphold the Papal power she may be thought not to have given an unwilling consent to those horrid cruelties but Sanguis martyrum est semen Ecclesiae which saying it pleased God to verifie most strangely at that time as may appear in the Reformation perfected and settled immediately after Queen Mary's days Queen Elizabeth's entry upon her Reign was embraced with a general applause by the Protestants cordially for they concluded her well affected to their principles and by the Papists seemingly because she was yet theirs in outward profession as appeared by the Popish Ceremonies used at her Coronation yet these could not but be very distrustfull knowing her interest to be directly opposite to that of her Sister for if the Pope had power to Legitimate the marriage with Katharine of Arragon Mother to Queen Mary then that with Ann of Bullen Mother to Queen Elizabeth being solemnized living the other must of necessity be invalide This Queen presently made an alteration at the Council-Table retaining some and dismissing others Of the latter sort was Edward Lord North and whether or no it was his own desire by reason of age and infirmity we know not but certain it is that he was not under any great displeasure for the Queen finding it requisite to erect a Lieutenancy for command of the Militia and ordering of Musters in each County made choice of him for that trust in Cambridge-shire and the Isle of Ely This she did in the first year of her reign and by another Patent in her second year she confirmed it unto him But this power was soon resumed and as I conceive laid down generally for the present which giveth occasion to say something Historically of the Militia of this Kingdom Anciently the Martial forces were of two kinds extraordinary or ordinary The extraordinary consisted of Mercenaries serving for Pay and taken into service upon the occasion The ordinary were partly such as lay under an obligation by the tenure of their Lands to serve their Prince and this comprized all the Nobility and Gentry of the Land with their Tenants and these were they by whose help our Kings made so great Conquests and became so formidable abroad for if the Tenants answered not the expectation of their Landlord it was in the Landlord's power to turn them out of the Estates which they held but especially such as were Copyholders This power of great men as it was extremely usefull against Foreigners so it grew dangerous at home for that means there was great and frequent oppositions made against the Princes by Civil War managed by the Nobles whose Tenants were necessitated to serve them and this made the Kings so far to diminish this power upon Tenants at Will by frequent decisions of
well anihilate such gifts already made as prevent them for Dedication seemeth to consist rather in the declared intention of the giver than in the approbation of Governours either Ecclesiastical or Temporal Neither shall I define how little subjects are blamable for executing the decrees of their supreme Magistracy though unjust or seeming irreligious albeit it were an obstruction scarcely recoverable in a State if subordinate Ministers should be obliged to dispute the rectitude or obliquity of every decree But certainly it can be no other than a high presumption to apply the judgments of the Almighty with too much strictness to such and such a particular cause for as the judgments are evident and exposed to the view of all so their grounds lie concealed in the clouds and darkness which are said to encompass the Deity and many times those who are crushed under a punishment do no more exceed their fellows in guiltiness than they in the Gospel on whom the Tower of Siloah fell But to leave this digression Sir Edward North now stood so high in the favour of his Prince as he put him into the roll of Privy-Counsellours and made frequent grants of Land as a testimony of his favour and of the good acceptance of the services done by him These were great encouragements and could not but carry with them as great a satisfaction to the receiver but it was so usual with this King to throw down those whom he had raised as it made his great ones Stare sempre in cervello as the Italians term it or to be watchfull carrying still in their minds the instability of the ground whereon they stood And to give some tast how dangerous a Master he served and how apprehensive he was of a change in the way of displeasure I shall here insert a relation which came to me though not immediately from one who being himself an Attendant in his Bed-chamber then when the matter passed was an eye and ear Witness of it and this it is That once early in the morning there came from the King to Charterhouse then the Mansion house of Sir Edward North a Messenger known to be no friend of his to command his immediate repair to Court which message was also delivered with some harshness This was so terrible in the suddainness and other circumstances as he observed his Master to tremble at the delivery of it who yet finding it dangerous to use the least delay hasted thither and was admitted speedily to the King's presence with this his Servant attending on him The King was then walking and continued doing so with great earnestness and ever now and then cast an angry eye upon him which was received with a very still and sober carriage At last the King brake out into these words We are informed that you have cheated us of certain Lands in Middlesex whereunto having received no other than a plain and humble negation after some little space he replyed How was it then did We give those Lands to you whereunto Sir Edward answered yes Sir Your Majesty was pleased so to doe Whereupon having paused a little the King put on a milder countenance and called him to a Cupboard conferring privately with him a long time whereby said this Servant I saw that the King could not spare my Master's service as yet but whether or no the cause lay in the King's occasions or in the other's humble behaviour and answers it must be left to judgment for as Solomon saith A soft answer turneth away wrath But to pursue the Series of our discourse King Henry after a long and strange prosperity in all his undertakings which were extraordinary and full of hazard came to breath his last in the year of Grace 1546 and as a full and final testimony of his confidence in the integrity of Sir Edward North he constituted him one of his Executors leaving unto divers others of his Council persons of more eminent condition the title of Overseers of his Testament a character of higher honour but of lest trust And seeing that this King was so great a benefactour to the person who is the occasion of this tractate I shall adventure to borrow so much time of the Reader as to say thus much more of him I know that many things are laid to his charge as that he was burthensom to his Subjects and yet a waster That he was Sanguinary and Voluptuous almost to the height As I will not go about to absolve him concerning these so I shall leave it to others who may conceive themselves more proper for it to set him out in such colours but thus much I shall take upon me to say on his behalf That he was endued with very great and royal abilities and that of all the governours of our Nation he is the only Prince meriting to be styled Arbiter of the most important affairs of Christendom or the Ballancer as Guicchiardin calls him and this he did by assistance constantly but variously given in the Wars between Charles the 5th Emperour of Germany and Francis the first of France still supporting the weaker and opposing the stronger by which means he kept those Princes still in play one against the other and so established his own security and in that respect was very fitly honoured with this Motto Cui adhereo praeest And I think that the bitterest of his enemies must give him this testimony That he was no less bountifull in his Rewards than severe in his Punishments that he maintained the honour of the Nation with Foreign Princes in point of power and that he carried on the worst of his actions relating to the publick with a concurrence of his Parliaments which howsoever his heart was disposed yet sheweth a very great dexterity of Brain But that which leaveth him the greatest glory is this That he laid the ground-work of a Reformation in the Church of England which afterwards grew to that perfection as justly to be deemed by judicious persons the best tempered of any in the Christian World And now upon his death the Scene is wholly changed for in stead of an active King who for the most part governed his own affairs the Crown is fallen to a Prince who by reason of his Nonage being not able to govern himself and much less two so potent Nations falleth under the tuition of his Servants whose nature is such as they seldom fail to be guided by their own ambition rather than the improvement of their Master's interests And this renders the providence of God the more conspicuous for in this King's days the Reformation of the Church was exalted almost to the height and in a way of more Purity than before for King Henry seemed rather to seek the abolition of Papal authority which so far restrained his Regal power than any other change in the Articles of the then received Faith but during the reign of King Edward there was an aim at the establishment of Truth even in
of known wisedom for though not impossible as in nature where A privatione ad habitum non datur regressus yet it is very difficult for persons once outed to obtain a restitution of Dignities and Possessions and sometimes it cannot be had at all even by those who seem to be very much advantaged with the present Governours as may appear in the Posterity of the Duke of Norfolk and of the Lord Dacre of the North whose Predecessours suffered for correspondence with Mary Queen of Scots and yet when the Son and Grandson of the same Queen came to wear the Crown successively they could not recover their former rights For ingenuity or open sincerity it is a most Christian vertue yet since the wisedom of the Serpent is an allowed companion to the innocency of the Dove that vertue cannot be so strictly required in a Statesman as in other persons for else it had been a very horrid thing in David a man according to God's own heart to suborn his friend Hushai to profess himself a Servant to his Son Absalom with an intention to supplant him and to subvert his Counsels for that action of David's is not at all disapproved of in Scripture as others were But to return to our business In the year of our Lord 1553 King Edward came to the period of his life and reign which though glorious for a great progress in the Churches reformation yet otherwise was but turbulent by reason of a presuming upon the King's minority both by the Commons who in several parts of the Kingdome arose in Rebellion and did it so dangerously as the State thought good to use Foreigners in the suppression of them a thing very unusual in this Nation and by the greater Nobles who divided themselves into Factions which some of them nearest in relation to the King himself paid for with the loss of their Heads even in his days and others upon grounds then laid very shortly after Upon King Edward's death this Kingdom fell from a condition of instability which it had often felt during the nonage of its Princes to an estate which was then altogether unexperienced by us to wit the government of a Queen regnant a thing which the French Nation professeth utterly to abhor and is called by them Tomber en quinoüille or to fall under the Distaff It is true that this Crown had frequently passed to the Progeny of our Sovereigns Daughters but before this time it was never set much less settled upon the head of any Woman This might have raised great storms but it pleased the Divine Providence so to dispose of things by way of preparation as the Pill was swallowed down with great quietness for first there was not then in being with us any male Prince of the bloud as Philip de Valois had been in France who there assumed the Crown to the disherison of our Edward the Third then this Nation had given its consent in Parliament to an Entail of the Crown upon Mary and Elizabeth Daughters to King Henry And last of all the Duke of Northumberland's ambition not being able to make way otherwise had endeavoured to fix the Crown upon another Lady of Royal bloud his Daughter in Law so as by reason of this competition all the active spirits of the Nation having no other adherence became quickly engaged with one of the Competitresses and so the other novelty was wholly put out of thought The affection of this People was then so great to a right Succession in the race of their Princes as notwithstanding hazard of the Churches late reformation which a great part of the Nation had then set their hearts upon and the interest of the most eminent persons become possessours of Church-lands by way of exchange and otherwise yet the Duke of Northumberland soon found the weakness of his designs which he thought so strongly laid and being forsaken by his party became an assistant in the proclaiming of Queen Mary but it was too late to prevent the loss of his Head which had shewed it self so dangerous Thus Queen Mary having her Sovereignty generally acknowledged began her Reign and being desirous to give some testimony of a gracious disposition she gave free pardon to all saving the Duke of Northumberland the Lady Jane and some few others The Lords of the Council who had subscribed against her and for some time had seemed to act in the same way were included in the Pardon and some of them continued in that great honour and trust which may seem strange considering that the designs of Queen Mary were so diametrally opposite to those of King Edward in point of Religion but the same opposition was between the Ecclesiastical policy and religion of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth yet many of the old Counsellours were also held on by the latter and it seems fit if not necessary that it should be so for great changes in a State cannot be wrought suddenly without great danger and the doing of it maturely and judiciously requireth not only an exact knowledge of matters formerly transacted but also of their grounds and causes Of the Counsellours retained Sir Edward North easily obtained to be one and not only so but in the first year of this Queens reign he received an encrease of Dignity being called to sit in Parliament as a Baron which is a character of the Queens favour not then extended to any other of the old Counsellours though many of them held themselves in favour with her even to the time of her death And this sheweth that she intended a special reward to him and presupposeth a merit contracted by the performance of some former service of eminence It cost her nothing yet was it of very high value for the dignity of Peerage was rarely conferred upon any but persons of great worth and merit during the reigns of these two Sisters though under the succeeding Princes it became not only more common but a kind of merchandize for the benefit of Courtiers And now it appears how seasonably he parted with his office of Chancellour of the Augmentations for he did it upon valuable consideration whereas his successour Sir Richard Sackvill who held himself in grace all Queen Mary's days yet lost it without any recompence at all One of the most remarkable occurrents during this Queens Reign was her marriage with King Philip the Second of Spain and considering that Edward Lord North is by our Historians specified in the catalogue of those Lords who were employed in his reception and therefore likely as a Counsellour to have concurred all the way in the negotiating of that affair perhaps it may not be thought improper to touch somewhat upon it It might well be apprehended as a great danger to this People for their Queen to match with a more potent Prince of another Nation in respect that this Kingdom might by such means become a Province being deprived of the presence of their Sovereign But the transactours well
their Judges giving to Copyholders a Tenure by custom as they grew altogether deaf at the call of their Landlords And so it was found by this our Edward and others who would have used their Tenants for service of the Crown in foreign wars under Henry the 8th This was some inconvenience to the Prince but little in comparison of that which hath shewed it self in these latter times wherein the Commonalty or third Estate hath assumed a power not only to subject their Sovereign to a jurisdiction established by the said Commons but to abolish the Regal power it self and as a consequent thereunto to bring the ancient Peerage to a level with themselves And this may be very much attributed to the former extirpation of power in great persons who stood as a wall of defence between Prince and People The other part of the ordinary Militia consisted in the arraying of all persons fit for War defensive and this was first managed by Commissioners of Array authorised from time to time by the Kings themselves which made them to countenance it much more than the other But in process of time this power residing in many who are more subject to find out dilatory scruples than a single person gave occasion to the Princes more to affect the placing of it in some one for one may more easily be commanded and is more subject to an account upon miscarriage But on the other side this gave more offence to the Commons in Parliament who bear the Purse for supply of their Princes extraordinary occasions which perhaps might be the cause of Queen Elizabeth's laying it down for that time though she resumed it afterwards After this it appeareth not that Edward Lord North ever desired other than an exemption from publick employments with a quiet enjoyment of himself and of the fruits of his past labours and in this it pleased God to bless him very far for he had little publick molestation yet was he not free from disquiet at home by reason of some apprehensions arising within his own family by the prodigality of his eldest Son for whom as is exprest in his Will he was constrained at the last to pay a great debt besides much of the same nature formerly In those days the sum which he paid was esteemed very great yet was not the debt so considerable in his thoughts as a disposition in his Son easily discernible as he esteemed to proceed in the same way of expence He feared that this would make the young man to exceed all bounds when he should become master of his Estate which made the impression so deep with him as he failed not to admonish his Son in the said Will with very great reflexions upon him as to his prudence and perhaps it wrought great effects after the Father's death And here may be noted that the ablest persons make their judgments as to the future with great incertainty for Roger Lord North proved a most industrious and provident man and a person of great honour for he was Ambassadour extraordinary from Queen Elizabeth to Charles the 9th of France and bare many other publick employments abroad and at home till at the last he became Treasurer of the houshold to the Queen and one of her Privy-Council dying with that Character upon him in which he exceeded his Father Neither had Edward Lord North any greater hopes of Sir Thomas North his other Son who though a man of courage a man learned as appears by divers translations of his and indued with very good parts otherwise yet never had a steadiness comparable to his Brother which made the Father to settle his Estate by way of Entail as strongly to prevent Alienations as the Law of those times would bear with a remainder to his Kindred of Walkeringam as hath been already touched And in the year 1563 he made the Will before-mentioned and constituted Sir William Cordall and Sir James Dyer Executors of the same both of them persons very eminent in those times Sir William being Master of the Rolls and Sir James Dyer Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In the year succeeding having crowned his wisedom by a discreet settlement of his private fortune he paid his last debt to Nature ending his life with the Julian year on the last day of December and so changed this for a better being then about the 68th year of his age as near as we can gather by conjecture Thus terminated the life of this noble and worthy person who hid not the talent wherewith his Maker entrusted him but improved it for the advantage of his Nation and Family which ought to be an eternal honour to him His marriages were two whereof the first was to Alice Squier Daughter to a Gentleman estated in Hamp-shire she then being Widow of Edward Myrfyn Son to an Alderman of London so named and having also had a former Husband called Brigantine or Brickenden and by each of these Husbands one Son By this Wife he had four Children whereof Roger Lord North and Sir Thomas North have already been named and in some sort Characterized herein The other two were Daughters whereof Christian the elder was married to William Earl of Worcester and Mary the younger to Henry Lord Scroope of Bolton Of every one of these four there is Posterity left and now grown so numerous in the whole and it is become so far an honour to their common Progenitor as I my self who am the Grandchild of his Grandchild may in the year of our Lord 1658 affirm that I know not any of the Race that have as yet applied themselves to courses dishonest or dishonourable This Lady Alice as she brought him a considerable estate in Marriage so she was a great and constant assistant to him in the improvement of his fortunes always shewing her self a discreet and provident person in the government of his domestique affairs and she continued so till the time of her death which hapned some four or five years before that of her husband who failed not to yield a fair mention of her goodness in his Testament desiring also to be buried with her at Kirtling His second and last Wife was the Lady Margaret Widow to Sir David Brooke and surely she was a person worthy of his choice for he shewed much care of her in his last settlement by Will which is all that I shall need to say of her By his Picture whereof there is yet a copy remaining with us he appears to have been a person of moderate stature somewhat inclining to corpulency and of a reddish hair As for his inward abilities it were extravagant to question them in a man so versed in affairs of State as a Privy-Counsellour and that sate at the Stern so many years in an eminent place of Judicature Such persons seldom want elocution sufficient but if we may judge of his Oratory by his Letters he seemed rather to have affected the delivery of a full and clear sense