Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth | Page 5

of Grey: she must therefore have been the daughter of the earl of Pembroke, a zealous Yorkist who was slain fighting in the cause of Edward IV. Henry VIII. was doubtless aware that his best hereditary title to the crown was derived from his mother, and during his reign the Yorkist families enjoyed at least an equal share of favor with the Lancastrians, whom his father had almost exclusively countenanced.
Thomas Boleyn earl of Wiltshire, the proud and happy grandfather of the princely infant, supported the train on one side. It is not true that he afterwards, in his capacity of a privy councillor, pronounced sentence of death on his own son and daughter; even Henry was not inhuman enough to exact this of him; but he lived to witness their cruel and disgraceful end, and died long before the prosperous days of his illustrious grandchild.
On the other side the train was borne by Edward Stanley third earl of Derby. This young nobleman had been a ward of Wolsey, and was carefully educated by that splendid patron of learning in his house and under his own eye. He proved himself a faithful and loyal subject to four successive sovereigns; stood unshaken by the tempests of the most turbulent times; and died full of days in the possession of great riches, high hereditary honors, and universal esteem, in 1574.
A splendid canopy was supported over the infant by four lords, three of them destined to disastrous fates. One was her uncle, the elegant, accomplished, viscount Rochford, whom the impartial suffrage of posterity has fully acquitted of the odious crime for which he suffered by the mandate of a jealous tyrant.
Another was lord Hussey; whom a rash rebellion brought to the scaffold a few years afterwards. The two others were brothers of that illustrious family of Howard, which furnished in this age alone more subjects for tragedy than "Thebes or Pelops' line" of old. Lord William, uncle to Catherine Howard, was arbitrarily adjudged to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of goods for concealing her misconduct; but Henry was pleased soon after to remit the sentence: he lived to be eminent in the state under the title of lord Howard of Effingham, and died peacefully in a good old age. Lord Thomas suffered by the ambition so frequent in his house, of matching with the blood royal. He formed a secret marriage with the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to the king; on discovery of which, he was committed to a close imprisonment, whence he was only released by death.
After the ceremony of baptism had been performed by Stokesly bishop of London, a solemn benediction was pronounced upon the future queen by Cranmer, that learned and distinguished prelate, who may indeed be reproached with some too courtly condescensions to the will of an imperious master, and what is worse, with several cruel acts of religious persecution; but whose virtues were many, whose general character was mild and benevolent, and whose errors and weaknesses were finally expiated by the flames of martyrdom.
In the return from church, the gifts of the sponsors, consisting of cups and bowls, some gilded, and others of massy gold, were carried by four persons of quality: Henry Somerset second earl of Worcester, whose father, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, had been acknowledged as a kinsman by Henry VII., and advanced to the peerage; lord Thomas Howard the younger, a son of the duke of Norfolk who was restored in blood after his father's attainder, and created lord Howard of Bindon; Thomas Ratcliffe lord Fitzwalter, afterwards earl of Sussex; and sir John Dudley, son of the detested associate of Empson, and afterwards the notorious duke of Northumberland, whose crimes received at length their due recompense in that ignominious death to which his guilty and extravagant projects had conducted so many comparatively innocent victims.
We are told, that on the same day and hour which gave birth to the princess Elizabeth, a son was born to this "bold bad man," who received the name of Robert, and was known in after-times as earl of Leicester. It was believed by the superstition of the age, that this coincidence of their nativities produced a secret and invincible sympathy which secured to Dudley, during life, the affections of his sovereign lady. It may without superstition be admitted, that this circumstance, seizing on the romantic imagination of the princess, might produce a first impression, which Leicester's personal advantages, his insinuating manners, and consummate art of feigning, all contributed to render deep and permanent.
The personal history of Elizabeth may truly be said to begin with her birth; for she had scarcely entered her second year when her marriage--that never-accomplished project, which for half a century afterwards inspired so many vain hopes and was the subject of so many fruitless negotiations, was already proposed as