He was father to that refined wit which since hath acted a disastrous part on the public stage, and of late sat in his father's room as Lord Chancellor; those that lived in his age, and from whence I have taken this little model of him, give him a lively character, and they decipher him to be another Solon, and the Simon of those times, such a one as OEdipus was in dissolving of riddles;doubtless he was an able instrument, as it was his commendation that his head was the mallet, for it was a very great one, and therein kept a wedge, that entered all knotty pieces that come to the table.
And now again I must fall back to smooth and plane a way to the rest that is behind, but not from my purpose. There have been, about this time, two rivals in the Queen's favour, old Sir Francis Knowles, Comptroller of the House, and Sir Henry Norris, whom she had called up at Parliament to sit with the Peers in the higher House, as, Henry Norris of Rycot, who had married the daughter and heir of the old Henry Williams of Tayne, a noble person, and to whom, in her adversity, the Queen had been committed to his safe custody, and from him had received more than ordinary observances;now, such was the goodness of the Queen's nature, that she neither forgot the good turns received from the Lord Williams, neither was she unmindful of this Lord Norris, whose father, in her father's time, and in the business of her brother, died in a noble cause, and in the justification of her innocency.
NORRIS.
My Lord Norris had, by this lady, an apt issue, which the Queen highly respected, for he had six sons, and all martial and brave men: the first was William, the eldest, and father to the late Earl of Berkshire, Sir John (vulgarly called General Norris), Sir Edward, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Maximilian, men of haughty courage, and of great experience in the conduct of military affairs; and, to speak in the character of their merit, they were persons of such renown and worth as future times must, of duty, owe them the debt of an honourable memory.
KNOWLES.
Sir Francis Knowles was somewhat near in the Queen's affinity, and had likewise no incompetent issue; for he had also William, his eldest son, and since Earl of Banbury, Sir Thomas, Sir Robert, and Sir Francis, if I be not a little mistaken in their names and marshalling; and there was also the Lady Lettice, a sister of those, who was first Countess of Essex, and after of Leicester; and those were also brave men in their times and places, but they were of the Court and carpet, and not by the genius of the camp.
Between these two families there was, as it falleth out amongst great ones and competitors of favour, no great correspondency; and there were some seeds, either of emulation or distrust, cast between them; which, had they not been disjoined in the residence of their persons, as that was the fortune of their employments, the one side attending the Court, and the other the Pavilion, surely they would have broken out into some kind of hostility, or, at least, they would entwine and wrestle one in the other, like trees circled with ivy; for there was a time when, both these fraternities being met at Court, there passed a challenge between them at certain exercises, the Queen and the old men being spectators, which ended in a flat quarrel amongst them all. For I am persuaded, though I ought not to judge, that there were some relics of this feigned that were long after the causes of the one family's almost utter extirpation, and the other's improsperity; for it was a known truth that so long as my Lord of Leicester lived, who was the main pillar on the one side, for having married the sister, the other side took no deep root in the Court, though otherwise they made their ways to honour by their swords. And that which is of more note, considering my Lord of Leicester's use of men of war, being shortly after sent Governor to the revolted States, and no soldier himself, is that he made no more account of Sir John Norris, a soldier, then deservedly famous, and trained from a page under the discipline of the greatest captain in Christendom, the Admiral Castilliau, and of command in the French and Dutch Wars almost twenty years. And it is of further observation that my Lord of Essex, after Leicester's decease, though addicted to arms and honoured by the general in the Portugal expedition, whether out of instigation, as it hath been thought, or out of ambition and jealousy, eclipsed by the fame and splendour of this great commander, never loved him in sincerity.
Moreover, and certain it is, he not only crushed, and upon all occasions quelled the youth of this great man and his famous brethren, but therewith drew on his own fatal end, by undertaking the Irish action in a time when he left the Court empty of friends, and full-fraught with his professed enemies. But I forbear to extend myself in any further relation upon this subject, as having lost some notes of truth in these two nobles, which I would present;and therewith touched somewhat, which I would not, if the equity of the narration would have permitted any omission.
PERROT.
Sir John Perrot was a goodly gentleman, and of the sword; and he was of a very ancient descent, as an heir to many subtracts of gentry, especially from Guy de Brain of Lawhorn; so was he of a very vast estate, and came not to Court for want and to these advancements.
