By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 269 



may please her, She hath promysed and he is to blame that doubts eyther 



• her word or her nature. 



" God prosper her & your Lordship in her favor. / From solytary Broxeborne* 

 this tewsday. 



"yo'. Lordships poore cosen 

 " To the right honora " FoULK Geevill " 



ble Earle of Essex." 



2, c. 1593. Charles Chester to Mr. (Gelly) Meyrick/ 

 Steward to the Earl of Essex. 



" M'. Merik. In few wurds of great wayte I protest without dissimulation to 

 [be] bound to you all dayes of my liif , & in lew thearof to deliver you a C£ if you 

 will procuer me my lordes cloth.f whome I have loved from his infancy. I will 

 till death honor him, & esteem his h. cloth more than Aiax or Ulisses did Akilles 

 armor, or more then Hercules the lions skin he wore, and more reverently use yt 

 then Cumberland J will esteem his robes of parliment wh. is the i-udest Earle by 

 reson of his northerly bringen up & great societe ever syns the first race at 

 Salsburi § and amunckst mariners that he hath gotten thear good wills, as he 

 thincketh to make him admirall on[e] day wh. may be never. It was thought x 

 years agon that you should never have fortune or Audacite, to do me good or any 

 that could scarse speak, but now contrary to that prownd scomfuU opinion, do me 

 good, for God I se by you doth exalt only the humbell & meek, & let me prayse 



• In Hertfordshire. 

 ' Sir Gelly Meyrick, the Earl's Steward, joined with him in his rebellion, was 

 tried, condemned and executed at Tyburn in 1601. Cuffe, one of his companions, 

 hanged at the same time, had been making a long speech. Sir Gelly, " with a 

 soul undaunted, as if he were weary of his life, interrupted him once or twice, 

 wishing him to spare his wise discourse which was altogether unreasonable now 

 that he was ready to die." (Camden's Elizabeth, p. 628.) 



T " To wear his cloth," i.e., to become a retainer in his service. In former times noblemen gave 

 clothes, a cloak, &c., not only to their servants or followers, but to others not of their family, to 

 engage .them to their quarrels for that year This was prohibited in the time of Richard II. In 

 1585 some land at Warminster was held on lease by one John Hyde, under Sir Walter Hungerford ; 

 and at the back of the lease it was recorded " That the said John Hyde shall during his life serve 

 the said Sir Walter & wear his livery, so the said Sir Walter will bestow his cloth upon him, and also 

 ride with the said Sir Walter upon reasonable warning and to make his ly very himself or at his own 

 charges." 



t George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, a great mathematician, had so decided a passion for 

 navigation that he vmdertook at his own expense several voyages for the public service ; but that, 

 and a passion for tournaments, horse-racing, &c., n^ade such inroads upon his fortune, that he is 

 said to have wasted more of his estate than any of his ancestors. K.G., 1592, Died, 1605, set. 47, 

 See an account of him in Whitaker's Hist, of Craven, p. 270. 



5 The Earl of Cumberland's victory at Salisbury races is thus noticed in Hatcher and Benson's 

 Hist, of S., p. 29i : " The following memorandum is perhaps among the earliest notices of a sport, 

 now become in a manner national. 



'1585. These two years, in March, there was a race run with horses at the furthest three miles 

 from Sarum, at the which were divers noble personages, whose names are underwritten, and t?u 

 Earl of Cumberland won the golden bell which was valued at £50, and better, which Earl is to 

 bring the same again, nezt year, which he promised to do, upon his honour, to the Mayor of this 

 city,' " 



