and court, and the truth is, hee had a large proportion of guifts and endowments, but too much of the season of envy, and he was a meere vegetable of the court that sprung up at night and sunke againe at his noone. Flos non mentorum, sed sex fuit illa virorum. does not seem any were ever reversed.† He was a great friend and patron of learning, and of singular bounty to students, for which the University of Oxford chose him their Chancellor. He died partly from grief of mind, as the Queen had somewhat bitterly exacted a great sum of money collected of tenths and first fruits, whereof he had the charge, which he had hoped in regard of the favour he was in with her, she would have forgiven him; but it seems he reckoned without his host, though she visited and comforted him. He died 1591, and was buried in St. Paul's, where a sumptuous monument was erected to his memory by his nephew William Newport, whom he had adopted as his heir, and who had taken the name of Hatton. After his death the keeping of the great seal was for some months in the hands of the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Hundsdon, the Lord Cobham, and the Lord Buckhurst, and afterwards was committed to John Puckering the Queen's Serjeant at Law, not with the title of chancellor, but keeper of the great seal. + The great Lawyers of England took offence at his advancement, as since the clergy and nobility were discontinued in this high office, it had been constantly filled by practitioners in the law. But Hatton's appointment was oweing to the recommendation of some rival courtiers, who imagined that by his absence from court, and the difficulty of the office for which they thought him insufficient, he might commit some blunders that would put him out of favor with the Queen. In this they were completely disappointed, as he conducted himself with the greatest propriety, and with more state and dignity than any of his predecessors, Earl of Nottingham. My Lord of Effingham* though a courtier betimes, yet I find not that the sunshine of his favor, brake out upon him untill she took him into the ship, and made him High Admirall of England, for his extract it might suffice that he was the sonnne of A. Howard, and of A. Duke of Norfolk. The following curious story of the countess of Nottingham was frequently told by Lady Elizabeth Spelman, great-grand daughter of Sir Robert Carey, brother of Lady Nottingham and afterwards Earl of Monmouth, whose curious memoirs of himself were published a few years ago by Lord Corke: "When Catherine Countess of Nottingham was dying (as she did, according to his lordship's own account about a fortnight before Queen Elizabeth) she sent to her Majesty, to desire that she might see her, in order to reveal something to her Majesty, without the discovery of which she could not die in peace. Upon the Queen's coming, Lady Nottingham told her, that, while the Earl of Essex lay under sentence of death, he was desirous of asking her Majesty's mercy, in the manner prescribed by herself, during the height of his favour; the Queen having given him a ring, which being sent to her as a token of his distress, might entitle him to her protection. But the Earl, |