himself. He first founded his hopes of preferment on the earl of Essex, to whom he seems to have made unbounded court. In one of his letters he tells that favourite, "So God deal with me in die illo, as I would lose of my own blood to save yours; and hold all those given over utterly in sensum reprobissimum, whose malice can distinguish at this day between the safeguard of your worthy person, and the life of your country"." In another; "When I see you not, yet I think of you, and, with the most divine philosophers, will ever settle my beatitude in contemplation of that shining object, unto which hypocrisy or flattery can add no grace, because the rare worth of itself hath made it very truly and singularly super-excellent." And as excess of flattery to the creature is not content till it has dared to engage even the Creator in its hyperboles, he tells Essex, "My hope of your safe return is anchored in heaven. I believe that God himself is not only pleased with his own workmanship in you, as he was when vidit omnia quæ creavit, et erant valdè bona; but withal, that he is purposed to protect that worthy person of your lordship's under the wings of his cherubim "." What could sir • Ib. p. 363. 7 Bacon Papers, vol. ii. p. 246. • Ib. p. 429. Anthony Weldon say too bad of the flattery of a man, who paints the GREAT GOD of heaven smitten, like an old doating queen, with a frail phantom of his own creation! But though Northampton could flatter, honest Abbot could not. The earl prosecuting some persons in the star-chamber for defamation, as his infamy began to grow public; when the lords were ready to pass sentence, the archbishop rose, and to the earl's face told him, "Those things said of him were grounded upon reason, and for which men of upright consciences had some reason to speak-and that his lordship's own letters made evident that he had done some things against his own conscience, merely to attain unto honour and sovereignty, and to please the king:"-and then pulled out a letter from Northampton to cardinal Bellarmine, in which [See some of the grossest and most fulsome flattery, says Mr. Cole, that ever came out of the mouth of the vilest sycophant, in a preface by this honest puritan Abbot (who could not flatter) before The Examination, Arraignment, and Convic tion of George Sprot, &c. 1608. W. is in favour of king James, The ingenious writer's antipathy to papists and popery, may go in a line with honest Abbot's, who considered the Christian religion no otherwise than as it militated against popery. It could not be other than the earl must be a reprobate, for he was a papist and a favourite of king James. MS. note in Mr. Gough's copy.] the earl professed to the latter, "that howsoever the condition of the times compelled him, and his majesty urged him to turn protestant, yet neverthelesse his heart stood with the papists, and that he would be ready to further them in any attempt3."-But to have done with this topic, which I should gladly quit, if it were • Northampton was so abashed with this reproof, that as soon as the court broke up, he went to Greenwich, made his will, confessing himself a papist, and died soon after. Sir Fulke Grevill's Five Years of King James, p. 57. This small book contains little more than the story of the earl and countess of Somerset and of Northampton, to whom sir Fulke would not only ascribe almost every thing done at that period, but resolves all into malicious designs of mischief, as Northampton's drawing the bishops into declaring for the divorce, in order to expose that bench; an unnecessary finesse to circumvent men so ready for any infamy, as many of the order were at that time. It seems strange that an author who refined so much, should have reasoned so little, as to believe in witches and incantations. The new volume of the Biographia rejects this work as not lord Brook's, for no better reason than his not having mentioned it in his other writings. A clergyman might as well refuse to baptize a child because the father at a former christening did not tell him that he intended to beget it. [See note in the article of lord Brooke. The Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James the Sixth, King of Scotland, was published by sir David Dalrymple, Edinb. 1766, 8vo. and con tains fourteen letters, dictated probably by Cecil, though written by lord Northampton. The editor remarks, that the style of his lordship is affectedly dark and perplexed; and to add to the distress of a publisher, his hand-writing is scarcely legible. Advertisement.] not to pass to that of blood. Howard, who always kept terms with the Cecils, and when he had presented one of his compositions to Essex, sent another to Burleigh (at the same time with a true sycophant's art, confessing it to his friend); skirmished himself out of Essex's misfortunes, and became the instrument of sir Robert Cecil's correspondence with king James*, which Cecil pretended was for the service of his mistress, as the confidence of her ministers would assure that prince of his peaceable succession, and prevent his giving her any disturb ance. This negotiation 5 was immediately rewarded by James on his accession, with his favour, and with the honours I have mentioned; but as every rising favourite was the object of Northampton's baseness, he addicted his services to the earl of Somerset, and became a chief and shocking instrument in that lord's match with Northampton's kinswoman the countess of Essex, and of the succeeding mur Bacon Papers, vol. ii. P. 514. Lloyd says, that Northampton was no flatterer, nor ambitious! p. 781. Those who condemn sir Anthony Weldon's impartiality, may perhaps admire Lloyd's veracity. ⚫ [One great motive to the raising of the Howards, says Weldon, with much probability, was the duke of Norfolk suffering for the queen of Scots, the king's mother. Court of King James, p. 15.] der of sir Thomas Overbury?. Northampton, the pious endower of hospitals, died luckily before the plot came to light; but his letters were read in court-not all, for there was such a horrid mixture of obscenity and blood in them, that the chief justice could not go through them in common decency.-It is time to come to this lord's works. He wrote "A Defensative against the Poison of supposed Prophesies;" dedicated to sir Francis Walsingham, and printed in 4to. at London, in 1583, and reprinted there in folio in 1620, by J. Charlewood, printer to the earl's great nephew the earl of Arundel. There is a long account of this work in the British Librarian, p. 3318. [The most infamous circumstance of this nobleman's life, observes Mr. Brydges, was the concern he had in the intrigue carried on between his great niece the countess of Essex and Carr viscount Rochester; the wretch acted as pander to the countess, for the purpose of conciliating the favour of the rising favourite. Two letters cited by Mr. B. from the Cotton MS. Titus B. vii. render it impossible to doubt the earl's deep criminality in the destruction of Overbury. Memoirs of the Peers of England, vol. i. p. 243.] [In the book referred to by lord Orford, the industrious editor Oldys has not only given an account, but an abstract and analysis of the contents of lord Northampton's Defensative; which, as he states, is replenished with variety of learned autho |