Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey

Secretary Davison, and succeeded Sir Christopher Hatton as Lord Keeper-his 'lawyer-like and ungenteel' appearance presenting so forcible a contrast to his predecessor, that the Queen could with difficulty overcome her repugnance to his appointment. It was he who defined to Speaker Coke the liberty allowed to the Commons: Liberty of speech is 'granted you; but you must know what privilege you have, 'not to speak every one what he listeth, or what cometh in ' his brain to utter; but your privilege is Aye or No." To Sir Sir Thomas Owen of Cundover, Justice of the Common Pleas, Owen, friend of Sir Nicholas Bacon, a fine effigy, resembling the 1598. portrait of him still preserved at Cundover, was erected by his son Roger, in the south aisle of the Choir. The tomb His tomb. bears the motto, given to him by the Queen, in allusion to

his humble origin, Memorare novissima;' and his own quaint epitaph, Spes, vermis, et ego.'

Thomas

But the most conspicuous monuments of this era are those of Lord Hunsdon and of the Cecils. Henry Cary, Baron Lord Hunsdon, Hunsdon, the rough honest chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, 1596. brother of Lady Catherine Knollys, has a place and memorial worthy of his confidential relations with the Queen, who was his first-cousin. Like his two princely kinswomen in the Chapels of St. Edmund and St. Nicholas, his interment was signalised by displacing the altar of the Chapel of St. John the Baptist. The monument was remarkable, His monueven in the next century, as most magnificent," and is, in ment. fact, the loftiest in the Abbey. It would almost seem as if his son, who erected it, laboured to make up to the old statesman for the long-expected honours of the earldom-. three times granted, and three times revoked. The Queen at last came to see him, and laid the patent and the robes

1 Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, ii. 175.

2 Fuller's Worthies, i. 433.

Lady Hunsdon was buried with him (1606-7), also the widow of his son (1617-18). (Burial Register.)

The Cecils. Lord Burleigh, 1598.

His funeral.

on his bed. 'Madam,' he answered, seeing you counted

me not worthy of this honour whilst I was living, I count 'myself unworthy of it now I am dying." He, like Sir R. Sackville, 'belonged,' as Leicester said, 'to the tribe of Dan, and was Noli me tangere.' 'I doubt much, my Harry,' wrote Elizabeth to him after his suppression of the Northern Rebellion, whether that the victory given me more joyed me, or that you were by God appointed the instrument of my glory.' And with the bitterness of a true patriot, as well as a true kinsman, he was at times so affected as to be 'almost senseless, considering the time, the necessity Her Majesty hath of assured friends, the needfulness of good ' and sound counsel, and the small care it seems she hath of ' either. Either she is bewitched,' or doomed to destruction.1 Lord Burleigh was attached to Westminster by many ties. He was the intimate friend of the Dean, Gabriel Goodman ; and this, combined with his High Stewardship, led to his being called, in play, the Dean of Westminster," and he had in his earlier days lived in the Precincts. Although he was buried at Stamford, his funeral was celebrated in the Abbey, over the graves of his wife and daughter, where already stood the towering monument, erected to them before his death, in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. It expresses the great grief of his life, which, but for the earnest entreaties of the Queen, would have driven him from his public duties altogether. If anyone ask,' says his epitaph, who is that aged man, on bended knees, ' venerable from his hoary hairs, in his robes of state, and 'with the order of the Garter?'-the answer is, that we see

1 Fuller's Worthies, i. 433.

2 Aikin's Elizabeth, i. 243.

3 Ibid.

Froude, ix. 557.

5 Strype's Memorials of Parker.
• Chapter Book, 1551.

She too had made Dean Goodman

one of her chief advisers. (Strype's Annals, iii. 2, 127.)

8 The monument has been recently restored by the present Marquis of Salisbury, who is directly descended from this marriage.

1589.

the great minister of Elizabeth, his eyes dim with tears 'for the loss of those who were dearer to him beyond the 'whole race of womankind." It shows the degree of superhuman majesty which he had attained in English History, that Sir Roger de Coverley was very well pleased to see 'the statesman Cecil on his knees.' The collar of St. George marks the special favour by which, to him alone of humble birth, Elizabeth granted the Garter. If any ask, who ' are those noble women, splendidly attired, and who are 'they at their head and feet?'-the answer is that the one is Mildred, his second wife, daughter of Sir Antony Cook, Mildred Cecil, Lady and sister of the learned lady who wrote the epitaphs of Burleigh, Lord Russell in the adjacent chapel, 'partner of her hus'band's fortunes, through good and evil, during the reigns of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth'-' versed in all 'sacred literature, especially Basil, Chrysostom, and Gregory 'Nazianzen;' the other 'Anne, his daughter, wedded to the 'Earl of Oxford;' at her feet, his second son, Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, and at her head her three daughters, Elizabeth, Bridget, and Susan Vere. But neither they,' nor his elder son Thomas, nor all his grandsons and granddaughters,' will efface the grief 'with which the old man 'clings to the sad monument of his lost wife and daughter.' Cecil, Robert, on whom his father invokes a long life, lies at Hatfield; but his wife Elizabeth has a tomb in this chapel, and also (removed from its place for the monument of the Duchess of Northumberland) his niece Elizabeth, wife of the second Earl of Exeter. The first Earl, Thomas, after a life full of years and honours, lies 2 on the other side of the Abbey, in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist. This tomb was built for him