OR, THE

Rise and Fall

OF

THE EARL OF SOMERSET.

A Romance,

LONDON:

SHACKELL AND ARROWSMITH, JOHNSON'S-COURT.

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A 725

659751

BLIGHTED AMBITION,

&c.

CHAPTER I.

You were us'd

To say extremity was the tirer of spirits;
That common chances, common men would bear;
That when the sea was calm, all boats alike
Shew'd mastership in floating. Fortune's blows,
When most struck home, being gently warded, crave
A noble cunning. You were used to load me
With precepts that would make invincible
The heart that conn'd them.

CORIOLANUS.

In a few days after the Earl of Somerset had visited the King at Hampton Court, the Privy Council resolved upon sending Sir Thomas Overbury as ambassador into the Low Countries to the Archduke. The great object of Cecil

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in this appointment, was to reward the diligence and sufficiency of the knight, and to make his mission a means of drawing him into greater preferments. But that great statesman did not live to see his plan carried into effect; for being now grown into years, he was advised to visit Bath for the benefit of his health, and in coming over the downs from that city, to Marlborough, he was taken ill in his coach, and expired the day after. The death of the great Earl of Salisbury, was not looked upon by many as having happened in the ordinary course of Nature, and they accordingly attributed it to poison, that invisible but fatal agent much in vogue in those days. And scarcely had this " supporter of the Protestant faction, and discloser of treasons," departed this life, than epitaphs innumerable were made for his tomb-stone, one saying:

SO

Here lies thrown

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Little Bossive Robin, that was so great,
Not Robin Goodfellow, nor Robin Hood,
But Robin th' incloser of Hatfield Wood;
Who seem'd as sent from ugly Fate,
To spoil the Prince and rob the state :
Owning a mind of dismal ends,
As traps for foes, and tricks for friends.

The great fame of Somerset, his popularity, and the mysterious manner in which he conducted some parts of his conduct, spread reports in no respects favourable to his reputation at this period. Some said he had tampered with Cecil's phy. sician, others that he had merely employed the chroniclers of men's actions, to write the epitaph of the great statesman now no more; but a third class in the blindness of their zeal, translated the Earl's death, into an effect of God's vengeance; but the Earl of Salisbury was a minister of incomparable prudence, and with such a scatterer as King James