My Lord Willoughby was one of the Queen’s first swordsmen; he was of the ancient extract of the Bartewes, but more ennobled by his mother, who was Duchess of Suffolk. He was a great master of the art _military_, and was sent general into France, and commanded the second army of five the Queen had sent thither, in aid of the French. I have heard it spoken that, had he not slighted the Court, but applied himself to the Queen, he might have enjoyed a plentiful portion of her grace; and it was his saying, and it did him no good, that he was none of the _reptilia_, intimating that he could not creep on the ground, and that the Court was not his element; for, indeed, as he was a great soldier, so he was of a suitable magnanimity, and could not brook the obsequiousness and assiduity of the Court; and as he was then somewhat descending from youth, happily he had an _animam revertendi_, or a desire to make a safe retreat.
And now I come to another of the _Togati_, Sir Nicholas Bacon, an arch-piece of wit and of wisdom. He was a gentleman, and a man of law, and of a great knowledge therein, whereby, together with his after-part of learning and dexterity, he was promoted to be Keeper of the Great Seal, and being of kin to the Treasurer Burleigh, and { 144} also the help of his hand to bring him to the Queen’s great favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, “that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;” and that, though he knew that “_verus quisque suæ fortunæ faber_,” was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, but I will never forgive that man that loseth himself to be rid of his jests.
He was father to that refined wit which since hath acted a disastrous part on the public stage, and of late sat in his father’s room as Lord Chancellor; those that lived in his age, and from whence I have taken this little model of him, give him a lively character, and they decipher him to be another Solon, and the Simon of those times, such a one as Œdipus was in dissolving of riddles; doubtless he was an able instrument, as it was his commendation that his head was the mallet, for it was a very great one, and therein kept a wedge, that entered all knotty pieces that come to the table.
