He was a very goodly person, tall, and singularly well-featured, and all his youth well-favoured, of a sweet aspect, but high-foreheaded, which (as I should take it) was of no discommendation; but towards his latter, and which with old men was but a middle age, he grew high-coloured, so that the Queen had much of her father, for, expecting some of her kindred, and some few that had handsome wits in crooked bodies, she always took personage in the way of election, for the people hath it to this day, _King Henry loved a man_.
Being thus in her grace, she called to mind the sufferings of _his_ ancestors, both in her father’s and sister’s reigns, and restored his and his brother’s blood, creating Ambrose, the elder, Earl of Warwick, and himself Earl of Leicester; and, as he was _ex primitis_, or, _of her first choice_, so he rested not there, but long enjoyed her favour, and therewith what he listed, till time and emulation, the companions of greatness, resolved of his period, and to colour him at his setting in a cloud (at Conebury) not by so violent a death, or by the fatal sentence of a judicature, as that of his father and grandfather was, but, as is supposed, by that poison which he had prepared for others, wherein they report him a rare artist. I am not bound to give credit to all vulgar relations, or the libels of his time, which are commonly forced and falsified suitable to the words and honours { 126} of men in passion and discontent; but what blinds me to think him no good man, amongst other things of known truth, is that of my Lord of Essex’s { 127a} death in Ireland and the marriage of his lady, which I forbear to press in regard he is long since dead, and others are living whom it may concern.
To take him in the observation of his letters and writings, which should best set him off, for such as have fallen into my hands, I never yet saw a style or phrase more seemingly religious and fuller of the strains of devotion; and, were they not sincere, I doubt much of his well-being, { 127b} and, I fear, he was too well seen in the aphorisms and principles of Nicholas the Florentine, and in the reaches { 127c} of Cesare Borgia.
And hereto I have only touched him in his courtships. I conclude him in his lance; { 127d} he was sent Governor by the Queen to the revolted States of Holland, where we read not of his wonders, for they say he had more of Mercury than he had of Mars, and that his device might have been, without prejudice to the great Cæsar, _Veni_, _vidi_, _redivi_.