[830]Ex registro capellae Turris London, scil. 1600[831], 'Robert, earle of Essex, beheaded, Febr. 6th.'
From my lady Elizabeth, viscountesse Purbec, repeated by her:--
1. There is none, oh none but you, Who from me estrange your sight, Whom mine eyes affect to view And chained eares heare with delight.
2. Others' beauties others move, In you I all graces find: Such are the effects of love To make them happy that are kind.
3. Woemen in fraile beauty trust, Only seeme you kind to me, Still be truly kind and just For that can't dissembled bee.
4. Deare, afford me then your sight, That surveighing all your lookes Endlesse volumnes I may write And fill the world with envyed bookes.
5. Which when after ages view All shall wonder and despayre, Women, to find a man so true, And men, a woeman halfe so faire--
made by Robert, earl of Essex, that was beheaded.
[832]The tradition is that the bell of Lincoln's-Inne was brought from Cales (Cadiz), tempore reginae Elizabethae, plundered in the expedition[833] under <Robert Devereux>, earl of Essex.
[834]Sir Everard Digby (father of Sir Kenelme) scripsit libellum Latinè cui titulus:--
I have heard Mr. John Digby say (his grandsonne) that he was the handsomest man (accounted) in England.
[835]Sir Everard Digby was a most gallant gentleman and one of the handsomest men of his time. He writt something in Latin _de methodo_, which I did light upon 23 yeares ago at a country man's howse in Herefordshire; and Mr. Francis Potter told me he writt _de arte natandi_.
'Twas his ill fate to suffer in the powder-plott. When his heart was pluct out by the executioner (who, _secundum formam_, cryed 'Here is the heart of a traytor!'), it is credibly reported, he replied, 'Thou liest!' This my lord Bacon speakes of, but not mentioning his name, in his _Historia vitae et mortis_.
[836]Sir Kenelm Digby[DU], knight: he was borne at <Gotehurst, Bucks> on the eleventh of June[DV]: see Ben: Johnson, 2d volumne:--
'Witnesse thy actions done at Scanderoon Upon _thy_ birthday, the eleaventh of June.'
[Memorandum:--in the first impression in 8vo it is thus; but in the folio 'tis _my_, instead of _thy_.]
Mr. Elias Ashmole assures me, from two or three nativities by Dr. <Richard> Nepier, that Ben: Johnson was mistaken and did it for the ryme-sake.--In Dr. Napier's papers of nativities, with Mr. Ashmole, I find:--'Sir Kenelme Digby natus July 11, 5ʰ 40´ A.M. 1603, 14 Leo ascending,' and another scheme gives it at '4ʰ A.M., 26 Cancer ascending'; and there are two others of Cancer and Leo.
