[66] No minister ever exerted his power with less tyranny and more benignity than the favourite of Philip the Third: he fell “from his high estate” by the intrigues of his son, and an ungrateful monk whom he had raised to be confessor to the king, and who abandoned the friend that had elevated him as soon as the smiles of sovereignty were transferred to another. On the 4th of October 1618, he retired to his paternal estate from the capricious favour of the court, where he passed the remainder of his days in peace and privacy.
[67] William Burton is said, by Antony à Wood, to have been a _pretender_ to astronomy, of which he published an Ephemeris in 1655.—Edmund Gunter, a mathematician of greater eminence, was astronomical professor of Gresham College, and eminent for his skill in the sciences: his publications were popular in his day. He died in Gresham College, 1626.
[68] Thomas Hariot, styled by Camden “Mathematicus Insignis,” was a pensioner and companion of sir Walter Raleigh in his voyage to Virginia (1584), of which upon his return he published an account. He was held in high estimation by the earl of Northumberland, sir Thomas Aylesbury, and others, for his mathematical knowledge, but, like his patron, Raleigh, was a deist in religion.—Ob. 1621. See Wood’s Athenæ, vol. i. p. 460. ed. 1721.
[69] Of this popular song, which is reprinted from “Deuteromelia,” 1609, in Hawkins’s History of Music, and in Ritson’s Antient Songs, the following is the introductory stanza:
“As it fell upon a holyday And upon a holy-tide-a, John Dory brought him an ambling nag To Paris for to ride-a.”
[70] Louis the XIIIth, for no superior virtues surnamed “Le Juste.” I have seen it somewhere observed that he chose his ministers for extraordinary reasons: Richlieu, because he could not govern his kingdom without him; Des Noyers, for psalm-singing; and le duc de Zuynes, for being an expert bird-catcher.
The satire of Corbet seems to justify the remark.
He was born 1601; married Anne of Austria 1615; and died at St. Germain’s 1643.
[71] Upon a similar declaration being issued by Charles in 1633, “one Dr. Dennison,” says lord Strafford’s garrulous correspondent, “read it here (London), and presently after read the ten commandments; then said, ‘Dearly beloved, you have now heard the commandments of God and man: obey which you please.’”