it; and in spite
of the strenuous efforts of his enemies, this attempt to injure him only
served to augment her affection and root him more firmly in her
confidence.

"Her majesty," says Whyte soon after, "is in very good health, and comes
much abroad; upon Thursday she dined at Kew, at my lord keeper's house,
(who lately obtained of her majesty his suit for one hundred pounds a
year in fee-farm,) her entertainment for that meal was great and
exceeding costly. At her first lighting she had a fine fan garnished
with diamonds, valued at four hundred pounds at least. After dinner, in
her privy-chamber, he gave her a fair pair of virginals. In her
bed-chamber, he presented her with a fine gown and a juppin, which
things were pleasing to her highness; and, to grace his lordship the
more, she of herself took from him a fork, a spoon, and a salt, of fair
agate." It must be confessed that this was a mode of "gracing" a
courtier peculiarly consonant to the disposition of her majesty.

The further Elizabeth descended into the vale of years, the stronger
were her efforts to make ostentation of a youthful gaiety of spirits and
an unfailing alacrity in the pursuit of pleasure; though avarice, the
vice of age, mingled strangely with these her juvenile affectations. To
remark to her the progress of time, was to wound her in the tenderest
part, and not even from her ghostly counsellors would she endure a topic
so offensive as the mention of her age: an anecdote to this effect
belongs to the year 1596, and is found in the account of Rudd bishop of
St. Davids given in Harrington's Brief View of the Church.

"There is almost none that waited in queen Elizabeth's court and
observed any thing, but can tell that it pleased her very much to seem,
to be thought, and to be told that she looked young. The majesty and
gravity of a sceptre borne forty-four years could not alter that nature
of a woman in her: This notwithstanding, this good bishop being
appointed to preach before her in the Lent of the year 1596... wishing
in a godly zeal, as well became him, that she should think sometime of
mortality," took a text fit for the purpose, on which he treated for a
time "well," "learnedly," and "respectively." "But when he had spoken
awhile of some sacred and mystical numbers, as three for the Trinity,
three for the heavenly Hierarchy, seven for the Sabbath, and seven times
seven for a Jubilee; and lastly,--seven times nine for the grand
climacteri