privi chamber of countrey daunces befor the Q. M.”; very likely he may have been in attendance upon the Queen when she walked on[12] “Richmond Greene,”“with greater shewes of ability, than”could “well stand with her years.”During the six years that he was at Court, he probably came in for a period of brilliancy and a period of depression, although there is nothing to show for certain whether he had retired before the time thus described in an old letter[13]:—“Thother of the counsayle or nobilitye estrainge themselves from court by all occasions, so as, besides the master of the horse, vice-chamberlain, and comptroller, few of account appeare there.”If Lingard is right, however,[14] he gave up his appointment at Court the year before Elizabeth’s death, and thus luckily escaped the time when, as he describes her, she was[15] “reduced to a skeleton. Her food was nothing but manchet bread and succory pottage. Her taste for dress was gone. She had not changed her clothes for many days. Nothing could please her; she was the torment of the ladies who waited on her person. She stamped with her feet, and swore violently at the objects of her anger.”

One thing that may have had a subsequent influence upon Digby, while he was at the Court of Elizabeth, was the violence shown towards Catholics. In the course of the fourteen years that followed the defeat of the Spanish Armada before the death of the Queen,[16] “the Catholics groaned under the presence of incessant persecution. Sixty-one clergymen, forty-seven laymen, and two gentlemen, suffered capital punishment for some or other of the spiritual felonies and treasons which had been lately created.”Although he had been brought up a Protestant, “this gentleman,”says Gerard,[17] “was always Catholicly affected,”and the severe measures dealt out to Catholics whilst he was at Court may have disgusted him and induced him to leave it.

I have shown how Father Gerard states[18] that Sir Everard Digby was educated “at the University by his guardians, as other young gentlemen used to be.” It is to be wished that he had informed us at what University and at what College; when he went there and when he left; as his attendance at Court, together with a very important event, to be noticed presently, which took place, or is said to have taken place, when he was fifteen, make it difficult to allot a vacant time for his University career.

The young man,—he did not live to be twenty-five,—whose portrait we have been looking at, is described in the Biographia Britannica[19] as having been “remarkably handsome,”“extremely modest and affable,” and “justly reputed one of the finest gentlemen in England.”His great personal friend, the already-quoted Father Gerard,[20] says that he was “as complete a man in all things that deserved estimation, or might win him affection, as one should see in a kingdom. He was of stature about two yards high,”“of countenance” “comely and manlike.”“He was skilful in all things that belonged to a gentleman, very cunning at his weapon, much practised and expert in riding of great horses, of which he kept divers in his stable with a skilful rider for them. For other sports of hunting or hawking, which gentlemen in England so much use and delight in, he had the best of both kinds in the country round about.”“For all manner of games which are also usual for gentlemen in foul weather, when they are forced to keep house, he was not only able therein to keep company with the best, but was so cunning in them all, that those who knew him well, had rather take his part than be against him.”“He was a good musician, and kept divers good musicians in his house; and himself also could play well of divers instruments. But those who were well acquainted with him”—and no one knew him better than Father Gerard himself—“do affirm that in gifts of mind he excelled much more than in his natural parts; although in those also it were hard to find so many in one man in such a measure. But of wisdom he had an extraordinary talent, such a judicial wit and so well able to discern and discourse of any matter, as truly I have heard many say they have not seen the like of a young man, and that his carriage and manner of discourse were more like to a grave Councillor of State than to a gallant of the Court as he was, and a man of about twenty-six years old (which I think was his age, or thereabouts).”In this Father Gerard was mistaken. Sir Everard Digby did not live to be twenty-six, or even twenty-five. Gerard continues:—“And though his behaviour were courteous to all, and offensive to none, yet was he a man of great courage and of noted valour.”

GOTHURST
The home of Sir Everard Digby; now called Gayhurst

We began by examining a portrait: let us now take a look at an old country-house. Turning our backs on Wales, a country which has little to do with my subject, we will imagine ourselves in Buckinghamshire, about half way between the towns of Buckingham and Bedford, and about three miles from Newport Pagnell, a little way from the high road leading in a north-westerly direction. There stands the now old, but at the time of which I am writing, the comparatively new house, known then as Gothurst.

Perhaps one of the chief attractions in Elizabethan architecture is that, by combining certain features of both classical and gothic architecture, it is a result, as well as an example, of that spirit of compromise so dear to the English nation. If somewhat less picturesque, and less rich and varied in colour, than the half-timbered houses of Elizabethan architecture, the stone buildings of the same style are more massive and stately in their appearance, and the newly-hewn stone of Gothurst