The Elizabethan Court Day by Day--1593
1593 1593 At HAMPTON COURT, Middlesex. Jan 1,Mon New Year gifts. New Year Gift roll is not extant, but William Dethick, Garter King of Arms, gave the Queen a book of: ‘Arms of the Knights of the Garter in the time of Henry VII’. T Also Jan 1: play, by Lord Strange’s Men. Jan 1: ‘A Pleasant Conceit plainly set out, and plainly presented as a New Year’s Gift to the Queen’s Majesty at Hampton Court Anno Domini 1592’. Entered by the Stationers, 17 Jan [1593]. Not extant, but Thomas Churchyard lists this in Churchyard’s Challenge as among his works. (See end 1593). Jan 1: Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) wrote a Dedicatory Epistle to the Queen, intended to preface an account of his services against Spain: ‘To the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, my most dread Sovereign’: ‘Madam, seeing divers hath diversely reported, and written, of these voyages and actions which I have attempted and made...whereby many untruths have been published...I have accounted it my duty to present this Discourse to your Majesty...either for itself, being the first fruits of your servant’s pen, or for the matter, being service done to your Majesty by your poor vassal against your great enemy...that...our present age...may be satisfied in the rightful- ness of these actions...and your servant’s labour not seem altogether lost, not only in travail by Sea and Land, but also in writing the Report thereof, a work to him no less troublesome, yet made pleasant and sweet, in that it hath been, is, and shall be, for your Majesty’s content; to whom I have devoted myself, live or die’.
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