1585 1585 At GREENWICH PALACE, Kent Jan 1,Fri New Year gifts. Works: ‘making New Year’s gift boards’. Among 191 gifts to the Queen: by William Dethick, York Herald: ‘A Book of Arms of the Knights of the noble Order of the Garter made since her Majesty’s Reign’; by Petruccio Ubaldini: ‘A Pedigree’; by William Absolon, Clerk of the Closet [a chapel]: ‘A book of Christian exercises, covered with crimson velvet embroidered with Venice gold and silver’. Edmund Bunny wrote A Book of Christian Exercise (1584). Also Jan 1: Feats of activity, by Earl of Oxford’s Men. Revels: ‘Divers feats of activity were showed and presented...by Symons and his fellows, whereon was employed the page’s suit of orange tawny tissued velvet which they spoiled’. Jan 2: christening. Queen was godmother to ‘Mr Anthony Powlet’s daughter’.T Parents: Anthony Paulet, son of Sir Amias Paulet; wife: Catherine (Norris), only daughter of Henry 1st Lord Norris of Rycote. Francis Coot went ‘from the court at Greenwich to the Lord Norris to his house at Rycote in Oxfordshire’ to make ready.T Queen’s gift, Jan 2: To ‘Sir Amias Paulet’s child’: gilt bowl with a cover.NYG The child was Anthony Paulet’s 1st child: Elizabeth Paulet. Jan 3,Sun play, Felix and Philiomena, by the Queen’s Men. Revels provided ‘one battlement and a house of canvas’. Court news. Jan 4, Lord Burghley to Sir Francis Walsingham, of John 2nd Lord St John of Bletsoe, who adamantly refuses to take charge of the Queen of Scots. Her Majesty ‘has commanded me to write to Rycote for Sir Amias Paulet’. To replace Sir Ralph Sadler, Mary’s temporary Keeper. [Scot.vii.524]. Jan 5, Greenwich, Lord Burghley to Sir Ralph Sadler: ‘Her Majesty...intended long afore Christmas that my Lord St John of Bletsoe should take that charge’. He refused to do so, although asked over several days by Burghley, the Earl of Bedford, and the Earl of Leicester. When ‘commanded in the Queen’s name...he said he would abide any extremity rather than to go...In the end, after many debates, my Lord of Leicester, and my Lord Chamberlain, had charge to tell him that her Majesty would make an example of him, by punishing him for his wilfulness...This tale we told him this after- noon, and then he yielded to obey her Majesty, as forced by her commandment, but not with his goodwill. We reported this to her Majesty, and finding her so much offended, as she bade he should not go’. [Sadler, ii.477-8]. Jan 6,Wed knighting: Walter Ralegh.M Also: play, An invention called Five Plays in One, by the Queen’s Men. Revels: ‘In the hall at Greenwich’ with ‘a great cloth and a battlement of canvas and canvas for a well and a mount’. Jan 6: Earl of Leicester gave ‘in reward’: ‘To Mr Sackford a cup with £20 for presenting the Queen’s New Year’s gift; to Mr Rawley’s blackamoor, 20s’.L Leicester gave the Queen: ‘A night-gown of tawny wrought velvet’ and ‘a sable skin the head and forefeet of gold fully furnished with diamonds and rubies’. He received from the Queen as usual 132 ounces of gilt plate.NYG Mr Sackford: Henry Sackford, Keeper of the Privy Purse. 1 1585 Jan 11: In the highway of St Martin in the Fields there was a fray with sword and buckler between Thomas Smith, a Yeoman of the Queen’s Chamber, and Richard Awdyence, an Uxbridge yeoman, who was wounded by Smith, and died immediately. [Jeaffreson, i.156]. Jan 11: St Martin in the Fields parish register, notes in Latin: Edward and Richard Audience, two brothers, were killed near Ivybridge and were buried at Uxbridge. Thomas Smith was killed and was buried at St Margaret Westminster. Jan 13: St Margaret: burial: ‘Thomas Smith of the Guard, slain’. Jan 16: death. Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln (1512-1585), K.G., Lord Admiral, Privy Councillor, died in London. The Earl’s corpse was taken by river to Windsor. Funeral: Feb 11, St George’s Chapel, Windsor; his monument remains in the Lincoln Chapel. There is a list of gifts by the Earl, beginning: ‘Given to Queen’s Majesty a bird called a Harpy of pearl’. [HT.iii.122]. The Earl’s son Henry Lord Clinton became 2nd Earl of Lincoln. The widowed Elizabeth (FitzGerald), Countess of Lincoln, died in 1590. January 19: Thomas Vavasour challenged the Earl of Oxford to a duel. Thomas’s sister Anne Vavasour, a Maid of Honour, gave birth to a child by the Earl of Oxford at court in March 1581; he had been feuding with the Earl. Thomas Vavasour to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford: ‘If thy body had been as deformed as thy mind is dishonourable my house had been yet unspotted, and thyself remained with thy cowardice unknown...If there be yet left any spark of honour in thee, or jot of regard of thy damaged reputation, use not thy birth for an excuse, for I am a gentleman, but meet me thyself alone and thy lackey to hold thy horse. For the weapons I leave them to thy choice for that I challenge, and the place to be appointed by us both at our meeting, which I think may conveniently be at Newington, or else where thyself shalt send me word by this bearer by whom I expect an answer’. [BL Lansdowne 99/93]. Endorsed by Lord Burghley (Oxford’s father-in-law), with the date and ‘A lewd letter from Thomas Vavasour to the Earl of Oxford’. No duel took place. Thomas Vavasour (1560-1620) became in 1586 one of the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners. Jan 20,Wed Earl of Derby at Greenwich to take leave. Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby (1531-1593), was to take the Order of the Garter to King Henri III of France (elected April 1575). ‘With him such gentlemen as were present were admitted to kiss her Highness’ hand’. [Stow]. Jan 23: Delivered to Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms, ‘by him to be carried and presented as her Highness’ gift to her dear brother [Henri] French King: one chain of gold with a George within a Garter garnished with three small diamonds and a small ruby hanging at it’.NYG John Pigeon, Jewel-house Officer, was sent from Greenwich ‘for fetching of a Collar, Garter and other things provided for the French King, and for plate for the Scottish Queen’.T January 26-March 16: Earl of Derby was Ambassador Extraordinary to France. The Earl left London on January 26 for Dover with a large company, including Lord Sandys, Lord Windsor, and two Heralds. The Scout (Thomas Grove, Master) took the Earl to France.N The Earl was received with great honour; and the King was invested in Paris on February 18. For the next weeks the Earl and Sir Edward Stafford, resident Ambassador, discussed Low Country matters with the King and his ministers. In February the King refused the Sovereignty of the United Provinces. [Description of Derby’s embassy: Nichols, Progresses (2014), iii.211-221]. 2 1585 Court news. Jan 26, Sir Christopher Hatton to Burghley: ‘The Queen requireth your good Lordship, with the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Steward [Leicester], who is presently at London, to be here the morrow at night, about the matter of Parliament, wherewith I find her Majesty somewhat troubled’. [Nicolas, 411]. [January], Sir Francis Walsingham to Sir Henry Wallop: ‘My absence from the court...hath been almost this month about my cure...Her Majesty having all this Christmas time given but deaf ears to business’. [SP63/114/53]. c.Feb 1: new Privy Councillor: Sir Amias Paulet. On February 1 Lord Burghley informed Sir Ralph Sadler that Paulet had accepted to be Keeper of the Queen of Scots, and had been made a Privy Councillor. [Sadler, ii.501]. Court news. Feb 2, at The Horse Head in Islington, Richard Kellet (one of the Earl of Derby’s servants) to William Farrington: Lord Derby’s attendants included some of Secretary Walsingham’s men and the Earl of Leicester’s men. ‘All which men, both of Mr Secretary’s men and my Lord of Leicester’s men, had my Lord’s livery, which was a purple in grain cloak of cloth with sleeves and guarded with velvet and a gold lace of either side the guard, and his gentlemen had black satin doublets and black velvet hose, and his yeomen had black taffeta doublets and hose of cloth like unto their cloaks with like guard and lace, in which both liveries he had of his own three score and ten, and his whole train was in all six score and ten or thereabouts...Surely it was said that her Majesty did give my Lord great thanks for so setting out his men’... ‘Mr Rawley was made knight upon New Year’s Day [sic] for his New Year gift, which said Sir Walter Rawley doth make him out six ships of the Queen’s into the Newfoundland whereas Mr Frobisher was, and the said land to inhabit, but he goeth not himself yet he is called Prince of that country’... ‘We hear say that the court removeth about the next Friday or Saturday to Somerset House in the Strand’. [Chetham Soc. 31 (1853), l-liii]. Feb 2, London, Sir Francis Walsingham to William Davison, in Holland: recommending Dr Joseph Michaeli, going over on private business. The Queen has made choice of him as one of her physicians, and has given him a passport signed by herself.