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44Q THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. of Comus and his beastly crew ; and such genius as it employed in its service, it degraded almost to its own level. To be a courtier of the highest mark was to indulge all gross propen- sities with hardly a cover to their nakedness. Elizabeth's circle had been far from the exactest model of decency ; but there was strength of understanding in the queen and it acted with constraint on the vices of those around her, as it served to veil her own. When a vulgar Satyr became chief of the revels, and when such noble poets as Beaumont and Fletcher condescended to make themselves echoes to the revelers, this check, of course passed wholly away. Everything was in foul excess and the most frightful corruption to satisfy it became a thing of course. Women and men were engaged alike. Lady Glenham took a bribe of a hundred pounds to induce her father to transact some dishonorable service. Ara- bella Stuart herself, who had intrigued for the promise of a peerage for one of her uncles Cavendish, would not, when the time came for claiming it, open her mouth "so wide as a bristle might enter," because he had omitted mention of any gratuity "which might move her to spend her breath for him." Eliza- beth had long disused, had even prohibited, the brutal sports of the cockpit ; James revived them, and took delight in them, at least twice every week. The fee of the chief huntsman has not been preserved ; but the fee of the master of the cocks was equal to the united salaries of two secretaries of states. "Our sovereign," wrote Cecil to Lord Shrewsbury, within a year after the accession "spent a hundred thousand pounds yearly in his house, which was wont to be but thirty thousand. Now think what the country feels, and so much for that." In the seventh year of his reign that surplus of expense above revenue continued, and his debts were half a million. His necessities became flagrant and shameful. His treasurer Buckhurst was stopped in the street for wages due to his servants, and the purveyors stopped the supply to his table. It would have been hard to say which was the most degrading, the extremity of .the want or of the means adopted to supply it. Impositions by prerogative were resisted, in the teeth of scandalous decisions by the lawyers, till every member of the house of commons was counted "viper" or "traitor." Fees were got from knighthood till nobody would be knighted ; and Bacon, at even his wit's end, suggested "knighthood with some new difference and precedence." Hereupon baronetcies were