rustic folk, or those to which the circumstances of place and time give something of a personal touch; as at Theobalds, where the hermit's cell typifies the temporary retirement of Burghley from public life, or at Rycote, where messengers bring in letters and jewels from sons and daughters of the house in Ireland, Flanders, France, and Jersey. Only fragments are preserved of the Harefield entertainment in 1602, but here a delicate fancy must have governed the devices, suggesting, for example, the presentation of a robe of rainbows on behalf of St. Swithin, and the personification of Harefield itself as Place 'in a partie-colored robe, like the brick house', accompanied by Time 'with yeollow haire, and in a green roabe, with an hower glasse, stopped, not runninge'. Here, too, was repeated the pretty notion of Elvetham, and at the royal departure there was Place again 'attyred in black mourning aparell', to bid farewell. In many instances the mimesis is so contrived as to lead to the introduction of the gift, which we may gather from the Hicks correspondence to have been looked upon as an obligatory rite of hospitality. The frugal and ostentatious soul of Elizabeth loved gifts; but James is said, at any rate on his first coming, to have thought it the more kingly part to decline them.[1] The mimetic entertainment itself, indeed, seems to have lost something of its vogue with the change of reign; possibly the King was less tolerant than his predecessor of pedantries other
- ↑ V. P. x. 25. Leicester left the Queen by will in 1588 (Sydney Papers, i. 71) a 'Jewel with three great Emrodes with a fair large Table Diamond in the middest, without a foyle, and set about with many Diamonds without foyle, and a Roape of fayre white Pearl, to the number six Hundred, to hang the said Jewel at; which Pearl and Jewel was once purposed for her Majesty, against a Coming to Wansted'. Rowland Whyte says of the visit to Lord Keeper Puckering at Kew in 1595 (Sydney Papers, i. 376), 'Her Intertainment for that Meale was great and exceeding costly. At her first Lighting, she had a fine Fanne, with a Handle garnisht with Diamonds. When she was in the Midle Way, between the Garden Gate and the Howse, there came Running towards her, one with a Nosegay in his Hand, deliuered yt vnto her, with a short well pened speach; it had in yt a very rich Iewell, with many Pendants of vnfirld Diamonds, valewed at 400^l at least. After Dinner, in her Privy Chamber, he gaue her a faire Paire of Virginals. In her Bed Chamber, presented her with a fine Gown and a Juppin, which Things were pleasing to her Highnes; and, to grace his Lordship the more, she, of her self, tooke from him a Salt, a Spoone, and a Forcke, of faire Agate'. Of the visit to the Earl of Nottingham in 1602, Chamberlain, 169, writes, 'The Lord Admiralls feasting the Quene had nothing extraordinarie, neither were his presents so precious as was expected; being only a whole suit of apparell, whereas it was thought he wold have bestowed his rich hangings of all the fights with the Spanish Armada in eightie-eight'. These hangings were bought by James at the Princess Elizabeth's wedding in 1613 (Abstract, 15; V. P. xii. 499) for £1,628, and were long preserved in the House of Lords.
