faculty. The indubitable fact is, that he Richard Howlet did, in Sidney-Sussex College, with his best ability, endeavour to infiltrate something that he called instruction into the soul of Oliver Cromwell and of other youths submitted to him: but how, of what quality, with what method, with what result, will remain extremely obscure to every one. In spite of mountains of books, so are books written, all grows very obscure. About this same date, George Radcliffe, Wentworth Strafford’s George, at Oxford, finds his green-baize table-cover, which his mother had sent him, too small; has it cut into ‘stockings,’ and goes about with the same.[1] So unfashionable were young Gentlemen Commoners! Queen Elizabeth was the first person in this country who ever wore knit stockings.
1617
In March of this year, 1617, there was another royal visit at Hinchinbrook.[2] But this time, I conceive, the royal entertainment would be much more moderate; Sir Oliver’s purse growing lank. Over in Huntingdon, Robert Cromwell was lying sick, somewhat indifferent to royal progresses.
King James, this time, was returning northward to visit poor old Scotland again, to get his Pretended-Bishops set into activity, if he could. It is well known that he could not, to any satisfactory extent, neither now nor afterwards: his Pretended-Bishops, whom by cunning means he did get instituted, had the name of Bishops, but next to none of the authority, of the respect, or, alas, even of the cash, suitable to the reality of that office. They were by the Scotch People derisively
- ↑ ‘University College, Oxford, 4th Dec. 1610.‘Loving Mother,—* * Send also, I pray you, by Briggs’ (this is Briggs the Carrier, who dies in January, and continues forwarding butter in May), ‘a green table-cloth of a yard and half a quarter, and two linen table-cloths. * * If the green table-cloth be too little, I will make a pair of warm stockings of it. * *—Thus remembering my humble duty, I take my leave.—Your loving Son,‘George Radcliffe.’Radcliffe’s Letters, by Whitaker (London, 1810), p. 64-5.
- ↑ Camden’s Annals; Nichols’s Progresses.
