"Father, Although it hath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by whome my life should rather have beene lengthened, yet can I soe patiently take it, that I yeild God more hearty thanks for shortning my wofull dayes, than if all the world had been given into my possessions, with life lengthened at my owne will. And albeit, I am very well assured of your impatient dolours, redoubled many wayes, both in bewayling your owne woe, and especially (as I am informed) my wofull estate; yet, my deare father, if I may without offence rejoyce in my owne mishaps, herein I may account myselfe blessed, that washing my hands with the innocence of my fact, my guiltless bloud may cry before the Lord, mercie to the innocent! And yet though I must needs acknowledge, that beinge constrayned, and (as you know well enough) continually assayed; yet in taking upon mee, I seemed to consent, and therein grievously offended the queene and her lawes. Yet, doe I assuredly trust that this my offence towards God is soe much the lesse; in that being in so royall estate as I was, my enforced honour never mingled with mine innocent heart. And thus, good father, I have opened unto you the state wherein I presently stand. My death at hand, although to you perhaps it may seeme wofull, yet to mee there is nothing that can bee more welcome, than from this vale of misery to aspire to that heavenly throne of all joy and pleasure, with Christ my Saviour; in whose stedfast faith (if it may be lawfull for the daughter soe to write to the father) the Lord that hath hitherto VOL. I. Ꮓ strengthened you, soe continue to keepe you, that att the last wee may meete in heaven, with the Father, Sonn, and Holy Ghost! "I am your obedient daughter, till death, The above was remarked, by, sir E. Brydges, to be indeed a most pathetic, and eloquent, and high-minded letter, which would alone justify all the praises that have been bestowed on this incomparable woman. Phillips records her as far more happy in her learning, wherein she took wonderful delight; and her fine vein of poetry, for which she is by many highly commended, than in being proclaimed queen of England. Theatr, Poetar. p. 258. See the case of her pretensions to the crown learnedly discussed in Hargrave's edition of Lord Hale's Jurisdiction of the Lords; and much of her family history in Nichols' Leicestershire. Cawthorn has a poetical epistle from lady Jane Grey to her husband, lord Guilford Dudley, professing to be in the manner of Ovid, but really more in the manner of Pope.] THOMAS, LORD VAUX OF HARWEDON. [NICHOLAS lord Vaux2 the ambassador, had long been confounded with his son, Thomas lord Vaux the poet. Edwards in his Paradise of dainty Devises, or Puttenham in his Art of Poesie, seem to have given rise to this error, which was continued by Phillips and Wood, and adopted by lord Orford. To the acumen of Dr. Percy we are indebted for its detection3, in the year 1765; and his opinion has been followed by Mr. Warton, by Mr. Ellis, and by Mr. Ritson. The latter indeed has proceeded a step farther, and assigns a place among our poets to William, the son of Thomas lord Vaux; but his assignment does not appear to have the warrant of confirmed authority. 1 Thomas lord Vaux of Harwedon, was eldest son to Nicholas, the first lord, by his second wife Anne, daughter of Thomas Greene, of Green's Norton, in Northamptonshire, esq. He was fourteen years old at the death of his father, which happened on the Among the Cottonian MSS. is a letter from sir Nicholas Vaux to cardinal Wolsey, about the preparation at Guines, May 18, 1520, and another from sir Thomas Vaux to the duke of Norfolk, reporting queen Catherine's protestation against relinquishing the title of queen, April 18, 1533. 3 Reliques, vol. iii. p. 336, first edit. + See Bibliographia Poetica, p. 379; and Specimens of Eng. Poetry, vol. ii. p. 82. 14th of May 1524, only seven days after his advancement to the peerage. In 1527 we find this nobleman among the attendants in Wolsey's stately embassy, when that prelate went to treat of a peace between the emperor Charles the fifth, and the kings of England and France; and on the 19th of January 1530, he took his place in parliament as a baron. In 1532 he waited on the king in his splendid expedition to Calais and Bologne, a little before which time he is said to have had the custody of the mild and persecuted Catherine. In the following year he was made a knight of the Bath, at the coronation of her yet more ill-fated successor Anne Boleyn. He appears to have held no public office but that of captain of the island of Jersey, which he surrendered in 1536. He married Elizabeth daughter and sole heir to sir Thomas Cheney of Irtlingburgh, in Northamptonshire, knight, and had by her two sons, William, who succeeded him, and Nicholas; and two daughters, Anne, married to Reginald Bray, of Stone, county of Northampton, and Maud, who died unmarried. Lord Vaux died early in the reign of Philip and Mary. 5 From the prose prologue to Sackville's Induction, in the Mirror for Magistrates, it would seem that lord Vaux had undertaken to pen the history of king Edward's two sons cruelly murdered in the Tower of London; but what he performed of his undertaking does not appear. 5 Lodge's Biographical Notices of the Portraits engraved from Holbein's Drawings. That of lord Vaux is singularly beautiful and interesting. Dr. Percy and Mr. Ellis, in their highly valuable Selections of early English Poetry, have printed “ the Assault of Cupid," and the "Dyttye, or Sonet made by the Lorde Vaus in Time of the noble Queene Marye, representinge the Image of Deathe;" of which a copy occurs in Harl. MS. 1703. They are not, therefore, inserted in the present work. But it may not be superfluous to remark, of the latter production, that the popular notion of lord Vaux's having composed it upon his death-bed, was discredited by Gascoigne in 1575, and is neither supported by its manuscript or printed title, which runs, "The aged Lover renounceth Love." In the Paradise of dainty Devises, 1596, there are ten pieces attributed to lord Vaux. One of those is here extracted from that scarce miscellany, on the supposition that it has not been republished: "NO PLEASURE WITHOUT SOME PAINE. "How can the tree but waste and wither away, Is this a life? Nay; death you may it call That feeles each paine, and knowes no joy at all. "What foodelesse beast can live long in good plight? Or is it life where sences there be none? Or what availeth eies, without their sight? Is this a life? - Nay; death you may it call That feeles each paine, and knowes no joy at all. |