strument by which to work out his future fortunes, could have
engaged him in a service so repugnant to his habits and pursuits, and
for which the hand of nature herself had so evidently disabled him.

The earl of Oxford, in expiation perhaps of some of those violences of
temper and irregularities of conduct by which he was perpetually
offending the queen and obstructing his own advancement in the state,
equipped on this occasion a vessel which he commanded.

Sir Charles Blount, notwithstanding the narrowness of his present
fortunes, judged it incumbent on him to give a similar proof of
attachment to his queen and country; and the circumstance affords an
occasion of introducing to the notice of the reader one of the brightest
ornaments of the court of Elizabeth.

This distinguished gentleman, now in the twenty-fifth year of his age,
was the second son of James sixth lord Montjoy of the ancient Norman
name of Le Blonde, corruptly written Blount. The family history might
serve as a commentary on the reigning follies of the English court
during two or three generations. His grandfather, a splendid courtier,
consumed his resources on the ostentatious equipage with which he
attended to the French wars his master Henry VIII. with whom he had the
misfortune to be a favorite. His father squandered a diminished
patrimony still more absurdly in his search after the philosopher's
stone; and the ruin of the family was so consummated by the ill-timed
prodigalities of his elder brother, that when his death without children
in 1594 transmitted the title of lord Montjoy to sir Charles, a thousand
marks was the whole amount of the inheritance by which this honor was to
be maintained. It is needless to add that the younger brother's portion
with which he set out in life was next to nothing. Having thus his own
way to make, he immediately after completing his education at Oxford
entered himself of the Inner Temple, as meaning to pursue the profession
of the law: but fortune had ordained his destiny otherwise; and being
led by his curiosity to visit the court, he there found "a pretty
strange kind of admission," which cannot be related with more vivacity
than in the original words of Naunton. "He was then much about twenty
years of age, of a brown hair, a sweet face, a most neat composure, and
tall in his person. The queen was then at Whitehall, and at dinner,
whither he came to see the fashion of the court. The queen had soon
found him o