l of Essex; the same who was once destined to be the
bride of Philip Sidney. She returned his attachment; but her friends,
judging the match inferior to her just pretensions, broke off the affair
and compelled her to give her hand to lord Rich; a man of disagreeable
character, who was the object of her aversion. In such a marriage the
unfortunate lady found it impossible to forget the lover from whom
tyrannical authority had severed her; and some years after, when Montjoy
returned victorious from the Irish wars, she suffered herself to be
seduced by him into a criminal connexion, which was detected after it
had subsisted for several years, and occasioned her divorce from lord
Rich. Her lover, now earl of Devonshire, regarded himself as bound in
love and in honor to make her his wife; but to marry a divorced woman in
the lifetime of her husband was at this time so unusual a proceeding and
regarded as so violent a scandal, that Laud, then chaplain to the earl
of Devonshire, who joined their hands, incurred severe blame, and
thought it necessary to observe the anniversary ever after as a day of
humiliation. King James, in whose reign the circumstance took place,
long refused to avail himself further of the services of the earl; and
the disgrace and vexation of the affair embittered, and some say
abridged, the days of this otherwise admirable person. Whether any
incidents connected with this attachment had a share in producing that
hostile state of feeling in the mind of Essex towards Blount which led
to their combat, remains matter of conjecture.

This year the customary festivities on the anniversary of her majesty's
accession were attended by one of those romantic ceremonies which mark
so well the taste of the age and of Elizabeth. This was no other than
the formal resignation by that veteran of the tilt-yard, sir Henry
Leigh, of the office of queen's champion, so long his glory and delight.
The gallant earl of Cumberland was his destined successor, and the
momentous transfer was accomplished after the following fashion.

Having first performed their respective parts in the chivalrous
exercises of the band of knights-tilters, sir Henry and the earl
presented themselves to her majesty at the foot of the gallery where she
was seated, surrounded by her ladies and nobles, to view the games. They
advanced to slow music, and a concealed performer accompanied the strain
with the following song.

My golden locks time hath