t least it was regarded by her as a sufficient sanction in the
eyes of the public for those manifestations of favor and esteem with
which she was pleased to honor him. But whether the affection which she
entertained for him best deserved the name of friendship or a still
tenderer one, seems after all a question of too subtile and obscure a
nature for sober discussion; though in a French "_cour d'amour_" it
might have furnished pleas and counterpleas of exquisite ingenuity,
prodigious sentimental interest, and length interminable. What is
unfortunately too certain is, that he was a favorite, and in the common
judgement of the court, of the nation, and of posterity, an unworthy
one; but calumny and prejudice alone have dared to attack the
reputation of the queen.

Elizabeth had no propensity to exalt immoderately her relations by the
mother's side;--for she neither loved nor honored that mother's memory;
but several of the number may be mentioned, whose merits towards
herself, or whose qualifications for the public service, justly entitled
them to share in her distribution of offices and honors, and whom she
always treated with distinction. The whole illustrious family of the
Howards were her relations; and in the first year of her reign she
conferred on the duke of Norfolk, her second-cousin, the order of the
garter. Her great-uncle lord William Howard, created baron of Effingham
by Mary, was continued by her in the high office of lord-chamberlain,
and soon after appointed one of the commissioners for concluding a peace
with France. Lord Thomas Howard, her mother's first-cousin, who had
treated her with distinguished respect and kindness on her arrival at
Hampton Court from Woodstock, and had the further merit of being
indulgent to protestants during the persecutions of Mary, received from
her the title of viscount Bindon, and continued much in her favor to the
end of his days.

Sir Richard Sackville, also her mother's first-cousin, had filled
different fiscal offices under the three last reigns; he was a man of
abilities, and derived from a long line of ancestors great estates and
extensive influence in the county of Sussex. The people, who marked his
growing wealth, and to whom he was perhaps officially obnoxious,
nicknamed him Fill-sack: in Mary's time he was a catholic, a
privy-councillor, and chancellor of the court of Augmentations; under
her successor he changed the first designation and retained the two
last, w