hich he probably valued more. He is chiefly memorable as the
father of Sackville the poet, afterwards lord Buckhurst and progenitor
of the dukes of Dorset.

Sir Francis Knolles, whose lady was one of the queen's nearest
kinswomen, was deservedly called to the privy-council on his return from
his voluntary banishment for conscience' sake; his sons gained
considerable influence in the court of Elizabeth; his daughter, the
mother of Essex, and afterwards the wife of Leicester, was for various
reasons long an object of the queen's particular aversion.

But of all her relations, the one who had deserved most at her hands was
Henry Carey, brother to lady Knolles, and son to Mary Boleyn, her
majesty's aunt. This gentleman had expended several thousand pounds of
his own patrimony in her service and relief during the time of her
imprisonment, and she liberally requited his friendship at her first
creation of peers, by conferring upon him, with the title of baron
Hunsdon, the royal residence of that name, with its surrounding park and
several beneficial leases of crown lands. He was afterwards joined in
various commissions and offices of trust: but his remuneration was, on
the whole, by no means exorbitant; for he was not rapacious, and
consequently not importunate; and the queen, in the employments which
she assigned him, seemed rather to consult her own advantage and that of
her country, by availing herself of the abilities of a diligent and
faithful servant, than to please herself by granting rewards to an
affectionate and generous kinsman. In fact, lord Hunsdon was skilled as
little in the ceremonious and sentimental gallantry which she required
from her courtiers, as in the circumspect and winding policy which she
approved in her statesmen. "As he lived in a ruffling time," says
Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers
wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave
gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous
person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all
malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were
both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity
in speech made him seem a worse Christian than he was."

Fuller relates of him the following characteristic anecdote. "Once, one
Mr. Colt chanced to meet him coming from Hunsdon to London, in the
equipage of a lord of those days. The lord,