estates
were forfeited and he had remained ever since in disgrace and suspicion.
A divorce which he had obtained from an unfaithful wife under the
ecclesiastical law of Henry VIII. was also called in question, and an
after marriage which he had contracted declared null, but it appears to
have been confirmed under Elizabeth. He was accounted a modest and
upright character, endowed with no great talents for military command,
in which he had been unsuccessful, nor yet for civil business; but
distinguished by a fine taste in music and poetry, which formed his
chief delight. From the new sovereign substantial benefits as well as
flattering distinctions awaited him, being reinstated by her in the
possession of his confiscated estates and appointed a privy-councillor.

Henry second earl of Rutland of the surname of Manners, was the
representative of a knightly family seated during many generations at
Ettal in Northumberland, and known in border history amongst the
stoutest champions on the English side. But Ettal, a place of strength,
was more than once laid in ruins, and the lands devastated and rendered
"nothing worth," by incursions of the Scots; and though successive kings
rewarded the services and compensated the losses of these valiant
knights, by grants of land and appointments to honorable offices in the
north, it was many an age before they attained to such a degree of
wealth as would enable them to appear with distinction amongst the great
families of the kingdom. At length sir Robert Manners, high sheriff of
Northumberland, having recommended himself to the favor of the
king-making Warwick and of Richard duke of Gloucester, was fortunate
enough by a judicious marriage with the daughter of lord Roos, heiress
of the Tiptofts earls of Worcester, to add the noble castle and fertile
vale of Belvoir to the battered towers and wasted fields of his paternal
inheritance.

A second splendid alliance completed the aggrandizement of the house of
Manners. The son of sir Robert, bearing in right of his mother the title
of lord Roos, and knighted by the earl of Surry for his distinguished
bravery in the Scottish wars, was honored with the hand of Anne sole
heiress of sir Thomas St. Leger by the duchess-dowager of Exeter, a
sister of king Edward IV. The heir of this marriage, in consideration
of his maternal ancestry, was advanced by Henry VIII. to the title of
earl of Rutland, never borne but by princes of the blood. His successo