ter, the whole court divided into factions upon the quarrel of
these two powerful peers; and to such extremity were matters carried,
that for some time neither of them would stir abroad without a numerous
train armed, according to the fashion of the day, with daggers and
spiked bucklers.

Scarcely could the queen herself restrain these "angry opposites" from
breaking out into acts of violence: at length however, summoning them
both into her presence, she forced them to a reconciliation neither more
nor less sincere than such pacifications by authority have usually
proved.

The open and unmeasured enmity of Sussex seems to have been productive
in the end of more injury to his own friends than to Leicester. The
storm under which the favorite had bowed for an instant was quickly
overpast, and he once more reared his head erect and lofty as before. To
revenge himself by the ruin or disgrace of Sussex was however beyond his
power: the well-founded confidence of Elizabeth in his abilities and his
attachment to her person, he found to be immovable; but against his
friends and adherents, against the duke of Norfolk himself, his
malignant arts succeeded but too well; and it seems not improbable that
Leicester, for the purpose of carrying on without molestation his
practices against them, concurred in procuring for his adversary an
honorable exile in the shape of an embassy to the imperial court, on
which he departed in the year 1567.

After his return from this mission the queen named the earl of Sussex
lord-president of the North, an appointment which equally removed him
from the immediate theatre of court intrigue. Not long after, the hand
of death put a final close to his honorable career, and to an enmity
destined to know no other termination. As he lay upon his death-bed,
this eminent person is recorded to have thus addressed his surrounding
friends: "I am now passing into another world, and must leave you to
your fortunes and to the queen's grace and goodness; but beware of the
_Gipsy_ (meaning Leicester), for he will be too hard for you all; you
know not the beast so well as I do[57]."

[Note 57: Naunton's "Fragmenta Regalia."]

This earl left no children, and his widow became the munificent
foundress of Sidney Sussex college, Cambridge. Of his negotiations with
the court of Vienna respecting the royal marriage which he had so much
at heart, particulars will be given in due time; but the miscellaneous
transactions o