ed, and had seen some military service; but the
tilt-yard was ever the scene of his most conspicuous exploits and those
in which he placed his highest glory. He had declared himself the
queen's own knight and champion, and having inscribed upon his shield
the constellation of Ariadne's Crown, culminant in her majesty's
nativity, bound himself by a solemn vow to appear armed in the tilt-yard
on every anniversary of her happy accession till disabled by age. This
vow gave origin to the annual exercises of the Knights-Tilters, a
society consisting of twenty-five of the most gallant and favored of the
courtiers of Elizabeth. The modern reader may wonder to find included in
this number so grave an officer as Bromley lord chancellor; but under
the maiden reign neither the deepest statesman, the most studious
lawyer, nor the rudest soldier was exempted from the humiliating
obligation of accepting, and even soliciting, those household and menial
offices usually discharged by mere courtiers, nor from the irksome one
of assuming, for the sake of their sovereign lady, the romantic disguise
of armed champions and enamoured knights. Sir Henry Lee, however,
appears to have devoted his life to these chivalrous pageantries rather
from a quixotical imagination than with any serious views of ambition or
interest. He was a gentleman of ancient family and plentiful fortune,
little connected, as far as appears, with any court faction or
political, party, and neither capable nor ambitious of any public
station of importance. It is an amiable and generous trait of his
character, that he attended the unfortunate duke of Norfolk even to the
scaffold, received his last embrace, and repeated to the assembled
multitude his request that they would assist him with their prayers in
his final agony. His royal Dulcinea rewarded his fatigues and his
adoration by the lieutenancy of Woodstock manor, the office of keeper of
the armoury, and especially by the appropriate meed of admission into
the most noble order of the Garter. He resigned the championship at the
approach of old age with a solemn ceremony hereafter to be described,
died at his mansion of Quarendon in Bucks, in 1611, in his 81st year,
and was interred in the parish church under a splendid tomb hung round
with military trophies, and inscribed with a very long, very quaint and
very tumid epitaph.

Christopher Hatton, the last of this undaunted band of challengers, was
a new competitor for the