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not heard of in our forefathers time, and, for ought I have read, or at least remember, unpractised by the most luxurious ty rants. The manner of which was, to have the board covered, at the first entrance of the ghests, with dishes, as high as a tall man could well reach, filled with the choycest and dearest viands sea or land could" afford: And all this once seen, and having feasted the eyes of the invited, was in a manner throwne away, and fresh set on to the same height, having only this advantage of the other, that it was hot. I cannot forget one of the attendants of the king, that at a feast, made by this monster in excesse, eate to his single share a whole pye, reckoned to my lord at ten pounds, being composed of amber-greece, magisteriall of perle, musk, &c. yet was so far (as he told me) from being sweet in the morning, that he almost poysoned his whole family, flying himselfe like the satyr from his owne stinck. And after such suppers huge banquets no lesse profuse, a waiter returning

his servant home with a cloak-bag full of dried sweet-meats and confects, valued to his lordship at more then ten shillings the pound. I am cloyd with the repetition of

The expensive entertainments of Hay, Earl of Carlisle and Doncaster, are also mentioned by Sir Anthony Welldon, in the subsequent Memoirs, who tells us, that, upon one occasion, he brought fish from Russia, (sturgeon doubtless,) of such a size, that no dish in England was capable of holding them. But he speaks of the qualities of his body and mind with much more indulgence than Osborne. Lloyd also draws Hay's character with more favourable colours.

"He served his master in Scotland by his generosity, and in England with his hospitality; the decay whereof King James observed the defect of the English nobility; and the restauration of it, he designed the honour of the Scots gentry. Royal was his master's munificence towards him, noble his towards others; . his majesty being not more intent upon his advancement for public service, than he was upon the advancement of others to his private assistance. His majesties gracious inclination being for a reign of peace, this servants estate was spent upon the arts of it, I mean upon feasts, masques, gay cloathes, and such other delicacies as might soften the harsher natures to quietness, that princes interest, who was first to understand, and then to manage the strength of this nation. Although he failed in most of his negotiations, because he carried his money on his back, rather than in his purse; rather to spend than to bestow; and amaze fo

this excesse, no lesse then scandalized at the continuance of it. For when the most able physitians and his owne weaknesse had passed a judgment, he could not live many daies, he did not forbeare his entertainements, but made divers brave cloathes, as he said, to out-face naked and despicable death withall: blaspheming God so far in the person of his handmaid nature, as to say she wanted wisdome, love, or power, in making man mortall and subject to diseases: Forgetting, that if every individuall

reigners rather than oblige them: yet was his embassy more suitable to the French vanity, than either the Dutch thryft or the German plainness; and his carriage more answerable to a gaudy treaty of marriage, then to a close agency for interest, or the intricate consultations of war. So great was the report of his hospitality, that an host of Delph demanded sixty pounds for providing him a supper, though he never came that way; yet so displeasing to the Prince of Orange, that when his steward asked what he should provide for the great embassador's entertainment? the prince looks on his bill of fare, and whereas there was but one pig, he bid them write two; tartly reflecting as well on my lord's nation as his magnificence."-LLOYD'S State Worthies, p. 775.

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his owne lust had been able to have produced, should have prosecuted an equall excesse with his, they would, in a far lesse time than an age, have brought themselves or the world into the same disease he died of, which was a consumption. He lay alwaies under the comfortable aspect of King James his favour, though I never found him in his bosome, a place reserved for younger men and of more indeering countenances : And these went under the appellation of his favourites or minions, who, like burningglasses, were daily interposed between him and the subject, multiplying the heat of oppressions in the generall opinion, though in his own he thought they screened them from reflecting upon the crowne: Through the fallacy of which maxime his son came to be ruined; it being unlikely any prince should abate in the account of his people, that hath no bodies expenses or faults to reckon for but his own. Now, as no other reason appeared in favour of their choyce but handsomnesse, so the love the king

shewed was as amorously convayed, as if he had mistaken their sex, and thought them ladies; which I have seene Sommerset and Buckingham labour to resemble, in the effeminatenesse of their dressings; though

in wexceeded any part of woman kind my conversation did ever cope withall. Nor was his love, or what else posterity will please to call it, (who must be the judges of all that history shall informe,) carried on with á discretion sufficient to cover a lesse scandalous behaviour; for the kings kissing them after so lascivious a mode in publick, and upon the theatre, as it were, of the world, prompted many to imagine some things done in the tyring-house, that exceed my expressions no lesse then they do my experience: And therefore left floting upon the waves of conjecture, which hath in my hearing tossed them from one side to another.

lookes and wanton gestures, they

40. I have heard that Sir Henry Rich, since Earle of Holland, and some others,

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