Note 102 — DIALOGUE IV. ON THE AGE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Perhaps they had no need of such favours: It seems as if they had provided for themselves another way. One of her ladies, the Lady Edmondes, had been applied to for her interest with the queen in a certain affair of no great moment, then depending in the Court of Chancery. The person, commissioned to transact this matter with her ladyship, had offered her 100l. which she treated as too small a sum. The relater of this fact adds—“This ruffianry of causes I am daily more and more acquainted with, and see the manner of dealing, which cometh of the queen’s straitness to give these women, whereby they presume thus to grange and truck causes.” See a letter in Mem. of Q. Elizabeth, by Dr. Birch, vol. i. p. 354. But this 100l. as the virtuous Lady Edmondes says, was a small sum. It appears, that bishop Fletcher, on his translation to London, “bestowed in allowances and gratifications to divers attendants [indeed we are not expressly told, they were female] about her majesty, the sum of 3100l. which money was given by him, for the most part of it, by her majesty’s direction and special appointment.” Mem. vol. ii. p. 113. And the curiosity is, to find this minute of episcopal gratifications in a petition presented to the queen herself, “To move her majesty in commiseration towards the orphans of this bishop.”—However, to do the ladies justice, the contagion of bribery was so general in that reign, that the greatest men in the court were infected by it. The lord-keeper Puckering, it seems, had a finger in the affair of the 100l.; nay, himself speaks to the lady to get him commanded by the queen to favour the suit. And we are told, that Sir W. Raleigh had no less than 10,000l. for his interest with the queen on a certain occasion, after having been invited to this service by the finest letter that ever was written.—Indeed it is not said how much of this secret service money went in allowances and gratifications to the attendants about the queen’s majesty, vol. ii. p. 497.