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 ambassadors on 6 Jan. By way of compensation these were also asked to the Roxburghe-Drummond wedding on 2 Feb. They received purely formal invitations to the Somerset wedding, and returned excuses for staying away. The agents of Florence and Savoy were asked, and when they raised the question of precedence were told that they were not ambassadors and might scramble for places.

I am not quite clear whether the costs of this mask, as well as of Jonson's Irish Mask, fell on the Exchequer. Chamberlain's notice of 25 Nov. (vide supra) is not conclusive. Reyher, 523, assigns most of the financial documents to the Irish Mask, but an account of the Works for an arch and pilasters to the Lords' mask; and the payment to Meredith Morgan in Sept. 1614 (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxvii. 92), which he does not cite, appears from the Calendar to be for more than one mask. The Irish Mask needed no costly scenery. J[ohn] B[ruce], (Camden Misc. v), describes a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century forgery, of unknown origin, purporting to describe one of the masks at the Somerset wedding and other events. The details used belong partly to 1613-14 and partly to 1614-15. ELIZABETH, LADY CARY (1586-1639). ''Mariam. 1602 < > 5.''

I have omitted a notice of this closet play, printed in 1613, by a slip, and can only add to the edition (M. S. C.) of 1914 that Lady Cary was married in 1602 (Chamberlain, 199), not 1600. She wrote an earlier play on a Syracusan theme. SIR ROBERT CECIL, EARL OF SALISBURY (1563-1612). But few details of the numerous royal entertainments given by Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his sons Sir Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley and afterwards Earl of Exeter, and Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, are upon record. It is, on the whole, convenient to note here, rather than in ch. xxiv, those which have a literary element. Robert Cecil contributed to that of 1594, and possibly to others. i. Theobalds Entertainment of 1571 (William Lord Burghley).

Elizabeth was presented with verses and a picture of the newly-finished house on 21 Sept. 1571 (Haynes-Murdin, ii. 772).

ii. Theobalds Entertainment of 1591 (William Lord Burghley).

Elizabeth came for 10-20 May 1591, and knighted Robert Cecil.

(a) Strype, Annals, iv. 108, and Nichols, Eliz. iii. 75, print a mock charter, dated 10 May 1591, and addressed by Lord Chancellor Hatton, in the Queen's name, 'To the disconsolate and retired spryte, the Heremite of Tybole', in which he is called upon to return to the world.

(b) Collier, i. 276, followed by Bullen, Peele, ii. 305, prints from a MS. in the collection of Frederic Ouvry a Hermit's speech, subscribed with the initials G. P. and said by Collier to be in Peele's hand. This is a petition to the Queen for a writ to cause the founder of the hermit's cell to restore it. This founder has himself occupied it for two years