Earl and Countess of Somerset, appears from his compliments to the Bride upon her masculine effrontery under circumstances at which female modesty revolts.

"If by that manly courage she be tried,

Which scorns unjust opinion, then the Bride
Becomes a man."

Wilson observes of the Earl of Somerset, that he had a "comely personage, mixed with a handsome and courtly garb, which he had been practising in France." The Earl of Somerset, according to the description of Lord Thomas Howard, written shortly before the marriage, was straight-limbed, well-favoured, strong-shouldered, and smooth-faced, with some sort of show of modesty. He was so particular in his dress to please the King, that he had changed his tailors and tire-men many times. And he was so decidedly

66

the King would lean on

the Court Favourite, that his arm, pinch his cheek, smooth his ruffled garment, and, when directing discourse to others, nevertheless gaze on him." The King taught him Latin every morning. Lord Howard, in mentioning these facts to Harrington, then a young courtier in whose advancement he was interested, adds, that, in order to rise in favour with King James, it might answer to tell his Majesty "that the stars were bright jewels fit for Carr's ears.'

The various ceremonies and little sorceries incident to marriages at Court were doubtless ob

served on this occasion; and if the details had been preserved, we should have found that King James had strenuously exerted himself in flinging the Bride's left stocking, sewing her up in the sheets, quaffing sack posset, drawing through the wedding-ring, playing a reveille matin, if he did. not also, as he did in compliment to Sir T. Herbert and his lady, visit the newly-married pair before they rose from their bed. We are told by an eye-witness, that the King and Queen, at the Earl of Somerset's marriage, tasted hypocras* and wafers in the Chapel with the Bride and Bridegroom, and that gloves were liberally distributed, and, in particular, that "a very fair" pair of gloves, worth 3l., was given to Secretary Winwood, whose wedding-dress, consisting of a doublet hose and cloak all black, cost fourscore pounds.

A nuptial sermon was preached by the Dean of Westminster; and one of his hearers tells us, what we might have conjectured, that, like another "soft Dean" who "never mentioned Hell to ears polite," the gist of the discourse was the commendation, to use the writer's own words, "of the young couple, glancing also at the praise of

* See "Strutt's Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 74, for the "Crafte to make Hypocras;" Brand's "Popular Antiquities," vol. ii. p. 65, for the benediction on the hypocras. In Shakspere's "Taming of the Shrew," Petruchio, after quaffing the muscadel at his marriage, throws the sops in the sexton's face.