of any Person living, and his Statues equal in Number, Value and Antiquity to those in the Houses of most Princes; to gain which, he had Persons many Years employed both in Italy, Greece, and so generally in any part of Europe where Rarities were to be had.  His Paintings likewise were numerous and of the most excellent Masters, having more of that exquisite Painter Hans Holben than are in the World besides....  He was a Person of great and universal Civility, but yet with that Restriction as that it forbad any to be bold or sawcy with him; though with those whom he affected, which were Lovers of State, Nobility and curious Arts, he was very free and conversible; but they being but few, the Stream of the times being otherwise, he had not many Confidents or Dependents; neither did he much affect to have them, they being unto great Persons both burthensome and dangerous.  He was not popular at all, nor cared for it, as loving better by a just Hand than Flattery to let the common People to know their Distance and due Observance.  Neither was he of any Faction in Court or Council, especially not of the French or Puritan....  He was in Religion no Bigot or Puritan, and professed more to affect moral Vertues than nice Questions and Controversies....  If he were defective in any thing, it was that he could not bring his Mind to his Fortune; which though great, was far too little for the Vastness of his noble Designs.’

Walker’s character was written before Clarendon’s.  It is dated ‘Iselsteyne the 7th of June 1651’.  It was first published in 1705 in his Historical Discourses upon Several Occasions, pp. 221-3.

Page 30, l. 15. his wife, ’the Lady Alithea Talbot, third Daughter and Coheir of Gilbert Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, Grandchild of George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury and Earl Marshal of England’ (Walker, Historical Discourses, p. 211).

7.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 34, 35; History, Bk.  I, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 44-6; ed.  Macray, vol. i, pp. 71-3.

This pleasing portrait of Pembroke, one of the great patrons of literature of James’s reign, follows immediately after the unfriendly portrait of Arundel, the art collector.  Clarendon knew the value of contrast in the arrangement of his gallery.

Pembroke is sometimes supposed to have been the patron of Shakespeare.  It cannot, however, be proved that there were any personal relations, though the First Folio was dedicated to him and his brother, the Earl of Montgomery, afterwards fourth Earl of Pembroke.  See note, p. 4, l. 30.  He was the patron of Ben Jonson, who dedicated to him his Catiline, his favourite play, and his Epigrams, ’the ripest of my studies’; also of Samuel Daniel, Chapman, and William Browne.  See Shakespeare’s England, vol. ii, pp. 202-3.

Clarendon has also given a character of the fourth Earl, ’the poor Earl of Pembroke’, History, ed.  Macray, vol. ii, pp. 539-41.