He was of the
highest rank, in great favour with the queen, and, in the style of the
day, when all our fashions and our poetry were moulding themselves on
the Italian model, he was the "Mirrour of Tuscanismo;" and, in a word,
this coxcombical peer, after seven years' residence in Florence,
returned highly "Italianated." The ludicrous motive of this
peregrination is given in the present manuscript account. Haughty of his
descent and alliance, irritable with effeminate delicacy and personal
vanity, a little circumstance, almost too minute to be recorded,
inflicted such an injury on his pride, that in his mind it required
years of absence from the court of England ere it could be forgotten.
Once making a low obeisance to the queen, before the whole court, this
stately and inflated peer suffered a mischance, which has happened, it
is said, on a like occasion--it was "light as air!" But this accident so
sensibly hurt his mawkish delicacy, and so humbled his aristocratic
dignity, that he could not raise his eyes on his royal mistress. He
resolved from that day to "be a banished man," and resided for seven
years in Italy, living in more grandeur at Florence than the Grand Duke
of Tuscany. He spent in those years forty thousand pounds. On his return
he presented the queen with embroidered gloves and perfumes, then for
the first time introduced into England, as Stowe has noticed.
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