If we may trust La Mothe Fénelon, Leicester was as much the Queen’s “maid” as her Master of the Horse. The French Ambassador says, that the public was displeased with the familiar offices he rendered at her toilet. He was in her bed-chamber ere she arose; and there, according to the reports of men who denounced his privileges merely because they were not their own, he would hand to her a garment which did not become the hands of a Master of the Horse, and would dare to “kiss her Majesty when he was not even invited thereto,” but when, as he very well knew, “he was right welcome.” For Elizabeth took all she could get, even “nightcaps,” which were among the presents sent to propitiate her by the Queen of Scots. She took with both hands; and gave, as she herself truly said, only with the little finger. She ever graciously received new-year’s gifts that enriched her wardrobe; and was especially wroth with the Bishop of London for preaching too strictly against vanity of attire. When she saw Harrington in a frieze jerkin, she declared that the cut liked her well, and she would have one like it for her own wear; but she spat on Sir Matthew Arundel’s fringed suit, with the remark,—“The fool’s wit is gone to rags. Heaven spare me from such gibing!” A queen of later days would not think of assuming the fashion of Lord Palmerston’s paletot, nor spoil the uniform of a bran-new deputy-lieutenant, as Elizabeth did Sir Matthew Arundel’s embroidery. I believe our Gracious Sovereign never went further in this direction than to laugh good-humouredly at the Duke of Wellington’s hair when he had had it newly cropped, as was his wont, into the appearance of short bristles on a scrubbing-brush. If it be true that Leicester helped her at her toilet, he was the only happy individual who enjoyed the privilege. At least, in her mature years she had a horror of being seen _en déshabille_. Essex once came upon her unexpectedly in the hands of her tiring-maids, and hardly escaped with his ears. Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s son, also once beheld her in her night-gear, as she stood at a window to look out at a May morning. The _Virgo, magis quam tempestiva_, hurried away with such blushes as she could call up at forty-five. Twenty years before she would have shown less haste and more discretion; at forty-five, in her “night-stuff” at sunrise,—no Gyges would have thanked Candaules for letting his eye rest on so questionable a vision.