Villiers into the English Court,[49] and there was, perhaps, not one of the subordinate personages better calculated to guide, in that sphere, the first steps of an inexperienced youth than Lake. Patronized originally by Sir Francis Walsingham, and by him recommended to the service of Queen Elizabeth, he had acted as Secretary for the French and Latin tongue to his Royal mistress, and acquired, from his accurate and rapid writing, the name of “Swiftsure.” In the Court of Elizabeth, where none but men of ability flourished, he had received his political education. He had enjoyed the Queen’s confidence, and was reading to her in French and Latin at the very moment when the Countess of Warwick told him that the Queen had expired. James made him a Privy Counsellor, and afterwards appointed him one of his Secretaries of State.[50] Lake eventually fell into disgrace, not from his own fault, but owing to the unfortunate marriage of his eldest daughter to the Lord de Roos, son of the Earl of Exeter, and to the subsequent enmity of the Cecils. But at the time when Villiers owed his first introduction to him, Lake was in the height of his influence, and James, even after his downfall, accorded to him the praise that “he was a Minister of State fit to serve any greater prince in Europe.”[51] Footnote 49: Kennet’s History of England, p. 706. Footnote 50: Fuller’s Worthies of Leicestershire. Footnote 51: Fuller’s Worthies of Hants. There is a curious account of the mysterious affair of the Lakes, in Bishop Goodman’s Court and Times of King James, vol. i., pp. 193-197; also some letters of Lady Lake’s, in the second volume of that work. The State Paper Office contains more upon the same subject, as yet, inedited. Under such auspices, Villiers secured the best introduction to the world that can be obtained—that afforded by individuals whose high rank was upheld in public estimation by their personal influence; and it augurs well of the views which were at that time entertained of his character, and of the terms on which it was desired to place him with the King, that those who were real lovers of their country, and patrons of its best interests, should have presented him to their sovereign. Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, “led him,” says Fuller, “by the one hand, and William, Earl of Pembroke, by the other.”