When Nature moulded him, her thoughts were most on Mars; And all the heavens to make him goodly were agreeing; Thence he was valiant, active, strong, and passing comely; And God did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling. Nature commends her workmanship to Fortune's charge, Fortune presents him to the court and queen, Queen Eliz. (O God's dear handmayd) his most miracle. _Now hearken, reader, raritie not heard or seen_; This blessed Queen, mirror of all that Albion rul'd, Gave favour to his faith, and precepts to his hopeful time; First trained him in the stately band of pensioners; * * * * * And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard. Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast Lessons his life, makes wise his heart for her great councells, And so, _Vice-Chamberlain_, where foreign princes eyes Might well admire her choyce, wherein she most excels. He then aspires, says the writer, to "the highest subject's seat," and becomes Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king:) _Robe_, _Collar_, _Garter_, dead figures of great honour, Alms-deeds with faith, honest in word, frank in dispence, The poor's friend, not popular, the church's pillar. This tombe sheweth one, the heaven's shrine the other.[30] The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are only to be equalled by a passage in an epitaph we have met with on a Lady of the name of Greenwood, of whom her husband says:-- "Her graces and her qualities were such That she might have married a bishop or a judge; But so extreme was her condescension and humility, That she married _me_, a poor doctor of divinity; _By which heroic deed_, she stands confest, Of all other women, the phoenix of her sex." Sir Christopher is said to have died of a broken heart, because his once loving mistress exacted a debt of him which he found it difficult to pay. It was common to talk of courtiers dying of broken hearts at that time; which gives one an equal notion of the Queen's power, and the servility of those gentlemen. Fletcher, Bishop of London, father of the great poet, was another who had a tomb in the old church, and is said to have undergone the same fate. It was he that did a thing very unlike a poet's father. He attended the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and said aloud, when her head was held up by the executioner, "So perish all Queen Elizabeth's enemies!" He was then Dean of Peterborough. The Queen made him a bishop, but suspended him for marrying a second wife, which so preyed upon his feelings, that it is thought, by the help of an immoderate love of smoking, to have hastened his end--a catastrophe worthy of a mean courtier. He was well, sick, and dead, says Fuller, in a quarter of an hour. Most probably he died of apoplexy, the tobacco giving him the _coup de grace_.[31]