II.

quitted himself of housekeeping, and paying for his board, SECT. by the courtesy of some of his friends; otherwise he must have fallen into extreme debt, and sold his land, as he signified his case to his uncle Cecil: notwithstanding a lease also, which he had of the Bishop of Winchester, obtained by means of his said uncle, and Mr. Vice-Chamberlain.

with

For two or three years he and his wife and children Sojourns resided in the country with some of his friends there, viz. friends. in the year 1574 at Wintney in Hantshire, and in 1575 at Bear, in Bear Forest, in the same county.

The Queen was acquainted with his circumstances, and He travels. intended to take him into her service; but she would have him first to travel, the better to fit him for it, which he forthwith undertook. And to fit himself out, he sold so much land as yielded him 4007. the which yet served not to maintain all his charge and expense abroad. In the year 1576 he went abroad, being now about eight and twenty years of age. In this year I find him at Antwerp, hastening towards Italy, and comes to Genoa. In the beginning of the next year he was at Florence, where he was in dan- His danger. ger of his life or liberty; means being used to entrap him, by laying in wait to catch him, with intention perhaps to serve him as they had done his father, out of a hatred conceived to his name. He was advised of this by a certain English gentleman, who coming into the company of one Stewkely, from Genoa to Siena, gave him warning to seek some other place, and to look carefully to himself, as one greatly noted by some of his countrymen, who had spoken such words in his hearing, he said, as he might not declare unto him the particulars. Upon which Mr. Cheke thought fit to ask the counsel of an Italian friend, Seignior Lorenzo Guicciardini, brother unto Vincenzo Guicciardini of London; a grave wise gentleman, and very friendly unto him, and of great credit with the great Duke of Tuscany. By his advice he resolved for Padua. So in the beginning of April he took himself to Ferrara, and found great difficulty to enter into the Duke's estate; forasmuch

VI.

CHAP. as being a neighbour unto the Venetians, (where the plague then was,) he kept the passages of his territories very strait. From thence he travelled to Padua about the end of the spring.

His observation in

tries.

His endeavour was (among the pleasures of his travels these coun- through this brave country) to attain to speak the language truly and readily, which he hoped to do by Michaelmas; and then he should think he had spent that year profitably: as he wrote to the Lord Treasurer. He noted various things, and made his observations in his travels here. But in the whole he made this remark, "That he had seen many notable cities, much rich soil, and great variety of "states; but in his opinion he had not seen any city so "beautiful as Florence, any soil so rich as that of Lombardy, nor any state so happy as the state of Eng"land."

Comes home.

Court,

66

66

He is at home in the year 1579. How much sooner he returned I find not. Now he resided with his family at Attends the Occham in Surrey. He daily attended the Court, though with little or no salary, yet in expectation of some place or preferment; for which he ceased not, as he might with modesty, to solicit his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, being his highest friend, at whose hand he looked for his greatest comfort in his necessity: for he had again lately sold some more of his land. He prayed that honourable person to bestow upon him some office in possession or reversion, whereby he might reap some yearly commodity, to the increase of his living. He was forced now, not by his unthriftiness, but by need, to sell a manor, amounting in yearly rent to the sum of 377. 15s. 10d. as well to pay his debts with part of the money, as to employ the rest in use to the best advantage. His debts were contracted by his late travel, and afterwards by his attendance at Court without fee, and other extraordinary expenses.

Made Secretary of

But some time after, viz. in the year 1581, (when he the Council almost now despaired of succeeding at Court,) by the interest of the Lord Treasurer, he was made Secretary to the Council in the north, in the room of one Blyth, a very ho

in the

north.

II.

nest able man, deceased. The Earl of Huntingdon, Pre- SECT. sident of that Council, wrote to the said Lord for Henry's speedy repair to the north; saying, that he was right glad of his promotion to that place: for though a worthy man were taken away, yet he hoped a good one should succeed; so as the want of Mr. Blyth there was not like to be missed, as else it would. But, he added, that he needed not to commend him to his Lordship, who better knew him, and could judge better of such than he. Besides this office, he obtained the honour of knighthood also of the And Queen his mistress.

knighted.

How long Sir Henry lived, I cannot tell: but I find one His death. Thomas Cheke, (by which name Sir Henry's eldest son was called,) in the year 1586, writing a Greek letter and Latin verses to the Lord Treasurer; therein calling himself an orphan, and speaking of his father being gone to the joys of heaven. And he prays his Lordship, that as he was always an help and a sanctuary unto his father, so he would be to him. And this I conclude to be Sir Henry's eldest son, who might now be of the age of fifteen or sixteen and if so, then at this year we must fix the period of his life.

SECT. III.

Sir Thomas Cheke, son of Sir Henry. His honourable

posterity.

SIR HENRY CHEKE'S issue by his before-said wife Sir Henry's Frances, was Thomas, his eldest; Hatton, who followed children. the wars in Flanders, and was slain in a duel by Sir Thomas Dutton, Knight, near the town of Calais, (whose corpse was brought over, and buried at Dover;) and Henry, his third son, who died without issue, and was also buried at Dover, near his brother Hatton.

Cheke.

Thomas being thus left a minor, was bred in a school Sir Thomas at York: where he had two memorable schoolfellows, though of different inclinations and reputations. The one was Morton, afterwards Bishop of Durham; an excellent

L

CHAP. and most learned Prelate, that wrote much and well VI. against the Papists: the other, Guy Faux, infamous to

His wives.

His sons.

posterity for his unparalleled Popish zeal and villainy. Thomas was knighted by King James I. and was then styled Sir Thomas Cheke of the county of Lincoln, in respect perhaps of his estate at Spalding in that county. After styled Sir Thomas Cheke of Pyrgo, in the liberty of Havering in Essex; being an estate which he purchased of the Grays, and where he lived anno 1634.

He married, first, a daughter of Peter Osborn, Esq. a very beautiful woman; as her picture shews, preserved in the long gallery of Pyrgo. To her he was married near twenty years, and had no issue. Afterwards he married Essex, daughter of Robert Lord Rich, Earl of Warwick. By whom he had three sons, Robert, Thomas, Charles; and five daughters, Frances, Essex, Anne, Isabel, and Elizabeth. And living to a great age, was buried, March 25, 1659, in St. Alban's church in Wood-street, (according to his desire and will,) near his grandfather, in the north chapel, without the furthest pillar, as appears by the register of the said parish. Upon the rebuilding of this church, in clearing the rubbish, the labourers thereabouts met with a grave bricked up, which probably was wrought about his corpse. Of whose progeny, and the honourable intermarriages thereof, partly Dugdale's Baronage, and partly the visitation books in the Office of Arms, (in one book whereof is Sir Thomas Cheke's own testimonial,) give this relation:

Robert Cheke was born in the year 1625. He was crooked, but a man of exquisite parts, and very dear to the Lord Cranborn, eldest son of the Earl of Salisbury, and sometime governor of one of King Charles the Second's natural children.

Thomas, who inherited the estate, called Colonel Cheke, was Lieutenant of the Tower under King Charles II. and King James II. He married, first, Dorothy, a daughter of Philip Sydney, Lord Viscount Lisle, afterwards Earl of Leicester; by whom he had no issue. He afterwards mar

III.

ried Lætitia, daughter of Edward Russel, second son to SECT. Francis, Earl of Bedford; by whom he had issue Henry, who, living to the age of eight or nine years, died, and was buried in the chapel at Pyrgo, besides other children dying young. He had by his said wife a son named Edward, the only son surviving, and now enjoying the seat of Pyrgo in honour and reputation: who married a daughter of Sir William Ellis, of Nocton in the county of Lincoln, Bart. The daughters of the said Thomas and Lætitia are, Essex, unmarried, and Anne, wife of Sir Thomas Tipping, of Oxfordshire, Bart. This is the posterity male of Sir Thomas Cheke, grandson to our Sir John.

ters, with

The daughters of the said Sir Thomas were five, all ho- His daughnourably matched: 1. Frances, the eldest, was married to their Sir Lancelot Lake, of Canons, in the county of Middle- matches. sex, Knight. 2. Essex, the second daughter, was wife of Sir Robert Bevyl, of Chesterton, in the county of Huntingdon, Knight of the Bath; afterward of Edward, Earl of Manchester, Lord Chamberlain of the Household to King Charles II. by whom he had six sons and two daughters. 3. Anne, the third daughter, married to Richard Rogers, of the county of Dorset, Esq. and after to Robert Lord Rich, Earl of Warwick. 4. Isabel, the fourth daughter, married to Sir Francis Gerard, of Harrow-the-hill in Middlesex, Bart. And 5. Elizabeth, to Sir Richard Franklin, of More Park, in the county of Hertford, Bart.

Thus may we see the offspring of the righteous to flourish, and our good and religious Cheke signally blessed in a very honourable house and a flourishing descent now for above an hundred and fifty years; and his family spreading in much noble blood to this day.