was a dance of the maskers, and in the midst of it her Majesty
asked the Ambassador from Spayne if he had seen the latest French
dance. He replied that he had not. Whereupon Her Most Excellent
Majesty skipt back a pace and forward a pace, and lifting her hoop,
delivered a kick at his Excellency's hat which sent it flying the
space of a good English ell above his head! Howbeit so great was
the acclamation that her Majesty was graciously moved to repeat it
to my Lord of Leicester, but, tripping back, her high heels caught
in her farthingale, and she would have fallen on the ice, but for
that my Lord, with exceeding swiftness and dexterity, whisked his
cloak from his shoulder, spreading it under her, and so received
her body in its folds on the ice, without himself touching her
Majesty's person. Her Majesty was greatly pleased at this, and
bade my Lord buy another cloak at her cost, though it swallowed an
estate; but my Lord replyed, after the lying fashion of the time,
that it was honour enough for him to be permitted to keep it after
"it had received her Royal person." I know that this hap hath been
partly related of another person--the shipman Raleigh--but I tell
such as deny me that they lie in their teeth, for I, John Longbowe,
have cause--miserable cause enough, I warrant--to remember it, and
my Lord can bear me out! For, spite of his fair speeches, when he
was quit of the Royal presence, he threw me his wet and bedraggled
cloak and bade me change it with him for mine own, which was dry
and warm. And it was this simple act which wrought the lamentable
and cruel deed of which I was the victim, for, as I followed my
Lord, thus apparelled, across the ice, I was suddenly set upon and
seized, a choke-pear clapt into my mouth so that I could not cry
aloud, mine eyes bandaged, mine elbows pinioned at my side in that
fatall cloak like to a trussed fowl, and so I was carried to where
the ice was broken, and thrust into a boat. Thence I was conveyed