Welsh Journals

ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS (PLATE XIII. 3) 15. MAURICE KYFFIN'S ACCOUNT OF LORD BUCKHURST'S EMBASSY TO THE NETHERLANDS, 1587. At the end of the year 1586 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, returned from the Low Countries after a sojourn which had caused Queen Elizabeth I a great deal of anxiety. She was afraid that Leicester's ambitions would involve her in protracted and expensive campaigns. In March 1587 Thomas Sackville, Baron Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, was despatched to pave the way for Leicester's return to the Netherlands and to persuade the Netherlanders that the English government's inclinations were favourable. Secretly, however, he was to suggest the possibility of a peace with Spain. It was a difficult mission rendered more difficult by the activities of Leicester's agents who were planning towards virtual sovereignty for their master. The Queen did not help matters by playing an underhand game. The situation was aggravated by the fall of Sluys after the heroic defence put up by the Welshman, Sir Roger Williams, with very little backing by the English government. In the face of a pressing offer of a place in the King of Spain's service against the Turks Sir Roger Williams protested his loyalty to the Protestant cause. 'My sword belongs to her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, above and before all the world. When Her Highness has no further use for it, it is at the service of the King of Navarre.' Lord Buckhurst was charged to convey to the States-General the Queen's sympathy for their cause but he was not to encourage them to expect further aid in men and money. Buckhurst seems to have placed too literal an interpretation on the Queen's instructions for when he returned home in July he was ordered to confine himself to his own house, where he dutifully remained for over nine months when Elizabeth relented-after Leicester's death. The Queen shortly before her death in a tribute to Buckhurst completely vindicated his behaviour at this time. 'When in a service of tickle nature he was employed into the Low Countries, where notwithstanding the sharp sight which by some was carried over him, yet his Lordship behaved himself so warily and discreetly that no blame could be fastened on him. His temper and moderation, after his return from thence, when Her Majesty, to give contentation to a great personage, in those days, of high employment, was pleased to command him unto his own house, there privately to remain till her farther pleasure was known: where his Lordship did bear himself so dutifully and obsequiously unto Her Highness's command that in all the time of his restraint for nine or ten months' space, he never would endure, either openly or secretly, either by day or by night, to see either wife or child'. Lord Buckhurst had as tutor to his sons a Welshman from the Oswestry district, Maurice Kyffin, best known to students of Welsh literature as the translator of Bishop Jewel's Apologia Ecclesice Anglicanee into the Welsh classic Deffynniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr in 1594. Kyffin was trained in the Welsh bardic tradition and could be described as one of the first Anglo-Welsh writers on the strength of his poem The Blessedness of Brytaine in praise of Queen Elizabeth and his English prose translation of Terence's Andria. He was completely at home in the literary atmosphere of the Sackville household. Lord Buckhurst took him on the embassy to the Low Countries. Kyffin wrote an account of the social side of the embassy for his pupil William Sackville, Buckhurst's second son. Kyffin, in this account, confines his attention entirely to non-political matters. This was not unnatural under the circumstances in which he and his master found themselves upon their return from the Netherlands. Buckhurst was confined to his house, presumably at the Earl of Leicester's instigation. A fellow sufferer in the same displeasure was Sir Thomas Wilkes. Wilkes had been sent to report on the situation in the Netherlands