Lord Howard seems to have been a mark at which the courtiers aimed their shafts of wit and ridicule; it was during the journey into Scotland that he came into collision with a nobleman of a very different character, James, second Marquis of Hamilton. This nobleman enjoyed, in a very uncommon degree, the confidence and esteem of his royal master, who was accustomed to call him familiarly by his Christian name. He held the office of Lord Steward of the Household, and Privy Councillor; and, in that capacity, was doubtless often surprised, if not irritated, by the precedence and latitude given to Buckingham. By his countrymen, the Marquis was considered “to be the gallantest gentleman in all Scotland.”
The following account is characteristic of the mingled idleness and dissension of a courtier’s life:—[169]
“Riding one day with the king, a-hunting, he, Lord Howard of Walden, asked the Marquis of Hamilton whether he were ever in love. He answered, Yes. What effects wrought it? saith he. His answer was, It made him fat, saucy, and ignorant. Other speeches passed just like this, but I proceed to the quarrels he had with him. The Marquis of Hamilton hath a page, whom my Lord Hay did liken, for his fairness of face, to the second daughter of the Lord Burghley, Mrs. Diana Cecil, admired so much by the Lord Walden, except he were unmarried. After my Lord Hay’s departure thence, the Marquis, the Favourite, and Lord Walden being at dinner together, and the boy waiting at the table, the Marquis and my Lord Buckingham whispered and laughed, to which my Lord Walden said he knew what they laughed at, and that he, that said that, was but a fool. To which the Marquis replied that, ‘were he a roaring boy, he would have flung a glass of wine in his face.’ It was my Lord Hay had said it. He was his friend, and a noble gentleman, whom, in his absence, he would not have wronged, and, therefore, bid him, before he should answer it, draw his sword. But my Lord of Buckingham so talked with these lords that after dinner he did reconcile this business, the Lord Walden acknowledging him now, upon better consideration, to be a noble gentleman, and that he knew no other of my Lord Hay. This business fell out nigh a month before the king’s coming from Scotland, though it came not to my knowledge since a week before the king’s departure there, at what time the Marquis Hamilton was on the point to be sworn a councillor. The Lord Walden, remembering some of these former passages, and thinking to stop the conferring of this honour upon him, as is said, did acquaint Sir Edward Villiers, that the Marquis should say that if my Lord of Buckingham did not dispatch that business for him, of conferring the councillorship, that he would cut his throat, wishing him to tell it his brother, which he did; so that, when he met the Marquis, the Lord of Buckingham questioned him of that, who presently demanded the author, which he told him. Then the Marquis departed, and presently sent the Lord Buckhurst to seek out the Lord Walden, with a challenge as was thought, but he could not be found. In the end he came to my Lord of Buckingham’s chamber, where, it is said, he lamented by ill fortune to have these words spoken again, and from thence did not depart until by acknowledgments the quarrel was reconciled.”