ELIZABETHAN PRIVY COUNCIL: A good L.S. by three members of Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council comprising William Cecil (1520-1598) 1st Baron Burghley, English Statesman, Secretary of State 1550-53, 1558-72, Lord High Treasurer 1572-98, Charles Howard (1536-1624) 1st Earl of Nottingham, English Statesman and Lord High Admiral, commander of the English forces during the battles against the Spanish Armada, and Henry Carey (1526-1596) 1st Baron Hunsdon, English Nobleman and Courtier, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth I and the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, William Shakespeare's playing company, one page, 4to, Greenwich, 24th April 1592, to [Robert Price], executor of [Joan] Lady Mordaunt. The Privy Councillors write following the death and burial of Lady Mordaunt 'whose funerals being to be solemnized agreeable to her condition and degree as a baroness, you nevertheless as we are given to understand would otherwise order the same in an obscure and private manner, not fitting to a personage of her degree, being a baroness, and besides having left sufficiently to perform the same in good sort; wherefore inasmuch as it hath pleased her majesty to authorise us by her commission under the great seal to exercise the place and authority of Earl Marshall, we do therefore will and require you to order her funerals agreeable to her degree and calling, by the advice and direction of Mr Garter the Principal King at Arms, to whom by his office it appertaineth, or otherwise to make your appearance before us to show sufficient cause of your refusal; and we do not a little marvel that of your self you would undertake to appoint eschutcheons of arms or other like things of armory to be made (as we understand you have done) without the allowance of the said Mr Garter to whom the same belongeth'. Subscribed at the foot 'Order was taken at Greenwich the court being there on the Monday 15th of May by these lords that Robert Pryce then present should pay and satisfy Mr Garter for the same funeral and adjudged to be punished for his proceedings therein and contempt but pardoned of prisonment….'. Some light overall damp staining, only very slightly affecting the text (which remains completely legible) and with a few darker stains and small tears (strengthened to the verso) to the edges, G The office of Earl Marshal was in commission between the death of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, on 18th November 1590 and the appointment of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, in 1597. The office of Garter King of Arms was held by Sir William Dethick between 21st April 1586 and 10th December 1606, although he had surrendered and been deprived of his patent in 1603. Joan Mordaunt, Lady Mordaunt, was the daughter of Sir Richard Fermor of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire. She died in 1592 as widow of Sir Thomas Kempe (d.1591), having formerly been the wife of John Mordaunt (1508-1571), second Baron Mordaunt, and before of Robert Wilford (d.1545). Her will of 6th October 1591 (a copy of which is included in the lot), expressing a wish only that she be 'decently' buried, was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury by her son-in-law Robert ap Rees on 5th April 1592. The strict line taken by the Privy Councillors with her executor may have been the result of the family's overt Catholicism, or of the argumentative, dishonest and generally outrageous character of William Dethick, Garter King of Arms.