The goldsmith and miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, recently…

The goldsmith and miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, recently married, had left in 1576 for France, despite the royal patronage, "with no other intent than to increase his knowledge by this voyage, and upon hope to get a piece of money of the lords and ladies here for his better maintenance in England at his return", carefully reported the English Ambassador in Paris, Sir Amyas Paulet, with whom Hilliard is to stay for much of the time.

Francis Bacon is attached to the embassy, and Hilliard had done a miniature of him in Paris.

He appears in the papers of the duc d'Alençon, a suitor of Queen Elizabeth, under the name of "Nicholas Belliart, peintre anglois" in 1577, receiving a stipend of two hundred livres.