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Title: Elizabeth and Essex. A Tragic History.
Author: Strachey, Giles Lytton (1880-1932)
Date of first publication: 1928
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harcourt, Brace; December 1928
   [fifth printing]
Date first posted: 30 April 2011
Date last updated: 30 April 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #778

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






[Frontispiece: QUEEN ELIZABETH.  _From the portrait in the
National Portrait Gallery_]





Elizabeth

_and_ Essex


A TRAGIC HISTORY



_by Lytton Strachey_




Harcourt, Brace and Company

New York




COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY LYTTON STRACHEY


COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
  IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN


FIFTH PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1928




PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N.J.




TO


ALIX _and_ JAMES

STRACHEY




ILLUSTRATIONS


QUEEN ELIZABETH                                        _Frontispiece_

  _From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery_


SIR WALTER RALEIGH

  _From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery_


ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX

  _From the portrait at Woburn Abbey, by kind permission
  of the Duke of Bedford, K.G., K.B.E._


QUEEN ELIZABETH IN 1596

  _From a contemporary engraved portrait_


ROBERT CECIL, EARL OF SALISBURY

  _From the portrait at Woburn Abbey, by kind permission
  of the Duke of Bedford, K.G., K.B.E._


FRANCIS BACON

  _From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery_




{1}

ELIZABETH _and_ ESSEX



I

The English Reformation was not merely a religious event; it was also a
social one.  While the spiritual mould of the Middle Ages was
shattered, a corresponding revolution, no less complete and no less
far-reaching, occurred in the structure of secular life and the seat of
power.  The knights and ecclesiastics who had ruled for ages vanished
away, and their place was taken by a new class of persons, neither
chivalrous nor holy, into whose competent and vigorous hands the reins,
and the sweets, of government were gathered.  This remarkable
aristocracy, which had been created by the cunning of Henry VIII,
overwhelmed at last the power that had given it being.  The figure on
the throne became a shadow, while the Russells, the Cavendishes, the
Cecils, ruled over England in supreme solidity.  For many generations
they _were_ England; and it is difficult to imagine an England without
them, even today.

The change came quickly--it was completed during the reign of
Elizabeth.  The rebellion of the Northern Earls in 1569 was the last
great effort of the old {2} dispensation to escape its doom.  It
failed; the wretched Duke of Norfolk--the feeble Howard who had dreamt
of marrying Mary Queen of Scots--was beheaded; and the new social
system was finally secure.  Yet the spirit of the ancient feudalism was
not quite exhausted.  Once more, before the reign was over, it flamed
up, embodied in a single individual--Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
The flame was glorious--radiant with the colours of antique knighthood
and the flashing gallantries of the past; but no substance fed it;
flaring wildly, it tossed to and fro in the wind; it was suddenly put
out.  In the history of Essex, so perplexed in its issues, so desperate
in its perturbations, so dreadful in its conclusion, the spectral agony
of an abolished world is discernible through the tragic lineaments of a
personal disaster.

His father, who had been created Earl of Essex by Elizabeth, was
descended from all the great houses of medieval England.  The Earl of
Huntingdon, the Marquis of Dorset, the Lord Ferrers--Bohuns,
Bourchiers, Rivers, Plantagenets--they crowded into his pedigree.  One
of his ancestresses, Eleanor de Bohun, was the sister of Mary, wife of
Henry IV; another, Anne Woodville, was the sister of Elizabeth, wife of
Edward IV; through Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the family
traced its descent from Edward III.  The first Earl had been a man of
dreams--virtuous and unfortunate.  In the spirit of a {3} crusader he
had set out to subdue Ireland; but the intrigues of the Court, the
economy of the Queen, and the savagery of the kerns had been too much
for him, he had effected nothing, and had died at last a ruined and
broken-hearted man.  His son Robert was born in 1567.  Nine years old
when his father died, the boy found himself the inheritor of an
illustrious name and the poorest Earl in England.  But that was not
all.  The complex influences which shaped his destiny were present at
his birth: his mother was as much a representative of the new nobility
as his father of the old.  Lettice Knollys's grandmother was a sister
of Anne Boleyn; and thus Queen Elizabeth was Essex's first cousin twice
removed.  A yet more momentous relationship came into being when, two
years after the death of the first Earl, Lettice became the wife of
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.  The fury of her Majesty and the
mutterings of scandal were passing clouds of small significance; what
remained was the fact that Essex was the step-son of Leicester, the
Queen's magnificent favourite, who, from the moment of her accession,
had dominated her Court.  What more could ambition ask for?  All the
ingredients were present--high birth, great traditions, Court
influence, even poverty--for the making of a fine career.

The young Earl was brought up under the guardianship of Burghley.  In
his tenth year he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where in
1581, at the age {4} of 14, he received the degree of Master of Arts.
His adolescence passed in the country, at one or other of his remote
western estates--at Lanfey in Pembrokeshire, or, more often, at
Chartley in Staffordshire, where the ancient house, with its carved
timber, its embattled top, its windows enriched with the arms and
devices of Devereux and Ferrers, stood romantically in the midst of the
vast chase, through which the red deer and the fallow deer, the badger
and the wild boar, ranged at will.  The youth loved hunting and all the
sports of manhood; but he loved reading too.  He could write correctly
in Latin and beautifully in English; he might have been a scholar, had
he not been so spirited a nobleman.  As he grew up this double nature
seemed to be reflected in his physical complexion.  The blood flew
through his veins in vigorous vitality; he ran and tilted with the
sprightliest; and then suddenly health would ebb away from him, and the
pale boy would lie for hours in his chamber, obscurely melancholy, with
a Virgil in his hand.

When he was eighteen, Leicester, sent with an army to the Netherlands,
appointed him General of the Horse.  The post was less responsible than
picturesque, and Essex performed its functions perfectly.  Behind the
lines, in festive tournaments, "he gave all men great hope," says the
Chronicler, "of his noble forwardness in arms"--a hope that was not
belied when the real fighting came.  In the mad charge of {5} Zutphen
he was among the bravest, and was knighted by Leicester after the
action.

More fortunate--or so it seemed--than Philip Sidney, Essex returned
scatheless to England.  He forthwith began an assiduous attendance at
Court.  The Queen, who had known him from his childhood, liked him
well.  His stepfather was growing old; in that palace a white head and
a red face were serious handicaps; and it may well have seemed to the
veteran courtier that the favour of a young connection would strengthen
his own hand, and, in particular, counterbalance the rising influence
of Walter Raleigh.  Be that as it may, there was soon no occasion for
pushing Essex forward.  It was plain to all--the handsome, charming
youth, with his open manner, his boyish spirits, his words and looks of
adoration, and his tall figure, and his exquisite hands, and the auburn
hair on his head, that bent so gently downwards, had fascinated
Elizabeth.  The new star, rising with extraordinary swiftness, was
suddenly seen to be shining alone in the firmament.  The Queen and the
Earl were never apart.  She was fifty-three, and he was not yet twenty:
a dangerous concatenation of ages.  Yet, for the moment--it was the May
of 1587--all was smooth and well.  There were long talks, long walks
and rides through the parks and the woods round London, and in the
evening there was more talk, and laughter, and then there was music,
until, {6} at last, the rooms at Whitehall were empty, and they were
left, the two, playing cards together.  On and on through the night
they played--at cards or one game or another, so that, a contemporary
gossip tells us, "my Lord cometh not to his own lodging till birds sing
in the morning."  Thus passed the May of 1587 and the June.

If only time could have stood still for a little and drawn out those
halcyon weeks through vague ages of summer!  The boy, in his
excitement, walking home through the dawn, the smiling Queen in the
darkness ... but there is no respite for mortal creatures.  Human
relationships must either move or perish.  When two consciousnesses
come to a certain nearness the impetus of their interactions, growing
ever intenser and intenser, leads on to an unescapable climax.  The
crescendo must rise to its topmost note; and only then is the
pre-ordained solution of the theme made manifest.




{7}

II

The reign of Elizabeth (1558 to 1603) falls into two parts:--the thirty
years that preceded the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the fifteen
that followed it.  The earlier period was one of preparation; it was
then that the tremendous work was accomplished which made England a
coherent nation, finally independent of the Continent, and produced a
state of affairs in which the whole energies of the country could find
free scope.  During those long years the dominating qualities of the
men in power were skill and prudence.  The times were so hard that
anything else was out of place.  For a whole generation the vast
caution of Burghley was the supreme influence in England.  The lesser
figures followed suit; and, for that very reason, a certain
indistinctness veils them from our view.  Walsingham worked
underground; Leicester, with all his gorgeousness, is dim to us--an
uncertain personage, bending to every wind; the Lord Chancellor Hatton
danced, and that is all we know of him.  Then suddenly the kaleidoscope
shifted; the old ways, the old actors, were swept off with the wreckage
of the Armada.  Burghley alone remained--a monument from the past.  In
the place of Leicester {8} and Walsingham, Essex and Raleigh--young,
bold, coloured, brilliantly personal--sprang forward and filled the
scene of public action.  It was the same in every other field of
national energy: the snows of the germinating winter had melted, and
the wonderful spring of Elizabethan culture burst into life.

The age--it was that of Marlowe and Spenser, of the early Shakespeare
and the Francis Bacon of the Essays--needs no description: everybody
knows its outward appearances and the literary expressions of its
heart.  More valuable than descriptions, but what perhaps is
unattainable, would be some means by which the modern mind might reach
to an imaginative comprehension of those beings of three centuries
ago--might move with ease among their familiar essential
feelings--might touch, or dream that it touches (for such dreams are
the stuff of history) the very "pulse of the machine."  But the path
seems closed to us.  By what art are we to worm out way into those
strange spirits, those even stranger bodies?  The more clearly we
perceive it, the more remote that singular universe becomes.  With very
few exceptions--possibly with the single exception of Shakespeare--the
creatures in it meet us without intimacy; they are exterior visions,
which we know, but do not truly understand.

It is, above all, the contradictions of the age that baffle our
imagination and perplex our intelligence.  {9} Human beings, no doubt,
would cease to be human beings unless they were inconsistent; but the
inconsistency of the Elizabethans exceeds the limits permitted to man.
Their elements fly off from one another wildly; we seize them; we
struggle hard to shake them together into a single compound, and the
retort bursts.  How is it possible to give a coherent account of their
subtlety and their _navet_, their delicacy and their brutality, their
piety and their lust?  Wherever we look, it is the same.  By what
perverse magic were intellectual ingenuity and theological
ingenuousness intertwined in John Donne?  Who has ever explained
Francis Bacon?  How is it conceivable that the puritans were the
brothers of the dramatists?  What kind of mental fabric could that have
been which had for its warp the habits of filth and savagery of
sixteenth-century London and for its woof an impassioned familiarity
with the splendour of Tamburlaine and the exquisiteness of Venus and
Adonis?  Who can reconstruct those iron-nerved beings who passed with
rapture from some divine madrigal sung to a lute by a bewitching boy in
a tavern to the spectacle of mauled dogs tearing a bear to pieces?
Iron-nerved?  Perhaps; yet the flaunting man of fashion, whose
cod-piece proclaimed an astonishing virility, was he not also, with his
flowing hair and his jewelled ears, effeminate?  And the curious
society which loved such fantasies and delicacies--how readily would it
turn {10} and rend a random victim with hideous cruelty!  A change of
fortune--a spy's word--and those same ears might be sliced off, to the
laughter of the crowd, in the pillory; or, if ambition or religion made
a darker embroilment, a more ghastly mutilation--amid a welter of moral
platitudes fit only for the nursery and dying confessions in marvellous
English--might diversify a traitor's end.

It was the age of _baroque_; and perhaps it is the incongruity between
their structure and their ornament that best accounts for the mystery
of the Elizabethans.  It is so hard to gauge, from the exuberance of
their decoration, the subtle, secret lines of their inner nature.
Certainly this was so in one crowning example--certainly no more
_baroque_ figure ever trod this earth than the supreme phenomenon of
Elizabethanism--Elizabeth herself.  From her visible aspect to the
profundities of her being, every part of her was permeated by the
bewildering discordances of the real and the apparent.  Under the
serried complexities of her raiment--the huge hoop, the stiff ruff, the
swollen sleeves, the powdered pearls, the spreading, gilded gauzes--the
form of the woman vanished, and men saw instead an image--magnificent,
portentous, self-created--an image of regality, which yet, by a
miracle, was actually alive.  Posterity has suffered by a similar
deceit of vision.  The great Queen of its imagination, the lion-hearted
heroine, who flung back {11} the insolence of Spain and crushed the
tyranny of Rome with splendid unhesitating gestures, no more resembles
the Queen of fact than the clothed Elizabeth the naked one.  But, after
all, posterity is privileged.  Let us draw nearer; we shall do no wrong
now to that Majesty, if we look below the robes.

The lion heart, the splendid gestures--such heroic things were there,
no doubt--visible to everybody; but their true significance in the
general scheme of her character was remote and complicated.  The sharp
and hostile eyes of the Spanish ambassadors saw something different; in
their opinion, the outstanding characteristic of Elizabeth was
pusillanimity.  They were wrong; but they perceived more of the truth
than the idle onlooker.  They had come into contact with those forces
in the Queen's mind which proved, incidentally, fatal to themselves,
and brought her, in the end, her enormous triumph.  That triumph was
not the result of heroism.  The very contrary was the case: the grand
policy which dominated Elizabeth's life was the most unheroic
conceivable; and her true history remains a standing lesson for
melodramatists in statecraft.  In reality, she succeeded by virtue of
all the qualities which every hero should be without--dissimulation,
pliability, indecision, procrastination, parsimony.  It might almost be
said that the heroic element chiefly appeared in the unparalleled
lengths to which she allowed those qualities to carry her.  It {12}
needed a lion heart indeed to spend twelve years in convincing the
world that she was in love with the Duke of Anjou, and to stint the
victuals of the men who defeated the Armada; but in such directions she
was in very truth capable of everything.  She found herself a sane
woman in a universe of violent maniacs, between contending forces of
terrific intensity--the rival nationalisms of France and Spain, the
rival religions of Rome and Calvin; for years it had seemed inevitable
that she should be crushed by one or other of them, and she had
survived because she had been able to meet the extremes around her with
her own extremes of cunning and prevarication.  It so happened that the
subtlety of her intellect was exactly adapted to the complexities of
her environment.  The balance of power between France and Spain, the
balance of factions in France and Scotland, the swaying fortunes of the
Netherlands, gave scope for a tortuosity of diplomacy which has never
been completely unravelled to this day.  Burghley was her chosen
helper, a careful steward after her own heart; and more than once
Burghley gave up the puzzle of his mistress's proceedings in despair.
Nor was it only her intellect that served her; it was her temperament
as well.  That too--in its mixture of the masculine and the feminine,
of vigour and sinuosity, of pertinacity and vacillation--was precisely
what her case required.  A deep instinct made it almost impossible for
her to {13} come to a fixed determination upon any subject whatever.
Or, if she did, she immediately proceeded to contradict her resolution
with the utmost violence, and, after that, to contradict her
contradiction more violently still.  Such was her nature--to float,
when it was calm, in a sea of indecisions, and, when the wind rose, to
tack hectically from side to side.  Had it been otherwise--had she
possessed, according to the approved pattern of the strong man of
action, the capacity for taking a line and sticking to it--she would
have been lost.  She would have become inextricably entangled in the
forces that surrounded her, and, almost inevitably, swiftly destroyed.
Her femininity saved her.  Only a woman could have shuffled so
shamelessly, only a woman could have abandoned with such unscrupulous
completeness the last shreds not only of consistency, but of dignity,
honour, and common decency, in order to escape the appalling necessity
of having, really and truly, to make up her mind.  Yet it is true that
a woman's evasiveness was not enough; male courage, male energy were
needed, if she were to escape the pressure that came upon her from
every side.  Those qualities she also possessed; but their value to
her--it was the final paradox of her career--was merely that they made
her strong enough to turn her back, with an indomitable persistence,
upon the ways of strength.

Religious persons at the time were distressed by her {14} conduct, and
imperialist historians have wrung their hands over her since.  Why
could she not suppress her hesitations and chicaneries and take a noble
risk?  Why did she not step forth, boldly and frankly, as the leader of
Protestant Europe, accept the sovereignty of Holland, and fight the
good fight to destroy Catholicism and transfer the Spanish Empire to
the rule of England?  The answer is that she cared for none of those
things.  She understood her true nature and her true mission better
than her critics.  It was only by an accident of birth that she was a
Protestant leader; at heart she was profoundly secular; and it was her
destiny to be the champion, not of the Reformation, but of something
greater--the Renaissance.  When she had finished her strange doings,
there was civilisation in England.  The secret of her conduct was,
after all, a simple one: she had been gaining time.  And time, for her
purposes, was everything.  A decision meant war--war, which was the
very antithesis of all she had at heart.  Like no other great statesman
in history, she was, not only by disposition, but in practice, pacific.
It was not that she was much disturbed by the cruelty of war--she was
far from sentimental; she hated it for the best of all reasons--its
wastefulness.  Her thrift was spiritual as well as material, and the
harvest that she gathered in was the great Age, to which, though its
supreme glories were achieved under her successor, her name has been
{15} rightly given.  For without her those particular fields could
never have come to ripeness; they would have been trodden down by
struggling hordes of nationalists and theologians.  She kept the peace
for thirty years--by dint, it is true, of one long succession of
disgraceful collapses and unheard-of equivocations; but she kept it,
and that was enough for Elizabeth.

To put the day of decision off--and off--and off--it seemed her only
object, and her life passed in a passion of postponement.  But here,
too, appearances were deceitful, as her adversaries found to their
cost.  In the end, when the pendulum had swung to and fro for ages, and
delay had grown grey, and expectation sunk down in its socket ...
something terrible happened.  The crafty Maitland of Lethington, in
whose eyes the God of his fathers was "ane bogle of the nursery,"
declared with scorn that the Queen of England was inconstant,
irresolute, timorous, and that before the game was played out he would
"make her sit upon her tail and whine, like ane whippet hound."  Long
years passed, and then suddenly the rocks of Edinburgh Castle ran down
like sand at Elizabeth's bidding, and Maitland took refuge from the
impossible ruin in a Roman's death.  Mary Stuart despised her rival
with a virulent French scorn; and, after eighteen years, at
Fotheringay, she found she was mistaken.  King Philip took thirty years
to learn the same lesson.  For so long had he spared his {16}
sister-in-law; but now he pronounced her doom; and he smiled to watch
the misguided woman still negotiating for a universal peace, as his
Armada sailed into the Channel.

Undoubtedly there was a touch of the sinister about her.  One saw it in
the movements of her extraordinarily long hands.  But it was a touch
and no more--just enough to remind one that there was Italian blood in
her veins--the blood of the subtle and cruel Visconti.  On the whole,
she was English.  On the whole, though she was infinitely subtle, she
was not cruel; she was almost humane for her times; and her occasional
bursts of savagery were the results of fear or temper.  In spite of
superficial resemblances, she was the very opposite of her most
dangerous enemy--the weaving spider of the Escurial.  Both were masters
of dissimulation and lovers of delay; but the leaden foot of Philip was
the symptom of a dying organism, while Elizabeth temporised for the
contrary reason--because vitality can afford to wait.  The fierce old
hen sat still, brooding over the English nation, whose pullulating
energies were coming swiftly to ripeness and unity under her wings.
She sat still; but every feather bristled; she was tremendously alive.
Her super-abundant vigour was at once alarming and delightful.  While
the Spanish ambassador declared that ten thousand devils possessed her,
the ordinary Englishman saw in King Hal's full-blooded daughter {17} a
Queen after his own heart.  She swore; she spat; she struck with her
fist when she was angry; she roared with laughter when she was amused.
And she was often amused.  A radiant atmosphere of humour coloured and
softened the harsh lines of her destiny, and buoyed her up along the
zigzags of her dreadful path.  Her response to every stimulus was
immediate and rich: to the folly of the moment, to the clash and horror
of great events, her soul leapt out with a vivacity, an abandonment, a
complete awareness of the situation, which made her, which makes her
still, a fascinating spectacle.  She could play with life as with an
equal, wrestling with it, making fun of it, admiring it, watching its
drama, intimately relishing the strangeness of circumstance, the sudden
freaks of fortune, the perpetual unexpectedness of things.  "Per molto
variare la natura e bella" was one of her favourite aphorisms.

The variations in her own behaviour were hardly less frequent than
nature's.  The rough hectoring dame with her practical jokes, her
out-of-doors manners, her passion for hunting, would suddenly become a
stern-faced woman of business, closeted for long hours with
secretaries, reading and dictating despatches, and examining with sharp
exactitude the minutiae of accounts.  Then, as suddenly, the cultivated
lady of the Renaissance would shine forth.  For Elizabeth's
accomplishments were many and dazzling.  {18} She was mistress of six
languages besides her own, a student of Greek, a superb calligraphist,
an excellent musician.  She was a connoisseur of painting and poetry.
She danced, after the Florentine style, with a high magnificence that
astonished beholders.  Her conversation, full, not only of humour, but
of elegance and wit, revealed an unerring social sense, a charming
delicacy of personal perception.  It was this spiritual versatility
which made her one of the supreme diplomatists of history.  Her protean
mind, projecting itself with extreme rapidity into every sinuous shape
conceivable, perplexed the most clear-sighted of her antagonists and
deluded the most wary.  But her crowning virtuosity was her command
over the resources of words.  When she wished, she could drive in her
meaning up to the hilt with hammer blows of speech, and no one ever
surpassed her in the elaborate confection of studied ambiguities.  Her
letters she composed in a regal mode of her own, full of apophthegm and
insinuation.  In private talk she could win a heart by some quick
felicitous _brusquerie_; but her greatest moments came when, in public
audience, she made known her wishes, her opinions, and her meditations
to the world.  Then the splendid sentences, following one another in a
steady volubility, proclaimed the curious workings of her intellect
with enthralling force; while the woman's inward passion vibrated
magically through the loud high {19} uncompromising utterance and the
perfect rhythms of her speech.

Nor was it only in her mind that these complicated contrasts were
apparent; they dominated her physical being too.  The tall and bony
frame was subject to strange weaknesses.  Rheumatisms racked her;
intolerable headaches laid her prone in agony; a hideous ulcer poisoned
her existence for years.  Though her serious illnesses were few, a long
succession of minor maladies, a host of morbid symptoms, held her
contemporaries in alarmed suspense and have led some modern searchers
to suspect that she received from her father an hereditary taint.  Our
knowledge, both of the laws of medicine and of the actual details of
her disorders, is too limited to allow a definite conclusion; but at
least it seems certain that, in spite of her prolonged and varied
sufferings, Elizabeth was fundamentally strong.  She lived to be
seventy--a great age in those days--discharging to the end the
laborious duties of government; throughout her life she was capable of
unusual bodily exertion; she hunted and danced indefatigably; and--a
significant fact, which is hardly compatible with any pronounced
weakness of physique--she took a particular pleasure in standing up, so
that more than one unfortunate ambassador tottered from her presence,
after an audience of hours, bitterly complaining of his exhaustion.
Probably the solution of the riddle--suggested at the time by {20}
various onlookers, and accepted by learned authorities since--was that
most of her ailments were of an hysterical origin.  That iron structure
was a prey to nerves.  The hazards and anxieties in which she passed
her life would have been enough in themselves to shake the health of
the most vigorous; but it so happened that, in Elizabeth's case, there
was a special cause for a neurotic condition: her sexual organisation
was seriously warped.

From its very beginning her emotional life had been subjected to
extraordinary strains.  The intensely impressionable years of her early
childhood had been for her a period of excitement, terror, and tragedy.
It is possible that she could just remember the day when, to celebrate
the death of Catherine of Aragon, her father, dressed from top to toe
in yellow, save for one white plume in his bonnet, led her to mass in a
triumph of trumpets, and then, taking her in his arms, showed her to
one after another of his courtiers, in high delight.  But it is also
possible that her very earliest memory was of a different kind: when
she was two years and eight months old, her father cut off her mother's
head.  Whether remembered or no, the reactions of such an event upon
her infant spirit must have been profound.  The years that followed
were full of trouble and dubiety.  Her fate varied incessantly with the
complex changes of her father's politics and marriages; alternately
caressed and neglected, she {21} was the heir to England at one moment
and a bastard outcast the next.  And then, when the old King was dead,
a new and dangerous agitation almost overwhelmed her.  She was not yet
fifteen, and was living in the house of her stepmother, Catherine Parr,
who had married the Lord Admiral Seymour, brother of Somerset, the
Protector.  The Admiral was handsome, fascinating and reckless; he
amused himself with the Princess.  Bounding into her room in the early
morning, he would fall upon her, while she was in her bed or just out
of it, with peals of laughter, would seize her in his arms and tickle
her, and slap her buttocks, and crack a ribald joke.  These proceedings
continued for several weeks, when Catherine Parr, getting wind of them,
sent Elizabeth to live elsewhere.  A few months later Catherine died,
and the Admiral proposed marriage to Elizabeth.  The ambitious charmer,
aiming at the supreme power, hoped to strengthen himself against his
brother by a union with the royal blood.  His plots were discovered; he
was flung into the Tower, and the Protector sought to inculpate
Elizabeth in the conspiracy.  The agonised girl kept her head.  The
looks and the ways of Thomas Seymour had delighted her; but she firmly
denied that she had ever contemplated marriage without the Protector's
consent.  In a masterly letter, written in an exquisite hand, she
rebutted Somerset's charges.  It was rumoured, she told him, that she
was "with child by {22} my Lord Admiral"; this was a "shameful
schandler"; and she begged to be allowed to go to court, where all
would see that it was so.  The Protector found that he could do nothing
with his fifteen-year-old antagonist; but he ordered the Admiral to be
beheaded.

Such were the circumstances--both horrible and singular--in which her
childhood and her puberty were passed.  Who can wonder that her
maturity should have been marked by signs of nervous infirmity?  No
sooner was she on the throne than a strange temperamental anomaly
declared itself.  Since the Catholic Mary Stuart was the next heir, the
Protestant cause in England hung suspended, so long as Elizabeth
remained unmarried, by the feeble thread of her life.  The obvious, the
natural, the inevitable conclusion was that the Queen's marriage must
immediately take place.  But the Queen was of a different opinion.
Marriage was distasteful to her, and marry she would not.  For more
than twenty years, until age freed her from the controversy, she
resisted, through an incredible series of delays, ambiguities,
perfidies, and tergiversations, the incessant pressure of her
ministers, her parliaments, and her people.  Considerations of her own
personal safety were of no weight with her.  Her childlessness put a
premium upon her murder; she knew it, and she smiled.  The world was
confounded by such unparalleled conduct.  It was not as if an icy
chastity possessed the heart of Elizabeth.  {23} Far from it; the very
opposite seemed to be the case.  Nature had implanted in her an
amorousness so irrepressible as to be always obvious and sometimes
scandalous.  She was filled with delicious agitation by the glorious
figures of men.  Her passion for Leicester dominated her existence from
the moment when her sister's tyranny had brought them together in the
Tower of London till the last hour of his life; and Leicester had
virile beauty, and only virile beauty, to recommend him.  Nor was
Leicester alone in her firmament: there were other stars which, at
moments, almost outshone him.  There was the stately Hatton, so comely
in a galliard; there was handsome Heneage; there was De Vere, the
dashing king of the tiltyard; there was young Blount, with "his brown
hair, a sweet face, a most neat composure, and tall in his person," and
the colour that, when the eye of Majesty was fixed upon him, came and
went so beautifully in his cheeks.

She loved them all; so it might be said by friends and enemies; for
love is a word of questionable import; and over the doings of Elizabeth
there hovered indeed a vast interrogation.  Her Catholic adversaries
roundly declared that she was Leicester's mistress, and had had by him
a child, who had been smuggled away into hiding--a story that is
certainly untrue.  But there were also entirely contrary rumours
afloat.  Ben Jonson told Drummond, at Hawthornden, after {24} dinner,
that "she had a membrana on her, which made her uncapable of man,
though for her delight she tryed many."  Ben's loose talk, of course,
has no authority; it merely indicates the gossip of the time; what is
more important is the considered opinion of one who had good means of
discovering the truth--Feria, the Spanish ambassador.  After making
careful inquiries, Feria had come to the conclusion, he told King
Philip, that Elizabeth would have no children: "entiendo que ella no
terna hijos," were his words.  If this was the case, or if Elizabeth
believed it to be so, her refusal to marry becomes at once
comprehensible.  To have a husband and no child would be merely to lose
her personal preponderance and gain no counter-balancing advantages;
the Protestant succession would be no nearer safety, and she herself
would be eternally vexed by a master.  The crude story of a physical
malformation may well have had its origin in a subtler, and yet no less
vital, fact.  In such matters the mind is as potent as the body.  A
deeply seated repugnance to the crucial act of intercourse may produce,
when the possibility of it approaches, a condition of hysterical
convulsion, accompanied, in certain cases, by intense pain.  Everything
points to the conclusion that such--the result of the profound
psychological disturbances of her childhood--was the state of
Elizabeth.  "I hate the idea of marriage," she told Lord Sussex, "for
reasons that I would not {25} divulge to a twin soul."  Yes; she hated
it; but she would play with it nevertheless.  Her intellectual
detachment and her supreme instinct for the opportunities of political
chicanery led her on to dangle the promise of her marriage before the
eyes of the coveting world.  Spain, France, and the Empire--for years
she held them, lured by that impossible bait, in the meshes of her
diplomacy.  For years she made her mysterious organism the pivot upon
which the fate of Europe turned.  And it so happened that a
contributing circumstance enabled her to give a remarkable
verisimilitude to her game.  Though, at the centre of her being, desire
had turned to repulsion, it had not vanished altogether; on the
contrary, the compensating forces of nature had redoubled its vigour
elsewhere.  Though the precious citadel itself was never to be
violated, there were surrounding territories, there were outworks and
bastions over which exciting battles might be fought, and which might
even, at moments, be allowed to fall into the bold hands of an
assailant.  Inevitably, strange rumours flew.  The princely suitors
multiplied their assiduities; and the Virgin Queen alternately frowned
and smiled over her secret.

The ambiguous years passed, and the time came at length when there
could be no longer a purpose in marriage.  But the Queen's curious
temperament remained.  With the approach of old age, her emotional {26}
excitements did not diminish.  Perhaps, indeed, they actually
increased; though here too there was a mystification.  Elizabeth had
been attractive as a girl; she remained for many years a handsome
woman; but at last the traces of beauty were replaced by hard lines,
borrowed colours, and a certain grotesque intensity.  Yet, as her
charms grew less, her insistence on their presence grew greater.  She
had been content with the devoted homage of her contemporaries; but
from the young men who surrounded her in her old age she required--and
received--the expressions of romantic passion.  The affairs of State
went on in a fandango of sighs, ecstasies, and protestations.  Her
prestige, which success had made enormous, was still further magnified
by this transcendental atmosphere of personal worship.  Men felt, when
they came near her, that they were in a superhuman presence.  No
reverence was too great for such a divinity.  A splendid young
nobleman--so the story went--while bowing low before her, had given
vent to an unfortunate sound, and thereupon, such was his horrified
embarrassment, he had gone abroad and travelled for seven years before
venturing to return to the presence of his Mistress.  The policy of
such a system was obvious; and yet it was by no means all policy.  Her
clear-sightedness, so tremendous in her dealings with outward
circumstances, stopped short when she turned her eyes within.  There
her vision grew artificial and {27} confused.  It seemed as if, in
obedience to a subtle instinct, she had succeeded in becoming one of
the greatest of worldly realists by dint of concentrating the whole
romance of her nature upon herself.  The result was unusual.  The
wisest of rulers, obsessed by a preposterous vanity, existed in a
universe that was composed entirely either of absurd, rose-tinted
fantasies or the coldest and hardest of facts.  There were no
transitions--only opposites, juxtaposed.  The extraordinary spirit was
all steel one moment and all flutters the next.  Once more her beauty
had conquered, once more her fascinations had evoked the inevitable
response.  She eagerly absorbed the elaborate adorations of her lovers,
and, in the same instant, by a final stroke of luck and cunning,
converted them--like everything else she had anything to do with--into
a paying concern.

That strange court was the abode of paradox and uncertainty.  The
goddess of it, moving in a nimbus of golden glory, was an old creature,
fantastically dressed, still tall, though bent, with hair dyed red
above her pale visage, long blackening teeth, a high domineering nose,
and eyes that were at once deep-set and starting forward--fierce,
terrifying eyes, in whose dark blue depths something frantic
lurked--something almost maniacal.  She passed on--the peculiar
embodiment of a supreme energy; and Fate and Fortune went with her.
When the inner door was {28} closed, men knew that the brain behind the
eyes was at work there, with the consummate dexterity of long-practised
genius, upon the infinite complexities of European statecraft and the
arduous government of a nation.  From time to time a raucous sound was
heard--a high voice, rating: an ambassador was being admonished, an
expedition to the Indies forbidden, something determined about the
constitution of the Church of England.  The indefatigable figure
emerged at last, to leap upon a horse, to gallop through the glades,
and to return, well satisfied, for an hour with the virginals.  After a
frugal meal--the wing of a fowl, washed down with a little wine and
water--Gloriana danced.  While the viols sounded, the young men,
grouped about her, awaited what their destiny might bring forth.
Sometimes the Earl was absent, and then what might not be hoped for,
from that quick susceptibility, that imperious caprice?  The excited
deity would jest roughly with one and another, and would end by
summoning some strong-limbed youth to talk with her in an embrasure.
Her heart melted with his flatteries, and, as she struck him lightly on
the neck with her long fingers, her whole being was suffused with a
lasciviousness that could hardly be defined.  She was a woman--ah, yes!
a fascinating woman!--but then, was she not also a virgin, and old?
But immediately another flood of feeling swept upwards and engulfed
her; she towered; she was something more--she {29} knew it; what was
it?  Was she a man?  She gazed at the little beings around her, and
smiled to think that, though she might be their Mistress in one sense,
in another it could never be so--that the very reverse might almost be
said to be the case.  She had read of Hercules and Hylas, and she might
have fancied herself, in some half-conscious day-dream, possessed of
something of that pagan masculinity.  Hylas was a page--he was before
her ... but her reflections were disturbed by a sudden hush.  Looking
round, she saw that Essex had come in.  He went swiftly towards her;
and the Queen had forgotten everything, as he knelt at her feet.




{30}

III

The summer idyll passed smoothly on, until, in the hot days of July,
there was a thunderstorm.  While the Earl conversed with the Queen in
her chamber, the Captain of the Guard stood outside the door on duty;
and the Captain of the Guard was a gentleman with a bold face--Sir
Walter Raleigh.  The younger son of a West-country squire, the royal
favour had raised him in a few years to wealth and power: patents and
monopolies had been showered upon him; he had become the master of
great estates in England and Ireland; he was warden of the stannaries,
Lord-Lieutenant of Cornwall, a Knight, a Vice-Admiral; he was
thirty-five--a dangerous and magnificent man.  His splendid bearing,
his enterprising spirit, which had brought him to this unexpected
grandeur--whither would they lead him in the end?  The Fates had woven
for him a skein of mingled light and darkness; fortune and misfortune,
in equal measure and in strange intensity, were to be his.

The first stroke of the ill-luck that haunted his life had been the
appearance at Court of the youthful Essex.  Just as Raleigh must have
thought that the Queen's fancy was becoming fixed upon him, just as
{31} the decay of Leicester seemed to open the way to a triumphant
future--at that very moment the old favourite's stepson had come upon
the scene with his boyish fascinations and swept Elizabeth off her
feet.  Raleigh suddenly found himself in the position of a once
all-conquering beauty whose charms are on the wane.  The Queen might
fling him three or four estates of beheaded conspirators, might give
him leave to plant a colony in America, might even snuff at his tobacco
and bite a potato with a wry face--all that was nothing: her heart, her
person, were with Essex, on the other side of the door.  He knotted his
black eyebrows, and determined not to sink without a struggle.  During
a country visit at Lord Warwick's, he succeeded in disturbing
Elizabeth's mind.  Lady Warwick was a friend of Essex's sister, Lady
Dorothy Perrott, who, owing to a clandestine marriage, had been
forbidden to appear at Court, and the rash hostess, believing that the
Queen's anger had abated, had invited Lady Dorothy, as well as her
brother, to the house.  Raleigh told Elizabeth that Lady Dorothy's
presence was a sign of deliberate disrespect on the part of Essex;
whereupon Elizabeth ordered Lady Dorothy to keep to her room.  Essex
understood what had happened and did not hesitate.  After supper, alone
with the Queen and Lady Warwick, he made a vehement expostulation,
defended his sister, and declared (as he told a friend, in a letter
written {32} immediately afterwards) that Elizabeth had acted as she
did "only to please that knave Raleigh, for whose sake I saw she would
both grieve me and my love, and disgrace me in the eye of the world."
Elizabeth, no less vehemently, replied.  "It seemed she could not well
endure anything to be spoken against Raleigh and taking hold of one
word, _disdain_, she said there was no such cause why I should disdain
him."  This speech "did trouble me so much, that, as near as I could, I
did describe unto her what he had been and what he was."  The daring
youth went further.  "What comfort can I have," he exclaimed, "to give
myself over to the service of a mistress that is in awe of such a man?"
All this time, the Captain of the Guard was at his post.  "I spake,
what of grief and choler, as much against him as I could, and I think
he, standing at the door, might very well hear the worst that I spoke
of himself."  But his high words were useless; the dispute grew
sharper; and when the Queen, from defending Raleigh, went on to attack
Essex's mother, Lady Leicester, whom she particularly disliked, the
young man would hear no more.  He would send his sister away, he said,
though it was almost midnight and "for myself," he told the agitated
Elizabeth, "I had no joy to be in any place, but loth to be near about
her, when I knew my affection so much thrown down, and such a wretch as
Raleigh so highly esteemed of her."  To this the Queen made no answer,
{33} "but turned her away to my Lady Warwick," and Essex, flinging from
the room, first despatched his sister from the house under an escort of
armed retainers and then rode off himself to Margate, determined to
cross the Channel and take a part in the Dutch war.  "If I return," he
wrote, "I will be welcomed home; if not, _una bella morire_ is better
than a disquiet life."  But the Queen was too quick for him.  Robert
Carey, sent galloping after him, found him before he had taken ship and
brought him back to Her Majesty.  There was a reconciliation; the royal
favour blazed forth again; and within a month or two Essex was Master
of the Horse and Knight of the Garter.

[Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH.  From the portrait in the National
Portrait Gallery]

Yet, though the cloud had vanished, the sky was subtly changed.  A
first quarrel is always an ominous thing.  In the curious scene at Lord
Warwick's, under the cover of jealousy and wounded affection, a
suppressed distrust, almost a latent hostility had, for a moment, come
to the surface.  And there was more; Essex had discovered that, young
as he was, he could upbraid the great Queen with impunity.  Elizabeth
had been angry, disagreeable, and unyielding in her defence of Raleigh,
but she had not ordered those audacious protestations to stop; it had
almost seemed that she liked them.




{34}

IV

The Armada was defeated; Leicester was dead.  A new world was opening
for the young and the adventurous.  It was determined, under Drake's
auspices, to make a counter-attack on Spain, and an armament was
prepared to raid Corunna, take possession of Lisbon, detach Portugal
from Philip, and place Don Antonio, who laid claim to the kingdom, on
the throne.  Excitement, booty, glory, fluttered before the imagination
of every soldier and of Essex among the rest; but the Queen forbade him
to go.  He was bold enough to ignore her orders, and, leaving London on
horseback one Thursday evening, he arrived in Plymouth on Saturday
morning--a distance of 220 miles.  This time he was too quick for his
mistress.  Taking ship immediately, with a detachment of troops under
the veteran Sir Roger Williams, he sailed for the coast of Spain.
Elizabeth was furious; she despatched messenger after messenger to
Plymouth, ordered pinnaces to search the Channel, and, in an enraged
letter to Drake, fulminated against the unfortunate Sir Roger.  "His
offence," she wrote, "is in so high a degree that the same deserveth to
be punished by death, which if you have not already {35} done, then we
will and command you that you sequester him from all charge and service
and cause him to be safely kept, until you shall know our further
pleasure therein, as you will answer for the contrary at your perils;
for as we have authority to rule so we look to be obeyed."  If Essex,
she continued, "be now come into the company of the fleet, we
straightly charge you that you do forthwith cause him to be sent hither
in safe manner.  Which, if you do not, you shall look to answer for the
same to your smart; for these be no childish actions.  Therefore
consider well of your doings herein."  But her threats and her commands
were alike useless.  Essex joined the main body of the expedition
unhindered and took a brave part in the skirmishes and marches in which
it ingloriously ended.  It turned out to be easier to repel an invasion
than to make one.  Some Spanish ships were burnt, but the Portuguese
did not rise, and Lisbon shut herself up against Don Antonio and the
English.  Into one of the gates of the town Essex, as a parting
gesture, thrust his pike, "demanding aloud if any Spaniard mewed
therein durst adventure forth in favour of his mistress to break a
lance."  There was no reply; and the expedition returned to England.

The young man soon made his peace with the Queen; even Sir Roger
Williams was forgiven.  The happy days of the Court returned with
hunting, feasting, and jousting.  Raleigh, with a shrug, went off {36}
to Ireland, to look after his ten thousand acres, and Essex was free
from even the shadow of a rivalry.  Or was Charles Blount a rival?  The
handsome boy had displayed his powers in the tiltyard to such purpose
that Elizabeth had sent him a golden queen from her set of chessmen,
and he had bound the trophy to his arm with a crimson ribbon.  Essex,
when he saw it, asked what it was, and, on being told, "Now I
perceive," he exclaimed, "that every fool must have a favour."  A duel
followed in Marylebone fields and Essex was wounded.  "By God's death!"
said Elizabeth, when she heard of it, "it was fit that someone or other
should take him down, and teach him better manners."  She was delighted
to think that blood had been shed over her beauty; but afterwards she
insisted on the two young men making up their quarrel.  She was obeyed,
and Blount became one of the Earl's most devoted followers.

The stream of royal kindness flowed on, though occasionally there were
odd shallows in it.  Essex was extravagant; he was more than 20,000 in
debt; and the Queen graciously advanced him 3000 to ease his
necessities.  Then suddenly she demanded immediate repayment.  Essex
begged for delay, but the reply was sharp and peremptory; the money--or
its equivalent in land--must be handed over at once.  In a pathetic
letter, Essex declared his submission and devotion.  "Now that your
Majesty repents yourself," {37} he wrote, "of the favour you thought to
do me, I would I could, with the loss of all the land I have, as well
repair the breach which your unkind answer hath made in my heart, as I
can with the sale of one poor manor answer the sum which your Majesty
takes of me.  Money and land are base things, but love and kindness are
excellent things, and cannot be measured but by themselves."  Her
Majesty admired the phrasing, but disagreed with the economics; and
shortly afterwards the manor at Keyston in Huntingdonshire, "of mine
ancient inheritance," as Essex told Burghley, "free from incumbrance, a
great circuit of ground, in a very good soil," passed into the royal
possession.

She preferred to be generous in a more remunerative way.  She sold to
Essex, for a term of years, the right to farm the customs on the sweet
wines imported into the country--and he might make what he could out of
it.  He made a great deal--at the expense of the public; but he was
informed that, when the lease expired, it might or might not be
renewed--as her Majesty thought fit.

He was lavish in the protestations of his worship--his adoration--his
love.  That convenient monosyllable, so intense and so ambiguous, was
for ever on his lips and found its way into every letter--those
elegant, impassioned, noble letters, which still exist, with their
stiff, quick characters and those silken ties that were once loosened
by the long fingers of Elizabeth.  {38} She read and she listened with
a satisfaction so extraordinary, so unprecedented, that when one day
she learned that he was married she was only enraged for a fortnight.
Essex had made an impeccable choice--the widow of Sir Philip Sidney and
the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham; he was twenty-three, handsome,
vigorous, with an earldom to hand on to posterity; even Elizabeth could
not seriously object.  She stormed and ramped; then remembered that the
relations between herself and her servant were unique and had nothing
to do with a futile domesticity.  The fascinating bridegroom pursued
and cajoled her with ardours as romantic as ever; and she felt that a
queen could ignore a wife.

Soon enough an occasion arose for showing the world that to be the
favourite of Elizabeth involved public duties as well as private
delights.  Henry IV of France, almost overpowered by the Catholic
League and the Spaniards, appealed urgently to England for help.
Elizabeth wavered for several months, and then reluctantly decided that
Henry must be supported--but only with the absolute minimum of
expenditure.  She agreed that four thousand men should be sent to
Normandy to act with the Huguenots; and Essex, who had done all he
could to bring her to this resolution, now begged to be put in command
of the force.  Three times the Queen refused his entreaties; at last he
knelt before her for two hours; still she refused--then {39} suddenly
consented.  The Earl went off in high feather, but discovered before
very long that the command even of the smallest army needs something
more than knight errantry.  During the autumn and winter of 1591,
difficulties and perplexities crowded upon him.  He was hasty, rash and
thoughtless.  Leaving the main body of his troops, he galloped with a
small escort through a hostile country to consult with the French King
about the siege of Rouen and on his return was almost cut off by the
Leaguers.  The Council wrote from England upbraiding him with
needlessly risking his life, with "trailing a pike like a common
soldier," and with going a-hawking in districts swarming with the
enemy.  The Queen despatched several angry letters; everything annoyed
her; she suspected Essex of incompetence and the French King of
treachery; she was on the point of ordering the whole contingent home.
Once more, as in the Portuguese expedition, it turned out that foreign
war was a dreary and unprofitable business.  Essex lost his favourite
brother in a skirmish; he was agonised by the Queen's severity; his
army dwindled, from death and desertion, to one thousand men.  The
English fought with reckless courage at Rouen; but the Prince of Parma,
advancing from the Netherlands, forced Henry to raise the siege.  The
unfortunate young man, racked with ague, was overcome by a sudden
despair.  "Unkindness and sorrow," he told {40} the Queen, "have broken
both my heart and my wits."  "I wish," he declared to one of his
friends, "to be out of my prison, which I account my life."  Yet his
noble spirit soon re-asserted itself.  His reputation was retrieved by
his personal bravery.  He challenged the Governor of Rouen to single
combat--it was his one and only piece of strategy--amid general
applause.  The Queen, however, remained slightly cynical.  The Governor
of Rouen, she said, was merely a rebel, and she saw no occasion for the
giving or receiving of challenges.  But Essex, whatever the upshot of
the expedition, would be romantic to the last; and, when the time came
for him to return to England, he did so with a gesture of ancient
chivalry.  Standing on the shore of France before his embarkation, he
solemnly drew his sword from its scabbard, and kissed the blade.




{41}

V

The spring of youth was almost over; in those days, at the age of
twenty-five, most men had reached a full maturity.  Essex kept
something of his boyishness to the end, but he could not escape the
rigours of time, and now a new scene--a scene of peril and gravity
appropriate to manhood--was opening before him.

The circumstances of a single family--it has happened more than once in
English history--dominated the situation.  William Cecil, Lord
Burghley, who had filled, since the beginning of the reign, the
position of Prime Minister, was over seventy; he could not last much
longer; who would succeed him?  He himself hoped that his younger son,
Robert, might step into his place.  He had brought him up with that end
in view.  The sickly, dwarfed boy had been carefully taught by tutors,
had been sent travelling on the Continent, had been put into the House
of Commons, had been initiated in diplomacy, and gently, persistently,
at every favourable moment, had been brought before the notice of the
Queen.  Elizabeth's sharp eye, uninfluenced by birth or position,
perceived that the little hunchback possessed a great ability.  When
{42} Walsingham died, in 1590, she handed over to Sir Robert Cecil the
duties of his office; and the young man of twenty-seven became in fact,
though not in name, her principal secretary.  The title and emoluments
might follow later--she could not quite make up her mind.  Burghley was
satisfied; his efforts had succeeded; his son's foot was planted firmly
in the path of power.

But Lady Burghley had a sister, who had two sons--Anthony and Francis
Bacon.  A few years older than their cousin Robert, they were, like
him, delicate, talented, and ambitious.  They had started life with
high hopes: their father had been Lord Keeper--the head of the legal
profession; and their uncle was, under the Queen, the most important
person in England.  But their father died, leaving them no more than
the small inheritance of younger sons; and their uncle, all-powerful as
he was, seemed to ignore the claims of their deserts and their
relationship.  Lord Burghley, it appeared, would do nothing for his
nephews.  Why was this?  To Anthony and Francis the explanation was
plain: they were being sacrificed to the career of Robert; the old man
was jealous of them--afraid of them; their capacities were suppressed
in order that Robert should have no competitors.  Nobody can tell how
far this was the case.  Burghley, no doubt, was selfish and wily; but
perhaps his influence was not always as great as it seemed; and
perhaps, also, he {43} genuinely mistrusted the singular characters of
his nephews.  However that may be, a profound estrangement followed.
The outward forms of respect and affection were maintained; but the
bitter disappointment of the Bacons was converted into a bitter
animosity, while the Cecils grew more suspicious and hostile every day.
At last the Bacons decided to abandon their allegiance to an uncle who
was worse than useless, and to throw in their lot with some other
leader, who would appreciate them as they deserved.  They looked round,
and Essex was their obvious choice.  The Earl was young, active,
impressionable; his splendid personal position seemed to be there,
ready to hand, waiting to be transformed into something more glorious
still--a supreme political predominance.  They had the will and the wit
to do it.  Their uncle was dropping into dotage, their cousin's
cautious brain was no match for their combined intelligence.  They
would show the father and the son, who had thought to shuffle them into
obscurity, that it is possible to be too grasping in this world and
that it is sometimes very far from wise to quarrel with one's poor
relations.

So Anthony at any rate thought--a gouty young invalid, splenetic and
uncompromising; but the imaginations of Francis were more complicated.
In that astonishing mind there were concealed depths and deceptive
shallows, curiously intermingled and {44} puzzling in the extreme to
the inquisitive observer.  Francis Bacon has been described more than
once with the crude vigour of antithesis; but in truth such methods are
singularly inappropriate to his most unusual case.  It was not by the
juxtaposition of a few opposites, but by the infiltration of a
multitude of highly varied elements, that his mental composition was
made up.  He was no striped frieze; he was shot silk.  The detachment
of speculation, the intensity of personal pride, the uneasiness of
nervous sensibility, the urgency of ambition, the opulence of superb
taste--these qualities, blending, twisting, flashing together, gave to
his secret spirit the subtle and glittering superficies of a serpent.
A serpent, indeed, might well have been his chosen emblem--the wise,
sinuous, dangerous creature, offspring of mystery and the beautiful
earth.  The music sounds, and the great snake rises, and spreads its
hood, and leans and hearkens, swaying in ecstasy; and even so the sage
Lord Chancellor, in the midst of some great sentence, some high
intellectual confection, seems to hold his breath in a rich beatitude,
fascinated by the deliciousness of sheer style.  A true child of the
Renaissance, his multiplicity was not merely that of mental
accomplishment, but of life itself.  His mind might move with joy among
altitudes and theories, but the variegated savour of temporal existence
was no less dear to him--the splendours of high living--the intricacies
of court intrigue--the {45} exquisiteness of pages--the lights
reflected from small pieces of coloured glass.  Like all the greatest
spirits of the age, he was instinctively and profoundly an artist.  It
was this aesthetic quality which on the one hand inspired the grandeur
of his philosophical conceptions and on the other made him one of the
supreme masters of the written word.  Yet his artistry was of a very
special kind; he was neither a man of science nor a poet.  The beauty
of mathematics was closed to him, and all the vital scientific
discoveries of the time escaped his notice.  In literature, in spite of
the colour and richness of his style, his genius was essentially a
prose one.  Intellect, not feeling, was the material out of which his
gorgeous and pregnant sentences were made.  Intellect!  It was the
common factor in all the variations of his spirit; it was the backbone
of the wonderful snake.

Life in this world is full of pitfalls: it is dangerous to be foolish,
and it is also dangerous to be intelligent; dangerous to others, and,
no less, to oneself.  "Il est bon, plus souvent qu'on ne pense," said
the wise and virtuous Malesherbes, "de savoir ne pas avoir de
l'esprit."  But that was one of the branches of knowledge that the
author of the _Advancement of Learning_ ignored.  It was impossible for
Francis Bacon to imagine that any good could ever come of being
simple-minded.  His intellect swayed him too completely.  He was
fascinated by it, he could not resist {46} it, he must follow wherever
it led.  Through thought, through action, on he went--an incredibly
clever man.  Through action even?  Yes, for though the medley of human
circumstance is violent and confused, assuredly one can find one's way
through it to some purpose if only one uses one's wits.  So thought the
cunning artist; and smiling he sought to shape, with his subtle
razor-blade, the crude vague blocks of passion and fact.  But razors
may be fatal in such contingencies; one's hand may slip; one may cut
one's own throat.

The miserable end--it needs must colour our vision of the character and
the life.  But the end was implicit in the beginning--a necessary
consequence of qualities that were innate.  The same cause which made
Bacon write perfect prose brought about his worldly and his spiritual
ruin.  It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.  His
imagination, with all its magnificence, was insufficient: it could not
see into the heart of things.  And among the rest his own heart was
hidden from him.  His psychological acuteness, fatally external, never
revealed to him the nature of his own desires.  He never dreamt how
intensely human he was.  And so his tragedy was bitterly ironical, and
a deep pathos invests his story.  One wishes to turn away one's gaze
from the unconscious traitor, the lofty-minded sycophant, the exquisite
intelligence entrapped and strangled in the web of its own weaving.
{47} "Although our persons live in the view of heaven, yet our spirits
are included in the caves of our own complexions and customs, which
minister unto us infinite errors and vain opinions."  So he wrote; and
so, perhaps, at last, he actually realised--an old man, disgraced,
shattered, alone, on Highgate hill, stuffing a dead fowl with snow.

But all this was still far distant in the busy years of the early
nineties, so rich with excitements and possibilities.  The issues were
simplified by the disgrace and imprisonment of Raleigh, whose amorous
intrigue with Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the maids of honour, had
infuriated the Queen.  The field was cleared for the two opposing
factions: the new party of Essex and his followers--aggressive and
adventurous--and the old party of the Cecils, entrenched in the
strongholds of ancient power.  This was the essence of the political
situation till the close of the century; but it was complicated and
confused both by compromises and by bitternesses, which were peculiar
to the time.  The party system was still undreamt-of; and the hostile
forces which would be grouped today as Government and Opposition, then
found themselves side by side in a common struggle to control the
executive.  When, early in 1593, Essex was sworn of the Privy Council,
he became the colleague of his rivals.  It was for the Queen to choose
her counsellors.  She would listen to one and then to another; she {48}
would shift, according to her adviser, from one policy to its direct
contrary; it was a system of government after her own heart.  Thus it
was that she could enjoy to the full the delicious sense of
ruling--could decide, with the plenitude of power, between momentous
eventualities--and, by that very means, could contrive to keep up an
endless balance and a marvellous marking of time.  Her servants,
struggling with each other for influence, remained her servants still.
Their profound hostility could not divert them from their duty of
working together for the Queen.  There was no such thing as going
temporarily out of office; one was either in office or one was nothing
at all.  To fail might mean death; but, until that came, the dangerous
enemy whose success was one's annihilation, met one every day in the
close companionship of the council table and the narrow inner circle of
the court.

[Illustration: ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX.  _From the portrait at
Woburn Abbey, by kind permission of the Duke of Bedford, K.G., K.B.E._]

Very swiftly Essex, with the Bacons at his back, grew to be something
more than a favourite and emerged as a minister and a statesman.  The
young man was taking himself seriously at last.  He was never absent
from the Council; and when the House of Lords was in session, he was to
be seen in his place as soon as the business of the day began--at seven
o'clock in the morning.  But his principal activities were carried on
elsewhere--in the panelled gallery and the tapestried inner chambers of
Essex House--the great Gothic family residence which overlooked the
{49} river from the Strand.  There it was that Anthony Bacon, his foot
swathed in hot flannels, plied his indefatigable pen.  There it was
that a great design was planned and carried into execution.  The Cecils
were to be beaten on their own chosen ground.  The control of foreign
affairs--where Burghley had ruled supreme for more than a
generation--was to be taken from them; their information was to be
proved inaccurate, and the policy that was based on it confuted and
reversed.  Anthony had no doubt that this could be done.  He had
travelled for years on the continent; he had friends everywhere; he had
studied the conditions of foreign states, the intricacies of foreign
diplomacy, with all the energy of his acute and restless mind.  If his
knowledge and intelligence were supported by the position and the
wealth of Essex, the combination would prove irresistible.  And Essex
did not hesitate; he threw himself into the scheme with all his
enthusiasm.  A vast correspondence began.  Emissaries were sent out, at
the Earl's expense, all over Europe, and letters poured in, from
Scotland, France, Holland, Italy, Spain, Bohemia, with elaborate daily
reports of the sayings of princes, the movements of armies, and the
whole complex development of international intrigue.  Anthony Bacon sat
at the centre, receiving, digesting, and exchanging news.  The work
grew and grew, and before long, such was the multiplicity of business,
he had four young {50} secretaries to help him, among whom were the
ingenious Henry Wotton and the cynical Henry Cuffe.  The Queen soon
perceived that Essex knew what he was talking about, when there was a
discussion on foreign affairs.  She read his memoranda, she listened to
his recommendations; and the Cecils found, more than once, that their
carefully collected intelligence was ignored.  Eventually a strange
situation arose, characteristic of that double-faced age.  Essex almost
attained the position of an alternative Foreign Secretary.  Various
ambassadors--Thomas Bodley was one--came under his influence, and,
while corresponding officially with Burghley, sent at the same time
parallel and more confidential communications to Anthony Bacon.  If the
gain to the public service was doubtful, the gain to Essex was clear;
and the Cecils, when they got wind of what was happening, began to
realise that they must reckon seriously with the house in the Strand.

Francis Bacon's connection with Essex was not quite so close as his
brother's.  A barrister and a Member of Parliament, he had a career of
his own; and he occupied his leisure with literary exercises and
philosophical speculations.  Yet he was in intimate contact with Essex
House.  The Earl was his patron, whom he held himself ready to assist
in every way, whenever his help was needed--with advice, or the
drafting of state papers, or the composition of some {51} elaborate
symbolic compliment, some long-drawn-out Elizabethan charade, for the
entertainment of the Queen.  Essex, seven years his junior, had been,
from the first moment of their meeting, fascinated by the intellectual
splendour of the elder man.  His enthusiastic nature leapt out to
welcome that scintillating wisdom and that profound wit.  He saw that
he was in the presence of greatness.  He vowed that this astonishing
being, who was devoting himself so generously to his service, should
have a noble reward.  The Attorney-Generalship fell vacant, and Essex
immediately declared that Francis Bacon must have the post.  He was
young and had not yet risen far in his profession--but what of that?
He deserved something even greater; the Queen might appoint whom she
would, and if Essex had any influence, the right man, for once, should
be given preferment.

The Attorney-Generalship was indeed a prize worth having, and to
receive it from the hand of Essex would bring a peculiar satisfaction
to Lord Burghley's nephew--it would show that he might come to honour
without the aid of his uncle.  Francis smiled; he saw a great career
opening before his imagination--judgeships--high offices of
state--might he not ere long be given, like his father before him, the
keeping of the Great Seal of England?  A peerage!--Verulam, St. Albans,
Gorhambury--what resounding title should he take?  "My manor of
Gorhambury"--the phrase {52} rolled on his tongue; and then his
chameleon mind took on another colour; he knew that he possessed
extraordinary administrative capacity; he would guide the destinies of
his country, the world should know his worth.  But those, after all,
were but small considerations.  Most could be politicians, many could
be statesmen; but might there not be reserved for him alone a more
magnificent fate?  To use his place and his power for the dissemination
of learning, for the creation of a new and mighty knowledge, for a vast
beneficence, spreading in ever wider and wider circles through all
humanity ... these were glorious ends indeed!  As for himself--and yet
another tint came over his fancy--that office would be decidedly
convenient.  He was badly in want of cash.  He was extravagant; he knew
it--it could not be helped.  It was impossible for him to lead the
narrow life of mean economies that poverty dictated.  His exuberant
temperament demanded the solace of material delights.  Fine clothes
were a necessity--and music--and a household with a certain state.  His
senses were fastidious; the smell of ordinary leather was torture to
him, and he put all his servants into Spanish leather boots.  He spent
infinite trouble in obtaining a particular kind of small beer, which
was alone tolerable to his palate.  His eye--a delicate, lively hazel
eye--"it was like the eye of a viper," said William Harvey--required
the perpetual refreshment of beautiful things.  {53} A group of
handsome young men--mere names now--a Jones, a Percy--he kept about
him, half servants and half companions, and he found in their equivocal
society an unexpected satisfaction.  But their high living added
alarmingly to the expenses of his establishment.  He was already in
debt, and his creditors were growing disagreeable.  There could be no
doubt about it; to be made Attorney-General would be a supreme piece of
good fortune, from every point of view.  Essex at first had little
doubt that he would speedily obtain the appointment.  He found the
Queen in good humour; he put forward Bacon's name, and immediately
discovered that a serious obstacle stood in the way of his desire.  By
an unlucky chance, a few weeks previously Bacon, from his place in the
House of Commons, had opposed the granting of a subsidy which had been
asked for by the Crown.  The tax, he declared, was too heavy, and the
time allowed for the levying of it too short.  The House of Lords had
intervened, and attempted to draw the Commons into a conference;
whereupon Bacon had pointed out the danger of allowing the Lords to
have any share in a financial discussion, with the result that their
motion had been dropped.  Elizabeth was very angry; interference in
such a question from a member of the House of Commons appeared to her
to be little short of disloyalty; and she forbade Bacon to appear
before her.  Essex tried to soften her in vain.  Bacon's {54}
apologies, she considered, were insufficient--he had defended himself
by asserting that he had done what he had merely from a sense of duty.
He had, in fact, acted with a singular spirit; but it was for the last
time.  His speech against the subsidy had been extremely clever, but
not to have made it would have been cleverer still.  Never again would
he be so ingenuous as to appear to be independent of the Court.  The
result of such plain dealing was all too obvious.  The more Essex
pressed his suit, the more objections the Queen raised.  Bacon, she
said, had had too little practice; he was a man of theory; and Edward
Coke was a sounder lawyer.  Weeks passed, months passed, and still the
Attorney-Generalship hung in the wind, and the regeneration of mankind
grew dubious amid a mountain of unpaid bills.

Essex continued sanguine; but Bacon perceived that if the delay lasted
much longer he would be ruined.  He raised money wherever he could.
Anthony sold an estate, and gave him the proceeds.  He himself
determined to sell land; but only one property was available, and that
he could not dispose of without the consent of his mother.  Old Lady
Bacon was a terrific dowager, who lived, crumpled and puritanical, in
the country.  She violently disapproved of her son Francis.  She
disapproved; but, terrific as she was, she found it advisable not to
express her sentiments directly.  There was something about her son
Francis {55} which made even her think twice before she displeased him.
She preferred to address herself to Anthony on such occasions, to pour
out her vexation before his less disquieting gaze, and to hope that
some of it would reach the proper quarter.  When she was approached by
the brothers about the land, her fury rose to boiling-point.  She wrote
a long, crabbed, outraged letter to Anthony.  She was asked, she said,
to consent to the selling of property in order to pay for the luxurious
living of Francis and his disreputable retainers.  "Surely," she wrote,
"I pity your brother, yet so long as he pitieth not himself but keepeth
that bloody Percy, as I told him then, yea as a coach companion and bed
companion--a proud, profane, costly fellow, whose being about him I
verily fear the Lord God doth mislike and doth less bless your brother
in credit and otherwise in his health--surely I am utterly
discouraged....  That Jones never loved your brother indeed, but for
his own credit, living upon your brother, and thankless though
bragging....  It is most certain that till first Enny, a filthy
wasteful knave, and his Welshmen one after another--for take one and
they will still swarm ill-favouredly--did so lead him in a train, he
was a towardly young gentleman, and a son of much good hope in
godliness."  So she fulminated.  She would only release the land, she
declared, on condition that she received a complete account of
Francis's debts and {56} was allowed a free hand in the payment of
them.  "For I will not," she concluded, "have his cormorant seducers
and instruments of Satan to him committing foul sin by his countenance,
to the displeasing of God and his godly fear."

When this was handed on to Francis, he addressed to his mother an
elaborate letter of protest and conciliation.  She returned it to
Anthony in a rage.  "I send herein your brother's letter.  Construe the
interpretation.  I do not understand his enigmatical folded writing."
Her son, she said, had been blessed with "good gifts of natural wit and
understanding.  But the same good God that hath given them to him will
I trust and heartily pray to sanctify his heart by the right use of
them, to glorify the Giver of them to his own inward comfort."  Her
prayer--it is the common fate of the prayers of mothers--was only
ironically answered.  As for the land, old Lady Bacon found herself in
the end no match for her two sons; she yielded without conditions; and
Francis, for the time at least, was freed from his embarrassment.

Meanwhile Essex did not relax his efforts with the Queen.  "I cannot
tell," wrote Anthony to his mother, "in what terms to acknowledge the
desert of the Earl's unspeakable kindness towards us both, but namely
to him now at a pinch, which by God's help shortly will appear by good
effects."  In several long conferences, the gist of which, when they
were over, {57} he immediately reported by letter to one or other of
the brothers, Essex urged Elizabeth to make the desired appointment.
But the "good effects" were slow in coming.  The vacancy had occurred
in the April of 1593, and now the winter was closing in, and still it
was unfilled.  The Queen, it was clear, was giving yet another
exhibition of her delaying tactics.  During the repeated discussions
with Essex about the qualifications of his friend, she was in her
element.  She raised every kind of doubt and difficulty, to every reply
she at once produced a rejoinder, she suddenly wavered and seemed on
the brink of a decision, she postponed everything on some slight
pretext, she flew into a temper, she was charming, she danced off.
Essex, who could not believe that he would fail, grew sometimes himself
more seriously angry.  The Queen was the more pleased.  She pricked him
with the pins of her raillery, and watched the tears of irritation
starting to his eyes.  The Attorney-Generalship and the fate of Francis
Bacon had become entangled in the web of that mysterious amour.  At
moments flirtation gave way to passion.  More than once that winter,
the young man, suddenly sulky, disappeared, without a word of warning,
from the Court.  A blackness and a void descended upon Elizabeth; she
could not conceal her agitation; and then, as suddenly, he would
return, to be overwhelmed with scornful reproaches and resounding oaths.

{58}

The quarrels were short, and the reconciliations were delicious.  On
Twelfth Night there was acting and dancing at Whitehall.  From a high
throne, sumptuously decorated, the Queen watched the ceremonies, while
beside her stood the Earl, with whom "she often devised in sweet and
favourable manner."  So the scene was described by Anthony Standen, an
old courtier, in a letter that has come down to us.  It was an hour of
happiness and peace; and, amid the jewels and the gilded hangings, the
incredible Princess, who had seen her sixtieth birthday, seemed to
shine with an almost youthful glory.  The lovely knight by her side had
wrought the miracle--had smiled the long tale of hideous years into
momentary nothingness.  The courtiers gazed in admiration, with no
sense of incongruity.  "She was as beautiful," wrote Anthony Standen,
"to my old sight, as ever I saw her."

Was it possible that to the hero of such an evening anything could be
refused?  If he had set his heart on the Attorney-Generalship for
Bacon, surely he would have it.  The time of decision seemed to be
approaching.  Burghley begged the Queen to hesitate no longer, and he
advised her to give the place to Edward Coke.  The Cecils believed that
she would do so; and Sir Robert, driving with the Earl one day in a
coach through the city, told him that the appointment would be made in
less than a week.  "I pray your {59} Lordship," he added, "to let me
know whom you will favour."  Essex replied that Sir Robert must surely
be aware that he stood for Francis Bacon.  "Lord!" replied Sir Robert,
"I wonder your lordship should go about to spend your strength in so
unlikely or impossible a manner.  If your lordship had spoken of the
_solicitorship_, that might be of easier digestion to her Majesty."  At
that Essex burst out.  "Digest me no digestions," he cried; "for the
attorneyship for Francis is that I must have.  And in that I will spend
all my power, might, authority, and amity, and with tooth and nail
defend and procure the same for him against whomsoever; and whosoever
getteth this office out of my hands for any other, before he have it,
it shall cost him the coming by.  And this be you assured of, Sir
Robert; for now do I fully declare myself.  And for your own part, Sir
Robert, I think strange both of my lord Treasurer and you that you can
have the mind to seek the preference of a stranger before so near a
kinsman."  Sir Robert made no reply; and the coach rattled on, with its
burden of angry ministers.  Henceforth there was no concealment; the
two parties faced each other fiercely; they would try their strength
over Coke and Bacon.

But Elizabeth grew more ambiguous than ever.  The week passed, and
there was no sign of an appointment.  To make any decision upon any
subject at all had become loathsome to her.  She lingered in a {60}
spiritual palsy at Hampton Court; she thought she would go to Windsor;
she gave orders to that effect, and countermanded them.  Every day she
changed her mind: it was impossible for her to determine even whether
she wanted to move or to stay still.  The whole Court was in an agony,
half packed up.  The carter in charge of the wagons in which the royal
belongings were carried had been summoned for the third time, and for
the third time was told that he might go away.  "Now I see," he said,
"that the Queen is a woman as well as my wife."  The Queen, who was
standing at a window, overheard the remark, and burst out laughing.
"What a villain is this!" she said, and sent him three angels to stop
his mouth.  At last she did move--to Nonesuch.  A few more weeks
passed.  It was Easter, 1594.  She suddenly made Coke Attorney-General.

The blow was a grave one--to Bacon, to Essex, and to the whole party;
the influence of the Cecils had been directly challenged, and they had
won.  There was apparently a limit to the favour of the Earl.  So far,
however, as Bacon was concerned, a possibility still remained of
retrieving the situation.  Coke's appointment left the
Solicitor-Generalship vacant, and it seemed obvious that Bacon was the
man for the post.  The Cecils themselves acquiesced; Essex felt that
this time there could be no doubt about the matter; he hurried off to
the Queen--and was again {61} met by a repulse.  Her Majesty was
extremely reserved; she was, she said, against Bacon--for the singular
reason that the only persons who supported him were Essex and Burghley.
Upon that, Essex argued and expatiated, until Elizabeth lost her
temper.  "In passion"--so Essex told his friend in a letter written
immediately afterwards--"she bade me go to bed, if I would talk of
nothing else.  Wherefore in passion I went away, saying while I was
with her I could not but solicit for the cause and the man I so much
affected, and therefore I would retire myself till I might be more
graciously heard.  And so we parted."  And so began another strange
struggle over the fate of Francis Bacon.  For almost a year Elizabeth
had refused to appoint an Attorney-General; was it conceivable that she
was now about to delay as long in her choice of a Solicitor-General?
Was it possible that, with a repetition _da capo_ of all her previous
waverings, she would continue indefinitely to keep every one about her
in this agonising suspense?

It was, indeed, all too possible.  The Solicitor-Generalship remained
vacant for more than eighteen months.  During all that time Essex never
lost courage.  He bombarded the Queen, in and out of season.  He wrote
to the Lord Keeper Puckering, pressing Bacon's claims; he even wrote to
Sir Robert Cecil, to the same purpose.  "To you, as to a Councillor,"
he told the latter, "I write this, that Her {62} Majesty never in her
reign had so able and proper an instrument to do her honourable and
great services as she hath now, if she will use him."  Old Anthony
Standen was amazed by the Earl's persistency.  He had thought that his
patron lacked tenacity of purpose--that "he must continually be pulled
by the ear, as a boy, that learneth _ut, re, mi, fa_"; and now he saw
that, without prompting, he was capable of the utmost pertinacity.  On
the other hand, in the opinion of old Lady Bacon, fuming at Gorhambury,
"the Earl marred all by violent courses."  The Queen, she thought, was
driven to underrate the value of Francis through a spirit of sheer
contradiction.  Perhaps it was so; but who could prescribe the right
method of persuading Elizabeth?  More than once she seemed to be on the
point of agreeing with her favourite.  Fulke Greville had an audience
of her, and, when he took the opportunity of putting in a word for his
friend, she was "very exceeding gracious."  Greville developed the
theme of Bacon's merits.  "Yes," said Her Majesty, "he begins to frame
very well."  The expression was perhaps an odd one; was it not used of
the breaking-in of refractory horses?  But Greville, overcome by the
benignity of the royal manner, had little doubt that all was well.  "I
will lay 100 to 50," he wrote to Francis, "that you shall be her
Solicitor."

While his friends were full of hope and energy, {63} Francis himself
had become a prey to nervous agitation.  The prolonged strain was too
much for his sensitive nature, and, as the months dragged on without
any decision, he came near to despair.  His brother and his mother,
similarly tempered, expressed their perturbation in different ways.
While Anthony sought to drown his feelings under a sea of
correspondence, old Lady Bacon gave vent to fits of arbitrary fury
which made life a burden to all about her.  A servant of Anthony's,
staying at Gorhambury, sent his master a sad story of a greyhound
bitch.  He had brought the animal to the house, and "as soon as my Lady
did see her, she sent me word she should be hanged."  The man
temporised, but "by-and-by she sent me word that if I did not make her
away she should not sleep in her bed; so indeed I hung her up."  The
result was unexpected.  "She was very angry, and said I was fransey,
and bade me go home to my master and make him a fool, I should make
none of her....  My Lady do not speak to me as yet.  I will give none
offence to make her angry; but nobody can please her long together."
The perplexed fellow, however, was cheered by one consideration.  "The
bitch," he added, "was good for nothing, else I would not a hung her."
The dowager, in her calmer moments, tried to turn her mind, and the
minds of her sons, away from the things of this world.  "I am sorry,"
she wrote to Anthony, "your brother with inward secret grief {64}
hindereth his health.  Everybody saith he looketh thin and pale.  Let
him look to God, and confer with Him in godly exercises of hearing and
reading, and contemn to be noted to take care."

But the advice did not appeal to Francis; he preferred to look in other
directions.  He sent a rich jewel to the Queen, who refused it--though
graciously.  He let Her Majesty know that he thought of travelling
abroad; and she forbade the project, with considerable asperity.  His
nerves, fretted to ribbons, drove him at last to acts of indiscretion
and downright folly.  He despatched a letter of fiery remonstrance to
the Lord Keeper Puckering, who, he believed, had deserted his cause;
and he attacked his cousin Robert in a style suggestive of a female
cat.  "I do assure you, Sir, that by a wise friend of mine, and not
factious toward your Honour, I was told with asseveration that your
Honour was bought by Mr. Coventry for two thousand angels....  And he
said further that from your servants, from your Lady, from some
counsellors that have observed you in my business, he knew you wrought
underhand against me.  The truth of which tale I do not believe."  The
appointment was still hanging in the balance; and it fell to the rash
and impetuous Essex to undo, with smooth words and diplomatic
explanations, the damage that the wise and subtle Bacon had done to his
own cause.

In October, 1595, Mr. Fleming was appointed, and {65} the long struggle
of two and a half years was over.  Essex had failed--failed
doubly--failed where he could hardly have believed that failure was
possible.  The loss to his own prestige was serious; but he was a
gallant nobleman, and his first thought was for the friend whom he had
fed with hope, and whom, perhaps, he had served ill through
over-confidence or lack of judgment.  As soon as the appointment was
made, he paid a visit to Francis Bacon.  "Master Bacon," he said, "the
Queen hath denied me yon place for you, and hath placed another.  I
know you are the least part in your own matter, but you fare ill
because you have chosen me for your mean and dependence; you have spent
your time and thoughts in my matters.  I die if I do not somewhat
towards your fortune: you shall not deny to accept a piece of land
which I will bestow upon you."  Bacon demurred; but he soon accepted;
and the Earl presented him with a property which he afterwards sold for
1800, or at least 10,000 of our money.

Perhaps, on the whole, he had come fortunately out of the business.
Worse might have befallen him.  In that happy-go-lucky world, a
capricious fillip from a royal finger might at any moment send one's
whole existence flying into smithereens.  Below the surface of
caracoling courtiers and high policies there was cruelty, corruption,
and gnashing of teeth.  One was lucky, at any rate, not to be Mr.
Booth, one of {66} Anthony Bacon's dependants, who, poor man, had
suddenly found himself condemned by the Court of Chancery to a heavy
fine, to imprisonment, and to have his ears cut off.  Nobody believed
that he deserved such a sentence, but there were several persons who
had decided to make what they could out of it, and we catch a glimpse,
in Anthony's correspondence, of this small, sordid, ridiculous
intrigue, going along contemporaneously with the heroic battle over the
great Law Offices.  Lady Edmondes, a lady-in-waiting, had been
approached by Mr. Booth's friends and offered 100 if she would get him
off.  She immediately went to the Queen, who was all affability.
Unfortunately, however, as her Majesty explained, she had already
promised Mr. Booth's fine to the head man in her stables--"a very old
servant"--so nothing could be done on that score.  "I mean," said her
Majesty, "to punish this fool some way, and I shall keep him in prison.
Nevertheless," she added, in a sudden access of generosity towards Lady
Edmondes, "if your ladyship can make any good commodity of this suit, I
will at your request give him releasement.  As for the man's ears..."
Her Majesty shrugged her shoulders, and the conversation ended.  Lady
Edmondes had no doubt that she could make a "good commodity," and
raised her price to 200.  She even threatened to make matters worse
instead of better, as she had influence, so she declared, {67} not only
with the Queen but with the Lord Keeper Puckering.  Anthony Standen
considered her a dangerous woman and advised that she should be offered
150 as a compromise.  The negotiation was long and complicated; but it
seems to have been agreed at last that the fine must be paid, but that,
on the payment of 150 to Lady Edmondes, the imprisonment would be
remitted.  Then there is darkness; in low things as in high the
ambiguous Age remains true to its character; and, while we search in
vain to solve the mystery of great men's souls and the strange desires
of Princes, the fate of Mr. Booth's ears also remains for ever
concealed from us.




{68}

VI

Mr. Booth's case was a brutal farce, and the splendid Earl, busied with
very different preoccupations--his position with the Queen, the
Attorney-Generalship, the foreign policy of England--could hardly have
given a moment's thought to it.  But there was another criminal affair
no less obscure but of far more dreadful import which, suddenly leaping
into an extraordinary notoriety, absorbed the whole of his
attention--the hideous tragedy of Dr. Lopez.

Ruy Lopez was a Portuguese Jew who, driven from the country of his
birth by the Inquisition, had come to England at the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign and set up as a doctor in London.  He had been
extremely successful; had become house physician at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital; had obtained, in spite of professional jealousy and racial
prejudice, a large practice among persons of distinction; Leicester and
Walsingham were his patients; and, after he had been in England for
seventeen years, he reached the highest place in his profession: he was
made physician-in-chief to the Queen.  It was only natural that there
should have been murmurs against a Jewish foreigner {69} who had
outdone his English rivals; it was rumoured that he owed his
advancement less to medical skill than flattery and self-advertisement;
and in a libellous pamphlet against Leicester it was hinted that he had
served that nobleman all too well--by distilling his poisons for him.
But Dr. Lopez was safe in the Queen's favour, and such malice could be
ignored.  In October, 1593, he was a prosperous elderly man--a
practising Christian, with a son at Winchester, a house in Holborn, and
all the appearances of wealth and consideration.

His countryman, Don Antonio, the pretender to the Portuguese crown, was
also living in England.  Since the disastrous expedition to Lisbon four
years earlier, this unfortunate man had been rapidly sinking into
disrepute and poverty.  The false hopes which he had held out of a
popular rising on his behalf in Portugal had discredited him with
Elizabeth.  The magnificent jewels which he had brought with him to
England had been sold one by one; he was surrounded by a group of
famishing attendants; fobbed off with a meagre pension, he was sent,
with his son, Don Manoel, to lodge in Eton College, whence, when the
Queen was at Windsor, he would issue forth, a haggard spectre, to haunt
the precincts of the Court.  Yet he was still not altogether
negligible.  He still might be useful as a pawn in the game against
Spain.  Essex kept a friendly eye upon him, for the Earl, by {70} an
inevitable propulsion, had become the leader of the anti-Spanish party
in England.  The Cecils, naturally pacific, were now beginning to hope
that the war, which seemed to be dragging on by virtue rather of its
own impetus than of any good that it could do to either party, might
soon be brought to an end.  This was enough in itself to make Essex
bellicose; but he was swayed not merely by opposition to the Cecils;
his restless and romantic temperament urged him irresistibly to the
great adventure of war; thus only could his true nature express itself,
thus only could he achieve the glory he desired.  Enemies he must have:
at home--who could doubt it?--the Cecils; abroad--it was
obvious--Spain!  And so he became the focus of the new Elizabethan
patriotism--a patriotism that was something distinct from religion or
policy--that was the manifestation of that enormous daring, that superb
self-confidence, that thrilling sense of solidarity, which, after so
many years of doubt and preparation, had come to the English race when
the smoke had rolled away and the storm subsided, and there was
revealed the wreck of the Armada.  The new spirit was resounding, at
that very moment, in the glorious rhythm of Tamburlaine; and its living
embodiment was Essex.  He would assert the greatness of England in
unmistakable fashion--by shattering the power of the Spaniard once for
all.  And in such an enterprise no instrument {71} must be neglected;
even the forlorn Don Antonio might prove serviceable yet.  There
might--who knew?--be another expedition to Portugal, more fortunate
than the last.  King Philip, at any rate, was of that opinion.  He was
extremely anxious to get Don Antonio out of the way.  More than one
plot for his assassination had been hatched at Brussels and the
Escurial.  His needy followers, bought by Spanish gold, crept backwards
and forwards between England and Flanders, full of mischief.  Anthony
Bacon, through his spies, kept a sharp look-out.  The pretender must be
protected; for long he could lay his hands on nothing definite; but one
day his care was rewarded.

News reached Essex House that a certain Esteban Ferreira, a Portuguese
gentleman, who had been ruined by his adherence to the cause of Don
Antonio, and was then living in Lopez's house in Holborn, was
conspiring against his master and had offered his services to the King
of Spain.  The information was certainly trustworthy, and Essex
obtained from Elizabeth an order for the arrest of Ferreira.  The man
was accordingly seized; no definite charge was brought against him, but
he was put into the custody of Don Antonio at Eton.  At the same time
instructions were sent to Rye, Sandwich and Dover, ordering all
Portuguese correspondence that might arrive at those ports to be
detained and read.  When Dr. Lopez heard {72} of the arrest of
Ferreira, he went to the Queen and begged for the release of his
countryman.  Don Antonio, he said, was much to blame; he treated his
servants badly; he was ungrateful to Her Majesty.  Elizabeth listened,
and the Doctor ventured to observe that Ferreira, if released, might
well be employed to "work a peace between the two kingdoms."  This
suggestion seemed not to please Elizabeth.  "Or," said the Doctor, "if
your Majesty does not desire that course..." he paused, and then added,
enigmatically, "might not a deceiver be deceived?"  Elizabeth stared;
she did not know what the fellow meant, but he was clearly taking a
liberty.  She "uttered"--so we are told by Bacon--"dislike and
disallowance"; and the Doctor, perceiving that he had not made a good
impression, bowed himself out of the room.

A fortnight later, Gomez d'Avila, a Portuguese of low birth, who lived
near Lopez's house in Holborn, was arrested at Sandwich.  He was
returning from Flanders, and a Portuguese letter was discovered upon
his person.  The names of the writer and the addressee were unknown to
the English authorities.  The contents, though they appeared to refer
to a commercial transaction, were suspicious; there were phrases that
wore an ambiguous look.  "The bearer will inform your Worship in what
price your pearls are held.  I will advise your Worship presently of
the {73} uttermost penny that can be given for them....  Also this
bearer shall tell you in what resolution we rested about a little musk
and amber, the which I determined to buy....  But before I resolve
myself I will be advised of the price thereof; and if it shall please
your Worship to be my partner, I am persuaded we shall make good
profit."  Was there some hidden meaning in all this?  Gomez d'Avila
would say nothing.  He was removed to London, in close custody.  When
there, while waiting in an antechamber before being examined by those
in charge of the case, he recognised a gentleman who could speak
Spanish.  He begged the gentleman to take the news of his arrest to Dr.
Lopez.

Meanwhile, Ferreira was still a prisoner at Eton.  One day he took a
step of a most incriminating kind.  He managed to convey to Dr. Lopez,
who had taken lodgings close by, a note, in which he warned the Doctor
"for God's sake" to prevent the coming over of Gomez d'Avila from
Brussels, "for if he should be taken the Doctor would be undone without
remedy."  Lopez had not yet heard of the arrest of Gomez, and replied,
on a scrap of paper hidden in a handkerchief, that "he had already sent
twice or thrice to Flanders to prevent the arrival of Gomez, and would
spare no expense, if it cost him 300."  Both the letters were
intercepted by Government spies, read, copied and passed on.  Then
Ferreira was sent for, confronted {74} with the contents of his letter,
and informed that Dr. Lopez had betrayed him.  He immediately declared
that the Doctor had been for years in the pay of Spain.  There was a
plot, he said, by which Don Antonio's son and heir was to be bought
over to the interests of Philip; and the Doctor was the principal agent
in the negotiations.  He added that, three years previously, Lopez had
secured the release from prison of a Portuguese spy, named Andrada, in
order that he should go to Spain and arrange for the poisoning of Don
Antonio.  The information was complicated and strange; the authorities
took a careful note of it; and waited for further developments.

At the same time, Gomez d'Avila was shown the rack in the Tower.  His
courage forsook him, and he confessed that he was an intermediary,
employed to carry letters backwards and forwards between Ferreira in
England and another Portuguese, Tinoco, in Brussels, who was in the pay
of the Spanish Government.  The musk and amber letter, he said, had
been written by Tinoco and addressed to Ferreira, under false names.
Gomez was then plied with further questions, based upon the information
obtained from Ferreira.  It was quite true, he admitted, that there was
a plot to buy over Don Antonio's son.  The youth was to be bribed with
50,000 crowns and the musk and amber letter referred to this
transaction.  Ferreira, examined in his turn, confessed that this was
so.

{75}

Two months later Burghley received a communication from Tinoco.  He
wished, he said, to go to England, to reveal to the Queen secrets of
the highest importance for the safety of her realm, which he had learnt
at Brussels; and he asked for a safe-conduct.  A safe-conduct was
despatched; it was, as Burghley afterwards remarked, "prudently
drafted"; it allowed the bearer safe ingress into England, but it made
no mention of his going away again.  Shortly afterwards Tinoco arrived
at Dover; upon which he was at once arrested, and taken to London.  His
person was searched, and bills of exchange for a large sum of money
were found upon him, together with two letters from the Spanish
governor of Flanders, addressed to Ferreira.

Tinoco was a young man who had been through much.  For years he had
shared the varying fortunes of Don Antonio; he had fought in Morocco,
had been taken prisoner by the Moors, and after four years of slavery
had rejoined his master in England.  Destitute and reckless, he had at
last, like his comrade Ferreira, sold himself to Spain.  What else
could such creatures do?  They were floating straws sucked into the
whirlpool of European statecraft; they had no choice; round and round
they eddied, ever closer to the abyss.  But for Tinoco, who was young,
strong, and courageous, a life of treachery and danger had, perhaps,
its attractions.  There was a zest in the {76} horror; and, besides,
Fortune was capricious; the bold, unscrupulous intriguer might always
pull some golden prize from the lottery, as well as some unspeakably
revolting doom.

The letters found on his person were vague and mysterious, and some
sinister interpretation might well be put upon them.  They were sent to
Essex, who decided himself to interrogate the young man.  The
examination was conducted in French; Tinoco had a story ready--that he
had come to England to reveal to the Queen a Jesuit plot against her
life; but he broke down under the cross-examination of the Earl,
prevaricated, and contradicted himself.  Next day he wrote a letter to
Burghley, protesting his innocence.  He had been, he said, "confused
and encumbered by the cunning questions of the Earl of Essex"; with his
small knowledge of French, he had failed to understand the drift of the
inquiry, or to express his own meaning; and he begged to be sent back
to Flanders.  The only result of his letter was that he was more
rigorously confined.  Again examined by Essex, and pressed with leading
questions, he avowed that he had been sent to England by the Spanish
authorities in order to see Ferreira and with him to win over Dr. Lopez
to do a service to the King of Spain.  Dr. Lopez once more!  Every line
of enquiry, so it seemed to Essex, led straight to the Jew.  His secret
note to Ferreira had been deeply incriminating.  Ferreira {77} himself,
Gomez d'Avila, and now Tinoco all agreed that the Doctor was the
central point in a Spanish conspiracy.  That conspiracy, if they were
to be believed, was aimed against Don Antonio; but could they be
believed?  Might not some darker purpose lie behind?  The matter must
be sifted to the bottom.  Essex went to the Queen; and on the 1st
January, 1594, Dr. Lopez, principal physician to Her Majesty, was
arrested.

He was taken to Essex House, and there kept in close custody, while his
house in Holborn was searched from top to bottom; but nothing
suspicious was found there.  The Doctor was then examined by the Lord
Treasurer, Robert Cecil, and Essex.  He had a satisfactory answer for
every question.  The Cecils were convinced that Essex had discovered a
mare's nest.  In their opinion, the whole affair was merely a symptom
of the Earl's anti-Spanish obsession; he saw plots and spies
everywhere; and now he was trying to get up a ridiculous agitation
against this unfortunate Jew, who had served the Queen faithfully for
years, who had furnished an explanation of every suspicious
circumstance, and whose general respectability was a sufficient
guarantee that this attack on him was the result of folly and malice.
Accordingly, as soon as the examination was over, Sir Robert hurried to
the Queen, and informed her that both his father and himself were
convinced of the Doctor's innocence.  But Essex was still unshaken; he
persisted in the {78} contrary opinion.  He too went to the Queen, but
he found her with Sir Robert, and in a passion.  As soon as he
appeared, he was overwhelmed with royal invectives.  Elizabeth declared
that he was "a rash and temerarious youth," that he had brought
accusations against the Doctor which he could not prove, that she knew
very well the poor man was innocent, that she was much displeased, and
that her honour was at stake in the matter.  The flood of words poured
on, while Essex stood in furious silence, and Sir Robert surveyed the
scene with gentle satisfaction.  At last the Earl, his expostulations
cut short with a peremptory gesture, was dismissed from the presence.
He immediately left the palace, hurried to his house and, brushing
aside his attendants without a word or a look, shut himself into his
room and flung himself upon his bed in an agony of wrath and
humiliation.  For two days he remained there, silent and enraged.  At
length he emerged, with fixed determination in his countenance.  _His_
honour, no less than the Queen's was at stake; come what might, he must
prove the Cecils to be utterly mistaken; he must bring Dr. Lopez to
justice.

Characteristically enough, in spite of the Queen's anger and the
Cecils' scepticism, the case against the Doctor was not allowed to
drop.  He was still kept a prisoner at Essex House; he and the rest of
the suspected Portuguese were still subjected to endless {79}
examinations.  And now began one of those strange and odious processes
which fill the obscure annals of the past with the ironical futility of
human justice.  The true principles of criminal jurisprudence have only
come to be recognised, with gradually increasing completeness, during
the last two centuries; the comprehension of them has grown with the
growth of science--with the understanding of the nature of evidence,
and the slow triumph, in men's mental habits, of ordered experience and
reason.  No human creature can ever hope to be truly just; but there
are degrees in mortal fallibility, and for countless ages the justice
of mankind was the sport of fear, folly, and superstition.  In the
England of Elizabeth there was a particular influence at work which, in
certain crucial cases, turned the administration of justice into a
mockery.  It was virtually impossible for any one accused of High
Treason--the gravest offence known to the law--to be acquitted.  The
reason for this was plain; but it was a reason, not of justice, but
expediency.  Upon the life of Elizabeth hung the whole structure of the
State.  During the first thirty years of her reign, her death would
have involved the accession of a Catholic sovereign, which would
inevitably have been followed by a complete revolution in the system of
Government, together with the death or ruin of the actual holders of
power.  The fact was obvious enough to the enemies of the {80} English
polity, and the danger that they might achieve their end by the Queen's
assassination was a very real one.  The murder of inconvenient monarchs
was one of the habits of the day.  William of Orange and Henry III of
France had both been successfully obliterated by Philip and the
Catholics.  Elizabeth on her side had sought--though, indeed, rather
half-heartedly--to have the Queen of Scots secretly put out of the way,
in order to avoid the public obloquy of a judicial execution.  Her own
personal fearlessness added to the peril.  She refused, she said, to
mistrust the love of her subjects; she was singularly free of access;
and she appeared in public with a totally inadequate guard.  In such a
situation, only one course of action seemed to be possible: every other
consideration must be subordinated to the supreme necessity of
preserving the Queen's life.  It was futile to talk of justice; for
justice involves, by its very nature, uncertainty; and the government
could take no risks.  The old saw was reversed; it was better that ten
innocent men should suffer than that one guilty man should escape.  To
arouse suspicion became in itself a crime.  The proofs of guilt must
not be sifted by the slow processes of logic and fair play; they must
be multiplied--by spies, by _agents provocateurs_, by torture.  The
prisoner brought to trial should be allowed no counsel to aid him
against the severity of iron-hearted judges and the virulence of the
ablest {81} lawyers of the day.  Conviction should be followed by the
most frightful of punishments.  In the domain of treason, under
Elizabeth, the reign of law was, in effect, superseded, and its place
was taken by a reign of terror.

It was in the collection of evidence that the mingled atrocity and
absurdity of the system became most obvious.  Not only was the fabric
of a case often built up on the allegations of the hired creatures of
the government, but the existence of the rack gave a preposterous twist
to the words of every witness.  Torture was constantly used; but
whether, in any particular instance, it was used or not, the
consequences were identical.  The threat of it, the hint of it, the
mere knowledge in the mind of a witness that it might at any moment be
applied to him--those were differences merely of degree; always, the
fatal compulsion was there, inextricably confusing truth and falsehood.
What shred of credibility could adhere to testimony obtained in such
circumstances--from a man, in prison, alone, suddenly confronted by a
group of hostile and skilful examiners, plied with leading questions,
and terrified by the imminent possibility of extreme physical pain?
Who could disentangle among his statements the parts of veracity and
fear, the desire to placate his questioners, the instinct to
incriminate others, the impulse to avoid, by some random affirmation,
the dislocation of an arm or a {82} leg?  Only one thing was plain
about such evidence:--it would always be possible to give to it
whatever interpretation the prosecutors might desire.  The Government
could prove anything.  It could fasten guilt upon ten innocent men with
the greatest facility.  And it did so, since by no other means could it
make certain that the one actual criminal--who might be among
them--should not escape.  Thus it was that Elizabeth lived her life
out, unscathed; and thus it happened that the glories of her Age could
never have existed without the spies of Walsingham, the damp cells of
the Tower, and the notes of answers, calmly written down by cunning
questioners, between screams of agony.

It was, of course, an essential feature of the system that those who
worked it should not have realised its implications.  Torture was
regarded as an unpleasant necessity; evidence obtained under it might
possibly, in certain cases, be considered of dubious value; but no one
dreamt that the judicial procedure of which it formed a part was
necessarily without any value at all.  The wisest and the ablest of
those days--a Bacon, a Walsingham--were utterly unable to perceive that
the conclusions, which the evidence they had collected seemed to force
upon them, were in reality simply the result of the machinery they
themselves had set in motion.  Judges, as well as prisoners, were
victims of the rack.

{83}

The case of Dr. Lopez was typical.  One can trace in it the process by
which suspicion, fear, and preconceived theories were gradually, under
the pressure of the judicial system, blended into a certainty which, in
fact, was baseless.  Essex was an honest young lord, who would have
recoiled in horror from the thought of doing an innocent man to death
for political purposes; but he was not very strong in the head.  He
mistrusted the Cecils, he mistrusted Spain, he perceived--what was true
enough--that there was something fishy about Dr. Lopez.  The scorn
poured by the Queen upon his sagacity was the final inducement: he was
right, in spite of them all; he would not rest till he had probed the
matter to the bottom.  And there was only one method of effecting
this--it was obvious; the Portuguese must be cross-examined until the
truth was forced from them.  Lopez himself had baffled him, but there
remained Ferreira and Tinoco, who had already shown themselves more
pliable.  They were accordingly, in their separate cells, relentlessly
questioned.  Each was ready enough, in order to exculpate himself, to
incriminate the other, and to declare, when pressed further, that the
Doctor was the centre of the plot.  But what was the plot?  If it was
merely aimed at Don Antonio, why this elaboration of mystery?  But if
it was aimed at some one else?  If...?  It needed no genius to unravel
the enigma.  One had only to state the circumstances, for the {84}
solution to arise spontaneously to the mind.  Spain--a plot--the royal
physician: such a concatenation was enough.  It was one more attempt on
the part of King Philip to assassinate the Queen of England.

This point once reached, the next step inevitably followed.  The belief
in the mind of the questioner became a statement in the mouth of the
questioned.  At one point in his examination, Ferreira asserted that
Dr. Lopez had written to the King of Spain, professing his willingness
to do everything his Majesty required.  The question was then
asked--"Would the Doctor have poisoned the Queen if required?" and
Ferreira replied in the affirmative.  He was then forced to elaborate
the supposition with a mass of detail; and the same process was applied
to Tinoco; with the same result.  After that, supposition very soon
slipped into fact.  "I have discovered," wrote Essex to Anthony Bacon,
"a most dangerous and desperate treason.  The point of conspiracy was
her Majesty's death.  The executioner should have been Dr. Lopez; the
manner poison.  This I have so followed that I will make it appear as
clear as noonday."

Luck was against the Doctor.  The case against him depended on a
complicated construction from the evidence of two perjured rogues,
Ferreira and Tinoco--evidence extorted under fear of the rack, and made
up of a mass of hearsay and the recollections of years' old
conversations and of letters never produced.  The {85} Cecils, with
their pro-Spanish and anti-Essex bias, would have been sharp enough to
see through such stuff, but for one unfortunate circumstance.  Early in
the proceedings the name of Andrada, a Portuguese spy, had been
mentioned by Ferreira, who had asserted that he had been sent to Spain
by Lopez to arrange for the murder of Don Antonio.  Andrada was well
known to Burghley.  It was true that the man had been to Spain, at the
period mentioned, in most suspicious circumstances.  Burghley had no
doubt that, while nominally in the service of Don Antonio, he had been
bought by the Spanish authorities.  He was now in Brussels; and, if it
was a fact that there had been a secret connection between him and
Lopez, something really damaging would at last have been discovered
about the Doctor.  As the examinations proceeded, Andrada's name
recurred more and more frequently.  It appeared that he had been the
principal intermediary between the Spanish Court and the intriguers in
Flanders.  Tinoco repeated--or purported to repeat--a long description
that Andrada had given of his visit to Madrid.  King Philip had
embraced him, and told him to pass on the embrace to Dr. Lopez; he had
handed him a diamond and ruby ring, with a similar injunction.  Could
all this be true?  Elizabeth was told of it, and she remembered that,
some three years previously, the Doctor had offered her a diamond and
ruby ring, which she had refused {86} to accept.  The Doctor was now
pressed once more with searching questions.  He denied, with violent
oaths and imprecations, that he knew anything of the matter; but at
last, when cross-examined on the ring, he changed his tone.  It was
true, he admitted, that he had been privy to Andrada's visit to Spain;
but he added that the explanation of that visit was entirely different
from any that had been put forward.  Andrada had been in the pay of
Walsingham.  He had been sent to Madrid on the pretext of a peace
negotiation, with the object of spying out the state of affairs at the
Spanish Court.  The Doctor, at Walsingham's special request, had agreed
to allow his name to be used, to give colour to the proceedings.
Andrada was to represent to Philip that he had been sent by Lopez, who
was eager for peace and influential with the Queen.  The deceiver, in
fact, was to be deceived.  The scheme had worked, Philip had been taken
in, and his ring had been intended, not for the Doctor, but for
Elizabeth.  Walsingham was perfectly aware of all this, and could
substantiate every detail.  Could, that is to say, if only...  Essex
laughed outright.  The Cecils, convinced that Andrada was in the pay of
the Spaniards, were incredulous.  It would not do.  The Doctor's story
was ingenious--it was too ingenious; the whole--it was obvious--hung
upon one thing--the corroboration of Walsingham; and Walsingham was
dead.

{87}

By a curious irony, the very circumstance which finally led the Cecils
to abandon Lopez has afforded to posterity the means of vindicating
him.  Papers have been discovered among the Spanish archives showing
that his tale was substantially true.  It was indeed under the pretext
of a peace overture that Andrada visited Madrid.  He was not permitted
to see Philip in person, and the story of the royal embrace was a
fabrication; but the diamond and ruby ring was actually handed to the
spy by the Spanish Secretary of State.  Other matters, it is true, were
discussed besides peace; it was agreed that Dr. Lopez should endeavour
to obtain either the imprisonment of Don Antonio, or his exile from
England; a hint was thrown out that he might usefully be poisoned; but
not the faintest suggestion was made which could possibly point to the
murder of Elizabeth.  As a matter of fact, however, and this was
unknown to Lopez--the Spaniards were not taken in.  They saw through
Walsingham's stratagem, and they determined to hoist him with his own
petard.  Persuaded by their gold, Andrada became a double spy.  He
agreed to return to England and to carry on, nominally, the negotiation
for peace, but, in reality, to use his position for furnishing Madrid
with inside information of the state of affairs in England.
Walsingham's death spoilt the plan.  Andrada was unable to explain his
conduct, and Burghley became convinced {88} that he was sold to Spain.
He was indeed; but the guilt of Lopez did not follow from that premise,
as Walsingham, could he have returned to earth for two minutes, would
have explained.

When the Cecils were won over to the view of Essex, the Doctor's doom
was sealed.  He was unable to cope with the ordeal that had come upon
him so suddenly in the comfortable prosperity of his old age.  Shut up
in Essex House, humiliated, badgered, terrified, when his resistance
was once broken down he completely lost his head.  He alternated
between frantic asseverations of utter ignorance and wild revelations
of complicated impossible plots.  There can be little doubt that he had
something discreditable upon his conscience.  His secret note to
Ferreira indicated that.  It seems highly probable that he was engaged
in some conspiracy to ruin Don Antonio; it is possible that he was
actually prepared, in return for a sufficient bribe from the Spaniards,
to poison him.  As to his murdering the Queen, not only is the evidence
for any such intention quite insufficient, but the improbability of
such a design is, on the face of it, overwhelming.  What would he gain
if he effected the death of Elizabeth?  Some wretched pittance from
Philip.  And he would lose everything--his position, his income, the
royal favour--to say nothing of the risk of detection.  It would have
been madness to think of such a thing; but the enraged persecutors {89}
who surrounded him thought of nothing else.  They were determined to
complete their case against him by forcing a confession from his own
lips.  A few twists of the rack would have produced this soon enough;
but that would be crude; true virtuosity lay in obtaining the required
words without the rack, without even an open threat of it, without more
than a glance, perhaps, a gesture, a significant silence.  Before very
long it was done.  To the question, constantly repeated, whether he had
promised the Spaniards to murder the Queen, the Doctor, worn out at
last by weeks of anxiety, suddenly collapsed, and assented.  That was
enough.  The odds, indeed, had been decidedly unequal.  On one side
were Anthony Bacon, Francis Bacon, Lord Burghley, Sir Robert Cecil, and
the Earl of Essex; and on the other an old Portuguese Jew.  One can
understand, perhaps, the intellectuals and the politicians; but Essex!
Generous, strong, in the flush of manhood, is it possible that he
failed to realise that what he was doing was, to say the least of it,
unfair?  Years afterwards, when Spain was no longer a bugbear, his
animosity against Dr. Lopez seemed only to be explicable on the ground
of some violent personal grudge.  But in truth no such explanation was
necessary.  The Earl's mind was above personalities; but it was not
above the excitement of political rivalry, the cruel conventions of
human justice, and the nobility of patriotism.

{90}

A form of trial followed.  Ferreira and Tinoco, far from saving
themselves by their incriminations of the Doctor, were arraigned beside
him as accomplices in his guilt.  Tinoco in vain pleaded the protection
of his safe-conduct; the lawyers solemnly debated the point, and
decided against him.  All three were sentenced to the death of
traitors.  The popular excitement was intense.  As Essex had foreseen,
the hatred of Spain, which had been dying down, rose again to a frenzy
throughout the country.  Dr. Lopez became the type of the foreign
traitor, and his villainy was sung in ballads, and his name hissed with
execrations from the boards of theatres.  That he was a Jew was merely
an incidental iniquity, making a shade darker the central abomination
of Spanish intrigue.  Modern critics have seen in him the original of
Shylock, who appeared upon the stage a few years later; but such a
supposition is wide of the mark.  In fact, if Shakespeare thought of
Dr. Lopez at all in connection with Shylock, it must have been because
of his unlikeness, and not of his resemblance, to the great figure in
"The Merchant of Venice."  The two characters are antithetical.  The
whole essence of Shylock lies in his colossal, his tragic, Hebraism;
but Dr. Lopez was Europeanised and Christianised--a meagre, pathetic
creature, who came to his ruin by no means owing to his opposition to
his gentile surroundings, but because he had allowed himself to be
fatally {91} entangled in them.  Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to
imagine that Shakespeare, in his tragedy of the Venetian outcast,
glanced for a moment, under cover of a piece of amorous jesting, at
that other tragedy of the royal physician.  "Ay," says Portia to
Bassanio,

    "but I fear you speak upon the rack,
  Where men enforcd do speak anything."

The wisdom and the pity of the divine poet exquisitely reveal
themselves in those light words.

The Queen hesitated even more than usual before she allowed the
sentences to be carried into execution.  Possibly she was waiting for
some confirmation or some denial from the authorities in Spain or
Flanders; possibly, in spite of all the accumulated proof of the
Doctor's guilt, she was unable to obliterate from her mind her
instinctive perception of his innocence.  Four months elapsed before
she allowed the law to take its course.  Then--it was June, 1594--the
three men, bound to hurdles, were dragged up Holborn, past the Doctor's
house, to Tyburn.  A vast crowd was assembled to enjoy the spectacle.
The Doctor standing on the scaffold attempted in vain to make a dying
speech; the mob was too angry and too delighted to be quiet; it howled
with laughter, when, amid the uproar, the Jew was heard asseverating
that he loved his mistress better than Jesus Christ; no more was heard,
and the old man was hurried to the {92} gallows.  He was strung up
and--such was the routine of the law--cut down while life was still in
him.  Then the rest of the time-honoured punishment--castration,
disembowelling, and quartering--was carried out.  Ferreira was the next
to suffer.  After that, it was the turn of Tinoco.  He had seen what
was to be his fate, twice repeated, and from close enough.  His ears
were filled with the shrieks and the moans of his companions, and his
eyes with every detail of the contortions and the blood.  And so his
adventures had ended thus at last.  And yet, they had not quite ended;
for Tinoco, cut down too soon, recovered his feet after the hanging.
He was lusty and desperate; and he fell upon his executioner.  The
crowd, wild with excitement, and cheering on the plucky foreigner,
broke through the guards, and made a ring to watch the fight.  But,
before long, the instincts of law and order reasserted themselves.  Two
stalwart fellows, seeing that the executioner was giving ground, rushed
forward to his rescue.  Tinoco was felled by a blow on the head; he was
held down firmly on the scaffold; and, like the others, castrated,
disembowelled, and quartered.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH IN 1596.  _From a contemporary engraved
portrait_]

Elizabeth was merciful to the Doctor's widow.  She allowed her to keep
the goods and chattels of the deceased, forfeited by his
attainder--with one exception.  She took possession of King Philip's
ring.  She slipped it--who knows with what ironical commiseration?--on
to her finger; and there it stayed till her death.




{93}

VII

The Spanish question grew ever more acute.  A war that was no war might
exactly suit the temper of Elizabeth; but it seemed an infamy to Essex,
and was no less distasteful to Henry of France, pressed hard by the
Spaniards on his northern frontier and by the Catholic Leaguers in his
own dominions.  The French king and the English peer came together in a
curious combination.  Their joint object was to propel Elizabeth into
an alliance with France, which would involve the active participation
of England in an attack on the Spaniards.  Between them flew, backwards
and forwards, uniting and enflaming their energies, the stormy petrel,
Antonio Perez, in whom a frantic hatred of King Philip had become the
very breath of life.

A few years earlier Perez had fled from Spain in the wildest
circumstances.  Philip's principal Secretary of State, he had
quarrelled with his master over a murder, had taken refuge in his
native town of Saragossa and had there, at the King's instigation, been
seized by the Inquisition.  His fate seemed certain; but unexpected
forces came to his rescue, and Perez lives in history as the one man,
who, having once {94} fallen into the clutches of the Holy Office,
escaped with a whole skin.  The charges against him were, indeed,
highly serious.  Exasperated in a dungeon, the misguided secretary had
allowed himself, in his ravings, to insult not only the King but the
Deity.  "God sleeps!  God sleeps!" he had exclaimed, and his words had
been heard and noted.  "This proposition," the official report
declared, "is heretical, as if God had no care for human beings, when
the Bible and the Church affirm that He does care."  That was bad
enough, but worse followed.  "If it is God the Father," said the
miscreant, "who has allowed the King to behave so disloyally towards
me, I'll pull God the Father's nose!"  "This proposition," said the
official report, "is blasphemous, scandalous, offensive to pious ears,
and savouring of the heresy of the Vaudois, who affirmed that God was
corporeal and had human members.  Nor is it an excuse to say that
Christ, being made man, had a nose, since the words were spoken of the
First Person of the Trinity."  The stake was the obvious retribution
for such wickedness, and the proper preparations were being made when
the people of Saragossa suddenly rose in arms.  The ancient liberties
of Aragon, its immemorial rights of jurisdiction, were being infringed,
they asserted, by the King and the Holy Office.  They invaded the
prison, beat to death the royal governor, and set Perez free.  He
escaped to France; but his safety {95} proved expensive to Saragossa.
For soon afterwards the King's army appeared upon the scene, and the
ancient liberties of Aragon were finally abolished, while seventy-nine
of the popular party were burnt alive in the market-place, the ceremony
beginning at eight in the morning and ending at nine in the evening, by
torchlight.

The hectic hero of this affair was now leading the life of an exile and
an intriguer.  He was obviously a rogue, but he might, for the moment
at any rate, be a useful rogue; and on that footing he had won his way
into the good graces of Essex and Henry.  He was active and
unscrupulous; he was full of stories that were infinitely discreditable
to the King of Spain, and he was master of an epistolary style of
Euphuistic Latin which precisely hit off the taste of the great ones of
that generation.  How delightful to weave plots, change policies, and
direct the fate of Europe in learned antitheses and elegant classical
allusions!

When the conclave at Essex House judged that the time was ripe, a
letter was despatched from the Earl to Perez, hinting that, if Henry
really wished for Elizabeth's alliance, his best course was to threaten
to make peace himself with Spain.  If Juno was France and Philip the
King of the Underworld, was not the conclusion clear?  For who was so
ignorant as not to know that Juno, when she had implored for help many
times and in vain, had at last burst out {96} with--"Flectere si nequeo
superos, Acheronta movebo"?  "But silence, my pen!  And silence
Antonio!  For methinks I have read the poets too much."[1]

Perez at once showed the letter to Henry, who was not slow to catch its
drift.  Taking the advice of his English friend, he despatched a
special envoy to Elizabeth, with instructions to inform her that he had
received favourable offers of peace from Spain, and was inclined to
accept them.  Elizabeth was apparently unmoved by this intelligence;
she wrote a letter of expostulation to Henry, but she was unable, she
declared, to give him further help; yet she was secretly uneasy, and
soon afterwards despatched, on her side, a special envoy to France, who
was to discover and report to her the real inclinations of the King.

This envoy was Sir Henry Unton, one of those remarkable ambassadors who
divided their allegiance between the Government and Essex House.  He
went to France armed with the instructions, not only of Elizabeth, but
of Anthony Bacon.  A letter exists in which Unton is directed, with
minute detail, to inform the French King that he must hold firm; in
which he is told so to arrange matters as to be received with public
coldness by Henry; and to "send us thundering letters, whereby he must
drive us to propound and {97} to offer."  Unton did as he was bid, and
the thundering letters duly arrived.  At the same time, Perez had been
ordered to write to the Earl "such a letter as may be showed, wherein
he shall say that the sending of Unton hath made all things worse than
ever."  Perez too was all obedience; he sent off, in elaborate Latin, a
report of Henry's asseverations in favour of peace; he himself, he
added, could not understand the policy of the English Government; but
perhaps there was some mystery that was unrevealed--"the designs of
Princes are a deep abyss."[2]

It was perfectly true.  All the letters were shown to the Queen, who
read them carefully through, with a particular relish for the latinity
of Perez.  But the result of this extraordinary intrigue was not at all
what might have been expected.  Perhaps Elizabeth had smelt a rat.
However that may be, she calmly wrote to Henry that she was very ready
to help him against Spain with men and money--on one condition: that he
should give into her keeping the town of Calais.  The charming proposal
was not well received.  "I had as lief be bitten by a dog as scratched
by a cat," exclaimed the infuriated Bearnais.  But in a few weeks he
found that he had spoken more truly than he thought.  A Spanish army
advanced from Flanders, laid siege to Calais, and stormed the outworks
of the town.  The roar of the besieging guns could be {98} distinctly
heard--so Camden tells us--in the royal palace at Greenwich.

Elizabeth did not like that.  Not only was the noise disturbing, but
the presence of the Spaniards in a port commanding the narrow seas
would be distinctly inconvenient.  The next news was that the town of
Calais had fallen, but that the citadel still held out.  Something
might yet be done, and a hasty levy of men was raised in London, and
sent down with all speed, under the command of Essex, to Dover.  With
luck, the French might be relieved and the situation saved; but it
suddenly occurred to Elizabeth that, with luck also, the French might
relieve themselves, and that in any case the whole thing was too
expensive.  Accordingly, when the troops were actually on board, a
courier galloped down to the shore with a letter from the Queen
countermanding the expedition.  Essex raved and implored with his usual
energy; but, while the messengers were posting to and fro between Dover
and London, the Spaniards took the citadel (April 14th, 1596).

This was too much, even for the hesitancy of Elizabeth.  She could not
conceal from herself that, in this instance, at any rate, she had
failed; that the beautiful negation, which was the grand object of all
her policy, had eluded her; that, in fact, something had actually
occurred.  She was very angry, but the necessity for some sort of
action on her own part {99} gradually forced itself upon her; and for
the first time she began to listen seriously to the suggestions of the
war party.

There were two possibilities of attack.  A really effective army might
be sent to France which would be strong enough to enable Henry to deal
with the Spaniards.  This was the course that Perez, accompanied by the
Duc de Bouillon, was immediately despatched across the Channel to urge,
with all the fury of his eloquence, upon Elizabeth.  But when the
emissaries arrived they found to their astonishment that the wind had
changed in England.  Another project was on foot.  For months a
rebellion had been simmering in Ireland, and there was reason to
believe that Philip was busy fitting out an expedition to give succour
to his Catholic friends.  It was now proposed to forestall his
offensive by delivering a naval attack upon Spain.  Essex was suddenly
converted to the plan.  Throwing over Henry and Perez with gay
insouciance, he pressed upon the Queen the formation of a powerful
armament to be sent not to Calais, but to Cadiz.  Elizabeth consented.
She appointed Essex and the Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham joint
commanders of the force; and, within a fortnight of the fall of Calais,
the Earl was in Plymouth, collecting together in feverish energy an
army and a fleet.

Elizabeth had consented; but, in the absence of Essex, the suggestions
of Perez sounded sweetly in {100} her ear.  She began wavering once
again.  Perhaps, after all, it would be wiser to help the French King;
and surely it would be dangerous to send off the fleet on a wild-cat
expedition--the fleet, which was her one protection against a Spanish
invasion.  The news of her waverings reached Essex, and filled him with
agitation.  He knew too well the temper of his mistress.  "The Queen,"
he wrote, "wrangles with our action for no cause but because it is in
hand.  If this force were going to France, she would then fear as much
the issue there as she doth our intended journey.  I know I shall never
do her service but against her will."  He had racked his wits, he
added, to bring her to agree to the expedition, and if it fell through
now he swore he would "become a monk upon an hour's warning."

Certainly, it was touch and go.  The next news was that an offensive
and defensive league had been concluded with France; and a few days
later the Queen wrote a letter to the two Lord Generals at Plymouth,
which seemed to portend yet another change of policy.  They were
ordered to put the expedition under the command of some inferior
officers, and to return themselves to the royal presence--"they being
so dear unto her and such persons of note, as she could not allow of
their going."  The Court was in a ferment.  As the terrible moment of
decision approached, Elizabeth's mind span round like a teetotum.  She
{101} was filled with exasperation and rage.  She thundered against
Essex, who, she said, was forcing her to do this thing against her
will.  The oldest courtiers were appalled, and Burghley, with trembling
arguments and venerable aphorisms, sought in vain to appease her.  The
situation was complicated by the reappearance of Walter Raleigh.  He
had returned from Guiana, more exuberant and formidable than ever, with
endless tales of wealth and adventure, and had been received with
something like forgiveness by the Queen.  Was it possible that the
recall of Essex and Howard would be followed by the appointment of
Raleigh to the supreme command?  But the expedition itself, even if it
was sanctioned, and whoever commanded it, might never start, for the
difficulties in the way of its preparation were very great, there was a
shortage of men, of money, of munitions, and it almost looked as if the
armament would only be ready when it was too late to be of any use.
Confusion reigned; anything might happen; then, all at once, the fog
rolled off, and certainty emerged.  Elizabeth, as was her wont, after
being buffeted for so long and in so incredible a fashion by a sea of
doubts, found herself firmly planted on dry land.  The expedition was
to go--and immediately; Essex and Howard were reinstated, while Raleigh
was given a high, though subordinate, command.  The new orientation of
English policy was signalised in a curious manner--by {102} the
degradation of Antonio Perez.  The poor man was no longer received at
Court; he took no part in the final stages of the French treaty; the
Cecils would not speak to him; he sought refuge in desperation with
Anthony Bacon, and Anthony Bacon was barely polite.  His life of
vertiginous intrigue suddenly collapsed.  Back in France again he was
looked upon with coldness, with faint animosity.  He faded, dwindled,
and sank; and when, years later, worn out with age and poverty, he
expired in a Parisian garret, the Holy Office may well have felt that
the sufferings of the enemy who had escaped its vengeance must have
been, after all, almost enough.

In the midst of his agitations at Plymouth, Essex had received a letter
from Francis Bacon.  The Lord Keeper Puckering had died; Egerton, the
Master of the Rolls, had been appointed to succeed him; and Bacon now
hoped for Egerton's place.  He wrote to ask for the Earl's good
offices, and his request was immediately granted.  Pressed and harassed
on every side by the labours of military organisation, by doubts of the
Queen's intentions, by anxieties over his own position, Essex found the
time and the energy to write three letters to the leaders of the Bar,
pressing upon them, with tactful earnestness, the claims of his friend.
Francis was duly grateful.  "This accumulating," he wrote, "of your
Lordship's favours upon me hitherto worketh only this effect: that it
raiseth my {103} mind to aspire to be found worthy of them, and
likewise to merit and serve you for them."  But whether, he added, "I
shall be able to pay my vows or no, I must leave that to God, who hath
them _in deposito_."

Among all the confusions that surrounded the departure of the
expedition, not the least disturbing were those caused by the
antagonism of the two commanders.  Essex and Lord Howard were at
loggerheads.  They bickered over everything from the rival claims of
the army and the navy to their own places in the table of precedence.
Howard was Lord Admiral, but Essex was an Earl; which was the higher?
When a joint letter to the Queen was brought for their signature,
Essex, snatching a pen, got in his name at the top, so that Howard was
obliged to follow with his underneath.  But he bided his time--until
his rival's back was turned; then, with a pen-knife, he cut out the
offending signature; and in that strange condition the missive reached
Elizabeth.

Everything was ready at last; it was time to say farewell.  The Queen,
shut up in her chamber, was busy with literary composition.  The
results of her labour were entrusted to Fulke Greville, who rode down
with the final despatches to Plymouth and handed them to Essex.  There
was a stately private letter from the Queen to the General:--"I make
this humble bill of requests to Him that all makes and {104} does, that
with His benign hand He will shadow you so, as all harm may light
beside you, and all that may be best hap to your share; that your
return may make you better and me gladder."  There was a friendly note
from Robert Cecil, with a last gay message from Elizabeth.  "The Queen
says, because you are poor she sends you five shillings."  And, in
addition, there was a royal prayer, to be read aloud to the assembled
forces, for the success of the expedition.  "Most omnipotent and guider
of all our world's mass! that only searchest and fathomest the bottoms
of all hearts and conceits, and in them seest the true original of all
actions intended....  Thou, that diddest inspire the mind, we humbly
beseech, with bended knees, prosper the work and with best forewinds
guide the journey, speed the victory, and make the return the
advancement of thy fame and surety to the realm, with least loss of
English blood.  To these devout petitions, Lord, give thou thy blessed
grant!  Amen."

The words, addressed by one potentate to another, with such a
diplomatic mixture of flattering devotion and ornate self-confidence,
were, apparently, exactly what were required.  At any rate, the
expedition was crowned with success.  The secret of its purpose was
well kept, and one day towards the end of June, 1596, the English
armament suddenly appeared in the bay of Cadiz.  At the first moment,
an injudicious decision {105} might have led to a disaster; the
commanders had ordered a hazardous assault to be made by land; and it
was only with difficulty that Raleigh persuaded them to change their
plan and attack on the water.  After that, all went swimmingly.
"Entramos!  Entramos!" shouted Essex, flinging his hat into the sea, as
his ship sailed into the harbour.  Within fourteen hours all was over.
The Spanish fleet was destroyed and the town, with all its strength and
riches, in the hands of the English.  Among the Spaniards the
disorganisation was complete; panic and folly had seized upon them.  By
a curious chance the Duke of Medina Sidonia was Governor of Andalusia.
As if it were not enough to have led the Armada to its doom, it was now
reserved for him to preside over the destruction of the most
flourishing city of Spain.  He hurried to the scene of action, wringing
his hands in querulous despair.  "This is shameful," he wrote to King
Philip.  "I told your Majesty how necessary it was to send me men and
money, and I have never even received an answer.  So now I am at my
wit's end."  He was indeed.  The West Indian fleet of fifty
merchantmen, laden with treasure worth eight million crowns, had fled
into an inner harbour where it lay, in helpless confusion, awaiting its
fate.  Essex had ordered it to be seized, but there were delays among
subordinates, and the unhappy Duke saw what must be done.  He instantly
gave commands; the whole fleet was set on {106} fire; a faint smile,
the first in seven years, was seen to flit across the face of Medina
Sidonia; at last, in that intolerable mass of blazing ruin, he had got
the better of his enemies.

While the honours of the sea-fight went to Raleigh, Essex was the hero
on shore.  He had led the assault on the city; his dash and bravery had
carried all before them; and, when the victory was won, his humanity
had put a speedy end to the excesses that were usual on such occasions.
Priests and churches were spared; and three thousand nuns were
transported to the mainland with the utmost politeness.  The Spaniards
themselves were in ecstasies over the chivalry of the heretic General.
"Tan hidalgo," said Philip, "non ha vista entre herejas."  The Lord
Admiral himself was carried away with admiration.  "I assure you," he
wrote to Burghley, "there is not a braver man in the world than the
Earl is; and I protest, in my poor judgment, a great soldier, for what
he doth is in great order and discipline performed."

The English occupied Cadiz for a fortnight.  Essex proposed that they
should fortify the town and remain there until the Queen's pleasure was
known.  When this was disallowed by the Council of War, he suggested a
march into the interior of Spain; and, on this also being negatived, he
urged that the fleet should put out to sea, lie in wait for the
returning {107} West Indian treasure-ships, and seize the vast booty
they were bringing home.  Once more he met with no support.  It was
decided to return to England immediately.  A great ransom was raised
from the inhabitants of Cadiz, the town was dismantled and destroyed,
and the English sailed away.  As they coasted back along the shores of
Portugal, they could not resist a raid upon the unlucky town of Faro.
The plunder was considerable, and it included one unexpected item--the
priceless library of Bishop Jerome Osorius.  The spectacle of so many
marvellous volumes rejoiced the heart of the literary General; and he
reserved them for himself, as his share of the loot.  Yet, perhaps, he
hardly glanced at them.  Perhaps, as he sailed victoriously towards
England, his wayward mind sank unexpectedly into an utterly incongruous
mood.  To be away from all this--and for ever!  Away from the glory and
the struggle--to be back at home, a boy again at Chartley--to escape
irrevocably into the prolonged innocence of solitude and insignificance
and dreams!  With a play upon his own name--half smiling, half
melancholy--he wrote some lines in which memory and premonition came
together to give a strange pathos to the simple words.--

  Happy were he could finish forth his fate
  In some unhaunted desert, where, obscure
  From all society, from love and hate
  Of worldly folk, there should he sleep secure;
  {108}
  Then wake again, and yield God ever praise;
  Content with hip, with haws, and brambleberry;
  In contemplation passing still his days,
  And change of holy thoughts to keep him merry:
  Who, when he dies, his tomb might be the bush
  Where harmless Robin resteth with the thrush:
        --Happy were he!



[1] Juno autem, quum saepius frustra spem implorasset, tandem eripuit:
"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo." ... Sed tace, calame,
et tace, Antoni, nimium enim poetas legisse videor.

[2] Fines principum abyssus multa.




{109}

VIII

On the same day on which Essex sailed from Cadiz, something of the
highest moment was done in England: Elizabeth made Robert Cecil her
Secretary, in name as well as in fact.  That he had exercised the
functions of the office for several years had not necessarily implied
his continuance in that position.  The Queen had been uncertain; the
arrangement, she said, was temporary; there were other candidates for
the post.  Among these was Thomas Bodley, whose claims Essex had pushed
forward with his customary vehemence--a vehemence which, once again,
had failed in its effect.  For Cecil was now definitely installed in
that great office; all the outward prestige and all the inward
influence that belonged to it were to be permanently his.

He sat at his table writing; and his presence was sweet and grave.
There was an urbanity upon his features, some kind of explanatory
gentleness, which, when he spoke, was given life and meaning by his
exquisite elocution.  He was all mild reasonableness--or so it
appeared, until he left his chair, stood up, and unexpectedly revealed
the stunted discomfort of deformity.  Then another impression came upon
{110} one--the uneasiness produced by an enigma: what could the
combination of that beautifully explicit countenance with that
shameful, crooked posture really betoken?  He returned to the table,
and once more took up his quill; all, once more, was perspicuous
serenity.  And duty too--that was everywhere--in the unhurried
assiduity of the writing, the consummate orderliness of the papers and
arrangements, the long still hours of expeditious toil.  A great
worker, a born administrator, a man of thought and pen, he sat there
silent amid the loud violence about him--the _brio_ of an Essex and a
Raleigh, the rush and flutter of minor courtiers, and the loquacious
paroxysms of Elizabeth.  While he laboured, his inner spirit waited and
watched.  A discerning eye might have detected melancholy and
resignation in that patient face.  The spectacle of the world's
ineptitude and brutality made him, not cynical--he was not aloof enough
for that--but sad--was he not a creature of the world himself?  He
could do so little, so very little, to mend matters; with all his power
and all his wisdom he could but labour, and watch, and wait.  What else
was possible?  What else was feasible, what else was, in fact, anything
but lunacy?  He inspected the career of Essex with serious concern.
Yet, perhaps, in some quite different manner, something,
sometimes--very rarely--almost never--might be done.  At a moment of
crisis, a faint, a hardly perceptible impulsion might {111} be given.
It would be nothing but a touch, unbetrayed by the flutter of an
eyelid, as one sat at table, not from one's hand, which would continue
writing, but from one's foot.  One might hardly be aware of its
existence oneself, and yet was it not, after all, by such minute,
invisible movements that the world was governed for its good, and great
men came into their own?

[Illustration: ROBERT CECIL, EARL OF SALISBURY.  _From the portrait at
Woburn Abbey, by kind permission of the Duke of Bedford, K.G., K.B.E._]

That might be, in outline, the clue to the enigma; but the detailed
working-out of the solution must remain, from its very nature, almost
entirely unknown to us.  We can only see what we are shown with such
urbane lucidity--the devoted career of public service, crowned at last,
so fortunately, by the final achievement--a great work accomplished,
and the Earl of Salisbury supreme in England.  So much is plain; but we
are shown no more--no man ever was.  The quiet minimum of action which
led to such vast consequences is withdrawn from us.  We can, with luck,
catch a few glimpses now and then; but, in the main, we can only
obscurely conjecture at what happened under the table.

Essex returned, triumphant and glorious.  He was the hero of the hour.
A shattering blow had been dealt to the hated enemy, and in the popular
opinion it was to the young Earl, so daring, so chivalrous, so
obviously romantic, that the victory was due.  The old Lord Admiral had
played no great part in the affair, {112} and the fact that the whole
expedition would have been a failure if the advice of Raleigh had not
been followed at the critical moment was unknown.  There seemed, in
fact, to be only one person in England who viewed the return of the
conqueror without enthusiasm; that person was the Queen.  Never was the
impossibility of foretelling what Elizabeth would do next more
completely exemplified.  Instead of welcoming her victorious favourite
in rapturous delight, she received him with intense irritation.
Something had happened to infuriate her; she had indeed been touched at
a most sensitive point; it was a question of money.  She had put down
50,000 for the expenses of the expedition, and what was she to get in
return?  Only, apparently, demands for more money, to pay the seamen's
wages.  It was, she declared, just as she had expected; she had
foreseen it all; she had known from the very first that every one would
make a fortune out of the business except herself.  With infinite
reluctance she disgorged another 2000 to keep the wretched seamen from
starvation.  But she would have it all back; and Essex should find that
he was responsible.  There certainly had been enormous leakages.  The
Spaniards themselves confessed to a loss of several millions, and the
official estimate of the booty brought back to England was less than
13,000.  Wild rumours were flying of the strings of pearls, the chains
of gold, the golden rings and buttons, the {113} chests of sugar, the
casks of quicksilver, the damasks and the Portuguese wines, that had
suddenly appeared in London.  There were terrific wranglings at the
council table.  Several wealthy hostages had been brought back from
Cadiz, and the Queen announced that all their ransoms should go into
her pocket.  When Essex protested that the soldiers would thereby lose
their prize-money, she would not listen; it was only, she said, owing
to their own incompetence that the loot had not been far greater; why
had they not captured the returning West Indian fleet?  The Cecils
supported her with unpleasant questions.  The new Secretary was
particularly acid.  Essex, who had good reason to expect a very
different reception, was alternately depressed and exacerbated.  "I
see," he wrote to Anthony Bacon, "the fruits of these kinds of
employments, and I assure you I am as much distasted with the glorious
greatness of a favourite as I was before with the supposed happiness of
a courtier, and call to mind the words of the wisest man that ever
lived, who speaking of man's works crieth out, Vanity of vanities, all
is but vanity."  The Queen's displeasure was increased by another
consideration.  The blaze of popularity that surrounded the Earl was
not to her liking.  She did not approve of any one being popular except
herself.  When it was proposed that thanksgiving services for the Cadiz
victory should be held all over the country, her Majesty {114} ordered
that the celebrations should be limited to London.  She was vexed to
hear that a sermon had been preached in St. Paul's, in which Essex had
been compared to the greatest generals of antiquity and his "justice,
wisdom, valour and noble carriage" highly extolled; and she took care
to make some biting remarks about his strategy at the next council.  "I
have a crabbed fortune that gives me no quiet," Essex wrote, "and the
sour food I am fain still to digest may breed sour humours."  It was an
odd premonition; but he brushed such thoughts aside.  In spite of
everything he would struggle to keep his temper, and "as warily watch
myself from corrupting myself as I do seek to guard myself from others."

His patience and forbearance were soon rewarded.  News came that the
West Indian fleet, laden with twenty million ducats, had entered the
Tagus only two days after the English had departed.  It seemed clear
that if the plan urged by Essex had been adopted, that if the armament
had waited off the coast of Portugal as he had advised, the whole huge
treasure would have been captured.  Elizabeth had a sudden revulsion.
Was it possible that she had been unjust?  Ungenerous?  Certainly she
had been misinformed.  Essex swam up into high favour, and the Queen's
anger, veering round full circle, was vented upon his enemies.  Sir
William Knollys, the Earl's uncle, was made a member of the Privy
Council and {115} Comptroller of the Household.  The Cecils were
seriously alarmed, and Burghley, trimming his sails to the changing
wind, thought it advisable, at the next council, to take the side of
Essex in the matter of the Spanish ransoms.  But the move was not
successful.  Elizabeth turned upon him in absolute fury.  "My Lord
Treasurer," she roared, "either for fear or favour, you regard my Lord
of Essex more than myself.  You are a miscreant!  You are a coward!"
The poor old man tottered away in a shaken condition to write a humble
expostulation to the Earl.  "My hand is weak, my mind troubled," he
began.  His case, he continued, was worse than to be between Scylla and
Charybdis, "for my misfortune is to fall into both....  Her Majesty
chargeth and condemneth me for favouring of you against her; your
Lordship contrariwise misliketh me for pleasing of Her Majesty to
offend you."  He really thought that it was time for him to retire.  "I
see no possibility worthily to shun both these dangers, but by
obtaining of licence to live an anchorite, or some such private life,
whereunto I am meetest for my age, my infirmity, and daily decaying
estate; but yet I shall not be stopped by the displeasure of either of
you both to keep my way to heaven."  Essex replied, as was fit, with a
letter of dignified sympathy.  But Anthony Bacon's comments were
different; he did not conceal his delighted animosity.  "Our Earl, God
be thanked!" {116} he told a correspondent in Italy, "hath with the
bright beams of his valour and virtue scattered the clouds and cleared
the mists that malicious envy had stirred up against his matchless
merit; which hath made the Old Fox to crouch and whine."

Burghley was indeed very much upset.  He considered the whole situation
carefully, and he came to the conclusion that perhaps, after all, he
had made a mistake in his treatment of the Bacons.  Would that young
nobleman have ever reached so dangerous an eminence without the support
of his nephews?  Did not they supply him with just that intellectual
stiffening, that background of sense and character, which his unstable
temperament required?  Was it possibly still not too late to detach
them?  He could but try.  Anthony was obviously the more active and
menacing of the two, and if he could be won over...  He sent Lady
Russell, the sister of his wife and Lady Bacon, on an embassy to her
nephew, with conciliatory messages and bearing offers of employment and
reward.  The conversation was long, but it was fruitless.  Anthony
would not budge an inch.  He was irrevocably committed to the Earl,
whom he worshipped with the sombre passion of an invalid, his uncle's
early neglect of him could never be forgiven or forgotten, and as for
his cousin Robert, his hatred of him was only equalled by his scorn.
He explained his feelings in detail to his aunt, who hardly knew {117}
what to answer.  The Secretary, he declared, had actually "denounced a
deadly feud" against him.  "Ah, vile urchin!" said Lady Russell, "is it
possible?"  Anthony replied with a laugh and a Gascon proverb--"Brane
d'ne ne monte pas al ciel."  "By God," said Lady Russell, "but he is
no ass."  "Let him go for a mule then, Madam," rejoined Anthony, "the
most mischievous beast that is."  When his aunt had gone, Anthony wrote
out a minute account of the conversation and sent it to his patron,
concluding with a protestation to his "Good Lord" of "the entire
devotion of my heart, together with the unchangeable vow of perfect
obedience, which it hath long since no less resolutely than freely
sworn unto your lordship, and the confidence I have in your lordship's
most noble and true love."  Why indeed should he change?  How futile to
suggest it!  And now, when so many years of service had grown into
adoration--now, when so many years of labour were blossoming into
success!

For, in truth, the dreams of Anthony seemed to be on the brink of
fulfilment; it was difficult to conceive what could prevent Essex from
becoming before long the real ruler of England.  His ascendancy over
Elizabeth appeared to be complete.  Her personal devotion had not
lessened with time; on the contrary it seemed now to be reinforced by a
growing recognition of his qualities as a soldier and a statesman.  The
{118} Cecils bowed before him; Raleigh was not admitted to the royal
presence; no other rivals were visible.  Dominating the council-table,
he shouldered the duties and responsibilities of high office with
vigour and assurance.  Work poured in upon him; he had, he said, "to
provide for the saving of Ireland, the contenting of France, the
winning of the Low Countries to such conditions as they are yet far
from; and the discovering and preventing of practices and designs,
which are more and greater than ever."  In the midst of so much
business and so much success, he did not forget his friends.  His
conscience pricked him on the score of Thomas Bodley.  What reparation
could he make for the loss of the Secretaryship, which he had promised
his faithful follower in vain?  He bethought him of the library of
Bishop Jerome Osorius, seized up so unexpectedly on that summer day at
Faro.  Bodley should have it--it was the very thing.  And Bodley did
have it; and such was the curious beginning of the great Library that
bears his name.

Success, power, youth, royal favour, popular glory--what was lacking in
the good fortune of the marvellous Earl?  Only one thing, perhaps--and
that too now was given him: the deathless consecration of Art.  A
supreme poet, blending together with the enchantment of words the
loveliness of an hour and the vastness of human destiny, bestowed a
splendid immortality upon the

{119}

              "noble Peer,
  Great England's glory and the world's wide wonder,
  Whose dreadful name late through all Spain did thunder,
  And Hercules two pillars standing near
  Did make to quake and fear.
  Fair branch of Honour, flower of Chivalry,
  That fillest England with thy triumph's fame,
  Joy have thou of thy noble victory!"

The prowess and the person of Essex stand forth, lustrous and dazzling,
before all eyes.

Yet there was one pair of eyes--and one only--that viewed the gorgeous
spectacle without blinking.  The cold viper-gaze of Francis Bacon,
heedless of the magnificence of the exterior, pierced through to the
inner quiddity of his patron's situation and saw there nothing but
doubt and danger.  With extraordinary courage and profound wisdom he
chose this very moment--the apex, so it seemed, of Essex's career--to
lift his voice in warning and exhortation.  In a long letter, composed
with elaborate solicitude and displaying at once an exquisite
appreciation of circumstances, a consummate acquaintance with the
conditions of practical life, and a prescience that was almost
superhuman, he explained to the Earl the difficulties of his position,
the perils that the future held in store for him, and the course of
conduct by which those perils might be avoided.  Everything, it {120}
was obvious, hinged upon the Queen; but Bacon perceived that in this
very fact lay, not the strength, but the weakness of Essex's situation.
He had no doubt what Elizabeth's half-conscious thoughts must be.--"A
man of a nature not to be ruled; that hath the advantage of my
affection, and knoweth it; of an estate not grounded to his greatness;
of a popular reputation; of a militar dependence."  What might not come
of such considerations?  "I demand," he wrote, "whether there can be a
more dangerous image than this represented to any monarch living, much
more to a lady, and of Her Majesty's apprehension?"  It was essential
that the whole of Essex's behaviour should be dominated by an effort to
remove those suspicions from Elizabeth's mind.  He was to take the
utmost pains to show her that he was not "_opiniastre_ and unrulable";
he was "to take all occasions, to the Queen, to speak against
popularity and popular courses vehemently and to tax it in all others";
above all, he was utterly to eschew any appearance of "militar
dependence."  "Herein," wrote Bacon, "I cannot sufficiently wonder at
your Lordship's course ... for Her Majesty loveth peace.  Next she
loveth not charge.  Thirdly, that kind of dependence maketh a suspected
greatness."  But there was more than that.  Bacon clearly realised that
Essex was not cut out to be a General; Cadiz, no doubt, had gone off
well; but he distrusted these military {121} excursions, and he urged
the Earl to indulge in no more of them.  There were rumours that he
wished to be made the Master of the Ordnance; such thoughts were most
unwise.  Let him concentrate upon the Council; there he could control
military matters without taking a hand in them; and, if he wished for a
new office, let him choose one that was now vacant and was purely
civilian in its character: let him ask the Queen to make him the Lord
Privy Seal.

No advice could have been more brilliant or more pertinent.  If Essex
had followed it, how different would his history have been!  But--such
are the curious imperfections of the human intellect--while Bacon's
understanding was absolute in some directions, in others it no less
completely failed.  With his wise and searching admonitions he mingled
other counsel which was exactly calculated to defeat the end he had in
view.  Profound in everything but psychology, the actual steps which he
urged Essex to take in order to preserve the Queen's favour were
totally unfitted to the temperament of the Earl.  Bacon wished his
patron to behave with the Machiavellian calculation that was natural to
his own mind.  Essex was to enter into an elaborate course of flattery,
dissimulation, and reserve.  He was not in fact to imitate the
subserviency of Leicester or Hatton--oh no!--but he was to take every
opportunity of assuring Elizabeth that he followed these noblemen as
{122} patterns, "for I do not know a readier mean to make Her Majesty
think you are in your right way."  He must be very careful of his
looks.  If, after a dispute, he agreed that the Queen was right, "a man
must not read formality in your countenance."  And "fourthly, your
Lordship should never be without some particulars afoot, which you
should seem to pursue with earnestness and affection, and then let them
fall, upon taking knowledge of Her Majesty's opposition and dislike."
He might, for instance, "pretend a journey to see your living and
estate towards Wales," and, at the Queen's request, relinquish it.
Even the "lightest sort of particulars" were by no means to be
neglected--"habits, apparel, wearings, gestures, and the like."  As to
"the impression of a popular reputation," that was "a good thing in
itself," and besides "well governed, is one of the best flowers of your
greatness both present and to come."  It should be handled tenderly.
"The only way is to quench it _verbis_ and not _rebus_."  The vehement
speeches against popularity must be speeches and nothing more.  In
reality, the Earl was not to dream of giving up his position as the
people's favourite.  "Go on in your honourable commonwealth courses as
before."

Such counsels were either futile or dangerous.  How was it possible
that the frank impetuosity of Essex should ever bend itself to these
crooked ways?  Every one knew--every one, apparently, but Bacon--that
{123} that the Earl was incapable of dissembling.  "He can conceal
nothing," said Henry Cuffe; "he carries his love and his hatred on his
forehead."  To such a temperament it was hard to say which was the most
alien--the persistent practice of some profoundly calculated stratagem,
or the momentary trickery of petty cunning.  "Apparel, wearings,
gestures!"  How vain to hope that Essex would ever attend to that kind
of tiresome particularity!  Essex, who was always in a hurry or a
dream--Essex, who would sit at table unconscious of what he ate or
drank, shovelling down the food, or stopping suddenly to fall into some
long abstraction--Essex, who to save his time would have himself
dressed among a crowd of friends and suitors, giving, as Henry Wotton
says, "his legs, arms, and breast to his ordinary servants to button
and dress him, with little heed, his head and face to his barber, his
eyes to his letters, and ears to petitioners," and so, clad in he knew
not what, a cloak hastily thrown about him, would pass out, with his
odd long steps, and his head pushed forward, to the Queen.

And, when he reached her, suppose that then, by some miracle, he
remembered the advice of Bacon, and attempted to put into practice one
or other of the contrivances that his friend had suggested.  What would
happen?  Was it not clear that his nature would assert itself in spite
of all his efforts?--that what was really in his mind would appear
under his inexpert {124} pretences, and his bungling become obvious to
the far from blind Elizabeth?  Then indeed his last state would be
worse than his first; his very honesty would display his falsehood; and
in his attempt to allay suspicions that were baseless he would actually
have given them a reality.

Essex, no doubt, read and re-read Bacon's letter with admiration and
gratitude--though perhaps, too, with some involuntary sighs.  But he
was soon to receive a very different admonition from another member of
the family.  Old Lady Bacon had been keeping, as was her wont, a sharp
watch upon the Court from Gorhambury.  Shortly after the Earl's return
from Cadiz, she had received a surprisingly good report of his
behaviour.  He had suddenly--so Anthony wrote--given up his dissipated
habits, and taken to "Christian zealous courses, not missing preaching
or prayers in the Court, and showing true noble kindness towards his
virtuous spouse, without any diversion."  So far so good; but the
amendment, it appeared, was not very lasting.  Within a month or two,
rumours were flying of an intrigue between the Earl and a married lady
of high position.  Lady Bacon was profoundly shocked; she was not,
however, surprised; such doings were only to be expected in the godless
world of London.  The opportunity for a letter--a severely pious
letter--presented itself.  As for the lady in question, no words could
be too harsh {125} for such a creature.  She was "unchaste and
impudent, with, as it were, an incorrigible unshamefacedness."  She was
"an unchaste gaze and common by-word."  "The Lord," she prayed,
"speedily, by His grace, amend her, or"--that would be simplest--"cut
her off before some sudden mischief."  For Essex, such extreme measures
were not yet necessary; he was, of course, less guilty, and there was
still hope of his reformation.  Let him read 1 Thess. iv. 3, and he
would see that "this is the will of God, that ye should be holy, and
abstain from fornication."  Nay, more; he would find "a heavy threat
that fornicators and adulterers God will judge, and that they shall be
shut out; for such things, says the Apostle, commonly cometh the wrath
of God upon us."  Let him "take care, and 'grieve not the Holy Spirit
of God.'"  "With my very inward affection," she concluded, "have I thus
presumed ill-favouredly to scribble, I confess, being sickly and weak
in many ways."

Essex replied immediately, in the style of pathetic and dignified
beauty that was familiar to him.  "I take it," he wrote, "as a great
argument of God's favour in sending so good an angel to admonish me;
and of no small care in your Ladyship of my well-doing."  He denied the
whole story.  "I protest before the majesty of God that this charge
which is newly laid upon me is false and unjust; and that, since my
departure from England towards Spain, I have been {126} free from
taxation of incontinency with any woman that lives."  It was all, he
declared, an invention of his enemies.  "I live in a place where I am
hourly conspired against, and practised upon.  What they cannot make
the world believe, that they persuade themselves unto; and what they
cannot make probable to the Queen, that they give out to the world....
Worthy Lady, think me a weak man, full of imperfections; but be assured
I do endeavour to be good, and had rather mend my faults than cover
them."  The Dowager did not quite know what to make of these
protestations; perhaps they were genuine--she hoped so.  He had begged
her, in a postscript, to burn his letter; but she preferred not to.
She folded it carefully up, with her crabbed fingers, and put it on one
side, for future reference.

Whatever may have been the truth about the story that had reached her,
it is clear that she no more understood the nature of her correspondent
than she did that of her younger son.  That devout austerity had too
little in common with the generous looseness of the Earl, who, no
doubt, felt that he might justly bow it on one side with some
magnificent asseverations.  His spirit, wayward, melancholy, and
splendid, belonged to the Renaissance--the English Renaissance, in
which the conflicting currents of ambition, learning, religion, and
lasciviousness were so subtly intervolved.  He lived and moved in a
superb {127} uncertainty.  He did not know what he was or where he was
going.  He could not resist the mysterious dominations of
moods--intense, absorbing, and utterly at variance with one another.
He turned aside suddenly from the exciting whirl of business and
politics to adore alone, in some inner room, the sensuous harmonies of
Spenser.  He dallied dangerously with court beauties; and then went to
meditate for hours upon the attributes of the Deity in the cold church
of St. Paul.  His lot seemed to lead him irrevocably along the paths of
action and power; and yet he could not determine whether that was
indeed the true direction of his destiny; he dreamt of the remoteness
of Lanfey and the serene solitudes of Chartley Chase.  He was sent for
by the Queen.  He came into her presence, and another series of
contradictory emotions overwhelmed him.
Affection--admiration--exasperation--mockery--he felt them all by
turns, and sometimes, so it seemed, simultaneously.  It was difficult
to escape the prestige of age, royalty, and success; it was impossible
to escape the fascination of that rare intellect, with its alluring
sinuosities and all the surprises of its gay vitality.  His mind, swept
along by hers, danced down delightful avenues.  What happy twists!
What new delicious vistas!  And then--what had happened?  The twists
had grown abrupt, unaccountable, ridiculous.  His head span.  There was
the way--plain and clear before them; but she insisted upon whisking
round {128} innumerable corners, and all his efforts could not keep her
straight.  She was a preposterous, obstinate old woman, fluctuating
only when she should be firm, and strong in nothing but perversity.
And he, after all, was a man, with a man's power of insight and
determination; he could lead if she would follow; but Fate had reversed
the rles, and the natural master was a servant.  Sometimes, perhaps,
he could impose his will upon her--but after what an expenditure of
energy, what a prolonged assertion of masculinity!  A woman and a man!
Yes, indeed, it was all too obvious!  Why was he where he was?  Why had
he any influence whatever?  It was not only obvious, it was ludicrous,
it was disgusting: he satisfied the peculiar cravings of a virgin of
sixty-three.  How was this to end?  His heart sank, and, as he was
about to leave her, he caught sight of something inexplicable in those
extraordinary eyes.  He hurried home--to his wife, his friends, his
sisters; and then, in his great house by the River, one of those
physical collapses, which from his boyhood had never been long absent,
would come upon him; incapable of thought or action, shivering in the
agonies of ague, he would lie for days in melancholy and darkness upon
his bed.

But, after all, he could not resist the pressure of circumstances, the
nature of the time, the call to do and to lead.  His vital forces
returned to him, bringing with them the old excitements of adventure
and {129} jealousies of ambition.  Spain loomed as ever upon the
horizon; she had not been crushed at Cadiz; the snake was still
dangerous, and must be scotched again.  There was talk of another
expedition.  Francis Bacon might say what he would; but if there was
one how would it be possible for the "noble Peer" of the Prothalamium
to keep out of it?  How could he leave the agitation and the triumph to
Walter Raleigh?  How could he stay behind with the hunchback secretary,
writing at a table?  In private, he pressed the Queen eagerly; and she
seemed more amenable than usual; she agreed to the principle of an
armed attack, but hesitated over its exact form.  The news began to
leak out, and Francis Bacon grew uneasy.  The event, he saw, would show
whether his advice was going to be taken: the parting of the ways was
at hand.

In the meantime, while the future hung in the balance, that versatile
intelligence was occupied in a different direction.  In January, 1597,
a small volume made its appearance--one of the most remarkable that has
ever come from the press.  Of its sixty pages, the first twenty-five
were occupied by ten diminutive "Essays"--the word was new in
English--in which the reflections of a matchless observer were
expressed in an imperishable form.  They were reflections upon the ways
of this world, and particularly upon the ways of Courts.  In later
years Bacon enlarged the collection, widening the range of his
subjects, and {130} enriching his style with ornament and colour; but
here all was terse, bare and practical.  In a succession of gnomic
sentences, from which every beauty but those of force and point had
been strictly banished, he uttered his thoughts upon such themes as
"Suitors," "Ceremonies and Respects," "Followers and Friends,"
"Expense," and "Negociating."  "Some books," he wrote, "are to be
tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and
digested"; there can be no doubt to which category his own belongs.
And, as one chews, one learns much, not only of the methods of politic
behaviour, but of the nature of the author, and of that curious quality
of mingled boldness and circumspection that was native to his mind.
"Mean men must adhere," he says, in his essay on "Faction," "but great
men that have strength in themselves were better to maintain themselves
indifferent and neutral; yet," he adds, "even in beginners to adhere so
moderately, as he be a man of the one faction, which is passablest with
the other, commonly giveth best way."  The book was dedicated to "Mr.
Anthony Bacon, his dear brother"; but what did Anthony, with his
instinct for uncompromising devotion, think of such an apophthegm?

Whatever Anthony might think, Francis could not help it; in the last
resort he must be swayed not by his brother but by his perception of
the facts.  It was clear that one of those periodical crises, which
seemed {131} to punctuate the relations of the Queen and the Earl with
ever-increasing violence, was rapidly approaching.  It became known
that a naval attack upon Spain had actually been decided upon; but who
was to command it?  Early in February, Essex took to his bed.  The
Queen came to visit him; he seemed to recover after so signal an act of
favour; and then once more was prostrate.  The nature of his ailment
was dubious: was he sulking, or was he really ill?  Perhaps he was
both.  For a fortnight he remained invisible, while the Queen fretted,
and rumour after rumour flew round the Court.  The signs of a
struggle--a quarrel--were obvious.  It was declared on good authority
that the Queen had told him that he was to share the command of the
expedition with Raleigh and Thomas Howard; and that thereupon the Earl
had sworn to have nothing to do with it.  At last Elizabeth's vexation
burst out into speech.  "I shall break him of his will," she exclaimed,
"and pull down his great heart!"  She wondered where he got his
obstinacy; but, of course, it was from his mother--from Lettice
Knowles, her cousin, that woman whom she hated--the widow of Leicester.
Then the news came that the Earl was better, so much better that he had
risen, and was about to depart from the Court immediately, to visit his
estates in Wales.

Bacon could hardly doubt any more where all this was leading.  He made
up his mind.  He was a beginner; {132} and it was for him "to adhere so
moderately, as he be a man of the one faction, which is passablest with
the other."  He wrote to Burghley.  He wrote with deliberation and
subtle care.  "I thought," he said, "it would better manifest what I
desire to express, if I did write out of a settled consideration of
mine own duty, rather than upon the spur of a particular occasion."  He
mingled flattery and gratitude, touching upon "your Lordship's
excellent wisdom," and adding, "My singular good Lord, _ex abundantia
cordis_, I must acknowledge how greatly and diversely your Lordship
hath vouchsafed to tie me unto you by many your benefits."  In a tone
of deep respect and humility, he pressed his services upon his uncle.
"This causeth me most humbly to pray your Lordship to believe that your
Lordship is upon just title a principal owner and proprietary of that,
I cannot call talent, but mite, that God hath given me; which I ever do
and shall devote to your service."  He even begged for forgiveness; he
even dissociated himself--with an ameliorating parenthesis--from his
brother Anthony.  "In like humble manner I pray your Lordship to pardon
mine errors, and not to impute unto me the errors of any other (which I
know also themselves have by this time left and forethought); but to
conceive of me to be a man that daily profiteth in duty."  And he
closed with a final protestation, cast in a sentence of superb rhythm,
with a noble and touching fall.  "And so {133} again, craving your
Honour's pardon for so long a letter, carrying so empty an offer of so
unpuissant a service, but yet a true and unfeigned signification of an
honest and vowed duty, I cease; commending your Lordship to the
preservation of the Divine Majesty."

Burghley's answer is unknown to us; but we may be sure that he did not
repel these advances, nor fail to note their implications.  Events were
now moving rapidly.  The death of old Lord Cobham, by leaving vacant
the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, brought the crisis to a head.  His
son, the new Lord, hoped to succeed to the office; but he was hated by
Essex, who pressed the claims of Sir Robert Sidney.  For a week the
conflict raged, and then the Queen announced her decision: the
Wardenship should go to Lord Cobham.  Thereupon Essex declared once
more that he would leave the Court--that he had pressing business in
Wales.  All was prepared; men and horses were ready, and the Earl was
only waiting to bid farewell to Burghley, when he was sent for by the
Queen.  There was a private interview, which ended in a complete
reconciliation; and Essex emerged Master of the Ordnance.

So this was the consequence of Francis Bacon's advice!  He had told the
Earl to pretend a journey, in order to be able to waive it gracefully
at the request of the Queen; and the foolish man had done the very
opposite--had used it as a threat with which to force {134} the royal
hand.  And to what end?  To pursue what was most to be avoided--to
emphasise that "militar dependence" which was at once so futile and so
full of danger--nay, even to get possession of that very office, the
Mastership of the Ordnance, which he had been particularly recommended
to shun.

Clearly, the letter to Burghley was justified; it had become imperative
for a "beginner" to acquire some other aid to the good things of this
world besides what was offered by the dubious fortune of Essex.  Yet it
would be foolish to abandon the old connection altogether; it might
still prove useful, in a variety of ways.  For instance, Sir William
Hatton was dead; he had left a rich widow--young and eligible; to marry
her would be an excellent cure for that disease from which Bacon was
still suffering--consumption of the purse.  Negotiations were set on
foot, and it seemed as if all might end happily, if the lady's father,
Sir Thomas Cecil, could be brought to agree.  Bacon begged Essex to use
his influence; and Essex did all that he was asked.  He wrote to Sir
Thomas, expatiating upon the merits of his "dear and worthy friend"
who, he had heard, was "a suitor to my Lady Hatton, your daughter."
"To warrant my moving of you to incline favourably to his suit, I will
only add this, that if she were my sister or daughter, I protest I
would as confidently resolve myself to farther it, as now I persuade
you.  And though my love to him be {135} exceedingly great, yet is my
judgment nothing partial; for he that knows him so well as I do cannot
but be so affected."  Yet, once more, the Earl's influence was
unavailing; for some unknown cause, Bacon was again disappointed; and
Lady Hatton, like the Attorney-Generalship, went to Edward Coke.

Essex had not only been made Master of the Ordnance; he had also been
given the command of the expedition against Spain.  For months it had
been known that the Spaniards had been busy with elaborate naval
preparations in their great adjoining harbours of Corunna and Ferrol.
The destination of the new Armada was unknown--perhaps it was Africa,
or Brittany, or Ireland; but there were persistent reports that an
attack was to be made on the Isle of Wight.  It was decided to
forestall the danger.  Essex, with Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard under
him, was to take the fleet and a powerful armed force to Ferrol, and
destroy all that he found there.  The Cadiz adventure, in short, was to
be repeated; and why not?  The Queen herself believed that it might be
done--cheaply, effectively and quickly.  Even the Cecils agreed.
Reconciliation was in the air.  Burghley acted as peace-maker, and
brought his son and the Earl together.  Essex gave a little dinner at
his house, to which was bidden not only Sir Robert, but Walter Raleigh
as well.  The enmities of years were laid aside; and, in a private
conclave of two hours, the three {136} great men bound themselves
together in friendship.  As a final proof of good-will, it was agreed
that Elizabeth should be persuaded to take Raleigh once more into her
favour.  She yielded, readily enough, to the double pressure; he was
summoned to her presence, graciously received, and told that he might
resume his duties as Captain of the Guard.  Raleigh celebrated the
occasion by having made for him a suit of silver armour; and so once
more, superb and glittering, the dangerous man stood in the royal
antechamber at Whitehall.

And now it was summer, and the great fleet was almost ready to depart.
Essex was on the coast, superintending the final preparations.  He had
taken his farewell of the Queen; but for a fortnight more he was in
England, and the adieux were continued till the last moment in an
impassioned correspondence.  Difficulties, dangers, griefs there might
be in that ambiguous relationship; but now absence seemed to make all
things clear.  Elizabeth was at her benignest.  She sent off a stream
of gifts and messages, she sent her portrait, she wrote constantly with
her own hand.  Essex was happy--active, important, excited; the great
Queen, with all her majesty and all her affection, appeared before his
imagination like some radiant fairy.  She was his "most dear and most
admired Sovereign."  He could not express his feelings; but, since
"words be not able to interpret for me, then {137} to your royal dear
heart I appeal, which, without my words, can fully and justly
understand me.  Heavens and earth shall witness for me.  I will strive
to be worthy of so high a grace and so blessed a happiness."  He was
tied to her "by more ties than ever was subject to a prince."  His soul
was "poured out with most earnest, faithful, and more than most
affectionate wishes."  He thanked her for her "sweet letters, indited
by the spirit of spirits."  She had heard a report that his ship
leaked, and wrote to him in alarm to bid him take precautions against
the danger.  He was in Plymouth, on the eve of departure, when her
letter reached him.  "That infinite love," he wrote, "which I bear your
Majesty makes me now love myself for your favour's sake; and therefore,
be secure, dear Lady, that I will be as useful to bring myself home to
you, as you would have me be."  There was no danger, he assured her;
the wind was favourable; all was ready; they were about to sail.  "I
humbly kiss your royal fair hands," he concluded, "and pour out my soul
in passionate jealous wishes for all true joys to the dear heart of
your Majesty, which must know me to be your Majesty's humblest and
devoutest vassal, Essex."  The fleet set out to sea.




{138}

IX

King Philip sat working in the Escurial--the gigantic palace that he
had built for himself, all of stone, far away, high up, amid the
desolation of the rocky Guadarrama.  He worked incessantly, as no
monarch had ever worked before, controlling from his desk a vast
empire--Spain and Portugal, half Italy, the Netherlands, the Western
Indies.  He had grown old and white-haired in his labours, but he
worked on.  Diseases had attacked him; he was tortured by the gout; his
skin was cankered, he was the prey of a mysterious and terrible
paralysis; but his hand moved over the paper from morning till night.
He never emerged now.  He had withdrawn into this inner room of his
palace--a small room, hung with dark green tapestries--and there he
reigned, secret, silent, indefatigable, dying.  He had one distraction,
and only one; sometimes he tottered through a low door into his oratory
beyond and kneeling, looked out, through an inner window, as it were
from a box of an opera, into the enormous spaces of a church.  It was
the centre of his great building, half palace and half monastery, and
there, operatic too in their vestments and their movements and their
{139} strange singings, the priests performed at the altar close below
him, intent upon their holy work.  Holy!  But his work too was that; he
too was labouring for the glory of God.  Was he not God's chosen
instrument?  The divine inheritance was in his blood.  His father,
Charles the Fifth, had been welcomed into Heaven, when he died, by the
Trinity; there could be no mistake about it; Titian had painted the
scene.  He also would be received in a similar glorious fashion; but
not just yet.  He must finish his earthly duties first.  He must make
peace with France, he must marry his daughter, he must conquer the
Dutch, he must establish everywhere the supremacy of the Catholic
Church.  There was indeed a great deal still to do, and very little
time to do it in--he hurried back to his table; and it must all be done
by himself, with his own hand.

His thoughts rushed round, confused and crowded.  Not one was pleasant
now.  He had forgotten the fountains of Aranjuez and the eyes of the
Princess of Eboli.  Obscure incentives obsessed and agonised his
brain--religion, pride, disappointment, the desire for rest, the desire
for revenge.  His sister of England rose before him--a distracting
vision!  He and she had grown old together, and she had always eluded
him--eluded his love and his hate.  But there was still just time; he
would work more unrelentingly than ever before; and he would teach
her--the unspeakable {140} woman, with her heretic laughter--before he
died, to laugh no longer.

That indeed would be a suitable offering with which to meet the
Trinity.  For years he had been labouring, with redoubled efforts,
towards this end.  His great Armada had not succeeded in its mission;
that was true; but the reverse had not been an irreparable one.  The
destruction of Cadiz had also been unfortunate; but neither had that
been fatal.  Another Armada should be built and, with God's blessing,
should achieve his purpose.  Already he had accomplished much.  Had he
not been able, within a few months of the fall of Cadiz, to despatch a
powerful fleet to Ireland, with a large army to succour the rebels
there?  It was unluckily a fact that the fleet had never reached
Ireland, owing to a northerly gale, that more than twenty ships had
sunk and that the remains of this second Armada had returned
discomfited to Spain.  But such accidents would happen, and why should
he despair so long as the Trinity was on his side?  With incredible
industry he had set to work to have the fleet refitted in the harbour
of Ferrol.  He had put Martin de Padilla, the Governor (Adelantado) of
Castile, in command of it, and Martin was a pious man, even more pious
than Medina Sidonia.  By the summer of 1597 it seemed as if the third
Armada should be ready to start.  Yet there were unaccountable delays.
The Council sat in solemn conclave, but {141} its elaborate discussions
appeared, for some reason or other, not to help things forward.  There
were quarrels, too, among the commanders and officials; all were at
loggerheads, without any understanding of the great task on which they
were engaged.  King Philip alone understood everything.  His designs
were his own secret; he would reveal them to no one; even the
Adelantado, enquire as he would, should not be told the destination of
the fleet.  But there was to be no more of this procrastination.  The
Armada must sail at once.

Then came most disturbing news.  The English fleet was being equipped;
it was being assembled at Plymouth; very soon it would be on the high
seas.  And there could be little doubt of its objective; it would sail
straight for Ferrol, and, once there--what was to prevent it?--the
story of Cadiz would be repeated.  The Adelantado declared that nothing
could be done, that it was impossible to leave the harbour, that the
preparations were altogether inadequate, that, in fact, he lacked
_everything_, and could not face an enemy.  It was exasperating--the
pious Martin seemed to have caught Medina Sidonia's tone.  But there
was no help for it; one must face it out, and trust in the Trinity.

News came that the fleet had left Plymouth; and then--there was a
miracle.  After a terrifying pause it was known that a south-westerly
gale had almost {142} annihilated the English, whose ships, after ten
days, had returned, with the utmost difficulty, into harbour.  King
Philip's Armada was saved.

The storm had indeed been an appalling one.  The Queen in her palace
had shuddered, as she listened to the awful wind; Essex himself had
more than once given up his soul to God.  His escape was less fortunate
than he imagined; he was to be overwhelmed by a more terrible disaster;
and the tempest was only an ominous prologue to the tragedy.  With the
fatal freshening of that breeze his good luck was over.  From that
moment misfortune steadily deepened upon him.  By a curious coincidence
the storm which ushered in such dreadful consequences has received a
peculiar immortality.  Among the young gentlemen who had sailed with
the Earl in search of adventures and riches was John Donne.  He
suffered horribly, but he determined to convert his unpleasant
sensations into something altogether unexpected.  Out of the violence
and disruption of a storm at sea he made a poem--a poem written in a
new style and a new movement, without sensuous appeal or classic
imagery, but harsh, modern, humorous, filled with surprising realistic
metaphor and intricate wit.

  "As sin-burdened souls from graves will creep
  At the last day, some forth their cabins peep;
  And tremblingly ask what news, and do hear so,
  Like jealous husbands, what they would not know.
  {143}
  Some sitting on the hatches, would seem there
  With hideous gazing to fear away fear.
  Then note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
  Shaked with this ague, and the hold and waste
  With a salt dropsy clogged, and all our tacklings
  Snapping, like too high stretched treble strings;
  And from our tattered sails, rags drop down so
  As from one hanged in chains a year ago."

The verses, handed round everywhere in manuscript, were highly
appreciated.  It was the beginning of that extraordinary career of
passion and poetry, which was to end in the fullness of time at the
Deanery of St. Paul's.

While Donne was busy turning his acrobatic couplets, Essex was doing
his utmost at Falmouth and Plymouth to repair the damage that had given
rise to them.  Commiseration came to him from Court.  The Cecils wrote
polite letters, and Elizabeth was in an unexpectedly gentle mood.  "The
Queen," Sir Robert told him, "is now so disposed to have us all love
you, as she and I do talk every night like angels of you."  An incident
that had just occurred had so delighted her that she viewed the naval
disaster with unusual equanimity.  An Ambassador had arrived from
Poland--a magnificent personage, in a long robe of black velvet with
jewelled buttons, whom she received in state.  Sitting on her throne,
with her ladies, her counsellors, and her noblemen about her, {144} she
graciously gave ear to the envoy's elaborate harangue.  He spoke in
Latin; extremely well, it appeared; than, as she listened, amazement
seized her.  This was not at all what she had expected.  Hardly a
compliment--instead, protestations, remonstrances, criticisms--was it
possible?--threats!  She was lectured for presumption, rebuked for
destroying the commerce of Poland, and actually informed that his
Polish Majesty would put up with her proceedings no longer.  Amazement
gave way to fury.  When the man at last stopped, she instantly leapt to
her feet.  "Expectavi orationem," she exclaimed, "mihi vero querelam
adduxisti!"--and proceeded, without a pause, to pour out a rolling
flood of vituperative Latin, in which reproof, indignation, and
sarcastic pleasantries followed one another with astonishing
volubility.  Her eyes flashed, her voice grated and thundered.  Those
around her were in ecstasy; with all their knowledge of her
accomplishments, this was something quite new--this prodigious power of
_ex tempore_ eloquence in a learned tongue.  The unlucky ambassador was
overwhelmed.  At last, when she had rounded her last period, she paused
for a moment, and then turned to her courtiers.  "By God's death, my
lords!" she said with a smile of satisfaction, "I have been enforced
this day to scour up my old Latin which hath lain long rusting!"
Afterwards she sent for Robert Cecil and told him that she wished Essex
{145} had been there to hear her Latin.  Cecil tactfully promised that
he would send the Earl a full account of what had passed; he did so,
and the details of the curious scene have reached posterity, too, in
his letter.

With some unwillingness she allowed the fleet to make another attack
upon Spain.  But it was now too weak to effect a landing at Ferrol; it
must do no more than send fire-ships into the harbour in order to
destroy the shipping; and after that an attempt might be made to
intercept the West Indian treasure fleet.  Essex set off with his
diminished squadron, and once more the winds were against him.  When,
after great difficulty, he reached the Spanish coast, a gale from the
East prevented his approaching the harbour of Ferrol.  He wrote home,
explaining his misadventure and announcing that, as he had received
intelligence of the Spanish fleet having sailed to the Azores to meet
the treasure transport, he intended to follow it thither immediately.
Elizabeth sent him a reply, written in her most regal and enigmatic
manner.  "When I see," she said, "the admirable work of the Eastern
wind, so long to last beyond the custom of nature, I see, as in a
crystal, the right figure of my folly, that ventured supernatural haps
upon the point of frenetical imputation."  In other words, she realised
that she was taking risks against her better judgment.  She was like
"the lunatic man that keeps a smack of the remains of his frenzy's
freak, helped well thereto {146} by the influence of _Sol in
Leone_"--(it was August).  Essex was not to presume too far on her
unwise indulgence.  She put in a "caveat, that this lunatic goodness
make you not bold ... to heap more errors to our mercy; ... you vex me
too much with small regard for what I scape or bid."  He was to be
cautious.  "There remains that you, after your perilous first attempt,
do not aggravate that danger with another in a farther-off climate,
which must cost blows of good store; let character serve your turn, and
be content when you are well, which hath not ever been your property."
With a swift touch or two, delivered _de haul en has_, she put her
finger on his failings.  "Of this no more, but of all my moods, I
forget not my tenses, in which I see no leisure for ought but
petitions, to fortify with best forwardness the wants of this army, and
in the same include your safe return, and grant you wisdom to discern
_verisimile_ from _potest fieri_."  And she concluded with an avowal of
affection, in which the fullness of the feeling seems to be expressed
by its very contortion.  "Forget not to salute with my great favour
good Thomas and faithful Mountjoy.  I am too like the common faction,
that forget to give thanks for what I received; but I was so loth to
take that I had well nigh forgot to thank; but receive them now with
millions and yet the rest keeps the dearest."

Her words went over the ocean to find him, and when they reached him it
would have been well had {147} he marked them more.  At the Azores
there was no sign of the Spanish fleet; but the treasure ships were
expected to appear at any moment.  Terceira, the central citadel in the
Islands, was too strong to be attacked; and since, if the transport
could once reach that harbour, it would be in safety, it was the plain
policy of the English to lie in wait for it to the westward on the line
of its route from America.  It was decided to make a landing on the
island of Fayal, which would be an excellent centre of observation.
The whole fleet sailed towards it, but the ships failed to keep
together, and when Raleigh's squadron reached the rendez-vous there was
no sign of Essex or the rest.  Raleigh waited for four days; then,
being in want of water, he landed his men, attacked the town of Fayal,
and took it.  It was a successful beginning; Raleigh had commanded
skilfully, and a good store of booty fell to him and his men.
Immediately afterwards the rest of the fleet made its appearance.  When
Essex heard what had happened he was furious; Raleigh, he declared, had
deliberately forestalled him for the sake of plunder and glory, and had
disobeyed orders in attacking the island before the arrival of the
commander-in-chief.  The old quarrel flamed up sky-high.  Some of
Essex's more reckless partisans suggested to him that such an
opportunity should not be missed--that Raleigh should be
courtmartialled and executed.  Angry though Essex was, {148} this was
too much for him; "I would do it," he was reported to have said, "if he
were my friend."  At last an agreement was come to.  It was arranged
that Raleigh was to apologise, and that no mention of his successful
action was to be recorded in the official report; he was to gain no
credit for what he had done; on those conditions his misconduct would
be passed over.  There was a reconciliation, but Essex was still sore.
So far he had done nothing worthy of his reputation--not a prize nor a
prisoner was his.  But he learnt that there was another island which
might easily be captured; if Raleigh had taken Fayal, he would take San
Miguel; and to San Miguel he instantly sailed.  _Verisimile_ and
_potest fieri_!  Why had he not marked those words?  The attack upon
San Miguel was an act of folly.  For that island lay to the east of
Terceira, and to go there was to leave the route of the treasure fleet
unguarded.  What might have been expected occurred.  While the English
were approaching San Miguel, the vast tribute of the Indies safely
sailed into the harbour of Terceira.  San Miguel after all proved to be
so rocky as to make a landing impossible; Terceira was impregnable; all
was over; there was nothing to be done but to return home.

Yes!  But all this time where was the Spanish fleet?  It had never left
Ferrol, where the preparations of years were at last being completed
with feverish rapidity.  While King Philip was urging them forward
{149} in an endless stream of despatches, the news reached him that the
English had sailed to the Azores.  He saw that his opportunity had
come.  The odious island lay open and defenceless before him.  Surely
now his enemy was delivered into his hands.  He ordered the Armada to
sail immediately.  It was in vain that the Adelantado begged for a
little more delay, that he expatiated upon the scandalous deficiencies
which made the armament unfit for service, that finally he implored to
be relieved of his intolerable responsibility.  In vain--the pious
Martin, still ignorant of his destination, was forced to lead the fleet
into the Bay of Biscay.  Then, and only then, was he allowed to read
his instructions.  He was to sail straight for England, to attack
Falmouth, to occupy it and, having defeated the enemy's fleet, to march
towards London.  The Armada sailed onwards, but as it approached Sicily
a northerly wind fell upon it.  The ships staggered and wavered; the
hearts of the Captains sank.  King Philip's preparations had been
indeed inadequate; everything, as the Adelantado had said, was
lacking--even elementary seamanship, even the desire to meet the foe.
The spider of the Escurial had been spinning cobwebs out of dreams.
The ships began to scatter and sink; the wind freshened to a gale;
there was a despairing Council of War; the Adelantado gave the signal;
and the Armada crept back into Ferrol.

{150}

King Philip was almost unconscious with anxiety and disease.  He prayed
incessantly, kneeling in anguish as he looked out from his opera box
upon the high altar.  Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a paralytic
seizure; he hardly breathed, he could swallow no food, his daughter,
hovering over him, blew liquid nourishment down his throat from a tube,
and so saved his life.  Already the news had come of the return of the
Adelantado; but the King seemed to have passed beyond the reach of
human messages.  Suddenly there was a change; his eyes opened; he
regained consciousness.  "Will Martin never start?" were his first
words.  The courtiers had a painful task in front of them.  They had to
explain to King Philip that the pious Martin had not only started but
that he had also come back.




{151}

X

Essex, too, had come back, and had to face a mistress who was by no
means dying.  A few Spanish merchantmen, accidentally picked up on the
return journey, were all he could produce to justify an exploit which
had not only been enormously expensive but had left England exposed to
the danger of foreign invasion.  Elizabeth had been unwilling to allow
the fleet to depart after the great storm; she had been over-persuaded;
and this was the consequence.  Her rage was inevitable.
Mismanagement--gross and inexcusable; severe loss, both of treasure and
reputation; imminent peril to the realm: such was her summary of the
business.  The only compensation, she felt, was that she had now learnt
her lesson.  The whole policy, which she had always profoundly
distrusted, of these dangerous and expensive expeditions, was finally
shown to be senseless, and she would have no more of it.  Never again,
she declared to Burghley, would she send her fleet out of the Channel;
and, for once in a way, she kept her word.

Received with icy disapprobation, Essex struggled to excuse himself,
found that it was useless, and, mortified and angry, retired from the
Court to the {152} seclusion of his country house at Wanstead, on the
eastern outskirts of London.  From there he addressed a pathetic letter
to the Queen.  She had made him, he said, "a stranger," and "I had
rather retire my sick body and troubled mind into some place of rest
than, living in your presence, to come now to be one of those that look
upon you afar off."  "Of myself," he added, "it were folly to write
that which you care not to know."  Nevertheless, he assured her, "I do
carry the same heart I was wont, though now overcome with unkindness,
as before I was conquered by beauty.  From my bed, where I think I
shall be buried for some few days, this Sunday night.  Your Majesty's
servant, wounded but not altered by your unkindness, R. Essex."

"Conquered by beauty!"  Elizabeth smiled, but she was not placated.
What particularly annoyed her was to find that the popular reputation
of the Earl as a great captain was in no way abated.  The failure of
the Islands Voyage was put down by the general public to ill luck, to
the weather, to Raleigh--to every cause but the right one--the
incompetence of the commander-in-chief.  They were fools; and she knew
where the truth lay.  Yet she wished it were otherwise.  One day, while
she was expatiating on the theme in the garden at Whitehall, Sir
Francis Vere ventured to speak up for the absent man.  She listened
graciously, argued a little, then changed her tone, and, leading {153}
Sir Francis to the end of an alley, sat down with him and talked for a
long time, with gentleness and affection, of Essex--his ways, his
views, his curious character, his delightful disposition.  Soon
afterwards, she wrote to him, enquiring of his health.  She wrote
again, more pressingly.  In her heart she wished him back, life was
dull without him, the past might be forgotten.  She wrote once more,
with hints of forgiveness.  "Most dear Lady," Essex replied, "your kind
and often sending is able either to preserve a sick man, or rather to
raise a man that were more than half dead to life again.  Since I was
first so happy as to know what love meant, I was never one day, nor one
hour, free from hope and jealousy; and, as long as you do me right,
they are the inseparable companions of my life.  If your Majesty do in
the sweetness of your own heart nourish the one, and in the justness of
love free me from the tyranny of the other, you shall ever make me
happy....  And so, wishing your Majesty to be mistress of that you wish
most, I humbly kiss your fair hands."

She was charmed.  Such protestations--all the more enticing for the
very ambiguity of their phrasing--melted away the last remains of her
resentment.  He must come back immediately; and she prepared herself
for a moving and thoroughly satisfactory scene of reconciliation.

But she was not to be happy so soon.  When Essex {154} saw beyond a
doubt that she wished him to return, he on his side grew remote and
querulous.  Surrounded by advisers less wise than Francis Bacon--his
mother and his sisters, and the pushing military men who depended on
his patronage--he allowed himself to listen to their suggestions and to
begin playing a dubious game.  The fact that he had failed indefensibly
in the Islands Voyage only made him the more anxious to assert himself.
His letters, written in a mixture of genuine regret and artful
coquetry, had produced the desired effect.  The Queen wished him back;
very well, she might have her wish--but she must pay for it.  He
considered that on his part he had a serious grievance.  Not only had
Robert Cecil been made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in his
absence, but, one week before his return, Lord Howard of Effingham had
been created Earl of Nottingham.  This was too much.  The patent
actually mentioned, among the reasons for this promotion, the capture
of Cadiz; and all the world knew that the capture of Cadiz had been due
to Essex alone.  It was true that the patent also mentioned--naturally
enough--the defeat of the Spanish Armada, that Howard was over sixty,
and that an earldom seemed a fitting reward for his long and splendid
career of public service.  No matter, there was another more serious
question at issue, and it was in fact as plain as day--so the hotheads
assured themselves at Wanstead {155} Park--that the whole affair had
been arranged beforehand as a deliberate slight.  Howard had already,
before the Cadiz expedition, attempted, as Lord Admiral, to take
precedence of Essex, who, as an Earl, had firmly resisted his
pretensions.  But now there could be no doubt about it: the Lord
Admiral, if he was an Earl, took precedence by law of all other
Earls--except the Great Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, and the Earl
Marshal; and thus Essex would have to give place to this upstart
Nottingham.  Who could be surprised if, in these circumstances, he
refused to return to Court?  He declined to be insulted.  If the Queen
really wished to see him, let her make such an eventuality impossible;
let her show the world, by some signal mark of her favour, that his
position--so far from being weakened by the Islands Voyage--was more
firmly established than ever.

It was announced that he was still far from well--that any movement
from Wanstead was out of the question.  Elizabeth loured.  Her
Accession Day--November 17th--was approaching, and the customary
celebrations would lack something--decidedly they would lack
something--in the absence of ... but she refused to think of it.  She
grew restless, and a thunderstorm seemed to hang over the Court.  The
return of Essex was becoming of the highest importance to everybody.
Lord Hunsdon addressed the Earl with a tactful remonstrance, but in
vain.  Then {156} Burghley wrote--not without humour.  "By report," he
said, "I hear that your Lordship is very sick, though, I trust,
recoverable with warm diet."  But Accession Day came and went without
the presence of Essex.  Burghley wrote again; even Nottingham sent a
fine Elizabethan letter, protesting his friendship.  He doubted "that
some villanous device had been pursued to make your Lordship conceive
ill of me: but, my Lord, if I have not dealt in all things concerning
you, as I would have dealt withal had I been in your place, let me
never enjoy the kingdom of Heaven!"  Under this fusillade Essex
weakened so far as to let it be known that he would return--if Her
Majesty expressly required it.  And then Elizabeth mounted her high
horse.  She would mention the matter no more; she had other things to
think of; she must give the whole of her attention to the negotiations
with the French Ambassador.

The French Ambassador did indeed require skilful handling.  A new
diplomatic situation was arising, so full of uncertainty that Elizabeth
found it more difficult than ever to decide upon the course to take.
King Philip had unexpectedly recovered after the return of his fleet to
Ferrol.  He had sent for the Adelantado, who, it was expected by the
courtiers, would leave the King's presence for the gallows.  But not at
all; the interview was entirely devoted to a discussion of the
forthcoming invasion of England, which was to {157} take place in the
Spring.  There was to be a fourth Armada.  Extraordinary efforts were
to be made, the deficiencies of the past were to be rectified, and this
time there would be no doubt of the result.  A State paper was drawn
up, to determine the steps which must be taken to ensure the success of
the expedition.  "The first," so ran this remarkable document, "is to
recommend the undertaking to God, and to endeavour to amend our sins.
But, since his Majesty has already given a general order to this
effect, and has appointed a commander who usually insists upon this
point, it will only be needful to take care that the order is obeyed
and to promulgate it again."  In the next place, a large sum of money
must be raised, "with extraordinary rapidity and by every licit means
that can be devised.  In order to examine what means are licit, a
committee of theologians must be summoned, to whom so great a matter
may be confided, and their opinion should be adopted."  Certainly, with
such wisdom at the head of affairs, there could be no possible doubt
whatever about the success of the scheme.

But, while the attack on England was maturing, King Philip was growing
more and more anxious for peace with France.  Henry IV was gradually
establishing his position, and, when he recaptured Amiens, the moment
for opening negotiations had come.  The French King, on his side,
wished for peace; he saw {158} that he could obtain it; but, before
coming to a conclusion, it was necessary to consult his two allies--the
English and the Dutch.  He hoped to persuade them to a general
pacification, and with this end in view he despatched a special envoy,
De Maisse, to London.

If De Maisse expected to extract a speedy reply to his proposals, he
was doomed to disappointment.  He was received at the English Court
with respect and cordiality, but, as his questions grew more definite,
the replies to them grew more vague.  He had several interviews with
Elizabeth, and the oracle was not, indeed, dumb; on the contrary, it
was extremely talkative--upon every subject but the one in hand.  The
ambassador was perplexed, amazed, and fascinated, while the Queen
rambled on from topic to topic, from music to religion, from dancing to
Essex, from the state of Christendom to her own accomplishments.  She
touched upon King Philip, who, she said, had tried to have her murdered
fifteen times.  "How the man must love me!" she added with a laugh and
a sigh.  She regretted these fatal differences in religion, which, she
considered, mostly turned upon bagatelles.  She quoted Horace:
"quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi."  Yes, it was all too
true; her people were suffering, and she loved her people, and her
people loved her; she would rather die than diminish by one iota that
mutual affection; and yet {159} it could not last much longer, for she
was on the brink of the grave.  Then, before De Maisse could get in a
word of expostulation, "No, no!" she exclaimed.  "I don't think I shall
die as soon as all that!  I am not so old, _Monsieur l'Ambassadeur_, as
you suppose."

The Queen's costumes were a source of perpetual astonishment to De
Maisse, and he constantly took note of them in his journal.  He learnt
that she had never parted with a dress in the course of her life and
that about three thousand hung in her wardrobes.  On one occasion he
experienced something more than astonishment.  Summoned to an audience,
he found Elizabeth standing near a window, in most unusual attire.  Her
black taffeta dress was cut in the Italian fashion, and ornamented with
broad gold bands, the sleeves were open and lined with crimson.  Below
this dress which was open all down the front, was another of white
damask, open also down to the waist; and below that again was a white
chemise, also open.  The amazed ambassador hardly knew where to look.
Whenever he glanced at the Queen, he seemed to see far too much, and
his embarrassment was still further increased by the deliberation with
which, from time to time, throwing back her head as she talked, she
took the folds of her dress in her hands and held them apart, so that,
as he described it, "lui voyait-on tout l'estomac jusques au nombril."
The costume was completed by a red wig, which fell on to her shoulders
{160} and was covered with magnificent pearls, while strings of pearls
were twisted round her arms, and her wrists were covered with jewelled
bracelets.  Sitting down when he appeared, she discoursed for several
hours with the utmost amiability.  The Frenchman was convinced that she
was trying to bewitch him; perhaps she was; or perhaps the
unaccountable woman had merely been feeling a little vague and
fantastic that morning when she put on her clothes.

The absence of Essex dominated the domestic situation, and De Maisse
was not slow to perceive a state of tension in the atmosphere.  The
great Earl, hovering on the outskirts of London in self-imposed and
ambiguous exile, filled every mind with fears, hopes, and calculations.
The Queen's references to the subject, though apparently outspoken,
were not illuminating.  She assured the ambassador that if Essex had
really failed in his duty during the Islands Voyage she would have cut
off his head, but that she had gone into the question very thoroughly,
and come to the conclusion that he was blameless.  She appeared to be
calm; her allusion to the Earl's execution seemed to be a piece of
half-jocular bravado; and she immediately passed on to other matters.
The courtiers were more agitated.  There were strange rumours abroad.
It was whispered that the Earl had announced his approaching departure
for the West, and had declared that so many gentlemen were with {161}
him who had been ill-recompensed for their services that it would be
dangerous to stay any longer near London.  The rash remark was repeated
everywhere by Essex's enemies; but it had no sequel, and he remained at
Wanstead.

All through the month of December, while De Maisse was struggling to
obtain some categorical pronouncement from Elizabeth, this muffled
storm continued.  At one moment Essex suggested that his difference
with Nottingham might be settled by single combat--a proposal that,
curiously enough, was not accepted.  Nottingham himself grew testy,
took to his bed, and talked of going into the country.  At last, quite
unexpectedly, Essex appeared at Court.  It was instantly known that he
had triumphed.  On the 28th the Queen made him Earl Marshal of England.
The office had been in abeyance for many years, and its revival and
bestowal at this moment was indeed a remarkable sign of the royal
favour; for the appointment automatically restored the precedency of
Essex over Nottingham.  Since the offices of Lord Admiral and Earl
Marshal were by statute of equal rank, and since both were held by
Earls, it followed that the first place belonged to him of the older
creation.

A few days later De Maisse prepared to depart, having achieved nothing
by his mission.  He paid a visit of farewell to Essex, who received him
with sombre courtesy.  A great cloud, said the Earl, had {162} been
hanging over his head, though now it was melting away.  He did not
believe in the possibility of peace between Spain and England; but he
was unwilling to take a part in those negotiations; it was useless--the
Father and the Son alone were listened to.  Then he paused, and added
gloomily, "The Court is a prey to two evils--delay and inconstancy; and
the cause is the sex of the sovereign."  De Maisse, inwardly noting the
curious combination of depression, anger, and ambition, respectfully
withdrew.

The Earl might still be surly; but the highest of spirits possessed
Elizabeth.  The cruel suspense of the last two months--the longest and
most anxious of those wretched separations--was over; Essex was back
again; a new delightful zest came bursting into existence.  France
could wait.  She would send Robert Cecil to talk to Henry.  In the
meantime--she looked gaily round for some object on which to vent her
energy--yes, there was James of Scotland!  That ridiculous young man
had been up to his tricks again; but she would give him a lesson.  It
had come to her ears that he was actually sending out an envoy to the
Courts of the Continent, to assert his right of succession to the
English throne.  His right of succession!  It was positively a mania.
He seemed to think she was already dead; but he would find he was
mistaken.  Lashing herself into a most exhilarating fury, she {163}
seized her pen, and wrote a letter to her brother of Scotland, well
calculated to make him shake in his shoes.  "When the first blast," she
began, "of strange unused and seld heard-of sounds had pearsed my ears,
I supposed that flyeing fame, who with swift quills ofte passeth with
the worst, had brought report of some untrothe"; but it was not so.  "I
am sorry," she continued, "that you have so wilfully falen from your
best stay, and will needs throwe yourself into the hurlpool of
bottomless discredit.  Was the haste soe great to hie to such oprobry?
... I see well wee two be of very different natures ... Shall imbassage
be sent to forayne princes laden with instructions of your raishe
advised charge?  I assure you the travaile of your creased words shall
passe the boundes of too many landes, with an imputation of such
levytie, as when the true sonnshine of my sincere dealing and
extraordinary care ever for your safety and honor shall overshade too
far the dymme and mystic clowdes of false invectyves ... And be
assured, that you deale with such a kinge as will beare no wronges and
indure no infamy.  The examples have been so lately seen as they can
hardly be forgotten, of a farr mightier and potenter prince than many
Europe hath.  Looke you not therefore without large amends I may or
will slupper-up such indignities ... And so I recomend you to a better
mynde and more advysed conclusions."

{164}

Having polished off King James, she felt able to cope once more with
King Henry.  She told Robert Cecil that he should go to France as her
special ambassador, and the Secretary was all assent and gratitude.
Inwardly, however, he was uneasy; he did not relish the thought of a
long absence abroad while the Earl remained at home in possession of
the field; and, while he gravely sat over his dispatches, he wondered
what could be done.  He decided to be perfectly open--to approach his
rival with a frank avowal of his anxieties.  The plan worked; and
Essex, in generous grandeur, remembering with a smile how, in his
absence, both the Secretaryship and the Duchy of Lancaster had gone to
Cecil, swore that he would steal no marches.  Yet Cecil still felt
uncomfortable.  It happened that at that moment a large and valuable
consignment of cochineal arrived from the Indies for the Queen.  He
suggested that Essex should be allowed the whole for 50,000, at the
rate of eighteen shillings a pound, the market price of a pound of
cochineal being between thirty and forty shillings; and he also
recommended that Essex should be given 7000 worth of the precious
substance as a free gift.  Elizabeth readily consented, and the Earl
found himself bound to the Secretary by something more than airy
chivalry--by ties of gratitude for a very solid benefit.

Cecil had taken ship for France, when news of a {165} most alarming
nature reached London.  A Spanish fleet of thirty-eight fly-boats with
5000 soldiers on board was sailing up the Channel.  Elizabeth's first
thought was for her Secretary.  She sent an urgent message, forbidding
him to leave England; but he had already sailed, had missed the Spanish
fleet, and arrived at Dieppe in safety.  From there he at once
despatched to his father a full account of the enemy's armament,
writing on the cover of his letter, "For life, for life, for very
life," with a drawing of a gallows, as a hint to the messenger of what
would happen to him if he dallied on the road.  There was not a
moment's hesitation in London.  The consultations of the Government
were brief and to the point: orders were sent out in every direction,
and no one asked the advice of the theologians.  Lord Cumberland, with
all the ships he could collect, was told to pursue the enemy; Lord
Nottingham hurried to Gravesend, and Lord Cobham to Dover; Raleigh was
commissioned to furnish provisions all along the coast; Essex was to
stand ready to repel an attack wherever it might be delivered.  But the
alarm passed as quickly as it had arisen.  Cumberland's squadron found
the Spaniards outside Calais, and sank eighteen of the fly-boats; the
rest of them huddled into the harbour, from which they never ventured
to emerge.

Essex kept his promise.  During the Secretary's absence, he supplied
his place with the Queen, but {166} made no attempt to take an unfair
advantage of the situation.  For the time indeed, his interests seemed
to be elsewhere, and politics gave way to love-making.  During the
early wintry months of 1598 he kept himself warm at Court, philandering
with the ladies.  The rumours of his proceedings were many and
scandalous.  It was known that he had had a child by Mistress Elizabeth
Southwell.  He was suspected of a passion for Lady Mary Howard and of
another for Mistress Russell.  A court gossip reported it as certain
that "his fairest Brydges" had once more captured the Earl's heart.
While he passed the time with plays and banquets, both Lady Essex and
the Queen were filled with uneasiness.  Elizabeth's high spirits had
suddenly collapsed; neither the state of Europe nor the state of
Whitehall gave her any satisfaction; she grew moody, suspicious, and
violent.  For the slightest neglect, she railed against her Maids of
Honour until they burst out crying.  She believed that she had detected
love-looks between Essex and Lady Mary Howard, and could hardly control
her anger.  She did, however, for the moment, privately determining to
have her revenge before long.  Her opportunity came when Lady Mary
appeared one day in a particularly handsome velvet dress, with a rich
border, powdered with pearl and gold.  Her Majesty said nothing, but
next morning she had the dress secretly abstracted from Lady Mary's
wardrobe and brought to her.  {167} That evening she electrified the
Court by stalking in with Lady Mary's dress upon her; the effect was
grotesque; she was far taller than Lady Mary and the dress was not
nearly long enough.  "Well, Ladies," she said, "how like you my
new-fancied suit?"  Then, amid the gasping silence, she bore down upon
Lady Mary.  "Ah, my Lady, and what think _you_?  Is not this dress too
short and ill-becoming?"  The unfortunate girl stammered out an assent.
"Why then," cried Her Majesty, "if it become not me, as being too
short, I am minded it shall never become thee, as being too fine; so it
fitteth neither well"; and she marched out of the room again.

Such moments were disturbing; but Essex still had the art to pacify the
royal agitations.  Then all was radiance again, and spring was seen to
be approaching, and one could forget the perplexities of passion and
politics, and one could be careless and gay.  In a particularly
yielding moment, the Earl had persuaded the Queen to grant him a great
favour; she had agreed to see his mother--the odious Lettice Leicester,
who had been banished from her presence for years.  Yet, when it came
to the point, Elizabeth jibbed.  Time after time Lady Leicester was
brought to the Privy Gallery; there she stood waiting for Her Majesty
to pass; but, for some reason or other, Her Majesty always went out by
another way.  At last it was arranged that Lady Chandos should give a
great {168} dinner, at which the Queen and Lady Leicester should meet.
Everything was ready; the royal coach was waiting; Lady Leicester stood
at the entrance with a fair jewel in her hand, worth 300.  But the
Queen sent word that she should not go.  Essex, who had been ill all
day, got out of bed when he heard what had happened, put on a
dressing-gown, and had himself conveyed to the Queen by a back way.  It
was all useless, the Queen would not move, and Lady Chandos's dinner
party was indefinitely postponed.  Then all at once Elizabeth relented.
Lady Leicester was allowed to come to Court; she appeared before the
Queen, kissed her hand, kissed her breast, embraced her, and was kissed
in return.  The reconciliation was a very pretty one; but how long
would these fair days last?

In the meantime, Cecil had failed as completely in France as De Maisse
in England.  He returned, having accomplished nothing, and early in May
the inevitable happened--Henry broke off from his allies, and, by the
treaty of Vervins, made peace with Spain.  Elizabeth's comments were
far from temperate.  The French King, she said, was the Antichrist of
Ingratitude; she had helped him to his crown, and now he had deserted
her; it was true enough--but the wily Bearnais, like everybody else,
was playing his own game.  Burghley, however, was convinced that the
situation required something more than vituperative {169} outbursts.
He wished for peace, and believed that it was still not too late to
follow Henry's example; Philip, he thought, would be ready enough to
agree to reasonable terms.  Such were Burghley's views, and Essex
violently opposed them.  He urged an exactly contrary policy--a
vigorous offensive--a great military effort, which would bring Spain to
her knees.  To start off with, he proposed an immediate attack upon the
Indies; whereupon Burghley made a mild allusion to the Islands Voyage.
And so began once more a long fierce struggle between the Earl and the
Cecils--a struggle that turned the Council board into a field of
battle, where the issues of Peace and War, the destinies of England,
and the ambitions of hostile ministers jostled and hurtled together,
while the Queen sat in her high chair at the head of the table,
listening, approving, fiercely disagreeing, veering passionately from
one side to the other, and never making up her mind.

Week after week the fight went on.  Essex's strong card was Holland.
Were we, he asked, to play the same trick on the Dutch as Henry had
played on us?  Were we to leave our Protestant allies to the tender
mercy of the Spaniard?  Burghley replied that the Dutch might join in a
general pacification; and he countered Holland with Ireland.  He
pointed out that the only hope of effectually putting a stop to the
running sore of Irish rebellion, which was draining {170} the resources
of England, was to make peace with Spain, whereby the rebels would be
deprived of Spanish money and reinforcements, while at the same time
England would be able to devote all her energies to a thorough conquest
of the country.  Current events gave weight to his words.  The Lord
Deputy Borough had suddenly died; there was confusion in Dublin; and
Tyrone, the leader of the rebels in Ulster, had, after a patched-up
truce, re-opened hostilities.  In June it was known that he was laying
siege to the fort on the river Blackwater, one of the principal English
strongholds in the North of Ireland, and that the garrison was in
difficulties.  No new Lord Deputy had been appointed; who should be
selected for that most difficult post?  Elizabeth, gravely troubled,
found it impossible to decide.  It looked as if the Irish question was
soon to become as intolerable as the Spanish one.  As the summer days
grew hotter, the discussions in the Council grew hotter too.  There
were angry explosions on either side.  One day, after Essex had
delivered a feverish harangue on his favourite topic--the infamy of a
peace with Spain--Burghley drew out a prayer-book from his pocket and
pointed with trembling finger to a passage in the fifty-fifth psalm.
"Bloodthirsty and deceitful men," read Essex, "will not live out half
their days."  He furiously brushed aside the imputation; but everyone
was deeply impressed; and there were some who recollected {171}
afterwards, with awe and wonder, the prophetic text of the old Lord
Treasurer.

Essex felt that he was misunderstood, and composed a pamphlet to
explain his views.  It was a gallantly written work, but it convinced
no one who was not convinced already.  As for the Queen, she still
wavered.  The Dutch sent an embassy, offering large sums of money if
she would continue the war.  This was important, and she appeared to be
coming round finally to an anti-Spanish policy; but it was appearance
and nothing more; she sheered away again with utter indecision.

Nerves grew jangled, and tempers dangerously short.  Everything, it was
clear, was working up towards one of those alarming climaxes, with
which all at Court had grown so familiar; and, while they waited in
dread, sure enough, the climax came.  But this time it was of a nature
undreamt of by the imagination of any courtier: when the incredible
story reached them, it was as if the earth had opened at their feet.
The question of the Irish appointment had become pressing, and
Elizabeth, feeling that something really must be done about it, kept
reverting to the subject on every possible occasion, without any
result.  At last she thought she had decided that Sir William Knollys,
Essex's uncle, was the man.  She was in the Council Chamber, with
Essex, the Lord Admiral, Robert Cecil, and Thomas Windebank, {172}
clerk of the signet, when she mentioned this.  As often happened, they
were all standing up.  Essex, who did not want to lose the support of
his uncle at Court, proposed instead Sir George Carew, a follower of
the Cecils, whose absence in Ireland would, he thought, inconvenience
the Secretary.  The Queen would not hear of it, but Essex persisted;
each was annoyed; they pressed their candidates; their words grew high
and loud; and at last the Queen roundly declared that, say what he
would, Knollys should go.  Essex, overcome with irritation,
contemptuous in look and gesture, turned his back upon her.  She
instantly boxed his ears.  "Go to the devil!" she cried, flaring with
anger.  And then the impossible happened.  The mad young man completely
lost his temper, and, with a resounding oath, clapped his hand to his
sword.  "This is an outrage," he shouted in his sovereign's face, "that
I will not put up with.  I would not have borne it from your father's
hands."--He was interrupted by Nottingham, who pressed him backwards.
Elizabeth did not stir.  There was an appalling silence; and he rushed
from the room.

Unparalleled as was the conduct of Essex, there was yet another
surprise in store for the Court, for the Queen's behaviour was no less
extraordinary.  She did nothing.  The Tower--the block--heaven knows
what exemplary punishment--might naturally have been expected.  But
nothing happened at all.  Essex {173} vanished into the country, and
the Queen, wrapped in impenetrable mystery, proceeded with her usual
routine of work and recreation.  What was passing in her head?  Had she
been horrified into a paralysis?  Was she overcome by the workings of
outraged passion?  Was she biding her time for some terrific revenge?
It was impossible to guess.  She swept on her way, until ... there was
indeed an interruption.  The great, the inevitable, misfortune had come
at last; Burghley was dying.  Worn out by old age, the gout, and the
cares of his great office, he was sinking rapidly to the grave.  He had
been her most trusted counsellor for more than forty years--from a
time--how unbelievably distant!--when she had not been Queen of
England.  Her Spirit, she had always called him; and now her Spirit was
leaving her for ever.  She could attend to nothing else.  She hoped
against hope, she prayed, she visited him constantly, waiting with
grand affection--the solicitude of some strange old fairy
daughter--beside his dying bed.  Sir Robert sent him game, but he was
too feeble to lift the food to his mouth, and the Queen fed him
herself.  "I pray you," he wrote to his son, "diligently and
effectually let Her Majesty understand how her singular kindness doth
overcome my power to acquit it, who, though she will not be a mother,
yet sheweth herself, by feeding me with her own princely hand, as a
careful norice; and if I may be weaned to feed myself, I shall be more
{174} ready to serve her on the earth; if not, I hope to be, in heaven,
a servitor for her and God's Church.  And so I thank you for your
partridges."

When all was over, Elizabeth wept long and bitterly; and her tears were
still flowing--it was but ten days after Burghley's death--when yet
another calamity fell upon her.  There had been a terrible disaster in
Ireland.  Sir Henry Bagenal, marching at the head of a powerful army to
the relief of the fort on the Blackwater, had been attacked by Tyrone;
his army had been annihilated, and he himself killed.  The whole of
northern Ireland, as far as the walls of Dublin, lay open to the
rebels.  It was the most serious reverse that Elizabeth had suffered in
the whole of her reign.

The news was quickly carried to Whitehall; it was also carried to the
Escurial.  King Philip's agony was coming to an end at last.  The
ravages of his dreadful diseases had overwhelmed him utterly; covered
from head to foot with putrefying sores, he lay moribund in
indescribable torment.  His bed had been lifted into the oratory, so
that his dying eyes might rest till the last moment on the high altar
in the great church.  He was surrounded by monks, priests, prayers,
chantings, and holy relics.  For fifty days and nights the
extraordinary scene went on.  He was dying as he had lived--in absolute
piety.  His conscience was clear: he had always done his duty; he had
been infinitely {175} industrious; he had existed solely for virtue and
the glory of God.  One thought alone troubled him: had he been remiss
in the burning of heretics?  He had burnt many, no doubt; but he might
have burnt more.  Was it because of this, perhaps, that he had not been
quite as successful as he might have wished?  It was certainly
mysterious--he could not understand it--there seemed to be something
wrong with his Empire--there was never enough money--the Dutch--the
Queen of England ... as he mused, a paper was brought in.  It was the
despatch from Ireland, announcing the victory of Tyrone.  He sank back
on his pillows, radiant; all was well, his prayers and his virtues had
been rewarded, and the tide had turned at last.  He dictated a letter
to Tyrone of congratulation and encouragement.  He promised immediate
succour, he foretold the destruction of the heretics, and the ruin of
the heretic Queen.  A fifth Armada ... he could dictate no more, and
sank into a tortured stupor.  When he awoke, it was night and there was
singing at the altar below him; a sacred candle was lighted and put
into his hand, the flame, as he clutched it closer and closer, casting
lurid shadows upon his face; and so, in ecstasy and in torment, in
absurdity and in greatness, happy, miserable, horrible, and holy, King
Philip went off, to meet the Trinity.




{176}

XI

Essex had gone away to Wanstead, where he remained in a disturbed,
uncertain, and unhappy condition.  The alternating contradictions in
his state of mind grew more extreme than ever.  There were moments when
he felt that he must fling himself at the feet of his mistress, that,
come what might, he must regain her affection, her companionship, and
all the sweets of the position that had so long been his.  He could
not--he would not--think that he had been in the wrong; she had treated
him with an indignity that was unbearable; and then as he brooded over
what had happened, anger flamed up in his heart.  He would tell her
what he thought of her.  Had he not always done so--ever since that
evening, more than ten years ago, when he had chided her so
passionately, with Raleigh standing at the door?  He would chide her
now, no less passionately, but, as was fitting, in a deeper and a
sadder tone.  "Madam," he wrote, "when I think how I have preferred
your beauty above all things, and received no pleasure in life but by
the increase of your favour towards me, I wonder at myself what cause
there could be to make me absent myself one day from you.  But when I
{177} remember that your Majesty hath, by the intolerable wrong you
have done both me and yourself, not only broken all laws of affection,
but done against the honour of your sex, I think all places better than
that where I am, and all dangers well undertaken, so I might retire
myself from the memory of my false, inconstant and beguiling
pleasures....  I was never proud, till your Majesty sought to make me
too base.  And now, since my destiny is no better, my despair shall be
as my love was, without repentance....  I must commend my faith to be
judged by Him who judgeth all hearts, since on earth I find no right.
Wishing your Majesty all comforts and joys in the world, and no greater
punishment for your wrongs to me, than to know the faith of him you
have lost, and the baseness of those you shall keep,

"Your Majesty's most humble servant,
  "R. ESSEX."


When the news of the disaster on the Blackwater reached him, he sent
another letter, offering his services, and hurried to Whitehall.  He
was not admitted.  "He hath played long enough upon me," Elizabeth was
heard to remark, "and now I mean to play awhile upon him, and stand as
much upon my greatness as he hath upon stomach."  He wrote a long
letter of expostulation, with quotations from Horace, and vows of duty.
"I stay in this place for no other {178} purpose but to attend your
commandment."  She sent him a verbal message in reply.  "Tell the Earl
that I value _my_self at as great a price as _he_ values _him_self."
He wrote again: "I do confess that, as a man, I have been more subject
to your natural beauty than as a subject to the power of a king."  He
obtained an interview; the Queen was not ungracious; the onlookers
supposed that all was well again.  But it was not, and he returned to
Wanstead in darker dudgeon than ever.

It was clear that what Elizabeth was waiting for was some apology.
Since this was not forthcoming, a deadlock had apparently been reached,
and it seemed to the moderate men at Court that it was time an effort
should be made to induce the Earl to realise the essence of the
situation.  The Lord Keeper Egerton, therefore, composed an elaborate
appeal.  Did not Essex understand, he asked, that his present course
was full of danger?  Did he not see that he was encouraging his
enemies?  Had he forgotten his friends?  Had he forgotten his country?
There was only one thing to do--he must beg for the Queen's
forgiveness; whether he was right or wrong could make no difference.
"Have you given cause, and yet take scandal to yourself?  Why then, all
you can do is too little to give satisfaction.  Is cause of scandal
given to you?  Let policy, duty, and religion enforce you to yield, and
submit to your sovereign, between whom {179} and you there can be no
proportion of duty."  "The difficulty, my good Lord," Egerton
concluded, "is to conquer yourself, which is the height of all true
valour and fortitude, whereunto all your honourable actions have
tended.  Do it in this, and God will be pleased, Her Majesty well
satisfied, your country will take good, and your friends comfort by it;
yourself shall receive honour; and your enemies, if you have any, shall
be disappointed of their bitter-sweet hope."

Essex's reply was most remarkable.  In a style no less elaborate than
the Lord Keeper's, he rebutted all his arguments.  He denied that he
was doing wrong either to himself or his friends; the Queen's conduct,
he said, made it impossible for him to act in any other way.  How could
he serve his country when she had "driven him into a private kind of
life"--when she had "dismissed, discharged, and disabled" him?  "The
indissoluble duty," he continued, "which I owe to Her Majesty is only
the duty of allegiance, which I never will, nor never can, fail in.
The duty of attendance is no indissoluble duty.  I owe to Her Majesty
the duty of an Earl and Lord Marshal of England.  I have been content
to do Her Majesty the service of a clerk, but can never serve her as a
villain or a slave."  As he wrote, he grew warmer.  "But, say you, I
must yield and submit; I can neither yield myself to be guilty, or this
imputation laid upon me to be just....  Have I given cause, ask you,
and take scandal when {180} I have done?  No, I give no cause....  I
patiently bear all, and sensibly feel all, that I then received when
this scandal was given me.  Nay more"--and now he could hold himself in
no longer--"when the vilest of all indignities are done unto me, doth
religion enforce me to sue?"  The whole heat of his indignation was
flaring out.  "Doth God require it?  Is it impiety not to do it?  What,
cannot princes err?  Cannot subjects receive wrong?  Is an earthly
power or authority infinite?  Pardon me, pardon me, my good Lord, I can
never subscribe to these principles.  Let Solomon's fool laugh when he
is stricken; let those that mean to make their profit of princes shew
to have no sense of princes' injuries; let them acknowledge an infinite
absoluteness on earth, that do not believe in an absolute infiniteness
in heaven.  As for me, I have received wrong, and feel it.  My cause is
good, I know it; and whatsoever come, all the powers on earth can never
shew more strength and constancy in oppressing than I can shew in
suffering whatsoever can or shall be imposed on me."

Magnificent words, certainly, but dangerous, portentous, and not wise.
What good could come of flaunting republican sentiments under the calm
nose of a Tudor?  Such oratory was too early or too late.  Hampden
would have echoed it; but in truth it was the past rather than the
future that was speaking with the angry pen of Robert Devereux.  The
blood of a hundred Barons who had paid small heed to the {181} Lord's
Anointed was pulsing in his heart.  Yes!  If it was a question of
birth, why should the heir of the ancient aristocracy of England bow
down before the descendant of some Bishop's butler in Wales?  Such were
his wild feelings--the last extravagance of the Middle Ages flickering
through the high Renaissance nobleman.  The facts vanished; his
outraged imagination preferred to do away with them.  For, after all,
what had actually happened?  Simply this, he had been rude to an old
lady, who was also a Queen, and had had his ears boxed.  There were no
principles involved, and there was no oppression.  It was merely a
matter of bad temper and personal pique.

A realistic observer would have seen that in truth there were only two
alternatives for one in Essex's position--a graceful apology followed
by a genuine reconciliation with the Queen, or else a complete and
final retirement from public life.  More than once his mind swayed--as
so often before--towards the latter solution; but he was not a realist,
he was a romantic--passionate, restless, confused, and he shut his eyes
to what was obvious--that, as things stood, if he could not bring
himself to be one of those who "make their profit of princes" he must
indeed make up his mind to a life of books and hunting at Chartley.
Nor were those who surrounded him any more realistic than himself.
Francis Bacon had for many months past avoided his company; Anthony was
an enthusiastic {182} devotee; Henry Cuffe was rash and cynical; his
sisters were too ambitious, his mother was too much biased by her
lifelong quarrel with Elizabeth, to act as a restraining force.  Two
other followers completed his intimate domestic circle.  His mother's
husband--for Lady Leicester had married a third time--was Sir
Christopher Blount.  A sturdy soldier and a Roman Catholic, he had
served his stepson faithfully for many years, and, it was clear, would
continue to do so, whatever happened, to the end.  More dubious, from
every point of view, was the position of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy.
The tall young man with the brown hair and the beautiful complexion,
who had won Elizabeth's favour by his feats at tilting, and who had
fought a duel with Essex over the golden chessman given him by the
Queen, had grown and prospered with the years.  The death of his elder
brother had brought him the family peerage; he had distinguished
himself as Essex's lieutenant in all his expeditions, and he had never
lost the favour of Elizabeth.  But he was united to Essex by something
more than a common military service--by a singular romance.  The Earl's
favourite sister, Lady Penelope, had been the Stella Sir Philip Sidney
had vainly loved.  She had married Lord Rich, while Sidney had married
Walsingham's daughter, who, on Sir Philip's death, had become the wife
of Essex.  Penelope had not been happy; Lord Rich was an odious
husband, {183} and she had fallen in love with Lord Mountjoy.  A
liaison sprang up--a lifelong liaison--one of those indisputable and
yet ambiguous connexions which are at once recognised and ignored by
society--between Essex's friend and Essex's sister.  Thus Mountjoy,
doubly bound to the Earl, had become--or so it seemed--the most
faithful of his adherents.  The little group--Essex, Lady Essex,
Mountjoy, and Penelope Rich--was held together by the deepest feelings
of desire and affection; while behind and above them all there hovered,
in sainted knightliness, the shade of Sir Philip Sidney.

And so there was no barrier to hold Essex back from folly and
intemperance; on the contrary, the characteristics of his
environment--personal devotion, family pride, and military zeal--all
conspired to urge him on.  More remote influences worked in the same
direction.  Throughout the country the Earl's popularity was a growing
force.  The reasons for this were vague, but none the less effectual.
His gallant figure had taken hold of the popular imagination; he was
generous and courteous; he was the enemy of Raleigh, who was everywhere
disliked; and now he was out of favour and seemed to be hardly used.
The puritanical City of London, especially, tending, as it always did,
to be hostile to the Court, paid an incongruous devotion to the
unregenerate Earl.  The word went round that he was a pillar of
Protestantism, and {184} Essex, who was ready enough to be all things
to all men, was not unwilling to accept the _rle_.  Evidence of
another kind of esteem appeared when, on the death of Burghley, the
University of Cambridge at once elected him to fill the vacant place of
Chancellor.  He was delighted by the compliment, and as a mark of
gratitude presented the University with a silver cup of rare design.
The curious goblet still stands on the table of the Vice-Chancellor, to
remind the passing generations of Englishmen at once of the tumult of
the past and of the placid continuity of their history.

Egged on by private passion and public favour, the headstrong man gave
vent, in moments of elation, to strange expressions of anger and
revolt.  Sir Christopher Blount was present at Wanstead when one of
these explosions occurred, and, though his stepson's words were
whirling and indefinite, they revealed to him with startling vividness
a state of mind that was full, as he said afterwards, of "dangerous
discontentment."  But the moments of elation passed, to be succeeded by
gloom and hesitation.  What was to be done?  There was no satisfaction
anywhere; retirement, submission, defiance--each was more wretched than
the others; and the Queen still made no sign.

In reality, of course, Elizabeth too was wavering.  She kept up a bold
front; she assured everybody, including herself, that this time she was
really going to {185} be firm; but she knew well enough how many times
before she had yielded in like circumstances, and experience indicated
that the future would resemble the past.  As usual, the withdrawal of
that radiant presence was becoming insupportable.  She thought of
Wanstead--so near, so far--and almost capitulated.  Yet no, she would
do nothing, she would go on waiting; only a little longer, perhaps, and
the capitulation would come from the other side.  And then one dimly
discerns that, while she paused and struggled, a new and a sinister
element of uncertainty was beginning to join the others to increase the
fluctuation of her mind.  At all times she kept her eyes and her ears
open; her sense of the drifts of feeling and opinion was extremely
shrewd, and there were many about her who were ready enough to tell
unpleasant stories of the absent favourite and expatiate on his
growing--his extraordinary--popularity all over the country.  One day a
copy of the letter to Egerton was put into her hand.  She read it, and
her heart sank; she scrupulously concealed her feelings, but she could
no longer hide from herself that the preoccupation which had now come
to wind itself among the rest that perturbed her spirit was one of
alarm.  If that was his state of mind--if that was his position in the
country ... she did not like it at all.  The lion-hearted heroine of
tradition would not have hesitated in such circumstances--would have
cleared up the situation in one {186} bold and final stroke.  But that
was very far indeed from being Elizabeth's way.  "Pusillanimity," the
Spanish ambassadors had reported; a crude diagnosis; what really
actuated her in the face of peril or hostility was an innate
predisposition to hedge.  If there was indeed danger in the direction
of Wanstead she would not go out to meet it--oh no!--she would
propitiate it, she would lull it into unconsciousness, she would put it
off, and put it off.  That was her instinct; and yet, in the
contradictory convolutions of her character, another and a completely
opposite propensity may be perceived, which nevertheless--such is the
strange mechanism of the human soul--helped to produce the same result.
Deep in the recesses of her being, a terrific courage possessed her.
She balanced and balanced, and if, one day, she was to find that she
was exercising her prodigies of agility on a tightrope over an
abyss--so much the better!  She knew that she was equal to any
situation.  All would be well.  She relished everything--the diminution
of risks and the domination of them; and she would proceed, in her
extraordinary way, with her life's work, which consisted ... of what?
Putting out flames?  Or playing with fire?  She laughed; it was not for
her to determine!  Thus it happened that when the inevitable
reconciliation came it was not a complete one.  The details are hidden
from us; we do not know the terms of the peace; we only know that the
pretext for it was yet {187} another misfortune in Ireland.  Sir
Richard Bingham had been sent out to take command of the military
operations, and early in October, immediately upon his arrival at
Dublin, he died.  All was in confusion once more; Essex again offered
his services; and this time they were accepted.  Soon the Queen and the
favourite were as much together as they had ever been.  It appeared
that the past had been obliterated, and that the Earl--as was his
wont--had triumphantly regained his old position, as if there had never
been a quarrel.  In reality it was not so; the situation was a new one;
mutual confidence had departed.  For the first time, each side was
holding something back.  Essex, whatever his words, his looks, and even
his passing moods may have been, had not uprooted from his mind the
feelings of injury and defiance that had dictated his letter to
Egerton.  He had returned to Court as unchastened and undecided as
ever, blindly impelled by the enticement of power.  And Elizabeth on
her side had by no means forgotten what had happened; the scene in the
Council Chamber still rankled; she perceived that there was something
wrong with those protestations; and, while she conversed and flirted as
of old, she kept open a weather eye.

But these were subtleties it was very difficult to make sure of, as the
days whirled along at Whitehall and Greenwich and Nonesuch; and even
Francis Bacon could not quite decide what had occurred.  {188} Possibly
Essex was really again in the ascendant; possibly, after the death of
Burghley, the star of Cecil was declining; it was most unwise to be too
sure.  For more than a year, gradually moving towards the Cecils, he
had kept out of the Earl's way.  In repeated letters he had paid his
court to the Secretary, and his efforts had at last been rewarded in a
highly gratifying manner.  A new assassination plot had come to
light--a new Catholic conspiracy; the suspects had been seized; and
Bacon was instructed to assist the Government in the unravelling of the
mystery.  The work suited him very well, for, while it provided an
excellent opportunity for the display of intelligence, it also brought
him into a closer contact with great persons than he had hitherto
enjoyed.  And it turned out that he was particularly in need of such
support.  He had been unable to set his finances in order.  The
Mastership of the Rolls and Lady Hatton had both eluded him; and he had
been obliged to content himself with the reversion to the Clerkship of
the Star Chamber--with the prospect, instead of the reality, of
emolument.  Yet it had seemed for a moment as if the prospect were
unexpectedly close at hand.  The actual Clerk was accused of
peculation, and the Lord Keeper Egerton was appointed, with others, to
examine into the case.  If the Clerk were removed, Bacon would succeed
to the office; he wrote a secret letter to Egerton; he promised, in
that eventuality, {189} to resign the office to Egerton's son, on the
understanding that the Lord Keeper on his side would do his best to
obtain for him some compensating position.  The project failed, for the
Clerk was not removed, and Bacon did not come into his reversion for
ten years.  In the meantime, an alarming poverty stared him in the
face.  He continued to borrow--from his brother, from his mother, from
Mr. Trott; the situation grew more and more serious; at last, one day,
as he was returning from the Tower after an examination of the
prisoners concerned in the assassination plot, he was positively
arrested for debt.  Robert Cecil and Egerton, however, to whom he
immediately applied for assistance, were able between them to get him
out of this difficulty, and his public duties were not interrupted
again.

But, if the Secretary was useful, the Earl might be useful too.  Now
that he was back at Court, it would be well to write to him.  "That
your Lordship," Bacon said, "is _in statu quo primo_ no man taketh
greater gladness than I do; the rather because I assure myself that of
your eclipses, as this hath been the longest, it shall be the last."
He hoped that "upon this, experience may found more perfect knowledge,
and upon knowledge more true consent....  And therefore, as bearing
unto your Lordship, after her Majesty, of all public persons the second
duty, I could not but signify unto you my affectionate gratulation."

{190}

So far so good; but now the clouds of a new tempest were seen to be
gathering on the horizon, filling the hearts of the watchers at
Whitehall with perplexity and perturbation.  It was absolutely
necessary that some one should be made Lord Deputy of Ireland.  After
the shattering scene in the summer, nothing had been done; the question
was urgent; upon its solution so much, so very much, depended!  The
Queen believed that she had found the right man--Lord Mountjoy.
Besides admiring his looks intensely, she had a high opinion of his
competence.  He was approached on the subject, and it was found that he
was willing to go.  For a short time it appeared that the matter was
happily settled--that Mountjoy was the _deux ex machina_ who would
bring peace not only to Ireland but to Whitehall.  But again the wind
shifted.  Essex once more protested against the appointment of one of
his own supporters; Mountjoy, he declared, was unfit for the post--he
was a scholar rather than a general.  It looked as if the fatal round
of refusal and recrimination was about to begin all over again.  Who
then, Essex was asked, did he propose?  Some year before, Bacon had
written him a letter of advice precisely on this affair of Ireland.  "I
think," said the man of policy, "if your Lordship lent your reputation
in this case--that is, to _pretend_ that you would accept the charge--I
think it would help you to settle Tyrone in his seeking accord, and win
you a great {191} deal of honour _gratis_."  There was only one
objection, Bacon thought, to this line of conduct: "Your Lordship is
too quick to pass in such cases from dissimulation to verity."  We
cannot trace all the moves--complicated, concealed, and fevered--that
passed at the Council table; but it seems probable that Essex, when
pressed to name a substitute for Mountjoy, remembered Bacon's advice.
He gave it as his opinion, Camden tells us, that "into Ireland must be
sent some prime man of the nobility which was strong in power, honour,
and wealth, in favour with military men, and which had before been
general of an army; so as he seemed with the finger to point to
himself."  The Secretary, with his face of gentle conscientiousness,
sat silent at the Board.  What were his thoughts?  If the Earl were
indeed to go to Ireland--it would be a hazardous decision; but if he
himself wished it--perhaps it would be better so.  He scrutinised the
future, weighing the possibilities with deliberate care.  It was
conceivable that the Earl, after all, was dissembling, that he
understood how dangerous it would be for him to leave England, and was
only making a show.  But Cecil knew, as well as his cousin, the weak
places in that brave character--knew the magnetism of arms and
action--knew the tendency "to pass from dissimulation to verity."  He
thought he saw what would happen.  "My Lord Mountjoy," he told a
confidential correspondent, "is named; but to you, in {192} secret I
speak of it, not as a secretary but as a friend, that I think the Earl
of Essex shall go Lieutenant of the Kingdom."  He sat writing; we do
not know of his other faint imperceptible movements.  We only know
that, in the Council, there were some who still pressed for the
appointment of Mountjoy, that the Earl's indication of himself was
opposed or neglected, and that then the candidature of Sir William
Knollys was suddenly revived.

Opposition always tended to make Essex lose his head.  He grew angry;
the Mountjoy proposal seriously vexed him, and the renewal of Knollys'
name was the last straw.  He fulminated against such notions, and, as
he did so, slipped--after what he had himself said, it was an easy, an
almost inevitable transition--into an assertion of his own claims.
Some councillors supported him, declaring that all would be well if the
Earl went; the Queen was impressed; Essex had embarked on a heated
struggle--he had pitted himself against Knollys and Mountjoy, and he
would win.  Francis Bacon had prophesied all too truly--the reckless
man had indeed "passed from dissimulation to verity."  Win he did.  The
Queen, bringing the discussion to a close, announced her decision:
since Essex was convinced that he could pacify Ireland, and since he
was so anxious for the office, he should have it; she would make him
her Lord Deputy.  With long elated strides and flashing {193} glances
he left the room in triumph; and so--with shuffling gait and looks of
mild urbanity--did Robert Cecil.

It was long before Essex began to realise fully what had happened.  The
sense of victory, both at the moment and in anticipation--both at home
and in Ireland--buoyed him up and carried him forward.  "I have beaten
Knollys and Mountjoy in the Council," he wrote to his friend and
follower, John Harington, "and by God I will beat Tyrone in the field;
for nothing worthy Her Majesty's honour hath yet been achieved."

Naturally enough the old story was repeated, and the long, accustomed
train of difficulties, disappointments, and delays dragged itself out.
Elizabeth chaffered over every detail, changed from day to day the size
and nature of the armament that she was fitting out, and disputed
fiercely upon the scope of the authority with which the new Lord Deputy
was to be invested.  As the weeks passed in angry bickering Essex sank
slowly downwards from elation to gloom.  Perhaps he had acted unwisely;
regrets attacked him; the future was dark and difficult; what was he
heading for?  He was overwhelmed by miserable sensations; but it was
too late now to draw back, and he must face the inevitable with
courage.  "Into Ireland I go," he told the young Earl of Southampton,
who had become his devoted disciple; "the Queen hath {194} irrevocably
decreed it, the Council do passionately urge it, and I am tied in my
own reputation to use no tergiversation; and, as it were indecorum to
slip collar now, so would it also be _minime tutum_; for Ireland would
be lost, and though it perished by destiny I should only be accused of
it, because I saw the fire burn and was called to quench it, but gave
no help."  He was well aware, he said, of the disadvantages of
absence--"the opportunities of practising enemies" and "the
construction of Princes, under whom _magna fama_ is more dangerous than
_mala_."  He realised and enumerated the difficulties of an Irish
campaign.  "All these things," he declared, "which I am like to see, I
do now foresee."  Yet to every objection he did his best to summon up
an answer.  "'Too ill success will be dangerous'--let them fear that
who allow excuses, or can be content to overlive their honour.  'Too
great will be envious'--I will never foreswear virtue for fear of
ostracism.  'The Court is the centre.'--But methinks it is the fairer
choice to command armies than humours." ... "These are the very private
problems," he concluded, "and nightly disputations, which from your
Lordship, whom I account another myself, I cannot hide."

At moments the gloom lifted, and hope returned.  The Queen smiled;
disagreements vanished; something like the old happy confidence was in
the air once more.  On Twelfth Night, 1599, there was a grand {195}
party for the Danish ambassador, and the Queen and the Earl danced hand
in hand before the assembled Court.  Visions of that other Twelfth
Night, five short years before--that apogee of happiness--must have
flitted through many memories.  Five short years--what a crowded gulf
between then and now!  And yet, now as then, those two figures were
together in their passion and their mystery, while the viols played
their beautiful tunes and the jewels glittered in the torch-light.
What was passing?  Perhaps, in that strange companionship, there was
delight, as of old ... and for the last time.

Elizabeth had much to trouble her--Ireland, Essex, the eternal question
of War and Peace--but she brushed it all aside, and sat for hours
translating the _Ars Poetica_ into English prose.  As for Ireland, she
had grown accustomed to that; and Essex, though fretful, seemed only
anxious to cut a figure as Lord Deputy--she could ignore those
uncomfortable suspicions of a few months ago.  There remained the
Spanish War; but that too seemed to have solved itself very
satisfactorily.  It drifted on, in complete ambiguity, while peace was
indefinitely talked of, with no fighting and no expense; a war that was
no war, in fact--precisely what was most to her liking.

One day, however, she had a shock.  A book fell into her hands--a
History of Henry the Fourth--she looked at it--there was a Latin
dedication to Essex.  {196} "To the most illustrious and honoured
Robert Earl of Essex and Ewe, Earl Marshal of England, Viscount of
Hereford and Bourchier, Baron Ferrars of Chartley, Lord Bourchier and
Louen"--what was all this?  She glanced through the volume, and found
that it contained an elaborate account of the defeat and deposition of
Richard the Second--a subject, implying as it did the possibility of
the removal of a sovereign from the throne of England, to which she
particularly objected.  It was true, no doubt, that the Bishop of
Carlisle was made to deliver an elaborate speech against the King's
deposition; but why bring the matter before the public at all?  What
could be the purpose of this wretched book?  She looked again at the
dedication, and as she looked the blood rushed to her head.  The tone
was one of gross adulation, but that was by no means all; there was a
phrase, upon which a most disgraceful construction might be put.  "Most
illustrious Earl, with your name adorning the front of our Henry, he
may go forth to the public happier and safer."[1]  The man would, no
doubt, pretend that "our Henry" referred to the book; but was there not
another very possible interpretation?--that if Henry IV had possessed
the name and titles of Essex his right to the throne would have been
better and more generally recognised.  It was treason!  She {197} sent
for Francis Bacon.  "Cannot this man--this John Hayward--be prosecuted
for treason?" she asked.  "Not, I think, for treason, Madam," was the
reply, "but for felony."  "How so?"  "He has stolen so many passages
from Tacitus...."  "I suspect the worst.  I shall force the truth from
him.  The rack----."  Bacon did what he could to calm her; but she was
only partially pacified; and the unfortunate Hayward, though he was
spared the rack, was sent to the Tower, where he remained for the rest
of the reign.

Her suspicions, having flamed up in this unexpected manner, sank down
again, and, after a slight scene with Essex, she finally signed his
appointment as Lord Deputy.  He departed at the end of March, passing
through the streets of London amid the acclamations of the citizens.
In the popular expectation, all would be well in Ireland, now that the
Protestant Earl had gone there to put things to rights.  But, at Court,
there were those whose view of the future was different.  Among them
was Bacon.  He had followed the fluctuations of the Irish appointment
with interest and astonishment.  Was it really possible that, with his
eyes open, that rash man had fallen into such a trap?  When he found
that it was indeed the case, and that Essex was actually going, he
wrote him a quiet, encouraging letter, giving no expression to his
fears or his doubts.  There was nothing else to be done; the {198} very
intensity of his private conviction made a warning useless and
impossible.  "I did as plainly see," he afterwards wrote, "his
overthrow chained, as it were, by destiny to that journey as it is
possible for a man to ground a judgment upon future contingents."



[1] Illustrissime comes, cujus nomen si Henrici nostri fronti radiaret,
ipse et laetior et tutior in vulgus prodiret.




{199}

XII

The state of affairs in Ireland was not quite so bad as it might have
been.  After the disaster on the Blackwater, rebellion had sprung up
sporadically all over the island; the outlying regions were everywhere
in open revolt; but Tyrone had not made the most of his opportunity,
had not advanced on Dublin, but had frittered away the months during
which he had been left undisturbed by his enemies in idleness and
indecision.  He was a man who was more proficient in the dilatory arts
of negotiation--sly bargaining, prolonged manoeuvring, the judicious
making and breaking of promises--than in the vigorous activities of
war.  Of Irish birth and English breeding, half savage and half
gentleman, half Catholic and half sceptic, a schemer, a lounger, an
adventurer, and a visionary, he had come at last, somehow or other,
after years of diffused cunning, to be the leader of a nation and one
of the pivots upon which the politics of Europe turned.  A quiet life
was what he longed for--so he declared; a quiet life, free alike from
the intolerance of Protestantism and the barbarism of war; and a quiet
life, curiously enough, was what in the end he was to be given.  But
the end was not yet, and in the {200} meantime all was disturbance and
uncertainty.  It had been impossible for him to assimilate his English
Earldom with the chieftainship of the O'Neils.  His hesitating attempts
to be a loyal vassal of the Saxons had yielded to the pressure of local
patriotism; he had intrigued and rebelled; he had become the client of
Philip of Spain.  More than once the English had held him at their
mercy, had accepted his submission, and had reinstated him in his
honours and his lands.  More than once, after trading on their
fluctuating policies of severity and moderation, he had treacherously
turned against them the power and the influence which their protection
had enabled him to acquire.  Personal animosities had been added to
public feuds.  He had seduced the sister of Sir Henry Bagenal, had
carried her off and married her, in spite of her brother's teeth; she
had died in misery; and Sir Henry, advancing with his army to meet the
rebel at the Blackwater, had been defeated and killed.  After such a
catastrophe, it seemed certain that the only possible issue was an
extreme one.  This time the English Government would admit no
compromise, and Tyrone must be finally crushed.  But Tyrone's own view
was very different; he was averse from extremity; he lingered vaguely
in Ulster; the old system of resistance, bargaining, compromise,
submission, and reconciliation, which had served him so often, might
very well prove useful once again.

{201}

But one thing was clear: if the English Government desired the speedy
destruction of Tyrone, it could have chosen no one more anxious to
second its purposes than the new Lord Deputy.  For Essex, it was
obvious, an Irish victory was vital.  Would he achieve one?  Francis
Bacon was not the only observer at Court to be pessimistic on that
subject.  A foreboding gloom was in the air.  When John Harington was
about to follow his patron to Ireland with a command in the Cavalry, he
received from his kinsman, Robert Markham, who had an office about the
Court, a weighty letter of advice and instruction.  Harington was
bidden to be most careful in his conduct; there would be spies in the
Irish army, who would report everything to high-placed ill-wishers at
home.  "Obey the Lord Deputy in all things," wrote Markham, "but give
not your opinion; it may be heard in England."  The general situation,
Markham thought, was menacing.  "Observe," he said, "the man who
commandeth, and yet is commanded himself; he goeth not forth to serve
the Queen's realm, but to humour his own revenge" ... "If the Lord
Deputy," he went on, "performs in the field what he hath promised in
the Council, all will be well; but, though the Queen hath granted
forgiveness for his late demeanour in her presence, we know not what to
think hereof.  She hath, in all outward semblance, placed confidence in
the man who so lately sought {202} other treatment at her hands; we do
sometime think one way, and sometime another; what betideth the Lord
Deputy is known to Him only who knoweth all; but when a man hath so
many shewing friends and so many unshewing enemies, who learneth his
end below? ... Sir William Knollys is not well pleased, the Queen is
not well pleased, the Lord Deputy may be pleased now, but I sore fear
what may happen hereafter."

To such warnings, no doubt, Harington--a gay spark, who had translated
Ariosto into English verse and written a Rabelaisian panegyric on water
closets--paid no great heed; but in fact they expressed, with an
exactness that was prophetic, the gist of the situation.  The
expedition was a gamble.  If Essex won in Ireland, he won in England,
too; but the dice were loaded against him; and if he failed ... From
the very first, the signs were unpropitious.  The force of sixteen
thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, which had been collected for
the expedition, was, for an Elizabethan army, a well-equipped and
efficient one; but that was the beginning and the end of the Lord
Deputy's advantages.  His relations with the Home Government were far
from satisfactory.  Elizabeth distrusted him--distrusted his capacity
and even, perhaps, his intentions; and the Secretary, who now dominated
the Council, was his rival, if not his enemy.  His wishes were
constantly thwarted, and his {203} decisions over-ruled.  A serious
quarrel broke out before he had left England.  He had appointed Sir
Christopher Blount to be one of his Council, and Lord Southampton his
General of the horse; both appointments were cancelled by Elizabeth.
Her objections to Sir Christopher are unknown--possibly she considered
his Catholicism a bar to high position in Ireland; but Southampton, who
had incurred her supreme displeasure by carrying on an intrigue with
Elizabeth Vernon, one of her ladies-in-waiting, and then daring to
marry her--Southampton, whom, in her fury, she had put into prison
together with his bride--that Essex should have ventured to name this
young reprobate for a high command seemed to her little short of a
deliberate impertinence.  There was some fierce correspondence; but she
held firm; the two men followed Essex as private friends only; and the
Lord Deputy arrived in Dublin--it was April 1599--in a gloomy mood and
a fretted temper.

He was immediately faced with a strategical question of crucial
importance.  Should he at once proceed to Ulster and dispose of Tyrone,
or should he first suppress the smouldering disaffection in the other
parts of the island?  The English Council in Dublin recommended the
latter course, and Essex agreed with them.  It would be easier, he
thought, to deal with the main forces of the rebellion when its
subsidiary supports had been demolished.  Possibly he {204} was right;
but the decision implied a swift and determined execution; to waste too
much time and too much energy on minor operations would be worse than
useless.  That was obvious, and the subduing of a few recalcitrant
chiefs with a powerful English Army seemed a simple enough affair.
Essex marched into Leinster, confident that nothing could resist
him--and nothing could.  But he was encountered by something more
dangerous than resistance--by the soft, insidious, undermining
atmosphere of that paradoxical country which, a quarter of a century
earlier, had brought his father to despair and death.

The strange air engulfed him.  The strange land--charming, savage,
mythical--lured him on with indulgent ease.  He moved, triumphant,
through a new peculiar universe of the unimagined and the unreal.  Who
or what were these people, with their mantles and their nakedness,
their long locks of hair hanging over their faces, their wild
battle-cries and gruesome wailings, their kerns and their gallowglas,
their jesters and their bards?  Who were their ancestors?  Scythians?
Or Spaniards?  Or Gauls?  What state of society was this, where chiefs
jostled with gypsies, where ragged women lay all day long laughing in
the hedgerows, where ragged men gambled away among each other their
very rags, their very forelocks, the very ... parts more precious
still, where wizards flew on whirlwinds, and rats were rhymed into
dissolution?  All was {205} vague, contradictory, and unaccountable;
and the Lord Deputy, advancing further and further into the green
wilderness, began--like so many others before and after him--to catch
the surrounding infection, to lose the solid sense of things, and to
grow confused over what was fancy and what was fact.

His conquering army was welcomed everywhere by the English settlers.
The towns threw open their gates to him, and he was harangued in Latin
by delighted Mayors.  He passed from Leinster into Munster--still
victorious.  But time was slipping away.  Days and days were spent over
the reduction of unimportant castles.  Essex had never shown any
military genius--only a military taste; and his taste was gratified
now, as it had never been before, by successful skirmishes, romantic
escapades, noble gestures, and personal glory.  The cost was serious.
He had lost sight of his main purpose in a tangle of insignificant
incidents.  And while he was playing with time, his strength was
dwindling.  Under the combined influences of casualties, desertions,
disease, and the garrisoning of distant outposts, his army was melting
away.  At last, in July, he found himself back in Dublin, having spent
nearly three months in dubious operations far from the real force of
the enemy, and with the numbers of the men under his command diminished
by one half.

Then the mist of illusion melted, and he was faced {206} with the
deplorable truth.  At this late hour, with his weakened army, was it
possible any longer to make sure of crushing Tyrone?  In extreme
agitation he counted up the chances, and knew not which way to turn.
Wherever he looked, a gulf seemed to open at his feet.  If he failed
against Tyrone, how fatal!  If he did nothing, what a derision!  Unable
to bring himself to admit that he had muddled away his opportunity, he
sought relief in random rage and wild accusations, in fits of miserable
despair, and passionate letters to Elizabeth.  A detachment of some
hundreds of men had shown cowardice in the field; he cashiered and
imprisoned all the officers, he executed a lieutenant, and he had every
tenth man in the rank and file put to death.  He fell ill, and death
seemed to come near to him too; he would welcome it.  He rose from his
couch to write a long letter to the Queen, of exposition and
expostulation.  "But why do I talk of victory or success?  Is it not
known that from England I receive nothing but discomfort and soul's
wounds?  Is it not spoken in the army, that your Majesty's favour is
diverted from me, and that already you do bode ill both to me and it?
... Is it not lamented of your Majesty's faithfullest subjects, both
there and here, that a Cobham or a Raleigh--I will forbear others for
their places' sakes--should have such credit and favour with your
Majesty when they wish the ill-success of your Majesty's most important
action? ...  {207} Let me honestly and zealously end a wearisome life.
Let others live in deceitful and inconstant pleasures.  Let me bear the
brunt, and die meritoriously....  Till then, I protest before God and
His Angels, I am a true votary, that is sequestered from all things but
my duty and my charge....  This is the hand of him that did live your
dearest, and will die your Majesty's faithfullest servant."

There was a sudden rising in Connaught which had to be put down; the
rebels were defeated by Sir Christopher Blount; but by now July was
over, and the Lord Deputy was still in Dublin.  Meanwhile, at home, as
time flowed by, and no news of any decisive action came from Ireland,
men's minds were divided between doubt and expectation.  At Court, the
tone was cynical.  "Men marvel," a gossip wrote on August 1, "Essex
hath done so little; he tarries yet at Dublin."  The decimation of the
soldiers was "not greatly liked," and when news came that the Lord
Deputy had used the powers specially given him by the Queen to make no
fewer than fifty-nine knights, there was much laughter and shrugging of
shoulders.  But elsewhere the feeling was different.  The people of
London still had high hopes for their favourite--hopes which were
voiced by Shakespeare in a play which he produced at this moment at the
Globe Theatre.  Southampton was the friend and patron of the rising
dramatist, who took this opportunity of {208} making a graceful public
allusion to Southampton's own patron and friend.

  "How London doth pour out her citizens!"

So spoke the Chorus in "Henry V," describing the victorious return of
the King from France--

  "As, by a lower but by loving likelihood,
  Were now the general of our gracious Empress,
  As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
  Bringing rebellion broachd on his sword,
  How many would the peaceful city quit
  To welcome him!"

The passage was no doubt applauded, and yet it is possible to perceive
even here, through the swelling optimism of the lines, a trace or two
of uneasiness.

Elizabeth, waiting anxiously for a despatch announcing Tyrone's defeat,
and receiving instead nothing but letter after letter of angry
complaints and despairing ejaculations, began to grow impatient.  She
did not restrain her comments to those about her.  She liked nothing,
she said, that was done in Ireland.  "I give the Lord Deputy a thousand
pounds a day to go on progress."  She wrote to him complaining bitterly
of the delay, and ordering him to march forthwith into Ulster.  The
reply came that the army was fatally depleted---that only 4000 men were
left of the 16,000 that had gone from England.  She sent a
reinforcement of 2000; but the expense cut her to the {209} quick.
What was the meaning of this waste and this procrastination?  Sinister
thoughts came floating back into her head.  Why, for instance, had he
made so many knights?  She wrote, peremptorily ordering Essex to attack
Tyrone, and not to leave Ireland till he had done so.  "After you shall
have certified us to what form you have reduced things in the North ...
you shall with all speed receive our warrant, without which we do
charge you, as you tender our pleasure, that you adventure not to come
out of that kingdom by virtue of any former license whatever."

Her agitation deepened.  One day at Nonesuch she met Francis Bacon, and
drew him aside.  She knew him as a clever man, a friend of Essex, and
possibly she could extract something from him which would throw a light
on the situation.  What was his opinion, she asked, of the state of
affairs in Ireland, and--she flashed a searching glance on him--the
proceedings of the Lord Deputy?  It was an exciting moment for Bacon.
The honour was great and unexpected--he felt himself swept upward.
With no official standing whatever, he was being consulted in this
highly confidential way.  What was he to answer?  He knew all the
gossip, and had reason to believe that, in the Queen's opinion, Essex
was acting in a manner that was not only unfortunate and without
judgment, but "contemptuous and not without some private end of his
own."  With this knowledge, he made a reply that {210} was remarkable.
"Madam," he said, "if you had my Lord of Essex here with a white staff
in his hand, as my Lord of Leicester had, and continued him still about
you for society to yourself, and for an honour and ornament to your
attendance and Court in the eyes of your people, and in the eyes of
foreign ambassadors, then were he in his right element.  For to
discontent him as you do, and yet to put arms and power into his hands,
may be a kind of temptation to make him prove cumbersome and unruly.
And therefore if you would send for him, and satisfy him with honour
here near you, if your affairs--which I am not acquainted with--will
permit it, I think were the best way."  She thanked him, and passed
onwards.  So that was how the land lay!  "Arms and power ... temptation
... cumbersome and unruly!"  He had blown upon her smouldering
suspicions, and now they were red hot.  Shortly afterwards Henry Cuffe
arrived from Ireland, with letters and messages for the Queen from the
Lord Deputy.  The tale he had to tell was by no means reassuring.  The
army, weakened still further by disease and desertion, was in an
unsatisfactory condition; the bad weather made movement difficult; and
the Dublin Council had once more pronounced strongly against an attack
upon Ulster.  Elizabeth wrote a scathing letter to her "right trusty
and well beloved cousin," in which she no longer gave command, but
merely desired to be informed what he was {211} going to do next.  She
could not imagine, she said, what could be the explanation of his
conduct.  Why had nothing been done?  "If sickness of the army be the
reason, why was not the action undertaken when the army was in better
state?  If winter's approach, why were the summer months of July and
August lost?  If the spring were too soon, and the summer that followed
otherwise spent, and the harvest that succeeded were so neglected as
nothing hath been done, then surely we must conclude that none of the
four quarters of the year will be in season for you and that Council to
agree to Tyrone's prosecution, for which all our charge is intended."
Then, into the middle of her long and bitter argumentation, she stuck a
phrase well calculated to give a jar to her correspondent.  "We require
you to consider whether we have not great cause to think that your
purpose is not to end the war."  She was determined to make him realise
that she was watching him carefully and was prepared for any
eventuality.

Meanwhile, in Dublin, the moment of final decision was swiftly
approaching.  The horns of a fearful dilemma were closing in upon the
unfortunate Lord Deputy.  Was he to obey the Queen, and risk all
against his own judgment and the advice of his Council?  Or was he to
disobey her, and confess himself a failure?  Winter was at hand, and,
if he were going to fight, he must fight at once.  Hysterical and {212}
distracted, he was still hesitating, when letters were brought to him
from England.  They told him that Robert Cecil had been appointed to
the lucrative office, which he himself had hoped to receive, of the
Mastership of the Wards.  Then every other feeling was drowned in rage.
He rushed to Blount and Southampton.  He had made up his mind, he said;
he would not go into Ulster; he would go into England, at the head of
his army; he would assert his power; he would remove Cecil and his
partners; and he would make sure that henceforward the Queen should act
as she ought to act and as he wished.

The desperate words were spoken, but that was all.  The hectic vision
faded, and, before the consultation was over, calmer councils had
prevailed.  Sir Christopher pointed out that what the Earl was
proposing--to lead his small army, with such a purpose, from Wales to
London--meant civil war.  It would be wiser, he said, to go over with a
bodyguard of a few hundred tried followers, and effect a _coup d'tat_
at Nonesuch.  But this plan too was waved aside.  Suddenly veering,
Essex decided to carry out the Queen's instructions and to attack
Tyrone in Ulster.

As a preliminary, he ordered Sir Conyers Clifford, at the head of a
picked force, to effect a diversion by marching against the rebels from
Connaught.  He himself was preparing to move, when there was a new
catastrophe: Clifford, caught by the enemy on a {213} causeway crossing
a bog, was set upon, defeated, and killed.  But it was too late for
Essex to draw back, and at the end of August he left Dublin.

At the same time he composed and despatched a short letter to the
Queen.  Never were his words more gorgeous and his rhythms more moving:
never were the notes of anguish, remonstrance, and devotion so
romantically blended together.

"From a mind delighting in sorrow; from spirits wasted with travail,
care, and grief; from a heart torn in pieces with passion; from a man
that hates himself and all things that keep him alive, what service can
your Majesty reap?  Since my services past deserve no more than
banishment and proscription into the most cursed of all countries, with
what expectation and what end shall I live longer?  No, no, the rebel's
pride and successes must give me means to ransom myself, my soul I
mean, out of this hateful prison of my body.  And if it happen so, your
Majesty may believe that you shall not have cause to mislike the
fashion of my death, though the course of my life may not please you.
From your Majesty's exiled servant, ESSEX."

It was very fine--thrilling, adorable!  But the sequel was less so.  If
the desperate knight had indeed flung himself to death amid the arrows
of the barbarians ... but what happened was altogether different.  In a
few days he was in touch with Tyrone's army, which, though it
outnumbered his own, refused to give battle.  {214} There was some
manoeuvring, a skirmish, and then Tyrone sent a messenger, demanding a
parley.  Essex agreed.  The two men met alone, on horseback, at a ford
in a river, while the armies watched from either bank.  Tyrone,
repeating his old tactics, offered terms--but only verbally; he
preferred, he said, not to commit them to writing.  He proposed a
truce, to be concluded for six weeks, to continue by periods of six
weeks until May Day, and not to be broken without a fortnight's
warning.  Essex again agreed.  All was over.  The campaign was at an
end.

Of all possible conclusions, this surely was the most impotent that
could have been imagined.  The grand expedition, the noble general,
efforts, hopes, vaunting--it had all dwindled down at last to a futile
humiliation, an indefinite suspension of hostilities--the equivocal,
accustomed triumph of Tyrone.  Essex had played all his cards
now--played them as badly as possible, and there was nothing left in
his hand.  Inevitably, as the misery of his achievement sank into his
consciousness, the mood of desperate resolutions returned.  He decided
that there was only one thing now that could save the situation--he
must see the Queen.  But--such was the wild wavering of his
spirit--whether he was to come into her presence as a suppliant or as a
master, he could not tell: he only knew that he could bear to be in
Ireland no longer.  With Blount's suggestion of a _coup d'tat_ {215}
indeterminately hovering in his mind, he summoned round him the members
of his household, and, accompanied by them and a great number of
officers and gentlemen, embarked at Dublin on September 24th.  Early on
the morning of the 28th the troop was galloping into London.

The Court was still at Nonesuch, in Surrey, about ten miles southward;
the river lay between; and, if an attack were to be made, it would be
necessary for the cavalcade to ride through the City and cross the
Thames at London Bridge.  But by this time the notion of deliberate
violence had become an unreality--had given place to the one
overmastering desire to be with the Queen at the earliest possible
moment.  The quickest way was to take the ferry from Westminster to
Lambeth, and Essex, leaving the bulk of his followers to disperse
themselves in London, had himself rowed across the river with six of
his chosen friends.  At Lambeth the weary men seized what horses they
could find and rode on.  They were soon passed by Lord Grey of Wilton,
a member of the Cecil party, who, on a fresher mount, was also riding
to Court that morning.  Sir Thomas Gerard spurred after him.  "My Lord,
I beg you will speak with the Earl."  "No," was Lord Grey's reply, "I
have business at Court."  "Then I pray you," said Sir Thomas, "let my
Lord of Essex ride before, that he may bring the first news of his
return himself."  "Doth he desire it?" {216} said Lord Grey.  "No,"
said Sir Thomas, "nor I think will desire anything at your hands."
"Then I have business," said Lord Grey, and rode on with greater speed
than ever.  When Gerard told his friends what had occurred, Sir
Christopher St. Lawrence cried out with an oath that he would press on
and kill Lord Grey, and after him the Secretary.  The possibility of a
swift, dramatic, irretrievable solution hovered in the air for a moment
amid the group of angry gentlemen.  But Essex forbade it; it would be
mere assassination; he must take his chance.

Directly Lord Grey reached Nonesuch he went to Cecil, and told him the
astounding news.  The Secretary was calm; he did nothing--sent no word
to the Queen, who was dressing in her upper chamber--but waited quietly
in his chair.  A quarter of an hour later--it was ten o'clock--the Earl
was at the gate.  He hurried forward, without a second's hesitation; he
ran up the stairs, and so--oh! he knew the way well enough--into the
presence chamber, and thence into the privy chamber; the Queen's
bedroom lay beyond.  He was muddy and disordered from his long journey,
in rough clothes and riding boots; but he was utterly unaware of any of
that, as he burst open the door in front of him.  And there, quite
close to him, was Elizabeth among her ladies, in a dressing-gown,
unpainted, without her wig, her grey hair hanging in wisps about her
face, and her eyes starting from her head.




{217}

XIII

She was surprised, she was delighted--those were her immediate
reactions; but then, swiftly, a third feeling came upon her--she was
afraid.  What was the meaning of this unannounced, this forbidden
return, and this extraordinary irruption?  What kind of following had
the man brought from Ireland and where was it?  What had happened?  Was
it possible that at this very moment she was in his power?  Completely
in the dark, she at once sought refuge in the dissimulation which was
her second nature.  Her instinctive pleasure in his presence, her
genuine admiration of his manner and his speech, served her purpose
excellently, and, covered with smiles, she listened while he poured out
his protestations and told his story--listened with an inward
accompaniment of lightning calculations and weighings of shifting
possibilities and snatchings at dubious hints.  Very soon she guessed
that she was in no immediate danger.  She laughingly bade him begone
and change his clothes, while she finished her toilet; he obeyed,
returned, and the conversation continued for an hour and a half.  He
came downstairs to dinner in high spirits, flirted with the ladies, and
thanked God that after so many {218} storms abroad he had found so
sweet a calm at home.  But the calm was of short continuance; he saw
the Queen again after dinner and found the breezes blowing.  She had
made her inquiries, and, having sufficiently gauged the situation, had
decided on her course of action.  She began by asking disagreeable
questions, disagreeably; when he answered, she grew angry; finally she
declared that he must explain himself to the Council.  The Council met,
and when the Earl had given an account of his proceedings, adjourned in
vague politeness.  Perhaps all was well--it almost seemed so; but the
Queen, apparently, was still vexed and inaccessible.  At eleven o'clock
at night the Earl received a message from Her Majesty; he was commanded
to keep to his chamber.

Every one was mystified, and the wildest speculations flew about.  At
the first blush it was supposed that Essex had completely
triumphed--that in one bold stroke he had recaptured the favour and the
power that were slipping from his grasp.  Bacon sent off a letter of
congratulation.  "I am more yours than any man's and more yours than
any man," he wrote.  A little later, the news of the Queen's
displeasure brought doubts; yet it seemed hardly possible that anything
very serious should happen to the Earl, who, after all, had only been
blundering in Ireland, like so many before him.  But meanwhile the
Queen proceeded with her plan.  Having waited a day, during {219} which
no news came of any suspicious movements in London, she felt she could
take her next step.  She committed Essex to the custody of the Lord
Keeper Egerton, to whose residence--York House, in the Strand--he was
forthwith removed.  All still remained calm, and Elizabeth was
satisfied: Essex was now completely at her mercy.  She could decide at
her leisure what she would do with him.

While she was considering he fell ill.  He had been seriously unwell
before he left Ireland, and the fatigue of his three days' ride across
England, followed by the emotion and disgrace at Nonesuch, had proved
too much for his uncertain and suggestible physique.  Yet, while he lay
in captivity at York House, he still--though crying out from time to
time that he only longed for a country obscurity--had not given up
hopes of a return to favour and even a reinstatement as Lord Deputy.
He wrote submissive letters to the Queen; but she refused to receive
them, and sent no word.  John Harington, who had been among those he
had knighted in Ireland, returned at this moment, and Essex begged him
to be the bearer of yet another missive, filled with contrition and
adoration.  But the sprightly knight preferred to take no risks.  He
had been threatened with arrest on his arrival in London, and he felt
that his own affairs were as much as he could manage; charity, he said,
began at home, and he had no desire to be "wracked on the Essex coast."
{220} His conscience, too, was not quite clear.  He had had the
curiosity to pay a visit to Tyrone after the pacification, and had
behaved, perhaps, in too friendly and familiar a fashion with the
recreant Earl.  He had produced a copy of his Ariosto, had read aloud
some favourite passages, had presented the book to the elder of
Tyrone's sons--"two children of good towardly spirit, in English
clothes like a nobleman's sons, with velvet jerkins and gold
lace,"--and finally had sat down to a merry dinner with the rebels at a
"fern table, spread under the stately canopy of heaven."  Possibly some
rumour of these proceedings had reached Elizabeth's ears, and she was
not altogether pleased by them.  Nevertheless he believed that all
would be well if only he could obtain an audience.  He knew that she
had a liking for him; he was her godson--had been familiar with her
from his childhood, and was actually connected, in an underground way,
with the royal family, his stepmother having been a natural daughter of
Henry VIII.  At last he was told that the Queen would receive him; he
went to Court in considerable trepidation; and as soon as he entered
the presence he thanked his stars that he had had the sense to refuse
to deliver any message from Essex.

He never forgot the fearful scene that followed.  Hardly had he knelt
before her than she strode towards him, seized him by the girdle, and,
shaking {221} it, exclaimed, "By God's Son, I am no Queen!  That man is
above me!  Who gave him command to come here so soon?  I did send him
on other business."  While the terrified poet stammered out some kind
of answer, she turned from him in fury, "walked fastly to and fro," and
"looked with discomposure in her visage."  "By God's Son!" she burst
out again, "you are all idle knaves and Essex worse!"  He tried to
pacify her, but "her choler did outrun all reason," she would listen to
nothing, and, in the storm of her invective, seemed to forget that her
unfortunate godson was not, after all, the Lord Deputy.  At last,
however, she grew calmer, asked questions, was amused by Harington's
little jokes and stories, and made no account of his hobnobbing with
Tyrone.  He described the rebel to her, and his curious Court--how "his
guard for the most part were beardless boys, without shirts, who in the
frost wade as familiarly through rivers as water-spaniels."  "With what
charm," he added, "such a master makes them love him, I know not; but
if he bid them come, they come; if go they do go; if he say do this,
they do it."  She smiled; and then, suddenly changing countenance, told
him to go home.  He "did not stay to be bidden twice," but rode away to
his house in Somersetshire "as if all the Irish rebels had been at his
heels."

The author of the _Metamorphosis of Ajax_ was no fit confidant for a
perplexed and injured sovereign.  {222} Elizabeth looked elsewhere for
an adviser, or at any rate a listener, and she found what she wanted in
Francis Bacon.  Recalling the conversation of the summer, she took
advantage of his official attendance upon her on legal business to
revert to the subject of the Earl.  She found his answers pertinent;
she renewed the topic; and so began a series of strange dialogues in
which, during many months, in confidential privacy, the fate of Essex,
with all its hidden implications of policy and passion, became the
meeting-point of those two most peculiar minds.  Elizabeth was, as
usual, uncertain how to treat the situation in which she found herself:
was there to be forgiveness or punishment? and, if the latter, of what
kind?  Revealing little, she asked much.  As for Bacon, he was in his
element.  He felt that he could thread his way through the intricacies
that surrounded him with perfect propriety.  To adjust the claims of
personal indebtedness and public duty, to combine the feelings of the
statesman and the friend, to hold the balance true between honour and
ambition--other men might find such problems difficult, if not
insoluble; but he was not frightened by them; his intellect was capable
of more than that.  As he talked to Elizabeth, he played upon the
complex theme with the profound relish of a virtuoso.  He had long
since decided that, in all human probability, Essex was a ruined man;
he owed the Earl something--much; but it would be {223} futile to spoil
his own chances of fortune by adhering to a hopeless cause; it was
essential to win the good graces of Robert Cecil; and now, there was
this heaven-sent opportunity--which it would be madness to miss--for
acquiring something more important still--the confidence of the Queen.
Besides--he could doubt it no longer--Essex was a mischievous person,
whose activities were dangerous to the State.  While he was clearly
bound to give him what help he could as a private individual, he was
certainly under no obligation to forward the return of such a man to
power; it was even his duty to insinuate into the Queen's mind his own
sense of the gravity of the situation.  And so, with unhesitating
subtlety, he spun the web of his sagacious thought.  He had no doubt of
himself--none; and when, a few years later, under the pressure of the
public disapproval, he wrote an account of his proceedings, it still
seemed to him that a recital of his actual conduct was all that was
necessary as a justification.

Elizabeth listened with interest to everything he had to say--it was
always impossible to do otherwise.  He was profuse in his expressions
of sympathy and attachment to the Earl; but, he must needs say it,
there were some positions to which he thought him ill-suited; to send
him back to Ireland, for instance--"Essex!" interrupted the Queen.
"Whensoever I send Essex back again into Ireland, I will marry you.
{224} Claim it of me."  No, that was not her thought--far from it; she
intended rather to bring him to justice; but by what process?  She
inclined to a trial before the Star Chamber.  But Bacon demurred.  It
would, he said, be a dangerous proceeding; it might be difficult to
produce cogent proof in public of the Earl's delinquencies; and his
popularity was so great that a severe punishment on insufficient
evidence might produce most serious consequences.  She glared angrily,
and dismissed him.  She did not like that suggestion; but the words
sank into her mind, and she veered away from the notion of a public
prosecution.

For, as time passed, everything seemed to show that Bacon's warning was
justified.  There could be no doubt about the Earl's popularity.  It
was increased by his illness, and, when it was whispered that he lay
near to death in his captivity, the public indignation made itself
heard.  Pamphlets, defending the Earl and attacking his enemies, were
secretly printed and scattered broadcast.  At last, even the white
walls of the palace were covered with abusive scrawls.  Bacon was
singled out for particular denunciation; he was a traitor, who was
poisoning the Queen's mind against his benefactor.  He was
threatened--so he declared--with assassination.  This was unpleasant,
but some use might be made of it: it might serve to put beyond a doubt
his allegiance to the Secretary.  He wrote to his cousin, telling him
of {225} these threats of violence, against which, he said, "I thank
God I have the privy coat of a good conscience."  He looked upon them
"as a deep malice to your honourable self, upon whom, by me, through
nearness, they think to make some aspersion."

Cecil smiled gently when he read the letter; and he sent for his
cousin.  He wished to make his own position quite clear.  He had indeed
heard, he said, that Francis had been doing some ill office to Essex;
but ... he did not believe it.  And then he added: "For my part, I am
merely passive and not active in this action; and I follow the Queen,
and that heavily, and I lead her not...  The Queen indeed is my
Sovereign, and I am her creature, I may not leese her; and the same
course I wish you to take."

So he explained himself, and the explanation was a perfectly true one.
Robert Cecil was indeed merely passive, merely following, with the
sadness which his experience of the world had brought him, the action
of the Queen.  But passivity, too, may be a kind of action--may, in
fact, at moments prove more full of consequence than action itself.
Only a still, disillusioned man could understand this; it was hidden
from the hasty children of vigour and hope.  It was hidden, among
others, from Walter Raleigh.  He could not conceive what the Secretary
was doing; he was letting a golden opportunity slip through his
fingers; he was leaving the Queen to her own devices--it was {226}
madness--this was the time to strike.  "I am not wise enough," he wrote
to Cecil, "to give you advice; but if you take it for a good counsel to
relent towards this tyrant, you will repent it when it shall be too
late.  His malice is fixed, and will not evaporate by any your mild
courses.  For he will ascribe the alteration to Her Majesty's
pusillanimity and not to your good nature: knowing that you work but
upon her humour, and not out of any love towards him.  The less you
make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours.  And if Her
Majesty's favour fail him, he will again decline to a common person....
Lose not your advantage; if you do, I rede your destiny.  Yours to the
end, W.R."  It was true--he was not "wise enough" to give a Cecil
advice.  Could he not see that the faintest movement, the slightest
attempt to put pressure upon the Queen, would be fatal?  How little he
understood that perverse, that labyrinthine character!  No!  If
anything was to be done, she herself, in her own strange way and with
her own strange will, must do it.  And the Secretary sat
motionless--waiting, watching, and holding his breath.

Elizabeth, certainly, needed watching very carefully.  For the moment
she seemed to be occupied with entirely frivolous pursuits.  The
ceremonies of Accession Day absorbed her; she sat for hours in the
tiltyard--where Essex had so often shone in all his glory--careless and
amused; and when at last there was a {227} grotesque surprise and Lord
Compton came in, as an eye-witness described it, "like a Fisherman,
with 6 men clad in motley, his capariesons all of nett, having caught a
Frogge," the old creature's sides shook with delighted laughter.  A
week later she came to a sudden decision: she would justify her
treatment of Essex before the world by having a statement of his
delinquencies read out by the Council in the Star Chamber.  He himself
could not be present--he was too ill.  But was he?  She could not feel
quite sure; he had been known before now to convert a fit of the sulks
into a useful malady; she would see for herself.  And so, at four
o'clock in the evening of November 28th, accompanied by Lady Warwick
and Lord Worcester, she stepped into her barge and had herself conveyed
to York House.  We know no more.  Essex was in truth very
ill--apparently dying.  Was he conscious of her visit?  Were there
words spoken?  Or did she come and look and go, unseen?  Unanswerable
questions!  The November night falls, gathering her up into its
darkness.

Next day the Star Chamber met, and the statement of the Earl's
misdoings was read aloud.  It was declared that he had mismanaged the
Irish operations, that he had made a disgraceful treaty with Tyrone,
and that he had returned to England contrary to the Queen's express
orders.  Members of the public were admitted, but Francis Bacon did not
attend.  Elizabeth, running {228} over the list of those who had been
present, observed the fact.  She sent him a message, asking the meaning
of it.  He replied that he had thought it wiser to keep away, in view
of the threats of violence against his person.  But she was not
impressed by the excuse, and did not speak to him again for several
weeks.

The Star Chamber declaration led to nothing.  The weeks, the months,
flowed by, and Essex was still a prisoner; the fatal evening at
Nonesuch proved to have been the beginning of a captivity which lasted
almost a year.  Nor was it a mild one.  None of the Earl's intimates
were allowed to see him.  Even Lady Essex, who had just borne him a
daughter, and who haunted the Court dressed in the deep mourning of a
suppliant, was forbidden to see her husband for many months.
Elizabeth's anger had assumed a grimmer aspect than ever before.  Was
this still a lovers' quarrel?  If so, it was indeed a strange one.  For
now contempt, fear, and hatred had come to drop their venom into the
deadly brew of disappointed passion.  With fixed resentment, as the
long months dragged out, she nursed her wrath; she would make him
suffer for his incompetence, his insolence, his disobedience; did he
imagine that his charms were irresistible?  She had had enough of them,
and he would find that he had made a mistake.

With the new year--it was the last of the century--there were two
developments.  Essex began to recover, {229} and by the end of January
he had regained his normal health.  At the same time the Queen made a
new attempt to deal with the situation in Ireland.  Tyrone had himself
put an end to the truce of September, and had recommenced his
manoeuvrings against the English.  Something had to be done, and
Elizabeth, falling back on her previous choice, appointed Mountjoy Lord
Deputy.  He tried in vain to escape from the odious office, but it was
useless; Elizabeth was determined; go he must.  Before doing so,
however, he held a consultation with Southampton and Sir Charles
Davers, another devoted follower of Essex, as to how he might best
assist the imprisoned Earl.  An extraordinary proposal was made.  For
some years past Essex had been in communication with James of Scotland,
and Mountjoy himself, during the campaign in Ireland, had written to
the King--whether with or without the knowledge of Essex is
uncertain--asking him to make some move in Essex's behalf.  James's
answer having proved unsatisfactory, the matter was dropped; but it was
now revived in an astonishing and far more definite manner.  It was
well known that the prime object of the King of Scotland's policy was
to secure the inheritance of England.  Mountjoy suggested that a
message should be sent to James informing him that the Cecil party was
hostile to his succession, that his one chance lay in the reinstatement
of Essex, that if he would take {230} action in Essex's favour Mountjoy
himself would cross over from Ireland with an army of four or five
thousand men, and that with their combined forces they could then
impose their will upon the English Government.  Southampton and Davers
approved of the project, and there can be no doubt that Essex himself
gave his consent to it, for the conspirators had found means of
conveying letters in secret to and from York House.  The messenger was
despatched to Scotland; and Mountjoy actually started to take up the
government of Ireland with this project of desperate treason in his
mind.  But James was a cautious person: his reply was vague and
temporising; Mountjoy was informed; and the scheme was allowed to drop.

But not for long.  For in the spring, Southampton went to Ireland, and
Essex took the opportunity to send a letter to Mountjoy, urging him to
carry out his original intention and to lead his army into England,
with or without the support of James.  Mountjoy, however, had changed
his mind.  Ireland had had its effect on him too--and an unexpected
one.  He was no longer the old Charles Blount, who had been content to
follow in the footsteps of his dazzling friend; he had suddenly found
his vocation.  He was a follower no more; he was a commander; he felt
that he could achieve what no one had achieved before him; he would
pacify Ireland, he would defeat {231} Tyrone.  Penelope herself would
not keep him from that destiny.  His answer was polite, but firm.  "To
satisfy my lord of Essex's private ambition, he would not enter into an
enterprise of that nature."

Meanwhile Elizabeth, unaware of these machinations, was wondering
gloomily what she was going to do.  The Tower?  On the whole, she
thought not; things were bad--but not quite so bad as that.
Nevertheless, she would move the culprit out of York House.  The poor
Lord Keeper could not be made a gaoler for ever; and Essex was sent
into his own house, after Anthony Bacon and all his other friends had
been turned out of it, to be kept there in as close confinement as
before.  Then her mind again moved towards the Star Chamber.  She
summoned Bacon, who once more advised against it; once more he told
her--not that the Earl's misdoings hardly deserved so terrible a form
of prosecution--but that his power with the people was such as to make
it dangerous.  This time she agreed with him, and decided to set up a
disciplinary tribunal of her own devising.  There should be a fine
show, and the miscreant should be lectured, very severely lectured,
made to apologise, frightened a little, and then--let off.  So she
arranged it, and every one fell in with her plans.  Never was the cool
paternalism of the Tudors so curiously displayed.  Essex was a naughty
boy, who had misbehaved, been sent to his room, and fed on bread and
water; and now he {232} was to be brought downstairs, and, after a good
wigging, told he was not to be flogged after all.

The ceremony took place (June 5th, 1600) at York House, and lasted for
eleven hours without a break.  Essex knelt at the foot of the table,
round which the assembled lords of the Council sat in all their
gravity.  After some time the Archbishop of Canterbury moved that the
Earl be allowed to stand; this was granted; later on he was allowed to
lean, and at last to sit.  The crown lawyers rose one after another to
denounce his offences, which, with a few additions, were those
specified in the Star Chamber declaration.  Among the accusers was
Bacon.  He had written an ingenious letter, begging to be excused from
taking a part in the proceedings, but adding that, if Her Majesty
desired it, he could not refuse.  Naturally enough, Her Majesty did
desire it, and Bacon was instructed to draw the attention of the lords
to the Earl's impropriety in accepting the dedication of Hayward's
history of Henry IV.  He knew full well the futility of the charge, but
he did as he was bid.  All was going well, and Essex was ready with a
profound apology, when the dignity of the scene was marred by the
excited ill-humour of Edward Coke, the Attorney-General.  Essex found
himself being attacked in such a way that he could not refrain from
angry answers; Coke retorted; and the proceedings were degenerating
into a wrangle, when Cecil intervened with some {233} tactful
observations.  Then the judgment of the Court was given.  Imprisonment
in the Tower and an enormous fine were hung for a moment over the
Earl's head; but on his reading aloud an abject avowal of his
delinquencies, followed by a prayer for mercy, he was told that he
might return to his house, and there await the Queen's pleasure.

He waited for a month before anything happened; at last his guards were
removed, but he was still commanded to keep to his house.  Not until
the end of August was he given complete liberty.  Elizabeth was
relenting, but she was relenting as unpleasantly as possible.  All
through the summer she was in constant conference with Bacon, who had
now taken up the _rle_ of intermediary between the Queen and the Earl.
He had sent an apology to Essex for the part he had played at York
House, and Essex had magnanimously accepted it.  He now composed two
elaborate letters, in Essex's name, addressed to the Queen and
imploring her forgiveness.  He did more.  He invented a letter from his
brother Anthony to Essex and the Earl's reply--brilliant compositions,
in which the style of each was exquisitely imitated, and in which the
Earl's devotion to his sovereign was beautifully displayed; and then he
took these works and showed them to the Queen.  Incidentally, there was
much in them to the credit of Francis Bacon; but their effect was
small.  Perhaps Elizabeth was too {234} familiar with the stratagems of
plotters in the theatre to be altogether without suspicions when they
were repeated in real life.

But Essex was not dependent upon Bacon's intervention; he wrote to the
Queen himself, again and again.  In varying tones he expressed his
grief, he besought for an entire forgiveness, he begged to be allowed
into the beloved presence once more.  "Now having heard the voice of
your Majesty's justice, I do humbly crave to hear your own proper and
natural voice of grace, or else that your Majesty in mercy will send me
into another world."  "I receive no grace, your Majesty shows no mercy.
But if your Majesty will vouchsafe to let me once prostrate myself at
your feet and behold your fair and gracious eyes, though it be unknown
to all the world but to him that your Majesty shall appoint to bring me
to that paradise--yea, though afterwards your Majesty punish me,
imprison me, or pronounce the sentence of death against your Majesty is
most merciful, and I shall be most happy."  So he wrote, but it was not
only to Elizabeth that he addressed himself.  Even while he was pouring
out these regrets and protestations, his mind kept reverting to
Ireland.  One day he sent for Sir Charles Davers and asked him to make
yet one more attempt upon the fidelity of Mountjoy.  Davers knew well
enough how it would be; but he was absolutely devoted to the Earl who,
as he said afterwards, {235} "had saved my life, and that after a very
noble fashion; he had suffered for me, and made me by as many means
bound unto him, as one man could be bound unto another; the life he had
saved, and my estate and means whatsoever, he should ever dispose of";
and the adoring vassal immediately took horse to do as his lord desired.

A moment of crisis was approaching, which, Essex perceived, would
reveal the real state of Elizabeth's mind.  The monopoly of the sweet
wines, which she had granted him for ten years, would come to an end at
Michaelmas; would she renew it?  It brought him a great income, and if
she cut that off she would plunge him into poverty.  Favour and
hope--disgrace and ruin--those were the alternatives that seemed to
hang upon her decision in this matter.  She was well aware of it
herself.  She spoke of it to Bacon.  "My Lord of Essex," she said, "has
written me some very dutiful letters, and I have been moved by them;
but"--she laughed grimly--"what I took for the abundance of the heart I
find to be only a suit for the farm of sweet wines."

One letter, however, perhaps moved her more than the rest.  "Haste,
paper, to that happy presence, whence only unhappy I am banished; kiss
that fair correcting hand which lays new plasters to my lighter hurts,
but to my greatest wound applieth nothing.  Say thou comest from
pining, languishing, despairing ESSEX." {236} Did she find those words
impossible to resist?  It may have been so.  From some phrases in
another letter we may guess that there was indeed a meeting; but, if
there was, it ended disastrously.  In the midst of his impassioned
speeches a fearful bitterness welled up within her; she commanded him
from her presence; and with her own hands she thrust him out.[1]

She hesitated for a month, and then it was announced that the profits
from the sweet wines would be henceforward reserved for the Crown.  The
effect upon Essex was appalling: he became like one possessed.  Davers
had already brought back word from Mountjoy that his decision was
irreversible.  "He desired my Lord to have patience, to recover again
by ordinary means the Queen's ordinary favour; that, though he had it
not in such measure as he had had heretofore, he should content
himself."  Patience!  Content himself!  The time for such words was
past!  He raved in fury, and then, suddenly recoiling, cursed himself
in despair.  "He shifteth," wrote Harington, who paid him at this time
a brief and terrified visit, "from sorrow and repentance to rage and
rebellion so suddenly as well proveth him devoid of good reason or
right mind....  He uttered strange words, {237} bordering on such
strange designs that made me hasten forth and leave his presence....
His speeches of the Queen becometh no man who hath _mens sana in
corpore sano_.  He hath ill advisers and much evil hath sprung from
this source.  The Queen well knoweth how to humble the haughty spirit,
the haughty spirit knoweth not how to yield, and the man's soul seemeth
tossed to and fro, like the waves of a troubled sea."

His "speeches of the Queen" were indeed insane.  On one occasion
something was said in his presence of "Her Majesty's conditions."  "Her
conditions!" he exclaimed.  "Her conditions are as crooked as her
carcase!"  The intolerable words reached Elizabeth and she never
recovered from them.

She, too, perhaps was also mad.  Did she not see that she was drifting
to utter disaster?  That by giving him freedom and projecting him into
poverty, by disgracing him and yet leaving him uncrushed, she was
treating him in the most dangerous manner that could be devised?  Her
life-long passion for half-measures, which had brought her all her
glory, had now become a mania, and was about to prove her undoing.
Involved in an extraordinary paralysis, she ignored her approaching
fate.

But the Secretary ignored nothing.  He saw what was happening, and what
was bound to follow.  He knew all about the gatherings at Lord
Southampton's {238} in Drury House.  He noted the new faces come up
from the country, the unusual crowds of swaggering gentlemen in the
neighbourhood of the Strand, the sense of stir and preparation in the
air; and he held himself ready for the critical moment, whenever it
might come.



[1] "This is but one of the many letters which, since I saw your
Majesty, I wrote, but never sent unto you ... I sometimes think of
running [_i.e._ in the tiltyard] and then remember what it will be to
come in armour triumphing into that presence, out of which both by your
own voice I was commanded, and by your hands thrust out."  Essex to the
Queen.  Undated.




{239}

XIV

For Essex had now indeed abandoned himself to desperate courses.
Seeing no more of Anthony Bacon, he listened only to the suggestions of
his mother and Penelope Rich, to the loud anger of Sir Christopher
Blount, and to the ruthless counsel of Henry Cuffe.  Though Mountjoy
had abandoned him, he still carried on a correspondence with the King
of Scotland, and still hoped that from that direction deliverance might
come.  Early in the new year (1601) he wrote to James, asking him to
send an envoy to London, who should concert with him upon a common
course of action.  And James, this time, agreed; he ordered the Earl of
Mar to proceed to England, while he sent Essex a letter of
encouragement.  The letter arrived before the ambassador; and Essex
preserved it in a small black leather purse, which he wore concealed
about his neck.

The final explosion quickly followed.  The Earl's partisans were
seething with enthusiasm, fear, and animosity.  Wild rumours were
afloat among them, which they disseminated through the City.  The
Secretary, it was declared, was a friend to the Spaniards; he was
actually intriguing for the Spanish {240} Infanta to succeed to the
Crown of England.  But more dangerous still was the odious Raleigh.
Every one knew that that man's ambition had no scruples, that he
respected no law, either human or divine; and he had sworn--so the
story flew from mouth to mouth--to kill the Earl with his own hand, if
there was no other way of getting rid of him.  But perhaps the Earl's
enemies had so perverted the mind of the Queen that such violent
measures were unnecessary.  During the first week of February the
rumour rose that he was to be at once committed to the Tower.  Essex
himself perhaps believed it; he took counsel with his intimates; and it
seemed to them that it would be rash to wait any longer for the arrival
of Mar; that the time had come to strike, before the power of
initiative was removed from them.  But what was to be done?  Some
favoured the plan of an attack upon the Court, and a detailed scheme
was drawn up, by which control was to be secured over the person of the
Queen with a minimum of violence.  Others believed that the best plan
would be to raise the City in the Earl's favour; with the City behind
them, they could make certain of overawing the Court.  Essex could
decide upon nothing; still wildly wavering, it is conceivable that,
even now, he would have indefinitely postponed both projects and
relapsed into his accustomed state of hectic impotence, if something
had not happened to propel him into action.

{241}

That something bears all the marks of the gentle genius of Cecil.  With
unerring instinct the Secretary saw that the moment had now arrived at
which it would be well to bring matters to an issue; and accordingly he
did so.  It was the faintest possible touch.  On the morning of
Saturday, February 7th, a messenger arrived from the Queen at Essex
House, requiring the Earl to attend the Council.  That was enough.  To
the conspirators it seemed obvious that this was an attempt to seize
upon the Earl, and that, unless they acted immediately, all would be
lost.  Essex refused to move; he sent back a message that he was too
ill to leave his bed; his friends crowded about him; and it was
determined that the morrow should see the end of the Secretary's reign.

The Queen herself--who could be so base or so mad as to doubt it?--was
to remain inviolate.  Essex constantly asserted it; and yet there were
some, apparently, among that rash multitude, who looked, even upon the
divine Gloriana, with eyes that were profane.  There was a singular
episode on that Saturday afternoon.  Sir Gilly Merrick, one of the most
fiery of the Earl's adherents, went across the river with a group of
his friends, to the players at Southwark.  He was determined, he said,
that the people should see that a Sovereign of England could be
deposed, and he asked the players to act that afternoon the play of
"Richard the Second."  The players {242} demurred: the play was an old
one, and they would lose money by its performance.  But Sir Gilly
insisted; he offered them forty shillings if they would do as he
wished; and on those terms the play was acted.  Surely a strange
circumstance!  Sir Gilly must have been more conversant with history
than literature; for how otherwise could he have imagined that the
spectacle of the pathetic ruin of Shakespeare's minor poet of a hero
could have nerved any man on earth to lift a hand, in actual fact,
against so oddly different a ruler?

The Government, aware of everything, took its precautions, and on
Sunday morning the guards were doubled at Whitehall.  Sir Charles
Davers went there early to reconnoitre, and returned with the news that
it was no longer possible to surprise the Court; he recommended the
Earl to escape secretly from London, to make his way into Wales, and
there raise the standard of revolt.  Sir Christopher Blount was for
immediate action, and his words were strengthened by the
ever-increasing crowd of armed men, who, since daybreak, had been
pouring into the courtyard of Essex House.  Three hundred were
collected there by ten o'clock, and Essex was among them, when there
was a knocking at the gate.  The postern was opened, and four high
dignitaries--the Lord Keeper, the Earl of Worcester, Sir William
Knollys, and the Lord Chief Justice--made their {243} appearance.
Their servants were kept out, but they themselves were admitted.  They
had come, said Egerton, from the Queen, to enquire the cause of this
assembly, and to say that if it arose through any grief against any
persons whatsoever all complaints should be heard and justice be given.
The noise and tumult were so great that conversation was impossible,
and Essex asked the stately but agitated envoys to come up with him
into his library.  They did so, but hardly had they reached the room
when the crowd burst in after them.  There were cries of "Kill them!
kill them!" and others of "Shop them up!"  The Earl was surrounded by
his shouting and gesticulating followers.  He tried to speak, but they
interrupted him.  "Away, my Lord, they abuse you; they betray you; they
undo you; you lose time!"  He was powerless among them, and, while the
Lords of the Council vainly adjured them to lay down their arms and
depart in peace, he found himself swept towards the door.  He bade
Egerton and the others stay where they were; he would return ere long,
he cried out, and go with them to the Queen.  Then he was out of the
room, and the door was shut and locked on the Councillors; they were
"shopped up."  Down the stairs and into the courtyard streamed the
frenzied mob.  And then the great gates were opened and they all rushed
out into the street.  But even now, at this last moment, there was
hesitation.  Where were they {244} to go?  "To the Court!  To the
Court!" cried some, and all waited upon Essex.  But he, with a sudden
determination, turned towards the City.  To the City, then, it was to
be.  But there were no horses for such a multitude; they must all walk.
The Strand lay before them, and down the Strand they hurried,
brandishing their weapons.  In front of all strode the tall black
figure of Sir Christopher Blount.  "Saw!  Saw!  Saw!  Saw!  Tray!
Tray!" he shouted, seeking with wild gestures and incoherent
exclamations to raise up London for the Earl.

The insurgents entered the City by Lud Gate; but the Government had
been beforehand with them.  Word had been sent to the preachers to tell
the citizens to keep themselves within doors, armed, until further
orders; and the citizens obeyed.  Why should they do otherwise?  The
Earl was their hero; but they were loyal subjects of the Queen.  They
were quite unprepared for this sudden outbreak; they could not
understand the causes of it; and then the news reached them that the
Earl had been proclaimed a traitor; and the awful word and the ghastly
penalties it carried with it struck terror into their souls.  By noon
Essex and his band were at St. Paul's, and there was no sign of any
popular movement.  He walked onward, crying aloud as he went that there
was a plot to murder him, and that the Crown had been sold to the
Spanish Infanta.  But it was useless; there {245} was no response; not
a creature joined him.  Those who were in the street stood still and
silent, while perplexed and frightened faces peered out at him from
doors and windows on either side.  He had hoped to make a speech at
Paul's Cross, but in such an atmosphere a set oration was clearly
impossible; and besides, his self-confidence had now utterly gone.  As
he walked on down Cheapside, all men could see that he was in
desperation; the sweat poured from his face, which was contorted in
horror; he knew it at last--he was ruined--his whole life had crashed
to pieces in this hideous fiasco.

In Gracechurch Street he entered the house of one of his friends,
Sheriff Smith, upon whose support he reckoned.  But the Sheriff, though
sympathetic, was not disloyal, and he withdrew, on the pretext of
consulting the Lord Mayor.  After refreshing himself a little, Essex
emerged, to find that many of his followers had slipped away, while the
forces of the Government were gathering against him.  He determined to
return to his house; but at Lud Gate he found that the way was blocked.
The Bishop of London and Sir John Leveson had collected together some
soldiers and well-disposed citizens, and had stretched some chains
across the narrow entry.  The rebels charged, and were repelled.  Sir
Christopher was wounded; a page was killed; and some others were
mortally injured.  Essex turned down to the {246} river.  There he took
boat, and rowed to Essex House, which he entered by the water-gate.
The Councillors, he found, had been set free, and had returned to
Whitehall.  Having hurriedly destroyed a mass of incriminating papers,
including the contents of the black leather purse about his neck, he
proceeded to barricade the house.  Very soon the Queen's troops, headed
by the Lord Admiral, were upon him; artillery was brought up, and it
was clear that resistance was useless.  After a brief parley, Essex
surrendered at discretion, and was immediately conveyed to the Tower.




{247}

XV

The Government had never been in any danger, though there must have
been some anxious moments at Whitehall.  It was conceivable that the
City might respond to the Earl's incitement and that a violent struggle
would be the consequence; but Elizabeth, who was never lacking in
personal courage, awaited the event with vigorous composure.  When the
news came that all was well, and she knew that she could depend upon
the loyalty of the people, she found herself without a qualm.  She gave
orders that Essex and his adherents should be put upon their trial
immediately.

Nearly a hundred persons were in custody, and the Council proceeded at
once with the examination of the ringleaders.  Very soon the whole
course of the intrigues of the last eighteen months, including the
correspondence with James and the connivance of Mountjoy, had
transpired.  The trial of the two Earls, Essex and Southampton, was
fixed to take place before a special commission of Peers on February
18th.  What line was the prosecution to take?  It was speedily decided
that no reference whatever should be made to Scotland, and that the
facts incriminating {248} Mountjoy, whose services in Ireland could not
be dispensed with, should be suppressed.  There would be ample evidence
of treason without entering upon such delicate and embarrassing
particulars.

Bacon had been employed in the preliminary examination of some of the
less important prisoners, and was now required to act as one of the
counsel for the prosecution.  He had no hesitations or doubts.  Other
minds might have been confused in such a circumstance; but he could
discriminate with perfect clarity between the claims of the Earl and
the claims of the Law.  Private friendship and private benefits were
one thing; the public duty of taking the part required of him by the
State in bringing to justice a dangerous criminal was another.  It was
not for him to sit in judgment: he would merely act as a lawyer--merely
put the case for the Crown, to the best of his ability, before the
Peers.  His own opinions, his own feelings, were irrelevant.  It was
true, no doubt, that by joining in the proceedings he would reap
considerable advantages.  From the financial point of view alone the
affair would certainly be a godsend, for he was still pressingly in
debt; and, besides that, there was the opportunity of still further
ingratiating himself with the man who now, undoubtedly, was the most
powerful personage in England--his cousin, Robert Cecil.  But was that
an argument for declining to serve?  It was nonsense to suppose so.
Because a {249} lawyer was paid his fee did it follow that his motives
were disreputable?  There was, besides, one further complication.  It
was clear that it would be particularly useful for the Government to
number Francis Bacon among its active supporters.  The Earl had been
his patron, and was his brother's intimate friend; and, if he was now
ready to appear as one of the Earl's accusers, the effect upon the
public, if not upon the judges, would be certainly great; it would be
difficult to resist the conclusion that the case against Essex must be
serious indeed since Francis Bacon was taking a share in it.  If, on
the other hand, he refused, he would undoubtedly incur the Queen's
displeasure and run the risk of actual punishment; it might mean the
end of his career.  What followed?  Surely only a simpleton would be
puzzled into hesitation.  The responsibility for the Government's acts
lay with the Government; it was not for him to enquire into its
purposes.  And if, by doing his duty, he avoided disaster--so much the
better!  Others might be unable to distinguish between incidental
benefits and criminal inducements: for him it was all as clear as day.

Never had his intellect functioned with a more satisfactory, a more
beautiful, precision.  The argument was perfect; there was, in fact,
only one mistake about it, and that was that it had ever been made.  A
simpleton might have done better, for a simpleton might have perceived
instinctively the essentials of {250} the situation.  It was an
occasion for the broad grasp of common humanity, not for the
razor-blade of a subtle intelligence.  Bacon could not see this; he
could not see that the long friendship, the incessant kindness, the
high generosity, and the touching admiration of the Earl had made a
participation in his ruin a deplorable and disgraceful thing.  Sir
Charles Davers was not a clever man; but his absolute devotion to his
benefactor still smells sweet amid the withered corruptions of history.
In Bacon's case such reckless heroism was not demanded; mere abstention
would have been enough.  If, braving the Queen's displeasure, he had
withdrawn to Cambridge, cut down his extravagances, dismissed Jones,
and devoted himself to those sciences which he so truly loved ... but
it was an impossibility.  It was not in his nature or his destiny.  The
woolsack awaited him.  Inspired with the ingenious grandeur of the
serpent, he must deploy to the full the long luxury of his coils.  One
watches, fascinated, the glittering allurement; one desires in vain to
turn away one's face.

A State Trial was little more than a dramatic formality.  The verdict
was determined beforehand by the administration, and every one
concerned was well aware that this was so.  Such significance as the
proceedings had were of a political nature; they enabled those in power
to give a public expression of their case against the prisoner--to lay
before the world the {251} motives by which they wished it to be
supposed that they were actuated.  In the present case there was no
doubt whatever of the technical guilt of the accused.  The Court of
Peers had consulted the judges, who had pronounced that the conduct of
Essex and his followers on Sunday the 8th, whatever their intentions
may have been, in itself constituted treason, so that sentence might
have been passed immediately a formal proof of that conduct had been
made.  But that a walk through the City should involve such fearful
consequences would outrage public feeling; and it was the object of the
prosecution to show that Essex had been guilty of a dangerous and
deliberate conspiracy.  The fact that the most serious feature in the
case--the intrigue with the King of Scotland--was to be suppressed was
a handicap for the Crown lawyers; but their position was an extremely
strong one.  The accused were allowed no counsel; their right of
cross-examination was cut down to a minimum; and the evidence of the
most important witnesses was given in the shape of depositions read
aloud to the Court--depositions which had been extracted in the Tower,
and which it was impossible to control or verify.  On the whole, it
seemed certain that with a little good management the prosecution would
be able to blacken the conduct and character of the prisoners in a way
which would carry conviction--in every sense of the word.

{252}

It so happened, however, that good management was precisely what was
lacking on the part of the Crown leader, Edward Coke.  On this far more
serious occasion, the Attorney-General repeated the tactical errors
which he had committed at York House.  He abused his antagonists so
roughly as to raise sympathy on their behalf; and he allowed himself to
be led away into heated disputations which obscured the true issues of
the case.  During these wranglings, Essex was more than once able to
carry the war into the enemy's camp.  He declared fiercely that Raleigh
had intended to murder him, and Raleigh was put into the witness-box to
deny the irrelevant charge.  A little later Essex brought up the story
that the succession had been sold to the Spaniards by the Secretary.
There followed a remarkable and unexpected scene.  Cecil, who had been
listening to the proceedings from behind a curtain, suddenly stepped
forth, and, falling on his knees, begged to be allowed to clear himself
of the slander.  It was agreed that he should be heard, and, after a
long altercation with Essex, Cecil elicited the fact that the informant
upon whose report the charge was based was Sir William Knollys, the
Earl's uncle.  Knollys in his turn was sent for, and his evidence
exculpated the Secretary.  All that had happened, he said, was that
Cecil had once mentioned to him a book in which the Infanta's title was
preferred before any other.  Essex's accusations {253} had collapsed;
but the prosecution, after many hours, had come no nearer to a proof of
his criminal intentions.  It was useless for Coke to shout and hector.
"It was your purpose," he cried, shaking a menacing finger at Essex,
"to take not only the Tower of London but the royal palace and the
person of the prince--yea, and to take away her life!"  Such
exaggerations were only damaging to his own cause.

Bacon saw what was happening, and judged that it was time to intervene.
The real question at issue--the precise nature of the Earl's
motives--was indeed a complicated and obscure one.  The motives of the
most ordinary mortal are never easy to disentangle, and Essex was far
from ordinary.  His mind was made up of extremes, and his temper was
devoid of balance.  He rushed from opposite to opposite; he allowed the
strangest contradictories to take root together, and grow up side by
side, in his heart.  He loved and hated--he was a devoted servant and
an angry rebel--all at once.  For an impartial eye, it is impossible to
trace in his conduct a determined intention of any kind.  He was swept
hither and thither by the gusts of his passions and the accidents of
circumstance.  He entertained treasonable thoughts, and at last
treasonable projects; but fitfully, with intervals of romantic fidelity
and noble remorse.  His behaviour in Ireland was typical of all the
rest.  After suggesting an invasion of England at the head of his
troops, he veered {254} completely round and led his army against
Tyrone.  It finally turned out that he had gone too far to draw back,
and, pushed on by his own followers and the animosity of the Queen, he
had plunged into a desperate action.  But, till the last moment, he was
uncertain, indefinite and distraught.  There was no settled malignancy
in his nature.  It is possible that he believed in the treachery of
Cecil; and, as it happened, there was some justification for the
belief, for Cecil, with all his loyalty, was actually in receipt of a
Spanish pension.  Convinced of his own high purposes, the unrealistic
creature may well have dreamed in his sanguine hours that, after all,
he would manage to effect a bloodless revolution; that Cecil and
Raleigh could be not too roughly thrust upon one side; and that then
the way would be open once more for his true affection, his true
admiration, his true ambition--that thenceforward the Queen would be
his and he the Queen's, in glorious happiness, until death parted them.

Such were his inward workings, and Francis Bacon was the last man in
the world to have understood them.  They were utterly remote from the
clear, bright ambit of that supremely positive intelligence.  Wish as
he might, the author of the "Essays or Counsels" could never have
comprehended a psychology that was dominated by emotion instead of
reason; but, on this occasion, he did not wish.  Sympathy was far from
{255} him.  What were the actual facts?  By facts alone was it possible
to judge of conduct, and the Court, led away by recrimination and
irrelevancies, was beginning to lose sight of them.  It was for him to
brush aside, calmly but firmly, the excuses and the subterfuges of the
prisoner, and to concentrate the attention of the judges--and of the
public--on what was really the vital point in the whole business--the
meaning of his deeds.

With perfect tact Bacon paid homage to the education of the Peers by
illustrating his remarks with an incident from the Classics.  All
history, he said, made it plain "that there was never any traitor heard
of, but he always coloured his practices with some plausible pretence."
Essex had "made his colour the severing of some great men and
counsellors from her Majesty's favour, and the fear he stood in of his
pretended enemies lest they should murder him in his house.  Therefore
he saith he was compelled to fly into the City for succour and
assistance."  He was "not much unlike Pisistratus, of whom it was so
anciently written how he gashed and wounded himself, and in that sort
ran crying into Athens that his life was sought and like to have been
taken away; thinking to have moved the people to have pitied him and
taken his part by such counterfeited harm and danger: whereas his aim
and drift was to take the government of the city into his hands, and
alter the form thereof.  {256} With like pretences of dangers and
assaults, the Earl of Essex entered the City of London."  In reality
"he had no such enemies, no such dangers."  The facts were plain, "and,
my Lord"--he turned to the prisoner--"all whatsoever you have or can
say in answer hereof are but shadows.  And therefore methinks it were
best for you to confess, not to justify."

Essex could never distinguish very clearly between a personality and an
argument.  "I call forth Mr. Bacon," he replied, "against Mr. Bacon";
and then he told the Court how, but a few months previously, his
accuser had written letters in his name, to be shown to the Queen, in
which his case had been stated "as orderly for me as I could do
myself."  "These digressions," said Bacon coldly, "are not fit, neither
should be suffered;" the letters were harmless; "and," he added, "I
have spent more time in vain in studying how to make the Earl a good
servant to the Queen and state than I have done in anything else."

Then he sat down, and the case came once more under the guidance of
Coke.  The confessions of the other conspirators were read; but there
was no order in the proceedings; point after point was taken up and
dropped; and, at last, when the Attorney-General, after an harangue on
the irreligion of the accused, offered to produce evidence upon the
subject, the Peers declined to hear it.  Once more {257} confusion had
descended, and once more Bacon rose to fix attention upon the central
issue.  "I have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to any
prisoner," he said, "so many digressions, such delivery of evidence by
fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious
treasons."  He then read aloud the opinion of the judges on the point
of law, and continued: "To take secret counsel, to execute it, to run
together in numbers armed with weapons--what can be the excuse?  Warned
by the Lord Keeper, by a herald, and yet persist.  Will any simple man
take this to be less than treason?"  Essex interrupted.  "If I had
purposed anything against others than my private enemies," he said, "I
would not have stirred with so slender a company."  Bacon paused a
moment and then replied, addressing himself directly to the Earl.  "It
was not the company you carried with you, but the assistance which you
hoped for in the City, which you trusted unto.  The Duke of Guise
thrust himself into the streets of Paris, on the day of the
Barricadoes, in his doublet and hose, attended only with eight
gentlemen, and found that help in the city, which (God be thanked) you
failed of here.  And what followed?  The King was forced to put himself
into a pilgrim's weeds, and in that disguise to steal away to escape
their fury.  Even such," he concluded, turning to the Peers, "was my
Lord's confidence too; and his pretence the same--an all-hail and a
kiss to the City.  {258} But the end was treason, as hath been
sufficiently proved."

The thrust was indeed a sharp one; but Bacon's words were no longer
directed merely to the Court and the public.  The parallel with Guise,
whose rebellion had occurred within living memory, had in it an
actuality far more deadly than the learned allusion to Pisistratus.
There could be only one purpose in drawing it: it was precisely
calculated to touch, in the most susceptible place, the mind of the
Queen.  To put Essex before her, with such verisimilitude, in the shape
of the man who had raised up Paris against Henry III, was a
master-stroke of detraction.  The words, no doubt, would reach
Elizabeth; but they were addressed, in reality, to some one else--to
the invisible listener, who, after his dramatic appearance, had
returned to his place behind the hangings.  The Secretary's kindred
intellect appreciated to the full the subtle implications of the
speech; his cousin was doing admirably.  The Earl was silent.  Francis
Bacon's task was over.  The double tongue had struck, and struck again.

Both prisoners were inevitably found guilty, and the revolting sentence
was passed in the usual form.  During the ordeal of the trial Essex had
been bold, dignified, and self-possessed; but now, back again in the
Tower, he was seized by a violent revulsion; anguish and horror
overpowered his mind.  A puritan clergyman, who had been sent to
minister to him, {259} took the opportunity to agitate his conscience
and fill his imagination with the fear of hell.  He completely
collapsed.  Self-reliance--self-respect--were swept away in a flood of
bitter lamentations.  He wished, he said, to make a confession to the
Lords of the Council.  They came, and he declared to them that he was a
miserable sinner, grovelling heart-broken before the judgment-seat of
God.  He cried out upon his inexcusable guilt; and he did more: he
denounced the black thoughts, the fatal counsels, the evil doings of
his associates.  They, too, were traitors and villains, no less than
himself.  He raved against them all--his stepfather--Sir Charles
Davers--Henry Cuffe--each was worse than the other; they had lured him
on to these abominable practices, and now they were all to sink
together under a common doom.  His sister, too!  Let her not be
forgotten--she had been among the wickedest!  Was she not guilty of
more sins than one?  "She must be looked to," he cried, "for she hath a
proud spirit!"--adding dark words of Mountjoy, and false friendship,
and broken vows of marriage.  Then, while the grave Councillors
listened in embarrassed silence, he returned once more to his own
enormities.  "I know my sins," he said, "unto her Majesty and to my
God.  I must confess to you that I am the greatest, the most vilest and
most unthankful traitor that has ever been in the land."

While these painful scenes of weakness and {260} humiliation were
passing in the Tower, Elizabeth had withdrawn into deepest privacy at
Whitehall.  Every mind was turned towards her--in speculation, in hope,
in terror; the fatal future lay now, spinning and quivering, within her
formidable grasp.

It is not difficult to guess the steps by which she reached her final
conclusion.  The actual danger which she had run must have seemed to
her--in spite of Bacon's reminder--the least important element in the
case.  The rising had been an act of folly, doomed from the first to
ignominious failure--an act so weak and ineffective that, taken by
itself, it could hardly be said to deserve the extreme penalty of the
Law.  If, for other reasons, she was inclined towards mercy, there
would be ample justification for taking a lenient view of what had
happened, and for commuting the punishment of death for one, perhaps,
of imprisonment and sequestration.  It is true that the intrigue with
James of Scotland wore a more serious complexion; but this had proved
abortive; it was unknown to all but a few in high places; and it might
well be buried in oblivion.  Were there, then, other reasons for mercy?
Most assuredly there were.  But these were not judicial reasons;
neither were they political; they were purely personal; and, of course,
in that very fact lay their strength.

To abolish, in a moment, the immediate miserable past--to be reconciled
once more; to regain, with a {261} new rapture, the old happiness--what
was there to prevent it?  Nothing, surely; she had the power for such
an act; she could assert her will--extend her royal pardon; after a
short eclipse, he would be with her again; not a voice would be raised
against her; Cecil himself, she knew, would accept the situation
without a murmur; and so--would not all be well?  It was indeed a
heavenly vision, and she allowed herself to float deliciously down the
stream of her desires.  But not for long.  She could not dwell
indefinitely among imaginations; her sense of fact crept
forward--insidious--paramount; with relentless fingers it picked to
pieces the rosy palaces of unreality.  She was standing once again on
the bleak rock.  She saw plainly that she could never trust him, that
the future would always repeat the past, that, whatever her feelings
might be, his would remain divided, dangerous, profoundly intractable,
and that, if this catastrophe were exorcised, another, even worse,
would follow in its place.

And yet, after all, might she not take the risk?  She had been a
gambler all her life; there was little left of it now; why not live out
that little in the old style, with the old hazard--the close-hauled
boat tacking fiercely against the wind?  Let him intrigue with James of
Scotland, she could manage that!  Let him do his worst--she would be
equal to it; she would wrestle with him, master him, hold him at her
mercy, and pardon him--magnificently, ecstatically, pardon {262}
him--again and again!  If she failed, well, that would be a new
experience, and--how often had she said it!--_per molto variare la
natura e bella_.  Yes, truly, she and nature were akin--variable,
beautiful ... a hideous memory struck her; terrible outrageous words
re-echoed in her mind.  "Crooked"--"carcase"--so that was what he
thought of her!  While he was pouring out his sugared adorations, he
loathed her, despised her, recoiled from her.  Was it possible?  Was
the whole history of their relations, then, one long infamous
deception?  Was it all bitterness and blindness?  Had he perhaps truly
loved her once?--Once!  But the past was over, and time was inexorable.
Every moment widened the desperate abyss between them.  Such dreams
were utter folly.  She preferred not to look in her looking-glass--why
should she?  There was no need; she was very well aware without that of
what had happened to her.  She was a miserable old woman of
sixty-seven.  She recognised the truth--the whole truth--at last.

Her tremendous vanity--the citadel of her repressed romanticism--was
shattered, and rage and hatred planted their flag upon its ruins.  The
animosity which for so long had been fluctuating within her now flared
up in triumph and rushed out upon the author of her agony and her
disgrace.  He had betrayed her in every possible way--mentally,
emotionally, materially--as a Queen and as a woman--before {263} the
world and in the sweetest privacies of the heart.  And he had actually
imagined that he could elude the doom that waited on such iniquity--had
dreamed of standing up against her--had mistaken the hesitations of her
strength for the weaknesses of a subservient character.  He would have
a sad awakening!  He would find that she was indeed the daughter of a
father who had known how to rule a kingdom and how to punish the
perfidy of those he had loved the most.  Yes, indeed, she felt her
father's spirit within her; and an extraordinary passion moved the
obscure profundities of her being, as she condemned her lover to her
mother's death.  In all that had happened there was a dark
inevitability, a ghastly satisfaction; her father's destiny, by some
intimate dispensation, was repeated in hers; it was supremely fitting
that Robert Devereux should follow Anne Boleyn to the block.  Her
father! ... but in a still remoter depth there were still stranger
stirrings.  There was a difference as well as a likeness; after all,
she was no man, but a woman; and was this, perhaps, not a repetition
but a revenge?  After all the long years of her life-time, and in this
appalling consummation, was it her murdered mother who had finally
emerged?  The wheel had come full circle.  Manhood--the fascinating,
detestable entity, which had first come upon her concealed in yellow
magnificence in her father's lap--manhood was overthrown at last, and
in the person of that traitor it {264} should be rooted out.
Literally, perhaps ... she knew well enough the punishment for high
treason.  But no!  She smiled sardonically.  She would not deprive him
of the privilege of his rank.  It would be enough if he suffered as so
many others--the Lord Admiral Seymour among the rest--had suffered
before him; it would be enough if she cut off his head.

And so it happened that this was the one occasion in her life on which
Elizabeth hardly hesitated.  The trial had taken place on February the
19th, and the execution was fixed for the 25th.  A little wavering
there had indeed to be--she would not have been Elizabeth without it;
but it was hardly perceptible.  On the 23rd she sent a message that the
execution should be postponed; on the 24th she sent another that it
should be proceeded with.  She interfered with the course of the law no
further.

Afterwards a romantic story was told, which made the final catastrophe
the consequence of a dramatic mishap.  The tale is well known: how, in
happier days, the Queen gave the Earl a ring, with the promise that,
whenever he sent it back to her, it would always bring forgiveness; how
Essex, leaning from a window of the Tower, entrusted the ring to a boy,
bidding him take it to Lady Scrope, and beg her to present it to her
Majesty; how the boy, in mistake, gave the ring to Lady Scrope's
sister, Lady Nottingham, the wife of the Earl's enemy; how Lady
Nottingham kept {265} it, and said nothing, until, on her deathbed two
years later, she confessed all to the Queen, who, with the exclamation
"God may forgive you, Madam, but I never can!" brought down the curtain
on the tragedy.  Such a narrative is appropriate enough to the place
where it was first fully elaborated--a sentimental novelette;[1] but it
does not belong to history.  The improbability of its details is too
glaring, and the testimony against it is overpowering.  It is
implicitly denied by Camden, the weightiest of contemporary historians;
it is explicitly contradicted by Clarendon, who, writing in the
succeeding generation, was in a position to know the facts; and it has
been rejected by later writers, including the learned and judicious
Ranke.  And assuredly the grim facts stand better by themselves,
without the aid of such adventitious ornaments.  Essex made no appeal.
Of what use would be a cry for mercy?  Elizabeth would listen to
nothing, if she was deaf to her own heart.  The end came in silence:
and at last he understood.  Like her other victims, he realised too
late that he had utterly misjudged her nature, that there had never
been the slightest possibility of dominating her, that the enormous
apparatus of her hesitations and collapses was merely an incredibly
elaborate faade, and that all within was iron.

{266}

One request he made--that he should not be executed in public; and it
was willingly granted, for there still seemed a chance of a popular
movement on his behalf.  He should be beheaded, like all the great
state criminals before him, in the courtyard of the Tower.

And there, on the morning of February 25th, 1601, were gathered
together all those who were qualified to witness the closing ceremony.
Among them was Walter Raleigh.  As Captain of the Guard, it was his
duty to be present; but he had thought, too, that perhaps the condemned
man would have some words to say to him, and he took up his station
very near the block.  There were murmurs around him.  Was this as it
should be?  Now that the great Earl was brought so low, were his
enemies to come pressing about him in scornful jubilation?  A shameful
sight!  Raleigh heard, and in sombre silence immediately withdrew.  He
went into the White Tower, ascended to the Armoury, and thence, from a
window, the ominous prophet of imperialism surveyed the scene.

It was not a short one.  The age demanded that there should be a
dignified formality on such occasions, and that the dreadful physical
deed should be approached through a long series of ornate and pious
commonplaces.  Essex appeared in a black cloak and hat with three
clergymen beside him.  Stepping upon the scaffold, he took off his hat,
and bowed to the {267} assembled lords.  He spoke long and earnestly--a
studied oration, half speech, half prayer.  He confessed his sins, both
general and particular.  He was young, he said--he was in his
thirty-fourth year--and he "had bestowed his youth in wantonness, lust,
and uncleanness."  He had been "puffed up with pride, vanity, and love
of this world's pleasure"; his sins were "more in number than the hairs
on his head."  "For all which," he went on, "I humbly beseech my
saviour Christ to be a mediator to the eternal Majesty for my pardon;
especially for this my last sin, this great, this bloody, this crying,
this infectious sin, whereby so many for love of me have been drawn to
offend God, to offend their sovereign, to offend the world.  I beseech
God to forgive it us, and to forgive it me--most wretched of all."  He
prayed for the welfare of the Queen, "whose death I protest I never
meant, nor violence to her person."  He was never, he declared, either
an atheist or a papist, but hoped for salvation from God only by the
mercy and merits of "my saviour Jesus Christ.  This faith I was brought
up in; and herein I am ready to die; beseeching you all to join your
souls with me in prayer."  He paused, and was about to take off his
cloak, when one of the clergymen reminded him that he should pray God
to forgive his enemies.  He did so, and then, removing his cloak and
ruff, knelt down by the block in his black doublet.  Another of the
clergymen encouraged him against the fear of death, {268} whereupon,
with ingenuous gravity, he confessed that more than once, in battle, he
had "felt the weakness of the flesh, and therefore in this great
conflict desired God to assist and strengthen him."  After that, gazing
upwards, he prayed, more passionately, to the Almighty.  He prayed for
all the Estates of the Realm, and he repeated the Lord's prayer.  The
executioner, kneeling before him, asked for his forgiveness, which he
granted.  The clergymen requested him to rehearse the creed, and he
went through it, repeating it after them clause by clause.  He rose and
took off his doublet; a scarlet waistcoat, with long scarlet sleeves,
was underneath.  So--tall, splendid, bare-headed, with his fair hair
about his shoulders--he stood before the world for the last time.
Then, turning, he bowed low before the block; and, saying that he would
be ready when he stretched out his arms, he lay down flat upon the
scaffold.  "Lord, be merciful to thy prostrate servant!" he cried out,
and put his head sideways upon the low block.  "Lord, into thy hands I
recommend my spirit."  There was a pause; and all at once the red arms
were seen to be extended.  The headsman whirled up the axe, and crashed
it downwards; there was no movement; but twice more the violent action
was repeated before the head was severed and the blood poured forth.
The man stooped, and, taking the head by the hair, held it up before
the onlookers, shouting as he did so, "God save the Queen!"



[1] _The Secret History of the most renowned Queen Elizabeth and the
Earl of Essex, by a Person of Quality_, 1695.  A reference to the
legend in its rudimentary form occurs in _The Devil's Law Case_
(_circa_ 1620).  Cf. _The Works of John Webster_, ed. Lucas, ii. 343.




{269}

XVI

Southhampton was spared.  His youth and romantic devotion to Essex were
accepted as a palliation of his delinquency, and the death sentence was
commuted for imprisonment in the Tower.  Sir Christopher Blount and Sir
Charles Davers were beheaded; Sir Gilly Merrick and Henry Cuffe were
hanged.  Some heavy fines were levied from some of the other
conspirators, but there were no more executions; the Government was
less vindictive than might have been expected.  Penelope Rich, who had
been taken prisoner in Essex House at the same time as her brother, was
set free.  In the hour of his triumph, Cecil's one wish was to show no
animosity; he gave rein to his instinctive mildness, and was as polite
as possible to his fallen enemies.  An opportunity occurred of showing
a favour to Lady Essex, and he immediately seized it.  One Daniell, a
servant of the Earl's, had got hold of some of his private letters, had
forged copies of them, and had blackmailed the Countess with threats of
publication.  She appealed to Cecil, who acted with great promptitude.
The ruffian was seized and brought before the Star Chamber; and, in an
elaborate sentence, filled with flowery praises of the Countess, he
{270} was condemned to pay her two thousand pounds, to be fined another
thousand, to be imprisoned for life, and--"to thend the said offences
of the foresaid Daniell should not only be notefyed to the publique
viewe, but to cause others to refrayne from committing of the like
hereafter, it is likewise ordered and decreed that for the same his
offences he the said Daniell shalbe sett upon the pillory, with his
eares thereunto nayled, with a paper on his head inscribed with these
words--For forgery, corrupte cosenages, and other lewde practises."
Lady Essex was duly grateful; a letter of thanks to Cecil gives us a
momentary glimpse of the most mysterious of the personages in this
tragic history.  A shrouded figure, moving dubiously on that
brilliantly lighted stage, Frances Walsingham remains utterly unknown
to us.  We can only guess, according to our fancy, at some rare beauty,
some sovereign charm--and at one thing more: a super-abundant vitality.
For, two years later, the widow of Sidney and Essex was married for the
third time--to the Earl of Clanricarde.  And so she vanishes.

The rising had been followed by no repercussions among the people, but
the Government remained slightly uneasy.  It was anxious to convince
the public that Essex had not been made a martyr to political intrigue,
but was a dangerous criminal who had received a righteous punishment.
The preacher in St. Paul's was instructed to deliver a sermon to that
{271} effect, but this was not enough; and it was determined to print
and publish a narrative of the circumstances, with extracts from the
official evidence attached.  Obviously Bacon was the man to carry out
the work; he was instructed to do so; his labours were submitted to the
correction of the Queen and Council; and the "Declaration of the
Practices and Treasons of Robert Late Earl of Essex and his Complices
... together with the very Confessions, and other parts of the
Evidences themselves, word for word taken out of the Originals" was the
result.  The tract was written with brevity and clarity, and, as was to
be expected, it expressed in a more detailed form the view of the case
which Bacon had outlined in his speeches at the trial.  It showed that
the rising had been the result of a long-thought-out and deliberately
planned conspiracy.  This result was achieved with the greatest skill
and neatness; certain passages in the confessions were silently
suppressed; but the manipulations of the evidence were reduced to a
minimum; and there was only one actually false statement of fact.  The
date of the Earl's proposal to invade England with the Irish army was
altered; it was asserted to have taken place after the expedition
against Tyrone, and not before it; and thus one of the clearest
indications of the indeterminate and fluctuating nature of Essex and
his plans was not only concealed but converted into a confirmation of
Bacon's thesis.  By means of a clever {272} series of small omissions
from the evidence, the balance of the facts just previous to the rising
was entirely changed; the Earl's hesitations--which in truth continued
up to the very last moment--were obliterated, and it was made to appear
that the march into the City had been steadily fixed upon for weeks.
So small and subtle were the means by which Bacon's end was reached
that one cannot but wonder whether, after all, he was conscious of
their existence.  Yet such a beautiful economy--could it have arisen
unbeknownst?  Who can tell?  The serpent glides off with his secret.

[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON.  _From the portrait in the National
Portrait Gallery_]

As a reward for his services Francis Bacon received 1200 from the
Queen.  And very soon his financial position was improved still
further.  Three months after the final catastrophe, Anthony Bacon found
the rest which this world had never given him.  The terrible
concatenation of events--the loss of his master, the loss of his
brother, the ruin of his hopes, the triumph of folly, passion, and
wickedness--had broken the last prop of his shattered health--his
fierce indomitable spirit.  He died, and Francis inherited his small
fortune.  The future was brightening.  Property--prosperity--a
multitude of satisfactions, sensual and intellectual--a crowded life of
brilliance, learning, and power--were these things coming then at last?
Perhaps; but when they came they would be shared in no family
rejoicings.  Only a strange cackle {273} disturbed the silence of
Gorhambury.  For old Lady Bacon's wits had finally turned.  Gibbering
of the Lord and the Earl, of her sons and her nephew, of hellfire and
wantonness, she passed the futile days in a confusion of prayers and
rages.  Frantic, she tottered on into extreme senility.  Oblivion
covers her.

Mastery had come into Robert Cecil's hands; but it was mastery tempered
by anxiety and vigilance.  No sooner was his great rival gone than a
fresh crisis, of supreme importance in his life, was upon him.  The
Earl of Mar arrived in London.  The situation had completely changed
since his departure from Scotland, and it now seemed as if James's
emissary could have little to do at the English Court.  While he was
waiting indecisively, he received a message from Cecil, asking for a
private interview.  The Secretary had seen where the key to the future
lay.  He was able to convince Mar that he was sincerely devoted to the
cause of the King of Scotland.  If only, he said, James would abandon
his policy of protests and clandestine manoeuvring, if he would put his
trust in him, if he would leave to him the management of the necessary
details, he would find, when the hour struck, that all would be well,
that the transition would be accomplished and the crown of England his,
without the slightest difficulty or danger.  Mar, deeply impressed,
returned to Edinburgh, and succeeded in making James understand the
crucial importance of these advances.  A {274} secret correspondence
began between the King and the Secretary.  The letters, sent round, by
way of precaution, through an intermediary in Dublin, brought James
ever more closely under the wise and gentle sway of Cecil.  Gradually,
persistently, infinitely quietly, the obstacles in the path of the
future were smoothed away; and the royal gratitude grew into affection,
into devotion, as the inevitable moment drew near.

To Cecil, while he watched and waited, one possibility was more
disturbing than all the rest.  The rise of Raleigh had accompanied the
fall of Essex; the Queen had made him Governor of Jersey; she was
beginning to employ him in diplomacy; where was this to end?  Was it
conceivable that the upshot of the whole drama was merely to be a
change of dangerous favourites--but a change for the worse, by which
the dashing incompetence of Essex would be replaced by Raleigh's
sinister force?  And, even if it was too late now for that bold man to
snatch very much more from Elizabeth, what fatal influence might he not
come to wield over the romantic and easily impressible James?  This
must be looked to; and looked to it was.  The King's mind was
satisfactorily infected with the required sentiments; Cecil himself
said very little--only a sharp word, once; but Lord Henry Howard, who,
as Cecil's closest ally, had been allowed to join in the secret
correspondence, poured out, in letter after {275} letter, envenomed
warnings and bitter accusations; and soon James felt for Raleigh only
loathing and dread.  Raleigh himself was utterly unsuspecting; there
seemed to be a warm friendship between him and the Secretary.  Once
again he was the victim of bad luck.  His earlier hopes had been
shattered by Essex; and now that Essex was destroyed he was faced by a
yet more dangerous antagonist.  In reality, the Earl's ruin, which he
had so virulently demanded, was to be the prologue of his own.  As he
had looked out from the armoury on his enemy's execution, his eyes had
filled with tears.  So strangely had he been melted by the grandeur of
the tragedy!  But did some remote premonition also move him?  Some
obscure prevision of the end that would be his too, at last?

The great reign continued for two years longer; but the pulses of
action had grown feeble; and over public affairs there hovered a cloud
of weariness and suspense.  Only in one quarter was history still being
made--in Ireland.  Elizabeth's choice of Mountjoy had been completely
justified.  With relentless skill and energy he had worn down the
forces of Tyrone.  It was in vain that all Catholic Europe prayed for
the rebel, in vain that the Pope sent him a phoenix's feather, in vain
that three thousand Spaniards landed at Kinsale.  Mountjoy was
victorious in a pitched battle; the Spaniards were forced to
capitulate; {276} Tyrone was pressed back, pursued, harried, driven
from pillar to post.  Once more he negotiated and yielded; but this
time the dream of a Catholic dominion in Ireland was finally shattered,
and Elizabeth's crowning triumph was achieved.  Yet Tyrone's strange
history was not ended; some unexpected sands were still waiting for him
in Time's glass.  A great lord once again on his estates in Ulster,
rich and proud with his adoring vassals about him, he suddenly plunged
into a fresh quarrel with the English Government.  All at once he took
fright--he fled.  For long he wandered with his family and retinue
through France, Flanders, and Germany, a desperate exile, an
extraordinary flitting focus of ambiguous intrigue.  At length the Pope
received him, housed him, pensioned him; his adventures silently
ceased.  And he, too, passes from us--submerged by the long vague years
of peace, indolence, and insignificance--sinking away into
forgetfulness through the monotony of Roman afternoons.

Elizabeth had resisted the first onslaughts of rage and grief with the
utmost bravery, but an inevitable reaction followed, and, as the full
consciousness of what had happened pressed in upon her, her nervous
system began to give way.  Her temper grew more abrupt and capricious
than ever; for days at a time she sat silent in moody melancholy.  She
could hardly bring herself to eat; "little but manchet and succory
{277} potage"--so Sir John Harington tells us--passed her lips.  She
kept a sword continually by her, and when a nerve-storm came upon her
she would snatch it up, stamp savagely to and fro, and thrust it in
fury into the tapestry.  Sir John, when he begged for an audience,
received a sharp reply.  "Go tell that witty fellow, my godson, to get
home; it is no season now to fool it here."  It was too true, and he
obeyed her, sad at heart.  Sometimes she would shut herself up in a
darkened room, in paroxysms of weeping.  Then she would emerge,
scowling, discover some imagined neglect, and rate her waiting-women
until they, too, were reduced to tears.

She still worked on at the daily business of Government, though at
times there were indications that the habits of a lifetime were
disintegrating, and she was careless, or forgetful, as she had never
been before.  To those who watched her, it almost seemed as if the
inner spring were broken, and that the mechanism continued to act by
the mere force of momentum.  At the same time her physical strength
showed signs of alarming decay.  There was a painful scene when, in
October, she opened Parliament.  As she stood in her heavy robes before
the Lords and Commons, she was suddenly seen to totter; several
gentlemen hurried forward and supported her; without them, she would
have fallen to the ground.

But in truth the old spirit was not yet extinct, and {278} she was
still capable of producing a magnificent sensation.  The veteran
conjurer's hand might tremble, but it had not lost the art of bringing
an incredible rabbit out of a hat.  When the session of Parliament
began, it was found that there was great and general discontent on the
subject of monopolies.  These grants to private persons of the sole
right to sell various articles had been growing in number, and were
felt to be oppressive.  As the long list of them was being read aloud
in the House of Commons, a member interjected.  "Is not bread there?"
"If order be not taken," another replied, "it will be, before next
Parliament."  The monopolies--Essex's lease of the sweet wines had been
one of them--were Elizabeth's frugal method of rewarding her favourites
or officials; and to protest against them amounted to an indirect
attack on the royal prerogative.  Elizabeth had not been accustomed to
put up with interferences of this kind from the Commons; how often, for
less cause than this, had she railed at them in high displeasure, and
dismissed them cowering from her presence!  And so no one was surprised
when she sent for the Speaker, and the poor man prepared himself for a
tremendous wigging.  Great was his amazement.  She greeted him with the
highest affability; told him that she had lately become aware that
"divers patents, which she had granted, were grievous to her subjects,"
assured him that she had been thinking of the matter "even in the midst
of {279} her most great and weighty occasions," and promised immediate
reform.  The Speaker departed in raptures.  With her supreme instinct
for facts, she had perceived that the debate in the House represented a
feeling in the country with which it would be unwise to come into
conflict; she saw that policy dictated a withdrawal; and she determined
to make the very best use of an unfortunate circumstance.  The Commons
were overwhelmed when they learnt what had happened; discontent was
turned to adoration; there was a flood of sentiment, and the
accumulated popularity of half a century suddenly leapt up to its
highest point.  They sent a deputation to express their gratitude, and
she received them in state.  "In all duty and thankfulness," said the
Speaker, as the whole company knelt before her, "prostrate at your
feet, we present our most loyal and thankful hearts, and the last
spirit in our nostrils, to be poured out, to be breathed up, for your
safety."  There was a pause; and then the high voice rang out:--"Mr.
Speaker, we perceive your coming is to present thanks unto us; know I
accept them with no less joy than your loves can have desired to offer
such a present, and do more esteem it than any treasure or riches, for
those we know how to prize, but loyalty, love, and thanks I account
them invaluable; and, though God hath raised me high, yet this I
account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves."
She stopped, and told them {280} to stand up, as she had more to say to
them.  "When I heard it," she went on, "I could give no rest unto my
thoughts until I had reformed it, and those varlets, lewd persons,
abusers of my bounty, shall know I will not suffer it.  And, Mr.
Speaker, tell the House from me that I take it exceeding grateful that
the knowledge of these things have come unto me from them.  Of myself,
I must say this, I never was any greedy scraping grasper, nor a strict
fast-holding prince, nor yet a waster; my heart was never set upon any
worldly goods, but only for my subjects' good."  Pausing again for a
moment, she continued in a deeper tone.  "To be a king and wear a crown
is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to
them that bear it.  The cares and troubles of a crown I cannot more
fitly resemble than to the drugs of a learned physician, perfumed with
some aromatical savour, or to bitter pills gilded over, by which they
are made more acceptable or less offensive, which indeed are bitter and
unpleasant to take.  And for my own part, were it not for conscience'
sake to discharge the duty that God hath laid upon me, and to maintain
His glory, and keep you in safety, in mine own disposition I should be
willing to resign the place I hold to any other, and glad to be freed
of the glory with the labours; for it is not my desire to live nor to
reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your good.  And,
though you have had and may have many mightier and wiser {281} princes
sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have any love you
better."  She straightened herself with a final effort; her eyes
glared; there was a sound of trumpets; and, turning from them in her
sweeping draperies--erect and terrible--she walked out.




{282}

XVII

The end approached very gradually--with the delay which, so it seemed,
had become _de rigueur_ in that ambiguous Court.  The ordinary routine
continued, and in her seventieth year the Queen transacted business,
went on progress, and danced while ambassadors peeped through the
hangings, as of old.  Vitality ebbed slowly; but at times there was a
sudden turn; health and spirits flowed in upon the capricious organism;
wit sparkled; the loud familiar laughter re-echoed through Whitehall.
Then the sombre hours returned again--the distaste for all that life
offered--the savage outbursts--the lamentations.  So it had come to
this!  It was all too clear--her inordinate triumph had only brought
her to solitude and ruin.  She sat alone, amid emptiness and ashes,
bereft of the one thing in the whole world that was worth having.  And
she herself, with her own hand, had cast it from her, had destroyed it
... but it was not true; she had been helpless--a puppet in the grasp
of some malignant power, some hideous influence inherent in the very
structure of reality.  In such moods, with royal indifference, she
unburdened her soul to all who approached her--to her ladies, to an
ambassador, {283} or to some old scholar who had come to show her his
books.  With deep sighs and mourning gestures she constantly repeated
the name of Essex.  Then she dismissed them--the futile listeners--with
a wave of her hand.  It was better that the inward truth should be
expressed by the outward seeming; it was better to be alone.

In the winter of 1602, Harington came again to Court, and this time he
obtained an audience of his godmother.  "I found her," he told his
wife, "in most pitiable state."  Negotiations with Tyrone were then in
progress, and she, forgetful of a former conversation, asked Sir John
if he had ever seen the rebel.  "I replied with reverence that I had
seen him with the Lord Deputy; she looked up with much choler and grief
in her countenance, and said, 'Oh, now it mindeth me that you was one
who saw this man elsewhere,' and hereat she dropped a tear, and smote
her bosom."  He thought to amuse her with some literary trifles, and
read her one or two of his rhyming epigrams.  She smiled faintly.
"When thou dost feel creeping time at thy gate," she said, "these
fooleries will please thee less; I am past my relish for such matters."

With the new year her spirits revived, and she attended some state
dinners.  Then she moved to Richmond, for change of air; and at
Richmond, in March, 1603, her strength finally left her.  There were no
very definite symptoms, besides the growing physical {284} weakness and
the profound depression of mind.  She would allow no doctors to come
near her; she ate and drank very little, lying for hours in a low
chair.  At last it was seen that some strange crisis was approaching.
She struggled to rise, and failing, summoned her attendants to pull her
to her feet.  She stood.  Refusing further help, she remained
immovable, while those around her watched in awe-stricken silence.  Too
weak to walk, she still had the strength to stand; if she returned to
her chair, she knew that she would never rise from it; she would
continue to stand, then; had it not always been her favourite posture?
She was fighting Death, and fighting with terrific tenacity.  The
appalling combat lasted for fifteen hours.  Then she yielded--though
she still declared that she would not go to bed.  She sank on to
cushions, spread out to receive her; and there she lay for four days
and nights, speechless, with her finger in her mouth.  Meanwhile an
atmosphere of hysterical nightmare had descended on the Court.  The air
was thick with doom and terror.  One of the ladies, looking under a
chair, saw, nailed to the bottom of it, a queen of hearts.  What did
the awful portent mean?  Another, leaving the Queen's room for a little
rest, went down a gallery, and caught a glimpse of a shadowy form,
sweeping away from her in the familiar panoply of Majesty.  Distracted
by fear, she retraced her steps, and, hurrying back into the royal
chamber, looked--and beheld the Queen {285} lying silent on the
pillows, with her finger in her mouth, as she had left her.

The great personages about her implored her to obey the physicians and
let herself be moved--in vain.  At last Cecil said boldly, "Your
Majesty, to content the people, you must go to bed."  "Little man,
little man," came the answer, "the word _must_ is not used to princes."
She indicated that she wished for music, and the instruments were
brought into the room; with delicate melancholy they discoursed to her,
and for a little she found relief.  The consolations of religion
remained; but they were dim formalities to that irretrievably
terrestrial nature; a tune on the virginals had always been more to her
mind than a prayer.  Eventually she was carried to her bed.  Cecil and
the other Councillors gathered round her; had she any instructions, the
Secretary asked, in the matter of her successor?  There was no answer.
"The King of Scotland?" he hinted; and she made a sign--so it seemed to
him--which showed agreement.  The Archbishop of Canterbury came--the
aged Whitgift, whom she had called in merrier days her "little black
husband"--and knelt beside her.  He prayed fervently and long; and now,
unexpectedly, she seemed to take a pleasure in his ministrations; on
and on he prayed, until his old knees were in an agony, and he made a
move as if to rise.  But she would not allow it, and for another
intolerable period he raised his petitions to heaven.  It {286} was
late at night before he was released, when he saw that she had fallen
asleep.  She continued asleep, until--in the cold dark hours of the
early morning of March 24th--there was a change; and the anxious
courtiers, as they bent over the bed, perceived, yet once again, that
the inexplicable spirit had eluded them.  But it was for the last time:
a haggard husk was all that was left of Queen Elizabeth.

But meanwhile, in an inner chamber, at his table, alone, the Secretary
sat writing.  All eventualities had been foreseen, everything was
arranged, only the last soft touches remained to be given.  The
momentous transition would come now with exquisite facility.  As the
hand moved, the mind moved too, ranging sadly over the vicissitudes of
mortal beings, reflecting upon the revolutions of kingdoms, and
dreaming, with quiet clarity, of what the hours, even then, were
bringing--the union of two nations--the triumph of the new
rulers--success, power, and riches--a name in after-ages--a noble
lineage--a great House.




{287}

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Prvost-Paradol.  _Elisabeth et Henri IV.  Deuxime Edition_.  1863.

Pollard, A. F.  _History of England_, 1547-1603.  1910.

Raleigh, Sir Walter.  _The Prerogative of Parliaments in England_.
1628.

Read, Conyers.  _Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen
Elizabeth_.  1925.

Smith, Logan Pearsall.  _The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton_.
1907.

Spedding, James.  _The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon_.  1862.

Spenser, Edmund.  _A Veue of the Present State of Ireland_.  Ed.
Grosart.  Vol. IX.  1882-4.

Stebbing, Walter.  _Sir Walter Raleigh_.  1899.

Strickland, Agnes.  _The Life of Queen Elizabeth_.  1848.

Sully.  _Mmoires des Sages et Royales OEconomies d'Estat_.

_Sydney Papers_.  Edited by Arthur Collins.  1746.

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Wotton, Sir Henry.  _Reliquiae Wottonianae.  Fourth Edition_.  1685.




{289}

INDEX


ADELANTADO, the, 140, 149-50, 156

_Advancement of Learning_, 45

Amiens, 157

Andalusia, 105

Andrada, 74, 85-87

Anjou, Duke of, 12

Antonio, Don, 34-35, 69-77, 83-88

Aragon, 94-95

Aranjuez, 139

Ariosto, 202, 220

_Ars Poetica_, 195

Athens, 255

Azores, 145, 147, 149, 152, 154-155, 160, 169


BACON, Anthony, 42-3, 49-50, 54-6, 63, 66, 71, 89, 96, 102, 113,
115-16, 124, 130, 132, 181, 231, 233, 239, 272

Bacon, Francis, afterwards Lord Verulam and Viscount St. Albans, his
family, 42; his youth, 42-43; abandons Burghley for Essex, 43; his
character, 43-47; his relations with Essex, 50-51; hopes to be made
Attorney-General, 51; his ambitions and tastes, 51-53; opposes the
Crown in the House of Commons, 53-54; his financial difficulties, 54;
his relations with his mother, 54-56; Essex's efforts on his behalf,
51, 53, 56-57, 64-65; hopes to be made Solicitor-General, 60; gives way
to nervous agitation, 63-64; offers a rich jewel to the Queen, 64;
writes foolishly to Robert Cecil, 64; is given a property by Essex, 65;
assisted by Essex in his endeavour to become Master of the Rolls, 102;
his letter of advice to Essex, 119-124; grows uneasy about Essex's
future, 129; publishes his Essays, _ibid._; offers his services to
Burghley, 132-133; disappointed by Essex, 133-135; assisted by Essex in
his suit for Lady Hatton, 135; avoids Essex's company, 181; moves
towards the Cecils, 188; employed to unravel an assassination plot,
188; given the reversion to the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, _ibid._;
attempts to obtain the removal of the Clerk, _ibid._; arrested for
debt, 189; congratulates Essex on his return to Court, 189; his advice
to Essex on Ireland, 190; his advice to the Queen on Hayward's book,
197; foresees the overthrow of Essex, 198; consulted by the Queen about
Essex, 210; declares his devotion to Essex, 218; his conversations with
the Queen about Essex, 222-4; threatened with assassination, 224;
spoken to by Robert Cecil, 225; does not attend the Star Chamber on the
declaration of Essex's misdemeanours, 227-8; the Queen displeased with
him, 228; her remark to him about Essex and the sweet wines, 235;
employed in the prosecution of Essex, 248; his state of mind, 248-50;
his conduct at the trial of Essex, 253-8; writes an official narrative
of the Treasons of Essex, 271-2; receives 1200 from the Queen, 272;
inherits from Anthony Bacon, _ibid._; his prosperity begins, _ibid._

Bacon, Lady, 54, 55, 62, 116, 124, 273

Bagenal, Sir Henry, 174, 200

Bingham, Sir Richard, 187

Blackwater, 170, 174, 177, 200-201

Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy, 23, 36, 146, 178-9, 190-3, 230-1,
234-5, 239, 248, 259, 275

Blount, Sir Christopher, 182, 184, 203, 207, 212, 216, 239, 245, 269

Bodley, Thomas, 50, 109, 118

Boleyn, Anne, 263

Booth, Mr., 66-8

Borough, Lord Deputy, 170

Bouillon, Duc de, 99

Bourchier, 2

Brussels, 71, 75

Brydges, 166

Burghley, Lady, 42

Burghley, Lord, 3, 7, 12, 37, 42, 50-2, 58, 61, 75-7, 85, 87, 101, 106,
115-16, 132-36, 151, 156, 169-71, 173-4, 184, 188


CADIZ, 99, 104, 106, 107, 113, 120, 129, 135, 140-1, 155

Calais, 97-9, 165

Calvin, 12

Cambridge University, 3, 184

Camden, 98, 191, 265

Carew, Sir George, 172

Carey, Robert, 33

Carlisle, Bishop of, 196

Catherine of Aragon, 20

Cecil, Sir Robert, afterwards 1st Earl of Salisbury, his birth and
education, 41; employed by the Queen as her principal secretary, 42;
hostility towards the Bacons, 43; opposed by Essex, 48-51; his
conversation with Essex about Francis Bacon, 59; appealed to by Essex
on behalf of Bacon, 62; accused by Bacon of working against him, 64;
disbelieves in the guilt of Dr. Lopez, 78; assures the Queen of his
innocence, 78-9; abandons Lopez, 87; appointed Secretary, 109; his
character, 109-11; acid towards Essex, 113; Anthony Bacon's account of
him, 116-7; reconciled with Essex, 135; made Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster, 154; appointed special ambassador to France, 164; makes an
arrangement with Essex, and obtains for him a consignment of cochineal,
164; writes from France an account of the Spanish fleet, 165; opposed
to Essex over the war with Spain, 169-70; present at the violent scene
between the Queen and Essex, 172; his father's last letter to him, 173;
his conduct as to the appointment of Essex to be Lord Deputy in
Ireland, 192-3; Sir C. St. Lawrence proposes to kill him, 216; receives
the news of the return of Essex at Nonesuch, 216; explains his position
to Bacon, 225; rejects Raleigh's advice, 226; foresees an explosion,
237; accused by Essex of intriguing with Spain, 239-40; precipitates
the crisis, 241-2; the most powerful man in England, 248; his
appearance at the trial of Essex, 252; in receipt of a Spanish pension,
254; appreciates Bacon's speech, 258; politeness to his fallen enemies,
270-1; thanked by Lady Essex, 270; wins over the Earl of Mar, 273; his
secret correspondence with King James, 274-5; undermines Raleigh, 275;
tells the Queen she must go to bed, 285; asks about her successor,
_ibid._; waits, 280

Cecil, Sir Thomas, 134

Chandos, Lady, 168

Charles the Fifth of Spain, 139

Chartley, Staffordshire, 4, 107, 127, 181

Cheapside, 245

Clanricarde, Earl of, 270

Clarendon, 265

Clifford, Sir Conyers, 212

Cobham, Lord, 133, 165, 206

Coke, Edward, 54, 59-60, 135, 232, 252-3, 256

Compton, Lord, 227

Connaught, 207, 212.

Corunna, 34, 135

Coventry, Mr., 64

Cuffe, Henry, 50, 123, 182, 210, 239, 259, 269

Cumberland, Lord, 165


DANIELL, 269-70

Davers, Sir Charles, 229-30, 234, 236, 242, 250, 259, 264, 269

d'Avila, Gomez, 72-4, 77

de Bohun, Eleanor, 2

De Maisse, 158-62, 168

de Vere, 23

_Devil's Law Case, The_, 265

Dieppe, 165

Donne, John, 9, 142-3

Dorset, Marquis of, 2

Dover, 71, 75, 98, 165

Drake, 34

Drummond of Hawthornden, 23

Drury House, 237

Dublin, 170, 174, 187, 199, 203, 205, 207, 211, 214, 274


EBOLI, Princess of, 139

Edinburgh Castle, 15

Edmondes, Lady, 66-7

Edward III, 2

Egerton, Lord Keeper, 102, 178-9, 185, 187-9, 219, 243

Elizabeth, Queen, the Reformation completed during the reign of, 1;
Earldom of Essex, created by, 2; her relationship to Essex, 3; origin
of Essex's favour with, 5; her reign divided into two parts, 7; her
character, 10-18; her health, 19-20; her sexual and emotional history,
20-27; her court, 29-30; relations with Sir Walter Raleigh, 30-33;
scene with Essex at Lord Warwick's, 31; forbids Essex to join the
Lisbon expedition, 34; her anger when he does so, 34-5; her comment on
the duel between Essex and Blount, 36; lends Essex money, 36-7; grants
him the customs on the sweet wines, 37; her attitude towards his
marriage, 37-8; appoints him to command the army sent to assist Henry
IV of France, 38; annoyed by his failures, 39; her comment on his
challenge to the Governor of Rouen, 40; employs Robert Cecil as her
principal secretary, 42; infuriated by Raleigh's intrigue with
Elizabeth Throgmorton, 47; her system of government, 47-8; impressed by
Essex's knowledge of foreign affairs, 50; her anger with Francis Bacon,
53; her objections to making Bacon Attorney-General, 54; her disputes
with Essex on the subject, 57-60; celebrates Twelfth Night, 1594, with
Essex, 58; her indecision, 60; makes Coke Attorney-General, 60;
unwilling to make Bacon Solicitor-General, 61; her comment on Bacon to
Fulke Greville, 62; refuses a jewel from Bacon, 64; her interview with
Lady Edmondes, 66; her interview with Dr. Lopez, 72; her belief in his
innocence, 78; her invectives against Essex, 78; danger of her
assassination, 80; offered a ring by Dr. Lopez, 85; postpones his
execution, 91; takes possession of his ring, 92; her negotiations with
Henry IV, 96-7; countermands the expedition to Calais, 98; influenced
by the war party, _ibid._; appoints Essex and Howard to command the
expedition to Cadiz, 99; again wavers, 100; decides to attack Spain,
101; writes letters to Essex, 103; composes a prayer, 104; makes Robert
Cecil her Secretary, 109; her irritation with Essex, 112-14; her
revulsion, and abuse of Burghley, 115-16; Bacon's view of her relations
with Essex, 120; Essex's feelings toward her, 127-28; agrees to another
attack on Spain, 129; crisis in her relations with Essex, 131-33; makes
Lord Cobham Warden of the Cinque Ports, 133; and Essex Master of the
Ordnance, _ibid._; favours an attack on Ferrol, 135; reconciled with
Raleigh, _ibid._; correspondence with Essex, 136-7; her speech to the
Polish ambassador, 144; her letter to Essex, Aug. 1597, 145-6; her rage
over the Islands expedition, 151; her quarrel with Essex, 151-2; her
interviews with De Maisse, 158-60; makes Essex Earl Marshal, 161;
writes to James of Scotland, 163; her fears for Cecil, 165; her scene
with Lady Mary Howard, 166-7; her relations with Lady Leicester, 167-8;
her comments on Henry IV, 168; her indecision as to peace, 170-1; boxes
Essex's ears, 172; her grief at the death of Burghley, 174; her anger
with Essex, 178-9; her uneasiness, 184-6; her apparent reconciliation
with Essex, 187-8; proposes to make Mountjoy Lord Deputy of Ireland,
190-1; appoints Essex, 192; celebrates Twelfth Night, 1599, with Essex,
194-5; translates the _Ars Poetica_, 195; her anger with John Hayward,
197; her distrust of Essex, 202-3, 208-9; consults Bacon, 209-10;
writes to Essex, 210-11; surprised by him at Nonesuch, 216; her
feelings on this event, 217; commits Essex to the custody of the Lord
Keeper, 219; her interview with John Harington, 220-1; her
conversations with Bacon, 222-4, 231, 233, 235; her amusements, 226-7;
visits Essex, 227; annoyed with Bacon, 228; her feelings towards Essex,
_ibid._; makes Mountjoy Lord Deputy, 229; sets up a special tribunal to
deal with Essex, 231; her last interview with Essex, 236; refuses to
renew his lease of the sweet wines, 236; hears of his abuse of her,
237; her paralysis, _ibid._; her courage during the rising, 247; her
state of mind after the trial of Essex, 260-4; apocryphal story of her
promise to Essex with a ring, 264-5; gradual collapse of her nervous
system, 276-7; her address to the Commons, 279-81; her ebbing vitality
and grief for Essex, 283; her final illness, 283-6; her death, 286

Enny, 55

Escurial, 71, 138, 149, 174

_Essays or Counsels_, 129, 254

Essex, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of, his history, 2; his descent, 2-3;
his birth, 3; his relationship to Queen Elizabeth and Leicester, 3; his
education, 3-4; General of the Horse in the Netherlands, 4; favour with
the Queen, 5-6; scene with the Queen at Lord Warwick's, 31-3; made
Master of the Horse and Knight of the Garter, 33; joins the Lisbon
expedition, 34-5; his duel with Charles Blount, 36; financial relations
with the Queen, 37; given the customs on the sweet wines, 37; marries,
38; commands the English army in France, 38-40; joined by the Bacons,
43; his opposition to the Cecils, 49; sworn of the Privy Council,
_ibid._; his activities in foreign policy, 49-50; his friendship with
Francis Bacon, 50-1; his attempts to have Bacon made Attorney-General,
51, 54, 56-7, 58-60; celebrates Twelfth Night, 1594, with the Queen,
58; his attempts to have Bacon made Solicitor-General, 60-1, 65; gives
Bacon a property, 65; leader of the anti-Spanish party, 70-1; obtains a
warrant for the arrest of Ferreira, 71; examines Tinoco, 76; obtains
the arrest of Dr. Lopez, 77; his belief in the guilt of Lopez, 78, 84,
89; employs Antonio Perez, 95-7; attempts to relieve Calais, 98;
appointed with Lord Howard to command the expedition to Cadiz, 99-100;
his account of the Queen's temper, 100; attempts to have Bacon made
Master of the Rolls, 102; disputes over precedence with Lord Howard,
103; his success at Cadiz, 105-7; advises an attack on the West Indian
fleet, 106; plunders the library of Bishop Osorius, 107-8; his poem on
a retired life, 107-8; his triumphant return, 111; the Queen displeased
with him, 112-14; in high favour with the Queen, 114-15; receives a
letter from Burghley, 115; his ascendancy, 117-18; gives the library of
Osorius to Thomas Bodley, 118; celebrated by Spenser, 118-19; advised
by Bacon, 119-21; his nature, 122-23; attacked by Lady Bacon, 124-26;
crisis in his relations with the Queen, 130-1; appointed Master of the
Ordnance, 133; writes to Sir T. Cecil on Bacon's behalf, 134; in
command of the expedition against Spain, 135; reconciled with Cecil and
Raleigh, _ibid._; correspondence with the Queen, 136-7; his danger at
sea, 141-2; further correspondence with the Queen, 145-6; his
mismanagement of the Islands expedition, 147-9; his quarrel with
Raleigh, 148; retires to Wanstead, 151-2; his letters to the Queen,
152-3; his anger at Lord Howard receiving an earldom, 154-5; refuses to
return to Court, 155; made Earl Marshal, 161; interviews De Maisse,
161-2; his agreement with Cecil, 164; receives a consignment of
cochineal, _ibid._; his love affairs with four ladies, 166-7; attempts
to reconcile the Queen with his mother, 167-8; urges a vigorous
offensive against Spain, 169-70; writes a pamphlet to explain his
views, 171; insults the Queen, 172; refuses to admit himself in the
wrong, 176; his letters to the Queen, 176-8; his correspondence with
Egerton, 178-80; his dangerous state of mind, and his advisers, 180-81;
his popularity, 183; made Chancellor of Cambridge University, 184; his
outburst to Sir Christopher Blount, 184; his apparent reconciliation
with the Queen, 187-8; opposes the appointment of Mountjoy as Lord
Deputy of Ireland, 190-2; himself appointed, 192-3; his exultation and
uneasiness, 193-5; celebrates Twelfth Night, 1599, with the Queen, 195;
departs for Ireland, 197; his situation in Ireland, 201-3; his conduct
of the campaign, 204-7; writes to the Queen, 206-7, 213; his thoughts
of invading England, 212; marches against Tyrone, 213; makes truce with
Tyrone, 214; leaves Dublin, 215; arrives in London, 215; and at
Nonesuch, 216; interviews the Queen, 216-18; committed to York House,
219; very ill, 219; recovers, 229; consents to Mountjoy's intrigue with
James of Scotland, 229-30; sent to Essex House, 231-2; admonished at
York House, 232-3; completely free, 233; constantly writes to the Queen
for forgiveness, 233-5; urges Mountjoy to invade England, 234; his last
interview with the Queen, 236; his rage when deprived of the lease of
the sweet wines, 236-7; abandons himself to desperate courses, 239;
refuses to attend the Council, 241; interviews four Councillors at
Essex House, 242-3; his march through the City, 244-6; his return to
Essex House and removal to the Tower, 246; his trial, 247, 250-59; his
motives, 253; he collapses, 258-9; apocryphal story of his attempt to
send a ring to the Queen, 264-5; his execution, 266-8

Essex, Countess of, 38, 166, 183, 228, 269-70

Essex House, 48-9, 71, 78, 88, 95, 241-2, 246, 269

Eton, 69, 71, 73


FALMOUTH, 143, 149

Faro, 107, 118

Fayal, 147-8

Feria, 24

Ferrers, 2, 4

Ferriera, Esteban, 71-6, 84-5, 88, 92

Ferrol, 135, 141, 145, 149, 156

Flanders, 71, 72, 75, 85, 91, 97

Fleming, Mr., 64

Fotheringay, 15

France, 12, 24, 49, 95, 100, 118, 139, 157, 162-4, 208


GERARD, Sir Thomas, 215

Globe Theatre, 207

Gorhambury, 51, 62-3, 124, 273

Gracechurch Street, 245

Gravesend, 165

Greenwich, 98, 187

Greville, Fulke, 62, 103

Grey, Lord, of Wilton, 215-16

Guadarrama, 138

Guiana, 101

Guise, Duke of, 257-8


HAMPDEN, 180

Hampton Court, 60

Harington, Sir John, 193, 202, 219, 221, 236, 276, 283

Harvey, William, 52

Hatton, Lady, 134, 188

Hatton, Sir William, Lord Chancellor, 7, 23, 121, 134

Hawthornden, 23

Hayward, John, 197, 232

Heneage, 23

Henry III of France, 80, 258

Henry IV of England, 195-6

Henry IV of France, 38-40, 95, 96-7, 99, 157, 162-4, 168-9

_Henry V_, 208

Henry VIII, 1, 16, 20, 220

Hercules, 29

Highgate Hill, 47

_History of Henry the Fourth_, 195, 232

Holborn, 69, 72, 77, 91

Holland, 14, 49, 169

Horace, 158, 177

Howard of Effingham, Lord Admiral, 99, 101, 103, 106, 111, 154, 246

Howard, Lady Mary, 166-7

Howard, Lord Henry, 274

Howard, Lord Thomas, 131, 135, 146

Huguenots, 38

Hunsdon, Lord, 155

Huntingdon, Earl of, 2

Hylas, 29


INDIES, 138, 145, 148, 164, 169

Ireland, 2, 36, 99, 118, 135, 140, 170, 172, 175, 187, 190-4, 195,
199-201, 207, 212-14, 217-19, 223, 229-30, 234, 248, 253, 275

Isle of Wight, 135

Italy, 49, 116, 138


JAMES VI OF SCOTLAND, 162-3, 229-30, 239, 247, 251, 260, 273-5, 285

Jersey, Governor of, 274

Jones, 53, 55, 250

Jonson, Ben, 23


KEYSTON, HUNTINGDONSHIRE, 37

Kinsale, 275

Knollys, Sir William, 114, 171, 192, 202, 242, 252


LAMBETH, 215

Lanfey, Pembrokeshire, 4, 127

Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 3, 4, 7, 8, 22-3, 31, 34, 68, 121,
131, 210

Leicester, Countess of, 3, 32, 131, 167-8, 182

Leinster, 204-5

Leveson, Sir John, 245

Lisbon, 34, 69

London, Bishop of, 245

Lopez, Dr. Ruy, 68-9, 71-79, 83-92

Lucas, F. L., 265

Lud Gate, 244


MADRID, 85-87

Maitland of Lethington, 15

Malesherbes, 45

Manoel, Don, 69

Mar, Earl of, 239-40, 273

Margate, 33

Markham, Robert, 201

Marlowe, 8

Mary, Queen of Scots, 2, 15, 22, 80

Marylebone fields, 36

Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 105, 140-1

_Merchant of Venice, The_, 90-1

Merrick, Sir Gilly, 241-2, 269

_Metamorphosis of Ajax_, 221

Morocco, 75

Munster, 205


NETHERLANDS, 4, 12, 39, 118, 138

Nonesuch, Surrey, 60, 187, 209, 212, 215, 216, 219, 228

Norfolk, Duke of, 1

Normandy, 38

Nottingham, Earl of, 155-6, 161, 165, 169

Nottingham, Lady, 264


O'NEILS, 200

Osorius, Bishop Jerome, 107, 118


PADILLA, Martin de, 140, 150

Paris, 258

Parma, Prince of, 39

Parr, Catherine, 21

Paul's Cross, 245

Percy, 52, 55

Perez, Antonio, 93-7, 99-102

Perrott, Lady Dorothy, 31

Philip, King of Spain, 15-6, 24, 34, 71, 74, 76, 79, 84-88, 92-3, 95,
99, 105, 138, 141, 149-50, 156-8, 168, 174, 200

Pisistratus, 255, 258

Plymouth, 34, 99, 102, 103, 137, 141, 143

Poland, 143

Portugal, 34, 69-71, 106, 114, 138

Puckering, Lord Keeper, 61, 64, 67, 102


RALEIGH, Sir Walter, 5, 8, 30-3, 35, 47, 101, 105, 110, 112, 118, 129,
131, 135-6, 147, 152, 165, 176, 183, 206, 225-6, 240, 252, 254, 266, 274

Ranke, 265

Rich, Penelope, 182-3, 231, 239, 269

Rich, Lord, 182

Richard II, 196

_Richard the Second_, 241

Richmond, 283

Rivers, 2

Rome, 11, 12, 276

Rouen, 39-40

Russell, Lady, 116-7

Russell, Mistress, 166

Rye, 71


ST. ALBANS, 51

St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 68

St. Lawrence, Sir Christopher, 216

St. Paul's, 127, 244, 270

Sandwich, 72

San Miguel, 148

Saragossa, 93-4

Scotland, 12, 49, 230, 247, 273

Scrope, Lady, 264

Seymour, Thomas, Lord Admiral, 21, 264

Shakespeare, 8, 90, 207, 242

Shylock, 90

Sicily, 149

Sidney, Sir Philip, 5, 38, 182-3, 270

Sidney, Sir Robert, 133

Smith, Sheriff, 245

Somerset the Protector, 21

Southampton, Earl of, 193, 203, 207-8, 212, 229-30, 237, 247, 269

Southwark, 241

Southwell, Mistress Elizabeth, 166

Spain, 11, 12, 14, 24, 34, 49, 69-70, 74-6, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 95-7,
99, 106, 128, 131, 135, 138, 145, 162, 169-70

Spanish Armada, 7, 12, 16, 34, 70, 140-1, 148-9, 154, 157, 175

Spanish Infanta, 239, 244, 252

Spenser, 8, 127

Standen, Anthony, 58, 62, 67

Star Chamber, 224, 227-8, 269

Stella, 182

Strand, 48-9, 238

Sussex, Lord, 24


TACITUS, 197

Tagus, 114

_Tamburlaine_, 9, 70

Terceira, 147-8

Throgmorton, Elizabeth, 47

Tinoco, 74-7, 84-5, 90, 92

Tower of London, 21, 23, 189, 197, 231-3, 240, 251, 253, 258-60, 264,
266, 269

Trott, Mr., 189

Tyburn, 91

Tyrone, Earl of, 170, 174-5, 190, 193, 199-200, 203, 206, 208, 211-14,
220-1, 227, 229, 254, 271, 276, 283


ULSTER, 170, 200, 203, 208, 210-12, 276

Unton, Sir Henry, 96-7


_Venus and Adonis_, 9

Vere, Sir Francis, 152

Vernon, Elizabeth, 203

Vervins, Treaty of, 168

Visconti, 16


WALES, 122, 131, 133, 181, 212, 242

Walsingham, Sir Francis, 7, 8, 38, 42, 68, 82, 86-8, 182

Wanstead Park, 152, 154-5, 161, 176, 178, 184-6

Warwick, Lady, 31, 227

Warwick, Lord, 31, 33

Webster, John, 265

Westminster, 215

Whitehall, 6, 58, 136, 152, 166, 174, 177, 187, 190, 242, 246, 247,
260, 282

Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 232, 285

William of Orange, 80

Williams, Sir Roger, 34

Winchester, 69

Windebank, Thomas, 171

Windsor, 60, 69

Woodstock, Thomas of, Duke of Gloucester, 2

Woodville, Anne, 2

Worcester, Earl of, 227, 242

Wotton, Henry, 50, 123


YORK HOUSE, Strand, 219, 227, 230-2, 233, 252


ZUTPHEN, 5




[End of Elizabeth and Essex, by Lytton Strachey]
