version, but he saw himself threatened by a new league of his Protestant subjects, few of whose leaders, with the exception of his great minister Sully, ever heartily forgave him for changing his religion. Although the French king had owed much to the support and secret assistance of Elizabeth before he came to the throne, and had no reason to be dissatisfied with her conduct since; yet before concluding any treaty with their common enemy, the King of Spain, he frankly told her that unless she bore a more active part in the contest he must conclude peace with Philip. She was in great anger at this proposal, and her envoy, Sir Robert Cecil, accused Henry of ingratitude. The debonnaire king said that in aiding him she had worked for her own interests, and in the month of April, 1598, he signed a treaty with Spain, by which he recovered Calais and all the places he had lost; at the same time by the publication of the tolerant edict of Nantes, he disarmed the hostility of his Protestant subjects. Shortly after a new treaty was concluded with the States of Holland, who had been more averse to the peace with Spain than Elizabeth herself. By this treaty the queen was freed from the charge of 126,000l. per annum, the average expense of the garrison she maintained in the cautionary towns; and the states moreover gave acknowledgments for a debt of 800,000l. due to her majesty, and bound themselves to discharge it gradually by instal ments. The Scottish king had for some time been in bad odour at the English court on account of his great anxiety for the succession, and the efforts he had made to secure it, by negotiating, not only with the king of Spain, but with the pope himself! Secret as these negotiations had been, they were detected by Elizabeth's agents. Among the prisoners that crowded the gaols of England there was one Valentine Thomas, who had been committed for some common felony. Of a sudden this man confessed, in private, that James had hired him to assassinate the queen. This seemed to be a sure way of humbling the Scottish king. Elizabeth wrote to James, telling him that she could not believe him guilty: James requested her to send him a declaration under the great seal, that the charge was false and groundless. She sent him an instrument, but it was so worded as to appear rather a pardon than an attestation of his innocence, and he returned it to her. Elizabeth considered this as an insult, and attacked the pusillanimous James with her usual virulence, and he, on his side (he never lacked words), retorted. But this was all he could do; and though, after a time, the cloud seemed to disperse, he was kept uneasy by the conduct of the English court, who did not bring Valentine Thomas to trial, but kept him in prison, to be produced as necessity should require. Had James taken any hostile direction the man would have been brought forth to denounce him publicly; but he grew quiet under this suspended rod, and when he came to the throne of England he had the miserable satisfaction of sending Valentine to the gallows. Meanwhile the state of Ireland grew worse and worse, though before this time things were brought to such extremities, that Walsingham had thought it no treason to wish the island and all in it buried in the sea. "The Irish nation," says a quaint old historian of the court of Elizabeth, we may call a malady, and a consumption of her times, for it accompanied her to her end; and it was of so profuse and vast an expense, that it drew near unto a distemperature of state and of passion in herself; for, towards her last, she grew somewhat hard to please, her armies being accustomed to prosperity, and the Irish prosecution not answering her expectations, and her wonted success; for it was a good while an unthrifty and inauspicious war, which did much disturb and mislead her judgment; and the more, for that it was a precedent taken out of her own pattern. For as the queen, by way of division, had, at her coming to the crown, supported the revolting States of Holland, so did the King of Spain turn the trick upon herself, towards her going out, by cherishing the Irish rebellion; where it falls into consideration, what the state of this kingdom and the crown's resources were then able to endure and embrace. **** We shall find the horse and foot troops in Ireland were, for three or four years together, much about 20,000, besides the naval charge, which was a dependant of the same war, in that the queen was then forced to keep in continual pay a strong fleet at sea to attend the Spanish coasts and parts, both to alarm the Spaniards and to intercept the forces designed for the Irish assistance; so that the charge of that war alone did cost the queen 300,000l. per annum, at least, which was not the moiety of her other disbursements and expenses; which, without the public aids, the state of the royal receipts could not have much longer endured*." The present leader of the Irish insurgents was Hugh, the son of the late Baron of Duncannon, who had been exalted by the queen to the Earldom of Tyrone, and who had exalted himself to be the O'Niel and rightful Irish sovereign of Ulster-an extraordinary man, ambitious, crafty, brave, and of an indefatigable activity. He possessed high military talents, and was not destitute of ability in civil government. Under his guidance the Irish pursued a consistent plan, which they had never done before. They wore out the English troops by a desultory warfare among marshes, woods, and hills; and strong in their numbers and improved discipline, they ventured to face them in the open field. Sir John Norris, the veteran who had gained honour in the Netherlands and in France, was harassed to death, and died of sheer grief and vexation. Sir Henry Bagnall was defeated in a pitched battle fought at Blackwater, in Tyrone, and lost his own life, the lives of 1500 of his men, his artillery, and ammunition. After this Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia. victory all the Irish, with the exception of a few septs, proclaimed the Earl of Tyrone the saviour of his country, and rose in arms, with the hope of wholly expelling the English. To meet the storm and to measure swords with the Earl of Tyrone, it was necessary to appoint a general of superior ability, and one that enjoyed the favour of the English army. The Cecils suggested that none was so fit as the Earl of Essex, for they wished to remove him from court, and involve him in a business which had brought death, or disgrace and ruin, to all preceding commanders. The earl was warned by his friends to beware of Ireland: he expressed great reluctance to take the command; but at last he yielded to the requests of the queen, and the temptations of a large sum of money and greater powers and privileges than had been enjoyed by any of his predecessors; and in the month of March, 1599, he left London for Ireland, surrounded by the flower of the English nobility. The Londoners followed him on the highway for more than four miles, crying, "God bless your lordship-God preserve you!" for he was much beloved by the common people, and some of them followed him until the evening. Almost as soon as he reached Ireland he appointed his friend the Earl of Southampton to be general of the horse, considering that the power to make such an appointment was vested in him. But the queen, after some angry correspondence, compelled him to revoke it.* Soon after he was accused of wasting time and money. He replied, that he acted by the advice of the lords of the Irish council, and in consideration of the state of affairs. "These rebels," he said, in one of his first dispatches, "are far more in number, than your majesty's army, and have (though I do unwillingly confess it) better bodies and perfect use of their arms than those men your majesty sends over." The queen harshly told him that she had great cause to think that his purpose was to prolong the war. The Cecils took every advantage of this fresh quarrel, and they no doubt helped to check the earl's supplies and embarrass his operations. His troops seem, indeed, to have been a Falstaff's army; many deserted, many fell lame, and could not, or would not, march; and then a sickness of a serious kind, the effect of scanty or bad provisions, broke out amongst them. By the month of August he had no more than 3500 foot and 300 horse in the field. He demanded and. obtained a reinforcement of 2000 men, upon which he marched, for the first time, into Ulster, the centre of the rebellion. He went, however, complaining that he had received nothing but "discomforts and soul wounds," and that Raleigh and Cobham with others were working It appears that Lord Southampton's disfavour with the queen arose from his marrying without her leave a kinswoman of the Earl of Essex. his ruin at home. On the 5th of September | Essex came up with Tyrone and his whole army in the county of Louth, but instead of a battle their meeting ended in a personal parley, the result of which was an armistice for six weeks, which was to be renewed from six weeks to six weeks, until May-day following. The Earl of Tyrone gave Essex several demands on the part of the Irish, which he undertook to deliver to the queen. Tyrone returned with all his forces into the heart of his country. Essex, upon receiving some angry dispatches from England, left the government of Ireland to the Archbishop of Dublin and Sir George Carew, and, without waiting for any order or permission, hastened to London. Upon Michaelmas eve, about ten o'clock in the morning, he alighted at the court-gate in post, and made all haste up to the presence, and so to the privy chamber, and staid not till he came to the queen's bed-chamber, where he found the queen newly up, with her hair about her face; he kneeled unto her, kissed her hands, and had some private speech with her, which seemed to give him great contentment; for when he came from her majesty he was very pleasant, and thanked God, though he had suffered much trouble and storms abroad, he found a sweet calm at home. The courtiers wondered at his going so boldly to her majesty's presence, she not being ready, and he so full of diet and wine, that his very face was full of it. In the course of the forenoon he had a long conference with her majesty, who was very gracious towards him. All the lords and ladies and court gentlemen also were very courteous-only a strangeness was observed between the earl and Sir Robert Cecil and that party. But after dinner, when Essex went again to the queen, he found her much changed; and she began to call him to question for his unauthorised return, and his leaving of all things in Ireland in such peril and confusion. At night, between ten and eleven o'clock, he received an order from her majesty to consider himself a prisoner in his room. Sir John Harrington, who had accompanied Essex from Ireland, was frightened out of his wits by the royal violence. "When I came into her presence," says Sir John, "she chafed much, walked to and fro, looked with discomposure in her visage, and, I remember, catched at my girdle when I kneeled to her, and swore, '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.' She bid me go home. I did not stay to be bidden twice. If all the Irish rebels had been at my heels, I should not have made better speed." On the next day the lords sat in council, and called Essex before them. It was said that never man answered with more temper, more gravity, or discretion. Three days after he was delivered to the lord keeper to be kept in "free custody." The great and little Bacon, who had had Nugæ Antiquæ, Sidney Papers, Sidney Papers. many obligations to Essex, but who was now making his way to power through intricate mazes, was consulted by the earl. "It is but a mist,' said Bacon, "but it is as mists are—if it go upwards it may cause a shower; if downwards it will clear up" by which periphrasis he meant that all must depend on the queen's humour. This humour seemed to be fixed in spite and revenge. She said that she sought his amendment not his destruction; but she consulted with the judges whether he might not be charged with high treason; she denied him the society of his wife, the attendance of his physician, even when Essex lay dangerously ill." "In his letters and discourses," says Camden, "he declared that he had discarded all the gaities of life, and drowned his ambition in tears; and that he had but one request to make, viz., that she would let her servant depart in peace." There were few men of the day more fitted by an ardent love of literature, and a cultivated taste, to enjoy a rural retirement, and he told his friends that all he wished for was to be restored to his quiet home in the country, to his wife, and his books. In the month of May, 1600, when he had been nearly eight months under restraint, he made a touching appeal to his sovereign, telling her how he had languished in four months' sickness, felt the very pangs of death upon him, and his poor reputation not suffered to die with him, but buried and he alive; that the length of his troubles, and the increase of her majesty's indignation, had made all men shy of him, and had ruined his estate, so that his kind friends and faithful servants were likely to die in prison. He then alluded to his rivals and enemies, who at first envied him for his happiness in her favour, and now hated out of custom, he being thrown into a corner like a dead carcase and gnawed on and torn by the vilest and basest creatures on earth. Then after an explosion of indignation, he concluded with a most humble and penitential prayer. On the 26th of August he was released from custody, being told that he was not to appear at court. A few days after his release a valuable patent for the monopoly of sweet wines, which he had held for some years, expired he petitioned for a renewal of it as an aid to his shattered fortunes; but the queen, saying that, "in order to manage an ungovernable beast, he must be stinted in his provender," positively refused. Essex now became desperate, and there was one at his elbow to prompt the most desperate deeds. This was Cuffe, his secretary; "a man smothered under the habit of a scholar, and slubbered over with a certain rude and clownish fashion that had the semblance of integrity."* The secretary suggested that he might easily recover his former ascendancy by forcibly removing Sir Rober: Cecil, Raleigh, and others from court. Essex knew that he had been the darling of the Londoners, who, with as much boldness as was consistent with prudence, had defended even his strange conduct Reliquia Wottonianæ, in Ireland, had laid the blame of his failures and his crosses on the malice of his enemies, and had compassionated his misfortunes. Some of the preachers had, indeed, been bolder than this-defending him in the pulpit, and praying for him by name. Nor had the press been idle; pamphlets were put forth in his favour; and Heywood, a civilian, published a curious history of the deposition of Richard II., and dedicated it to the earl, with lavish commendations of his character. Other daring men joined in the advice given by Cuffe ; and Essex finally adopted their perilous plan. He threw open the gates of his house in London, and thither flocked Catholic priests, Puritan preachers, soldiers and sailors, young citizens and needy adventurers. A strong party of military men, officers who had served under him, took up lodgings in his immediate neighbourhood, and formed themselves into a council. Essex, moreover, wrote to the King of Scots, representing the court party as engaged in a conspiracy against his title to the succession, in favour of the Infanta of Spain, Donna Isabella Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II., and married to the Archduke Albert, and urging James to send ambassadors to London forthwith, in order to insist upon an open declaration of his title by Elizabeth. It was impossible that these proceedings should be kept secret: the court soon heard all, and sumInoned Essex to appear before the privy council. At that moment a note, from an unknown writer, warning him to provide for his safety, was put into his hand; and he was told, soon after, that the guard had been doubled at the palace. He saw that he must either fly, be arrested where he was, or strike his blow; and on the following morning, being Sunday, the 8th of February, in conjunction with the earls of Rutland and Southampton, Lord Sandys, Lord Mounteagle, and about three hundred gentlemen, many of whom had joined him the pre ceding night on notice sent to them by him that his life was threatened by Cobham and Raleigh, he resolved to enter the city during sermon time at Paul's Cross, to call upon the people to join him against his enemies, and with their help to force his way to the queen. As the company was about to set forth, the lord keeper Egerton, Sir William Knollys, the lord chief justice Popham, and the Earl of Worcester, arrived at Essex House to inquire the cause of that tumultuous assembly. They were admitted into the house by the wicket-gate, but their attendants were excluded. When Egerton and Popham asked what all this meant, Essex replied, in a loud and passionate voice," There is a plot laid for my life-letters have been forged in my name-men have been hired to murder me in my bed-mine enemies cannot be satisfied unless they suck my blood!" The lord chief justice said that he ought to explain his case, and that the queen would do impartial justice. While this conversation was going on a tumult arose in the assembly, and some voices exclaimed,-" They abuse you, my lord,-they betray you, you are losing time." The lord keeper, putting on his cap, and turning to the assembly, commanded them, in the queen's name, to lay down their arms and depart. Upon this there was a louder cry"Kill them! kill them!-keep them for hostages! away with the great seal!" The Earl of Essex took them to an inner apartment, where, bidding them have patience for half an hour, he bolted the door upon them, and placed over them a guard of musqueteers. Then, drawing his sword, he rushed out of his house, followed by the earls of Rutland and Southampton, Lord Sandys, Lord Mounteagle, and most of the gentlemen. On reaching the city he found that the streets were empty, that there was no preaching at Paul's Cross, and that the people remained quiet within their houses. The queen had procured this great quiet by sending orders to the lord mayor and aldermen. The earl shouted-"For the queen, my mistress!—a plot is laid for my life!"-and he entreated the citizens to arm themselves. But though the common people cried "God bless your honour," not one man, from the chiefest citizen to the meanest artificer or prentice, armed with him. The citizens were not without their discontents and desire of change, particularly on the grounds of religion, for London swarmed with Puritans, but their wealth made them cautious and loyal.* Essex went into the house of Smith, one of the sheriffs, and remained there some time, not knowing what to do. About two o'clock in the afternoon he again went forth, and having passed to and fro through divers streets, and being forsaken by many of his followers, he resolved to make the nearest way to his own house. He found the streets barricaded in many places with empty carts, and, coming into Ludgate, he was strongly resisted by several companies of well armed men, levied and placed there by the Lord Bishop of London. A sharp skirmish ensued; several were wounded; the earl himself was twice shot through the hat; and Sir Christopher Blount, his stepfather, was sore wounded in the head, and taken prisoner. Essex then turned, and retreated into Friday-street; and, being faint, he desired drink, which was given him by the citizens. He made his way to Queenhithe, where he took boat, and so gained Essex House. To his increased dismay he found that all the imprisoned lords had been liberated and conveyed to court by his own esteemed trusty friend and servant, Sir Ferdinando Gorge, who, by this act, sought to provide for his own safety. He then fortified his house, with full purpose to die in his own defence, -hoping, however, it is said, that the citizens would yet join him. But the house was presently hemmed in on all sides by a very great force, and not a man came to his relief. Some great pieces of artillery were planted against the building. His case was hopeless, but still he hesitated. One of his faithful followers, Captain Owen Salisbury, seeing all hopes were gone, stood openly in a window, bare-headed, on purpose to be slain; and one in the street hit him in the side of the head with a musket bullet. "Oh, that thou hadst been so much my friend as to have shot but a little lower," exclaimed Salisbury. But the wound was serious enough to save him from the horrid death of a traitor, and he died the next morning. At length, about ten o'clock at night, Essex held a parley, and then surrendered to the lord-admiral, upon a promise of a fair hearing and a speedy trial. Essex and the Earl of Southampton were committed to the Tower, the other prisoners were lodged in various goals in London and Westminster. Two or three days after this mad affray, Thomas Lee, a soldier of fortune, was heard to say, that if the friends of Essex meant to save him from the block, they should petition the queen in a body, and not depart till they had their prayer granted. On that • Camden. same evening Lee was seen in the crowd at the door of the presence-chamber as the queen sat at her supper: he was seized, and on the very next day arraigned on a charge of intending to murder her majesty, and with a most flagrant disregard to law and justice, was condemned to die the horrible death of a traitor, it being deemed expedient to give a high colouring to the case of Essex, and to impress the people with a notion of their sovereign's danger. On the 17th of February the victim was drawn to Tyburn, where he died declaring his innocence.* On the 19th the Earls of Essex and Southampton were arraigned before twentyfive peers, with the Lord Buckhurst as lord steward. Among the peers were Cobham and Grey, and others the personal enemies of Essex, the very men whom he had accused of seeking his life. With his eye fixed on these men, Essex touched his companion in misfortune, Southampton, on the sleeve, and smiled. He then asked the lord chief justice whether the privilege which was permitted to every private person on his trial, might be granted to them-namely, to make challenge of any of the peers against whom they might have just cause of exception. The chief justice made a distinction between peers and jurors, saying, "That verily the law did allow no challenge of any of the peers; for such was the credit and estimation of the peers of England, that they are neither compelled to an oath on arraignment, nor are subject to any exception." Whereupon the Earl said he was satisfied, and desired them to go on. When they were called upon to hold up their right hands, Essex said that he had before that time done it often at her majesty's command for a better purpose. The indictment charged them with having imagined to deprive and depose the queen's majesty, to procure her death and destruction, and also a cruel slaughter of her majesty's subjects, with alteration of the religion established, and total change of government. Essex, in pleading not guilty, called God to witness that he had done nothing but that which the law of nature commanded him to do in his own defence. The indictment was supported with the usual vehemence by the crown lawyers, Yelverton, Coke, and Francis Bacon. The latter, by his conduct on this occasion, laid some of the dark spots on his fame which no genius can or ought ever to erase. It appears, however, that his tone was less virulent than that of either Coke or Yelverton; but Coke and Yelverton were not bound to the Earl of Essex, as Bacon was, by the strongest obligations. Yelverton compared Essex to Catiline; for as Catiline entertained the most seditious persons about all Rome to join with him in his conspiracy, so had the Earl of Essex entertained none but papists, recusants, and atheists for his rebellion in London; but he hoped that God, of his mercy, would not suffer any hurt; and he prayed God long to preserve the queen. Essex and Southampton said "Amen! and God confound their souls who ever wished otherwise. " Coke, as * Camden.-Stow. |