on the contrary, the popular discontents were not of a very desperate kind, then they were to keep in good terms with the queen, and “ 'dally with the present guiders." James, who wrote these previous instructions himself, further told the two envoys that they must be careful to take the time right; not to be too precipitate, and yet not to mar all for lack of good backing, as it would be very unwise to give the English people a ground of excuse against him; that, by suffering them to be overthrown through his not declaring himself in time, "they were forced to sue to other saints." "But," continues this high professor of king-craft, “in this last point have a care with the facility of the people, and the craft of the council; for I know that they concluded, before that ever they saw you, to deny you whatever you craved, thereby to force me to appear in my own colours, as they call it.” What James craved was, that Elizabeth would believe that he had had no secret correspondence with any of her subjects; that she would receive his honour's pledge that he would never give her any cause of grief during her lifetime; that she would relieve all such as were kept in prison for merely speaking with him; that she would give out a plain declaration that he was untouched in any action or practice that ever had been intended against her, especially in this last; that she would liberally consider of his necessities, and give him the lands of his fraternal grandmother, the Countess of Lennox; and that she would remember her old promise, that nothing should be done by her, in her time, in prejudice of his future right to the English crown-"excepted always," adds James, "if she be not to endure as long as the sun and the moon." But at the same time the Earl of Marr and Mr. Edward Bruce were to set forward their private negociations with the country, to obtain all the certainty they could of the town of London that in the due time it would favour the right, to renew and confirm their acquaintance with the lieutenant of the Tower, to obtain as great a certainty as they could of the fleet, to secure the hearts of as many noblemen and knights as they could get dealing with, and settle what every one of their parts should be at the great day (the day of Elizabeth's death), to foresee anent armour for every shire, that, against that day, his enemies should not have the whole command of the army, and his friends only be unarmed; and to do as they had written, and distribute good sowers in every shire, that should never leave working till the day of reaping came. They were instructed to behave to her majesty with all honour, respect, and love to her person; but if she gave them flat denials they were to tell her that the day might come when the base instruments about her, that abused her ear, would be left to themselves, when there would be no bar between him and them, and when he would crave account of them, and of their presumption. And they were also to tell Mr. Secretary Cecil, and his followers, that, if they would thus continue to misknow him, when the chance

should turn, he, the king, would cast a deaf ear to all their requests. "And," continues James,

"whereas now I would have been content to have given them, by your means, a pre-assurance of my favour, if, at this time, they had pressed; so now they, contemning it, may be assured never hereafter to be heard, but all the queen's hard usage of me to be hereafter craved at their hands."* Cecil, who never loved or hated a man except with a direct reference to what he might get or lose, was convinced at once by these arguments, which every day acquired more weight from the declining health and spirits of the queen. Three or four years before this she had had a very dangerous attack. Soothsayers had said that she would live to be seventy-five; but, if she went off suddenly, what would be the fate of the enemies of a king, who would inevitably be brought in on the strong shoulders of hereditary right? Cecil immediately engaged to smooth all difficulties, and he forthwith entered into a secret correspondence, by ciphers, with King James-a correspondence which would have cost him his head, if it had been discovered by Elizabeth. The Lord Henry Howard undertook the dangerous office of conducting the chief part of this correspondence-a most rich fund of amusement, if not of instruction. James got, for the present, an addition of 2000l. to his pension, and Cecil cajoled the queen, and looked cheerfully beyond her grave † In these transactions Sir Walter Raleigh lost the chart, and "those wicked villains," Cobham and Raleigh (as they were called by my Lord Henry Howard), were both set down on the wrong side of King James's account-book. In the month of October, 1601, Elizabeth met her parliament for the last time, sick and failing, but dressed more gaily and gorgeously than ever. She was in great straits for money in order to carry on the war in Ireland. The houses voted her much more than had ever been voted at a time, viz., four subsidies, and eight tenths and fifteenths; but the commons were as free of their complaints as they were of their money, and they called loudly and boldly for a redress of grievances. The most notorious of the abuses which disgraced the civil government of Elizabeth were an endless string of monopolies, which had been for the most part bestowed by the queen on her favourites. kinds of wine, oil, salt, starch, tin, steel, coals, and numerous other commodities, were monopolised by men who had the exclusive right of vending them, and fixing their own prices. The Commons' complaints were not new; they had pressed them many years before, but they had been then silenced by authority, and told that no one must speak against licences and monopolies lest the queen and council should be angry thereat.

Ali

Sir David Dalrymple, Lo'd Hailes, Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with Jame: VI. King of Scotland.

In May, 1602, when advisea to send a special ambassador to Elizabeth, James says, "I have daily large experience, that no resi dent sent from me could accomplish the hundredth part of that service, which. by the means of my worthy Cecil, is performed unto me there except, as a fool, I would ever be desirous of change."-bee Correspondence.

Of course, in the interval, they had gone on increasing. When the list of them was now read over in the House, a member asked whether bread was not among the number? The House seemed amazed. Nay, said he, if no remedy is found for these, bread will be there before the next parliament. The ministers and courtiers could not withstand the impetuous attacks which ensued. Raleigh, who dealt largely in tin, and had his fingers in other profitable monopolies, offered to give them all up: Cecil and Bacon talked loudly of the prerogative, and endeavoured to persuade the House that it would be fitter to proceed by petition than by bill; but it was properly answered that nothing had been gained by petitioning in the last parliament. After four days of such debate as the House had not heard before, Elizabeth sent down a message that she would revoke all grants that should be found injurious by fair trial at law; and Cecil, seeing that the Commons were not satisfied with the ambiguous generality of this expression, gave an assurance that the existing patents should all be repealed and no more be granted. The Commons hailed their victory with exceeding great joy, though in effect her majesty did not revoke all of the detestable monopolies. Elizabeth now employed an oblique irony at some of the movers in the debate, but the imperious tone, the harsh schooling, of former years were gone. Her resolute will was now struggling in vain against the infirmities of her body, and she saw that there was a growing spirit among the representatives of the people.

In the mean time the Lord Mountjoy, the successor to Essex in the command of Ireland, had to maintain a tremendous struggle, for Don Juan D'Aguilar landed at Kinsale with four thousand Spanish troops, fortified himself skilfully in that position, and gave fresh life to the Catholic insurgents. But Mountjoy acted with vigour and decision; he collected all the forces he possibly could, and shut up the Spaniards within their lines at Kinsale. On Christmas Eve (1601) the Earl of Tyrone advanced to the assistance of his friends with six thousand native Irish and four hundred foreigners. His project was to attack the English besiegers by surprise before daylight, but Mountjoy, who was awake and ready, repulsed him from all points of his camp, and finally defeated him with great loss. Thereupon D'Aguilar capitulated, and was permitted to return to Spain with arms, baggage, and ammunition. His departure and the destructive ravages of famine brought the Irish to extremities, and Tyrone, after flying from place to place, capitulated, and, upon promise of life and lands, surrendered to Mountjoy at the end of 1602.* Some naval conflicts on the coast of

Thus," says Camden, "was Tir Oen's rebellion happily extinguished through the queen's better fortune and the good conduct of the Lord Mountjoy, lord deputy. It commenced at first upon personal disgusts, with a little touch of ambition at the bottom; it was fomented and kept up by the neglect and stinginess of England; it rau all over Ireland on the pretence of restoring popery, and the prospect of unbounded liberty; it got strength by the weakness and credulity of some, and the private countenance of others that were in

Spain and in the British Channel closed the warlike operations of this long reign, in which the English sailors had learnt to consider themselves equal or superior to any enemy. Mountjoy's great victory at Kinsale somewhat revived the spirits of Elizabeth, who found further consolation in a tall Irish favourite. "Her eye," writes Beaumont, the French ambassador, is still lively; she has good spirits, and is fond of life, for which reason she takes great care of herself: to which may be added an inclination for the Earl of Clancarty, a brave, handsome Irish nobleman. This makes her cheerful, full of hope and confidence respecting her age; this inclination is, besides, promoted by the whole court with so much art that I cannot sufficiently wonder at it. . . . The flatterers about the court say this Irish earl resembles the Earl of Essex; the queen, on the other hand, with equal dissimulation, declares that she cannot like him because he too strongly revives her sorrow for that earl; and this contest employs the whole court." A few months afterwards, on the 19th of March, 1603, Beaumont informed his court that Elizabeth was sinking, and that disease, and not, as she alleged, her grief at the recent death of the Countess of Nottingham, had prevented her from showing herself abroad,-that she had scarcely any sleep, and ate much less than usual, -that she had so great a heat of the mouth and stomach that she was obliged to cool herself every instant in order that the burning phlegm, with which she was often oppressed, might not stifle her. Some people, he said, were of opinion that her illness had been brought on by her displeasure touching the succession; some, that it had been caused by the Irish affairs, her council having constrained her (against her nature and inclination) to grant a pardon to the Earl of Tyrone; while others affirm that she was possessed with grief for the death of the Earl of Essex. "It is certain," adds the ambassador," that a deep melancholy is visible in her countenance and actions. It is, however, much more probable that the sufferings incident to her age, and the fear of death, are the chief causes of all." In his next dispatch he says that the queen, who would take no medicine whatever, was given up by the physicians. She would not take to her bed, for fear, as some supposed, of a prophecy she should die in that bed. "For the last two days," he adds, "she has been sitting on cushions on the floor, neither rising nor lying down, her finger almost always in her mouth, her eyes open and fixed on the ground. . . . Yet, as this morning the queen's band has gone to her, I believe she means to die as cheerfully as she has lived." On the 21st of March she was put to bed, partly by force, and place, and gained more ground by one or two fortunate successes, backed by the Spaniard's gold and forces and the pope's indulgences; it was protracted and spun out by the ill-timed emulation of the English, the lodging of the government in two hands, and the avarice of the old soldiers, who made the war a kind of trade; to which we may add the subtle stratagems of Tir Oen, his feigned submissions and treacherous capitulations, the protections granted to offenders, the difficulty and straitness of the roads and passages, and, in the last place, the desperate temper of the Irish, who trusted more to the swiftness of their heels than the strength of their hands."

listened attentively to the prayers and discourses of the Bishop of Chichester, the Bishop of London, but chiefly to Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury. It is scarcely necessary to put the reader on his guard against an over-positive belief in any of the accounts of what passed in these moments of mystery and awe, when the people about her were determined to make her say the things that made most for their interest and plans. The narrative more generally received is, that, on the 22nd of March, Secretary Cecil, with the Lord Admiral and the Lord Keeper, approached the dying queen and begged her to name her successor; she started, and then said, "I told you my seat has been the seat of kings;-I will have no rascal to succeed me!" The lords, not understanding this dark speech, looked the one on the other; but, at length, Cecil boldly asked her what she meant by those words,-no rascal? She replied that a king should succeed her, and who could that be but her

cousin of Scotland? They then asked her whether that was her absolute resolution? whereupon she begged them to trouble her no more. Notwithstanding, some hours after, when the Archbishop of Canterbury and other divines had been with her, and had left her in a manner speechless, the three lords repaired to her again, and Cecil besought her, if she would have the King of Scots to succeed her, she would show some sign unto them. Whereat, suddenly heaving herself up in her bed, she held both her hands joined together over her head in manner of a crown. Then she sank down, fell into a dose, and, at three o'clock on the morning of the 24th of March,-which Bacon accounted "as a fine morning before sun-rising," meaning thereby the rising of James,-she died in a stupor, without any apparent pain of mind or body. She was in the seventieth year of her age and the fortyfifth year of her reign.*

Camden.-Somers.-Birch.-D'Israeli.-Raumer.-Lodge.

รุก

My

HENRY VII. Cotton MS. Caligula, B. 6.

SSL Vesey HS

HENRY VIII. Cotton MS. Vespasian, F. 13.

Edward

EDWARD VI. Cotton MS. Vespasian, F. 13.

mazze

MARY. Cotton MS. Vespasian, F. 13.