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1598.]

INCIDENTAL CAUSES OF INDIGENCE.

277

Medical knowledge was to a great extent empirical. The universal system of blood-letting twice a year was likely to produce more maladies than it averted. Those who lived in detached cottages and small villages were subject to fevers, from the ill-drained lands by which they were surrounded. Those who lived in towns had to endure the pestilent nuisances of the streets, which no magisterial power could keep clean. The scarcity of fuel made the mud-built cottages, in which chimneys were still rare, miserably cold in winter. The thatched cottages of the towns were often on fire; and the rapid destruction of whole streets produced the greatest misery, when the protection of fire insurance was unknown. Such were some of the many causes that reduced the poor to helpless indigence, and which sometimes prostrated even the comparatively wealthy. It was a state of society in which a merciful provision for the relief of the poor was one of the great exigencies of the time. The old laws which equally consigned crime and misery to the fetter and the whip had happily died out.

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Death of lord Burleigh-Death of Philip II.--Condition of Ireland-Rebellion of Tyrone-Essex appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland-His bootless campaign-Essex suddenly returns to England-He is committed to free custody, and then suspended from his offices-His discontent, and schemes for redress-Armed assembly at Essex-House--Attempt at insurrection-Essex and Southampton tried for high-treason-Conduct of Bacon on that trial -Essex executed-Scotland-The Gowrie conspiracy-The last parliament of ElizabethDebates on a subsidy-Bill for abating monopolies-The queen's wisdom in yielding to public opinion-Death of Elizabeth-Note on the story of Essex's ring.

IN August, 1598, died William Cecil, lord Burleigh, the faithful counsellor of Elizabeth for forty years. He was the acknowledged head, by character as well as by office, of that illustrious band, whom Mr. Macaulay terms "the first generation of statesmen by profession that England produced." His consummate prudence, his large experience, his perfect adaptation to the nature of his royal mistress, made his long tenure of power almost as much a political necessity as the security of the throne itself. In his last illness Elizabeth sent him a cordial, saying "that she did entreat Heaven for his longer life; else would her people, nay herself, stand in need of cordials too."* Months after his death, it was written of the queen that her highness "doth often speak of him in tears, and turn aside when he is discoursed of." + Burleigh, like Elizabeth herself, had a deep and abiding sense of responsibility. Walsingham, seeing him come in from prayers, wished he were as good a servant of God as the lord treasurer, "but that he had not been at church for a week past." The reply of Burleigh is worthy to be held in remembrance: Harrington, "Nuga Antiquæ," p. 237. + Ibid., p. 244.

1598.]

DEATHS OF BURLEIGH AND PHILIP II.

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279

"I hold it meet for us to ask God's grace to keep us sound at heart who have so much in our power; and to direct us to the well-doing of all the people, whom it is easy for us to injure and ruin." Cecil, Walsingham, Smith, Mildmay, Nicholas Bacon, were themselves of the people. They were English gentlemen-the best depositaries of political power that our country has produced; with broader views for the common welfare than the views of the intriguing churchmen, and of the ambitious nobles, who had the chief direction of affairs before the days of Elizabeth. When Burleigh died there was a struggle for

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ascendancy between two court factions, which had a tragical ending, and made the last days of the queen's life dark and dreary.

Within a month of the decease of Burleigh died Philip II. Henry IV. had concluded a separate peace with Spain; for which act, though probably one of imperious necessity, Elizabeth called him " an antichrist of ingratitude." But the two sovereigns had a respect, each for the other; and there was no permanent ill-will between England and France. The death of Philip, however, caused no abatement of the hostility between the Protestant and queen the Most Catholic king. In 1599 Spain again threatened invasion; and extensive preparations for resistance were made with the usual alacrity. The weak place of Elizabeth's dominions was Ireland. The intrigues of Jesuits, who

*Harrington, "Nuge Antiqux," p. 174.

280

CONDITION OF IRELAND.

[1599

were always scheming and negotiating with the Spanish ministers to obtain. money and men for the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion in England, might be detected and defeated by ordinary prudence; but Ireland, with its rude native population, under the control of the Romish priesthood, and with the ancient families of their Anglo-Irish oppressors, haters of Protestantism, was a perpetual trouble to the English government. Ireland yielded no revenue to England; she absorbed a large annual amount of the queen's treasure for her defence. Since the time of Henry VIII., Ireland, without having been wholly neglected, had not been governed with the same vigour that characterised the general administration of Elizabeth. Sir Henry Sidney was engaged for eleven years in keeping down the animosities of the Desmonds and the Ormonds; in repressing insurrections and rebellions; in doing a little, but only a little, for the general civilisation of the people. Lord Gray succeeded Sidney, and had the same chronic difficulties to contend with. The attempt of the elder lord Essex to colonise some forfeited lands was a ruinous failure. Spenser, who made his few years' residence on the banks of the Mulla famous, had his house burned over his head, and his child slaughtered. The neglect and misrule of previous centuries was visited upon those who, in the second half of the sixteenth century, desired "to turn so goodly and commodious a soil to good uses," by "reducing that nation to better government and civility." So Spenser felt when he prophetically wrote, "whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or influence of the stars; or, that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time for her reformation; or, that he reserveth her in this unquiet state still, for some secret scourge, which shall by her come unto England,-it is hard to be known but yet much to be feared." The poet, with the practical wisdom of a statesman, saw that the greatest evils of Ireland were social evils; and that her state would never be otherwise than unquiet until these were in some degree remedied. They were so difficult to be remedied that Spenser says that he had often heard it wished," even by some whose great wisdom in opinion should seem to judge more soundly of so weighty a consideration-that all that land were a seapool." It was Walsingham who uttered that wish. He could dive into plots with a sagacity that beat the Jesuits at their own weapons; but he could not comprehend the height and breadth and depth of the troubles of Ireland; or, comprehending them, could not see any instant remedy. The footing of the English was still confined to the Pale.† Beyond that narrow region there was barbarism. But where the quiet cultivator took the place of the gallowglass and kerne, there grew up a system even worse than that of the outlaw, whose boast was that he "did never eat his meat before he had won it with his sword." It was the foolish oppression of the landlords, who "there use most shamefully to rack their tenants;" it was the inconstancy of the tenant, who "daily looketh after change and alteration, and hovereth in expectation of new worlds,"-that kept Ireland miserable, rebellious, the scourge of England, for three centuries. It was no political evil-it was not even religious differences-that made the description which Spenser gives of the Irish cabin in 1593, the true picture of the same cabin two hundred and fifty years after;-" rather swine-sties than houses"-these dwellings of abject

*Spenser, "View of the State of Ireland."

+ See ante, vol. ii. p. 386.

1599.]

REBELLION OF TYRONE

281

poverty being the chiefest cause of the poor cultivator's "beastly manner of life and savage condition, lying and living with his beast, in one house, in one room, in one bed, that is, clean straw, or rather a foul dunghill." The mode in which this accurate observer speaks of the tenure of land in Ireland implies that a wholly contrary practice prevailed in England; and we may thence DRAVN AFTER THE

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have one solution of the different rate of industrial progress in the two countries. "There is one general inconvenience, which reigneth almost throughout all Ireland, that is, the lords of land and freeholders do not there use to set out their land in farm, or for term of years to their tenants, but only from year to year, and some during pleasure; neither indeed will the Irish tenant or husbandman otherwise take his land than so long as he list himself." The natural bonds of mutual interest between landlord and tenant thus hanging loose, there could be no growth of capital, and no improved cultivation: a wretched Cottier tenantry, worn to the bone by exactions, increased in numbers and in poverty generation after generation; till at length the great collapse came, and the merciful severity of God's providence solved the problem which man's wisdom could never wholly fathom.

The first remedy for the evils of Ireland at the end of the sixteenth century was to put down rebellion with a sufficient force. Hugh O'Neale, earl of Tyrone, had been for some time in insurrection against the English government. He had received arms and military stores from Spain; he was the leader of all who, according to Spenser, were "waiting when the watch-word should come that they should all arise generally into rebellion." As yet he had met with no adequate resistance. Sir John Norris, with the few thousand men that the English government maintained, was unable to make head against an enemy whose defeat only drove his wild companies to the woods and morasses, again to sally forth in new strength. Norris died of fatigue and vexation in this troublesome warfare. Another commander, Sir Henry Bagnal, was defeated with great loss, and himself killed, in an attempt to

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