282

ESSEX LORD-LIEUTENANT.

[1599.

relieve the fortress of Blackwater, which was besieged by Tyrone's men. It became necessary to make some great effort, if Ireland were to remain to the English crown.

The determination to employ Essex in subduing the Irish rebels was unfortunate for Elizabeth's government, and more unfortunate for himself. He was a chivalrous soldier, fit for daring exploits, but unqualified for conducting a war requiring not only bravery and decision, but that foresight and faculty of organisation which are rarely united with an ardent temperament. He was a courtier, but not a statesman; and as a courtier he was rash and obstinate to a degree. Friends and foes alike predicted his fall. He differed in council with the queen, and then insolently turned his back upon her. The thin jewelled hand of Elizabeth was raised in uncontrollable anger, and she boxed his ear as a mother would a petted child. The earl put his hand upon his sword, and swore that he would not have borne such an affront from Henry VIII. For months he sulked and kept away from court. At length, probably to remove him without disgrace, he was appointed to the lord lieutenancy of Ireland, with higher powers than had ever before been granted to that great office. At the end of March, 1599, he left London for Dublin, surrounded by a train of nobles and knights, and greeted by the acclamations of the people, with whom he was an especial object of regard. There were those who said that the high trust bestowed upon Essex would be fatal to him. Bacon, his friend, and probably then a sincere friend, endeavoured to dissuade him from accepting the dangerous appointment; and afterwards declared that he plainly saw his overthrow, "chained as it were by destiny to that journey." Stow, describing the march of Essex from the city, amidst the blessings of the multitude, says, "When he and his company came forth of London, the sky was very calm and clear; but before he could get past Islington, there arose a great black cloud in the north-east, and suddenly came lightning and thunder, with a great shower of hail and rain, the which some held as an ominous prodigy." The superstition, which saw a presage of danger in the great black cloud in the midst of sunshine, was the natural reflection of the judgment of those who anticipated evil from the too confident deportment of Essex. He swore that "he would beat Tyr-Owen in the field, for nothing worthy her majesty's honour hath yet been achieved." * He underrated the services of all who had preceded him, and the policy they had pursued, of endeavouring to conciliate the Irish malcontents, rather than extirpate them. He was to return from Ireland,

"Bringing rebellion broached on his sword."

He came back in six months, without having accomplished a single object that his predecessors in the government had not more completely effected with a far inferior force. He was entirely ignorant of the difficulties of the enterprise. Raleigh, who knew the country and the people, shrank from the command. Essex maintained that a man of the highest rank, a man popular with soldiers, a man of military experience, should be the queen's vicegerent. He pointed to himself; and his rivals, Robert Cecil and Raleigh, suffered

* Harrington, p. 246.

1599.]

HIS CAMPAIGN AND HIS RETURN.

283

him to fall into the toils. He had a force of sixteen thousand men when he marched out of Dublin on the 10th of May. From some extraordinary vacillation, produced, it is said, by interested advisers in the Irish Council, instead of leading his force against Tyrone, he made a progress of seven weeks through Munster; now and then skirmishing with small parties of rebels, and displaying his superfluous energy, "flying like lightning from one part of the army to another;" and having his love of popularity abundantly gratified by his reception in the towns. At Kilkenny the streets were strewed with rushes. At Limerick, "where he arrived by easy journeys," he was "entertained with two English orations." At Waterford he " was received with two Latin orations, and with as much joyful concourse of people as any other town of Ireland." He had marched to Waterford; and he marched back to Dublin by another route, having obtained some useless triumphs over small bodies of rebels, and wasted his army without the least beneficial result. Essex remained at Dublin from the 3rd of July till the 28th of August, and then set forth into Ulster to do battle with Tyrone. After a skirmish, the queen's army and the rebel's army were in sight of each other; and Tyrone sent a message that he desired her majesty's mercy, and asked that the lord lieutenant would hear him. He proposed to meet Essex at the ford of Bellachinche. "Upon this message his lordship sent two gentlemen with H. Hagan to the ford, to view the place. They found Tyrone there, but the water so far out as they told him they thought it no fit place to speak in. Whereupon he grew very impatient, and said, 'Then I shall despair ever to speak with him;' and at last, knowing the ford, found a place, where he, standing up to the horse's belly, might be near enough to be heard by the lord lieutenant, though he kept the hard ground; upon which notice the lord lieutenant drew a troop of horse to the hill above the ford, and seeing Tyrone there alone, went down alone: at whose coming Tyrone saluted his lordship with a great deal of reverence, and they talked near half an hour, and after went either of them up to their companies on the hills.” * There was a second conference, when others on each side were present; and the result was an armistice for six weeks. "This being concluded," says Harrington, "on the 8th of September, on the 9th the lord lieutenant dispersed his army." Tyrone retired with his forces. On the 17th of September Elizabeth wrote a letter to Essex, disapproving of his proceedings in the strongest terms. The impetuous nature of the man would not endure this reproof. He saw, and perhaps justly, that his rivals in Elizabeth's court were working his downfall; and, in a blind confidence in the queen's favour, he took the fatal resolution of leaving his command in Ireland. There is a graphic narrative by a contemporary of his arrival in England. On the 28th of September," about ten o'clock in the morning, my lord of Essex lighted at the court-gate in post, and made all haste up to the presence, and so to the privy chamber, and stayed 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

Harrington's "Report concerning the Earl of Essex's Journeys in Ireland,” p. 299.

284

ESSEX AND THE QUEEN.

[1599.

'Tis much

much trouble and storms abroad, he found a sweet calm at home. wondered at here that he went so boldly to her majesty's presence, she not being ready, and he so full of dirt and mire, that his very face was full of it. About eleven he went up to the queen again, and conferred with her till half an hour past twelve. As yet all was well, and her usage very gracious towards him. He was visited frankly by all sorts here of lords and ladies, and gentlemen; only strangeness is observed between him and Mr. Secretary, and that party. After dinner he went up to the queen, but found her much changed in that small time, for she began to call him to question for his return, and was not satisfied in the manner of his coming away, and leaving all things at so great hazard. She appointed the lords to hear him, and so they went to council in the afternoon, and he went with them, where they sat an hour, but nothing was determined on, or yet known: belike it is referred to a full council, for all the lords are sent for to be here this day. It is mistrusted that for his disobedience he shall be committed." *

The personal affection of the queen for Essex was, as in the instances of other favourites, under subjection to what she held as her public duty. We have avoided, and shall still avoid, those passages of the scandalous chronicles of the reign of this queen, which may add to the interest of a novel, but have little to do with the sober narratives of history. The passions of Elizabeth— if we may apply the term passions to her feminine weaknesses-never turned her aside from an impartial decision upon the political faults of those who appear to have had the largest share of her private regard. These favourites, it must be observed, were always men of great ability and rare accomplishments. They were no low adventurers or fierce desperadoes, such as other female sovereigns have honoured. Leicester, Hatton, Raleigh, Essex, were men that brought no disgrace upon the court; though the queen's relation to them might be so equivocal that historians have chosen to doubt whether, in youth or age,

"the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free."

The adulation which her flatterers, and even Raleigh, heaped upon her was in the exaggerated style of the euphuistic romance of the time; and, however we may smile at the vanity with which a gray and wrinkled woman received these compliments with approving delight, we must not forget that when she went from the presence chamber to the council-board, the wisest who sat there, the most patriotic, could not excel Elizabeth in sagacity, or show a deeper solicitude for the honour and prosperity of her country. We can forgive every personal folly to the ruler who felt that she held her power as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people. There were many despotic practices recognised as lawful in that period, and the queen had enough of the arbitrary notions of the Tudors in her composition. She required obedience; but she knew what conduct ensured the heartiest and most constant obedience. Harrington has a domestic anecdote which illustrates this principle of Elizabeth's conduct as well as her set orations: "The queen did once ask my wife in merry sort, how she kept my good will and love, which I did always maintain to be truly good towards her and my children.' My

*Letter of Rowland White, in the "Sidney Papers."

285

Mall, in wise and discreet manner, told her highness, she had confidence in her husband's understanding and courage, well founded on her own stedfastness not to offend or thwart, but to cherish and obey; hereby did she persuade her husband of her own affection, and in so doing did command his.'—' Go to, go to, mistress,' saith the queen, 'you are wisely bent I find: after such sort do I keep the good will of all my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest assured of some special love toward them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience." We may understand, as Essex did not understand, why his public delinquencies would not escape the displeasure of the queen through her private regard. In the morning of the 28th of September he thought he had escaped from the dangers of his Irish career. In the evening he was commanded to keep his chamber. On the next day he was examined before the Council, and, instead of being restored to favour, was commanded from court, and committed to the "free custody" of the lord keeper, and was afterwards under the same restricted liberty at his own house. This condition, so irritating to one of the temperament of Essex, was followed by more decided humiliation. His deportment was penitential; he addressed the queen in letters of the deepest contrition. But the affairs of Ireland had grown worse; Tyrone was again in rebellion. Another lord deputy was sent, and Blount, lord Mountjoy, although without military experience, soon restored obedience to the English authority by his energy and prudence. The contrast was injurious to Essex, and gave new opportunities to his rivals. He was again examined before commissioners; and received the severest censure in being suspended from his offices of privy counsellor, of lord marshal, and of master of the ordnance. He was released from custody in August, but was still commanded not to appear at court. A valuable monopoly of sweet wines which he held having expired, the queen refused to renew the patent, saying "that in order to manage an ungovernable beast, he must be stinted of his provender." Under these indignities the mind of Essex lost all balance. Harrington relates his demeanour in his last conversation with him, before the outbreak which sealed his fate: resteth with me in opinion, that ambition thwarted in its career doth speedily lead on to madness. Herein I am strengthened by what I learn in my lord of Essex, who shifteth from sorrow and repentance to rage and rebellion so suddenly, as well proveth him devoid of good reason or right mind. In my last discourse, he uttered strange words bordering on such strange designs, that made me hasten forth and leave his presence. Thank Heaven! I am safe at home, and if I go in such troubles again, I deserve the gallows for a meddling fool. 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.'

It

It is difficult to understand what method there was in the madness of Essex. It is still more difficult to understand how other men, not having the same excitement of jealousy and revenge which drove the humiliated favourite to acts of treason, should have joined in his wild projects. There can be no

"Nugæ Antiquæ," p. 179.

286

SCHEMES OF ESSEX AND HIS ADHERENTS.

[1601.

doubt that he contemplated removing the queen's advisers by force; believing them to be, as they to a great extent were, his personal enemies. Cecil, Raleigh, and Cobham were held by him to be the chief obstacles to his restoration to favour. But there were circumstances which rendered his attempt not altogether hopeless. The queen was now sixty-eight years of age; and although she had shown no signs of a failure of intellectual vigour, the people were naturally looking forward to a successor. James VI. of Scotland was intriguing in various quarters to procure his official recognition as the future king of England; but upon this point Elizabeth was unapproachable. The wary Cecil was in secret correspondence with James; but the incautious Essex had not scrupled to contemplate the possibility of compelling the government into such recognition; and had even proposed to Mountjoy, the lord deputy of Ireland, to bring over a body of troops for that purpose. His own plans to the same end during his tardy prosecution of the Irish war were more than suspected. There was great discontent amongst the opposing classes of Papists and Puritans, naturally excited by the penalties to which each was subjected as recusants or non-conformists. Essex, whether conscientiously or politically, professed sentiments of toleration. The citizens of London were greatly inclined to the Puritan opinions; and Essex had his house open to preachers of that denomination. The more fanatical Romanists, in which number were included several of those who were afterwards prominent in the Gunpowder Plot, did not scruple to ally themselves with those of the extreme opposite opinions, in any scheme for the overthrow of the government. Essex surrounded himself with a number of those who had been his companions in arms; but he placed a greater reliance upon his popularity with the Londoners. pains were taken to familiarise the people with that great story of English history which told how a corrupt and imbecile king had been hurled from his throne. Elizabeth was apprehensive of the effect of the example thus made prominent of the deposition of Richard II.; and when, during the period in which Essex was secluded from court, Hayward dedicated his life of Henry IV to the earl, she asked Bacon whether he did not see treason in it? She persisted in her notion in spite of Bacon's witty answer, that he “ saw no treason, but very much felony, for every second sentence was stolen from Tacitus." The queen was perhaps right as to the possible effect of the popular knowledge of this passage of our annals. At any rate those who were concerned in the schemes of Essex fancied that the bringing forward upon the stage the deposition of a king might familiarise the people with an idea that had long passed out of the English mind, as to the responsibility of sovereign power. Sir Gilly Meyrick, an officer of the household of Essex, on the afternoon of February 1, "procured the out-dated tragedy of The Deposition of Richard II.' to be publicly acted at his own charge." * The overt act of treason in which Essex and his adherents were involved took place on the 8th of February. Six months after this event, Elizabeth, in a conversation with Lambarde, keeper of the records in the Tower, in examining a list of historical documents, "her majesty fell upon the reign of Richard II., saying 'I am Richard II.; know ye not that?'" In this

Extraordinary

There are reasonable doubts whether this play was Shakspere's "Richard 11." See "Studies of Shakspere," by Charles Knight.