1601.J

ATTEMPT AT INSURRECTION.

287

conversation the queen also said, "This tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses."*

On Sunday morning, the 8th of February, the earls of Rutland and Southampton, the lords Sandys and Monteagle, with about three hundred gentlemen, assembled at Essex House, in the Strand. Essex had sent round to say that his life was threatened by Raleigh and Cobham. The queen was apprised of this remarkable gathering, and she despatched the lord keeper, the comptroller of the household, the lord chief justice, and the earl of Worcester to demand the cause of this assembly. They were admitted by the wicket, without their servants, and found the court full of men. The lord keeper declared their errand, to which Essex replied that his life was sought, and that he had been perfidiously dealt with. These great officers assured him that he should have honourable and equal justice. The evidence given by the lord chief justice upon the trial of Essex describes this scene very strikingly. After this conversation, "There was a great clamour raised among the multitude, crying 'Away, my lord, they abuse you, they betray you, they undo you, you lose time.' Whereupon the lord keeper put on his hat, and said with a loud voice, ' My lord, let us speak with you privately, and understand your griefs;' and then he said to the company, 'I command you all, upon your allegiance, to lay down your weapons and to depart, which you ought all to do, being thus commanded, if you be good subjects and owe that duty to the queen's majesty which you profess.' Whereupon they all broke out into an exceeding loud shout, crying, All, all, all.' And whilst the lord keeper was speaking, the earl of Essex and most of the company put on their hats. Then the earl of Essex went into the house, and we followed him, thinking that his purpose had been to speak with us privately as we had required; and at that instant one at my back cried, Kill them, kill them.' I know him not, if I should see him again, but he had on a white satin doublet. And as we were going into the great chamber some cried 'Cast the great seal out of the window;' some others cried there, 'Kill them,' and some others said, 'Nay, let us shut them up.' The lord keeper did often call to the earl of Essex to speak with us privately, thinking still that his meaning had been so, until the earl brought us into his back chamber, and there gave order to have the farther door of that chamber shut fast. And at his going forth out of that chamber, the lord keeper pressing again to have spoken with the earl of Essex, the ear) said, 'My lords, be patient awhile and stay here, and I will go into London and take order with the mayor and sheriffs for the city, and will be here again within this half hour.'”

When Essex left the lord keeper and the others in custody, he drew his sword, and rushed out of his house, followed by a large number of his adherents, and he shouted, "For the queen, for the queen, a plot is laid for my life." The people, as he rode at the head of his company, either did not comprehend his object, or were unwilling to assist him; for though they were provided with arms, and trained, as they always were during any apprehension of foreign invasion, not a sword or a musket was brought forth to give him assistance. Camden shrewdly says, "Though the citizens were, accord

Nicholls' "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth."

288

TRIAL OF ESSEX AND SOUTHAMPTON.

[1601.

ing to the temper of the common people, desirous enough of change, yet their wealth made them cautious and loyal. And, to say the truth, poverty is that, which, above all things, prompts the English to rebellion." Disheartened, the unhappy nobleman and his friends attempted to return from the city; but they found the streets barricaded with empty carriages. At Ludgate the chains were drawn; and a party of soldiers opposed their progress. A fight ensued, in which several were killed. Essex escaped by water to his own house; which he attempted to defend, with those who got in with him. But

no succour from the city reached him, and they surrendered. Southampton were that night removed to the Tower.

Essex and

their trial,

On the 19th of February the two noble friends were put upon in the court of the lord high steward. The facts against them were too clearly proved to allow of any verdict of the Peers but that of Guilty. They were tried upon the old statute of Edward III. "As far as can be ascertained, it seems to have been intended to rest the charge on two propositions : first, that the design to restrain the queen's person, and remove her counsellors, amounted to treason, in the article of compassing the queen's death, of which general treason, the consultation at Drury-house, the insurrection in London, the imprisonment of the lord keeper and his companions, and the refusal to dismiss the company upon the queen's command, were overt acts; and, secondly, that the insurrection in the city was in itself a rebellion, and, consequently, a levying of war against the queen, within the statute of Edward III., of which the skirmish at Ludgate, the defence of Essex-house against the queen's troops, and many other actions of the earl's on that day, were overt acts." There was no straining of the law to procure the con

Jardine, "Criminal Trials," vol. i. p. 381.

CONDUCT OF BACON.

289

demnation of these rash men; although we may well believe the truth of the solemn averment of Essex, "Here I protest before the living God, as he may have mercy upon me, that my conscience is clear from any disloyal thought of harm to her majesty, and my desire ever hath been to be free from bloodshed." Coke, the attorney-general, bitterly alluded to that part of the indictment which accused him of aiming to be king, saying of Essex, "He of his earldom shall be Robert the Last, that of a kingdom sought to be Robert the First." Essex, to this charge, made his denial in these words: "And thou, O God, which knowest the secrets of all hearts, knowest that I never sought the crown of England,, nor ever wished to be of higher degree than a subject."

There is an incidental circumstance connected with the trial of Essex which cannot be passed over, affecting as it does the moral character of one of the most illustrious in the roll of England's immortals. Francis Bacon was one of the queen's counsel, and he was officially employed against Essex in this trial. He was bound to Essex by no common obligations. generous earl had given him an estate, because he could not procure for him The a lucrative appointment. Essex had struggled against the ill-will of the Cecils to advance Bacon's fortunes, in season and out of season. the trial Bacon said stronger things against his friend than were urged by Yet upon his bitterest adversaries. Bacon compared his proceeding in saying his life was in danger, to that of "one Pisistratus, in Athens, who, coming into the city with the purpose to procure the subversion of the kingdom, and wanting aid for the accomplishing his aspiring desires, and as the surest means to win the hearts of the citizens unto him, he entered the city, having cut his body with a knife, to the end they might conjecture he had been in danger of his life." He compared "this rebellion of my lord of Essex to the duke of Guise's, that came upon the barricades at Paris in his doublet and hose; and when he failed, alleged that he was there upon a private quarrel." There was a general indignation expressed against Bacon for this severity; but what his contemporaries objected to him was mildness itself, compared with the judgment of an eloquent modern writer upon these passages of his speeches. They were intended, Mr. Macaulay holds, to deprive the prisoner of those excuses which "might incline the queen to grant a pardon”—“ to produce a strong impression on the mind of the haughty and jealous princess on whose pleasure the earl's fate depended."* Bacon, in the 'Apology" which he wrote of his conduct in this trial, says, I performed at the bar in my public service, by the rules of duty I "that which was bound to do it honestly and without prevarication." To shut out Essex from mercy, Mr. Macaulay says that Bacon "employed all his wit, his rhetoric, and his learning." We would, rather than impute deliberate blood-guiltiness to this great man, whose kindness of nature was as conspicuous as his genius, entertain the belief that the temptation to a counsel, almost for the first time employed on a great cause, to show forth "his wit, his rhetoric, and his learning" to the best advantage, was a temptation too great to be resisted, even at the sacrifice of his gratitude. That Bacon was a high-minded man in public transactions is as difficult to believe as that he possessed a treacherous

66

• "Essays," vol. ii.; art. "Bacon."

VOL. III.

U

290

EXECUTION OF ESSEX-SCOTLAND.

[1601. and cruel nature. His concern with the official publication entitled "The Declaration of the Treasons of the late earl of Essex and his complices,” is as little to be defended as his rhetorical flights upon the trial. It is a garbled and partial narrative. He says, "never secretary had more particular and express directions and instructions, in every point, how to guide my hand in it.-Myself, indeed, gave only words and style in pursuing their directions;" -those of certain principal counsellors. We must feel acutely the meanness of the great writer-he who had already published a volume of his noble "Essays "-in becoming such an unworthy instrument of expediency. But there were excuses. He was poor; he was ambitious. In penning his Apology for his conduct in the unhappy affair of Essex, he is manifestly unconscious of his own degradation. There was a singular combination, in those times, of private virtue and public immorality, amongst courtiers and statesmen. "High-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy" were to be found in the English gentleman as his general characteristic; but the rivalry for power, when power was to be reached chiefly by subserviency, made the aspirant too often a sycophant and a tool. Bacon pocketed the wages of an hireling, when he received a large sum out of the fine which Catesby, one of the Romanist followers of Essex, paid for his pardon. But Bacon probably did not himself see that this was the price of his dishonour.

The earl of Essex was beheaded within the walls of the Tower on Wednesday morning, the 25th of February. There were few persons present at the execution, which was stated to have been in private by his own desire. There were politic reasons for avoiding the manifestations of popular sympathy which one so generally beloved would have called forth in his dying hour. His end was truly "pious and Christian," to use the words of Camden. To the noblemen and others who sat upon the scaffold he addressed a brief speech, in which he deplored the "last sin," which had drawn others for love of him to offend God, to offend their sovereign. But he besought them to hold a charitable opinion of him for his intention towards her majesty," whose death I protest I never meant, nor violence to her person." Lord Southampton, who had been found guilty and sentenced to death at the same time with Essex, was spared from the scaffold but was confined during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign. Sir Gilly Meyrick, Henry Cuffe, Sir Christopher Blount, and Sir Charles Danvers, were executed as adherents to the conspiracy.

The correspondence of Essex with king James VI. was certainly amongst the causes which prevented his restoration to the favour of Elizabeth. The harshness with which he was treated in the autumn of 1600 was a natural consequence of the indignation of the English government at the proceedings of James. At a convention of the Scottish estates, in June of that year, the king proposed that a tax should be levied, for the purpose of asserting his claim to the succession to the crown of England. This demand met with the most strenuous resistance. Amongst those who led the opposition was the young earl of Gowrie, who had recently returned from the court of Elizabeth. The king was furious against his parliament. They had laughed at his notion of raising money to make a conquest of England; and altogether refused to give him more than forty thousand pounds Scots. After this, Robert Cecil was informed that James had a party in England, and intended not to tarry for the queen's death, The mutual ill-will that subsisted at this time between

1601.]

THE GOWRIE CONSPIRACY.

291

James and Elizabeth has led to the belief, resting upon very insufficient foundation, that what is called the Gowrie plot may be traced to the contrivance of the English queen.* The whole of this dark affair is involved in the greatest mystery. The facts which are commonly related are briefly these. On the morning of the 5th of August, 1600, James was going forth from his palace at Falkland to hunt, when Alexander Ruthven, the younger brother of Gowrie, desired to speak with him privately. He whispered something about an unknown man having found a pot of gold; and the treasure, which was in Gowrie house, at Perth, might be seen by the king if he would come thither without his attendants. The scent of gold was irresistible to James. After the chase be rode off to Perth with young Ruthven ; but he was ultimately joined by his attendants. James dined alone; and after dinner Gowrie, with James's suite, went into the pleasure garden. Alexander Ruthven then told the king it was now time to go and look at the gold. They went together through various apartments, Ruthven locking the doors as they passed along. At length they reached a small round room; and then Ruthven, removing a curtain, disclosed a portrait of his father, and asked James who murdered him? He held a dagger to the king's breast, and said that if he made any attempt to open the window, or to cry out, the dagger should be in his heart. There was a man in the room, Henderson, who had been placed there to aid in the plot. Young Ruthven left the king alone with this man. James appealed to Henderson for protection. Ruthven, soon returning, ran upon the king and attempted to bind him. A desperate struggle ensued; in which James managed to reach the window and cry out for help. Lennox and the other courtiers in the garden saw the king's flushed face at the window, as he uttered the cry of "Treason." Some rushed up the great staircase; but found the door locked. Ramsay, one of the suite, remembered a back stair; and reaching the door of the round chamber, dashed it open, and found the king still struggling with Ruthven. Ramsay stabbed the youth, who was quickly dispatched by others who came up the turnpike-stair. Gowrie himself, with his servants, having seen the dead body of his brother, rushed frantically to the gallery where some of the attendants of James were assembled, and was quickly slain. The populace in the streets of Perth were roused to madness when they heard of the deaths of the two Ruthvens; and they cried to the king, as he looked out, "Come down, thou son of signor Davie; thou hast slain a better man than thyself." Some of the preachers of the kirk maintained that the king conspired against the Gowries, and not the Gowries against the king; and this belief was by no means confined to the Presbyterian ministers.

The last parliament of Elizabeth met on the 27th of October, 1601. There were debates on the question of a subsidy, which it would be scarcely necessary here to notice, but for a mis-statement of Hume. The prejudiced historian affirms that, when Mr. Serjeant Heyle said, "all we have is her majesty's, and she may lawfully at her pleasure take it from us," there was no one who "cared to take him down, or oppose those monstrous positions." In the Reports of D'Ewes, where Hume found Serjeant Heyle's speech, he would have read the reply of Mr. Montague: "If

Robertson, "History of Scotland."