sure-trove, and of excluding from its commerce the ships of all other nations, was indeed monstrous; but, on the other hand, it will be difficult to consider Drake, Hawkins, and the rest, in any other light than that of buccaneers, however much we may admire their daring spirit and the great contributions they made in the course of their marauding expeditions to the sciences of navigation and geography. Drake, in the course of three expeditions, had plundered the Spanish towns of Nombre de Dios and Carthagena, and nearly all the towns on the coast of Chili and Peru, and had destroyed or taken an immense number of Spanish ships, returning from each voyage with immense booty. Elizabeth insisted that she and other nations had a right to navigate those seas and to visit the ports which the jealousy of the Spaniards kept closed to all save their own flag, and that it was contrary to the laws of nations to treat intruders as pirates; but there being no declaration of war, she certainly committed in this way manifold acts of real piracy. Again, in the Netherlands, the King of Spain was everywhere met by English money and English resources, which had enabled those whom he termed his revolted subjects to prolong the struggle year after year. For a long time Elizabeth furnished her aid with all possible secrecy, denying to the Spanish court that she ever abetted rebels. But the course of events forced her to adopt a more open practice; and though she again declined the sovereignty or protectorship of the country, she, in 1585, sent over a royal army of six thousand men, having bargained with the States that they should pay all expenses, and deliver to her, as securities, the town of Brill and Flushing, and Rammekins, a strong and important fort. The queen's passionate regard for Leicester had cooled since the revelation of his secret marriage with the Countess of Essex; and that earl was now permitted to take the command of the army in the Netherlands, where he entertained very ambitious projects, and displayed a woful want both of military and civil ability. Without consulting his mistress, he induced the States to name him GovernorGeneral of the Low Countries, and to declare his autho

rity supreme and absolute, jointly with the council of state. Elizabeth wrote to him in a fury, telling him to remember the dust from which she had raised him, and to do whatever she might command as he valued his neck. The States, who had thought to please the queen by elevating her favourite, were in great perplexity, and Leicester soon showed them, in other ways, that they had committed a lamentable mistake in intrusting a sovereign power to such an incapable, arrogant, and insolent man, whose first operations were to cramp the freedom of commerce, which had given life and energy to the insurgents. In the field he was pompous, vain-glorious, and inefficient, presenting a wretched contrast to Alexander Farnese, the prince of Parma, who still prolonged the struggle for Spain with remarkable generalship. He carefully avoided a battle, and his greatest affair of arms was an attack upon Zutphen, which failed, and which would scarcely deserve a mention in history but for the death of the gallant and accomplished Sir Philip Sidney, who perished there in the twenty-fifth year of his age.' The best-managed part of his campaign was his hunting all Catholics from places of profit and trust, and his captivating the Calvinistic preachers of the Low Countries by such measures, and by a very sanctimonious bearing. When the States ventured to call him to account for his gross misconduct, this noble grandson of a tax-gatherer and extortioner † promised redress, but complained to his creatures that one of his rank should be questioned by shopkeepers and artisans.‡ In the winter of 1586, having pacified the queen, he returned to England, still however, retaining the power intrusted to him in the Low Countries.

By this time there began to rise a rumour that the

* Sir Philip Sidney was nephew to Leicester, but as unlike his uncle as light to dark.

For the history of Leicester's grandfather, Dudley, the colleague of Empson, see ante, Reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.

+ Grotius.

King of Spain was preparing to invade England with a tremendous force, and some Catholic plot or other at home was the news of every day. Most-nearly every one-of these conspiracies were conjured up by the imagination, or were altogether obscure and insignificant ; but, in the autumn of 1586, a real plot was discovered, at the head of which was Anthony Babington, a young English Catholic of an enthusiastic temper, who was brought to consider that it would be glorious in this world and acceptable in the next if he could assassinate Elizabeth and deliver Queen Mary from a captivity which was now rendered an unceasing torture, physically as well as morally. Babington had several accomplices, and one of these, named Pooley, put himself in direct communication with Walsingham, who was informed of every particular from the first rude arrangement of the scheme, and who permitted the plot to go on in order to implicate Mary. When he had played with the numerous threads of this intrigue for months, and had woven a complete web round the conspirators, he opened the subject to Elizabeth, and soon after proceeded to act. Ballard, a seminary priest, whom Camden calls " a silken priest in a soldier's habit," was suddenly arrested. Babington and the rest, who were all young men of fortune and acquirements, fled; but Babington was taken in a few days, at Harrow-on-the-Hill, with Gage, Charnock, Barnwell, and Don, in the house of Bellamy their common friend. Titchborn, Travers, Abington, Salisbury, Jones, and Tilney were seized in other places, and of the whole number only Edward Windsor, the brother of Lord Windsor, escaped pursuit. These were no base and mercenary conspirators,--they were such high-spirited and intellectual young men as could not have been easily matched in the kingdom. But it appears that they were all put to the rack, or at least threatened with it; a gratuitous atrocity, for Walsingham, Burleigh, and the queen knew precisely all that could possibly be known of the business. While this was doing the bells of London rang merrily for their apprehension,-bonfires were lit, and on the morrow, banquets were spread in the

streets, with singing of psalms and praising God for preserving her majesty and people.* The fate of the prisoners, however, on account of their youth, their honourable condition in society, and their previously unimpeached characters, excited some commiseration, and this seems to have been the cause of the government arraigning them not all at once, but in two separate bodies, notwithstanding the great legal objection that their case was one and indivisible. On the 13th of September, certain of them being put upon their trial were condemned as traitors, and executed on the 20th, with a scrupulous attention to the atrocious processes prescribed by law, being all cut down while life was in them. The other seven were tried on the 15th and were all executed on the 21st, but, in this more fortunate than their companions, they were allowed to hang till they were dead. The place selected for their execution was Lincoln's-Inn Fields, 66 even the place where they had used to meet and confer." With the exception of Babington, it seems to be extremely doubtful whether any of these gentlemen contemplated the murder of the queen, and, with the single exception of Babington, all of them behaved chivalrously and nobly, endeavouring to take blame to themselves rather than cast it upon their companions. Most of them maintained that their views were confined to liberating the captive queen, a project likely to take firm hold of young and romantic minds. Bellamy, of Harrow, appears to have suffered merely because some of the fugitives were found in his house. His wife escaped through a misnomer in the indictment. A statute had been just passed to meet the case, and to bring Mary to the block;

*Stow. The Protestant people of London were so excited that the French ambassador was afraid they would set upon and massacre all the Catholics and foreigners! + Stow.

Stat. 27 Eliz. c. 1. By this statute it was enacted that twenty-four or more of the privy council and House of Lords, to be deputed by the queen's commission, should make inquisition after all such as should invade the kingdom, raise rebellion, or attempt to hurt or destroy the queen's person,

and as what was deemed evidence against her had been secured from the Babington conspiracy, Elizabeth's council now proposed an immediate trial of the Scottish queen. But even now Elizabeth hesitated, to the dismay and secret wrath of Burghley, Walsingham, Sadler, and the rest of the ministry. At this moment Leicester, who was abroad, stepped in with what he considered a masterpiece of advice, proposing a little quiet poison. Walsingham, who had the chief management of the affair, objected to such a course as being contrary to God's law; upon which the earl sent him a canting preacher to prove that such means against such a person were quite justifiable by scripture. There was then a talk of shortening the captive's life by increasing the rigour of her treatment, which, in fact, had already been rigorous enough to make a sickly cripple of that once healthful and beautiful woman. At last, giving herself up entirely to the advice of Walsingham, Elizabeth issued a commission to try Mary and pronounce judgment upon her according to the act recently passed. There was no want of high names or of legal authorities in this most illegal commission. There were the Chancellor Bromley, the Lord Treasurer Burghley, the Earls of Oxford, Kent, Derby, Worcester, Rutland, Cumberland, Warwick, Pembroke, and Lincoln; the Viscount Montague, the Lords Abergavenny, Zouch, Morley, Stafford, Grey, Lumley, Stourton, Sandys, Wentworth, Mordant, St. John of Bletsoe, Compton, and Cheney; Sir James Croft, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Walter Mildmay, and Sir Amyas Pawlet; Wray, chief justice of the Common Pleas; Anderson, chief justice of the King's Bench; Manwood, chief baron of

for or by whomsoever employed that might lay claim to the crown of England; and that the person for whom or by whom they should attempt the same, should be utterly incapable of the crown of England, deprived wholly of all right and title to it, and prosecuted to death by all faithful subjects, if he or she should be judged by those four-and-twenty men to be a party to such invasion, rebellion, or treasonable attempt