hailed her as they had been wont to do; and her ministers and counsellors were insulted and hooted. And yet they went on to shed more blood about this wild business, which ought to have been forgotten as soon as over. On the last day of February a young man named Woodhouse was hanged for speaking against the queen's proclamation and apprehending of the Earl of Essex. On the 13th of March, Cuffe, the secretary, and Merrick, the steward of Essex, was drawn to Tyburn, and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered. On the 18th of March Sir Charles Davers, or Danvers, a close friend of the Earl of Southampton, was publicly beheaded upon Tower Hill. On the same day, and as soon as the body of this victim was removed from the scaffold, Sir Christopher Blount, the step-father of the Earl of Essex, was stretched over the same block, and died with equal firmness, protesting that he had been and was a true Catholic. Sir Walter Raleigh stood near the scaffold all the time, not foreseeing the day when he should be there as a sufferer, not as a spectator. Sir John Davies, Sir Edward Baynam, and Mr. Littleton were also condemned as traitors; but Davies, after a year's confinement, obtained a pardon; Baynam bought a pardon by giving large sums of money to Sir Walter Raleigh; and Littleton, having surrendered a great estate, and paid a fine of 10,000l., was removed to the King's Bench, where he died three months after.

If at this moment Elizabeth had had the neck of the sapient James of Scotland under the protection of her laws, it would scarcely have had a better chance than his mother's; for Elizabeth, no doubt, knew of that prince's correspondence with the Earl of Essex. There is some reason, indeed, for suspecting that the English were not unconcerned in an extraordinary affair which happened in Scotland only a few months before Essex's wild outbreak. The Gowrie conspiracy, as it is called, is perhaps the most perplexing puzzle in history-for not only is the evidence as to the facts defective and contradictory, which is a common case, but we are scarcely any nearer a satisfactory solution of the mystery, let us select any version of the story we please. Among many dif

:

ferent theories which the ingenuity of modern inquirers has suggested, one, proposed by an eminent historian, would trace the attempt directly to the contrivance of Elizabeth in support of which view it is alleged that, besides the Earl of Gowrie's known attachment to the English interest, he had, during his residence in Paris, contracted an intimate friendship with Sir Henry Neville, the queen's ambassador there, and was recommended by him to his court as a person of whom great use might be made; that he had been received by Elizabeth, as he returned home through England with distinguished marks of respect and favour; that Elizabeth's participation in the affair was matter of general suspicion at the time; that for some months before an English ship was observed hovering in the mouth of the Frith of Forth; that after the failure of the conspiracy the earl's two younger brothers fled into England, and were protected by Elizabeth; and, finally, that James, though he prudently concealed what he felt, is well known to have at this time taken great umbrage at the behaviour of the English queen. The object of the Gowrie conspiracy, it is assumed on this supposition, was not to murder but only to coerce James, and control the government, as had been the object of the authors of the Raid of Ruthven sixteen years before an enterprise which was in like manner instigated and supported by Elizabeth.*

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 com plaints 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

VOL. IX.

*Robertson, Hist. Scot.

F

on her favourites. All 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. 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 the monopolies. Elizabeth now employed an oblique irony against 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 strength and 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.*

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

* Camden.

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 affirmed 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 despatch 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 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