A letter from sir Robert Sidney to sir John Harrington, written some time in this year, affords some not uninteresting traits of her behaviour, mixed with other matters:
"Worthy knight;
"Your present to the queen was well accepted of; she did much commend your verse, nor did she less praise your prose.... The queen hath tasted your dainties, and saith you have marvellous skill in cooking of good fruits. If I can serve you in your northern suit, you may command me.... Our lawyers say, your title is well grounded in conscience, but that strict law doth not countenance your recovering those lands of your ancestors.... Visit your friends often, and please the queen by all you can,for all the great lawyers do much fear her displeasure.... I do see the queen often, she doth wax weak since the late troubles, and Burleigh's death doth often draw tears from her goodly cheeks; she walketh out but little, meditates much alone, and sometimes writes in private to her best friends. The Scottish matters do cause much discourse, but we know not the true grounds of state business, nor venture further on such ticklish points[137]. Her highness hath done honor to my poor house by visiting me, and seemed much pleased at what we did to please her. My son made her a fairspeech, to which she did give most gracious reply. The women did dance before her, whilst the cornets did salute from the gallery; and she did vouchsafe to eat two morsels of rich comfit cake, and drank a small cordial out of a golden cup. She had a marvellous suit of velvet, borne by four of her first women-attendants in rich apparel; two ushers did go before; and at going up stairs she called for a staff, and was much wearied in walking about the house, and said she wished to come another day. Six drums and six trumpets waited in the court, and sounded at her approach and departure. My wife did bear herself in wonderous good liking, and was attired in a purple kirtle fringed with gold; and myself in a rich band and collar of needlework, and did wear a goodly stuff of the bravest cut and fashion, with an under body of silver and loops. The queen was much in commendation of our appearances, and smiled at the ladies who in their dances often came up to the step on which the seat was fixed to make their obeisance, and so fell back into their order again. The younger Markham did several gallant feats on a horse before the gate, leaping down and kissing his sword, then mounting swiftly on the saddle, and passing a lance with much skill. The day well nigh spent, the queen went and tasted a small beverage that was set out in divers rooms where she might pass, and then in much order was attended to her palace; the cornets and trumpets sounding through the streets." &c.
The fate of Essex was now drawing to a crisis. The mixture of severity and indulgence with whichhe had been treated;—her majesty's perseverance in refusing to readmit him to her presence, though all other liberty was restored to him;—her repeated assurances that she meant only to chastise, not to ruin him, contrasted with the tedious duration of her anger and the utter uncertainty when, or by what means, it was to be brought to an end;—had long detained him in the mazes of a tormenting uncertainty: but he at length saw the moment when her disposition towards him must be brought to a test which he secretly assured his adherents that he should regard as decisive.
The term for which the earl had held the lucrative farm of sweet wines would expire at Michaelmas; he was soliciting its renewal; and on the doubtful balance of success or failure his already wavering loyalty was suspended. He spared on this occasion no expressions of humility and contrition which might soften the heart of the queen:—He professed to kiss the hand and the rod with which he had been corrected; to look forward to the beholding again those blessed eyes, so long his Cynosure, as the only real happiness which he could ever enjoy; and he declared his intention with Nebuchodonosor, to make his habitation with the beasts of the field, to eat hay like an ox, and to be wet with the dews of heaven, until it should please the queen to restore him. To lord Henry Howard, who was the bearer of these dutiful phrases, Elizabeth expressed her unfeigned satisfaction to find him in so proper a frame of mind; she only wished, she said, that his deeds might answer to his words; and as he had long tried her patience, itwas fit that she should make some experiment of his humility. Her father would never have endured such perversity:—but she would not now look back:—All that glittered was not gold, but if such results came forth from her furnace, she should ever after think the better of her chemistry. Soon after, having detected the motive of immediate interest which had inspired such moving expressions of penitence and devotion, her disgust against Essex was renewed; and in the end, she not only rejected his suit, but added the insulting words, that an ungovernable beast must be stinted of his provender, in order to bring him under management.
The spirit of Essex could endure no more;—rage took possession of his soul; and equally desperate in fortune and in mind, he prepared to throw himself into any enterprise which the rashness of the worst advisers could suggest. It was at this time that he is reported, in speaking of the queen, to have used the expression, maliciously repeated to her by certain court ladies,—that through old age her mind was become as crooked as her carcase:—words which might have sufficed to plunge him at once from the height of favor into irretrievable ruin.
The doors of Essex-house, hitherto closed night and day since the disgrace of the earl, were now thrown popularly open. Sir Gilly Merrick, his steward, kept an open table for all military adventurers, men of broken fortunes and malcontents of every party. Sermons were delivered there daily by the most zealous and popular of the puritan divines, to which thecitizens ran in crowds; and lady Rich, who had lately been placed under restraint by the queen and was still in deep disgrace, on account of her intermeddling in the affairs of her brother, and on the further ground of her scandalous intrigue with lord Montjoy, became a daily visitant. The earl himself, listening again to the suggestions of his secretary Cuff, whom he had once dismissed on account of his violent and dangerous character, began to meditate new counsels.
An eye-witness has thus impressively described the struggles of his mind at this juncture. "It 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 littered such 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 hathmens 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[138]."
The affinity of Essex to the crown by his descent from Thomas of Woodstock has been already adverted to;—it seems never to have awakened the slightest jealousy in the mind of Elizabeth; but the absurd vaunts of some of his followers, commented upon by the malicious ingenuity of his enemies, had sufficed to excite sinister suspicions in the bosom of the king of Scots. For the purpose of counteracting these, lord Montjoy, near the beginning of the earl's captivity, had sent Henry Leigh into Scotland, to give the king assurance that Essex entertained none of the ambitious views which had been imputed to him, but was, on the contrary, firmly resolved to endure no succession but that of his majesty; further hinting at some steps for causing his right to be recognised in the lifetime of the queen. From this time a friendly correspondence had been maintained between James and the Essex party; and Montjoy, on being appointed lord deputy of Ireland, had gone so far as to offer to the king to bring over to England such part of his army as, acting in concert with the force that the earl would be able to raise, might compass by force the object which they had in view. By some delay in the return of the messenger, added to the dilatoriness or reluctance of James, this plan was frustrated; but some time after Essex, impatient alike of the disgrace and the inactivity of his present restraint, urged Montjoy to bring over his forces without waiting for the tardy co-operation of the king of Scots. The lord deputy replied, "that he thought it more lawful to enter into such a course with one that had interest inthe succession than otherwise; and though he had been led before out of the opinion he had to do his country good by the establishment of the succession, and to deliver my lord of Essex out of the danger he was in; yet now his life appeared to be safe, to restore his fortune only, and to save himself from the danger which hangs over him by discovery, and to satisfy my lord of Essex's private ambition, he would not enter into any enterprise of that" kind[139].
After this repulse, Essex as a last resource applied himself once more to the court of Scotland, and, with the disingenuousness inseparable from the conduct of political intrigue, exerted all his efforts to deceive James into a belief that the party now in power were pensioners of Spain, hired to the support of the pretended title of the Infanta. He further alarmed the king by representing that the places most proper for the reception of Spanish forces were all in the hands of the creatures of Cecil;—Raleigh being governor of Jersey, lord Cobham warden of the Cinque Ports, lord Burleigh president of the North, and sir George Carew president of Munster. In consequence, he urged James to lose no time in claiming by his ambassadors a solemn acknowledgement of his title. These suggestions were listened to; and Essex was animated to proceed in his perilous career by hopes of the speedy arrival of the Scottish embassy. In the meantime he formed a council of five of the friends most devoted to his cause:—the earl of Southampton, sir CharlesDavers, sir Ferdinando Gorges, sir John Davis surveyor of the ordnance, and John Littleton esquire of Frankley. By this junto, which met privately at Drury-house, the plot was matured. The earl delivered in a list of one hundred and twenty nobles, knights and gentlemen, on whose attachment he thought he could rely: it was agreed that an attempt should be made to seize the palace, and to persuade or compel the queen to remove from her councils the enemies of the earl, and to summon a new parliament; and their respective parts were allotted to the intended actors in this scene of violence.
Meantime the extraordinary concourse to Essex-house had fixed the attention of government, and measures were taken for obtaining intelligence of all that passed within its walls. Lord Henry Howard, who had made a timely secession from the leader to whom, in terms of the grossest adulation, he had professed everlasting and unlimited attachment, is believed to have discovered some of his secrets; and a domestic educated with the earl from childhood, and entirely trusted by him, had also the baseness to reveal his counsels. On the 7th of February 1601, the privy-council, being fully informed of his proceedings, dispatched secretary Herbert to summon the earl to appear before them. But apprehensive that he was betrayed, and conscious that the steps which he had already taken were incapable of being justified, the earl excused himself from attending the council, and summoning around him the most confidential of his friends, he represented to them that they were on the point ofbeing committed to prison, and bade them decide whether they would quietly submit themselves to the disposal of their enemies, or attempt thus prematurely to carry into effect the designs which they had meditated.
During the debate which ensued, a person entered who pretended to be deputed by the people of London to assure the earl of their cordial co-operation in his cause. This decided the question; Essex, with a more cheerful countenance, began to expatiate on the affection borne him by the city, and his expectation of being joined by sheriff Smith with a thousand of the trained bands whom he commanded. The following morning was fixed for the insurrection; and in the meantime emissaries were dispatched, who ran about the town in all directions, to spread among the friends of the earl the alarm of a design upon his life by Cobham and Raleigh.
Early on the morrow the lord keeper, the lord chief justice, and sir W. Knolles comptroller of the household, arrived at Essex-house and demanded entrance on the part of the queen. They themselves were with difficulty admitted through the wicket of the gate, which was now kept shut and guarded; but all their servants, except the purse-bearer, were excluded. They beheld the court-yard filled with a confused multitude, in the midst of which stood Essex accompanied by the earls of Southampton and Rutland and many others. The lord keeper demanded in the name of her majesty the cause of this unusual concourse; adding an assurance that if any had injured his lordship, he should find redress. Essex in a vehementmanner complained of letters counterfeited in his name,—of designs against his life,—of perfidious dealings towards him: but the conference was interrupted by the clamors of the crowd, some of whom threatened violence against the court-emissaries. Without further parley the earl conducted them into the house, where he ordered them to be safely kept as hostages till his return from the city, whither he was hastening to take measures with the lord-mayor and sheriffs.
About ten o'clock he entered the city attended by the "chief gallants" of the time; as the earls of Southampton and Rutland, lords Sandys and Monteagle, sir Charles Davers, sir Christopher Blount, and many others. As they passed Fleet-street, they cried, "For the queen, for the queen!" in other places they gave out that Cobham and Raleigh would have murdered the earl in his bed; and the multitude, universally well affected to Essex, eagerly reported that he and the queen were reconciled, and that she had appointed him to ride in that triumphant manner through the city to his house in Seething-lane. The lord-mayor however received warning from the privy-council to look well to his charge, and by eleven the gates were closed and strongly guarded. The earl, though a good deal disconcerted at observing no preparations for joining him, made his way to the house of sheriff Smith; but this officer slipped out at his back door and hastened to the lord-mayor for instructions. He next proceeded to an armourer's and demanded ammunition, which was refused; and while he was hastening to and fro, without aim or object as appears, lordBurleigh courageously entered the city with a king-at-arms and half a score horse-men, and in two places proclaimed the earl and all his adherents traitors. A pistol was fired at him by one of the followers of Essex; but the multitude showed no disposition to molest him, and he hastened back to assure the queen that a popular commotion was not at all to be apprehended.
The palace was now fortified and double-guarded; the streets were blocked up with carts and coaches; and the earl, after wandering in vain about the town till two o'clock, finding himself joined by none of the citizens and deserted by a great portion of his original followers, determined to make his way back to Essex-house. At Ludgate he was opposed by some troops posted there by order of the bishop; and drawing his sword, he directed sir Christopher Blount to attack them; "which he did with great bravery, and killed Waite, a stout officer, who had been formerly hired by the earl of Leicester to assassinate sir Christopher, and was now abandoned by his company[140]." In the end, however, the earl was repulsed with the loss of one young gentleman killed and sir Christopher Blount wounded and taken prisoner; and retreating with his diminished band to the river side, he returned by water to his own house.
He was much disappointed to find that his three prisoners had been liberated in his absence by sir Ferdinando Gorges: but sanguine to the last in hishopes of an insurrection of the citizens in his favor, he proceeded to fortify his house in the best manner that circumstances would admit.
It was soon invested by a considerable force under the lord admiral, the earls of Cumberland and Lincoln, and other commanders. Sir Robert Sidney was ordered to summon the little garrison to surrender, when the earl of Southampton demanded terms and hostages; but being answered that none would be granted to rebels, except that the ladies within the house and their women would be permitted to depart if they desired it, the defenders declared their resolution to hold out, and the assault continued.
Lord Sandys, the oldest man in the party, encouraged the earl in the resolution which he once appeared to have adopted, of cutting a way through the assailants; observing, that the boldest courses were the safest, and that at all events it was more honorable for men of quality to die sword in hand than by the axe of the executioner:—but Essex, who had not yet resigned the flattering hopes of life, was easily moved by the tears and cries of the surrounding females to yield to less courageous, not more prudent, counsels. Captain Owen Salisbury, a brave veteran, seeing that all was lost, planted himself at a window bare-headed, for the purpose of being slain: on receiving from one of the assailants a bullet on the side of his head, "O!" cried he, "that thou hadst been so much my friend to have shot but a little lower!" Of this wound however he expired the next morning.
About six in the evening the earl made known hiswillingness to surrender, on receiving assurance, for himself and his friends, of civil treatment and a legal trial; and permission for a clergyman named Aston to attend him in prison:—the lord admiral answered that of the two first articles there could be no doubt, and for the last he would intercede. The house was then yielded with all that were in it. During that night the principal offenders were lodged in Lambeth-palace, the next day they were conveyed to the Tower; while the common prisons received the accomplices of meaner rank.
On February 19th Essex and Southampton were brought to their trial before the house of peers; lord Buckhurst sitting as lord high steward. Essex inquired whether peers might not be challenged like common jurymen, but was answered in the negative. He pleaded Not guilty; professed his unspotted loyalty to his queen and country, and earnestly labored to give to his attempt to raise the city the color of a necessary act of self-defence against the machinations of enemies from whom his life was in danger. Had this interpretation of his conduct been admitted, possibly his offence might not have come within the limits of treason: but it was held, that his refusal to attend the council; the imprisonment of the three great officers sent to him by the queen; and above all the consultations held at Drury-house for bringing soldiers from Ireland, for surprising the Tower, for seizing the palace, and for compelling the queen to remove certain persons from her counsels and to call a parliament, assigned to his overt acts the character of designsagainst the state itself. For the confessions of his accomplices, by which the secrets of the Drury-house meetings were brought to light, he was evidently unprepared; and the native violence of his temper broke out in invectives against those associates by whom, as he falsely pretended, all these criminal designs had been originally suggested to his mind. This evidence, he said, had been elicited by the hope of pardon and reward;—let those who had given it enjoy their lives with impunity;—to him death was far more welcome than life. Whatever interpretation lawyers might put upon it, the necessity of self-defence against Cobham, Raleigh and Cecil, had impelled him to raise the city; and he was consoled by the testimony of a spotless conscience. Lord Cobham here rose, and protested that he had never acted with malice against the earl, although he had disapproved of his ambition. "On my faith," replied the earl, "I would have given this right hand to have removed from the queen such an informer and calumniator."
He afterwards proceeded to accuse sir Robert Cecil of having affirmed that the title of the Infanta was equally well founded with that of any other claimant. But the secretary here stepped forward to entreat that, the prisoner might be obliged to bring proof of his assertions; and it thus became manifest, and in the end was confessed with contrition by the earl himself, that he had advanced this charge on false grounds.
It was with better reason that he reproached Francis Bacon, who then stood against him as queen's counsel, with the glaring inconsistency between his pastprofessions and his present conduct. This cowardly desertion of his generous and affectionate friend and patron,—or rather this open revolt from him, this shameless attack upon him in the hour of his extreme distress and total ruin,—forms indeed the foulest of the many blots which stain the memory of this illustrious person: it may even be pronounced, on a deliberate survey of all its circumstances, the basest and most profligate act of that reign, which yet affords examples, in the conduct of its public men, of almost every species of profligacy and baseness. That it continued to be matter of general reproach against him, clearly appears from the long and labored apology which Bacon thought it necessary, several years afterwards, to address to lord Montjoy, then earl of Devon;—an apology which extenuates in no degree the turpitude of the fact; but which may be consulted for a number of highly curious, if authentic, particulars.
The earl of Southampton likewise pleaded Not guilty, and professed his inviolate fidelity towards her majesty: he excused whatever criminality he might have fallen into by the warmth of his attachment for Essex, and behaved throughout with a mildness and an ingenuous modesty which moved all hearts in his favor. After a trial of eleven hours, sentence of Guilty was unanimously pronounced on both the prisoners. Southampton in an affecting manner implored all present to intercede for him with her majesty, and Essex, with great earnestness, joined in this petition of his unfortunate friend: as to himself, he said, he was not anxious for life; wishing for nothing more than to layit down with entire fidelity towards God and his prince.—Yet he would have no one insinuate to the queen that he despised her mercy, though he believed he should not too submissively implore it; and he hoped all men would in their consciences acquit him, though the law had pronounced him guilty. Such was the lofty tone of self-justification assumed by Essex on this memorable occasion, when his pride was roused and his temper exasperated, by the open war of recrimination and reproaches into which he had so unadvisedly plunged with his personal enemies; and by the cruel and insolent invectives of the crown lawyers. But he was soon to undergo on this point a most remarkable and total change.
The mind of the earl of Essex was deeply imbued with sentiments of religion: from early youth he had conversed much with divines of the stricter class, whom he held in habitual reverence; and conscious in the conduct of his past life of many deviations from the Gospel rule of right, he now, in the immediate prospect of its violent termination, surrendered himself into the hands of these spiritual guides with extraordinary humility and implicit submission. To the criminality of his late attempt, his conscience was not however awakened; he seems to have believed, that in contriving the fall of his enemies, he was at the same time deserving the thanks of his country, oppressed by their maladministration; and he repelled all the efforts of Dr. Dove, by whom he was first visited, to inspire him with a different sense of this part of his conduct. Cut his favorite divine, Mr. Aston,—whois described by a contemporary as "a man base, fearful and mercenary," in whom the earl was much deceived,—practised with more success upon his mind. By an artful pretext of believing him to have aimed at the crown, he first drew him into a warm defence of his conduct on this point; then by degrees into a confession of all that he had really plotted, and the concurrence which he had found from others. This was the end aimed at by Aston, or by the government which employed him: he professed that he could not reconcile it to his conscience to conceal treasons so foul and dangerous; alarmed the earl with all the terrors of religion; and finally persuaded him, that a full discovery of his accomplices was the only atonement which he could make to heaven and earth. The humbled Essex was brought to entreat that several privy-councillors, of whom Cecil by name was one, should be sent to hear his confessions; and so strangely scrupulous did he show himself to leave nothing untold, that he gave up even the letters of the king of Scots, and betrayed every private friend whom attachment to himself had ever seduced into an acquiescence in his designs, or a nice sense of honor withheld from betraying them.
Sir Henry Nevil, for having only concealed projects in which he had absolutely refused to concur, was thus exposed to the loss of his appointment of ambassador to France; to imprisonment, and to a long persecution;—and lord Montjoy might have suffered even capitally, had not his good and acceptable service in Ireland induced the queen to wink at formeroffences. Cuff, the secretary of the earl, whom he sent for to exhort him to imitate his sincerity, sternly upbraided his master with his altered mind, and his treachery towards those who had evinced the strongest attachment to his service: but the earl remained unmoved by his reproaches, and calmly prepared for death in the full persuasion that he had now worked out his own salvation.
Elizabeth had behaved on occasion of the late insurrection with all her wonted fortitude; even at the time when Essex was actually in the city and a false report was brought her of its revolt to him, "she was never more amazed," says Cecil in a letter to sir George Carew, "than she would have been to have heard of a fray in Fleet-street." But when, in the further progress of the affair, she beheld her once loved Essex brought to the bar for high-treason and condemned by the unanimous verdict of his peers; when it rested solely with herself to take the forfeit of his life or interfere by an act of special grace for his preservation,—her grief, her agitation and her perplexity became extreme. A sense of the many fine qualities and rare endowments of her kinsman,—his courage, his eloquence, his generosity, and the affectionate zeal with which he had served her:—indulgence for the youthful impetuosity which had carried him out of the path of duty, not unmixed with compunction for that severe and contemptuous treatment by which she had exasperated to rebellion the spirit which mildness might have softened into penitence and submission;—above all, the remaining affection which still lurkedat the bottom of her heart, pleaded for mercy with a force scarcely to be withstood. On the other hand, the ingratitude, the neglect, the insolence with which he had occasionally treated her, and the magnitude of his offences, which daily grew upon her by his own confessions and those of his accomplices, fatally united to confirm the natural bias of her mind towards severity.
At this juncture Thomas Leigh, one of the dark and desperate characters whose service Essex had used in his criminal negotiations with Tyrone, by an atrocious plot for entering the palace, seizing the person of the queen and compelling her to sign a warrant for the release of the two earls, renewed her fears and gave fresh force to her anger. Irresolute for some days, she once countermanded by a special messenger the order for the death of Essex; then, as repenting of her weakness, she signed a second warrant, in obedience to which he was finally, on February 25th, brought to the scaffold.
The last scene was performed in a manner correspondent in all respects to the contrite and humiliated frame of mind to which the noble culprit had been wrought. It was no longer the brave, the gallant, the haughty earl of Essex, the favorite of the queen, the admiration of the ladies, the darling of the soldiery, the idol of the people;—no longer even the undaunted prisoner, pouring forth invectives against his enemies in answer to the charges against himself; loudly persisting in the innocence of his intentions, instead of imploring mercy for his actions, and defending hishonor while he asserted a lofty indifference to life;—it was a meek and penitent offender, profoundly sensible of all his past transgressions, but taught to expect their remission in the world to which he was hastening, through the fervency of his prayers and the plenitude of his confessions; and prepared, as his latest act, to perform in public a solemn religious service, composed for his use by the assistant clergy, whose directions he obeyed with the most scrupulous minuteness. Under a change so entire, even his native eloquence had forsaken him. Sir Robert Cecil, who seems to have been a cool and critical spectator of the fatal scene, remarks to his correspondent that "the conflict between the flesh and the soul did thus far appear, that in his prayers he was fain to be helped; otherwise no man living could pray more christianly than he did."
Essex had requested of the queen that he might be put to death in a private manner within the walls of the Tower, fearing, as he told the divines who attended him, that "the acclamations of the citizens should have hoven him up." His desire in this point was willingly complied with; but about a hundred nobles, knights and gentlemen witnessed the transaction from seats placed near the scaffold. Sir Walter Raleigh chose to station himself at a window of the armory whence he could see all without being observed by the earl. This action, universally imputed to a barbarous desire of glutting his eyes with the blood of the man whom he hated and had pursued with a hostility more unrelenting than that of Cecil himself, wasnever forgiven by the people, who detested him no less than they loved and admired his unfortunate rival. Several years after, when Raleigh in his turn was brought to the same end in the same place, he professed however, and perhaps truly, that the sorrowful spectacle had melted him to tears: meantime, he at least extracted from the late events large gratification for another ruling passion of his breast, by setting to sale his interest in procuring pardons to gentlemen concerned in the insurrection. Mr. Lyttleton in particular is recorded to have paid him ten thousand pounds for his good offices, and Mr. Bainham a sum not specified. The life of the earl of Southampton was spared, at the intercession chiefly of Cecil, but he was confined in the Tower till the death of the queen: others escaped with short imprisonments and the imposition of fines, few of which were exacted; sir Fulk Greville having humanely made it his business to represent to the queen that no danger was to be apprehended from a faction which had lost its leader. Four only of the principal conspirators suffered capitally; sir Christopher Blount and sir Charles Davers, both catholics, sir Gilly Merrick and Henry Cuff.
Those ambassadors from the king of Scots on whose co-operation Essex had placed his chief reliance, now arrived; and finding themselves too late for other purposes, they obeyed their master's instructions in such a case by offering to the queen his warmest congratulations on her escape from so foul and dangerous a conspiracy. They were further charged to make secret inquiry whether James's correspondence withEssex and concurrence in the late conspiracy had come to her knowledge; and whether any measures were likely to be taken in consequence for his exclusion from the succession. The confessions of Essex to the privy-councillors had indeed rendered Elizabeth perfectly acquainted with the machinations of James; but resolute to refrain during the remnant of her days from all angry discussions with the prince whom she saw destined to succeed her, she had caused the earl to be not only requested, but commanded, to forbear the repetition of this part of his acknowledgements on the scaffold. She was thus left free to receive with all those demonstrations of amity which cost her nothing the compliments of James; and she remained deliberately ignorant of all that he desired her not to know. The Scottish emissaries had the further satisfaction of carrying back to their master assurances of the general consent of Englishmen in his favor, and in particular a pledge of the adherence of secretary Cecil, who immediately opened a private correspondence with the king, of which lord Henry Howard, who had formerly conducted that of Essex, became the willing medium.
There is good evidence that the peace of Elizabeth received an incurable wound by the loss of her unhappy favorite, which she daily found additional cause to regret on perceiving how completely it had delivered her over to the domination of his adversaries; but she still retained the resolution to pursue with unabated vigor the great objects on which she was sensible that the mind of a sovereign ought to be with little remissionemployed. The memorable siege of Ostend, begun during this summer by the archduke Albert, fixed her attention and that of Europe. The defence was conducted by that able officer sir Francis Vere at the head of a body of English auxiliaries, whom the States had enlisted with the queen's permission, at their own expense. Henry IV., as if for the purpose of observing more nearly the event, had repaired to Calais. The queen of England, earnestly desirous of a personal interview, wrote him two letters on the subject; and Henry sent in return marshal Biron and two other ambassadors of rank, with a train of three or four hundred persons, whom the queen received with high honors, and caused to accompany her in her progress. During her visit of thirteen days to the marquis of Winchester at Basing, the French embassy was lodged at the house of lord Sandys, which was furnished for the occasion with plate and hangings from Hampton-court; the queen defraying all the charges, which were more than those of her own court at Basing. She made it her boast that she had in this progress entertained royally a royal ambassador at her subjects' houses; which she said no other prince could do. The meeting of the two sovereigns, in hopes of which Elizabeth had actually gone to Dover, could not for some unknown reason be at last arranged; but Henry, at the particular instance of his friend and ally, sent Sully over in disguise to confer confidentially with her respecting an important political project which she had announced. This was no less than a plan for humbling the houseof Austria, and establishing a more perfect balance of power in Europe by uniting into one state the seventeen Flemish provinces. It was an idea, as Sully declared to her, which had previously occurred to Henry himself; and the coincidence was flattering to both; but various obstacles were found likely to retard its execution till a period to which Elizabeth could scarcely look forward. One advantage, however, was gained to the queen of England by the interview;—the testimony of this celebrated statesman, recorded in his own memoirs, to the solidity of her judgement and the enlargement of her views; and his distinct avowal that she was in all respects worthy of the high estimation which she had for more than forty years enjoyed by common consent of all the politicians of Europe.
Ireland was still a source to Elizabeth of anxiety and embarrassment. In order to sustain the expenses of the war, she suffered herself to be prevailed on to issue base money for the pay of the troops;—a mortifying circumstance, after the high credit which she had gained by that restoration of the coin to its original standard which was one of the first acts of her reign. Montjoy in the meantime was struggling with vigor and progressive success against the disorders of the country. With the assistance of sir George Carew president of Munster, and other able commanders, he was gradually reducing the inferior rebels and cutting off the supplies of Tyrone himself: but the courage of this insurgent was still supported by the hope of aids from Spain; and during this summer twobodies of Spanish troops, one of four thousand, the other of two thousand men, made good their landing. The larger number, under Aquila, took possession of Kinsale; the smaller, under Ocampo, was joined by Tyrone and other rebels with all their forces. The appearance of affairs was alarming, since the catholic Irish every where welcomed the Spaniards as deliverers and brethren: but Montjoy, after blockading Aquila in Kinsale, marched boldly to attack Ocampo and his Irish allies; gave them a complete defeat, in which the Spanish general was made prisoner and Tyrone compelled to fly into Ulster; and afterwards returning to the siege of Kinsale, compelled Aquila to capitulate on condition of a safe conveyance to their own country for himself and all the Spanish troops in the island.
The state of the queen's mind while the fate of Ireland seemed to hang in the balance, and while the impression made by the attempt of Essex was still recent, is depicted in the following letter by sir John Harrington with his usual minuteness and vivacity.
To sir Hugh Portman knight.(Dated October 9th 1601.)
"...For six weeks I left my oxen and sheep and ventured to court.... Much was my comfort in being well received, notwithstanding it is an ill hour for seeing the queen. The madcaps are all in riot, and much evil threatened. In good sooth I feared her majesty more than the rebel Tyrone, and wished I had never received my lord of Essex's honor of knighthood. Sheis quitedisfavored[141]and unattired, and these troubles waste her much. She disregarded every costly cover that cometh to the table, and taketh little but manchet and succory pottage. Every new message from the city doth disturb her, and she frowns on all the ladies. I had a sharp message from her, brought by my lord Buckhurst, namely thus. 'Go tell that witty fellow my godson to get home; it is no season now to fool it here,' I liked this as little as she doth my knighthood, so took to my boots, and returned to the plough in bad weather. I must not say much even by this trusty and sure messenger, but the many evil plots and designs hath overcome all her highness' sweet temper. She walks much in her privy chamber, and stamps with her feet at ill news, and thrusts her rusty sword at times into the arras in great rage. My lord Buckhurst is much with her, and few else since the city business; but the dangers are over, and yet she always keeps a sword by her table. I obtained a short audience at my first coming to court, when her highness told me, if ill counsel had brought me so far from home, she wished heaven might mar that fortune which she had mended. I made my peace in this point, and will not leave my poor castle of Kelston, for fear of finding a worse elsewhere, as others have done. I will eat Aldborne rabbits, and get fish as you recommend from the man at Curry-Rival; and get partridge and hares when I can; and my venison where I can; and leave all great matters to thoselike them better than myself.... I could not move in any suit to serve your neighbour B. such was the face of things: and so disordered is all order that her highness hath worn but one change of raiment for many days, and swears much at those that cause her griefs in such wise, to the no small discomfiture of all about her, more especially our sweet lady Arundel, thatVenus plus quam venusta."
In the month of October 1601, the wants of her treasury compelled the queen to call a parliament. Her procession to the house had something gloomy and ominous; the people, still resenting the death of their favorite, whom they never could be taught to regard as a traitor to his sovereign, refused to gratify her ears as formerly with those affectionate acclamations on which this wise and gracious princess had ever placed so high a value. The house of commons however, in consideration of her extraordinary expenses in the Irish wars, granted a supply large beyond example. Having thus deserved well of her majesty, they ventured to revive the topic of monopolies, the crying grievance of the age, against which the former parliament had petitioned her, but without effect. It was universally allowed, that the granting of exclusive privileges to trade in certain articles was a prerogative inherent in the crown; and though the practice so lavishly adopted by Elizabeth of providing in this manner for her courtiers without expense to herself, had rendered the evil almost intolerable, the ministerial members insisted strongly that no right existed in the house to frame a bill for its redress.It was maintained by them, that the dispensing power possessed by the queen would enable her to set at nought any statute which could be made in this matter;—in short, that she was an absolute prince; and consequently that the mode of petition, of which the last parliament had proved the inefficacy, was the only course of proceeding open to them. Other members, in whose bosoms some sparks of liberty had now been kindled, supported the bill which had been offered to the house: the event was, that in the midst of the debate the queen sent for the speaker, to inform him that she would voluntarily cancel some of the patents which had excited most discontent.
This concession, though extorted doubtless by necessity, was yet made with so good a grace, that her faithful commons were filled with admiration and gratitude. One member pronounced the message "a gospel of glad tidings;" others employed phrases of adulation equally profane;—a committee was appointed to return their acknowledgements to her majesty, who kneeled for some time at her feet, while the speaker enlarged upon her "preventing grace and all-deserving goodness," She graciously gave thanks to the commons for pointing out to her abuses which might otherwise have escaped her notice; since the truth, as she observed, was too often disguised from princes by the persons about them, through motives of private interest: and thus, with the customary assurances of her loving care over her loyal subjects, she skilfully accomplished her retreat from a contest in which she judged perseverance to be dangerous and final success at bestuncertain. In her farewell speech, however, at the close of the session, she could not refrain from observing, in reference to this matter, that she perceived private respects to be masked with them under public pretences. Such was the final parting between Elizabeth and her last parliament!
The year 1602 was not fertile of domestic incident. One of the most remarkable circumstances was a violent quarrel between the Jesuits and the secular priests in England. The latter accused the former, and not without reason, of having been the occasion, by their assassination-plots and conspiracies against the queen and government, of all the severe enactments under which the English catholics had groaned since the fulmination of the papal bull against her majesty. In the height of this dispute, intelligence was conveyed to the privy-council of some fresh plots on the part of the Jesuits and their adherents; on which a proclamation was immediately issued, banishing this order the kingdom on pain of death; and the same penalty was declared against all secular priests who should refuse to take the oath of allegiance.
The queen continued to pursue from habit, and probably from policy also, amusements for which all her relish was lost. She went a-maying to Air. Buckley's at Lewisham, and paid several other visits in the course of the year;—but her efforts were unavailing; the irrevocable past still hung upon her spirits. About the beginning of June, in a conversation with M. de Beaumont the French ambassador, she owned herself weary of life; then sighing, whilst her eyes filled withtears, she adverted to the death of Essex; and mentioned, that being apprehensive, from his ambition and the impetuosity of his temper, of his throwing himself into some rash design which would prove his ruin, she had repeatedly counselled him, during the two last years, to content himself with pleasing her, and forbear to treat her with the insolent contempt which he had lately assumed; above all, not to touch her sceptre; lest she should be compelled to punish him by the laws of England, and not according to her own laws; which he had found too mild and favorable to give him any cause of fear: but that her advice, however salutary and affectionate, had proved ineffectual to prevent his ruin.
A letter from sir John Harrington to his lady, dated December 27th, 1602, gives the following melancholy picture of the state of his sovereign and benefactress.
"Sweet Mall;
"I herewith send thee what I would God none did know, some ill-bodings of the realm and its welfare. Our dear queen, my royal godmother and this state's natural mother, doth now bear some show of human infirmity; too fast, for that evil which we shall get by her death, and too slow, for that good which she shall get by her releasement from pains and misery. Dear Mall, how shall I speak what I have seen or what I have felt? thy good silence in these matters emboldens my pen. For thanks to the sweet God of silence, thy lips do not wanton out of discretion's path like the many gossiping dames we could name, wholose their husbands' fast hold in good friends rather than hold fast their own tongues. Now I will trust thee with great assurance; and whilst thou dost brood over thy young ones in the chamber, thou shalt read the doings of thy grieving mate in the court. I find some less mindful of what they are soon to lose, than of what they may perchance hereafter get: Now, on my own part, I cannot blot from my memory's table the goodness of our sovereign lady to me, even, I will say, before born. Her affection to my mother, who waited in privy-chamber, her bettering the state of my father's fortune (which I have, alas, so much worsted), her watchings over my youth, her liking to my free speech and admiration of my little learning and poesy, which I did so much cultivate on her command, have rooted such love, such dutiful remembrance of her princely virtues, that to turn askant from her condition with tearless eyes, would stain and foul the spring and fount of gratitude. It was not many days since I was bidden to her presence; I blessed the happy moment, and found her in most pitiable state; she bade the archbishop ask me if I had seen Tyrone? I replied with reverence, that I had seen him with the lord deputy; she looked up with much choler and grief in her countenance, and said: O! now it mindeth me that you wasonewho saw this manelsewhere[142], and hereat she dropped a tear and smote her bosom; she held in her hand a golden cup, which she often put toher lips; but in truth her heart seemeth too full to need more filling. This sight moved me to think of what passed in Ireland, and I trust she did not less think onsomewho were busier there than myself. She gave me a message to the lord deputy, and bade me come to the chamber at seven o'clock. Hereat some who were about her did marvel, as I do not hold so high place as those she did not choose to do her commands.... Her majesty inquired of some matters which I had written; and as she was pleased to note my fanciful brain, I was not unheedful to feed her humour, and read some verses, whereat she smiled once, and was pleased to say: 'When thou dost feel creeping time at thy gate, these fooleries will please thee less; I am past my relish for such matters; thou seest my bodily meat doth not suit me well; I have eaten but one ill-tasted cake since yesternight.' She rated most grievously at noon at some one who minded not to bring up certain matters of account: several men have been sent to, and when ready at hand, her highness hath dismissed in anger; but who, dearest Mall, shall say, that 'your highness hath forgotten?'"
During the campaign of 1602, lord Montjoy had been occupied in Ireland in reducing the inferior rebels to submission; in building forts and planting garrisons; at the same time wasting the country in every direction, for the purpose of straitening the quarters of Tyrone and cutting off his supplies. At length, having collected all his forces, he purposed to hazard an attack on the chieftain himself, in the midst of thedesert fastnesses to which he had driven him; but the difficulties which he experienced from the impassable state of the roads, the treachery of scouts and the inclemency of the season, compelled him to defer this undertaking till the return of spring. Meantime, such was the extremity of distress to which Tyrone had been reduced, that numbers of his people had perished by hunger; and perceiving the remnant fast diminishing by daily desertion, he renewed the offer of surrender on certain conditions which he had propounded some months before. At that time, Cecil had once prevailed upon her majesty, for the sake of avoiding the intolerable expense of a further prosecution of the Irish war, to sign the rebel's pardon;—but she had immediately retracted the concession, and all that he was able finally to gain of her, by the intercession of the French ambassador, was a promise, that if Tyrone were not taken by the lord deputy before winter, she would consent to pardon him. About Christmas her council urged upon her the fulfilment of this engagement; but she replied with warmth, that she would not begin at her age to treat with her subjects, nor leave such an ill example after her decease[143].
The importunities of her ministers, however, among whom Tyrone is said to have made himself friends, finally overpowered the reluctance of the queen; and she authorized the deputy to grant the rebel his life, with some part of the terms which he asked; but soextreme was her mortification in making this concession, that many have regarded it as the origin of that deep melancholy to which she soon after fell a victim. The council apprehended, or affected to apprehend, that Tyrone would still refuse to surrender on the hard conditions imposed by the queen; but so desperate was now his situation, that without even waiting to receive them, he had thrown himself at the feet of the deputy and submitted his lands and life to the queen's mercy. Ministers more resolute, or more disinterested, might therefore have spared her the degradation, as she regarded it, of treating with a rebel. The news of his final submission, which occurred four days only before her death, she never learned.
The closing scene of the long and eventful life of queen Elizabeth is all that now remains to be described; but that marked peculiarity of character and of destiny which has attended her from the cradle, pursues her to the grave, and forbids us to hurry over as trivial and uninteresting the melancholy detail.
Notwithstanding the state of bodily and mental indisposition in which she was beheld by Harrington at the close of the year 1602, the queen had persisted in taking her usual exercises of riding and hunting, regardless of the inclemencies of the season. One day in January she visited the lord admiral, probably at Chelsea, and about the same time she removed to her palace of Richmond.
In the beginning of March her illness suddenlyincreased; and it was about this time that her kinsman Robert Cary arrived from Berwick to visit her. In his own memoirs he has thus related the circumstances which he witnessed on this occasion.
"When I came to court I found the queen ill-disposed, and she kept her inner lodging; yet she, hearing of my arrival, sent for me. I found her in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her; I kissed her hand, and told her it was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety and in health, which I wished might long continue. She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well;' and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days, and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at the first to see her in this plight; for in all my lifetime I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the queen of Scots was beheaded. Then, upon my knowledge, she shed many tears and sighs, manifesting her innocence, that she never gave consent to the death of that queen.
"I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humour; but I found by her it was too deep rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed. This was upon a Saturday night, and she gave command that the great closet should be prepared for her to go to chapel the next morning. The next day, all things being in a readiness, we long expected her coming. After eleven o'clock, one of the grooms cameout and bade make ready for the private closet, she would not go to the great. There we stayed long for her coming, but at last she had cushions laid for her in her privy-chamber hard by the closet door, and there she heard service.
"From that day forward she grew worse and worse. She remained upon her cushions four days and nights at the least. All about her could not persuade her either to take any sustenance or go to bed.... The queen grew worse and worse because she would be so, none about her being able to go to bed. My lord-admiral was sent for, (who by reason of my sister's death, that was his wife, had absented himself some fortnight from court;) what by fair means what by force, he gat her to bed. There was no hope of her recovery, because she refused all remedies.
"On Wednesday the 23rd of March she grew speechless. That afternoon by signs she called for her council, and by putting her hand to her head when the king of Scots was named to succeed her, they all knew he was the man she desired should reign after her.
"About six at night she made signs for the archbishop and her chaplains to come to her; at which time I went in with them and sat upon my knees full of tears to see that heavy sight. Her majesty lay upon her back with one hand in the bed and the other without. The bishop kneeled down by her and examined her first of her faith; and she so punctually answered all his several questions, by lifting up her eyes and holding up her hand, as it was a comfort to all thebeholders.... After he had continued long in prayer, till the old man's knees were weary, he blessed her; and meant to rise and leave her. The queen made a sign with her hand. My sister Scrope, knowing her meaning, told the bishop the queen desired he would pray still. He did so for a long half hour after, and then thought to leave her. The second time she made sign to have him continue in prayer. He did so for half an hour more, with earnest cries to God for her soul's health, which he uttered with that fervency of spirit, as the queen to all our sight much rejoiced thereat, and gave testimony to us all of her christian and comfortable end. By this time it grew late, and every one departed, all but her women that attended her.... Between one and two o'clock of the Thursday morning, he that I left in the cofferer's chamber brought me word that the queen was dead."
A Latin letter written the day after her death to Edmund Lambert, whether by one of her physicians or not is uncertain, gives an account of her sickness in no respect contradictory to Robert Cary's.
"It was after laboring for nearly three weeks under a morbid melancholy, which brought on stupor not unmixed with some indications of a disordered fancy, that the queen expired. During all this time she could neither by reasoning, entreaties, or artifices be brought to make trial of any medical aid, and with difficulty was persuaded to receive sufficient nourishment to sustain nature; taking also very little sleep, and that not in bed, but on cushions, where she would sit whole days motionless and sleepless; retaining however thevigor of her intellect to her last breath, though deprived for three days before her death of the power of speech."
Another contemporary writes to his friend thus.... "No doubt you shall hear her majesty's sickness and manner of death diversly reported; for even here the papists do tell strange stories, as utterly void of truth as of all civil honesty or humanity.... Here was some whispering that her brain was somewhat distempered, but there was no such matter; only she held an obstinate silence for the most part; and, because she had a persuasion that if she once lay down she should never rise, could not be got to go to bed in a whole week, till three days before her death.... She made no will, neither gave any thing away; so that they which come after shall find a well-furnished jewel-house and a rich wardrobe of more than two thousand gowns, with all things else answerable[144]."
That a profound melancholy was either the cause, or at least a leading symptom, of the last illness of the queen, so many concurring testimonies render indisputable; but the origin of this affection has been variously explained. Some, as we have seen, ascribed it to her chagrin on being in a manner compelled to grant the pardon of Tyrone;—a cause disproportioned surely to the effect. Others have imagined it to arise from grief and indignation at the neglect which she began to experience from the venal throng of courtiers, who were hastening to pay timely homage to hersuccessor. By others, again, her dejection has been regarded as nothing more than a natural concomitant of bodily decay; a physical rather than a mental malady. But the prevalent opinion, even at the time, appears to have been, that the grief or compunction for the death of Essex, with which she had long maintained a secret struggle, broke forth in the end superior to control, and rapidly completed the overthrow of powers which the advances of old age and an accumulation of cares and anxieties had already undermined. "Our queen," writes an English correspondent to a Scotch nobleman in the service of James, "is troubled with a rheum in her arm, which vexeth her very much, besides the grief she hath conceived for my lord of Essex's death. She sleepeth not so much by day as she used, neither taketh rest by night. Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes, with shedding tears, to bewail Essex."
A remarkable anecdote first published in Osborn's Traditional Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, and confirmed by M. Maurier's Memoirs,—where it is given on the authority of sir Dudley Carleton the English ambassador in Holland, who related it to prince Maurice,—offers the solution of these doubts. According to this story, the countess of Nottingham, who was a relation, but no friend, of the earl of Essex, being on her death-bed, entreated to see the queen; declaring that she had something to confess to her before she could die in peace. On her majesty's arrival, the countess produced a ring, which she said the earl of Essex hadsent to her after his condemnation, with an earnest request that she would deliver it to the queen, as the token by which he implored her mercy; but which, in obedience to her husband, to whom she had communicated the circumstance, she had hitherto withheld; for which she entreated the queen's forgiveness. On sight of the ring, Elizabeth instantly recognised it as one which she had herself presented to her unhappy favorite on his departure for Cadiz, with the tender promise, that of whatsoever crimes his enemies might have accused him, or whatsoever offences he might actually have committed against her, on his returning to her that pledge, she would either pardon him, or admit him at least to justify himself in her presence. Transported at once with grief and rage, on learning the barbarous infidelity of which the earl had been the victim and herself the dupe, the queen shook in her bed the dying countess, and vehemently exclaiming, that God might forgive her, but she never could, flung out of the chamber.
Returning to her palace, she surrendered herself without resistance to the despair which seized her heart on this fatal and too late disclosure.—Hence her refusal of medicine and almost of food;—hence her obstinate silence interrupted only by sighs, groans, and broken hints of a deep sorrow which she cared not to reveal;—hence the days and nights passed by her seated on the floor, sleepless, her eyes fixed and her finger pressed upon her mouth;—hence, in short, all those heart-rending symptoms of incurable andmortal anguish which conducted her, in the space of twenty days, to the lamentable termination of a long life of power, prosperity and glory[145].
The queen expired on March 24th 1603.
After the minute and extended survey of the life and actions of Elizabeth which has made the principal business of these pages, it would be a trespass alike on the patience and the judgement of the reader to detain him with a formal review of her character;—let it suffice to complete the portrait by a few additional touches.
The ceremonial of her court rivalled the servility of the East: no person of whatever rank ventured to address her otherwise than kneeling; and this attitude was preserved by all her ministers during their audiences of business, with the exception of Burleigh, in whose favor, when aged and infirm, she dispensed with its observance. Hentzner, a German traveller who visited England near the conclusion of her reign, relates, that as she passed through several apartments from the chapel to dinner, wherever she turned her eyes he observed the spectators throw themselves on their knees. The same traveller further relates, thatthe officers and ladies whose business it was to arrange the dishes and give tastes of them to the yeomen of the guard by whom they were brought in, did not presume to approach the royal table, without repeated prostrations and genuflexions and every mark of reverence due to her majesty in person.
The appropriation of her time and the arrangements of her domestic life present more favorable traits.
"First in the morning she spent some time at her devotions; then she betook herself to the dispatch of her civil affairs, reading letters, ordering answers, considering what should be brought before the council, and consulting with her ministers. When she had thus wearied herself, she would walk in a shady garden or pleasant gallery, without any other attendance than that of a few learned men. Then she took her coach and passed in the sight of her people to the neighbouring groves and fields, and sometimes would hunt or hawk. There was scarce a day but she employed some part of it in reading and study; sometimes before she entered upon her state affairs, sometimes after them[146]."
She slept little, seldom drank wine, was sparing in her diet, and a religious observer of the fasts. She sometimes dined alone, but more commonly had with her some of her friends. "At supper she would divert herself with her friends and attendants, and if they made her no answer would put them upon mirth and pleasant discourse with great civility. She wouldthen also admit Tarleton, a famous comedian and pleasant talker, and other such men, to divert her with stories of the town and the common jests and accidents."
"She would recreate herself with a game of chess, dancing or singing.... She would often play at cards and tables, and if at any time she happened to win, she would be sure to demand the money.... She was waited on in her bed-chamber by married ladies of the nobility; the marchioness of Winchester widow, lady Warwick, and lady Scrope; and here she would seldom suffer any to wait upon her but Leicester, Hatton, Essex, Nottingham, and Raleigh.... Some lady always slept in her chamber; and besides her guards, there was always a gentleman of good quality and some others up in the next chamber, to wake her if any thing extraordinary happened[147]."
"She loved a prudent and moderate habit in her private apartment and conversation with her own servants; but when she appeared in public she was ever richly adorned with the most valuable clothes; set off again with much gold and jewels of inestimable value; and on such occasions she ever wore high shoes, that she might seem taller than indeed she was. The first day of the parliament she would appear in a robe embroidered with pearls, the royal crown on her head, the golden ball in her left hand and the sceptre in her right; and as she never failed then of the loud acclamations of her people, so she was everpleased with it, and went along in a kind of triumph with all the ensigns of majesty. The royal name was ever venerable to the English people; but this queen's name was more sacred than any of her ancestors.... In the furniture of her palaces she ever affected magnificence and an extraordinary splendor. She adorned the galleries with pictures by the best artists; the walls she covered with rich tapestries. She was a true lover of jewels, pearls, all sorts of precious stones, gold and silver plate, rich beds, fine couches and chariots, Persian and Indian carpets, statues, medals, &c. which she would purchase at great prices. Hampton-court was the most richly furnished of all her palaces; and here she had caused her naval victories against the Spaniards to be worked in fine tapestries and laid up among the richest pieces of her wardrobe.... When she made any public feasts, her tables were magnificently served and many side-tables adorned with rich plate. At these times many of the nobility waited on her at table. She made the greatest displays of her regal magnificence when foreign ambassadors were present. At these times she would also have vocal and instrumental music during dinner; and after dinner, dancing[148]."
The queen was laudably watchful over the morals of her court; and not content with dismissing from her service, or banishing her presence, such of her female attendants as were found offending against the laws of chastity, she was equitable enough to visit withmarks of her displeasure the libertinism of the other sex; and in several instances she deferred the promotion of otherwise deserving young men till she saw them reform their manners in this respect. Europe had assuredly never beheld a court so decent, so learned, or so accomplished as hers; and it will not be foreign from the purpose of illustrating more fully the character of the sovereign, to borrow from a contemporary writer a few particulars on this head.
It was rare to find a courtier acquainted with no language but his own. The ladies studied Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian, and French. The "more ancient" among them exercised themselves some with the needle, some with "caul work," (probably netting) "divers in spinningsilk, some in continual reading either of the Scriptures or of histories either of their own or foreign countries; divers in writing volumes of their own, or translating the works of others into Latin or English;" while the younger ones in the meantime applied to their "lutes, citharnes, pricksong and all kinds of music." Many of the elder sort were also "skilful in surgery and distillation of waters, beside sundry artificial practices pertaining to the ornature and commendations of their bodies." "This," adds our author, "I will generally say of them all; that as each of them are cunning in something whereby they keep themselves occupied in the court, there is in manner none of them but when they be at home can help to supply the ordinary want of the kitchen with a number of delicate dishes of their own devising,wherein theportingalis their chief counsellor, as some of them are most commonly with the clerk of the kitchen," &c.
"Every office," at court, had "either a Bible or the book of the Acts and Monuments of the Church of England, or both, besides some histories and chronicles lying therein, for the exercise of such as come into the same[149]."
Such was the scene over which Elizabeth presided;—such the companions whom she formed to herself, and in whom she delighted! The new men and new manners brought in by James I. served more fully to instruct the nation in the value of all that it had enjoyed under his illustrious predecessor, the vigor which had rendered her government respectable abroad; and the wise and virtuous moderation which caused it to beloved at home, were now recalled with that sense of irreparable loss which exalts to enthusiasm the sentiment of veneration and the principle of gratitude; and almost in the same proportion as the sanguinary bigotry of her predecessor had occasioned her accession to be desired, the despicable weakness of her successor caused her decease to be regretted and deplored.
It was on the tenth anniversary of the proclamation of king James that the eloquent Hall, in his sermon at Paul's Cross, gave utterance to the general sentiment in the following animated apostrophe to the manes of the departed sovereign: