power to empty the London jails. All that he can do for Wright is to get him removed from Bridewell to the Clink.

From the hour of his quitting Whitehall Essex assumes the powers of a sovereign prince. On his way to the coast he sends back Lord Montjoy. Montjoy is his friend; the yet nearer friend of his sister Lady Rich. For love of her, Montjoy has joined in opposition to Raleigh on the right hand, to Cecil on the left; but neither friendship for Essex, nor love for Lady Rich, would draw a man so firm in faith, so loyal to the Crown, to league with a gang of Papists against the Queen. Essex sends him back.

From Drayton Bassett, where Blount and Lady Leicester live, Essex has the effrontery to write for leave to appoint Blount his Marshal of the Camp. A marshal of the camp is the second in command, the first in activity and influence; to put such a fellow as Blount in such a place, the Queen indignantly demurs. There is Sir Henry Brounker, an officer of talent and experience: let him be our marshal. Essex pouts and sulks: "If she grant me not this favour," he writes to Cecil, "I am maimed of my right arm.” Cecil takes care he shall have his way.

10. When he lands in Dublin he casts to the four winds his commission and instructions. One of his first and most insolent acts is to appoint the young Earl of Southampton his Master of the Horse. This friend and patron of Shakespeare is not a Papist, not an ally of Blount. He is a patriot, though not a wise one; a Protestant, though not a zealous one. Heady, amorous, quarrelsome,

10. Cecil to Southampton, Sept. 3, 1598, S. P. O.; Council to Essex, June 10, 1599, S. P. O.; Elizabeth to Essex, July 19, 1599, S. P. O.; Devereux, i. 474.

V. 9.

1599.

April.

May.

1599.

May.

V. 10. swift to go right or wrong as his passions tempt him, he has vexed and grieved the Queen by falling madly and licentiously in love with Mistress Vernon, one of her beautiful maids of honour, and filling her court with the fame of his amours. In this offence against modesty he was abetted by the young lady's first cousin Lord Essex, himself too frail as regards the passions, and too familiar with his mother's vices and his sister's infidelities to feel the shame brought on his kin by a scandal which after all may end in marriage. Sent away from London, Southampton returned in secret, and married the lady without her sovereign's knowledge. For these offences he was ordered into free custody. Breaking his gage of honour, he has stolen away to Dublin, where the Earl, in place of sending back the Queen's fugitive, gives him the welcome which a prince at war might give to a deserting general from the hostile camp.

Aug.

11. Every one knows the issue of this Irish campaign: a lost summer, a corrupted army, a traitorous truce. Instead of smiting O'Neile, Lee arranges an interview on the Lagan, at which the English and Irish rebels discuss their terms and enter into league. Blount hails his fellows in the Celtic camp. Like the Irish traitors, he abhors the Protestant Queen, not only as the most powerful enemy of their church, but as an insolent sovereign who has spared their lives. They propose to carry out the Papal scheme, giving England to Essex, Ireland to O'Neile. The Desmonds and Fitzmaurices, not less than the O'Donnels and O'Kanes, are privy to a league in which the Celts drive a bargain with their allies; for while the Roman Catholics

11. Annals of the Four Masters, 646-654; Blount's Confessions, State Trials, i. 1415.

ESSEX RETURNS TO ENGLAND.

103

1599.

are to get the whole of Ireland to themselves, they claim V. 11. immunities in England equal to those of the rival creed. They are to enjoy on the Thames, not alone freedom of conscience, but street processions of the host and public performance of the mass.

12. Essex breaks up his camp at Drogheda; hurries to Dublin, Blount at his side, Danvers, Constable, Lee at his heels; crosses the sea, leaving Ireland without an army or a government; the English settlers aghast at this desertion, the Ulster rebels elate with joy. At Milford Haven they receive intelligence which breaks down all their plans. The country rings with arms. While they have been conspiring with O'Neile, the Privy Council, under guise of preparing to repel an expected landing of the Spaniards, have drawn out the musters, set the trainbands in motion, filled the city with chosen troops. Wags have mocked and jested over this invisible Armada; but Essex lands at Milford Haven to find his road to London barred by a truly formidable force. Nottingham covers the capital with a camp of six thousand horse and foot. Twenty-five thousand men answer to the roll in Kent and Essex. Under such a change of affairs, even Blount dissuades a march on London. The road is long; halberdiers cannot fly, like Imogen, on the wings of love; and the very maddest of the plotters knows that the Protestant gentlemen of Gloucester, Wilts, and Berks will not stare idly on while gangs of mutinous troopers, led by Papist captains, march past to dethrone their Queen. With the whole army of Drogheda at their backs, they could not

12. Annals of the Four Masters, 655; Blount's Confessions, State Trials, i. 1415; Bacon's Notes to Camden, Works, vi. 359; Memorandum of Precautionary Measures, Aug. 1599, S. P. O.; List of Army in Kent and Essex, Aug. 1599, S. P. O.

Aug.

Sept.

V. 12.

1599.

force their way through six or eight warlike shires. Better, says Blount, prick on alone. A chance remains that by dash and swiftness Essex may surprise the Queen, put his friends in power, and return to Dublin to mature his plans. Sept. 28. To horse, to horse! No pause in the ride till he flings himself, splashed and faint, at his sovereign's feet.

Oct.

1600.

Feb.

13. Lee, Danvers, Constable, Davis, spur into London. News-writers stare at the swarms of captains and commanders from the Irish camp which suddenly hustle through the taverns of Paternoster Row and fill the pit of the theatre, where Rutland and Southampton are daily seen, and where Shakespeare's company, in the great play of Richard II., have for more than a year been feeding the public eye with pictures of the deposition of kings. But the plotters have met their mates. The Earl is in charge. From the presence of his Queen he has passed into custody; when a solemn act of the Privy Council having declared him unfit to discharge the duties of Earl Marshal, Privy Councillor, and Master of the Ordnance, a writ from the Star-Chamber cites him to answer for his suspicious dealings with O'Neile. This citation he disobeys. After a brief confinement in the house of Lord Keeper Egerton, he is placed in permanent free custody in his own great mansion in the Strand.

14. The Council hastens to repair the evil done in Dublin. Montjoy goes over as Lord Deputy; letters

13. Rowland White, Oct. 3, 11, 1599, in Sydney Papers, ii. 130, 132; Devereux' Lives of the Earls of Essex, ii. 76-117; Speeches in the Star Chamber on Essex's Expedition to Ireland, Nov. 1599, S. P. O.; Essex to Eliz., Feb. 11, 22, 1600, S. P. O.

14. Wood's Confessions, Jan. 20, 1599-1600, S. P. O.; Council Reg., Feb. 2, 1600.

recal the Lords Justices and magistrates of Ireland to their duty. Threads of the great conspiracy soon appear. Among the witnesses against Essex, Thomas Wood, a nephew of Lord Fitzmaurice, makes this declaration :

He saith that, happening to be with the Lord Fitzmaurice, Baron of Lixnaw, at his house of Lixnaw, between Michaelmas and Allhallowtide, the said Baron walking abroad with the said Wood asked him what force the Earl of Essex was of in England. He answered he could not tell, but said he was well beloved of the commonalty. Then said the Baron that the Earl was gone for England, and had discharged many of the companies of Ireland; and that if her Majesty were dead he should be King of England and O'Neile to be Viceroy of Ireland; and whensoever he should have occasion and could send for them, he would send him eight thousand men out of Ireland. The said Wood asked the Baron how he knew that, and he answered that the Earl of Desmond sent him word so.

THOMAS WOOD.

This statement, wholly in the handwriting of Wood, remains in the State Paper Office.

Below it Cecil has written :

This confession and declaration was made before us whose names are underwritten this 20th of January, 1599 (1600); and after being charged of us severally and jointly to declare nothing but truth upon his soul and conscience, as he would answer it at the latter day, he hath both protested this to be true that he hath written, and that he is a Christian and would not say an untruth in this kind for

V. 14.

1600.

Feb.