V. 14. all the good in the world; and for proof thereof hath again 1600. Feb. Mar. set his hand in our presence. T. BUCKHURST. NOTTINGHAM. ROBERT CECIL. J. FORTESCUE. THOMAS WOOD. 15. The world parts suddenly from the fallen man. Those who know or suspect the depth of his guilt shun him as one who is lost past hope; those who see no more than his disgrace fall off from a losing cause. Cecil spurns his advances; when the old Countess of Leicester begs of him to save her son, Cecil answers her that his fate is with a higher power. Babington, Bishop of Worcester, glances at him cautiously in a Court sermon; but when sent for by the angry Queen he denies that he pointed to the Earl. Save his cousin Lady Scrope, and his sisters Lady Rich and the Countess of Northumberland, not one of his confederates or companions dares to speak for him a word. Blount slinks with his wife to Drayton Bassett. Southampton goes abroad to fight Lord Gray, breaking his parole for the second time; an offence for which the council, though loth to strike the amiable and misled young gentleman, strips him of his company of horse. Lee makes no sign. Danvers and Constable hide their heads. These Bobadils of Drogheda and Milford skulk about the kens of Newgate Street and Carter Lane; and only a group of women, kin to the Queen, who gloom about the court in black, find courage for even tears and weeds. 15. Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 22, Mar. 5, 1600, S. P. O.; Cecil to Countess of Leicester, Mar. 21, 1600, S. P. O.; Sydney Papers, ii. 132, 213 ; Council Reg., Aug. 3, 17, 1600. 1600. Yea; there is one. In this dead silence of despair, one V. 15. voice alone dares to breath the Earl's name, to whisper in the royal ear excuses for his fault, to plead with that leonine heart for the mercy which becomes a monarch better than his crown. Mar. 16. Any man save Francis Bacon would have left the April. Earl to his fate. The connexion has been to him waste of character and waste of time. The hope of making Essex chief of the national party has come to nought and their intercourse has ceased. To Bacon, and to all his kin, the Earl has brought anxiety, grief, and shame. The loss of rank and power is the least part of his loss; that loving and beloved brother, to whom the Essays are so tenderly inscribed, has now sunk past hope, the victim of his companion's riot and evil ways. Despite the warnings of the Saint of God, though Anthony and Essex both promised her to amend their ways, they have run from bad to worse, until one is about to sink into political crime, the other into a premature grave. 17. The prospects, the affections of Bacon and Essex now lie apart, distant as the temperate and the torrid zones. For two whole years they have met but once; to part less near in opinions than before. All that Bacon foresaw from the Irish expedition has come to pass. The voyage has failed. More than the visible failure Bacon does not know; nothing of the interviews with Wright; nothing of the understanding with the Jesuits; nothing of the Pope's approval; nothing of the compact with O'Neile. Cecil keeps these formidable secrets close, sharing them, if with 16. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon, various dates, in Lambeth MSS. 649, 650; Devereux, i. 406. 17. Council to Yelverton, Coke, Fleming, and Bacon, Nov. 9, 1600, S. P. O.; Council Reg., Feb. 2, 28, July 6, Sept. 29, Dec. 24, 1600. June. 1600. June. V. 17. any one, only with his creature and dependant Coke. In other business of the Crown, in admiralty affairs, revenue affairs, in debts, in grants, and fines, above all in arbitrations, Bacon is now constantly employed by the Crown. Instructions from the Privy Council run to Yelverton, Coke, Fleming, and Bacon. In cases of dispute, as in those of Blundel, of Perrim, of Trachey, he is often employed alone. But in taking the confessions, in confronting the spies and prisoners of the Irish plot, he has no share. Yet, knowing no more of it than all men know, why should he risk his future to save a man who has covered him with misfortunes, who has sought his advice to cast it in his teeth? 18. Bacon is not the man to ask. Seeing the Earl crushed without being charged, supposing him free from crime, he carries his plea of clemency to the throne. Often in the Queen's closet on public duty, he seizes every opening for this plea. Never had such an offender such an advocate. Gaily, gravely, in speech, in song, he besets the royal ear. He kneels to her Majesty at Nonesuch; he coaxes her at Twickenham Park. When she ferries to his lodge, he presents her with a sonnet on mercy; when she calls him to the palace, he reads to her letters purporting to come from the penitent Earl. What Babington dares not hint from the pulpit, Bacon dares to urge in the private chamber. Wit, eloquence, persuasion of the rarest power, he lavishes on this ungrateful cause. At times the Queen seems shaken in her mood; but she knows her kinsman better than his advocate knows him. Spain still threatens a descent; and Ireland rocks with the tumult of civil war. 18. Abstract of Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600, S. P. O.; Shakespeare's Richard II., editions of 1598 and 1608. SHAKESPEARE'S RICHARD THE SECOND.' 109 1600. June. Those scenes of Shakespeare's play disturb her dreams. V. 18. This play has had a long and splendid run, not less from its glorious agony of dramatic passion than from the open countenance lent to it by the Earl, who, before his voyage, was a constant auditor at the Globe, and by his noble companions Rutland and Southampton. The great parliamentary scene, the deposition of Richard, not in the printed book, was probably not in the early play; yet the representation of a royal murder and a successful usurpation on the public stage is an event to be applied by the groundlings in a pernicious and disloyal sense. Tongues whisper to the Queen that this play is part of a great plot, to teach her subjects how to murder kings. They tell her she is Richard; Essex, Bolingbroke. These warnings sink into her soul. When Lambard, Keeper of the Records, waits upon her at the palace, she exclaims to him, "I am Richard, know you not that?" 19. Nor does the play by Shakespeare stand alone. One of the Earl's friends publishes on this story of the deposition of Richard a singular and mendacious tract, which, under ancient names and dates, gives a false and disloyal account of things and persons in his own age: the childless sovereign; the association of defence; the heavy burthen of taxation; the levy of double subsidies; the prosecution of an Irish war, ending in general discontent; the outbreak of blood; the solemn deposition and final murder of the prince. The book has no name on the title-page— that of John Hayward signs the dedication. Bolingbroke is made the hero of the tale; and that even the grossly 19. Hayward's First Part of the Life of Henry IV., 1599; Papers concerning the History of Henry IV., the Letter Apologetical written by Dr. Hayward, 1599, S. P. O. V. 19. stupid may not miss its meaning, this lump of sedition is dedicated to the Earl. In one place it openly affirms the existence of a title to the throne superior to that of the Queen! 1600. June, July. 20. This proves too much for Elizabeth. Packing the scribe in jail, she sends for Bacon to draw up articles against him. Had she sent for Coke! To Bacon's tenderness of human life the poor scribbler, Hayward, owes his subsequent length of days and authorship of other books. "There is treason in it," says the Queen; as indeed there is. 'Treason, your Grace?" replies Bacon; "not treason, Madam, but felony, much felony." "Ha!" gasps her Highness, willing to hang a rogue for one crime as for another: "Felony-where?" "Where, Madam? Everywhere: the whole book is a theft from Cornelius Tacitus." A light of laughter breaks the cloud. "But," says her darkening Highness, "Hayward is a fool; some one else has writ the book; make him confess it; put him to the rack." "rack advocate of mercy; Give him paper and pens, carry on his tale. By com "Nay, Madam," pleads the not his body-rack his style. with help of books; bid him paring the two parts, I will tell you if he be the true man." 21. Aware how strong are Bacon's views on political crime, some of the conspirators, conscious of their own guilty thoughts, dread lest in these frequent passages with the Queen he may be taking part against their lord. Fear 20. Bacon's Apologie, 36; Bacon's Remains, 42; Matters wherewith Dr. Hayward was charged, and Dr. Hayward's Confession, 1599, S. P. O. 21. Bacon's Apologie, 47; Birch, 459; Montagu, xii. 168. |