IMPROVEMENT IN ESSEX'S AFFAIRS. 111 1600. July. gives suspicion wing. Among themselves they whisper V. 21. that in the royal presence he has pronounced the offence treason. The true offence is treason; but Bacon has not called it such, for he has no knowledge of its darker facts. He therefore meets and spurns the misrepresentation of his words. In a note to Lord Henry Howard, one of the Roman Catholic friends of Essex, he writes with honest heat: "I thank God my wit serveth me not to deliver any opinion to the Queen which my stomach serveth me not to maintain; one and the same conscience guiding and fortifying me. The untruth of this fable God and my sovereign can witness, and there I leave it. . . . For my Lord of Essex, I am not servile to him, having regard to my superior duty. I have been much bound unto him; on the other side, I have spent more time and more thoughts about his welldoing than ever I did about mine own. I pray God you his friends amongst you be in the right." 22. Affairs grow brighter for the Earl. Good news come in from Dublin and the Hague; news that Desmond has been taken, and Wexford pacified by Montjoy; that Vere and Nassau have fought a battle and gained a victory on Nieuport sands. The Queen's heart opens. When the Earl now begs for freedom, she more than ever inclines to hear his prayer. Cecil gets alarmed; so, putting Wright and Hayward under stern examination, he frames from their confessions an indictment against Essex, which, if half of it were proved, would assuredly send him to the block. But an advocate, stronger than Cecil, stands beside the Queen; who, in season and out of season, in the midst 22. Essex to Eliz., June 21, 1600, S. P. O.; Chamberlain to Carleton, July 1, 26, 1600, S. P. O.; Confession of D. Hayward, July 11, 1600, S. P. O.; Abstract of Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600; Examination of Thomas Wright, July 24, 1600, S. P. O.; Bacon's Apologie, 41, 57. 1600. July. V. 22. of a dispute on law, in the turn of an anecdote, in a casual laugh or sigh, searches and finds a way to her heart. One day she asks him about his brother's gout. Anthony's gout is sometimes better, sometimes worse. "I tell you how it is, Bacon," says her sagacious Majesty; "these physicians give you the same physic to draw and to cure ; so they first do you good, and then do you harm." "Good God, Madam!" cries Bacon, "how wisely you speak of physic to the body! consider of physic to the mind. In the case of my Lord of Essex, your princely word is, that you mean to reform his mind, not to ruin his fortune. Have you not drawn the humour? Is it not time to apply the cure?" Another day she tells him the Earl has written to her most dutifully, that she felt moved by his protestations; but that, when she came to the end, it was all to procure from her a patent of sweet wines! "How your Majesty construes!" says Bacon; "as if duty and desire could not stand together! Iron clings to the loadstone from its nature. A vine creeps to the pole that it may twine." Speak to your business," says the Queen; "speak for yourself: for the Earl not a word." 66 Yet drop by drop the daily oil softens her heart. At length the Earl is set at large; though as one to whom much has been pardoned; one who shall never again command armies, or even approach the Court. Elizabeth will see her kinsman's face no more. Shall he go back to the Irish camp? "When I send Essex back into Ireland," says the Queen, "I will marry you-you, Mr. Bacon. Claim it of me." 1. WHEN free to plot, Essex, in the secresy of his own house, and in open breach of loyalty and honour, renews the intrigue with Rome. Blount returns from Drayton Bassett to crowd Barns Elms and Essex House, the Earl's headquarters in and near London, with the most desperate of his Papist gangs. Mad at their loss of time, they propose to do without an army what they failed to do with one. Enough, they say, to raise a troop, to kill Raleigh and Nottingham, to seize the Queen by force, and summon a parliament of their own. Essex shall be swept to the throne by a street fight and an act of assassination. Yet, if they still pretend to believe him more popular than Elizabeth, they dare not trust his chances and their own safety to an English crowd. Seeking to gain strength elsewhere, they open a deceptive intercourse with James, incite O'Neile to resist by promises of speedy help, raise a band of their sturdy partisans in Wales. One Englishman holding office, Sheriff Smith of London, probably a Roman Catholic, alone listens to their schemes. The Earls of Rutland and Southampton sit at the board; Rutland bound like Southampton by a pair of bright eyes to the Earl, being deeply in love with Elizabeth Sydney, daughter of Lady Essex by her first husband Sir Philip; neither of them sharing his insane ambition 1. Nottingham to Montjoy, Goodman, ii. 14; Jardine's Criminal Trials, i. 342; Chamberlain to Carleton, Oct. 10, 1600, S. P. O. VI. 1. 1600. Oct. I 1600. Oct. VI. 1. or suspecting his murderous thoughts. The partners of his secret soul are those Papists, old and new, who have been and will be the terror and shame of England for twenty years. Blount and Danvers, Davis, Percy, and Monteagle are not the worst. From dens like the Hart's Horn and the Shipwreck Tavern, haunts of the vilest refuse of a great city, the spawn of hells and stews, the vomit of Italian cloisters and Belgian camps, Blount, long familiar with the agents of disorder, unkennels, in the Earl's name, a pack of needy ruffians eager for any service which seems to promise pay to their greed or licence to their lust. 2. These miscreants are wholly Papists. Four of the five monsters who, some years later, dig the mine in Vineyard House, Robert Catesby, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Thomas Winter, answer to this call of Blount; while the fifth, Thomas Percy, is with them in the persons of his more reputable kinsmen Jocelyn and Charles. Nearly all their most guilty associates of the Powder Plot, Throckmorton, Lyttleton, and Grant, join with them; as also Ogle, Baynham, Whitelocke, and Downhall, the dregs and waste of a dozen Roman Catholic plots. Is 3. They mean to kill the Queen-a palace murder if she resist them, a Pomfret murder if she yield. Raleigh and Cecil are to share the fate of Bushy and Green. Essex more squeamish than Bolingbroke? Is Blount less bold than Piers of Exton? Though they advance towards their goal under cover of a design to free the Queen from enemies who hold her in thrall, the confession of Blount 2. List of Prisoners in the Compter and the Poultry, Feb. 8, 1601, S. P. O.; Lodge, ii. 545. 3. State Trials, i. 1415. VALENTINE THOMAS'S CONFESSION. 115 on the scaffold removes all doubt of a deliberate plan to assassinate her if she stand in their way. "I know and must confess," said the impenitent ruffian, "if we had failed in our end, we should even have drawn blood from herself." Nor is this design of dethronement and assassination a last resource of men at bay. The plan was formed two years before. It lay at the door of all Father Wright's suggestions, inspired the publication of Hayward's tract, controlled the understanding with O'Neile, gave colour to the correspondence with King James. 4. At the moment when this faction was struggling to secure the Irish command, Bacon had been engaged with Coke and others in probing a mysterious crime. A Scot of many names and characters-Thomas Anderson, Thomas Alderson, Valentine Thomas, a servant, a soldier, a gentleman-giving no good account of his journey to London, had been brought into the Tower. Bread and water, Bacon and Coke, had brought him to his knees. He confessed that he had been employed by the King of Scots to kill the Lord Treasurer Burghley and her Majesty the Queen. Here is the confession, solemnly attested: Collection of the Principal Points in Valentine Thomas's Valentine Thomas, otherwise called Thomas Alderson or Anderson, confesseth that his access to the King of Scotts was principally procured by one John Stewart of the 4. Scottish Papers of Elizabeth, Ixii. 28, 46, 50, 52, 54; lxiii. 13, 15, 22, 29, 31, 45. VI. 3. 1600. Oct. |