1601. Feb. 19. him are withheld; the Government wishing to spare his VI. 11. memory, though they cannot in honour, and dare not in policy, spare his life. They shrink from proclaiming to the world that a kinsman of the Queen has been in treacherous intercourse with Jesuits and the Pope. Not a word is said on the trial about his midnight interviews with Father Wright; not a word about his complicity in the publication of Hayward's tract. Only the obvious facts are proved, but these suffice. From the hour of his rising his fate has been sealed. That girlish romance of the ring, that still more girlish tale of Elizabeth's weakness and change of mind, are idle mirage of the brain. Camden, indeed, speaks of her hesitancy; but Camden wrote after the Queen's death, when it had become fashionable at court to speak well of the Earl. Jardine was the first to remark that this rumour of her changes and hesitations is unsupported by any one passage in the State Papers. In fact, Elizabeth never in her life showed less weakness than in the case of her rebellious kinsman. For a crime like his there was no mercy but the grave. 12. Called by the Privy Council to bear his part in this great drama, Bacon no more shirks his duty at the bar than Levison shirked his duty at Ludgate Hill, or Raleigh his duty at Charing Cross. As her Counsel Learned in the Law, he has no more choice or hesitation about his duty of defence than her Captain of the Guard. Raleigh and Bacon have each tried to save the Earl as long as he remained an honest man; but England is their first love, and by her faith, her freedom, and her Queen they must stand or fall. 12. Council to Bacon, Feb. 18, 1601, S. P. O.; Abstract of Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600, S. P. O.; Jardine, i. 316-321, 351, 360. VI. 12. Never is stern and holy duty done more gently on a criminal than by Bacon on this trial. He aggravates nothing. If he condemns the action, he refrains from Feb. 19. needless condemnation of the man. Here is his speech 1601. (set down, though it has already appeared in print, that the reader may have the whole case before his eyes without trouble of turning to another book): "My Lord, I expected not that the matter of defence would have been excused this day; to defend is lawful, but to rebel in defence is not lawful; therefore what my Lord of Essex hath here delivered, in my conceit, seemeth to be simile prodigio. I speak not to simple men, but to prudent, grave, and wise peers, who can draw up out of the circumstances the things themselves. And this I must needs say, it is evident that my Lord of Essex had planted a pretence in his heart against the Government, and now, under colour of excuse, he layeth the cause upon his particular enemies. My Lord of Essex, I cannot resemble your proceedings more rightly than to one Pisistratus, in Athens, who, coming into the city with the purpose to procure the subversion of the kingdom and wanting aid for the accomplishing his aspiring desires, and as the surest means to win the hearts of the citizens unto him, he entered the city, having cut his body with a knife, to the end they might conjecture he had been in danger of his life. Even so your Lordship gave out in the streets that your life was sought by the Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh, by this means persuading yourselves, if the city had undertaken your cause, all would have gone well on your side. But the imprisoning the Queen's councillors, what reference had that fact to my Lord Cobham, Sir Walter Raleigh, or the rest? You allege the matter to SPEECHES ON ESSEX'S TRIAL. 123 1601. Feb. 19. have been resolved on a sudden. No, you were three VI. 12. months in the deliberation thereof. Oh! my Lord, strive with yourself and strip off all excuses; the persons whom you aimed at, if you rightly understand it, are your best friends. All that you have said, or can say, in answer to these matters, are but shadows. It were your best course to confess and not to justify." What a contrast to the style of Coke! Later in the day, after hours of prevarication on the part of Essex, Bacon speaks again, in a warmer tone, but without a particle of rancour in his words: “My Lord, I have never yet seen, in any case, such favour shown to any prisoner; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons. Your Lordships may see how weakly my Lord of Essex hath shadowed his purpose, and how slenderly he hath answered the objections against him. But admit the case that the Earl's intent were, as he would have it, to go as a suppliant to her Majesty, shall petitioners be armed and guarded? Neither is it a mere point of law, as my Lord of Southampton would have it believed, that condemns them of treason, but it is apparent in common sense; to consult, to execute, to run together in numbers, in doublets and hose, armed with weapons, what colour of excuse can be alleged for this? And all this persisted in after being warned by messengers sent from her Majesty's own person. Will any man be so simple as to take this to be less than treason? But, my Lord, doubting that too much variety of matter may occasion forgetfulness, I will only trouble your Lordship's remembrance with this point, rightly comparing this rebellion of my Lord of Essex to the Duke of Guise's, that - 1601. Feb. 19. VI. 12. came upon the barricadoes at Paris in his doublet and hose, attended upon but with eight gentlemen; but his confidence in the city was even such as my Lord's was; and when he had delivered himself so far into the shallow of his own conceit, and could not accomplish what he expected, the King taking arms against him, he was glad to yield himself, thinking to colour his pretexts and his practices by alleging the occasion thereof to be a private quarrel." Mar. Aug. 6. Defence there is none: the peers condemn him to death. 13. After trial and condemnation, when the Garter is plucked from his knee and the George from his breast, the Earl's pride and courage give way. He closes a turbulent and licentious life by confessing against his companions, still untried, more than the law-officers of the Crown could have proved against them; and, despicable to relate, most of all against the two men who have been his closest associates-Blount and Cuffe. His confessions in the face of death deprive these prisoners of the last faint hope of grace. They go, with Meyrick and Danvers, to the gallows or to the block. But the anger of the Queen being stayed, the rest of the gang-Catesby, Tresham, Grant, Winter, Baynham, and their tribe-escape, some with imprisonment, some with mulct, for future villanies. At the end of twelve or fifteen weeks the last of the conspirators leaves the Tower. 14. Their fines reward service for which no other salaries are paid. The Queen, who in the fictions of biographers and historians is for ever starving Bacon for the good of 13. Council Reg., Feb. 24, 1602; Jardine's ' Criminal Trials,' i. 366-372; State Trials, i. 1412, 1414. 14. Council Reg., Aug. 6, 1601. AWARDS FROM REBELS' FORFEITS. 125 1601. his soul, now makes over to him, in actual fact, a con- VI. 14. siderable share of Catesby's fine. The manner of this grant of twelve hundred pounds is not less gracious than the gift itself. It is not made in the usual way, from the Aug. 6. Lord Treasurer's office, but as a public act of the Privy Council and the Queen. A council meets at Greenwich Palace, Egerton in the chair. Around him sit Lord Buckhurst, the delightful poet; Nottingham, the great commander; the Earls of Shrewsbury and Worcester; Knollys, Fortescue, and Cecil. These councillors draft a letter to Coke, which stands among the many interesting letters in the Privy Council register thus: A LETTER TO EDWARD COKE, ESQ., HER MAJESTY'S ATTORNEY-GENERAL. Aug. 6, 1601. Forasmuch as her Majesty is pleased to bestow particular reward upon divers of her servants, to be taken out of such fines as have grown unto her by the offences of several persons, we have thought good to let you know particularly who they be that are at this time to receive several portions in that kind, to the intent that you may cause some such assurances to be passed over, as the person may be assured to receive those portions as are allotted to them according to her Majesty's gracious pleasure, in this sort following. When there is an assurance passed to her Majesty's use of certain lands, for the payment of two thousand at several days by Francis Tresham, her Majesty is pleased that Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower shall receive the sum of a thousand five hundred pounds, assigned him out of that; the other five hundred remaining to be disposed at her Majesty's pleasure. Next, you shall |