Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

By this solemn hearing the mind of the queen was much tranquillized; because her grave councillors and learned judges in their speeches, "amplifying her majesty's clemency and the earl's offences, according to the manner in the Star-chamber," had held him worthy of much more punishment than he had yet received. A few days after her majesty repaired to lady Russel's house in Blackfriars to grace the nuptials of her daughter, a maid of honor, with lord Herbert, son of the earl of Worcester;—on which occasion it may be mentioned, that she was conveyed from the water-side in a lectica, or half-litter, borne by six knights. After dining with the wedding company, she passed to the neighbouring house of lord Cobham to sup. Here she was entertained with a mask of eight ladies, who, after performing their appointed part, chose out eight ladies more to dance the measure, when Mrs. Fitton the principal masker came and "wooed" the queen also to dance. Her majesty inquired who she was? "Affection," she replied. "Affection," said the queen, "is false;" yet she rose and danced.

Elizabeth was now possessed with a strange fancy of unmaking the knights made by Essex; being flattered in this folly by Bacon, who assured her, certainly in contradiction to all the laws of chivalry, that her general had no right to confer that degree after a prohibition laid upon him by her majesty. She was resolved to command at least that no ancient gentleman should give place to these new knights; and she had actually signed the warrant for a proclamation to this effect, when the timely interference of the secretary saved her from thus exposing herself.

Late in August 1600, the earl was acquainted in form by the privy-council that his liberty was restored, but that he was still prohibited from appearing at court. He answered, that it was his design to lead a retired life at his uncle's in Oxfordshire, yet he begged their intercession that he might be admitted to kiss the queen's hand before his departure. But this was still too great a favor to be accorded, and he was informed, that though free from restraint, he was still to regard himself as under indignation; a distinction which served to deter all but his nearest relations from resorting to him.

In the spring of this year, Vereiken, an ambassador from Flanders, was very honorably received by the queen, whose counsels had assumed a more pacific aspect since the disgrace of Essex.

Whyte informs us, with his usual minuteness, that the ambassador was lodged with alderman Baning in Dowgate; and that he was fetched to court in great state, the whole household being drawn up in the hall; the great ladies and fair maids appearing "excellently brave" in the rooms through which he passed; and the queen, very richly dressed and surrounded by her council, extending to him a most gracious reception. He solemnly congratulated himself on the happiness of beholding her majesty, "who for beauty and wisdom did excel all other princes of the earth;" and she, in requital, promised to consider of his proposals. The negotiation proved in the end abortive; but great offence was taken at the publication in this juncture of a letter by the earl of Essex against a peace with Spain.

Raleigh was at this time leaving London in discontent because nothing was done for him;—it does not appear what was now the particular object of his solicitation; but a writer has recorded it as an instance of the prudent reserve of Elizabeth in the advancement of her courtiers, that she would never admit the eloquent and ambitious Raleigh to a seat at her council-board136.

In the midst of her extreme anxiety for the fate of Ireland,—where Tyrone for the present carried all things at his will, boasting himself the champion of the Romish cause, and proclaiming his expectation of Spanish aid; and of her more intimate and home-felt uneasiness respecting the effect of her measures of chastisement on the haughty mind of Essex,—we find Elizabeth promoting with some affectation the amusements of her court. "This day," says Whyte, "she appoints to see a Frenchman do feats upon a cord in the conduit court. Tomorrow she hath commanded the bears, the bull and the ape to be baited in the tilt-yard; upon Wednesday she will have solemn dancing."

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 points137. 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 fair speech, 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 which he 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, it was 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 the citizens 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 hath mens 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 sea138."

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 in the 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" kind139.

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 Charles Davers, 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 of being 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 vehement manner 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, lord Burleigh 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 company140." 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 his hopes 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 his willingness 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 designs against 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."