Elizabeth's regard for Dudley, however, still continued. She made him Earl of Leicester, and granted him the magnificent castle of Kenilworth, with a large estate adjoining and surrounding it; the rents of the lands giving him a princely income, and enabling him to live in almost royal state. Queen Elizabeth visited him frequently in this castle. One of these visits is very minutely described by the chroniclers of the times. The earl made the most expensive and extraordinary preparations for the reception and entertainment of the queen and her retinue on this occasion. The moat—which is a broad canal filled with water surrounding the castle—had a floating island upon it, with a fictitious personage whom they called the lady of the lake upon the island, who sung a song in praise of Elizabeth as she passed the bridge. There was also an artificial dolphin swimming upon the water, with a band of musicians within it. As the queen advanced across the park, men and women, in strange disguises, came out to meet her, and to offer her salutations and praises. One was dressed as a sibyl, another like an American savage, and a third, who was concealed, represented an echo. This visit was continued for nineteen days, and the stories of the splendid entertainments provided for the company—the plays, the bear-baitings, the fireworks, the huntings, the mock fights, the feastings and revelries—filled all Europe at the time, and have been celebrated by historians and story-tellers ever since. The Castle of Kenilworth is now a very magnificent heap of ruins, and is explored every year by thousands of visitors from every quarter of the globe.

Leicester, if he ever really entertained any serious designs of being Elizabeth's husband at last gave up his hopes, and married another woman. This lady had been the wife of the Earl of Essex. Her husband died very suddenly and mysteriously just before Leicester married her. Leicester kept the marriage secret for some time, and when it came at last to the queen's knowledge she was exceedingly angry. She had him arrested and sent to prison. However, she gradually recovered from her fit of resentment, and by degrees restored him to her favor again.

Twenty years of Elizabeth's reign thus passed away, and no one of all her suitors had succeeded in obtaining her hand. All this time her government had been administered with much efficiency and power. All Europe had been in great commotion during almost the whole period, on account of the terrible conflicts which were raging between the Catholics and the Protestants, each party having been doing its utmost to exterminate and destroy the other. Elizabeth and her government took part, very frequently, in these contests; sometimes by negotiations, and sometimes by fleets and armies, but always sagaciously and cautiously, and generally with great effect. In the mean time, however, the queen, being now forty-five years of age, was rapidly approaching the time when questions of marriage could no longer be entertained. Her lovers, or, rather, her suitors, had, one after another, given up the pursuit, and disappeared from the field. One only seemed at length to remain, on the decision of whose fate the final result of the great question of the queen's marriage seemed to be pending.

It was the Duke of Anjou. He was a French prince. His brother, who had been the Duke of Anjou before him, was now King Henry III. of France. His own name was Francis. He was twenty five years younger than Elizabeth, and he was only seventeen years of age when it was first proposed that he should marry her. He was then Duke of Alencon. It was his mother's plan. She was the great Catharine de Medici, queen of France, and one of the most extraordinary women, for her talents, her management, and her power, that ever lived. Having one son upon the throne of France, she wanted the throne of England for the other. The negotiation had been pending fruitlessly for many years, and now, in 1581, it was vigorously renewed. The duke himself, who was at this time a young man of twenty-four or five, began to be impatient and earnest in his suit. There was, in fact, one good reason why he should be so. Elizabeth was forty-eight, and, unless the match were soon concluded, the time for effecting it would be obviously forever gone by.



He had never had an interview with the queen. He had seen pictures of her, however, and he sent an embassador over to England to urge his suit, and to convince Elizabeth how much he was in love with her charms. The name of this agent was Simier. He was a very polite and accomplished man, and soon learned the art of winning his way to Elizabeth's favor. Leicester was very jealous of his success. The two favorites soon imbibed a terrible enmity for each other. They filled the court with their quarrels. The progress of the negotiation, however, went on, the people taking sides very violently, some for and some against the projected marriage. The animosities became exceedingly virulent, until at length Simier's life seemed to be in danger. He said that Leicester had hired one of the guards to assassinate him; and it is a fact, that one day, as he and the queen, with other attendants, were making an excursion upon the river, a shot was fired from the shore into the barge. The shot did no injury except to wound one of the oarsmen, and frighten all the party pretty thoroughly. Some thought the shot was aimed at Simier, and others at the queen herself. It was afterward proved, or supposed to be proved, that this shot was the accidental discharge of a gun, without any evil intention whatever.

In the mean time, Elizabeth grew more and more interested in the idea of having the young duke for her husband; and it seemed as if the maidenly resolutions, which had stood their ground so firmly for twenty years, were to be conquered at last. The more, however, she seemed to approach toward a consent to the measure, the more did all the officers of her government, and the nation at large, oppose it. There were, in their minds, two insuperable objections to the match. The candidate was a Frenchman, and he was a papist. The council interceded. Friends remonstrated. The nation murmured and threatened. A book was published entitled "The Discovery of a gaping Gulf wherein England is like to be swallowed up by another French marriage, unless the Lord forbid the Bans by letting her see the Sin and Punishment thereof." The author of it had his right hand cut off for his punishment.

At length, after a series of most extraordinary discussions, negotiations, and occurrences, which kept the whole country in a state of great excitement for a long time, the affair was at last all settled. The marriage articles, both political and personal, were all arranged. The nuptials were to be celebrated in six weeks. The duke came over in great state, and was received with all possible pomp and parade. Festivals and banquets were arranged without number, and in the most magnificent style, to do him and his attendants honor. At one of them, the queen took off a ring from her finger, and put it upon his, in the presence of a great assembly, which was the first announcement to the public that the affair was finally settled. The news spread every where with great rapidity. It produced in England great consternation and distress, but on the Continent it was welcomed with joy, and the great English alliance, now so obviously approaching, was celebrated with ringing of bells, bonfires, and grand illuminations.

And yet, notwithstanding all this, as soon as the obstacles were all removed, and there was no longer opposition to stimulate the determination of the queen, her heart failed her at last, and she finally concluded that she would not be married, after all. She sent for the duke one morning to come and see her. What takes place precisely between ladies and gentlemen when they break off their engagements is not generally very publicly known, but the duke came out from this interview in a fit of great vexation and anger. He pulled off the queen's ring and threw it from him, muttering curses upon the fickleness and faithlessness of women.

Still Elizabeth would not admit that the match was broken off. She continued to treat the duke with civility and to pay him many honors. He decided, however, to return to the Continent. She accompanied him a part of the way to the coast, and took leave of him with many professions of sorrow at the parting, and begged him to come back soon. This he promised to do, but he never returned. He lived some time afterward in comparative neglect and obscurity, and mankind considered the question of the marriage of Elizabeth as now, at last, settled forever.



CHAPTER IX.

PERSONAL CHARACTER.

1560-1586

Opinions of Elizabeth's character.—The Catholics and Protestants.—Parties in England.—Elizabeth's wise administration.—Mary claims the English throne.—She is made prisoner by Elizabeth.—Various plots.—Execution of Mary.—The impossibility of settling the claims of Mary and Elizabeth.—Elizabeth's duplicity.—Her scheming to entrap Mary.—Maiden ladies.—Their benevolent spirit.—Elizabeth's selfishness and jealousy.—The maids of honor.—Instance of Elizabeth's cruelty.—Her irritable temper.—Leicester's friend and the gentleman of the black rod.—Elizabeth in a rage.—Her invectives against Leicester.—Leicester's chagrin.—Elizabeth's powers of satire.—Elizabeth's views of marriage.—Her insulting conduct.—The Dean of Christ Church and the Prayer Book.—Elizabeth's good qualities.—Her courage.—The shot at the barge.—Elizabeth's vanity.—Elizabeth and the embassador.—The pictures.—Elizabeth's fondness for pomp and parade.—Summary of Elizabeth's character.

Mankind have always been very much divided in opinion in respect to the personal character of Queen Elizabeth, but in one point all have agreed, and that is, that in the management of public affairs she was a woman of extraordinary talent and sagacity, combining, in a very remarkable degree, a certain cautious good sense and prudence with the most determined resolution and energy.

She reigned about forty years, and during almost all that time the whole western part of the Continent of Europe was convulsed with the most terrible conflicts between the Protestant and Catholic parties. The predominance of power was with the Catholics, and was, of course, hostile to Elizabeth. She had, moreover, in the field a very prominent competitor for her throne in Mary Queen of Scots. The foreign Protestant powers were ready to aid this claimant, and there was, besides, in her own dominions a very powerful interest in her favor. The great divisions of sentiment in England, and the energy with which each party struggled against its opponents, produced, at all times, a prodigious pressure of opposing forces, which bore heavily upon the safety of the state and of Elizabeth's government, and threatened them with continual danger. The administration of public affairs moved on, during all this time, trembling continually under the heavy shocks it was constantly receiving, like a ship staggering on in a storm, its safety depending on the nice equilibrium between the shocks of the seas, the pressure of the wind upon the sails, and the weight and steadiness of the ballast below.

During all this forty years it is admitted that Elizabeth and her wise and sagacious ministers managed very admirably. They maintained the position and honor of England, as a Protestant power, with great success; and the country, during the whole period, made great progress in the arts, in commerce, and in improvements of every kind. Elizabeth's greatest danger, and her greatest source of solicitude during her whole reign, was from the claims of Mary Queen of Scots. We have already described the energetic measures which she took at the commencement of her reign to counter act and head off, at the outset, these dangerous pretensions. Though these efforts were triumphantly successful at the time, still the victory was not final. It postponed, but did not destroy, the danger. Mary continued to claim the English throne. Innumerable plots were beginning to be formed among the Catholics, in Elizabeth's own dominions, for making her queen. Foreign potentates and powers were watching an opportunity to assist in these plans. At last Mary, on account of internal difficulties in her own land, fled across the frontier into England to save her life, and Elizabeth made her prisoner.

In England, to plan or design the dethronement of a monarch is, in a subject, high treason. Mary had undoubtedly designed the dethronement of Elizabeth, and was waiting only an opportunity to accomplish it. Elizabeth, consequently, condemned her as guilty of treason, in effect; and Mary's sole defense against this charge was that she was not a subject. Elizabeth yielded to this plea, when she first found Mary in her power, so far as not to take her life, but she consigned her to a long and weary captivity.

This, however, only made the matter worse. It stimulated the enthusiasm and zeal of all the Catholics in England, to have their leader, and as they believed, their rightful queen, a captive in the midst of them, and they formed continually the most extensive and most dangerous plots. These plots were discovered and suppressed, one after another, each one producing more anxiety and alarm than the preceding. For a time Mary suffered no evil consequences from these discoveries further than an increase of the rigors of her confinement. At last the patience of the queen and of her government was exhausted. A law was passed against treason, expressed in such terms as to include Mary in the liability for its dreadful penalties although she was not a subject, in case of any new transgression; and when the next case occurred, they brought her to trial and condemned her to death. The sentence was executed in the gloomy castle of Fotheringay, where she was then confined.

As to the question whether Mary or Elizabeth had the rightful title to the English crown, it has not only never been settled, but from its very nature it can not be settled. It is one of those cases in which a peculiar contingency occurs which runs beyond the scope and reach of all the ordinary principles by which analogous cases are tried, and leads to questions which can not be decided. As long as a hereditary succession goes smoothly on, like a river keeping within its banks, we can decide subordinate and incidental questions which may arise; but when a case occurs in which we have the omnipotence of Parliament to set off against the infallibility of the pope—the sacred obligations of a will against the equally sacred principles of hereditary succession—and when we have, at last, two contradictory actions of the same ultimate umpire, we find all technical grounds of coming to a conclusion gone. We then, abandoning these, seek for some higher and more universal principles—essential in the nature of things, and thus independent of the will and action of man—to see if they will throw any light on the subject. But we soon find ourselves as much perplexed and confounded in this inquiry as we were before. We ask, in beginning the investigation, What is the ground and nature of the right by which any king or queen succeeds to the power possessed by his ancestors? And we give up in despair, not being able to answer even this first preliminary inquiry.

Mankind have not, in their estimate of Elizabeth's character, condemned so decidedly the substantial acts which she performed, as the duplicity, the false-heartedness, and the false pretensions which she manifested in performing them. Had she said frankly and openly to Mary before the world, if these schemes for revolutionizing England and placing yourself upon the throne continue, your life must be forfeited, my own safety and the safety of the realm absolutely demand it; and then had fairly, and openly, and honestly executed her threat, mankind would have been silent on the subject, if they had not been satisfied. But if she had really acted thus, she would not have been Elizabeth. She, in fact, pursued a very different course. She maneuvered, schemed, and planned; she pretended to be full of the warmest affection for her cousin; she contrived plot after plot, and scheme after scheme, to ensnare her; and when, at last, the execution took place, in obedience to her own formal and written authority, she pretended to great astonishment and rage. She never meant that the sentence should take effect. She filled England, France, and Scotland with the loud expressions of her regret, and she punished the agents who had executed her will. This management was to prevent the friends of Mary from forming plans of revenge.

This was her character in all things. She was famous for her false pretensions and double dealings, and yet, with all her talents and sagacity, the disguise she assumed was sometimes so thin and transparent that her assuming it was simply ridiculous.

Maiden ladies, who spend their lives, in some respects, alone, often become deeply imbued with a kind and benevolent spirit, which seeks its gratification in relieving the pains and promoting the happiness of all around them. Conscious that the circumstances which have caused them to lead a single life would secure for them the sincere sympathy and the increased esteem of all who know them, if delicacy and propriety allowed them to be expressed, they feel a strong degree of self-respect, they live happily, and are a continual means of comfort and joy to all around them. This was not so, however, with Elizabeth. She was jealous, petulant, irritable. She envied others the love and the domestic enjoyments which ambition forbade her to share, and she seemed to take great pleasure in thwarting and interfering with the plans of others for securing this happiness.

One remarkable instance of this kind occurred. It seems she was sometimes accustomed to ask the young ladies of the court—her maids of honor—if they ever thought about being married, and they, being cunning enough to know what sort of an answer would please the queen always promptly denied that they did so. Oh no! they never thought about being married at all. There was one young lady, however, artless and sincere, who, when questioned in this way, answered, in her simplicity, that she often thought of it, and that she should like to be married very much, if her father would only consent to her union with a certain gentleman whom she loved. "Ah!" said Elizabeth; "well, I will speak to your father about it, and see what I can do." Not long after this the father of the young lady came to court, and the queen proposed the subject to him. The father said that he had not been aware that his daughter had formed such an attachment, but that he should certainly give his consent, without any hesitation, to any arrangement of that kind which the queen desired and advised. "That is all, then," said the queen; "I will do the rest." So she called the young lady into her presence, and told her that her father had given his free consent. The maiden's heart bounded with joy, and she began to express her happiness and her gratitude to the queen, promising to do every thing in her power to please her, when Elizabeth interrupted her, saying, "Yes, you will act so as to please me, I have no doubt, but you are not going to be a fool and get married. Your father has given his consent to me, and not to you, and you may rely upon it you will never get it out of my possession. You were pretty bold to acknowledge your foolishness to me so readily."

Elizabeth was very irritable, and could never bear any contradiction. In the case even of Leicester, who had such an unbounded influence over her, if he presumed a little too much he would meet sometimes a very severe rebuff, such as nobody but a courtier would endure; but courtiers, haughty and arrogant as they are in their bearing toward inferiors, are generally fawning sycophants toward those above them, and they will submit to any thing imaginable from a queen.

It was the custom in Elizabeth's days, as it is now among the great in European countries, to have a series or suite of rooms, one beyond the other, the inner one being the presence chamber, and the others being occupied by attendants and servants of various grades, to regulate and control the admission of company. Some of these officers were styled gentlemen of the black rod, that name being derived from a peculiar badge of authority which they were accustomed to carry. It happened, one day, that a certain gay captain, a follower of Leicester's, and a sort of favorite of his, was stopped in the antechamber by one of the gentlemen of the black rod, named Bowyer, the queen having ordered him to be more careful and particular in respect to the admission of company. The captain, who was proud of the favor which he enjoyed with Leicester, resented this affront, and threatened the officer, and he was engaged in an altercation with him on the subject when Leicester came in. Leicester took his favorite's part, and told the gentleman usher that he was a knave, and that he would have him turned out of office. Leicester was accustomed to feel so much confidence in his power over Elizabeth, that his manner toward all beneath him had become exceedingly haughty and overbearing. He supposed, probably, that the officer would humble himself at once before his rebukes.

The officer, however, instead of this, stepped directly in before Leicester, who was then going in himself to the presence of the queen; kneeled before her majesty, related the facts of the case, and humbly asked what it was her pleasure that he should do. He had obeyed her majesty's orders, he said, and had been called imperiously to account for it, and threatened violently by Leicester, and he wished now to know whether Leicester was king or her majesty queen. Elizabeth was very much displeased with the conduct of her favorite. She turned to him, and, beginning with a sort of oath which she was accustomed to use when irritated and angry, she addressed him in invectives and reproaches the most severe. She gave him, in a word, what would be called a scolding, were it not that scolding is a term not sufficiently dignified for history, even for such humble history as this. She told him that she had indeed shown him favor, but her favor was not so fixed and settled upon him that nobody else was to have any share, and that if he imagined that he could lord it over her household, she would contrive a way very soon to convince him of his mistake. There was one mistress to rule there, she said, but no master. She then dismissed Bowyer, telling Leicester that, if any evil happened to him, she should hold him, that is, Leicester, to a strict account for it, as she should be convinced it would have come through his means.

Leicester was exceedingly chagrined at this result of the difficulty. Of course he dared not defend himself or reply. All the other courtiers enjoyed his confusion very highly, and one of them, in giving an account of the affair, said, in conclusion, that "the queen's words so quelled him, that, for some time after, his feigned humility was one of his best virtues."

Queen Elizabeth very evidently possessed that peculiar combination of quickness of intellect and readiness of tongue which enables those who possess it to say very sharp and biting things, when vexed or out of humor. It is a brilliant talent, though it always makes those who possess it hated and feared. Elizabeth was often wantonly cruel in the exercise of this satirical power, considering very little—as is usually the case with such persons—the justice of her invectives, but obeying blindly the impulses of the ill nature which prompted her to utter them. We have already said that she seemed always to have a special feeling of ill will against marriage and every thing that pertained to it, and she had, particularly, a theory that the bishops and the clergy ought not to be married. She could not absolutely prohibit their marrying, but she did issue an injunction forbidding any of the heads of the colleges or cathedrals to take their wives into the same, or any of their precincts. At one time, in one of her royal progresses through the country, she was received, and very magnificently and hospitably entertained, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at his palace. The archbishop's wife exerted herself very particularly to please the queen and to do her honor. Elizabeth evinced her gratitude by turning to her, as she was about to take her leave, and saying that she could not call her the archbishop's wife, and did not like to call her his mistress, and so she did not know what to call her; but that, at all events, she was very much obliged to her for her hospitality.

Elizabeth's highest officers of state were continually exposed to her sharp and sudden reproaches, and they often incurred them by sincere and honest efforts to gratify and serve her. She had made an arrangement, one day, to go into the city of London to St. Paul's Church, to hear the Dean of Christ Church, a distinguished clergyman, preach. The dean procured a copy of the Prayer Book, and had it splendidly bound, with a great number of beautiful and costly prints interleaved in it. These prints were all of a religious character, being representations of sacred history, or of scenes in the lives of the saints. The volume, thus prepared, was very beautiful, and it was placed, when the Sabbath morning arrived, upon the queen's cushion at the church, ready for her use. The queen entered in great state, and took her seat in the midst of all the parade and ceremony customary on such occasions. As soon, however, as she opened the book and saw the pictures, she frowned, and seemed to be much displeased. She shut the book and put it away, and called for her own; and, after the service, she sent for the dean, and asked him who brought that book there. He replied, in a very humble and submissive manner, that he had procured it himself, having intended it as a present for her majesty. This only produced fresh expressions of displeasure. She proceeded to rebuke him severely for countenancing such a popish practice as the introduction of pictures in the churches. All this time Elizabeth had herself a crucifix in her own private chapel, and the dean himself, on the other hand, was a firm and consistent Protestant, entirely opposed to the Catholic system of images and pictures, as Elizabeth very well knew.

This sort of roughness was a somewhat masculine trait of character for a lady, it must be acknowledged, and not a very agreeable one, even in man; but with some of the bad qualities of the other sex, Elizabeth possessed, also, some that were good. She was courageous, and she evinced her courage sometimes in a very noble manner. At one time, when political excitement ran very high, her friends thought that there was serious danger in her appearing openly in public, and they urged her not to do it, but to confine herself within her palaces for a time, until the excitement should pass away. But no; the representations made to her produced no effect. She said she would continue to go out just as freely as ever. She did not think that there was really any danger; and besides, if there was, she did not care; she would rather take her chance of being killed than to be kept shut up like a prisoner.

At the time, too, when the shot was fired at the barge in which she was going down the Thames, many of her ministers thought it was aimed at her. They endeavored to convince her of this, and urged her not to expose herself to such dangers. She replied that she did not believe that the shot was aimed at her; and that, in fact, she would not believe any thing of her subjects which a father would not be willing to believe of his own children. So she went on sailing in her barge just as before.



Elizabeth was very vain of her beauty, though, unfortunately, she had very little beauty to be vain of. Nothing pleased her so much as compliments. She sometimes almost exacted them. At one time, when a distinguished embassador from Mary Queen of Scots was at her court, she insisted on his telling her whether she or Mary was the most beautiful. When we consider that Elizabeth was at this time over thirty years of age, and Mary only twenty-two, and that the fame of Mary's loveliness had filled the world, it must be admitted that this question indicated a considerable degree of self-complacency. The embassador had the prudence to attempt to evade the inquiry. He said at first that they were both beautiful enough. But Elizabeth wanted to know, she said, which was most beautiful. The embassador then said that his queen was the most beautiful queen in Scotland and Elizabeth in England. Elizabeth was not satisfied with this, but insisted on a definite answer to her question; and the embassador said at last that Elizabeth had the fairest complexion, though Mary was considered a very lovely woman. Elizabeth then wanted to know which was the tallest of the two. The embassador said that Mary was. "Then," said Elizabeth, "she is too tall, for I am just of the right height myself."

At one time during Elizabeth's reign, the people took a fancy to engrave and print portraits of her, which, being perhaps tolerably faithful to the original, were not very alluring. The queen was much vexed at the circulation of these prints, and finally she caused a grave and formal proclamation to be issued against them. In this proclamation it was stated that it was the intention of the queen, at some future time, to have a proper artist employed to execute a correct and true portrait of herself, which should then be published; and, in the mean time, all persons were forbidden to make or sell any representations of her whatever.

Elizabeth was extremely fond of pomp and parade. The magnificence and splendor of the celebrations and festivities which characterized her reign have scarcely ever been surpassed in any country or in any age. She once went to attend Church, on a particular occasion, accompanied by a thousand men in full armor of steel, and ten pieces of cannon, with drums and trumpets sounding. She received her foreign embassadors with military spectacles and shows, and with banquets and parties of pleasure, which for many days kept all London in a fever of excitement. Sometimes she made excursions on the river, with whole fleets of boats and barges in her train; the shores, on such occasions, swarming with spectators, and waving with flags and banners. Sometimes she would make grand progresses through her dominions, followed by an army of attendants—lords and ladies dressed and mounted in the most costly manner—and putting the nobles whose seats she visited to a vast expense in entertaining such a crowd of visitors. Being very saving of her own means, she generally contrived to bring the expense of this magnificence upon others. The honor was a sufficient equivalent. Or, if it was not, nobody dared to complain.

To sum up all, Elizabeth was very great, and she was, at the same time, very little. Littleness and greatness mingled in her character in a manner which has scarcely ever been paralleled, except by the equally singular mixture of admiration and contempt with which mankind have always regarded her.



CHAPTER X.

THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA.

1585-1588

Fierce contests between Catholics and Protestants.—Philip's cruelty.—Effects of war.—Napoleon and Xerxes.—March of improvement.—Spanish armadas.—The Low Countries.—Their situation and condition.—Embassage from the Low Countries.—Their proposition.—Elizabeth's decision.—Leicester and Drake.—Leicester sets out for the Low Countries.—His reception.—Leicester's elation.—Elizabeth's displeasure.—Drake's success.—His deeds of cruelty.—Drake's expedition in 1577.—Execution of Doughty.—Straits of Magellan.—Drake plunders the Spaniards.—Chase of the Cacofogo.—Drake captures her.—Drake's escape by going round the world.—Character of Drake.—Philip demands the treasure.—Alarming news.—Elizabeth's navy.—Drake's expedition against the Spaniards.—His bold stroke.—Exasperation of Philip.—His preparations.—Elizabeth's preparations.—The army and navy.—Elizabeth reviews the troops.—Her speech.—Elizabeth's energy.—Approach of the armada.—A grand spectacle.—A singular fight.—Defeat of the armada.—A remnant escapes.

Thirty years of Queen Elizabeth's reign passed away. During all this time the murderous contests between the Catholic governments of France and Spain and their Protestant subjects went on with terrible energy. Philip of Spain was the great leader and head of the Catholic powers, and he prosecuted his work of exterminating heresy with the sternest and most merciless determination. Obstinate and protracted wars, cruel tortures, and imprisonments and executions without number, marked his reign.

Notwithstanding all this, however, strange as it may seem, the country increased in population, wealth, and prosperity. It is, after all, but a very small proportion of fifty millions of people which the most cruel monster of a tyrant can kill, even if he devotes himself fully to the work. The natural deaths among the vast population within the reach of Philip's power amounted, probably, to two millions every year; and if he destroyed ten thousand every year, it was only adding one death by violence to two hundred produced by accidents, disasters, or age. Dreadful as are the atrocities of persecution and war, and vast and incalculable as are the encroachments on human happiness which they produce, we are often led to overrate their relative importance, compared with the aggregate value of the interests and pursuits which are left unharmed by them, by not sufficiently appreciating the enormous extent and magnitude of these interests and pursuits in such communities as England, France, and Spain.

Sometimes, it is true, the operations of military heroes have been on such a prodigious scale as to make very serious inroads on the population of the greatest states. Napoleon for instance, on one occasion took five hundred thousand men out of France for his expedition to Russia. The campaign destroyed nearly all of them. It was only a very insignificant fraction of the vast army that ever returned. By this transaction, Napoleon thus just about doubled the annual mortality in France at a single blow. Xerxes enjoys the glory of having destroyed about a million of men—and these, not enemies, but countrymen, followers, and friends—in the same way, on a single expedition. Such vast results, however, were not attained in the conflicts which marked the reigns of Elizabeth and Philip of Spain. Notwithstanding the long-protracted international wars, and dreadful civil commotions of the period, the world went on increasing in wealth and population, and all the arts and improvements of life made very rapid progress. America had been discovered, and the way to the East Indies had been opened to European ships, and the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the French, had fleets of merchant vessels and ships of war in every sea. The Spaniards, particularly, had acquired great possessions in America, which contained very rich mines of gold and silver, and there was a particular kind of vessels called galleons, which went regularly once a year, under a strong convoy, to bring home the treasure. They used to call these fleets armada, which is the Spanish word denoting an armed squadron. Nations at war with Spain always made great efforts to intercept and seize these ships on their homeward voyages, when, being laden with gold and silver, they became prizes of the highest value.

Things were in this state about the year 1585, when Queen Elizabeth received a proposition from the Continent of Europe which threw her into great perplexity. Among the other dominions of Philip of Spain, there were certain states situated in the broad tract of low, level land which lies northeast of France, and which constitutes, at the present day, the countries of Holland and Belgium. This territory was then divided into several provinces, which were called, usually, the Low Countries, on account of the low and level situation of the land. In fact, there are vast tracts of land bordering the shore, which lie so low that dikes have to be built to keep out the sea. In these cases, there are lines of windmills, of great size and power, all along the coast, whose vast wings are always slowly revolving, to pump out the water which percolates through the dikes, or which flows from the water-courses after showers of rain.

The Low Countries were very unwilling to submit to the tyrannical government which Philip exercised over them. The inhabitants were generally Protestants, and Philip persecuted them cruelly. They were, in consequence of this, continually rebelling against his authority, and Elizabeth secretly aided them in these struggles, though she would not openly assist them, as she did not wish to provoke Philip to open war. She wished them success, however, for she knew very well that if Philip could once subdue his Protestant subjects at home, he would immediately turn his attention to England, and perhaps undertake to depose Elizabeth, and place some Catholic prince or princess upon the throne in her stead.

Things were in this state in 1585, when the confederate provinces of the Low Countries sent an embassage to Elizabeth, offering her the government of the country as sovereign queen, if she would openly espouse their cause and protect them from Philip's power. This proposition called for very serious and anxious consideration. Elizabeth felt very desirous to make this addition to her dominions on its own account, and besides, she saw at once that such an acquisition would give her a great advantage in her future contests with Philip, if actual war must come. But then, on the other hand, by accepting the proposition, war must necessarily be brought on at once. Philip would, in fact, consider her espousing the cause of his rebellious subjects as an actual declaration of war on her part, so that making such a league with these countries would plunge her at once into hostilities with the greatest and most extended power on the globe. Elizabeth was very unwilling thus to precipitate the contest; but then, on the other hand, she wished very much to avoid the danger that threatened, of Philip's first subduing his own dominions, and then advancing to the invasion of England with his undivided strength. She finally concluded not to accept the sovereignty of the countries, but to make a league, offensive and defensive, with the governments, and to send out a fleet and an army to aid them. This, as she had expected, brought on a general war.

The queen commissioned Leicester to take command of the forces which were to proceed to Holland and the Netherlands; she also equipped a fleet, and placed it under the command of Sir Francis Drake, a very celebrated naval captain, to proceed across the Atlantic and attack the Spanish possessions on the American shores. Leicester was extremely elated with his appointment, and set off on his expedition with great pomp and parade. He had not generally, during his life, held stations of any great trust or responsibility. The queen had conferred upon him high titles and vast estates, but she had confided all real power to far more capable and trustworthy hands. She thought however, perhaps, that Leicester would answer for her allies; so she gave him his commission and sent him forth, charging him, with many injunctions, as he went away, to be discreet and faithful, and to do nothing which should compromise, in any way, her interests or honor.

It will, perhaps, be recollected that Leicester's wife had been, before her marriage with him, the wife of a nobleman named the Earl of Essex. She had a son, who, at his father's death, succeeded to the title. This young Essex accompanied Leicester on this occasion. His subsequent adventures, which were romantic and extraordinary, will be narrated in the next chapter.

The people of the Netherlands, being extremely desirous to please Elizabeth, their new ally, thought that they could not honor the great general she had sent them too highly. They received him with most magnificent military parades, and passed a vote in their assembly investing him with absolute authority as head of the government, thus putting him, in fact, in the very position which Elizabeth had herself declined receiving. Leicester was extremely pleased and elated with these honors. He was king all but in name. He provided himself with a noble life-guard, in imitation of royalty, and assumed all the state and airs of a monarch. Things went on so very prosperously with him for a short time, until he was one day thunderstruck by the appearance at his palace of a nobleman from the queen's court, named Heneage, who brought him a letter from Elizabeth which was in substance as follows:

"How foolishly, and with what contempt of my authority, I think you have acted, the messenger I now send to you will explain. I little imagined that a man whom I had raised from the dust, and treated with so much favor, would have forgotten all his obligations, and acted in such a manner. I command you now to put yourself entirely under the direction of this messenger, to do in all things precisely as he requires, upon pain of further peril."

Leicester humbled himself immediately under this rebuke, sent home most ample apologies and prayers for forgiveness, and, after a time, gradually recovered the favor of the queen. He soon, however, became very unpopular in the Netherlands. Grievous complaints were made against him, and he was at length recalled.

Drake was more successful. He was a bold, undaunted, and energetic seaman, but unprincipled and merciless. He manned and equipped his fleet, and set sail toward the Spanish possessions in America. He attacked the colonies, sacked the towns, plundered the inhabitants, intercepted the ships, and searched them for silver and gold. In a word, he did exactly what pirates are hung for doing, and execrated afterward by all mankind. But, as Queen Elizabeth gave him permission to perform these exploits, he has always been applauded by mankind as a hero. We would not be understood as denying that there is any difference between burning and plundering innocent towns and robbing ships, whether there is or is not a governmental permission to commit these crimes. There certainly is a difference. It only seems to us surprising that there should be so great a difference as is made by the general estimation of mankind.

Drake, in fact, had acquired a great and honorable celebrity for such deeds before this time, by a similar expedition, several years before, in which he had been driven to make the circumnavigation of the globe. England and Spain were then nominally at peace, and the expedition was really in pursuit of prizes and plunder.

Drake took five vessels with him on this his first expedition, but they were all very small. The largest was only a vessel of one hundred tons, while the ships which are now built are often of three thousand. With this little fleet Drake set sail boldly, and crossed the Atlantic, being fifty-five days out of sight of land. He arrived at last on the coast of South America, and then turned his course southward, toward the Straits of Magellan. Two of his vessels, he found, were so small as to be of very little service; so he shipped the men on board the others, and turned the two adrift. When he got well into the southern seas, he charged his chief mate, whose name was Doughty, with some offense against the discipline of his little fleet, and had him condemned to death. He was executed at the Straits of Magellan—beheaded. Before he died, the unhappy convict had the sacrament administered to him, Drake himself partaking of it with him. It was said, and believed at the time, that the charge against Doughty was only a pretense, and that the real cause of his death was that Leicester had agreed with Drake to kill him when far away, on account of his having assisted, with others, in spreading the reports that Leicester had murdered the Earl of Essex, the former husband of his wife.

The little squadron passed through the Straits of Magellan, and then encountered a dreadful storm, which separated the ships, and drove them several hundred miles to the westward, over the then boundless and trackless waters of the Pacific Ocean. Drake himself afterward recovered the shore with his own ship alone, and moved northward. He found Spanish ships and Spanish merchants every where, who, not dreaming of the presence of an English enemy in those distant seas, were entirely secure; and they fell, one after another, a very easy prey. The very extraordinary story is told of his finding, in one place, a Spaniard asleep upon the shore, waiting, perhaps, for a boat, with thirty bars of silver by his side, of great weight and value, which Drake and his men seized and carried off, without so much as waking the owner. In one harbor which he entered he found three ships, from which the seamen had all gone ashore, leaving the vessels completely unguarded, so entirely unconscious were they of any danger near. Drake broke into the cabins of these ships, and found fifty or sixty wedges of pure silver there, of twenty pounds each. In this way, as he passed along the coast, he collected an immense treasure in silver and gold, both coin and bullion, without having to strike a blow for it. At last he heard of a very rich ship, called the Cacofogo, which had recently sailed for Panama, to which place they were taking the treasure, in order that it might be transported across the isthmus, and so taken home to Spain; for, before Drake's voyage, scarcely a single vessel had ever passed round Cape Horn. The ships which he had plundered had been all built upon the coast, by Spaniards who had come across the country at the Isthmus of Darien, and were to be used only to transport the treasure northward, where it could be taken across to the Gulf of Mexico.

Drake gave chase to the Cacofogo. At last he came near enough to fire into her, and one of his first shots cut away her foremast and disabled her. He soon captured the ship, and he found immense riches on board. Besides pearls and precious stones of great value, there were eighty pounds of gold, thirteen chests of silver coin, and silver enough in bars "to ballast a ship."

Drake's vessel was now richly laden with treasures, but in the mean time the news of his plunderings had gone across the Continent, and some Spanish ships of war had gone south to intercept him at the Straits of Magellan on his return. In this dilemma, the adventurous sailor conceived of the sublime idea of avoiding them by going round the world to get home. He pushed boldly forward, therefore, across the Pacific Ocean to the East Indies, thence through the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, and, after three years from the time he left England, he returned to it safely again, his ship loaded with the plundered silver and gold.

As soon as he arrived in the Thames, the whole world flocked to see the little ship that had performed all these wonders. The vessel was drawn up alongside the land, and a bridge made to it, and, after the treasure was taken out, it was given up, for some time, to banquetings and celebrations of every kind. The queen took possession of all the treasure, saying that Philip might demand it, and she be forced to make restitution, for it must be remembered that all this took place several years before the war. She, however, treated the successful sailor with every mark of consideration and honor; she went herself on board his ship, and partook of an entertainment there, conferring the honor of knighthood, at the same time, on the admiral, so that "Sir Francis Drake" was thenceforth his proper title.

If the facts already stated do not give sufficient indications of the kind of character which in those days made a naval hero, one other circumstance may be added. At one time during this voyage, a Spaniard, whose ship Drake had spared, made him a present of a beautiful negro girl. Drake kept her on board his ship for a time, and then sent her ashore on some island that he was passing, and inhumanly abandoned her there, to become a mother among strangers, utterly friendless and alone. It must be added, however, in justice to the rude men among whom this wild buccaneer lived, that, though they praised all his other deeds of violence and wrong, this atrocious cruelty was condemned. It had the effect, even in those days, of tarnishing his fame.

Philip did claim the money, but Elizabeth found plenty of good excuses for not paying it over to him.

This celebrated expedition occupied more than three years. Going round the world is a long journey. The arrival of the ship in London took place in 1581, four years before the war actually broke out between England and Spain, which was in 1585; and it was in consequence of the great celebrity which Drake had acquired in this and similar excursions, that when at last hostilities commenced, he was put in command of the naval preparations. It was not long before it was found that his services were likely to be required near home, for rumors began to find their way to England that Philip was preparing a great fleet for the actual invasion of England. The news put the whole country into a state of great alarm.

The reader, in order to understand fully the grounds for this alarm, must remember that in those days Spain was the mistress of the ocean, and not England herself. Spain possessed the distant colonies and the foreign commerce, and built and armed the great ships, while England had comparatively few ships, and those which she had were small. To meet the formidable preparations which the Spaniards were making, Elizabeth equipped only four ships. To these however, the merchants of London added twenty or thirty more, of various sizes, which they furnished on condition of having a share in the plunder which they hoped would be secured. The whole fleet was put under Drake's command.

Robbers and murderers, whether those that operate upon the sea or on the land, are generally courageous, and Drake's former success had made him feel doubly confident and strong. Philip had collected a considerable fleet of ships in Cadiz, which is a strong sea-port in the southeastern part of Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea, and others were assembling in all the ports and bays along the shore, wherever they could be built or purchased. They were to rendezvous finally at Cadiz. Drake pushed boldly forward, and, to the astonishment of the world, forced his way into the harbor, through a squadron of galleys stationed there to protect the entrance, and burned, sunk, and destroyed more than a hundred ships which had been collected there. The whole work was done, and the little English fleet was off again, before the Spaniards could recover from their astonishment. Drake then sailed along the coast, seizing and destroying all the ships he could find. He next pushed to sea a little way, and had the good fortune to intercept and capture a richly-laden ship of very large size, called a carrack, which was coming home from the East Indies. He then went back to England in triumph. He said he had been "singeing the whiskers" of the King of Spain.

The booty was divided among the London merchants, as had been agreed upon. Philip was exasperated and enraged beyond expression at this unexpected destruction of armaments which had cost him so much time and money to prepare. His spirit was irritated and aroused by the disaster, not quelled; and he immediately began to renew his preparations, making them now on a still vaster scale than before. The amount of damage which Drake effected was, therefore, after all, of no greater benefit to England than putting back the invasion for about a year.

At length, in the summer of 1588, the preparations for the sailing of the great armada, which was to dethrone Elizabeth and bring back the English nation again under the dominion of some papal prince, and put down, finally, the cause of Protestantism in Europe, were complete. Elizabeth herself, and the English people, in the mean time, had not been idle. The whole kingdom had been for months filled with enthusiasm to prepare for meeting the foe. Armies were levied and fleets raised. Every maritime town furnished ships; and rich noblemen, in many cases, built or purchased vessels with their own funds, and sent them forward ready for the battle, as their contribution toward the means of defense. A large part of the force thus raised was stationed at Plymouth, which is the first great sea-port which presents itself on the English coast in sailing up the Channel. The remainder of it was stationed at the other end of the Channel, near the Straits of Dover, for it was feared that, in addition to the vast armament which Philip was to bring from Spain, he would raise another fleet in the Netherlands, which would, of course, approach the shores of England from the German Ocean.

Besides the fleets, a large army was raised. Twenty thousand men were distributed along the southern shores of England in such positions as to be most easily concentrated at any point where the armada might attempt to land and about as many more were marched down the Thames, and encamped near the mouth of the river, to guard that access. This encampment was at a place on the northern bank of the river, just above its mouth. Leicester, strange as it may seem, was put in command of this army. The queen, however, herself, went to visit this encampment, and reviewed the troops in person. She rode to and fro on horseback along the lines, armed like a warrior. At least she had a corslet of polished steel over her magnificent dress, and bore a general's truncheon, a richly-ornamented staff used as a badge of command. She had a helmet, too, with a white plume. This, however she did not wear. A page bore it, following her, while she rode, attended by Leicester and the other generals, all mounted on horses and splendidly caparisoned, from rank to rank, animating the men to the highest enthusiasm by her courageous bearing, her look of confidence, and her smiles.

She made an address to the soldiers. She said that she had been warned by some of her ministers of the danger of trusting herself to the power of such an armed multitude, for these forces were not regularly enlisted troops, but volunteers from among the citizens, who had suddenly left the ordinary avocations and pursuits of life to defend their country in this emergency. She had, however, she said, no such apprehensions of danger. She could trust herself without fear to the courage and fidelity of her subjects, as she had always, during all her reign, considered her greatest strength and safeguard as consisting in their loyalty and good will. For herself, she had come to the camp, she assured them, not for the sake of empty pageantry and parade, but to take her share with them in the dangers, and toils, and terrors of the actual battle. If Philip should land, they would find their queen in the hottest of the conflict, fighting by their sides. "I have," said she, "I know, only the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king; and I am ready for my God, my kingdom, and my people, to have that body laid down, even in the dust. If the battle comes, therefore, I shall myself be in the midst and front of it, to live or die with you."

These were, thus far, but words, it is true, and how far Elizabeth would have vindicated their sincerity, if the entrance of the armada into the Thames had put her to the test, we can not now know. Sir Francis Drake saved her from the trial. One morning a small vessel came into the harbor at Plymouth, where the English fleet was lying, with the news that the armada was coming up the Channel under full sail. The anchors of the fleet were immediately raised, and great exertions made to get it out of the harbor, which was difficult, as the wind at the time was blowing directly in. The squadron got out at last, as night was coming on. The next morning the armada hove in sight, advancing from the westward up the Channel, in a vast crescent, which extended for seven miles from north to south, and seemed to sweep the whole sea.



It was a magnificent spectacle, and it was the ushering in of that far grander spectacle still, of which the English Channel was the scene for the ten days which followed, during which the enormous naval structures of the armada, as they slowly made their way along, were followed, and fired upon, and harassed by the smaller, and lighter, and more active vessels of their English foes. The unwieldy monsters pressed on, surrounded and worried by their nimbler enemies like hawks driven by kingfishers through the sky. Day after day this most extraordinary contest, half flight and half battle continued, every promontory on the shores covered all the time with spectators, who listened to the distant booming of the guns, and watched the smokes which arose from the cannonading and the conflagrations. One great galleon after another fell a prey. Some were burned, some taken as prizes, some driven ashore; and finally, one dark night, the English sent a fleet of fire-ships, all in flames, into the midst of the anchorage to which the Spaniards had retired, which scattered them in terror and dismay, and completed the discomfiture of the squadron.

The result was, that by the time the invincible armada had made its way through the Channel, and had passed the Straits of Dover, it was so dispersed, and shattered, and broken, that its commanders, far from feeling any disposition to sail up the Thames, were only anxious to make good their escape from their indefatigable and tormenting foes. They did not dare, in attempting to make this escape, to return through the Channel, so they pushed northward into the German Ocean. Their only course for getting back to Spain again was to pass round the northern side of England, among the cold and stormy seas that are rolling in continually among the ragged rocks and gloomy islands which darken the ocean there. At last a miserable remnant of the fleet—less than half—made their way back to Spain again.



CHAPTER XI.

THE EARL OF ESSEX.

1588-1600

Character of Essex.—Death of Leicester.—Essex becomes the queen's favorite.—Cecil and Essex.—Elizabeth's regard for Essex.—His impulsive bravery.—Essex's ardor for battle.—His duel.—Elizabeth's remark upon the duel.—She gives Essex a ring.—The quarrel.—The box on the ear.—Mortification of Essex.—He and Elizabeth reconciled.—Essex sent to Ireland.—Curious negotiations.—The queen's displeasure.—Essex's sudden return.—Essex is arrested.—Resentment and love.—Essex's anger and chagrin.—He is taken sick.—Nature of Essex's sickness.—The queen's anxiety.—The queen's kindness to Essex.—They are reconciled again.—Essex's promises.—The queen's ungenerous conduct.—Essex's monopoly of wines.—The queen refuses to renew it.—Essex made desperate.—His treasonable schemes.—Ramifications of the plot.—It is discovered.—Anxious deliberations.—The rising determined upon.—The hostages.—Essex enters the city.—The proclamation.—Essex unsuccessful.—Essex's hopeless condition.—He escapes to his palace.—Essex made prisoner, tried, and condemned.—His remorse.—Elizabeth's distress.—The ring not sent.—The warrant signed.—The platform.—Essex's last words.—The closing scene.—The courtier.—His fiendish pleasure.

The lady whom the Earl of Leicester married was, a short time before he married her, the wife of the Earl of Essex, and she had one son, who, on the death of his father, became the Earl of Essex in his turn. He came to court, and continued in Leicester's family after his mother's second marriage. He was an accomplished and elegant young man, and was regarded with a good deal of favor by the queen. He was introduced at court when he was but seventeen years old, and, being the step-son of Leicester, he necessarily occupied a conspicuous position; his personal qualities, joined with this, soon gave him a very high and honorable name.

About a month after the victory obtained by the English over the invincible armada, Leicester was seized with a fever on a journey, and, after lingering for a few days, died, leaving Essex, as it were, in his place. Elizabeth seems not to have been very inconsolable for her favorite's death. She directed, or allowed, his property to be sold at auction, to pay some debts which he owed her—or, as the historians of the day express it, which he owed the crown—and then seemed at once to transfer her fondness and affection to the young Essex, who was at that time twenty-one years of age. Elizabeth herself was now nearly sixty. Cecil was growing old also, and was somewhat infirm, though he had a son who was rapidly coming forward in rank and influence at court. This son's name was Robert. The young Earl of Essex's name was Robert too. The elder Cecil and Leicester had been, all their lives, watchful and jealous of each other, and in some sense rivals. Robert Cecil and Robert Devereux—for that was, in full, the Earl of Essex's family name—being young and ardent, inherited the animosity of their parents, and were less cautious and wary in expressing it. They soon became open foes.

Robert Devereux, or Essex, as he is commonly called in history, was handsome and accomplished, ardent, impulsive, and generous. The war with Spain, notwithstanding the destruction of the armada, continued, and Essex entered into it with all zeal. The queen, who with all her ambition, and her proud and domineering spirit, felt, like any other woman, the necessity of having something to love, soon began to take a strong interest in his person and fortunes, and seemed to love him as a mother loves a son; and he, in his turn, soon learned to act toward her as a son, full of youthful courage and ardor, often acts toward a mother over whose heart he feels that he has a strong control. He would go away, without leave, to mix in affrays with the Spanish ships in the English Channel and in the Bay of Biscay, and then come back and make his peace with the queen by very humble petitions for pardon, and promises of future obedience. When he went, with her leave, on these expeditions, she would charge his superior officers to keep him out of danger; while he, with an impetuosity which strongly marked his character, would evade and escape from all these injunctions, and press forward into every possible exposure, always eager to have battle given, and to get, himself, into the hottest part of it, when it was begun. At one time, off Cadiz, the officers of the English ships hesitated some time whether to venture an attack upon some ships in the harbor—Essex burning with impatience all the time—and when it was at length decided to make the attack, he was so excited with enthusiasm and pleasure that he threw his cap up into the air, and overboard, perfectly wild with delight, like a school-boy in anticipation of a holiday.

Ten years passed away, and Essex rose higher and higher in estimation and honor. He was sometimes in the queen's palaces at home, and sometimes away on the Spanish seas, where he acquired great fame. He was proud and imperious at court, relying on his influence with the queen, who treated him as a fond mother treats a spoiled child. She was often vexed with his conduct, but she could not help loving him. One day, as he was coming into the queen's presence chamber, he saw one of the courtiers there who had a golden ornament upon his arm which the queen had given him the day before. He asked what it was; they told him it was a "favor" from the queen. "Ah," said he, "I see how it is going to be; every fool must have his favor." The courtier resented this mode of speaking of his distinction, and challenged Essex to a duel. The combatants met in the Park, and Essex was disarmed and wounded. The queen heard of the affair, and, after inquiring very curiously about all the particulars, she said that she was glad of it; for, unless there was somebody to take down his pride, there would be no such thing as doing any thing with him.

Elizabeth's feelings toward Essex fluctuated in strange alternations of fondness and displeasure. At one time, when affection was in the ascendency, she gave him a ring, as a talisman of her protection. She promised him that if he ever should become involved in troubles or difficulties of any kind, and especially if he should lose her favor, either by his own misconduct or by the false accusations of his enemies, if he would send her that ring, it should serve to recall her former kind regard, and incline her to pardon and save him. Essex took the ring, and preserved it with the utmost care.

Friendship between persons of such impetuous and excitable temperaments as Elizabeth and Essex both possessed, though usually very ardent for a time, is very precarious and uncertain in duration. After various petulant and brief disputes, which were easily reconciled, there came at length a serious quarrel. There was, at that time, great difficulty in Ireland; a rebellion had broken out, in fact, which was fomented and encouraged by Spanish influence. Essex was one day urging very strongly the appointment of one of his friends to take the command there, while the queen was disposed to appoint another person. Essex urged his views and wishes with much importunity, and when he found that the queen was determined not to yield, he turned his back upon her in a contemptuous and angry manner. The queen lost patience in her turn, and, advancing rapidly to him, her eyes sparkling with extreme resentment and displeasure, she gave him a severe box on the ear, telling him, at the same time, to "go and be hanged." Essex was exceedingly enraged; he clasped the handle of his sword, but was immediately seized by the other courtiers present. They, however, soon released their hold upon him, and he walked off out of the apartment, saying that he could not and would not bear such an insult as that. He would not have endured it, he said, from King Henry the Eighth himself. The name of King Henry the Eighth, in those days, was the symbol and personification of the highest possible human grandeur.

The friends of Essex among the courtiers endeavored to soothe and calm him, and to persuade him to apologize to the queen, and seek a reconciliation. They told him that, whether right or wrong, he ought to yield; for in contests with the law or with a prince, a man, they said, ought, if wrong, to submit himself to justice; if right, to necessity; in either case, it was his duty to submit.

This was very good philosophy; but Essex was not in a state of mind to listen to philosophy. He wrote a reply to the friend who had counseled him as above, that "the queen had the temper of a flint; that she had treated him with such extreme injustice and cruelty so many times that his patience was exhausted, and he would bear it no longer. He knew well enough what duties he owed the queen as an earl and grand marshal of England, but he did not understand being cuffed and beaten like a menial servant; and that his body suffered in every part from the blow he had received."

His resentment, however, got soothed and softened in time, and he was again admitted to favor, though the consequences of such quarrels are seldom fully repaired. The reconciliation was, however, in this case, apparently complete, and in the following year Essex was himself appointed the Governor, or, as styled in those days, the Lord Deputy of Ireland.

He went to his province, and took command of the forces which had been collected there, and engaged zealously in the work of suppressing the rebellion. For some reason or other, however, he made very little progress. The name of the leader of the rebels was the Earl of Tyrone.[D] Tyrone wanted a parley, but did not dare to trust himself in Essex's power. It was at last, however, agreed that the two leaders should come down to a river, one of them upon each side, and talk across it, neither general to have any troops or attendants with him. This plan was carried into effect. Essex, stationing a troop near him, on a hill, rode down to the water on one side, while Tyrone came into the river as far as his horse could wade on the other, and then the two earls attempted to negotiate terms of peace by shouting across the current of the stream.

[Footnote D: Spelled in the old histories Tir-Oen.]

Nothing effectual was accomplished by this and some other similar parleys, and in the mean time the weeks were passing away, and little was done toward suppressing the rebellion. The queen was dissatisfied. She sent Essex letters of complaint and censure. These letters awakened the lord deputy's resentment. The breach was thus rapidly widening, when Essex all at once conceived the idea of going himself to England, without permission, and without giving any notice of his intention, to endeavor, by a personal interview, to reinstate himself in the favor of the queen.



This was a very bold step. It was entirely contrary to military etiquette for an officer to leave his command and go home to his sovereign without orders and without permission. The plan, however, might have succeeded. Leicester did once succeed in such a measure; but in this case, unfortunately, it failed. Essex traveled with the utmost dispatch, crossed the Channel, made the best of his way to the palace where the queen was then residing, and pressed through the opposition of all the attendants into the queen's private apartment, in his traveling dress, soiled and way-worn. The queen was at her toilet, with her hair down over her eyes. Essex fell on his knees before her, kissed her hand, and made great professions of gratitude and love, and of an extreme desire to deserve and enjoy her favor. The queen was astonished at his appearance, but Essex thought that she received him kindly. He went away after a short interview, greatly pleased with the prospect of a favorable issue to the desperate step he had taken. His joy, however, was soon dispelled. In the course of the day he was arrested by order of the queen, and sent to his house under the custody of an officer. He had presumed too far.

Essex was kept thus secluded and confined for some time. His house was on the bank of the river. None of his friends, not even his countess, were allowed access to him. His impetuous spirit wore itself out in chafing against the restraints and means of coercion which were pressing upon him; but he would not submit. The mind of the queen, too, was deeply agitated all the time by that most tempestuous of all mental conflicts, a struggle between resentment and love. Her affection for her proud-spirited favorite seemed as strong as ever, but she was determined to make him yield in the contest she had commenced with him. How often cases precisely similar occur in less conspicuous scenes of action, where they who love each other with a sincere and uncontrollable affection take their stand in attitudes of hostility, each determined that the obstinacy of the other shall give way, and each heart persisting in its own determination, resentment and love struggling all the time in a dreadful contest, which keeps the soul in a perpetual commotion, and allows of no peace till either the obstinacy yields or the love is extinguished and gone.

It was indirectly made known to Essex that if he would confess his fault, ask the queen's forgiveness, and petition for a release from confinement, in order that he might return to his duties in Ireland, the difficulty could be settled. But no, he would make no concessions. The queen, in retaliation, increased the pressure upon him. The more strongly he felt the pressure, the more his proud and resentful spirit was aroused. He walked his room, his soul boiling with anger and chagrin, while the queen, equally distressed and harassed by the conflict in her own soul, still persevered, hoping every day that the unbending spirit with which she was contending would yield at last.

At length the tidings came to her that Essex, worn out with agitation and suffering, was seriously sick. The historians doubt whether his sickness was real or feigned; but there is not much difficulty in understanding, from the circumstances of the case, what its real nature was. Such mental conflicts as those which he endured suspend the powers of digestion and accelerate the pulsations of the heart, which beats in the bosom with a preternatural frequency and force, like a bird fluttering to get free from a snare. The result is a sort of fever burning slowly in the veins, and an emaciation which wastes the strength away, and, in impetuous and uncontrollable spirits, like that of Essex, sometimes exhausts the powers of life altogether. The sickness, therefore, though of mental origin, becomes bodily and real; but then the sufferer is often ready, in such cases, to add a little to it by feigning. An instinct teaches him that nothing is so likely to move the heart whose cruelty causes him to suffer, as a knowledge of the extreme to which it has reduced him. Essex was doubtless willing that Elizabeth should know that he was sick. Her knowing it had, in some measure, the usual effect. It reawakened and strengthened the love she had felt for him, but did not give it absolutely the victory. She sent eight physicians to him, to examine and consult upon his case. She caused some broth to be made for him, and gave it to one of these physicians to carry to him, directing the messenger, in a faltering voice, to say to Essex that if it were proper to do so she would have come to see him herself. She then turned away to hide her tears. Strange inconsistency of the human heart—resentment and anger holding their ground in the soul against the object of such deep and unconquerable love. It would be incredible, were it not that probably every single one of all the thousands who may read this story has experienced the same.

Nothing has so great an effect in awakening in the heart a strong sentiment of kindness as the performance of a kind act. Feeling originates and controls action, it is true, but then, on the other hand, action has a prodigious power in modifying feeling. Elizabeth's acts of kindness to Essex in his sickness produced a renewal of her tenderness for him so strong that her obstinacy and anger gave way before it, and she soon began to desire some mode of releasing him from his confinement, and restoring him to favor. Essex was softened too. In a word, there was finally a reconciliation, though it was accomplished by slow degrees, and by means of a sort of series of capitulations. There was an investigation of his case before the privy council, which resulted in a condemnation of his conduct, and a recommendation to the mercy of the queen; and then followed some communications between Essex and his sovereign, in which he expressed sorrow for his faults, and made satisfactory promises for the future.

The queen, however, had not magnanimity enough to let the quarrel end without taunting and irritating the penitent with expressions of triumph. In reply to his acknowledgments and professions, she told him that she was glad to hear of his good intentions, and she hoped that he would show, by his future conduct, that he meant to fulfill them; that he had tried her patience for a long time, but she hoped that henceforth she should have no further trouble. If it had been her father, she added, instead of herself, that he had had to deal with, he would not have been pardoned at all. It could not be a very cordial reconciliation which was consummated by such words as these. But it was very like Elizabeth to utter them. They who are governed by their temper are governed by it even in their love.

Essex was not restored to office. In fact, he did not wish to be restored. He said that he was resolved henceforth to lead a private life. But even in respect to this plan he was at the mercy of the queen, for his private income was in a great measure derived from a monopoly, as it is called, in a certain kind of wines, which had been granted to him some time before. It was a very customary mode, in those days, of enriching favorites, to grant them monopolies of certain kinds of merchandise, that is, the exclusive right to sell them. The persons to whom this privilege was granted would underlet their right to merchants in various parts of the kingdom, on condition of receiving a certain share of the profits. Essex had thus derived a great revenue from his monopoly of wines. The grant, however, was expiring, and he petitioned the queen that it might be renewed.

The interest which Essex felt in the renewal of this grant was one of the strongest inducements to lead him to submit to the humiliations which he had endured, and to make concessions to the queen. But he was disappointed in his hopes. The queen, elated a little with the triumph already attained, and, perhaps, desirous of the pleasure of humbling Essex still more, refused at present to renew his monopoly, saying that she thought it would do him good to be restricted a little, for a time, in his means. "Unmanageable beasts," she said, "had to be tamed by being stinted in their provender."

Essex was sharply stung by such a refusal, accompanied, too, by such an insult. He was full of indignation and anger. At first he gave free expression to his feelings of vexation in conversation with those around him. The queen, he said, had got to be a perverse and obstinate old woman, as crooked in mind as she was in body. He had plenty of enemies to listen to these speeches, and to report them in such a way as that they should reach the queen. A new breach was consequently opened, which seemed now wider than ever, and irreparable.

At least it seemed so to Essex; and, abandoning all plans for again enjoying the favor of Elizabeth, he began to consider what he could do to undermine her power and rise upon the ruins of it. The idea was insanity, but passion always makes men insane. James, king of Scotland, the son and successor of Mary, was the rightful heir to the English throne after Elizabeth's death. In order to make his right of succession more secure, he had wished to have Elizabeth acknowledge it; but she, always dreading terribly the thoughts of death, could never bear to think of a successor, and seemed to hate every one who entertained any expectation of following her. Essex suppressed all outward expressions of violence and anger; became thoughtful, moody, and sullen; held secret consultations with desperate intriguers, and finally formed a scheme to organize a rebellion, to bring King James's troops to England to support it, to take possession of the Tower and of the strong-holds about London, to seize the palace of the queen, overturn her government, and compel her both to acknowledge James's right to the succession and to restore Essex himself to power.

The personal character of Essex had given him a very wide-spread popularity and influence, and he had, consequently, very extensive materials at his command for organizing a powerful conspiracy. The plot was gradually matured, extending itself, in the course of the few following months, not only throughout England, but also into France and Spain. The time for the final explosion was drawing near, when, as usual in such cases, intelligence of the existence of this treason, in the form of vague rumors, reached the queen. One day, when the leading conspirators were assembled at Essex's palace, a messenger came to summon the earl to appear before the council. They received, also, private intelligence that their plots were probably discovered. While they were considering what to do in this emergency—all in a state of great perplexity and fear—a person came, pretending to be a deputy sent from some of the principal citizens of London, to say to Essex that they were ready to espouse his cause. Essex immediately became urgent to commence the insurrection at once. Some of his friends, on the other hand, were in favor of abandoning the enterprise, and flying from the country; but Essex said he had rather be shot at the head of his bands, than to wander all his days beyond the seas, a fugitive and a vagabond.

The conspirators acceded to their leader's councils. They sent word, accordingly, into the city, and began to make their arrangements to rise in arms the next morning. The night was spent in anxious preparations. Early in the morning, a deputation of some of the highest officers of the government, with a train of attendants, came to Essex's palace, and demanded entrance in the name of the queen. The gates of the palace were shut and guarded. At last, after some hesitation and delay, the conspirators opened a wicket, that is, a small gate within the large one, which would admit one person at a time. They allowed the officers themselves to enter, but shut the gate immediately so as to exclude the attendants. The officers found themselves in a large court-yard filled with armed men, Essex standing calmly at the head of them. They demanded what was the meaning of such an unusual assemblage. Essex replied that it was to defend his life from conspiracies formed against it by his enemies. The officers denied this danger, and began to expostulate with Essex in angry terms, and the attendants on his side to reply with vociferations and threats, when Essex, to end the altercation, took the officers into the palace. He conducted them to a room and shut them up, to keep them as hostages.

It was now near ten o'clock, and, leaving his prisoners in their apartment, under a proper guard, Essex sallied forth, with the more resolute and desperate of his followers, and proceeded into the city, to bring out into action the forces which he supposed were ready to co-operate with him there. He rode on through the streets, calling to arms, and shouting, "For the queen! For the queen!" His design was to convey the impression that the movement which he was making was not against the queen herself, but against his own enemies in her councils, and that she was herself on his side. The people of London, however, could not be so easily deceived. The mayor had received warning before, from the council, to be ready to suppress the movement, if one should be made. As soon, therefore, as Essex and his company were fairly in the city, the gates were shut and barred to prevent his return. One of the queen's principal ministers of state too, at the head of a small troop of horsemen, came in and rode through the streets, proclaiming Essex a traitor, and calling upon all the citizens to aid in arresting him. One of Essex's followers fired a pistol at this officer to stop his proclamation, but the people generally seemed disposed to listen to him, and to comply with his demand. After riding, therefore, through some of the principal streets, he returned to the queen, and reported to her that all was well in the city; there was no danger that Essex would succeed in raising a rebellion there.

In the mean time, the further Essex proceeded, the more he found himself environed with difficulties and dangers. The people began to assemble here and there with evident intent to impede his movements. They blocked up the streets with carts and coaches to prevent his escape. His followers, one after another, finding all hope of success gone, abandoned their despairing leader and fled. Essex himself, with the few who still adhered to him, wandered about till two o'clock, finding the way of retreat every where hemmed up against him. At length he fled to the river side, took a boat, with the few who still remained with him, and ordered the watermen to row as rapidly as possible up the river. They landed at Westminster, retreated to Essex's house, fled into it with the utmost precipitation, and barricaded the doors. Essex himself was excited in the highest degree, fully determined to die there rather than surrender himself a prisoner. The terrible desperation to which men are reduced in emergencies like these is shown by the fact that one of his followers did actually station himself at a window bare-headed, inviting a shot from the pistols of the pursuers, who had by this time environed the house, and were preparing to force their way in. His plan succeeded. He was shot, and died that night.

Essex himself was not quite so desperate as this. He soon saw, however, that he must sooner or later yield. He could not stand a siege in his own private dwelling against the whole force of the English realm. He surrendered about six in the evening, and was sent to the Tower. He was soon afterward brought to trial. The facts, with all the arrangements and details of the conspiracy, were fully proved, and he was condemned to die.

As the unhappy prisoner lay in his gloomy dungeon in the Tower, the insane excitement under which he had for so many months been acting slowly ebbed away. He awoke from it gradually, as one recovers his senses after a dreadful dream. He saw how utterly irretrievable was the mischief which had been done. Remorse for his guilt in having attempted to destroy the peace of the kingdom to gratify his own personal feelings of revenge; recollections of the favors which Elizabeth had shown him, and of the love which she had felt for him, obviously so deep and sincere; the consciousness that his life was fairly forfeited, and that he must die—to lie in his cell and think of these things, overwhelmed him with anguish and despair. The brilliant prospects which were so recently before him were all forever gone, leaving nothing in their place but the grim phantom of an executioner, standing with an ax by the side of a dreadful platform, with a block upon it, half revealed and half hidden by the black cloth which covered it like a pall.

Elizabeth, in her palace, was in a state of mind scarcely less distressing than that of the wretched prisoner in his cell. The old conflict was renewed—pride and resentment on the one side, and love which would not be extinguished on the other. If Essex would sue for pardon, she would remit his sentence and allow him to live. Why would he not do it? If he would send her the ring which she had given him for exactly such an emergency, he might be saved. Why did he not send it? The courtiers and statesmen about her urged her to sign the warrant; the peace of the country demanded the execution of the laws in a case of such unquestionable guilt. They told her, too, that Essex wished to die, that he knew that he was hopelessly and irretrievably ruined, and that life, if granted to him, was a boon which would compromise her own safety and confer no benefit on him. Still Elizabeth waited and waited in an agony of suspense, in hopes that the ring would come; the sending of it would be so far an act of submission on his part as would put it in her power to do the rest. Her love could bend her pride, indomitable as it usually was, almost to the whole concession, but it would not give up quite all. It demanded some sacrifice on his part, which sacrifice the sending of the ring would have rendered. The ring did not come, nor any petition for mercy, and at length the fatal warrant was signed.

What the courtiers said about Essex's desire to die was doubtless true. Like every other person involved in irretrievable sufferings and sorrows, he wanted to live, and he wanted to die. The two contradictory desires shared dominion in his heart, sometimes struggling together in a tumultuous conflict, and sometimes reigning in alternation, in calms more terrible, in fact, than the tempests which preceded and followed them.

At the appointed time the unhappy man was led out to the court-yard in the Tower where the last scene was to be enacted. The lieutenant of the Tower presided, dressed in a black velvet gown, over a suit of black satin. The "scaffold" was a platform about twelve feet square and four feet high, with a railing around it, and steps by which to ascend. The block was in the center of it, covered, as well as the platform itself, with black cloth. There were seats erected near for those who were appointed to be present at the execution. Essex ascended the platform with a firm step, and, surveying the solemn scene around him with calmness and composure, he began to speak.

He asked the forgiveness of God, of the spectators present, and of the queen, for the crimes for which he was about to suffer. He acknowledged his guilt, and the justice of his condemnation. His mind seemed deeply imbued with a sense of his accountability to God, and he expressed a strong desire to be forgiven, for Christ's sake, for all the sins which he had committed, which had been, he said, most numerous and aggravated from his earliest years. He asked the spectators present to join him in his devotions, and he then proceeded to offer a short prayer, in which he implored pardon for his sins, and a long life and happy reign for the queen. The prayer ended, all was ready. The executioner, according to the strange custom on such occasions, then asked his pardon for the violence which he was about to commit, which Essex readily granted. Essex laid his head upon the block, and it required three blows to complete its severance from the body. When the deed was done, the executioner took up the bleeding head, saying solemnly, as he held it, "God save the queen."

There were but few spectators present at this dreadful scene, and they were chiefly persons required to attend in the discharge of their official duties. There was, however, one exception; it was that of a courtier of high rank, who had long been Essex's inveterate enemy, and who could not deny himself the savage pleasure of witnessing his rival's destruction. But even the stern and iron-hearted officers of the Tower were shocked at his appearing at the scaffold. They urged him to go away, and not distress the dying man by his presence at such an hour. The courtier yielded so far as to withdraw from the scaffold; but he could not go far away. He found a place where he could stand unobserved to witness the scene, at the window of a turret which overlooked the court-yard.



CHAPTER XII.

THE CONCLUSION.

1600-1603

Question of Essex's guilt.—General opinion of mankind.—Elizabeth's distress.—Fall of Essex's party.—Wounds of the heart.—Elizabeth's efforts to recover her spirits.—Embassage from France.—A conversation.—Thoughts of Essex.—Harrington.—The Countess of Nottingham.—The ring.—The Countess of Nottingham's confession.—The queen's indignation.—Bitter reminiscences.—The queen removes to Richmond.—Elizabeth grows worse.—The private chapel and the closets.—The wedding ring.—The queen's friends abandon her.—The queen's voice fails.—She calls her council together.—The chaplains.—The prayers.—The queen's death.—King James proclaimed.—Portrait of James the First.—Burial of the queen.—Westminster Abbey.—Its history.—The Poet's Corner.—Henry the Seventh's Chapel.—Elizabeth's monument.—James.—Mary's monument.—Feelings of visitors.—Summary of Elizabeth's character.

There can be no doubt that Essex was really guilty of the treason for which he was condemned, but mankind have generally been inclined to consider Elizabeth rather than him as the one really accountable, both for the crime and its consequences. To elate and intoxicate, in the first place, an ardent and ambitious boy, by flattery and favors, and then, in the end, on the occurrence of real or fancied causes of displeasure, to tease and torment so sensitive and impetuous a spirit to absolute madness and phrensy, was to take the responsibility, in a great measure, for all the effects which might follow. At least so it has generally been regarded. By almost all the readers of the story, Essex is pitied and mourned—it is Elizabeth that is condemned. It is a melancholy story; but scenes exactly parallel to this case are continually occurring in private life all around us, where sorrows and sufferings which are, so far as the heart is concerned, precisely the same result from the combined action, or rather, perhaps, the alternating and contending action, of fondness, passion, and obstinacy. The results are always, in their own nature, the same, though not often on so great a scale as to make the wrong which follows treason against a realm, and the consequences a beheading in the Tower.

There must have been some vague consciousness of this her share in the guilt of the transaction in Elizabeth's mind, even while the trial of Essex was going on. We know that she was harassed by the most tormenting suspense and perplexity while the question of the execution of his sentence was pending. Of course, when the plot was discovered, Essex's party and all his friends fell immediately from all influence and consideration at court. Many of them were arrested and imprisoned, and four were executed, as he had been. The party which had been opposed to him acquired at once the entire ascendency, and they all, judges, counselors, statesmen, and generals, combined their influence to press upon the queen the necessity of his execution. She signed one warrant and delivered it to the officer; but then, as soon as the deed was done, she was so overwhelmed with distress and anguish that she sent to recall it, and had it canceled. Finally she signed another, and the sentence was executed.

Time will cure, in our earlier years, most of the sufferings, and calm most of the agitations of the soul, however incurable and uncontrollable they may at first appear to the sufferer. But in the later periods of life, when severe shocks strike very heavily upon the soul, there is found far less of buoyancy and recovering power to meet the blow. In such cases the stunned and bewildered spirit moves on, after receiving its wound, staggering, as it were, with faintness and pain, and leaving it for a long time uncertain whether it will ultimately rise and recover, or sink down and die.

Dreadfully wounded as Elizabeth was, in all the inmost feelings and affections of her heart, by the execution of her beloved favorite, she was a woman of far too much spirit and energy to yield without a struggle. She made the greatest efforts possible after his death to banish the subject from her mind, and to recover her wonted spirits. She went on hunting excursions and parties of pleasure. She prosecuted with great energy her war with the Spaniards, and tried to interest herself in the siege and defense of Continental cities. She received an embassage from the court of France with great pomp and parade, and made a grand progress through a part of her dominions, with a long train of attendants, to the house of a nobleman, where she entertained the embassador many days in magnificent state, at her own expense, with plate and furniture brought from her own palaces for the purpose. She even planned an interview between herself and the King of France, and went to Dover to effect it.

But all would not do. Nothing could drive the thoughts of Essex from her mind, or dispel the dejection with which the recollection of her love for him, and of his unhappy fate, oppressed her spirit. A year or two passed away, but time brought no relief. Sometimes she was fretful and peevish, and sometimes hopelessly dejected and sad. She told the French embassador one day that she was weary of her life, and when she attempted to speak of Essex as the cause of her grief, she sighed bitterly and burst into tears.

When she recovered her composure, she told the embassador that she had always been uneasy about Essex while he lived, and, knowing his impetuosity of spirit and his ambition, she had been afraid that he would one day attempt something which would compromise his life, and she had warned and entreated him not to be led into any such designs, for, if he did so, his fate would have to be decided by the stern authority of law, and not by her own indulgent feelings but that all her earnest warnings had been insufficient to save him.

It was the same whenever any thing occurred which recalled thoughts of Essex to her mind; it almost always brought tears to her eyes. When Essex was commanding in Ireland, it will be recollected that he had, on one occasion, come to a parley with Tyrone, the rebel leader, across the current of a stream. An officer in his army, named Harrington, had been with him on this occasion, and present, though at a little distance, during the interview. After Essex had left Ireland, another lord-deputy had been appointed; but the rebellion continued to give the government a great deal of trouble. The Spaniards came over to Tyrone's assistance, and Elizabeth's mind was much occupied with plans for subduing him. One day Harrington was at court in the presence of the queen, and she asked him if he had ever seen Tyrone. Harrington replied that he had. The queen then recollected the former interview which Harrington had had with him, and she said, "Oh, now I recollect that you have seen him before!" This thought recalled Essex so forcibly to her mind, and filled her with such painful emotions, that she looked up to Harrington with a countenance full of grief: tears came to her eyes, and she beat her breast with every indication of extreme mental suffering.