II. BOOK services from" circumstances not criminal, nor of themselves alone justifying imputed suspicions; but which take that appearance when viewed in connexion with all his other conduct. And the general effect of the whole of these unquestionable facts, leaves a dissatisfied feeling upon the mind that is calmly investigating, and which endeavors fairly to appreciate his character, even without resorting to the scandal of the day, or to the manifest slanders of his Romish assailants. Of their viler imputations, the first and greatest arose from his first wife's death; which roused immediate suspicions, perhaps unwarrantably, in his rural neighborhood, and so spread, as to lead Cecil to think the circumstances disadvantageous to his good name: 49 such was also the impression in the French 48 47 Catherine de Medicis, on 4th May 1570, wrote of him to the French ambassador, at London, as one whom they consulted and much relied on. 'I wish you to let the earl of Leicester know this. Following up the propos which he has held with you on it,' &c. This was to no other end but to cause him to know the good will which the king and I bear to him; and that we have done and will do all the good offices we can to aid him to attain that which he may desire in this: assuring ourselves that he will do, always, all the good offices which he can with his mistress, to keep up the amity which exists between us.' Murray's MSS. On 29th Jan. 1571, Charles IX. bids him to intreat earnestly but in the most courteous manner on my part, the queen for her [Mary,] as you say the earl of Leicester has advised you.' MSS. ib. On 28 May 1574, we read of Catherine de Medicis mentioning' a ring for lord Leicester.' ib. On the other hand, there is a letter from the ambassador to Leicester, of 6th Sept. 1570, complaining of having been deceived by him, in the British Museum, Calig. c. 2. p. 14. 48 She died 8th Sept. 1560, at Cumnore, near Oxford. On 17 Sept. 1560, T. Lever wrote from Coventry to Cecil, and to sir F. Knowles: In these parts seemeth to be a grievous and dangerous suspicion and muttering of the death of her which was the wife of my lord Robert Dudley. My desire and trust is, that by your discreet device and diligence, thro the queen's authority, earnest searching and trying out of the truth, with due punishment, IF any be found guilty in this matter, may be openly known.' Haynes, 362. This seems to be only one of those angry surmises which sometimes arise on sudden deaths, but unjustly. In his reasons against the queen marrying Leicester in 1566, the fourth is, 'He is infamed by death of his wife.' ib. 144. XXXIII. capital.50 Yet as these are most fully told by one of CHAP. his most rancorous revilers," the mode of her death does not necessarily imply a producing criminality." 52 The 50 On 28 Oct. 1560, sir N. Throckmorton wrote from Paris, bruits be so brim and so maliciously reported here, touching the marriage of the lord Robert, and the death of his wife, as I know not where to turn me, nor what countenance to bear. Sir! I thank God, I had rather perish and quail with honesty, than live and beguile a little time with shame.' Hardw. State Papers, v. 1. p. 122. 51 It is the Jesuit Parsons who, in his 'Dialogue,' afterwards called 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' first printed abroad in 1584, and transmitted by the English Jesuits into this nation, (Sidney Mem. 61.) thus narrates it: When his lordship was in full hope to marry her majesty, and his own wife stood in his way as he supposed, he did but send her aside to the house of his servant Forster, near Oxford; where shortly she had the chance to fall from a pair of stairs, and so to break her neck; but yet without hurting of her hood that stood upon her head. But sir Richard Varney, who by commandment remained with her that day alone, with one man only, and had sent away perforce all her servants from her to a market two miles off, can tell how she died. His man being taken afterwards for a felony in the marches of Wales, and offering to publish the manner of the said murder, was made away privily in the prison; and sir Richard dying about the same time in London, said to a gentleman of mine acquaintance, that all the devils in hell did tear him to pieces. The wife also of Bald Butler, kinsman to my lord, gave out the whole fact a little before his death.' Parsons' Leicest. Commonw. p. 22. This book was in 1585 translated into French, and circulated abroad. On 14 January 1585, C. Paget wrote to Mary, that Leicester supposed her to be privy to the setting forth this book against him, and will persecute you to the uttermost.' Murd. p. 437. So Morgan, on the next day, stated to her, 'It was told me that Leicester should say, that the book written against him tendeth all to your honor, and to his ruin, and therefore he would provide thereafter.' Murd. 456. 52 I have known three persons perish from falling down stairs accidentally. One in full health, by missing the first step at top, as moving rapidly to the staircase; another, a large heavy gentleman, who, in going to his chamber up the staircase, by some accident overbalancing on one side as he raised his foot, swung over the short iron balustrades before he could recover himself, on the marble pavement of the hall below; and a late eminent physician, going from his study at midnight to his bed-room, stumbled backwards, and in the morning was found dying at the foot of his staircase, this November 1828. Therefore lady Leicester's fall might have been accident, not murder; and as other ways would have more certainly and quietly killed her, and this violence might have only maimed her, it seems, in the absence of all other evidence but the fact of her death, to be too much of a surmise as to the cause, to be justly charged as guilt upon her husband. If he had then views on any other lady, it is unlikely that such an incident, from its probable imputation, would have been resorted to by a man so acute, and under the scrutiny of such a sagacious and reflective queen. II. BOOK By his connexions with Mary and Norfolk, he had been favoring the plots of the Romish party in the kingdom. Yet that he gave them afterwards some unknown but unpardonable offence, we may infer from the fact, that their writers have become his most implacable assailants." The Spanish Jesuit paints him with branding characters; and the Catholic Dr. Sanders regrets that the sister and predecessor of Elizabeth did not execute him when she had the power." But it was Parsons, the clever and persevering disciple of St. Ignatius, who devoted an entire pamphlet to defame him ;" and the great 53 The new and expatiating title chosen for the French version of Parsons' book, in 1585, for its continental circulation, is one specimen of this determination of its authors and disseminators to destroy him, if words and charges could have this effect. La vie abominable, ruses, trahisons, murtres, impostures, empoisonnements, pailliardises, atheismes, et autres tres iniques conversations, due quelle ià usé et use journellement le my lord de Lecestre, machiaveliste, contre l'honneur de Dieu, sa princesse,' &c. Sid. Mem. 61, 2. It is Ribadineira who styles him hombre sin Dios, sin fe, sin ley;'-without God, without faith, without law, (p. 315,) which I interpret to mean, that he had become a decided opponent of the machinations of this Jesuit's order: for we may fairly ask, if, with those machinations, they could themselves have much of Dios, fe or ley? Sanders declares that Leicester was 'tantorum malorum auctor;' that Mary, the preceding queen, was thought to have done nothing, in all her life, more incommodius, than that she did not execute him when she had the power, on his being condemned with his father.' De Schis. p. 327, 8. This book, now usually entitled 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' is in the form of a dialogue between a gentleman and a lawyer, on the "Defence of the public Justice,' then recently published by Elizabeth's government. It is directed principally against Leicester, and thus blackens him with every crime. That, to marry his minion, dame Lettice of Essex,' he poisoned her husband in his journey from Ireland; that he overthrew the archbishop of Canterbury for not allowing him two wives at once, p. 21.: That when in full hope to marry her majesty, he caused his own wife to be murdered,' p. 22: That after this he fell in love with the lady Sheffield,' and 'had the same fortune to have her husband die quickly,' p. 23: That cardinal Chatillan having accused him to the queen, died on his return of a burning fever [from poison], p. 24: That Mrs. Draycot was also poisoned, with the XXXIII. papal champion, and half-sainted Dr. Allen, with CHAP. concurring hatred adopting the slanders and party malignity of his precursor, selects him as an object of his peculiar denunciation." The abuse of unreasonable or inveterate enemies, is at all times rather our praise than our disgrace; and as Cecil was a more active and effective public adversary to the papal conspirators than Leicester was, their peculiar vituperation of this execrated earl, looks like their revenge for private treachery, or the unforgiving disappointment of excited hope. Their attacks are full demonstration that his conduct, whatever it was, whether that of a partisan becoming an informer, or a deserter, or of an invited friend proving but a penetrating spy, had yet effectually thwarted the papal schemes, and fixed on Leicester their most envenomed hate. The earl of Essex, p. 25: That he invited sir Nicholas Throckmorton to a supper at his house, who died that night of poison, 'given him in a salad there,' p. 27: That he attempted to poison the earl of Sussex and monsieur Siniers, 28; and, that after visiting lady Lennox, at Hackney, she fell immediately into such a flux' as killed her; and that she, and all near her, were fully of opinion that my lord had procured her dispatch at his being there,' p. 28. All these, and other villanies, are enlarged upon, so as to destroy all credibility in the accusation, from the unnatural accumulation of atrocities which they lay upon him; proving only the depth of the hatred he had excited in the Romanists. 57 It is in his Admonition' that the cardinal distinguishes him by this urbane designation, venturing beyond Parsons, for he chuses to suppose the queen an accomplice in the wife's death: In which sort, besides others whom we need not note, she hath exalted one special extortioner, whom she took up, first of a traitor, and worse than nought. To have the more freedom and interest [with her] he, as may be presumed, by her consent, caused his own wife cruelly to be murthered; as afterward, for the accomplishment of his like brutish pleasures with another noble dame, it is openly known he made away her husband; who now, of an amorous minion, advanced to higher office, degree, and excessive wealth, is become her chief leader in all her wicked and unwonted course of regiment; her instrument for the destruction of the nobility by many indirect means and of the ruining,' &c. &c. Admon. p. xviii. BOOK actual cause of their distinguishing indignation is now inscrutable by us ; II. We, distant mortals, lost in doubts below; 'But guess by rumor, and but boast we know.' 58 But it is for us also to recollect, that he was vindi- 58 Sir Henry, then lord deputy of Ireland, wrote to the council of England, on the earl of Essex's death in Ireland in 1576, That he had made a diligent enquiry into the affair, and found that by the earl of Essex's own relation, it was usual for him to fall into a bloody flux whenever he was disturbed in mind; that his body retained the same colour in his sickness as in perfect health; no spot, no infection appeared, no falling off of the hair or nails, and when his corps was opened, there were no visible signs of poison seen on him; none of his physicians had advised any manner of application against the force of poison, and that his cupbearer was falsely accused of having intermingled it with his wine.' Sidney Pap. Mem. prefixed, p. 48. Lord Leicester did not marry the countess till 21st September 1578, two years after her husband's death. Their only son died in July 1584, but she survived him till Christmas-day 1634. ib. 69. 59 It is printed by Mr. Collins, from the MS. in the Memoirs prefixed to the Sidney Papers, p. 62-8. He arraigns the writer, not only for concealing his name when uttering such dishonorable falsehoods,' but also for counterfeiting himself to be a Protestant.' p. 62. He says, with some justice, that it is so full of horrible villainies, as no good heart will think it possible to enter into any creature.' It may rebound upon himself the vile reproach of a railer, but never can sink into any good mind.' p. 63. He vindicates the Dudley ancestry and their connexions with great earnestness and feeling. 60 He closes indignantly with, To thee I say, thou therein liest in thy throat, which I will be ready to justify upon thee, in any place of Europe where thou wilt assign me a free place of coming, as within three months after the publishing hereof I may understand thy mind. Till thou hast proved this, in all construction of virtue and honor, all |