11.

41

BOOK when she thought he was discharging his official duties in Ireland. She received him forbearingly, but he was soon committed to a friendly custody in the lord keeper's house, with the hope that he might be withdrawn from the corrupting counsels of turbulent advisers.39 The ministers stated to the queen the errors which they considered him to have committed.40 He remained six months in his honorable confinement, in which his mind took a religious direction; and when he seemed to have abandoned his wrong feelings, he was allowed to return to his own mansion, to be privately examined by appointed commissioners. Again misled by seditious counsellors, he increased the queen's displeasure and suspicions. At length, he attempted to make the insurrection in London which he had been four months meditating, with a body of other noblemen and gentry. The treasonable effort failed; the citizens would not revolt; he was besieged, taken, and beheaded;" and some of the assisting and mis

43

39 Camd. 509.

40 The treasurer, lord Buckhurst, stated that a strong and well appointed army had been sent with him; and that this war, in six months, had cost 300,000 7. and yet nothing had been done. The lord admiral, Nottingham, mentioned, that the wisest counsellors had directed that Ulster should be first reduced; and that the earl had concurred in the opinion, and yet had done the contrary; and sir Robert Cecil, the secretary, added, that Essex had gone into Munster instead of Ulster, and he had now returned from Ireland in direct opposition to the queen's command that he should not leave it, and altho its affairs were in a desperate state. Camd. 512.

41 Camd. 513.

42 Camd. 529, 530.

43 Camd. 530-4.

"The queen was very averse, as in Mary's case, to inflict the legal punishment upon him. She at first countermanded it, till alarm and his obstinacy occasioned the fatal order. Dr. Birch remarks, that the traditional story of his application for her mercy having been intercepted by the earl and countess of Nottingham, is confirmed by Osborne, in his Memoirs, p. 23; and by Maurier, whose father heard it from prince Maurice, to whom sir Dudley Carleton related it. Birch's Mem. 2. p. 481. He was only 34 when he fell.

XXXVI.

leading counsellors also suffered. It was the last CHAP. attempt of the English nobility to shake their sovereign's throne. Their ambition afterwards sought other and wiser, or at least safer, paths and prizes.

947

46

The commotions in Ireland continued, stimulated by the disgraceful goading of the papal agency. They were at last subdued by the lord deputy Mountjoy: So that in the month of December Ireland was most peaceable, and not one fort was defended against the queen.' In the next year a Spanish force arrived, to rekindle the declining embers, proclaiming Elizabeth to be deprived of her crown by the papal sentences, and therefore that her subjects were absolved from their allegiance." The rebellion revived from their presence, but was soon suppressed, and the invaders expelled. The negociations for a peace with Spain did not effect it.50 The English retaliated the attempt by an expedition against the coast of Spain and Portugal." Tyrone at length solicited reconciliation, and absolutely submitting himself, the queen had the satisfaction of

49

45 See the detail of these events in Camd. 536-550. Dr. Birch's Memoirs of Elizabeth contain many letters and extracts, which give the fullest illustration of the conduct of the earl of Essex, and several of the more minute transactions of the last years of this reign.

46 In 1600, Clement VIII. encouraged them by an indulgence.' Camd. p. 515. It commended them for assisting his beloved son, prince O'Neil, earl of Tyrone, captain-general of the Catholic army in Ireland;' and stated, to the end that you, both captains and soldiers, may with more alacrity perform your service hereafter in this expedition against heretics, we grant to every one of you that follow the earl of Tyrone, and his army, plenary pardon and remission, upon being penitent, confessing,' &c. Camd. 515.

47 Camd. 518.

48 Camd. 567.

49 Camd. 571. The Spaniards surrendered on terms, 2 January 1601. ib.

50 Camd. 519-23. They took place at Boulogne; but disputes for precedency increased the difficulties. ib.

51 Camd. 572-4.

BOOK seeing the disturbances in Ireland terminated, as her last sickness began to increase upon her.52

II.

52 Camd. 582-4. It is to be regretted that Elizabeth allowed her reign to be stained by the burning of some persons, not Catholics, for their peculiar opinions. It was the last imitation of the cruelties of the papal church by the English hierarchy; but it was her duty to have prevented, and not to have sanctioned it. She was wiser than most of her people, and ought not to have given way to the bigotry, bad habits or prejudices of any, or acts and counsels of such disgraceful inhumanity.

CHAP. XXXVII.

THE LAST SICKNESS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER OF

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

XXXVII.

If the opinion of cardinal Bellarmine be true, and CHAP. that he spoke from the experience of his day, as a contemporary of Elizabeth, we cannot doubt, that 'kings, for the most part, have gouts and troublesome pains of the head and stomach,' in addition to the cares of mind and vexations which keep them sleepless for whole nights,"-it was but in the course of things, that both Elizabeth and Mary should be the subjects of frequent indisposition. The illnesses of Mary were so continually recurring, from her nineteenth year to her death, that they may be almost considered as habitual to her constitution, or to have arisen from indulgences which she did not alter. In the English queen, they were more

'He says, that 'Kings have gardens, orchards, banquets, huntings, theatres, and many other enjoyments of that sort, most adapted to recreate their minds; Sed habent etiam PLERUMQUE podagros, stomachi et capitis dolores; et quod amarius est, sollicitudines mentis gravissimas, quæ aliquando, totas noctes insomnes ducere cogunt.' Bellarm. de æter. felicit. p. 24.

2 In the year 1559, when Mary was 19, our ambassador at Paris frequently noticed her indispositions. He wrote in May, 'The Scottish queen looketh very ill, very pale and green, and therewithal short breathed, and it is whispered among them that she cannotlive.' Forbes, v. 1. p. 100. In June, the queen dauphin, being at church, was very evil at ease, and to keep her from swooning they were fain to bring her wine from the altar; and indeed I never saw her look so ill.' ib. 146. In the following August, 'Mr. Vielleville declared unto me that the young French queen doth daily increase in sickness, and that the same was of no long continuance; at his being at the court after dinner she looked very evil, and was so weak as, even before all the presence that was there, she fell on swooning, and was in a very dangerous case, as

II.

BOOK Occasional, tho sometimes severe; and she preferred to lessen their predominance, rather by regimen and self-government,3 than by that resort to corrective medicaments, which, as sir Francis Walsingham observed, may alter the natural powers and state of our established functions, and diminish their future efficiency, altho they furnish the comfort of present alleviation."

she is always after meals, when she was revived with aqua composita and other things, and retired.' ib. 210. A month afterwards, The French queen, who, contrary to her wont, hath, since her being at Villiers, found herself well, is now, upon such news as Leviston brought from Scotland, fallen sick again, so that at even song she was for faintness constrained to be led to her chamber, where she swooned twice or thrice. p. 244. In November, On the 11th she felt herself very evil disposed, and looked very pale, and the 12th kept her chamber all the day long.' p. 260.

After these infirmities in one year, she appears to have been sickly all her life. Every year we find similar notices; and one complaint, which scarcely ever left her, was a fixed pain, becoming often very acute, on her left side. How far this may have originated from the following accident professional gentlemen only can decide. But in this same year 1559, On 19 December, the French queen riding on hunting, and following the hart of force, was in her course cast off her gelding by a bough of a tree, and with the suddenness of the fall was not able to call her help. Tho divers gentlemen and ladies of her chamber followed her, yet three or four of them passed over her before she was espied, and some of their horses rode so near her that her hood was trodden by them. As soon as she was raised from the ground she spake, and said she felt no hurt, and herself began to set her hair, and dress her head, and so returned to the court, where she kept her chamber till the king removed. She feeleth no incommodity by her fall, yet she hath determined to change that kind of exercise.' Forbes, 290.

3 The MS. written in the year she died, which Mr. Ellis has inserted in his Second Series, thus notices this fact: She was in her diet very temperate; eating but of few kinds of meat; and those not compounded. The wine she drank was mingled with water; containing three parts more in quantity than the wine itself. Precise hours of refection, she observed not; as never eating, but when her appetite required it.' v. 3. p. 193.

Camden noticed with uneasiness to sir R. Cotton, her avoidance of medicine in her illness of 1596. Her mind altogether adverted from physique in this her climacterical year.' Ellis's Second Series, v. 3. p. 197. James I. in this respect resembled her. 'Aversus ab omnibus medicamentis rex.' He had never taken any till his 53d year. ib. 1599.

Sir Francis, in 1581, blamed lord Bacon's brother, Anthony, because he too easily and too often gave himself to the taking of medicine,