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.' But it is for us also to recollect, that he was vindicated from the criminations of Parsons, as to Essex, by his brother-in-law sir Henry Sidney;58 and that as to the general aspersions of the calumniating book, his nephew, the honored and beloved sir Philip Sidney, wrote an earnest denial, characterising the vituperative publication as he thought it deserved, and challenging the anonymous libeller to come forward and maintain, by his courage or by proof, what his secret pen had maliciously invented. 59 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 XXXIII. From a consideration of all the preceding circum- CHAP. stances, it may not be an unfair conclusion, to reject the private scandals as the exaggeration of popular surmise by wilful or credulous malignity; but to infer, that he chose to take in political society, the peculiar and hazardous position of mingling in the dealings and of obtaining the confidence of all parties, and especially of those whom he knew or suspected to be inimical to government, or weaving plots against it, in the dangerous period between 1566 and 1572; in order that he might choose whether he should ultimately promote or subvert them, and advance his own importance by their success, or by betraying them. Eagerly courted by the shame thou hast spoken is thine own. So if I do not, having my life and liberty, prove this upon thee, I am content that this lie which I have given thee, return to my perpetual infamy.' p. 68. I admit that the sword is no decider of moral evidence, nor bravery a criterion of moral truth. But sir Philip could not do more than to meet what were mere assertions, by contradictory assertions: to hold up their author as a liar in their publication, and to put his own life to the hazard, if his epithet was incorrect. No Christian can approve a duel, nor a challenge to fight one: but neither would any Christian have written such a book. As nothing like evidence accompanies the charges, common justice to each other seems to require us, in this unsubstantiated state, to deem them but a fugitive portion of that circulating scandal which, tho it amuses society, neither benefits nor becomes it. That Mary's party strove with peculiar industry against Leicester, we see from many indications. When he was in Holland, her confidential agent Morgan, at Paris, assured her, in March 1586, My poor advice and labor shall not want to give Leicester all dishonor, which will fall upon him in the end with shame enough, tho for the present he be very strong in the fields and towns of that country. Murd. 494. On 20 July 1585, the same Morgan wrote to her, Leicester is a great tyrant in the realm, where Catholics be so plagued. Leicester is not born to do good to God's people.' ib. 449. Leicester had many channels of connexions with Mary's friends. We see one instance in what Morgan also told her: The said Hotman is a great Huguenot, and much addicted to Leicester. He is a kinsman to the Hotman that serveth your majesty in your council here.' Murd. 444. But Morgan, as if to counterwork Leicester, said he would get her ambassador to deal with old Hotman, to see whether the other may be made an honest man, and an instrument to serve your majesty.' ib. BOOK II. the disaffected and conspiring, from his high station 61 Possessed of her confidence, from her ignorance of his secret conduct, he knew how far she trusted him, and was enabled to discern, at what point or time she was beginning to doubt. In the instance of his confessing at once, when questioned about Norfolk, with apparent frankness and duty, as much as he could consistently with his personal security acknowlege, and then making the most humble and loyal submission as to his future conduct, we perceive how he turned the eye of further suspicion from himself, and could even assume a merit in the allegation, that he had acted to reconnoitre and explore, in order that he might baffle or control. While his own mind was undecided whether to subvert or support the government, his very hesitations would benefit it by procrastinating the execution of the ripening schemes; and as events led him, after his temporary disgrace, to resolve to uphold his royal mistress, he could make himself an important instrument of her personal and political 61 See before, note 32. XXXIII. safety, by continuing still in apparent concert with CHAP. the conspirators; and by embarrassing or baffling their projects with insidious advice or by private partial discoveries to his royal mistress, who, supposing him to know only what he revealed, would admire his penetration, while she reaped the good effects of his counsels. If Mary had chosen him for her husband instead of Darnley or Norfolk, he might have fulfilled the whole wishes of the grand confederacy, by dispossessing Elizabeth and seating the Scottish princess in her stead. But, failing in this object, it never became his superior interest to dethrone his English benefactor; and therefore whatever may have been his original intentions, or might have been his conduct, if the secret plotters had decreed him, instead of Norfolk, to have the hand of the northern Helen; yet when that became impossible, either from the opposition of Rome, because he was a heretic, or from the pride of the more highborn nobles, on account of his inferior ancestry, it was no longer his advantage to throw down · 62 That he was in correspondence with some of the exiles in 1570, we learn from lord Morley's letter to him from Bruges, in the September of that year, who intreats his assistance to obtain the queen's clemency; who writes to her by his advice; puts his son under his protection; informs him of lord Seton's coming to Flanders, and promises, From thence I will give your lordship such advices as I can learn.' Haynes, 604, 5. In October he was more earnest, as he found Elizabeth more indisposed to favor him. ib. p. 621. On 20th July 1585, Morgan wrote to Mary, from Paris, I am always full jealous of such as depend or have to do with Leicester, unless I know them.' He adds, of one Blunt, 'His father was kin to Leicester. This Blunt and his elder brother, and their mother, being all Catholics, are all forced to fawn upon Leicester, to see if thereby they may live quiet; and by Leicester's means they have been more quietly handled than some others. I have warned and prayed him earnestly to deal with your son to beware of Leicester. Murd. 448, 9. The epithet Machiavelite,' given to the earl in the French title-page, would lead us to infer that the Romanists considered him to have been playing a double part with them. MOD. HIST. VOL. IV. EE |