queen for pardon. He had taken up the high tone of an injured person, and he intimated that he expected satisfaction for the blow he had received, regardless of the gallant Spanish proverb, "Blancos manos no offendite," "white hands never offend." The queen demanded an apology for his insolent demeanour, as well she might. He, whose duty it was, as earl-marshal, to defend her from all personal injury, and to commit to the prison, over which his office gave him jurisdiction, any one who raised brawls in the court, or violated, in any manner, the solemn etiquettes which guard the approaches to the royal person he had conducted himself in a manner which would have ensured any one else a lodging in the Marshalsea, if not in the Tower, with a heavy Star-Chamber fine; and yet the queen had only punished him with a box on the ear, to which he had responded in a manner that might have brought another man to the block. At length, however, some compromise was effected, and in November he was again received at court, and as if nothing had happened to occasion a five months' absence.

The affairs of Ireland had, meantime, assumed a more gloomy aspect than they had yet done; the whole country was in a state of that disaffection, which is the offspring of misrule and misery, and the province of Ulster was in open rebellion under the earl of Tyrone. The choice of a new lord-deputy was still a matter of debate; the queen considered Charles Blount, lord Mountjoye, was a suitable person to undertake that difficult office. Essex again

ventured to dissent from the royal opinion, and raised objections not only to that young nobleman, but to every one else who was proposed, till at last the queen, finding no one would satisfy him, insisted on his taking the appointment himself. This post was bestowed in anger rather than love, his rivals and foes rejoiced in the prospect of being rid of his presence in the court; and that there was a combination among them to render it a snare to accomplish his ruin, no one who reads the hints given by Markham to his friend Harrington, who was sent out by the queen as a spy on Essex, can for a moment doubt.

66

If," says he, "the lord-deputy Essex perform in the field what he hath promised in the council, all will be well; but though the queen hath granted forgiveness for his late

demeanour in her presence, we know not what to think thereof. She hath, in all outward semblance, placed confidence in the man who so lately sought other treatment at her hands; we do sometime think one way and sometime another. What betideth the lord-deputy, is known to Him only, who knoweth all; but when a man hath so many shewing friends and so many unshewing enemies, who learneth his end here below? I say, do you not meddle in any sort, nor give your jesting too freely among those you know not." The solemn warnings, which Markham addresses to Harrington, are sufficiently portentous of the approaching fall of Essex, which is as shrewdly predicted in this remarkable letter, as if it had been settled and foreknown. "Two or three of Essex's sworn foes and political rivals, Mountjoye's kinsmen," he says, "are sent out in your army. They are to report all your conduct to us at home. As you love yourself, the queen, and me, discover not these matters; if I had not loved you they had never been told. High concerns deserve high attention; you are to take account of all that passes in this expedition, and keep journal thereof unknown to any in the company-this will be expected of you."

Essex appears to have received some hint that his appointment was the work of his enemies, and he endeavoured to back out of the snare, but in vain, and, in the bitterness of his heart, he addressed the following sad and passionate letter to Elizabeth :

THE EARL OF ESSEX TO THE QUEEN.

"From a mind delighting in sorrow; from spirits wasted with passion ; from a heart torn in pieces with care, grief, and travail; from a man that hateth himself, and all things else that keep him alive; what service can your majesty expect, since any service past deserves no more than banishment and proscription to the cursedest of all islands? It is your rebel's pride and succession that must give me leave to ransome myself out of this hateful prison, out of my loathed body, which, if it happened so, your majesty shall have no cause to mistake the fashion of my death, since the course of my life ould never please you.

"Happy could be finish forth his fate,

In some unhaunted desert most obscure,
From all society, from love and hate,

Of worldly folk; then should he sleep secure.
Then wake again, and yield God ever praise,
Content with hips, and haws, and bramble berry,
In contemplation passing out his days,

And change of holy thoughts to make him merry;

And when he dies his tomb may be a bush,
Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush.

"Your majesty's exiled servant,

"ROBERT ESSEX."1

The queen was, perhaps, touched with the profound melancholy of this letter, for she betrayed some emotion when he kissed her hand at parting, and she bade him a tender farewell. The people crowded to witness his departure, and followed him for more than four miles out of London, with blessings and acclamations. It was on the 29th of March, 1599, that he set forth on this ill-omened expedition. When he left London, the day was calm and fair; but scarcely had he reached Iselden, when a black cloud from the north-east overshadowed the horizon, and a great storm of thunder and lightning, with hail and rain, was regarded, by the superstition of the times, as a portent of impending woe:2

The policy pursued by Essex was of a pacific character. He loved the excitement of battle when in the cause of freedom, or when the proud Spaniard threatened England with invasion; but, as the governor of Ireland, his noble nature inclined him to the blessed work of mercy and conciliation. He ventured to disobey the bloody orders he had received from the short-sighted politicians, who were for enforcing the same measures which had converted that fair isle into a howling wilderness, and goaded her despairing people into becoming brigands and rabid wolves. If the generous and chivalric Essex had been allowed to work out his own plans, he would probably have healed all wounds, and proved the regenerator of Ireland; but, surrounded as he was by spies, and thwarted by his deadly and jealous foes in the cabinet, and, finally, rendered an object of suspicion to the most jealous of sovereigns, he only accelerated his own doom, without ameliorating the evils he would fain have cured.

3

The events of the Irish campaign belong to general history; suffice it to say, that Elizabeth was greatly offended with Essex for three things. He had appointed his friend, Southampton, general of the horse, against her majesty's express orders, who had not yet forgiven that 2 Contemporary document in Nichols. 3 See Camden. Leland. Rapin. Lingard.

1 Birch.

DE METTE na treated with Tyrone * J Sar oreret for our he hat exercised & place of many moms which though in strict STTUALE Will it aws of Cervar she wished to be coninset excusiver a te swort of the sovereign. She wrote Sven at reprem etter u nia. I presumed to Just amet ir al mar done and all he had left tutor aut dent remorcement of men and munitrote of was. fo us fores were reducer by desertion, seless aut the commgencies of war. The queen was funnet, aut we of course, encouraged in her ministers it reluse everyting me to cope with Tyrone, from the neficiency of his forces he was glad to meet on amicae grouts a rate interview where many erviinues went exchanged, and he promised to convey the Continious requrec in the chief n the queen. Though tuuse conditions went more than justice and sound poler ougin to have induced the sovereign to grant, Elizabeti regarded it as treason, on the part of Essex, even to listen to them, and she expressed herself in that spirit to her murtunate viceroy. The fiery and impetrous end was infuriated, in iis turn, at the reports that were conrered to him, of the practices against him in the English cabinet. He was accused of aiming at making himself king of Ireland, with the assistance of Tyrone; nay, even of aspiring to the crown of England, and that he was plotting to bring over a wild Irish army to dethrone the queen Elizabeth's health suffered in consequence of the ferment in which her spirits were kept, and the agonizing conflict of her mind between love and hatred. She removed to her fairy palace of Nonsuch for a change of air; and hearing, soon after, that a rumour of her death had got into circulation, she was somewhat troubled, and would often murmur to herself, "Mortua sed non sepulta,"-"dead, but not buried."*

Elizabeth suffered from needless anxiety at this period: the new king of Spain, Philip III. had, indeed, sent a formidable expedition to sea, with the declared purpose of attempting a descent on some part of her dominions. Irewas the weak point, which the disaffection, produced

en, Birch. Lingard.

"Sidney Papers, vol. ii. p. 114.

by misgovernment, rendered vulnerable, and it was artfully insinuated to her majesty, that Essex was a traitor at heart; but with such an admiral, as the earl of Nottingham, she had no cause to fear the Spanish fleet, and the treasons of Essex, existed only in the malignant representations of sir Robert Cecil, Raleigh, and Cobham. She wrote, however, in so bitter a style to Essex, that he fancied her letters were composed by Raleigh. He perceived that his ruin was determined by the powerful junta of foes, who guided the council, and had poisoned the royal ear against him.

In an evil hour, he determined to return and plead his own cause, to his royal mistress, in the fond idea, that her own tenderness would second his personal eloquence. At first, he is said to have resolved to bring a body of troops with him for the security of his own person; but from this unlawful purpose, he was dissuaded by sir Christopher Blount, his mother's husband, and his more prudent advisers. On the 28th of September, he arrived in London, and learning that the queen was at Nonsuch, he hastily crossed the ferry at Lambeth, attended by only six persons, and seized for his own use the horses of some gentlemen, which were waiting there for their masters. He learned from one of his friends, that his great enemy lord Grey, of Wilton, was on the road before him, and that he was posting to Cecil, to announce his arrival. It was this adverse circumstance which precipitated the fate of Essex, who, urged by the natural impetuosity of his character, spurred on, through mud and mire, at headlong speed, in the vain hope of overtaking his foe, that he might be the first to bring the news of his return to court. Grey had the start of him, and being probably better mounted, won the fierce race, and had already been closeted a full quarter of an hour with Cecil, when Essex arrived at the palace.

It was then about ten o'clock in the morning, and the rash Essex, without pausing for a moment's consideration, rushed into the privy-chamber to seek the queen; not finding her there, he determined at all hazards to obtain an interview before his enemies should have barred his access to her presence, and all breathless, disordered, and travel-stained, as he was, his very face being covered with spots of mud, he burst unannounced into her bed-chamber, flung himself on his knees before her, and covered her hands with kisses. The