by extravagant profusion. Her majesty, having made him repeat his name to herself, said to him, "Fail you not to come to court, and I will bethink me how to do you good." His fortune was then very small. The Earl of Essex was seized with jealous displeasure at the favourable reception given by the queen to this modest young courtier, who, bashful as he was, was well accomplished in the manly exercises of that chivalrous age. One day, the noble student ran so well at the tilt, that the queen, being highly pleased with him, sent him, in token of her favour, a golden chessqueen, richly enamelled, which his servants next day fastened to his arm with a crimson ribbon. Proud of this token, and the better to display it, Charles Blount passed through the privy chamber, with his cloak under his arm, instead of over his shoulder, on which, the Earl of Essex observing the decoration, demanded what it was, and wherefore so placed? Mr. Fulke Greville replied, "that it was the queen's favour, which the day before she had, after the tilting, sent to Charles Blount,' on which the earl contemptuously observed, "Now I perceive that every fool must have a favour."

1

Blount replied to this unprovoked impertinence by a challenge. He and Essex met near Marybone park, and the haughty favourite was wounded in the thigh, and disarmed. When the queen was informed of this hostile encounter, and its result, she swore, "by God's death, that it was fit that some one or other should take the earl down, and teach him manners, otherwise there would be no ruling him."

Essex had distinguished himself very honourably at the battle of Zutphen, where he encouraged his men with this chivalric address:-" For the honour of England, my fellows, follow me!" and with that he "threw his lance into the rest, and overthrew the first man; and with his curtelax so behaved himself, that it was wonderful to see.”3

In that same battle, the flower of English chivalry, the illustrious sir Philip Sidney, received his death-wound; after performing prodigies of valour, his thigh-bone was shattered, in the third charge. When Leceister saw him,

1 Birch's Memorials; Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia.

2 Naunton.

3 Stowe.

he exclaimed with great feeling, "Oh, Philip! I am sorry for thy hurt."

"Oh, my lord!" replied the dying hero, "this have I done to do you honour and her majesty service."

Sir William Russell kissed his hand, and said, with tears, Oh, noble sir Philip! never man attained hurt more honourably than ye have done, nor any served like unto you." But Sidney's most glorious deed was yet to do; when, a few minutes after this, he resigned the cup of cold water which he had craved, in his agony, to quench the death-thirst of a private soldier, who had turned a longing look on the precious draught. "Give it to him," exclaimed sir Philip, "his necessity is greater than mine;" an incident which must have inclined every one to say, that the death of Sidney was worthy of his life. Public honours were decreed to the remains of her hero by his weeping country, and the learned young king of Scotland composed his epitaph in elegiac Latin verse. Elizabeth is said to have prevented sir Philip Sidney's election to the sovereignty of Poland, observing, "That she could not afford to part with the choicest jewel of her court." Sidney, in a tone of chivalric loyalty, replied, "And I would rather remain the subject of queen Elizabeth, than accept of the highest preferment in a foreign land."1

Elizabeth subsequently alluded to the death of this accomplished hero, in terms approaching to levity, on the occasion of her youthful favourite, Charles Blount, escaping from the silken bonds in which her majesty essayed to detain him, and joining the English army in Flanders. Elizabeth sent a special messenger to his commander, sir John Norreys, charging him to send her truant back to her. She received Blount with a sound rating, asking him how he durst go without her consent. "Serve me so once more," added she, "and I will lay you fast enough, for running!—you will never leave off, till you are knocked over the head, as that inconsiderate fellow Sidney was.' Such was the respect cherished by the sovereign, for the memory of the brightest ornament of her court-he who had worshipped her as a goddess, during his life, and rejoiced to die in her service!

She concluded her lecture to her dainty pet, in these

words:- You shall go when I send you. In the meantime, see that you lodge in the court, where you may follow your books, read, and discourse of the wars."

Christopher Blount, undoubtedly a near relation of the highly honoured courtier, Charles, was the person employed by Elizabeth as a spy upon Leicester's proceedings in the Low Countries. Both the French ambassador and Morgan, in their private letters to the captive queen of Scots, suggest the expediency of endeavouring to win him over to her interest, as a person likely to afford very important information to her friends as to the affairs of England. Yet any one possessed of the slightest reflection, would be apt to imagine, that the very attempt to tamper with a person so connected, would be dangerous in the extreme, and only likely to end in betraying their political secrets to Elizabeth.

The course of chronology now brings us to the darkest and most painful epoch of the maiden reign, the death of Elizabeth's hapless kinswoman, Mary queen of Scots.

The implacable junta by whom Elizabeth's resolves were at times influenced, and her better feelings smothered, had sinned too deeply against Mary Stuart, to risk the possibility of her surviving their royal mistress. Elizabeth shrank from either incurring the odium, or establishing the dangerous precedent, of bringing a sovereign princess to the block. The queens, whose blood had been shed on the scaffold by her ruthless father, were subjects of his own, puppets whom he had raised, and then degraded from the fatal dignity which his own caprice had bestowed upon them; but even he, tyrant as he was, had not ventured to slay either of his royally-born consorts, Katharine of Arragon, or Anne of Cleves, though claiming the two-fold authority of husband and sovereign over both.

Blount, afterwards, became fatally enamoured of the fair and frail sister of his old adversary, Essex, the beautiful Penelope, whom he had engaged in a mutual affection before she was linked in a joyless wedlock with Robert, lord Rich. They finally engaged in an illicit passion; and, after much guilt and sorrow, were united in marriage, when lady Rich was repudiated by her injured husband; but Blount, who had succeeded to his brother's title, died the following year, 1606, of the sorrow his self-indulgence had sown for him, a mournful sequel to the bright beginning of his fortunes.

This appears to have been the sir Christopher Blount, who became the husband of the countess of Leicester, after the decease of her lord, whose death they have been accused of hastening by poison. He was put to death for his share in Essex's rebellion.

Mary Stuart was not only a king's daughter, but a crowned and anointed sovereign; and under no pretence, could she legally be rendered amenable to Elizabeth's authority. Every species of quiet cruelty that might tend to sap the life of a delicately-organized and sensitive female, had been systematically practised on the royal captive by the leaders of Elizabeth's cabinet. Mary had been confined in damp, dilapidated apartments, exposed to malaria, deprived of exercise and recreation, and compelled, occasionally, by way of variety, to rise from a sick bed, and travel through an inclement country, from one prison to another, in the depth of winter. These atrocities, had entailed upon her a complication of chronic maladies of the most agonizing description, but she continued to exist, and it was evident that the vital principle in her constitution, was sufficiently tenacious to enable her to endure many years of suffering. The contingencies of a day, an hour, meantime, might lay Elizabeth in the dust, and call Mary Stuart to the seat of empire. Could Burleigh, Walsingham, and Leicester expect, in that event, to escape the vengeance which their injurious treatment had provoked from that princess?

It is just possible, that Burleigh, rooted as he was to the helm of state, and skilled in every department of government, might, like Talleyrand, have made his defence good, and retained his office at court, if not his personal influence with the sovereign, under any change. He had observed an outward shew of civility to Mary, and was suspected, by Walsingham, of having entered into some secret pact with James of Scotland; but Walsingham and Leicester had committed themselves irrevocably, and, for them, there could be no other prospect than the block, if the Scottish queen, who was nine years younger than Elizabeth, outlived her.

From the moment that Elizabeth had declared that "honour and conscience both forbade her to put Mary to death," it had been the great business of these determined foes of Mary, to convince her that it was incompatible with her own safety, to permit her to live. Assertions to this effect, were lightly regarded by Elizabeth, but the evidence of a series of conspiracies, real as well as feigned, 1 See Letters of Mary queen of Scots.

began to take effect upon her mind, and slowly, but surely, brought her to the same conclusion.

For many years it had been the practice of Walsingham to employ spies, not only for the purpose of watching the movements of those who were suspected of attachment to the Scottish queen, but to inveigle them into plots against the government and person of queen Elizabeth. One of these base agents, William Parry, after years of secret treachery in this abhorrent service, became himself a convert to the doctrines of the church of Rome, and conceived a design of assassinating queen Elizabeth. This he communicated to Neville, one of the English exiles, the claimant of the forfeit honours and estates of the last earl of Westmoreland. Neville, in the hope of propitiating the queen, gave prompt information of Parry's intentions against her majesty; but as Parry had formerly denounced Neville, Elizabeth, naturally imagining that he had been making a very bold attempt to draw Neville into an overt act of treason, directed Walsingham to inquire of the spy, whether he had recently, by way of experiment, suggested the idea of taking away her life to any one? If Parry had replied in the affirmative he would have been safe; but the earnest manner of his denial excited suspicion. He and Neville were confronted; and he then avowed " that he had felt so strong an impulse to murder the queen, that he had, of late, always left his dagger at home when summoned to her presence, lest he should fall upon her and slay her.”1 This strange conflict of feeling appears like the reasoning madness of a monomaniac, and suggests the idea that Parry's mind had become affected with the delirious excitement of the times.

He was condemned to death, and on the scaffold cited his royal mistress to the tribunal of the all-seeing Judge, in whose presence he was about to appear."

The unhappy man expressly acquitted the queen of Scots of any knowledge of his designs. Mary herself, in her private letters, denies having the slightest connexion with him. The plot, however, furnished an excuse for treating her with greater cruelty than before. Her comparatively humane keeper, Sir Ralph Sadler, was superseded by Sir Amias Paulet and Sir Drue Drury, two rigid puri1 Hamilton's Annals. State Trials.

* Camden.