Chapter 19

1582 TO 1587.

Traits of the queen.--Brown and his sect.--Promotion of Whitgift.--Severities exercised against the puritans.--Embassy of Walsingham to Scotland.--Particulars of lord Willoughby.--Transactions with the Czar.--Death of Sussex.--Adventures of Egremond Ratcliffe--of the earl of Desmond.--Account of Raleigh--of Spenser.--Prosecutions of catholics.--Burleigh's apology for the government.--Leicester's Commonwealth.--Loyal association.--Transactions with the queen of Scots.--Account of Parry.--Case of the earl of Arundel--of the earl of Northumberland.--Transactions of Leicester in Holland.--Death and character of P. Sidney--of sir H. Sidney.--Return of Leicester.--Approaching war with Spain.--Babington's conspiracy.--Trial and condemnation of the queen of Scots.--Rejoicings of the people.--Artful conduct of the queen.--Reception of the Scotch embassy.--Conduct of Davison.--Death of Mary.--Behaviour of Elizabeth.--Davison's case.--Conduct of Leicester.--Reflections.

The disposition of Elizabeth was originally deficient in benevolence and sympathy, and prone to suspicion, pride and anger; and we observe with pain in the progress of her history, how much the influences to which her high station and the peculiar circumstances of her reign inevitably exposed her, tended in various modes to exasperate these radical evils of her nature.

The extravagant flattery administered to her daily and hourly, was of most pernicious effect; it not only fostered in her an absurd excess of personal vanity, but, what was worse, by filling her with exaggerated notions both of her own wisdom and of her sovereign power and prerogative, it contributed to render her rule more stern and despotic, and her mind on many points incapable of sober counsel. This effect was remarked by one of her clergy, who, in a sermon preached in her presence, had the boldness to tell her, that she who had been meek as lamb was become an untameable heifer; for which reproof he was in his turn reprehended by her majesty on his quitting the pulpit, as "an over confident man who dishonored his sovereign."

The decay of her beauty was an unwelcome truth which all the artifices of adulation were unable to hide from her secret consciousness; since she could never behold her image in a mirror, during the latter years of her life, without transports of impotent anger; and this circumstance contributed not a little to sour her temper, while it rendered the young and lovely the chosen objects of her malignity.

On this head the following striking anecdote is furnished by sir John Harrington.... "She did oft ask the ladies around her chamber, if they loved to think of marriage? And the wise ones did conceal well their liking hereto, as knowing the queen's judgement in this matter. Sir Matthew Arundel's fair cousin, not knowing so deeply as her fellows, was asked one day hereof, and simply said, she had thought much about marriage, if her father did consent to the man she loved. 'You seem honest, i'faith,' said the queen; 'I will sue for you to your father.'... The damsel was not displeased hereat; and when sir Robert came to court, the queen asked him hereon, and pressed his consenting, if the match was discreet. Sir Robert, much astonied at this news, said he never heard his daughter had liking to any man, and wanted to gain knowledge of her affection; but would give free consent to what was most pleasing to her highness will and advice. 'Then I will do the rest,' saith the queen. The lady was called in, and the queen told her that her father had given his free consent. 'Then,' replied the lady, 'I shall be happy, and please your grace'. 'So thou shalt, but not to be a fool and marry; I have his consent given to me, and I vow thou shalt never get it into thy possession. So go to thy business, I see thou art a bold one to own thy foolishness so readily[93].'"

[Note 93: "Nugae."]

The perils of many kinds, from open and secret enemies, by which Elizabeth had found herself environed since her unwise and unauthorized detention of the queen of Scots, aggravated the mistrustfulness of her nature; and the severities which fear and anger led her to exercise against that portion of her subjects who still adhered to the ancient faith, increased its harshness. It is true that, since the fulmination of the papal anathema, the zealots of this church had kept no measures with respect to her either in their words, their writings, or their actions. Plans of insurrection and even of assassination were frequently revolved in their councils, but as often disappointed by the extraordinary vigilance and sagacity of her ministers; while the courage evinced by herself under these circumstances of severe probation was truly admirable. Bacon relates that "the council once represented to her the danger in which she stood by the continual conspiracies against her life, and acquainted her that a man was lately taken who stood ready in a very dangerous and suspicious manner to do the deed; and they showed her the weapon wherewith he thought to have acted it. And therefore they advised her that she should go less abroad to take the air, weakly attended, as she used. But the queen answered, 'that she had rather be dead than put in custody.'"

"Ireland," says Naunton, "cost her more vexation than any thing else; the expense of it pinched her, the ill success of her officers wearied her, and in that service she grew hard to please." She also arrived at a settled persuasion that the extreme of severity was safer than that of indulgence; an opinion which, being communicated to her officers and ministers, was the occasion, especially in Ireland, of many a cruel and arbitrary act.

When angry, she observed little moderation in the expression of her feelings. In the private letters even of Cecil, whom she treated on the whole with more consideration than any other person, we find not unfrequent mention of the harsh words which he had to endure from her, sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for which she was accustomed to make sudden amends to her faithful servants by new and extraordinary tokens of her favor.

There was no branch of prerogative of which Elizabeth was more tenacious than that which invested her with the sole and supreme direction of ecclesiastical affairs. The persevering efforts therefore of the puritans, to obtain various relaxations or alterations of the laws which she in her wisdom had laid down for the government of the church,--on failure of which they scrupled not to recall to her memory the strong denunciations of the Jewish prophets against wicked and irreligious princes,--at once exasperated and alarmed her, and led her to assume continually more and more of the incongruous and odious character of a protestant persecutor of protestants. But the puritans themselves must have seemed guiltless in her eyes compared with a new sect, the principles of which, tending directly to the abrogation of all authority of the civil magistrate in spiritual concerns, called forth about this time her indignation manifested by the utmost severity of penal infliction.

It was in the year 1580 that Robert Brown, having completed his studies in divinity at Cambridge, began to preach at Norwich against the discipline and ceremonies of the church of England, and to promulgate a scheme which he affirmed to be more conformable to the apostolical model. According to his system, each congregation of believers was to be regarded as a separate church, possessing in itself full jurisdiction over its own concerns; the _liberty of prophesying_ was to be indulged to all the brethren equally, and pastors were to be elected and dismissed at the pleasure of the majority, in whom he held that all power ought of right to reside. On account of these opinions Brown was called before certain ecclesiastical commissioners, who imprisoned him for contumacy; but the interference of his relation lord Burleigh procured his release, after which he repaired to Holland, where he founded several churches and published a book in defence of his system, in which he strongly inculcated upon his disciples the duty of separating themselves from what he stated antichristian churches. For the sole offence of distributing this work, two men were hanged in Suffolk in 1583; to which extremity of punishment they were subjected as having impugned the queen's supremacy, which was declared felony by a late statute now for the first time put in force against protestants. Brown himself, after his return from Holland, was repeatedly imprisoned, and, but for the protection of his powerful kinsman might probably have shared the fate of his two disciples. At length, the terror of a sentence of excommunication drove him to recant, and joining the established church he soon obtained preferment. But the Brownist sect suffered little by the desertion of its founder, whose private character was far from exemplary: in spite of penal laws, of persecution, and even of ridicule and contempt, it survived, increased, and eventually became the model on which the churches not only of the sect of Independents but also of the two other denominations of English protestant dissenters remain at the present day constituted.

The death of archbishop Grindal in 1583 afforded the queen the long desired opportunity of elevating to the primacy a prelate not inclined to offend her, like his predecessor, by any remissness in putting in force the laws against puritans and other nonconformists. She nominated to this high dignity Whitgift bishop of Worcester, known to polemics as the zealous antagonist of Cartwright the puritan, and further recommended to her majesty by his single life, his talents for business, whether secular or ecclesiastical, his liberal and hospitable style of living, and the numerous train of attendants which swelled the pomp of his appearance on occasions of state and ceremony, when he even claimed to be served on the knee.

This promotion forms an important aera in the ecclesiastical history of the reign of Elizabeth: but only a few circumstances more peculiarly illustrative of the sentiments and disposition of Whitgift, of the queen herself, and of some of her principal counsellors, can with propriety find a place in a work like the present.

To bring back the clergy to that exact uniformity with respect to doctrines, rites, and ceremonies, from which the lenity of his predecessor had suffered them in many instances to recede, appeared to the new primate the first and most essential duty of his office; and the better to enforce obedience, he eagerly demanded to be armed with that plenitude of power which her majesty as head of the church was authorized to delegate at her pleasure. His request was granted with alacrity, and the work of intolerance began. Subscriptions were now required of the whole clerical body to the supremacy; to the book of Common-prayer; and to the articles of religion settled by the convocation of 1560. In consequence of this first step alone, so large a number of zealous preachers and able divines attached to the Calvinistic model were suspended from their functions for non-compliance, that the privy-council took alarm, and addressed a letter to the archbishop requesting a conference; but he loftily reproved their interference in matters of this nature, declaring himself amenable in the discharge of his functions to his sovereign alone. In the following year he prevailed upon her majesty to appoint a second high-commission court, the members of which were authorized, _ex officio_, to administer interrogatories on oath in matters of faith;--an assumption of power not merely cruel and oppressive, but absolutely illegal, if we are to rely on Beal, clerk of the council, an able and learned but somewhat intemperate partisan of the puritans, who published on this occasion a work against the archbishop. To enter into controversy was now no part of the plan of Whitgift; he held it as a maxim, that it was safer and better for an established church to silence than to confute; and a book of Calvinistic discipline having issued from the Cambridge press, he procured a Star-chamber decree for lessening and limiting the number of presses; for restraining any man from exercising the trade of a printer without a special license; and for subjecting all works to the censorship, of the archbishop or the bishop of London. At the same time he vehemently declared that he would rather lie in prison all his life, or die, than grant any indulgence to puritans; and he expressed his wonder, as well as indignation, that men high in place should countenance the factious portion of the clergy, low and obscure individuals and not even considerable by their numbers, against him the second person of the state. The earl of Leicester was not however to be intimidated from extending to these conscientious sufferers a protection which was in many instances effectual: Walsingham occasionally interceded in behalf of Calvinistic preachers of eminence; and sir Francis Knolles, whose influence with the queen was considerable, never failed to encounter the measures of the primate with warm, courageous, and persevering opposition. Even Burleigh, whom Whitgift had regarded as a friend and patron and hoped to number among his partisans, could not forbear expressing to him on various occasions his serious disapprobation of the rigors now resorted to; nor was he to be silenced by the plea of the archbishop, that he acted entirely by the command of her majesty. On the contrary, as instances multiplied daily before his eyes of the tyranny and persecution exercised, through the extraordinary powers of the ecclesiastical commission, on ministers of unblemished piety and often of exemplary usefulness, his remonstrances assumed a bolder tone and more indignant character: as in the following instance. "But when the said lord treasurer understood, that two of these ministers, living in Cambridgeshire, whom for the good report of their modesty and peaceableness he had a little before recommended unto the archbishop's favor, were by the archbishop in commission sent to a register in London, to be strictly examined upon those four and twenty articles before mentioned, he was displeased. And reading over the articles himself, disliked them as running in a Romish style, and making no distinction of persons. Which caused him to write in some earnestness to the archbishop, and in his letter he told him, that he found these articles so curiously penned, so full of branches and circumstances, as he thought the inquisitors of Spain used not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their preys. And that this juridical and canonical sifting of poor ministers was not to edify and reform. And that in charity he thought, they ought not to answer to all these nice points, except they were very notorious offenders in papistry or heresy: Begging his grace to bear with that one fault, if it were so, that he had willed these ministers not to answer those articles, except their consciences might suffer them[94]."

[Note 94: "Life of Whitgift" by Strype.]

The archbishop, in a long and labored answer, expressed his surprise at his lordship's "vehement speeches" against the administering of interrogatories, "seeing it was the ordinary course in other courts: as in the star-chamber, in the courts of the marches, and in other places:" and he advanced many arguments, or assertions, in defence of his proceedings, none of which proved satisfactory to the lord treasurer, as appeared by his reply. In the end, the archbishop found himself obliged to compromise this dispute by engaging that in future the twenty-four articles should only be administered to students in divinity previously to their ordination; and not to ministers already settled in cures, unless they should have openly declared themselves against the church-government by law established. But this instance of concession extorted by the urgency of Walsingham appears to have been a solitary one; the high commission, with the archbishop at its head, proceeded unrelentingly in the work of establishing conformity, and crushing with a strong hand all appeals to the sense of the public on controverted points of discipline or doctrine. The queen, vehemently prepossessed with the idea that the opposers of episcopacy must ever be ill affected also to monarchy, made no scruple of declaring, after some years experience of the untameable spirit of the sect, that the puritans were greater enemies of hers than the papists; and in the midst of her greatest perils from the machinations of the latter sect, she seldom judged it necessary to conciliate by indulgence the attachment of the former. Several Calvinistic ministers, during the course of the reign, were subjected even to capital punishment on account of the scruples which they entertained respecting the lawfulness of acknowledging the queen's supremacy: on the other hand, the attempts of sir Francis Knowles to inspire her majesty with jealousy of the designs of the archbishop, by whom some advances were made towards claiming for the episcopal order an authority by divine right, independently of the appointment of the head of the church, failed entirely of success. No ecclesiastic had ever been able to acquire so great an ascendency over the mind of Elizabeth as Whitgift; there was a conformity in their views, and in some points a sympathy in their characters; which seem to have secured to the primate in all his undertakings the sanction and approval of his sovereign: his favor continued unimpaired to the latest hour of her life: it was from his lips that she desired to receive the final consolations of religion; and regret for her loss, from the apprehension of unwelcome changes in the ecclesiastical establishment under the auspices of her successor, is believed to have contributed to the attack which carried off the archbishop within a year after the decease of his gracious and lamented mistress.

Elizabeth took an important though secret part in the struggles for power among the Scottish nobles of opposite factions by which that kingdom was now agitated during several years. It has been suspected, but seems scarcely probable, that she was concerned in the conspiracy of the earl of Gowry for seizing the person of the young king; she certainly however interposed afterwards to mitigate his just anger against the participators in that dark design. On the whole, she was generally enabled to gain all the influence in the court of Scotland which she found necessary to her ends; for James could always be intimidated, and his minions most frequently bribed or cajoled. She regarded it however as an object of some consequence to gain an accurate knowledge of the character and capacity of her young kinsman, from one on whom she could rely; and for this purpose she prevailed on Walsingham, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, to undertake an embassy into Scotland, of which the ostensible objects were so trifling that its real purpose became perfectly evident to the more sagacious of James's counsellors. Melvil confesses, that it cost him prodigious pains to equip the king, at short notice, with so much of artificial dignity and borrowed wisdom as might enable him to pass successfully through the ordeal of Walsingham's examination. But his labor was not thrown away; for James, who really possessed considerable quickness of parts and a competent share of book learning, played with such plausibility the part assigned him, that even this sagacious statesman is believed to have returned impressed with a higher opinion of his abilities than any part of his after conduct was found to warrant.

Her increasing apprehensions from the hostility of the king of Spain, caused Elizabeth to cultivate with added zeal the friendship of the northern powers of Europe, and in 1582 she sent the garter to the king of Denmark as a pledge of amity; making at the same time a fruitless endeavour to obtain for English merchant ships some remission of the duties newly levied by the Danish sovereign on the passage of the Sound. It was the prudent practice of her majesty to intrust these embassies of compliment to young noblemen lately come into possession of their estates, who, for her favor and their own honor, were willing to discharge them in a splendid manner at their private expense. The Danish mission was the price which she exacted from Peregrine Bertie, lately called up to the house of peers as lord Willoughby of Eresby in right of his mother, for her reluctant and ungracious recognition of his undeniable title to this dignity. On the occurrence of this first mention of a high-spirited nobleman, afterwards celebrated for a brilliant valor which rendered him the idol of popular fame, the remarkable circumstances of his birth and parentage must not be omitted. His mother, only daughter and heir of the ninth lord Willoughby by a Spanish lady of high birth who had been maid of honor to queen Catherine of Arragon, was first the ward and afterwards the third wife of Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk, by whom she had two sons, formerly mentioned as victims to the sweating-sickness.

Few ladies of that age chose long to continue in the unprotected state of widowhood; and the duchess had already re-entered the matrimonial state with Richard Bertie, a person of obscure birth but liberal education, when the accession of Mary exposed her to all the cruelties and oppressions exercised without remorse by the popish persecutors of that reign upon such of their private enemies as they could accuse of being also the enemies of the catholic church. The duchess, during the former reign, had drawn upon herself the bitter enmity of Gardiner by some imprudent and insulting manifestations of her abhorrence of his character and contempt for his religion; and she now learned with dismay that it was his intention to subject her to a strict interrogatory on the subject of her faith.

Except apostasy, there was no other resource than the hazardous and painful one of voluntary banishment, and this she without hesitation adopted. Bertie first obtained license for quitting the country on some pretended business; and soon after, the duchess, attended only by two or three domestics, escaped by night with her infant daughter from her house in Barbican, and taking boat on the Thames arrived at a port in Kent. Here she embarked; and through many perils,--for stress of weather compelled her to put back into an English port, and the search was every where very strict,--she reached at length a more hospitable shore, and rejoined her husband at Santon in the duchy of Cleves. From this town, however, they were soon chased by the imminent apprehension of molestation from the bishop of Arras. It was on an October evening that, followed only by two maid-servants, on foot, through rain and mire and darkness, Bertie carrying a bundle and the duchess her child, the forlorn wanderers began their march for Wesel one of the Hanse-towns, about four miles distant. On their arrival, their wild and wretched appearance, with the sword which Bertie carried, gave them in the eyes of the inhabitants so suspicious an appearance, that no one would harbour them; and while her husband ran from inn to inn vainly imploring admittance, the afflicted duchess was compelled to betake herself to the shelter of a church porch; and there, in that misery and desolation and want of every thing, was delivered of a child, to whom, in memory of the circumstance, she gave the name of Peregrine. Bertie meantime, addressing himself in Latin to two young scholars whom he overheard speaking together in that language, obtained a direction to a Walloon minister, to whom the duchess had formerly shown kindness in England. By his means such prompt and affectionate succour was administered as served to restore her to health; and here for some time they found rest for the sole of their foot. A fresh alarm then obliged them to remove into the dominions of the Palsgrave, where they had remained till the supplies which they had brought with them in money and jewels were nearly exhausted; when a friend of the duchess's having interested the king of Poland in their behalf, they fortunately received an invitation from this sovereign. Arriving in his country, after great hardships and imminent danger of their lives from the brutality of some soldiers on their way, a large demesne was assigned them by their princely protector, on which they lived in great honor and tranquillity till the happy accession of Elizabeth recalled them to their native land.

Peregrine lord Willoughby found many occasions of distinguishing himself in the wars of Flanders, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. He was not less magnanimous than brave; and disdaining the servility of a court life, is thought to have enjoyed on this account less of the queen's favor than her admiration of military merit would otherwise have prompted her to bestow upon him. He died governor of Berwick in 1601; his son was afterwards created earl of Lindsey, and the title of duke of Ancaster is now borne by his descendants.

The king of Sweden, conducted to the brink of ruin by an unequal contest with the arms of Russia, sent in 1583 a solemn embassy to the queen of England to entreat her to mediate a peace for him. This good work, in which she cheerfully engaged, was speedily brought to a happy issue; and the Czar seized the opportunity of the negotiations to press for the conclusion of that league offensive and defensive with England, which he had formerly proposed in vain. The objection that such an alliance was inconsistent with the laws of nations, since it might engage the queen to commit hostilities on princes against whom she had never declared war, made, as might be expected, little impression on this barbarian; and Elizabeth had considerable difficulty in escaping from the intimate embrace of his proffered friendship, to the cool civilities of a commercial treaty. Another perplexing circumstance occurred. The Czar had set his heart upon an English wife; some say he ventured to address the queen herself; but however this might be, she was about to gratify his wish by sending him for a bride a lady of royal blood, sister of the earl of Huntingdon, when the information which she received of the unlimited privilege of divorce exercised by his Muscovite majesty, deterred her from completing her project. She was in consequence obliged to excuse the failure on the ground of the delicate health of the young lady, the reluctance of her brother to part with her, and, what must have filled the despot with astonishment, her own inability to dispose of her female subjects in marriage against the consent of their own relations.

About this time died the earl of Sussex. In him the queen was deprived of a faithful and honorable counsellor and an affectionate kinsman; Leicester lost the antagonist whom he most dreaded, and the nobility one of its principal ornaments. Dying childless, his next brother succeeded him, in whom the race ended; for Egremond Ratcliffe, his youngest brother, had already completed his disastrous destiny. This unfortunate gentleman, it will be remembered, was rendered a fugitive and an outlaw by the part which he had taken, at a very early age, in the Northern rebellion. For several years he led a forlorn and rambling life, sometimes in Flanders, sometimes in Spain, deriving his sole support from an ill paid pension and occasional donations of Philip II., and often enduring extremities of poverty and hardship.

Wearied with so many sufferings in a desperate cause, he then employed all his endeavours to make his peace at home; and impatient at length of the suspense which he endured, he took the step of returning to England at all hazards and throwing himself on the compassion of lord Burleigh. The treasurer, touched with his misery and his expressions of penitence, interceded with the queen for his pardon; but she, on some fresh occasion of suspicion, caused him to be advised to steal out of the kingdom again; and neglecting this intimation, he was committed to the Tower. After some months he was released, possibly under a promise of attempting some extraordinary piece of service to his country, and was sent back to Flanders, where he was soon after apprehended on a charge of conspiring against the life of don John of Austria: some say, and some deny, that he confessed his guilt, and accused the English ministry of a participation in the design: however this might be, he perished by the hand of public justice, a lamentable victim to the guilty violence of the popish faction which first beguiled his inexperience; to the relentless policy of Elizabeth, which forbade the return of offenders perhaps not incorrigible; and to the desperation which gaining dominion over his mind had subverted all its moral principles.

Ireland had been as usual the scene of much danger and disturbance. In 1582 an attempt was made by the king of Spain to incite the catholic inhabitants to a general rebellion, by throwing on the coast a small body of troops seconded by a very considerable sum of money, and attended by a number of priests prepared to preach up his title to the sovereignty of the island in virtue of the papal donation. But the vigorous measures of Arthur lord Grey the deputy, by holding the Irish in check, rendered this effort abortive. The Spaniards, unable to penetrate into the country, raised a fort near the place of their landing, which they hoped to be able to hold out till the arrival of reinforcements. They obstinately refused the terms of surrender first offered them by the deputy; and the fort being afterwards taken by assault, the whole garrison, with the exception of the officers, was put to the sword: an act of cruelty which the deputy is said to have commanded with tears, in obedience to the decision of a court-martial from which he could not venture to depart; and which Elizabeth publicly reprobated, perhaps without internally condemning.

The earl of Desmond, who on the arrival of the Spanish troops had risen in arms against the government with all the power he could muster, was excepted from the general pardon granted to other Irish insurgents, and thus remaining by necessity in a state of rebellion, gave for some time considerable disquiet, if not alarm, to the English government. But his resources of every kind gradually falling off, he was hunted about through bogs and forests, from one fastness or lurking-place to another, enduring every kind of privation and hardship, and often foiling his pursuers by hair-breadth scapes. It is even related that he and his countess on one occasion being roused from their bed in the middle of the night, found no other mode of concealment than that of wading up to their necks in the river which bathed the walls of their retreat. At length, a small party of soldiers having entered by surprise a solitary cabin, they there found one old man sitting alone, to whom their brutal leader gave a blow with his sword, which nearly cut off his arm, and another on the side of his head; on which he cried out, "I am the earl of Desmond." The name was no protection; for perceiving that he bled fast and was unable to march, the ruthless soldier, bidding him prepare for instant death, struck off his head and brought it away as a trophy; leaving the mangled trunk to the chance of interment by any faithful follower of the house of Fitzgerald who might venture from his hiding-place to explore the fate of his chief. The head was sent to England as a present to the queen, and placed by her command on London Bridge.

From this time, the beginning of 1583, Ireland enjoyed a short respite from scenes of violence and blood under the vigorous yet humane administration of sir John Perrot, the new deputy.

The petty warfare of this turbulent province, amid the many and great evils of various kinds which it brought forth, was productive however of some contingent advantage to the queen's affairs, by serving as a school of military discipline to many an officer of merit whose abilities she afterwards found occasion to employ in more important enterprises to check the power of Spain. Ireland was, in particular, the scene of several of the early exploits of that brilliant and extraordinary genius Walter Raleigh; and it was out of his service in this country that an occasion arose for his appearing before her majesty, which he had the talent and dexterity so to improve as to make it the origin of all his favor and advancement. Raleigh was the poor younger brother of a decayed but ancient family in Devonshire. His education at Oxford was yet incomplete, when the ardor of his disposition impelled him to join a gallant band of one hundred volunteers led by his relation Henry Champernon, in 1569, to the aid of the French protestants. Here he served a six-years apprenticeship to the art of war, after which, returning to his own country, he gave himself for a while to the more tranquil pursuits of literature; for "both Minervas" claimed him as their own. In 1578 he resumed his arms under general Norris, commander of the English forces in the Netherlands; the next year, ambitious of a new kind of glory, he accompanied that gallant navigator sir Humphrey Gilbert, his half brother, in a voyage to Newfoundland. This expedition proving unfortunate, he obtained in 1580 a captain's commission in the Irish service; and recommended by his vigor and capacity, rose to be governor of Cork. He was the officer appointed to carry into effect the bloody sentence passed upon the Spanish garrison; a cruel service, but one which the military duty of obedience rendered matter of indispensable obligation. A quarrel with lord Grey put a stop to his promotion in Ireland; and on his following this nobleman to England, their difference was brought to a hearing before the privy-council, when the great talents and uncommon flow of eloquence exhibited by Raleigh in pleading his own cause, by raising the admiration of all present, proved the means of introducing him to the presence of the queen. His comely person, fine address, and prompt proficiency in the arts of a courtier, did all the rest; and he rapidly rose to such a height of royal favor as to inspire with jealousy even him who had long stood foremost in the good graces of his sovereign.

It is recorded of Raleigh during the early days of his court attendance, when a few handsome suits of clothes formed almost the sum total of his worldly wealth, that as he was accompanying the queen in one of her daily walks,--during which she was fond of giving audience, because she imagined that the open air produced a favorable effect on her complexion,--she arrived at a miry spot, and stood in perplexity how to pass. With an adroit presence of mind, the courtier pulled off his rich plush cloak and threw it on the ground to serve her for a footcloth. She accepted with pleasure an attention which flattered her, and it was afterwards quaintly said that the spoiling of a cloak had gained him many _good suits_.

It was in Ireland too that Edmund Spenser, one of our first genuine poets, whose rich and melodious strains will find delighted audience as long as inexhaustible fertility of invention, truth, fluency and vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable and heart-ennobling morality shall be prized among the students of English verse, was now tuning his enchanting lyre; and the ear of Raleigh was the first to catch its strains. This eminent person was probably of obscure parentage and slender means, for it was as a sizer, the lowest order of students, that he was entered at Cambridge; but that his humble merit early attracted the notice of men of learning and virtue is apparent from his intimacy with Stubbs, already commemorated, and from his friendship with that noted literary character Gabriel Hervey, by whom he was introduced to the acquaintance of Philip Sidney. His leaning towards puritanical principles, clearly manifested by various passages in the Shepherd's Calendar, had probably betrayed itself to his superiors at the university, by his choice of associates, or other circumstances, previously to the publication of that piece; and possibly might have some share in the disappointment of his hopes of a fellowship which occurred in 1576. Quitting college on this occurrence, he retired for some time into the north of England; but the friendship of Sidney drew him again from his solitude, and it was at Penshurst that he composed much of his Shepherd's Calendar, published in 1579 under the signature of Immerito, and dedicated to this generous patron of his muse. The earl of Leicester, probably at his nephew's request, sent Spenser the same year on some commission to France; and in the next he obtained the post of secretary to lord Grey, and attended him to Ireland.

Though the child of fancy and the muse, Spenser now showed that business was not "the contradiction of his fate;" he drew up an excellent discourse on the state of Ireland, still read and valued, and received as his reward the Grant of a considerable tract of land out of the forfeited Desmond estates, and of the castle of Kilcolman, which henceforth became his residence, and where he had soon the satisfaction of receiving a first visit from Raleigh. Both pupils of classical antiquity, both poets and aspirants after immortal fame, they met in this land of ignorance and barbarity as brothers; and so strong was the impression made on the mind of Raleigh, that even on becoming a successful courtier he dismissed not from his memory or his affection the tuneful shepherd whom he had left behind tending his flocks "under the foot of Mole, that mountain hoar." He spoke of him to the queen with all the enthusiasm of kindred genius; obtained for him some favors, or promises of favors; and on a second visit which he made to Ireland, probably for the purpose of inspecting the large grants which he had himself obtained, he dragged his friend from his obscure retreat, carried him over with him to England, and hastened to initiate him in those arts of pushing a fortune at court which with himself had succeeded so prosperously. But bitterly did the disappointed poet learn to deprecate the mistaken kindness which had taught him to exchange leisure and independence, though in a solitude so barbarous and remote, for the servility, the intrigues and the treacheries of this heart-sickening scene. He put upon lasting record his grief and his repentance, in a few lines of energetic warning to the inexperienced in the ways of courts, and hastened back to earn in obscurity his title to immortal fame by the composition of the Faery Queen. This great work appeared in 1589, with a preface addressed to Raleigh and a considerable apparatus of recommendatory poems; one of which, a sonnet of great elegance, is marked with initials which assign it to the same patronizing friend.

The proceedings of the administration against papists accused of treasonable designs or practices, began about this time to excite considerable perturbation in the public mind; for though circumstances were brought to light which seemed to justify in some degree the worst suspicions entertained of this faction, a system of conduct on the part of the government also became apparent which no true Englishman could without indignation and horror contemplate. The earl of Leicester, besides partaking with the other confidential advisers of her majesty in the blame attached to the general character of the measures now pursued, lay under the popular imputation of making these acts of power subservient, in many atrocious instances, to his private purposes of rapacity or vengeance, and a cloud of odium was raised against him which the breath of his indulgent sovereign was in vain exerted to disperse.

There was in Warwickshire a catholic gentleman named Somerville, a person of violent temper and somewhat disordered in mind, who had been worked up, by the instigations of one Hall his confessor, to such a pitch of fanatical phrensy, that he set out for London with the fixed purpose of killing the queen; but falling furiously upon some of her protestant subjects by the way, he was apprehended, and readily confessed the object of his journey. Being closely questioned, perhaps with torture, he is said to have dropped something which touched Mr. Arden his father-in-law; and Hall on examination positively declared that this gentleman had been made privy to the bloody purpose of Somerville. On this bare assertion of the priest, unconfirmed, as appears, by any collateral evidence, Arden was indicted, found guilty, and underwent the whole sentence of the law. It happened to be publicly known that Arden was the personal enemy of Leicester, for he had refused to wear his livery;--a base kind of homage which was paid him without scruple, as it seems, by other neighbouring gentlemen;--and he was also in the habit of reproaching him with the murder of his first wife. The wife also of Arden was the sister of sir Nicholas Throgmorton, whom Leicester was vulgarly supposed to have poisoned, and of the chief justice of Chester lately displaced. When therefore, in addition to these circumstances of suspicion, it was further observed that Somerville, instead of being produced to deny or confirm on the scaffold the evidence which he was said to have given against Arden, died strangled in prison, by his own hand as was affirmed;--when it was seen that Hall, who was confessedly the instigator of the whole, and further obnoxious to the laws as a catholic priest, was quietly sent out of the kingdom by Leicester's means, in spite of the opposition of sir Christopher Hatton;--and finally, when it appeared that the forfeited lands of Arden went to enrich a creature of the same great man,--this victim of law was regarded as a martyr, and it was found impossible to tie up the tongues of men from crying shame and vengeance on his cruel and insidious destroyer.

The plot thickened when Francis Throgmorton, son of the degraded judge of Chester, was next singled out. Some intercepted letters to the queen of Scots formed the first ground of this gentleman's arrest; but being carried to the Tower, he was there racked to extort further discoveries, and lord Paget and Charles Arundel, a courtier, quitted the kingdom in haste as soon as they knew him to be in custody. After this many of the leading catholics fell into suspicion, particularly the earls of Northumberland and Arundel, who were ordered to confine themselves to their houses; lord William Howard, brother to the latter nobleman, and his uncle lord Henry Howard, were likewise subjected to several long and rigorous examinations, but were dismissed at length on full proof of their perfect innocence. The confessions of Throgmorton further implicated the Spanish ambassador; who replied in so high a tone to the representations made him on the subject, that her majesty commanded him to quit the kingdom.

Francis Throgmorton was condemned, and suffered as a traitor, and, it is probable, not undeservedly: there was reason also to believe that a dangerous activity was exercised by the queen of Scots and her agents, and that the letters which she was continually finding means of conveying not only to the heads of the popish party, but to all whose connexions led her to imagine them in any degree favorable to the cause, had shaken the allegiance of numbers. On the other hand, the catholics complained, and certainly not without reason, of dark and detestable means employed by the ministry to betray and ensnare them. Counterfeited letters, it seems, were often addressed to gentlemen of this persuasion, purporting to come either from the queen of Scots or from certain English exiles, and soliciting concurrence in some scheme for her deliverance, or some design against the government. If the unwary receivers either answered the letters, or simply forbore to deliver them up to the secretary of state, their houses were entered; search was made for these papers by the emissaries of government, who were themselves the fabricators of them; the unfortunate owners were dragged to prison as suspected persons; and interrogated, and perhaps tortured, till they discovered all that they knew of the secrets of the party. Spies were planted upon them, every unguarded word was caught up and interpreted in the worst sense, and false or frivolous accusations were greedily entertained.

Walsingham, next to Leicester, bore the chief odium of these proceedings; but to him no corrupt motives or private ends ever appear to have been imputed in particular cases, though an anxiety to preserve his place, and to recommend himself to the queen his mistress by an extraordinary manifestation of care for her safety and zeal in her service, may not unfairly be supposed to have influenced the general character of his policy.

The loud complaints of the catholics had excited so strong and so widely diffused a sentiment of compassion for them and indignation against their oppressors, that it was judged expedient to publish an apology for the measures of government, written either by lord Burleigh himself or under his direction, which bore the title of "A declaration of the favorable dealing of her majesty's commissioners appointed for the examination of certain traitors, and of tortures unjustly reported to be done upon them for matters of religion."

It thus begins: "Good reader, although her majesty's most mild and gracious government be sufficient to defend itself against those most slanderous reports of heathenish and unnatural tyranny and cruel tortures pretended to have been exercised upon certain traitors who lately suffered for their treason, and others; as well as spread abroad by rungates, Jesuits, and seminary men in their seditious books, letters and libels, in foreign countries and princes courts, as also intimated into the hearts of some of our own countrymen and her majesty's subjects.... I have conferred with a very honest gentleman whom I knew to have good and sufficient means to deliver the truth." &c. And the following are the heads of this "honest gentleman's" testimony. "It is affirmed for truth, and is offered upon due examination to be proved," "that the forms of torture in their severity or rigor of execution have not been such as is slanderously represented"... "that even the principal offender Campion himself"... "before the conference had with him by learned men in the Tower, wherein he was charitably used, was never so racked but that he was presently able to walk and to write, and did presently write and subscribe all his confessions." That Briant, a man said to, have been reduced to such extremities of hunger and thirst in prison, that he ate the clay out of the walls and drank the droppings of the roof, was kept in that state by his own fault; for certain treasonable writings being found upon him, he was required to give a specimen of his handwriting; which refusing, he was told he should have no food till he wrote for what he wanted, and after fasting nearly two days and nights he complied. Also, that both with respect to these two and others, it might be affirmed, that the warders, whose office it is to use the rack, "were ever by those that attended the examinations specially charged to use it in as charitable a manner as such a thing might be."

Secondly, that none of those catholics who have been racked during her majesty's reign were, "upon the rack or in any other torture," demanded of any points of faith and doctrine merely, "but only with what persons, at home or abroad, and touching what plots and practises they had dealt... about attempts against her majesty's estate or person, or to alter the laws of the realm for matters of religion, by treason or by force; and how they were persuaded themselves and did persuade others, touching the pope's pretence of authority to depose kings and princes; and namely for deprivation of her majesty, and to discharge subjects from their allegiance." &c.

"Thirdly, that none of them have been put to the rack or torture, no not for the matters of treason, or partnership of treason, or such like, but where it was first known and evidently probable, by former detections, confessions, and otherwise, that the party was guilty, and could deliver truth of the things wherewith he was charged; so as it was first assured that no innocent was at any time tormented, and the rack was never used to wring out confessions at adventure upon uncertainties." &c.

"Fourthly, that none of them hath been racked or tortured unless he had first said expressly, or amounting to as much, that he will not tell the truth though the queen did command him." &c.

"Fifthly, that the proceeding to torture was always so slowly, so unwillingly, and with so many preparations of persuasions to spare themselves, and so many means to let them know that the truth was by them to be uttered, both in duty to her majesty, and in wisdom for themselves, as whosoever was present at those actions must needs acknowledge in her majesty's ministers a full purpose to follow the example of her own gracious disposition."... "Thus it appeareth, that albeit, by the more general laws of nations, torture hath been and is lawfully judged to be used in lesser cases, and in sharper manner, for inquisition of truth in crimes not so near extending to public danger as these ungracious persons have committed, whose conspiracies, and the particularities thereof, it did so much import and behove to have disclosed; yet even in that necessary use of such proceeding, enforced by the offenders notorious obstinacy, is nevertheless to be acknowledged the sweet temperature of her majesty's mild and gracious clemency, and their slanderous lewdness to be the more condemned, that have in favor of heinous malefactors and stubborn traitors spread untrue rumours and slanders, to make her merciful government disliked, under false pretence and rumors of sharpness and cruelty to those against whom nothing can be cruel, and yet upon whom nothing hath been done but gentle and merciful."

This is a document which speaks sufficiently for itself. Torture, in any shape, was even at this time absolutely contrary to the law of the land; and happily, there was enough of true English feeling in the country, even under the rule of a Tudor, to render it expedient for Elizabeth, soon after the exposition of these "favorable dealings" of her commissioners, to issue an order that no species of it should in future be applied to state-prisoners on any pretext whatsoever.

Parsons the Jesuit, who had been fortunate enough to make his escape when his associate Campion was apprehended, is believed to have been the papist who sought to avenge his party on its capital enemy by the composition of that virulent invective called "Leicester's Commonwealth:" a pamphlet which was printed in Flanders in 1584, and of which a vast number of copies were imported into England, where it obtained, from the color of the leaves and the supposed author, the familiar title of "Father Parsons' Green-coat." In this work all the current stories against the unpopular favorite were collected and set forth as well attested facts; and they were related with that circumstantiality and minuteness of detail which are too apt to pass upon the common reader as the certain and authentic characters of truth. The success of this book was prodigious; it was read universally and with the utmost avidity. All who envied Leicester's power and grandeur; all who had smarted under his insolence, or felt the gripe of his rapacity; all who had been scandalized, or wounded in family honor, by his unbridled licentiousness; all who still cherished in their hearts the image of the unfortunate duke of Norfolk, whom he was believed to have entangled in a deadly snare; all who knew him for the foe and suspected him for the murderer of the gallant and lamented earl of Essex;--finally, all, and they were nearly the whole of the nation, who looked upon him as a base and treacherous miscreant, shielded by the affection of his sovereign and wrapped in an impenetrable cloud of hypocrisy and artifice, who aimed in the dark his envenomed weapons against the bosom of innocence;--exulted in this exposure of his secret crimes, and eagerly received and propagated for truth even the grossest of the exaggerations and falsehoods with which the narrative was intermixed.

Elizabeth, incensed to the last degree at so furious an attack upon the man in whom her confidence was irremoveably fixed, caused her council to write letters to all persons in authority for the suppression of these books, and punishment of such as were concerned in their dispersion; adding at the same time the declaration, that her majesty "testified in her conscience before God, that she knew in assured certainty the books and libels against the earl to be most malicious, false and scandalous, and such as none but an incarnate devil himself could dream to be true." The letters further stated, that her majesty regarded this publication as an attempt to discredit her own government, "as though she should have failed in good judgement and discretion in the choice of so principal a councillor about her, or to be without taste or care of all justice or conscience, in suffering such heinous and monstrous crimes, as by the said books and libels be infamously imputed, to pass unpunished; or finally, at the least, to want either good will, ability or courage, if she knew these enormities were true, to call any subject of hers whatsoever to render sharp account of them, according to the force of her laws." The councillors in their own persons afterwards went on to declare, that they, "to do his lordship but right, of their sincere consciences must needs affirm these strange and abominable crimes to be raised of a wicked and venomous malice against the said earl, of whose good service, sincerity of religion, and all other faithful dealings towards her majesty and the realm, they had had long and true experience."

These letters said too much; it was not credible that either her majesty or her privy-councillors should each individually know to be false all the imputations thrown upon Leicester in the libels written against him; there was even good reason to believe that many of them were firmly believed to be well founded by several, and perhaps most, of the privy-councillors; at all events nothing like exculpatory evidence was brought, or attempted to be brought, on the subject, consequently no effect was produced on public opinion; the whole was regarded as an _ex-parte_ proceeding. Philip Sidney, who probably set out with a sincere disbelief of these shocking accusations brought against any uncle who had shown for him an affection next to parental, eagerly took up the pen in his defence. But the only point on which his refutation appears to have been triumphant, was unfortunately one of no moral moment,--the antiquity and nobility of the Dudley family, falsely, as it seems, impugned by the libeller. Some inconsistencies and contradictions he indeed pointed out in other matters; but, on the whole, the answer was miserably deficient in every thing but invective, of which there was far too much; and either from a gradual perception of the badness of his cause or the weakness of his performance, or perhaps for other reasons with which we are unacquainted, he abandoned his design; and the fragment never saw the light till the publication of the Sidney Papers about sixty years ago. But whatever might be the private judgements of men concerning the character and conduct of the earl of Leicester; the support of the queen, and the strength of the party which the long possession of power, and a remarkable fidelity in the observance of his engagements towards his own adherents, had enabled him to form, effectually protected him from experiencing any decline of his political influence. Of this a proof appeared soon after, when in consequence of further disclosures of the dangerous designs of the catholics, a form of association, by which the subscribers bound themselves to pursue, to the utmost of their power, even to the death, all who should attempt any thing against the queen in favor of any pretender to the crown, was drawn up by this nobleman and obtained the signatures of all orders of men.

This was a measure which the queen of Scots perceived to be aimed expressly against herself, and of which she sought to divert the ill effects by all the means still within her power. She desired to be one of the first to whom the association should be offered for subscription; and she begged that this act might form the basis of a treaty by which all differences between herself and Elizabeth might be finally composed, and her long captivity exchanged at length, if not for absolute freedom, at least for a state of comparative independence under articles guarantied by the principal powers of Europe. These articles, far different from the former claims of Mary, appeared to Walsingham so advantageous to his mistress, by the exemption which they seemed to promise her from future machinations on the part of the queen of Scots, that he strenuously urged their acceptance; but it was in vain. Mutual injuries, dissimulation on both sides, and causes of jealousy on the part of Elizabeth from which all her advantages over her captive enemy had not served to set her free, now, as ever, opposed the conclusion of any terms of agreement; and the imprudent and violent conduct of Mary served to confirm Elizabeth in her unrelentingness. Even while the terms were under discussion, a letter was intercepted addressed by the queen of Scots to sir Francis Englefield, an English exile and pensioner in Spain, in which she thus wrote: "Of the treaty between the queen of England and me, I may neither hope nor look for good issue. Whatsoever shall become of me, by whatsoever change of my state and condition, let the execution of the _Great Plot_ go forward, without any respect of peril or danger to me. For I will account my life very happily bestowed, if I may with the same help and relieve so great a number of the oppressed children of the Church.... And further, I pray you, use all possible diligence and endeavour to pursue and promote, at the pope's and other kings' hand, such a speedy execution of their former designments, that the same may be effectuated sometime this next spring." &c. It must be confessed, that after such a letter Mary had little right to complain of the failure of these negotiations. The countess of Shrewsbury, now at open variance with her husband, had employed every art to infuse into the queen suspicions of a too great intimacy subsisting between the earl and his prisoner; and Elizabeth, either from a jealousy which the long fidelity of Shrewsbury to his arduous trust was unable to counteract, or, as was believed, at the instigation of some who meant further mischief to Mary, ordered about this time her removal to the custody of sir Amias Paulet and sir Drugo Drury.

This change filled the mind of the captive queen with terror, which prepared her to listen with avidity to any schemes, however desperate, for her own deliverance and the destruction of her enemy; and proved the prelude to that tragical castastrophe which was now advancing fast upon her.

A violent quarrel between Mary and the countess of Shrewsbury had naturally resulted from the conduct of this furious woman; and Mary, whose passions, whether fierce or tender, easily hurried her beyond the bounds of decency and of prudence, gratified her resentment at once against the countess and the queen by addressing to Elizabeth a letter which could never be forgiven or forgotten. In this piece, much too gross for insertion in the present work, she professes to comply with the request of her royal sister, by acquainting her very exactly with all the evil of every kind that the countess of Shrewsbury had ever spoken of her majesty in her hearing. She then proceeds to repeat or invent all that the most venomous malice could devise against the character of Elizabeth: as, that she had conferred her favors on a nameless person (probably Leicester) to whom she had promised marriage; on the duke of Anjou, on Simier, on Hatton and others; that the latter was quite disgusted with her fondness; that she was generous to none but these favorites, &c. That her conceit of her beauty was such, that no flattery could be too gross for her to swallow; and that this folly was the theme of ridicule to all her courtiers, who would often pretend that their eyes were unable to sustain the radiance of her countenance,--a trait, by the way, which stands on other and better authority than this infamous letter. That her temper was so furious that it was dreadful to attend upon her;--that she had broken the finger of one lady, and afterwards pretended to the courtiers that it was done by the fall of a chandelier, and that she had cut another across the hand with a knife;--stories very probably not entirely unfounded in fact, since we find the earl of Huntingdon complaining, in a letter still preserved in the British Museum, that the queen, on some quarrel, had pinched his wife "very sorely." That she interfered in an arbitrary manner with the marriage of one of the countess of Shrewsbury's daughters, and wanted to engross the disposal of all the heiresses in the kingdom;--in which charge there was also some truth. This insulting epistle concluded with assurances of the extreme anxiety of the writer to see a good understanding restored between herself and Elizabeth.

Meantime, the most alarming manifestations of the inveterate hostility of the persecuted papists against the queen, continued to agitate the minds of a people who loved and honored her; and who anticipated with well founded horror the succession of another Mary, which seemed inevitable in the event of her death. A book was written by a Romish priest, exhorting the female attendants of her majesty to emulate the merit and glory of Judith by inflicting on her the fate of Holophernes. Dr. Allen, afterwards cardinal, published a work to justify and recommend the murder of a heretic prince; and by this piece a gentleman of the name of Parry was confirmed, it is said, in the black design which he had several times revolved in his mind, but relinquished as often from misgivings of conscience.

In the history of this person there are some circumstances very remarkable. He was a man of considerable learning, but, being vicious and needy, had some years before this time committed a robbery, for which he had received the royal pardon. Afterwards he went abroad, and was reconciled to the Romish church, though employed at the same time by the ministers of Elizabeth to give intelligence respecting the English exiles, whom he often recommended to pardon or favor, and sometimes apparently with success. Returning home, he gained access to the queen, who admitted him to several private interviews; and he afterwards declared, that fearing he might be tempted to put in act the bloody purpose which perpetually haunted his mind, he always left his dagger at home when he went to wait upon her. On these occasions he apprized her majesty of the existence of many designs against her life, and endeavoured, with great earnestness and plainness of speech, to convince her of the cruelty and impolicy of those laws against the papists which had rendered them her deadly foes: but finding his arguments thrown away upon the queen, he afterwards procured a seat in parliament, where he was the sole opponent of a severe act passed against the Jesuits. On account of the freedom with which he expressed himself on this occasion, he was for a few days imprisoned.

Soon after a gentleman of the family of Nevil, induced it is said by the hope of obtaining as his reward the honors and lands of the rebel earl of Westmorland lately dead, disclosed to the government a plot for assassinating the queen, in which he affirmed that Parry had engaged his concurrence. Parry confessed in prison that he had long deliberated on the means of effectually serving his church, and it appeared that he had come to the decision that the assassination of the queen's greatest subject might be lawful: a letter was also found upon him from cardinal Como, expressing approbation of some design which he had communicated to him. On this evidence he was capitally condemned; but to the last he strongly denied that the cardinal's letter, couched in general terms, referred to any attempt on the queen's person, or that he had ever entertained the design charged upon him. Unlike all the other martyrs of popery at this time, he died,--not avowing and glorying in the crime charged upon him,--but earnestly protesting his innocence, his loyalty, his warm attachment to her majesty. An account of his life was published immediately afterwards by the queen's printer, written in a style of the utmost virulence, and filled with tales of his monstrous wickedness which have much the air of violent calumnies.

Parry was well known to lord Burleigh, with whom he had corresponded for several years; and the circumstance of his being brought by him to the presence of the queen, proves that this minister was far from regarding him either as the low, the infamous, or the desperate wretch that he is here represented. That he had sometimes _imagined_ the death of the queen, he seems to have acknowledged; but most probably he had never so far conquered the dictates of loyalty and conscience as to have laid any plan for her destruction, or even to have resolved upon hazarding the attempt. The case therefore was one in which mercy and even justice seem to have required the remission of a harsh and hasty sentence; but the panic terror which had now seized the queen, the ministry, the parliament, and the nation, would have sufficed to overpower the pleadings of the generous virtues in hearts of nobler mould than those of Elizabeth, of Leicester, or of Walsingham.

Nevil, the accuser of Parry, far from gaining any reward, was detained prisoner in the Tower certainly till the year 1588, and whether he even then obtained his liberation does not appear.

The severe enactments of the new parliament against papists, which included a total prohibition of every exercise of the rites of their religion, so affected the mind of Philip Howard earl of Arundel, already exasperated by the personal hardships to which the suspicions of her majesty and the hostility of her ministers had exposed him, that he formed the resolution of banishing himself for ever from his native land. Having secretly prepared every thing for his departure, he put his whole case upon record in a letter addressed to her majesty, and left behind at his house in London. This piece ought, as it appears, to have excited in the breast of his sovereign sentiments of regret and compunction rather than of indignation. The writer complains, that without any offence given on his part, or even objected against him by her majesty, he had long since fallen into her disfavor, as by her "bitter speeches" had become publicly known; so that he was generally accounted, "nay in a manner pointed at," as one whom her majesty least favored, and in most disgrace as a person whom she did deeply suspect and especially mislike." That after he had continued for some months under this cloud, he had been called sundry times by her command before the council, where charges had been brought against him, some of them ridiculously trifling, others incredible, all so untrue, that even his greatest enemies could not, after his answers were made, reproach him with any disloyal thought;--yet was he in the end ordered to keep his house. That his enemies still continued to pursue him with interrogatories, and continued his restraint; and that even after the last examination had failed to produce any thing against him, he was still kept fifteen weeks longer in the same state, though accused of nothing. That when, either his enemies being ashamed to pursue these proceedings further, or her majesty being prevailed upon by his friends to put an end to them, he had at length recovered his liberty, he had been led to meditate on the fates of his three unfortunate ancestors, all circumvented by their enemies, and two of them (the earl of Surry his grandfather and the duke of Norfolk his father) brought for slight causes to an untimely end. And having weighed their cases with what had just befallen himself, he concluded that it might well be his lot to succeed them in fortune as in place. His foes were strong to overthrow, he weak to defend himself, since innocence, he had found, was no protection; her majesty being "easily drawn to an ill opinion of" his "ancestry;" and moreover, he had been "charged by the council to be of the religion which was accounted odious and dangerous to her estate." "Lastly," he adds, "but principally, I weighed in what miserable doubtful case my soul had remained if my life had been taken, as it was not unlikely, in my former troubles. For I protest, the greatest burden that rested on my conscience at that time was, because I had not lived according to the prescript rule of that which I undoubtedly believed." &c.

The earl had actually embarked at a small port in Sussex, when, his project having been betrayed to the government by the mercenary villany of the master of the vessel and of one of his own servants, orders were issued for his detention, and he was brought back in custody and committed to the Tower. The letter just quoted was then produced against him; it was declared to reflect on the justice of the country; and for the double offence of having written it and of attempting to quit the kingdom without license, he underwent a long imprisonment, and was arbitrarily sentenced to a fine of one thousand pounds, which he proved his inability to pay. The barbarous tyranny which held his body in thraldom, served at the same time to rivet more strongly upon his mind the fetters of that stern superstition which had gained dominion over him. The more he endured for his religion, the more awful and important did it appear in his eyes; while in proportion to the severity and tediousness of his sufferings from without, the scenery within became continually more cheerless and terrific; and learning to dread in a future world the prolonged operation of that principle of cruelty under which he groaned in this, he sought to avert its everlasting action by practising upon himself the expiatory rigors of asceticism. The sequel of his melancholy history we shall have occasion to contemplate hereafter.

Thomas Percy earl of Northumberland, brother to that earl who had suffered death on account of the Northern rebellion,--by his participation in which he had himself also incurred a fine, though afterwards remitted,--was naturally exposed at this juncture to vehement suspicions. After some examinations before the council, cause was found for his committal to the Tower; and here, according to the iniquitous practice of the age, he remained for a considerable time without being brought to trial. At length the public was informed that another prisoner on a like account having been put to the torture to force disclosures, had revealed matters against the earl of Northumberland amounting to treason, on which account he had thought fit to anticipate the sentence of the law by shooting himself through the heart. That the earl was really the author of his own death was indeed proved before a coroner's jury by abundant and unexceptionable testimony, as well as by his deliberate precautions for making his lands descend to his son, and his indignant declaration that the queen, on whom he bestowed a most opprobrious epithet, should never have his estate; though it may still bear a doubt whether a consciousness of guilt, despair of obtaining justice, or merely the misery of an indefinite captivity, were the motive of the rash act: but the catholics, actuated by the true spirit of party, added without scruple the death of this nobleman to the "foul and midnight murders" perpetrated within these gloomy walls.

Meantime the opposition to popery, which had now become the reigning principle of English policy, was to be maintained on other ground, and with other weapons than those with which an inquisitorial high-commission, or a fierce system of penal enactments, had armed the hands of religious intolerance, political jealousy, or private animosity; and all the more generous and adventurous spirits prepared with alacrity to draw the sword in the noble cause of Belgian independence, against the united tyranny and bigotry of the detestable Philip II.

The death of that patriot hero William prince of Orange by the hand of a fanatical assassin, had plunged his country in distress and dismay, and the States-general had again made an earnest tender of their sovereignty to Elizabeth. She once more declined it, from the same motives of caution and anxiety to avoid the imputation of ambitious encroachment on the rights of neighbouring princes, which had formerly determined her. But more than ever aware how closely her own safety and welfare were connected with the successful resistance of these provinces, she now consented to send over an army to their succour, and to grant them supplies of money; in consideration of which several cautionary towns were put into her hands. Of these, Flushing was one; and Elizabeth gratified at once the protestant zeal of Philip Sidney and his aspirations after military glory, by appointing him its governor. It was in November 1585 that he took possession of his charge.

Meanwhile the earl of Leicester, whose haughty and grasping spirit led him to covet distinction and authority in every line, was eagerly soliciting the supreme command of this important armament; and in spite of the general mediocrity of his talents and his very slight experience in the art of war, his partial mistress had the weakness to indulge him in this unreasonable and ill-advised pretension. The title of general of the queen's auxiliaries in Holland was conferred upon him, and with it a command over the whole English navy paramount to that of the lord-high-admiral himself.

He landed at Flushing, and was received first by its governor and afterwards by the States of Holland and Zealand with the highest honors, and with the most magnificent festivities which it was in their power to exhibit. A splendid band of youthful nobility followed in his train:--the foremost of them all was his stepson Robert earl of Essex, now in his 19th year, who had already made his appearance at court, and experienced from her majesty a reception which clearly prognosticated, to such as were conversant in the ways of the court, the height of favor to which he was predestined.

It was highly characteristic of the jealous haughtiness of Elizabeth's temper, that the extraordinary honors lavished by the States upon Leicester instantly awakened her utmost indignation. She regarded them as too high for any subject, even for him who enjoyed the first place in her royal favor, whom she had invested with an amplitude of authority quite unexampled, and who represented herself in the council of the States-general. She expressed her anger in a tone which made both Leicester and the Belgians tremble; and the explanations and humble submissions of both parties were found scarcely sufficient to appease her. At the same time, the incapacity and misconduct of Leicester as a commander were daily becoming more conspicuous and offensive in the eyes of the Dutch authorities; and the most serious evils would immediately have ensued, but for the prudence, the magnanimity, the conciliating behaviour, and the strenuous exertions, by which his admirable nephew labored unceasingly to remedy his vices and cover his deficiencies.

The brilliant valor of the English troops, and particularly of the young nobility and gentry who led them on, was conspicuous in every encounter; but the want of a chief able to cope with that accomplished general the prince of Parma, precluded them from effecting any important object. Philip Sidney distinguished himself by a well-conducted surprise of the town of Axel, and received in reward among a number of others the honor of knighthood from the hands of his uncle. Afterwards, having made an attack with the horse under his command on a reinforcement which the enemy was attempting to throw into Zutphen, a hot action ensued, in which though the advantage remained with the English, it was dearly purchased by the blood of their gallant leader, who received a shot above the knee, which after sixteen days of acute suffering brought his valuable life to its termination.

Thus perished at the early age of thirty-two sir Philip Sidney, the pride and pattern of his time, the theme of song, the favorite of English story. The beautiful anecdote of his resigning to the dying soldier the draught of water with which he was about to quench his thirst as he rode faint and bleeding from the fatal field, is told to every child, and inspires a love and reverence for his name which never ceases to cling about the hearts of his countrymen. He is regarded as the most perfect example which English history affords of the _preux Chevalier_; and is named in parallel with the spotless and fearless Bayard the glory of Frenchmen, whom he excelled in all the accomplishments of peace as much as the other exceeded him in the number and splendor of his military achievements.

The demonstrations of grief for his loss, and the honors paid to his memory, went far beyond all former example, and appeared to exceed what belonged to a private citizen. The court went into mourning for him, and his remains received a magnificent funeral in St. Paul's, the United Provinces having in vain requested permission to inter him at their own expense, with the promise that he should have as fair a tomb as any prince in Christendom. Elizabeth always remembered him with affection and regret. Cambridge and Oxford published three volumes of "_Lachrymae_" on the melancholy event. Spenser in verse, and Camden in prose, commemorated and deplored their friend and patron. A crowd of humbler contemporaries pressed emulously forward to offer up their mite of panegyric and lamentation; and it would be endless to enumerate the poets and other writers of later times, who have celebrated in various forms the name of Sidney. Foreigners of the highest distinction claimed a share in the general sentiment. Du Plessis Mornay condoled with Walsingham on the loss of his incomparable son-in-law in terms of the deepest sorrow. Count Hohenlo passionately bewailed his friend and fellow-soldier, to whose representations and intercessions he had sacrificed his just indignation against the proceedings of Leicester. Even the hard heart of Philip II. was touched by the untimely fate of his godson, though slain in bearing arms against him.

We are told that on the next tilt-day after the last wife of the earl of Leicester had borne him a son, Sidney appeared with a shield on which was the word "_Speravi_" dashed through. This anecdote,--if indeed the allusion of the motto be rightly explained, which it is difficult to believe,--would serve to show how publicly he had been regarded, both by himself and others, as the heir of his all-powerful uncle. The death of this child, on which occasion adulatory verses were produced by the university of Cambridge, restored Sidney, the year before his death, to this brilliant expectancy; and it cannot reasonably be doubted, that the academic honors paid to his memory were, like the court-mourning, a homage to the power of the living rather than the virtues of the dead. But though he should be judged to have owed to his connexion with a royal favorite much of his contemporary celebrity, and even in some measure his enduring fame, no candid estimator will suffer himself to be hurried, under an idea of correcting the former partiality of fortune, into the clear injustice of denying to this accomplished character a just title to the esteem and admiration of posterity. On the contrary, it will be considered, that the very circumstances which rendered him so early conspicuous, would also expose him to the shafts of malice and envy; and that if his spirit had not been in reality noble, and his conduct irreproachable, it would have exceeded all the power of Leicester to shield the reputation of his nephew against attacks similar to those from which he had found it impracticable to defend his own.

Philip Sidney was educated, by the cares of a wise and excellent father, in the purest and most elevated moral principles and in the best learning of the age. A letter of advice addressed to him by this exemplary parent at the age of twelve, fully exemplifies both the laudable solicitude of sir Henry respecting his future character, and the soundness of his views and maxims: in the character of his son, as advancing to manhood, he saw his hopes exceeded and his prayers fulfilled. Nothing could be more correct than his conduct, more laudable than his pursuits, while on his travels; young as he was, he merited the friendship of Hubert Languet. He also gained just and high reputation for the manner in which he acquitted himself of an embassy to the protestant princes of Germany, though somewhat of the ostentation and family pride of a Dudley was apparent in the port which he thought it necessary to assume on the occasion. After his return, he commenced the life of a courtier; and that indiscriminate thirst for glory which was in some measure the foible of his character, led him into an ostentatious profusion, which, by involving his affairs, rendered it necessary for him to solicit the pecuniary favors of her majesty, and to earn them by some acts of adulation unworthy of his spirit: for all these, however, he made large amends by his noble letter against the French marriage. He afterwards took up, with a zeal and ability highly honorable to his heart and his head, the defence of his father, accused, but finally acquitted, of some stretches of power as lord-deputy of Ireland. This business involved him in disputes with the earl of Ormond, his father's enemy, who seems to have generously overlooked provocations which might have led to more serious consequences, in consideration of the filial feelings of his youthful adversary.

These indications of a bold and forward spirit appear however to have somewhat injured him in the mind of her majesty; his advancement by no means kept pace either with his wishes or his wants; and a subsequent quarrel with the earl of Oxford,--in which he refused to make the concessions required by the queen, reminding her at the same time that it had been her father's policy, and ought to be hers, rather to countenance the gentry against the arrogance of the great nobles than the contrary,--sent him in disgust from court. Retiring to Wilton, the seat of his brother-in-law the earl of Pembroke, he composed the Arcadia. This work he never revised or completed; it was published after his death, probably contrary to his orders; and it is of a kind long since obsolete. Under all these disadvantages, however, though faulty in plan and as a whole tedious, this romance has been found to exhibit extensive learning, a poetical cast of imagination, nice discrimination of character, and, what is far more, a fervor of eloquence in the cause of virtue, a heroism of sentiment and purity of thought, which stamp it for the offspring of a noble mind,--which evince that the workman was superior to his work.

But the world re-absorbed him; and baffled at court he meditated, in correspondence with one of his favorite mottoes,--"_Aut viam inveniam aut faciam_,"--to join one of the almost piratical expeditions of Drake against the Spanish settlements. Perhaps he might then be diverted from his design by the strong and kind warning of his true friend Languet, "to beware lest the thirst of lucre should creep into a mind which had hitherto admitted nothing but the love of truth and an anxiety to deserve well of all men." After the death of this monitor, however, he engaged in a second scheme of this very questionable nature, and was only prevented from embarking by the arrival of the queen's peremptory orders for his return to court and that of Fulke Greville who accompanied him.

It would certainly be difficult to defend in point of dignity and consistency his conspicuous appearance, as formerly recorded, at the triumph held in honor of the French embassy, or his attendance upon the duke of Anjou on his return to the Netherlands.

The story of his nomination to the throne of Poland deserves little regard; it is certain that such an elevation was never within his possibilities of attainment. His reputation on the continent was however extremely high; Don John of Austria himself esteemed him; the great prince of Orange corresponded with him as a real friend; and Du Plessis Mornay solicited his good offices on behalf of the French protestants. Nothing but the highest praise is due to his conduct in Holland; to the valor of a knight-errant he added the best virtues of a commander and counsellor. Leicester himself apprehended that it would be scarcely possible for him to sustain his high post without the countenance and assistance of his beloved nephew; and the event showed that he was right.

His death was worthy of the best parts of his life; he showed himself to the last devout, courageous, and serene. His wife, the beautiful daughter of Walsingham; his brother Robert, to whom he had performed the part rather of an anxious and indulgent parent than of a brother; and many sorrowing friends, surrounded his bed. Their grief was beyond a doubt sincere and poignant, as well as that of the many persons of letters and of worth who gloried in his friendship and flourished by his bountiful patronage.

On the whole, though justice claims the admission that the character of Sidney was not entirely free from the faults most incident to his age and station, and that neither as a writer, a scholar, a soldier, or a statesman,--in all which characters during the course of his short life he appeared, and appeared with distinction,--is he yet entitled to the highest rank; it may however be firmly maintained that, as a _man_, an accomplished and high-souled man, he had among his contemporary countrymen neither equal nor competitor. Such was the verdict in his own times not of flatterers only, or friends, but of England, of Europe; such is the title of merit under which the historian may enroll him, with confidence and with complacency, among the illustrious few whose name and example still serve to kindle in the bosom of youth the animating glow of virtuous emulation.

Leicester never appears in an amiable light except in connexion with his nephew, for whom his affection was not only sincere but ardent. A few extracts from a letter written by him to sir Thomas Heneage, captain of the queen's guards, giving an account of the action in which Sidney received his mortal wound, will illustrate this remark, while it records the gallant exploits of several of his companions in arms.

After relating that sir Philip had gone out with a party to intercept a convoy of the enemy's, he adds, "Many of our horses were hurt and killed, among which was my nephew's own. He went and changed to another, and would needs to the charge again, and once passed those musqueteers, where he received a sore wound upon his thigh, three fingers above his knee, the bone broken quite in pieces; but for which chance, God did send such a day as I think was never many years seen, so few against so many." The earl then enumerates the other commanders and distinguished persons engaged in the action. Colonel Norris, the earl of Essex, sir Thomas Perrot; "and my unfortunate Philip, with sir William Russell, and divers gentlemen; and not one hurt but only my nephew. They killed four of their enemy's chief leaders, and carried the valiant count Hannibal Gonzaga away with them upon a horse; also took captain George Cressier, the principal soldier of the camp, and captain of all the Albanese. My lord Willoughby overthrew him at the first encounter, man and horse. The gentleman did acknowledge it himself. There is not a properer gentleman in the world towards than this lord Willoughby is; but I can hardly praise one more than another, they all did so well; yet every one had his horse killed or hurt. And it was thought very strange that sir William Stanley with three hundred of his men should pass, in spite of so many musquets, such troops of horse three several times, making them remove their ground, and to return with no more loss than he did. Albeit, I must say it, it was too much loss for me; for this young man, he was my greatest comfort, next her majesty, of all the world; and if I could buy his life with all I have, to my shirt I would give it. How God will dispose of him I know not, but fear I must needs, greatly, the worst; the blow in so dangerous a place and so great; yet did I never hear of any man that did abide the dressing and setting of his bones better than he did; and he was carried afterwards in my barge to Arnheim, and I hear this day, he is still of good heart, and comforteth all about him as much as may be. God of his mercy grant me his life! which I cannot but doubt of greatly. I was abroad that time in the field giving some order to supply that business, which did endure almost two hours in continual fight; and meeting Philip coming upon his horseback, not a little to my grief. But I would you had stood by to hear his most loyal speeches to her majesty; his constant mind to the cause; his loving care over me, and his most resolute determination for death, not one jot appalled for his blow; which is the most grievous I ever saw with such a bullet; riding so a long mile and a half upon his horse, ere he came to the camp; not ceasing to speak still of her majesty, being glad if his hurt and death might any way honor her majesty; for hers he was whilst he lived, and God's he was sure to be if he died. Prayed all men to think the cause was as well her majesty's as the country's; and not to be discouraged; for you have seen such success as may encourage us all; and this my hurt is the ordinance of God by the hap of the war. Well, I pray God, if it be his will, save me his life; even as well for her majesty's service sake, as for mine own comfort[95]."

[Note 95: "Sidney Papers."]

Sir Henry Sidney was spared the anguish of following such a son to the grave, having himself quitted the scene a few months before. It was in 1578 that he received orders to resign the government of Ireland, having become obnoxious to the gentlemen of the English pale by his rigor in levying certain assessments for the maintenance of troops and the expenses of his own household, which they affirmed to be illegally imposed. There is every reason to believe that their complaint was well founded; but Elizabeth, refusing as usual to allow her prerogative to be touched, imprisoned several Irish lawyers, who came to England to appeal against the tax; and sir Henry, being able to prove that he had royal warrant for what he had done, was finally exonerated by the privy-council from all the charges which had been preferred against him, and retained to the last his office of lord-president of Wales.

The sound judgement of sir Henry Sidney taught him, that his near connexion with the earl of Leicester had its dangers as well as its advantages; and observing the turn for show and expense with which it served to inspire the younger members of his family, he would frequently enjoin them "to consider more whose sons than whose nephews they were." In fact, he was not able to lay up fortunes for them;--the offices he held were higher in dignity than emolument; his spirit was noble and munificent; and the following, among other anecdotes, may serve to show that he himself was not averse to a certain degree of parade; at least on particular occasions. The queen, standing once at a window of her palace at Hampton-court, saw a gentleman approach escorted by two hundred attendants on horseback; and turning to her courtiers, she asked with some surprise, who this might be? But on being informed that it was sir Henry Sidney, her lord deputy of Ireland and president of Wales, she answered, "And he may well do it, for he has two of the best offices in my kingdom."

The following letter, addressed to sir Henry as lord-president of Wales, discloses an additional trait of his character, which cannot fail to recommend him still more to the esteem of a humane and enlightened age;--his reluctance, namely, to lend his concurrence to the measures of religious persecution which the queen and her bishops now urged upon all persons in authority as their incumbent duty.

* * * * *

_Sir Francis Walsingham to sir H. Sidney lord president of Wales_.

"My very good lord;

"My lords of late calling here to remembrance the commission that was more than a year ago given out to your lordship and certain others for the reformation of the recusants and obstinate persons in religion, within Wales and the marches thereof, marvelled very much that in all this time they have heard of nothing done by you and the rest; and truly, my lord, the necessity of this time requiring so greatly to have these kind of men diligently and sharply proceeded against, there will here a very hard construction be made, I fear me, of you, to retain with you the said commission so long, doing no good therein. Of late now I received your lordship's letter touching such persons as you think meet to have the custody and oversight of Montgomery Castle, by which it appeareth you have begun, in your present journeys in Wales, to do somewhat in causes of religion; but having a special commission for that purpose, in which are named special and very apt persons to join with you in those matters, it will be thought strange to my lords to hear of your proceeding in those causes without their assistance; and therefore, to the end their lordships should conceive no otherwise than well of your dealing without them, I have forborne to acquaint them with our late letter, wishing your lordship, for the better handling and success of those matters in religion, you called unto you the bishop of Worcester, Mr. Philips, and certain others specially named in the commission. They will, I am sure, be glad to wait on you in so good a service, and your proceeding together with them in these matters will be better allowed of here, &c.

"P.S. Your lordship had need to walk warily, for your doings are narrowly observed, and her majesty is apt to give ear to any that shall ill you. Great hold is taken by your enemies for neglecting the execution of this commission.

"Oatlands, August 9th 1580[96]."

[Note 96: "Sidney Papers," vol. i. p. 276.]

* * * * *

Leicester, soon after the death of his nephew, placed his army in winter-quarters, having effected no one object of importance. The States remonstrated with him in strong terms on the various and grievous abuses of his administration; he answered them in the tone of graciousness and conciliation which it suited his purpose to assume; and publicly surrendering up to them the whole apparent authority of the provinces, whilst by a secret act of restriction he in fact retained for himself full command over all the governors of towns and provinces, he set sail for England.

Elizabeth received her favorite with her usual complacency, either because his abject submissions had in reality succeeded in banishing from her mind all resentment of his conduct in Holland, or because she required the support of his long-tried counsels under the awful responsibilities of that impending conflict with the whole collected force of the Spanish monarchy for which she felt herself summoned to prepare. The king of Denmark, astonished to behold a princess of Elizabeth's experienced caution involving herself with seeming indifference in peril so great and so apparent, exclaimed, that she had now taken the diadem from her brow to place it on the doubtful cast of war; and trembling for the fate of his friend and ally, he dispatched an ambassador in haste to offer her his mediation for the adjustment of all differences arising out of the revolt of the Netherlands. But Elizabeth firmly, though with thanks, declined all overtures towards a reconciliation with a sovereign whom she now recognised as her implacable and determined foe.

She was far, however, from despising the danger which she braved; and with a prudence and diligence equal to her fortitude, she had begun to assemble and put in action all her means, internal and external, of defence and annoyance. She linked herself still more closely, by benefits and promises, with the prince of Conde, chief of the Hugonots now in arms against the League, or Catholic association, formed in France under the auspices of the king of Spain. With the king of Scots also she entered into an intimate alliance; and she had previously secured the friendship of all the protestant princes of Germany and the northern powers of Europe. She now openly avowed the enterprises of Drake, which she had hitherto only encouraged underhand, or on certain pretexts of retaliation; and she sent him with a fleet of twenty-one ships, carrying above eleven thousand soldiers, to make war upon the Spanish settlements in the West Indies.

But if all these measures seemed likely to afford her kingdom sufficient means of protection against the attacks of a foreign enemy, it was difficult for her to regard her own person as equally well secured against the dark conspiracies of her catholic subjects, instigated as they were by the sanguinary maxims of the Romish see, fostered by the atrocious activity of the emissaries of Philip, and sanctioned by the authority of the queen of Scots, to whom homage was rendered by her party as rightful sovereign of the British isles.

During the festival of Easter 1586, some English priests of the seminary at Rheims had encouraged a fanatical soldier named Savage to vow the death of the queen. About the same time Ballard, also a priest of this seminary, was concerting in France, with Mendoca and the fugitive lord Paget, the means of procuring an invasion of the country during the absence of its best troops in Flanders. Repairing to England, Ballard communicated both these schemes to Anthony Babington, a gentleman who had been gained over on a visit to France by the bishop of Glasgow, Mary's ambassador there, and whose vehement attachment to her cause had rendered him capable of any enterprise, however criminal or desperate, for her deliverance. Babington entered into both plots with eagerness; but he suggested, that so essential a part of the action as the assassination of the queen ought not to be intrusted to one adventurer; and he lost no time in associating five others in the vow of Savage, himself undertaking the part of setting free the captive Mary. With her he had previously been in correspondence, having frequently taken the charge of transmitting to her by secret channels her letters from France; and he immediately imparted to her this new design for her restoration to liberty and advancement to the English throne. There is full evidence that Mary approved it in all its parts; that in several successive letters she gave Babington counsels or directions relative to its execution; and that she promised to the perpetrators of the murder of Elizabeth every reward which it should hereafter be in her power to bestow.

All this time the vigilant eye of Walsingham was secretly fixed on the secure conspirators. He held a thread which vibrated to their every motion, and he was patiently awaiting the moment of their complete entanglement to spring forth and seize his victims.

To the queen, and to her only, he communicated the daily intelligence which he received from a spy who had introduced himself into all their secrets; and Elizabeth had the firmness to hasten nothing, though a picture was actually shown her, in which the six assassins had absurdly caused themselves to be represented with a motto underneath intimating their common design. These dreadful visages remained however so perfectly impressed on her memory, that she immediately recognised one of the conspirators who had approached very near her person as she was one day walking in her garden. She had the intrepidity to fix him with a look which daunted him; and afterwards, turning to her captain of the guards, she remarked that she was well guarded, not having a single armed man at the time about her.

At length Walsingham judged it time to interpose and rescue his sovereign from her perilous situation. Ballard was first seized, and soon after Babington and his associates. All, overcome by terror or allured by vain hopes, severally and voluntarily confessed their guilt and accused their accomplices. The nation was justly exasperated against the partakers in a plot which comprised foreign invasion, domestic insurrection, the assassination of a beloved sovereign, the elevation to the throne of her feared and hated rival, and the restoration of popery. The traitors suffered, notwithstanding the interest which the extreme youth and good moral characters of most or all of them were formed to inspire, amid the execrations of the protestant spectators. But what was to be the fate of that "pretender to the crown," on whose behalf and with whose privity this foul conspiracy had been entered into, and who was by the late statute, passed with a view to this very case, liable to condign punishment?

This was now the important question which awaited the decision of Elizabeth, and divided the judgements of her most confidential counsellors. Some advised that the royal captive should be spared the ignominy of any public proceeding; but that her attendants should be removed, and her custody rendered so severe as to preclude all possibility of her renewing her pestilent intrigues. Leicester, in conformity with the baseness and atrocity of his character, is related to have suggested the employment of treachery against the life of a prisoner whom it appeared equally dangerous to spare or to punish; and to have sent a divine to convince Walsingham of the lawfulness of taking her off by poison. But that minister rejected the proposal with abhorrence, and concurred with the majority of the council in urging the queen to bring her without fear or scruple to an open trial. In favor of this measure Elizabeth at length decided, and steps were taken accordingly.

By means of well concerted precautions, Mary had been kept in total ignorance of the apprehension of the conspirators, till their confessions had been made and their fates decided:--a gentleman was then sent to her from the court to announce that all was discovered.

It was just as she had mounted her horse to take her usual exercise with her keepers, that this alarming message was delivered to her; and for obvious reasons she was compelled to proceed on her excursion, instead of returning, as she desired, to her chamber. Meantime all her papers were seized, sealed up, and conveyed to the queen. Amongst them were letters from a large proportion of the nobility and other leading characters of the English court, filled with expressions of attachment to the person of the queen of Scots and sympathy in her misfortunes, not unmixed, in all probability, with severe reflections on the conduct of her rival and oppressor. All these Elizabeth perused, and no doubt stored up in her memory; but her good sense and prudence supplied on this occasion the place of magnanimity; and well knowing that the conscious fears of the writers would be ample security for their future conduct, she buried in lasting silence and apparent oblivion all the discoveries which had reached her through this channel.

The principal domestics of Mary were now apprehended, and committed to different keepers; and Nau and Curl her two secretaries were sent prisoners to London. She herself was immediately removed from Tutbury, and conveyed with a great attendance of the neighbouring gentry, and with pauses at several noblemen's houses by the way, to the strong castle of Fotheringay in Northamptonshire. This part of the business was safely and prudently conducted by sir Amias Paulet; and he received for his encouragement and reward the following characteristic letter, subscribed by the hand of her majesty, and surely of her own inditing.

* * * * *

"To my faithful Amias.

"Amias, my most careful servant, God reward thee treble fold in the double for thy most troublesome charge so well discharged! If you knew, my Amias, how kindly, besides dutifully, my grateful heart accepteth your double labors and faithful actions, your wise orders and safe conduct performed in so dangerous and crafty a charge, it would ease your troubles and rejoice your heart. And (which I charge you to carry this most just thought) that I cannot balance in any weight of my judgement the value I prize you at: And suppose no treasure to countervail such a faith: And condemn myself in that fault which I have committed, if I reward not such deserts. Yea, let me lack when I have most need, if I acknowledge not such a merit with a reward '_non omnibus datum_.'

"But let your wicked mistress know, how with hearty sorrow her vile deserts compel those orders; and bid her from me ask God forgiveness for her treacherous dealing toward the saver of her life many years, to the intolerable peril of her own. And yet, not content with so many forgivenesses, must fall again so horribly, far passing a woman, much more a princess. Instead of excusing thereof, not one can serve, it being so plainly confessed by the authors of my guiltless death.

"Let repentance take place; and let not the fiend possess so as her best part be lost. Which I pray, with hands lifted up to him that may both save and spill. With my loving adieu and prayer for thy long life,

"Your assured and loving sovereign in heart,

by good desert induced,

"ELIZ. R."

* * * * *

Soon, after the arrival of Mary at Fotheringay, Elizabeth, according to the provisions of the late act, issued out a commission to forty noblemen and privy-councillors, empowering them to try and pass sentence upon Mary daughter and heir of king James V. and late queen of Scots; for it was thus that she was designated, with a view of intimating to her that she was no longer to be regarded as possessing the rights of a sovereign princess. Thirty-six of the commissioners repaired immediately to Fotheringay, where they arrived on October 9th 1586, and cited Mary to appear before them. This summons she refused to obey, on the double ground, that as an absolute princess she was free from all human jurisdiction, since kings only could be her peers; and that having been detained in England as a prisoner, she had not enjoyed the protection of the laws, and consequently ought not in equity to be regarded as amenable to their sentence. Weighty as these objections may appear, the commissioners refused to admit them, and declared that they would proceed to judge her by default. This menace she at first disregarded; but soon after, overcome by the artful representations of Hatton on the inferences which must inevitably be drawn from her refusal to justify herself for the satisfaction of a princess who had declared that she desired nothing so much as the establishment of her innocence, she changed her mind and consented to plead. None of her papers were restored, no counsel was assigned her; and her request that her two secretaries, whose evidence was princicipally relied on by the prosecutors, might be confronted with her, was denied. But all these were hardships customarily inflicted on prisoners accused of high treason and it does not appear that, with respect to its forms and modes of proceedings, Mary had cause to complain that her trial was other than a regular and legal one.

On her first appearance she renewed her protestation against the competence of the tribunal. Bromley lord-chancellor answered her, showing the jurisdiction of the English law over all persons within the country; and the commissioners ordered both the objection and the reply to be registered, as if to save the point of law; but it does not appear that it was ever referred for decision to any other authority.

Intercepted letters, authenticated by the testimony of her secretaries, formed the chief evidence against Mary. From these the crown lawyers showed, and she did not attempt to deny, that she had suffered her correspondents to address her as queen of England; that she had endeavoured by means of English fugitives to incite the Spaniards to invade the country; and that she had been negotiating at Rome the terms of a transfer of all her claims, present and future, to the king of Spain, disinheriting by this unnatural act her own schismatic son. The further charge of having concurred in the late plot for the assassination of Elizabeth, she strongly denied and attempted to disprove; but it stood on equally good evidence with all the rest; and in spite of some suggestions of which her modern partisans have endeavoured to give her the benefit, there appears no solid foundation on which an impartial inquirer can rest any doubt of the fact.

The deportment of Mary on this trying emergency exhibited somewhat of the dignity, but more of the spirit and adroitness, for which she has been famed. She justified her negotiations, or intrigues, with foreign princes, on the ground of her inalienable right to employ all the means within her power for the recovery of that liberty of which she had been cruelly and unjustly deprived. With great effrontery she persisted in denying that she had ever entertained with Babington any correspondence whatever; and she urged that his pretending to receive, or having in fact received, letters written in her cipher, was no conclusive proof against her; since it was the same which she used in her French correspondence, and might have fallen into other hands. But finding herself hard pressed by evidence on this part of the subject, she afterwards hazarded a rash attempt to fix on Walsingham the imputation of having suborned witnesses and forged letters for her destruction. The aged minister, greatly moved by this attack upon his character, immediately rose and asserted his innocence in a manner so solemn, and with such circumstantial corroboration, as compelled her to retract the accusation with an apology.

On some mention of the earl of Arundel and lord William Howard his brother, which occurred in the intercepted letters, she sighed, and exclaimed with a feeling which did her honor, "Alas, what has not the noble house of Howard suffered for my sake!"

On the whole, her presence of mind was remarkable; though the quick sensibilities of her nature could not be withheld from breaking out at times, either in vehement sallies of anger or long fits of weeping, as the sense of past and present injuries, or of her forlorn and afflicted state and the perils and sufferings which still menaced her, rose by turns upon her agitated and affrighted mind.

The commissioners, after a full hearing, of the cause, quitted Fotheringay, and, meeting again in the Star-chamber summoned before them the two secretaries, who voluntarily confirmed on oath the whole of their former depositions: after this, they proceeded to an unanimous sentence of death against Mary, which was immediately transmitted to the queen for her approbation. On the same day a declaration was published on the part of the commissioners and judges, importing, that the sentence did in no manner derogate from the titles and honors of the king of Scots.

Most of the subsequent steps taken by Elizabeth in this unhappy business are marked with the features of that intense selfishness which, scrupling nothing for the attainment of its own mean objects, seldom fails by exaggerated efforts and overstrained manoeuvres to expose itself to detection and merited contempt.

Never had she enjoyed a higher degree of popularity than at this juncture: the late discoveries had opened to view a series of popish machinations which had fully justified, in the eyes of an alarmed and irritated people, even those previous measures of severity on the part of her government which had most contributed to provoke these attempts.

The queen was more than ever the heroine of the protestant party; and the image of those imminent and hourly perils to which her zeal in the good cause had exposed her, inflamed to enthusiasm the sentiment of loyalty. On occasion of the detection of Babington's plot, the whole people gave themselves up to rejoicings. Sixty bonfires, says the chronicler, were kindled between Ludgate and Charing-Cross, and tables were set out in the open streets at which happy neighbours feasted together. The condemnation of the queen of Scots produced similar demonstrations. After her sentence had been ratified by both houses of parliament, it was thought expedient, probably by way of feeling the pulse of the people, that solemn proclamation of it should be made in London by the lord-mayor and city officers, and by the magistrates of the county in Westminster. The multitude, untouched by the long misfortunes of an unhappy princess born of the blood-royal of England and heiress to its throne,--insensible too of every thing arbitrary, unprecedented, or unjust, in the treatment to which she had been subjected, received the notification of her doom with expressions of triumph and exultation truly shocking. Bonfires were lighted, church bells were rung, and every street and lane throughout the city resounded with psalms of thanksgiving[97].

[Note 97: Hollinshed's Castrations.]

It is manifest, therefore, that no deference for the opinions or feelings of her subjects compelled Elizabeth to hesitate or to dissemble in this matter.

Had she permitted the execution of the sentence simply, and without delay, all orders of men attached to the protestant establishment would have approved it as an act fully justified by state-expediency and the law of self-defence; and though misgivings might have arisen in the minds of some on cooler reflection, when alarm had subsided and the bitterness of satiated revenge had begun to make itself felt,--these "compunctious visitings" could have led to no consequences capable of alarming her. It must have been felt as highly inequitable to reproach the queen, when all was past and irrevocable, for the consent which she had afforded to a deed sanctioned by a law, ratified by the legislature and applauded by the people, and from which both church and state had reaped the fruits of security and peace. Foreign princes also would have respected the vigor of this proceeding; they would not have been displeased to see themselves spared by a decisive act the pain of making disregarded representations on such a subject; and a secret consciousness that few of their number would have scrupled under all the circumstances to take like vengeance on a deadly foe and rival, might further have contributed to reconcile them to the fact. Even as it was, pope Sixtus V. himself could scarcely restrain his expressions of admiration at the completion of so strong a measure as the final execution of the sentence: his holiness had indeed a strange passion for capital punishments, and he is said to have envied the queen of England the glorious satisfaction of cutting off a royal head:--a sentiment not much more extraordinary from such a personage, than the ardent desire which he is reported to have expressed, that it were possible for him to have a son by this heretic princess; because the offspring of such parents could not fail, he said, to make himself king of the world.

But it was the weakness of Elizabeth to imagine, that an extraordinary parade of reluctance, and the interposition of some affected delays, would change in public opinion the whole character of the deed which she contemplated, and preserve to her the reputation of feminine mildness and sensibility, without the sacrifice of that great revenge on which she was secretly bent. The world, however, when it has no interest in deceiving itself, is too wise to accept of words instead of deeds, or in opposition to them; and the sole result of her artifices was to aggravate in the eyes of all mankind the criminality of the act, by giving it rather the air of a treacherous and cold-blooded murder, than of solemn execution done upon a formidable culprit by the sentence of offended laws. The parliament which Elizabeth had summoned to partake the odium of Mary's death, met four days after the judges had pronounced her doom, and was opened by commission. An unanimous ratification of the sentence by both houses was immediately carried, and followed by an earnest address to her majesty for its publication and execution; to which she returned a long and labored answer.

She began with the expression of her fervent gratitude to Providence for the affections of her people; adding protestations of her love towards them, and of her perfect willingness to have suffered her own life still to remain exposed as a mark to the aim of enemies and traitors, had she not perceived how intimately the safety and well-being of the nation was connected with her own. With regard to the queen of Scots, she said, so severe had been the grief which she had sustained from her recent conduct, that the fear of renewing this sentiment had been the cause, and the sole cause, of her withholding her personal appearance at the opening of that assembly, where she knew that the subject must of necessity become matter of discussion; and not, as had been suggested, the apprehension of any violence to be attempted against her person;--yet she might mention, that she had actually seen a bond by which the subscribers bound themselves to procure her death within a month.

So far was she from indulging any ill will against one of the same sex, the same rank, the same race as herself,--in fact her nearest kinswoman,--that after having received full information of certain of her machinations, she had secretly written with her own hand to the queen of Scots, promising that, on a simple confession of her guilt in a private letter to herself, all should be buried in oblivion. She doubted not that the ancient laws of the land would have been sufficient to reach the guilt of her who had been the great artificer of the recent treasons; and she had consented to the passing of the late statute, not for the purpose of ensnaring her, but rather to give her warning of the danger in which she stood. Her lawyers, from their strict attachment to ancient forms, would have brought this princess to trial within the county of Stafford, have compelled her to hold up her hand at the bar, and have caused twelve jurymen to pass judgement upon her. But to her it had appeared more suitable to the dignity of the prisoner and the importance of the cause to refer the examination to the judges, nobles, and counsellors of the realm;--happy if even thus she could escape that ready censure to which the conspicuous station of sovereigns on all occasions exposed them.

The statute, by requiring her to pronounce judgement upon her kinswoman, had involved her in anxiety and difficulties. Amid all her perils, however, she must remember with gratitude and affection the voluntary association into which her subjects had entered for her defence. It was never her practice to decide hastily on any matter; in a case so rare and important some interval of deliberation must be allowed her; and she would pray Heaven to enlighten her mind, and guide it to the decision most beneficial to the church, to the state, and to the people.

Twelve days after the delivery of this speech, her majesty sent a message to both houses, entreating that her parliament would carefully reconsider the matter, and endeavour to hit upon some device by which the life of the queen of Scots might be rendered consistent with her own safety and that of the country. Her faithful parliament, however, soon after acquainted her, that with their utmost diligence they had found it impracticable to form any satisfactory plan of the kind she desired; and the speakers of the two houses ended a long representation of the mischiefs to be expected from any arrangement by which Mary would be suffered to continue in life, with a most earnest and humble petition, that her majesty would not longer deny to the united wishes and entreaties of all England, what it would be iniquitous to refuse to the meanest individual; the execution of justice.

Elizabeth, after pronouncing a second long harangue designed to display her own clemency, to upbraid the malice of her libellers, and to refute the suspicion, which her conscience no doubt helped her to anticipate, that all this irresolution was but feigned, and that the decisions of the two houses were influenced by a secret acquaintance with her wishes,--again dismissed their petitions without any positive answer. Soon after, however, she permitted herself to authorize the proclamation of the sentence, and sent lord Buckhurst, and Beal clerk of the council, to announce it to Mary herself.

During the whole of this time, the kings of France and of Scotland were interceding by their ambassadors for the pardon of the illustrious prisoner. How the representations of Henry III. were received, we do not find minutely recorded; but Elizabeth knew that they might be safely disregarded: that monarch was himself too much a sufferer by the arrogance and ambition of the house of Guise, to be very strenuous in his friendship towards any one so nearly connected with it; and it is even said that, while a sense of decorum extorted from him in public some energetic expressions of the interest taken by him in the fate of a sister-in-law and queen-dowager of France, a sentiment of regard for Elizabeth, his friend and ally, prompted him to counsel her, through a secret agent, to execute the sentence with the least possible delay. Of the treatment experienced by the master of Gray, the envoy of James, we gain some particulars from an original memorial drawn up by himself.

He appears to have reached Ware on December 24th, whence he sent to desire Keith and Douglas, the resident Scotch ambassadors, to announce to the queen his approach; and she voluntarily promised that the life of Mary should be spared till his proposals were heard. His reception in London was somewhat ungracious;--no one was sent to welcome or convoy him, and it was ten days before he and sir Robert Melvil his coadjutor were admitted to an audience. Elizabeth's first address to them was, "A thing long looked for should be welcome when it comes; I would now see your master's offers." Gray desired first to be assured that the cause for which those offers were made was "still extant;" that is, that the life of Mary was still safe, and should be so till their mission had been heard. She answered, "I think it be extant yet, but I will not promise for an hour." They then brought forward certain proposals, not here recited, which she rejected with contempt; and calling in Leicester, the lord-admiral, and Hatton, "very despitefully" repeated them in hearing of them all. Gray then propounded his last offer:--that the queen of Scots should resign all her claims upon the English succession to her son, by which means the hopes of the papists would, as he said, be cut off. The terms in which this overture was made Elizabeth affected not to understand; Leicester explained their meaning to be, that the king of Scots should be put in his mother's place. "Is it so?" the queen answered; "then I put myself in a worse case than before:--By God's passion, that were to cut my own throat; and for a duchy or an earldom to yourself, you, or such as you, would cause some of your desperate knaves to kill me. No, by God, he shall never be in that place!" Gray answered, "He craves nothing of your majesty, but only of his mother." "That," said Leicester, "were to make him _party_ (rival or adversary) to the queen my mistress." "He will be far more party," replied Gray, "if he be in her place through her death." Her majesty exclaimed, that she should not have a worse in his mother's place, and added; "Tell your king what good I have done for him in holding the crown on his head since he was born, and that I _mind_ (intend) to keep the league that now stands between us, and if he break it, it shall be a double fault." With this speech she would have left them; but they persisted in arguing the matter further, though in vain. Gray then requested that Mary's life might be spared for fifteen days; the queen refused: sir Robert Melvil begged for only eight days; she said not for an hour, and so quitted them.

After this, the Scotch ambassadors assumed a tone of menace: but the perfidious Gray secretly fortified Elizabeth's resolution with the proverb, "The dead cannot bite;" and undertook soon to pacify, in any event, the anger of his master, whose minion he at this time was.

No sooner had Elizabeth silenced with this show of inflexibility all the pleadings or menaces by which others had attempted to divert her from her fatal aim, than she began, as in the affair of the French marriage, to feel her own resolution waver. It appears unquestionable that to affected delays a real hesitation succeeded. When her pride was no longer irritated by opposition, she had leisure to survey the meditated deed in every light; and as it rose upon her view in all its native deformity, anxious fears for her own fame and credit, yet untainted by any crime, and perhaps genuine scruples of conscience, forcibly assailed her resolution. But her ministers, deeply sensible that both she and they had already gone too far to recede with reputation or with safety, encountered her growing reluctance with a proportional increase in the vehemence of their clamors for what they called, and perhaps thought, justice. All the hazards to which her excess of clemency might be imagined to expose her, were conjured up in the most alarming forms to repel her scruples. A plot for her assassination was disclosed, to which the French ambassador was ascertained to have been privy;--rumors were raised of invasions and insurrections; and it may be suspected that the queen, really alarmed in the first instance by the representations of her council, voluntarily contributed afterwards to keep up these delusions for the sake of terrifying the minds of men into an approval of the deed of blood.

At length, on February 1st 1587, her majesty ordered secretary Davison to bring her the warrant, which had remained ready drawn in his hands for some weeks; and having signed it, she told him to get it sealed with the great seal, and in his way to call on Walsingham and tell him what she had done; "though," she added smiling, "I fear he will die of grief when he hears of it;"--this minister being then sick. Davison obeyed her directions, and the warrant was sealed. The next day he received a message from her, purporting that he should forbear to carry the warrant to the lord keeper till further orders. Surprised and perplexed, he immediately waited upon her to receive her further directions; when she chid him for the haste he had used in this matter, and talked in a fluctuating and undetermined manner respecting it which greatly alarmed him. On leaving the queen, he immediately communicated the circumstances to Burleigh and Hatton; and thinking it safest for himself to rid his hands of the warrant, he delivered it up to Burleigh, by whom it had been drawn and from whom he had at first received it. A council was now called, consisting of such of the ministers as either the queen herself or Davison had made acquainted with the signing of the warrant; and it was proposed that, without any further communication with her majesty, it should be sent down for immediate execution to the four earls to whom it was directed.

Davison appears to have expressed some fears that he should be made to bear the blame of this step; but all his fellow-councillors then present joined to assure him that they would share the responsibility: it was also said, that her majesty had desired of several that she might not be troubled respecting any of the particulars of the last dismal scene; consequently it was impossible that she could complain of their proceeding without her privity. By these arguments Davison was seduced to give his concurrence; and Beal, a person noted for the vehemence of his attachment to the protestant cause and to the title of the countess of Hertford, was dispatched with the instrument; in obedience to which Mary underwent the fatal stroke on February 8th.

The news of this event was received by Elizabeth with the most extraordinary demonstrations of astonishment, grief, and anger. Her countenance changed, her voice faltered, and she remained for some moments fixed and motionless; a violent burst of tears and lamentations succeeded, with which she mingled expressions of rage against her whole council. They had committed, she said, a crime never to be forgiven; they had put to death without her knowledge her dear kinswoman and sister, against whom they well knew that it was her fixed resolution never to proceed to this fatal extremity. She put on deep mourning, kept herself retired among her ladies abandoned to sighs and tears, and drove from her presence with the most furious reproaches such of her ministers as ventured to approach her. She caused several of the councillors to be examined as to the share which they had taken in this transaction. Burleigh was of the number; and against him she expressed herself with such peculiar bitterness that he gave himself up for lost, and begged permission to retire with the loss of all his employments. This resignation was not accepted; and after a considerable interval, during which this great minister deprecated the wrath of his sovereign in letters of penitence and submission worthy only of an Oriental slave, she condescended to be reconciled to a man whose services she felt to be indispensable.

But the manes of Mary, or the indignation of her son, could not be appeased, it seems, without a sacrifice; and a fit victim was at hand. From some words dropped by lord Burleigh on his examination, it had appeared that it was the declaration of Davison respecting the sentiments of the queen, as expressed to himself, which had finally decided the council to send down the warrant; and on this ground proceedings were instituted against the unfortunate secretary. He was stripped of his office, sent to the Tower in spite of the warm and honest remonstrances of Burleigh, and after several examinations subjected to a process in the Star-chamber for a twofold contempt. First, in revealing her majesty's counsels to others of her ministers;--secondly, in giving up to them an instrument which she had committed to him in special trust and secrecy, to be kept in case of any sudden emergency which might require its use.

Davison demanded that his own examination, which with that of Burleigh formed the whole evidence against him, should be read entire, instead of being picked and garbled by the crown lawyers; but this piece of justice the queen's counsel refused him, on the ground that they contained matter unfit to be divulged. He was found guilty, and sentenced to a fine of ten thousand marks and imprisonment during the queen's pleasure, by judges who at the same time expressed a high opinion both of his abilities and his integrity, and who certainly regarded his offence as nothing more than an error of judgement or want of due caution. Elizabeth ordered a copy of his sentence to be immediately transmitted to the king of Scots, as triumphant evidence of that perfect innocence in the tragical _accident_ of his mother's death, of which she had already made solemn protestation. James complied so far with obvious motives of policy as to accept her excuses without much inquiry; but impartial posterity will not be disposed to dismiss so easily an important and curious investigation which it possesses abundant means of pursuing. The record of Burleigh's examination is still extant, and so likewise is Davison's apology; a piece which was composed by himself at the time and addressed to Walsingham, who could best judge of its accuracy; and which after being communicated to Camden, who has inserted an extract from it in his Annals, has at length been found entire among the original papers of sir Amias Paulet. From this authentic source we derive the following very extraordinary particulars.

It was by the lord-admiral that the queen first sent a message to Davison requiring him to bring the warrant for her signature; after subscribing it, she asked him if he were not heartily sorry it were done? to which he replied by a moderate and cautious approval of the act. She bade him tell the chancellor when he carried the warrant to be sealed, that he must "use it as secretly as might be." She then signed other papers which he had brought; dispatching them all "with the best disposition and willingness that could be." Afterwards she recurred to the subject; mentioned that she had delayed the act so long that the world might see "that she had not been violently or maliciously drawn unto it;" but that she had all along perceived the necessity of it to her own security. She then said, that she would have it done as secretly as might be, and not in the open court or green of the castle, but in the hall. Just as Davison was gathering up his papers to depart, "she fell into some complaint of sir Amias Paulet and others that might have eased her of this burthen;" and she desired that he would yet "deal with secretary Walsingham to write jointly to sir Amias and sir Drue Drury to sound them in this matter; "aiming still at this, that it might be so done as the blame might be removed from herself." This nefarious commission Davison strangely consented to execute, though he declares that he had always before refused to meddle therein "upon sundry of her majesty's motions,"--as a thing which he utterly disapproved; and though he was fully persuaded that the wisdom and integrity of sir Amias would render the application fruitless. The queen repeated her injunctions of secrecy in the matter, and he departed.

He went to Walsingham, told him that the warrant was signed for executing the sentence against the queen of Scots; agreed with him at the same time about the letter to be written to sir Amias for her private assassination;--then got the warrant sealed, then dispatched the letter.

The next morning, the queen sent him word to forbear going to the chancellor till she had spoken with him again. He went directly to acquaint her that he had already seen him. She asked, "what needed such haste?" He pleaded her commands, and the danger of delay. The queen particularized some other form in which she thought it would be safer and better for her to have the thing done. Davison answered, that the just and honorable way would, he thought, be the safest and the best, if she meant to have it done at all. The queen made no reply, but went to dinner.--It appears from another statement of Davison's case, also drawn up by himself, that it was on this very day, without waiting either for Paulet's answer or for more explicit orders from her majesty, that he had the incredible rashness to deliver up the warrant to Burleigh, and to concur in the subsequent proceedings of the council; though aware that the members were utterly ignorant of the queen's application to Paulet.

A day or two after, her majesty called him to her in the privy chamber, and told him smiling, that she had been troubled with him in a dream which she had had the night before, that the queen of Scots was put to death; and which so disturbed her, that she thought she could have run him through with a sword. He answered at first jestingly, but, on recollection, asked her with great earnestness, whether she did not intend that the matter should go forward? She answered vehemently and with an oath, that she did; but again harped upon the old string;--that this mode would cast all the blame upon herself, and a better might be contrived. The same afternoon she inquired if he had received an answer from sir Amias; which at the time he had not, but he brought it to her the next morning. It contained an absolute refusal to be concerned in any action inconsistent with justice and honor. At this the queen was much offended; she complained of what she called the "dainty perjury" of him and others, who contrary to their oath of association cast the burthen upon herself. Soon after, she again blamed "the niceness of these precise fellows;" but said she would have the thing done without them, and mentioned one Wingfield who would undertake it. Davison remonstrated against this design; and also represented the dangerous dilemma in which Paulet and Drury would have been placed by complying with her wishes; since, if she avowed their act, she took it upon herself, "with her infinite dishonor;" if she disavowed it, they were ruined. It is absolutely inconceivable how a man who understood so well the perils which these persons had skilfully avoided, should have remained so blind to those which menaced himself; yet Davison, by his own account, still suffered the queen to go on devising new schemes for the taking off of Mary, without either acquainting her that the privy-council had already sent off Beal with the warrant, or interfering with them to procure, if possible, the recall of this messenger of death. Even on his next interview with her, which he believes to have been on Tuesday, the very day before the execution of the sentence, when her majesty, after speaking of the daily peril in which she lived, swore a great oath, that it was a shame for them all that the thing was not yet done, and spoke to him to write a letter to Paulet for the dispatch of the business; he contented himself with observing generally, that the warrant was, he thought, sufficient; and though the queen still inclined to think the letter requisite, he left her without even dropping a hint that it was scarcely within the limits of possibility that it should arrive before the sentence had been put in execution.

Of this unaccountable imprudence the utmost advantage was taken against him by his cruel and crafty mistress; whose chief concern it had all along been to discover by what artifice she might throw the greatest possible portion of the blame from herself upon others. Davison underwent a long imprisonment; the fine, though it reduced him to beggary, was rigorously exacted; some scanty supplies for the relief of his immediate necessities, while in prison, were all that her majesty would vouchsafe him; and neither the zealous attestations of Burleigh in the beginning to his merit and abilities and the importance of his public services, nor the subsequent earnest pleadings of her own beloved Essex for his restoration, could ever prevail with Elizabeth to lay aside the appearances of perpetual resentment which she thought good to preserve against him. She would neither reinstate him in office nor ever more admit him to her presence; unable perhaps to bear the pain of beholding a countenance which carried with it an everlasting reproach to her conscience.

From the formidable responsibilities of this unprecedented action, the wary Walsingham had withdrawn himself by favor of an opportune fit of sickness, which disabled him from taking part in any thing but the application to sir Amias Paulet, by which he could incur, as he well knew, no hazard. A still more crafty politician, Leicester, after throwing out in the privy-council hints of her majesty's wishes, which served to accelerate the decisive steps there taken, had artfully contrived to escape from all further participation in their proceedings. Both ministers, in secret letters to Scotland, washed their hands of the blood of Mary. But Leicester, not content with these defensive measures, sought to improve the opportunity to the destruction of a rival whom he had never ceased to hate and envy. To his insidious arts the temporary disgrace of Burleigh is probably to be imputed; and it seems to have been from the apprehension of his malignant misconstructions that the lord treasurer refused to put on paper the particulars of his defence, and never ceased to implore admission to plead his cause before his sovereign in person. His perseverance at length prevailed: the queen saw him; heard his justification, and restored him to her wonted grace; after which the tacit compromise between the minister and the favorite was restored;--that compromise by which, during eight-and-twenty years, each had vindicated to himself an equality of political power, personal influence, and royal favor, with the secret enemy whom he vainly wished, or hoped, or plotted, to displace.

To relate again those melancholy details of Mary's closing scene, on which the historians of England and of Scotland, as well as the numerous biographers of this ill-fated princess, have exhausted all the arts of eloquence, would be equally needless and presumptuous. It is, however, important to remark, that she died rather with the triumphant air of a martyr to her religion, the character which she falsely assumed, than with the meekness of a victim or the penitence of a culprit. She bade Melvil tell her son that she had done nothing injurious to his rights or honor; though she was actually in treaty to disinherit him, and had also consented to a nefarious plot for carrying him off prisoner to Rome; and she denied with obstinacy to the last the charge of conspiring the death of Elizabeth, though by her will, written the day before her death, she rewarded as faithful servants the two secretaries who had borne this testimony against her. A spirit of self-justification so haughty and so unprincipled, a perseverance in deliberate falsehood so resolute and so shameless, ought under no circumstances and in no personage, not even in a captive beauty and an injured queen, to be confounded, by any writer studious of the moral tendencies of history and capable of sound discrimination, with genuine religion, true fortitude, or the dignity which renders misfortune respectable.

Let due censure be passed on the infringement of morality committed by Elizabeth, in detaining as a captive that rival kinswoman, and pretender to her crown, whom the dread of still more formidable dangers had compelled to seek refuge in her dominions: let it be admitted, that the exercise of criminal jurisdiction over a person thus lawlessly detained in a foreign country was another sacrifice of the just to the expedient, which none but a profligate politician will venture to defend; and let the efforts of Mary to procure her own liberty, though with the destruction of her enemy and at the cost of a civil war to England, be held, if religion will permit, justifiable or venial;--but let not our resentment of the wrongs, or compassion for the long misfortunes, of this unhappy woman betray us into a blind concurrence in eulogiums lavished, by prejudice or weakness, on a character blemished by many foibles, stained by some enormous crimes, and never under the guidance of the genuine principles of moral rectitude.