They were confirmed in this hope, when they saw that, though he was still prohibited from appearing at court, he was continued in his office of master of horse, and was restored to his liberty, and that all his friends had access to him. Essex himself seemed determined to persevere in that conduct which had hitherto been so successful, and which the queen, by all this discipline, had endeavored to render habitual to him: he wrote to her, that he kissed her majesty’s hands, and the rod with which she had corrected him; but that he could never recover his wonted cheerfulness, till she deigned to admit him to that presence which had ever been the chief source of his happiness and enjoyment: and that he had now resolved to make amends for his past errors, to retire into a country solitude, and say with Nebucidnezzar, “Let my dwelling be with the beasts of the field; let me eat grass as an ox, and be wet with the dew of heaven; till it shall please the queen to restore me to my understanding.” The queen was much pleased with these sentiments; and replied, that she heartily wished his actions might correspond with his expressions; that he had tried her patience a long time, and it was but fitting she should now make some experiment of his submission; that her father would never have pardoned so much obstinacy; but that, if the furnace of affliction produced such good effects, she should ever after have the better opinion of her chemistry.[*]
The earl of Essex possessed a monopoly of sweet wines; and as his patent was near expiring, he patiently expected that the queen would renew it; and he considered this event as the critical circumstance of his life, which would determine whether he could ever hope to be reinstated in credit and authority.[**] But Elizabeth, though gracious in her deportment, was of a temper somewhat haughty and severe; and being continually surrounded with Essex’s enemies, means were found to persuade her, that his lofty spirit was not yet sufficiently subdued, and that he must undergo this further trial, before he could again be safely received into favor. She therefore denied his request; and even added, in a contemptuous style, that an ungovernable beast must be stinted in his provender.[***]
* Camden, p. 628.
** Birch’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 472.
*** Camden, p. 628.
This rigor, pushed one step too far, proved the final ruin of this young nobleman, and was the source of infinite sorrow and vexation to the queen herself. Essex, who had with great difficulty so long subdued his proud spirit, and whose patience was now exhausted, imagining that the queen was entirely inexorable, burst at once all restraints of submission and of prudence, and determined to seek relief by proceeding to the utmost extremities against his enemies. Even during his greatest favor, he had ever been accustomed to carry matters with a high hand towards his sovereign, and as this practice gratified his own temper, and was sometimes successful, he had imprudently imagined that it was the only proper method of managing her: [*] but being now reduced to despair, he gave entire reins to his violent disposition, and threw off all appearance of duty and respect. Intoxicated with the public favor which he already possessed, he practised anew every art of popularity; and endeavored to increase the general good will by a hospitable manner of life, little suited to his situation and circumstances. His former employments had given him great connections, with men of the military profession; and he now entertained, by additional caresses and civilities, a friendship with all desperate adventurers, whose attachment, he hoped, might, in his present views, prove serviceable to him. He secretly courted the confidence of the Catholics; but his chief trust lay in the Puritans, whom he openly caressed, and whose manners he seemed to have entirely adopted. He engaged the most celebrated preachers of that sect to resort to Essex House; he had daily prayers and sermons in his family; and he invited all the zealots in London to attend those pious exercises. Such was the disposition now beginning to prevail among the English, that, instead of feasting and public spectacles, the methods anciently practised to gain the populace, nothing so effectually ingratiated an ambitious leader with the public as these fanatical entertainments. And as the Puritanical preachers frequently inculcated in their sermons the doctrine of resistance to the civil magistrate, they prepared the minds of their hearers for those seditious projects which Essex was secretly meditating.[**]
* Cabala, p. 79.
** Birch’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 463. Camden, p. 630.
But the greatest imprudence of this nobleman proceeded from the openness of his temper, by which he was ill qualified to succeed in such difficult, and dangerous enterprises. He indulged himself in great liberties of speech, and was even heard to say of the queen, that she was now grown an old woman and was become as crooked in her mind as in her body.[*] Some court ladies, whose favors Essex had formerly neglected, carried her these stories, and incensed her to a high degree against him. Elizabeth was ever remarkably jealous on this head; and though she was now approaching to her seventieth year, she allowed her courtiers,[**] and even foreign ambassadors,[***] to compliment her upon her beauty; nor had all her good sense been able to cure her of this preposterous vanity.[****] [37]
* Camden, p. 629. Osborne, p. 397. Sir Walter Raleigh’s
Prerogative of Parliament, p. 43.
** Birch’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 442, 443.
*** Sidney’s Letters, vol. ii. p. 171.
**** See note KK, at the end of the volume.
There was also an expedient employed by Essex, which, if possible, was more provoking to the queen than those sarcasms on her age and deformity; and that was, his secret applications to the king of Scots, her heir and successor. That prince had this year very narrowly escaped a dangerous, though ill-formed conspiracy of the earl of Gowry; and even his deliverance was attended with this disagreeable circumstance, that the obstinate ecclesiastics persisted, in spite of the most incontestable evidence, to maintain to his face, that there had been no such conspiracy. James, harassed with his turbulent and factious subjects, cast a wishful eye to the succession of England; and in proportion as the queen advanced in years, his desire increased of mounting that throne, on which, besides acquiring a great addition of power and splendor, he hoped to govern a people so much more tractable and submissive. He negotiated with all the courts of Europe, in order to insure himself friends and partisans: he even neglected not the court of Rome and that of Spain; and though he engaged himself in no positive promise, he flattered the Catholics with hopes that, in the event of his succession, they might expect some more liberty than was at present indulged them. Elizabeth was the only sovereign in Europe to whom he never dared to mention his right of succession: he knew that, though her advanced age might now invite her to think of fixing an heir to the crown, she never could bear the prospect of her own death without horror, and was determined still to retain him, and all other competitors, in an entire dependence upon her.
Essex was descended by females from the royal family and some of his sanguine partisans had been so imprudent as to mention his name among those of other pretenders to the crown; but the earl took care, by means of Henry Lee, whom he secretly sent into Scotland, to assure James, that so far from entertaining such ambitious views, he was determined to use every expedient for extorting an immediate declaration in favor of that monarch’s right of succession. James willingly hearkened to this proposal, but did not approve of the violent methods which Essex intended to employ. Essex had communicated his scheme to Mountjoy, deputy of Ireland; and as no man ever commanded more the cordial affection and attachment of his friends, he had even engaged a person of that virtue and prudence to entertain thoughts of bringing over part of his army into England, and of forcing the queen to declare the king of Scots her successor.[*] And such was Essex’s impatient ardor, that, though James declined this dangerous expedient, he still endeavored to persuade Mountjoy not to desist from the project; but the deputy, who thought that such violence, though it might be prudent, and even justifiable, when supported by a sovereign prince, next heir to the crown, would be rash and criminal if attempted by subjects, absolutely refused his concurrence. The correspondence, however, between Essex and the court of Scotland was still conducted with great secrecy and cordiality; and that nobleman, besides conciliating the favor of James, represented all his own adversaries as enemies to that prince’s succession, and as men entirely devoted to the interests of Spain, and partisans of the chimerical title of the infanta.
* Birch’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 471.