It was at this time that Burghley died (August 4), in his seventy-eighth year. Elizabeth, though she could call him “a froward old fool” about a trifling matter (March 1596), could not but feel that much was changed when she lost the able and faithful servant who had worked with her for forty years. “She seemeth to take it very grievously, shedding of tears and separating herself from all company.” Buckhurst was the new Treasurer.
Essex had for some time cast his eyes on Ireland as a field where glory and power might be won. There can be little doubt that he was already speculating on the advantage that the possession of an army might give him in any difficulty with his rivals or with the Queen herself. Cecil perfidiously advocated his appointment to a post which had been the grave of so many reputations. The Queen at length consented, though reluctantly. Essex was a popular favourite. He had managed—it is not very clear how—to win the confidence of both Puritans and Papists. The general belief was that, for the first time since she had mounted the throne, Elizabeth was afraid of one of her subjects.
During the whole of the reign Ireland had been a cause of trouble and anxiety. Elizabeth’s treatment of that unhappy country was not more creditable or successful than that of other English statesmen before and after her. There was the same absence of any systematic policy steadily carried out, the same wearisome and disreputable alternation between bursts of savage repression and intervals of pusillanimity, concession, and neglect. In the competition of the various departments of the public service for attention and expenditure, Ireland generally came last. All other needs had to be served first whether at home or abroad.
In the early years of the reign the chief trouble lay in Ulster, then the most purely Celtic part of Ireland, and practically untouched by English conquest. Twice, in her weariness of the struggle with Shan O’Neill, Elizabeth conceded to him something like a sub-kingship of Ulster in return for his nominal submission. In the end he was beaten, and his head was fixed on the walls of Dublin Castle (1566). But nothing further was done to anglicise Ulster. During the attempt of the Devonshire adventurers to colonise South Munster (1569-71), and the consequent rebellion, the northern province remained an unconcerned spectator. Nor did it join in the great Desmond rising (1579-83), which, with the insurrection of the Catholic lords of the Pale and the landing of the Pope’s Italians at Smerwick, was the Irish branch of the threefold attack on Elizabeth directed by Gregory XIII. The attempt of the elder Essex to colonise Antrim (1573-75) was a disastrous failure, and Ulster still remained practically independent of the Dublin Government.
The most successful Deputy of the reign was Perrot (1584-87), a valiant soldier and strict ruler, who, after long experience in the Irish wars, had come to the conclusion that what Ireland most wanted was justice. The native chiefs, released from the constant dread of spoliation, and finding that English encroachment was repressed as inflexibly as Irish disorder, became quiet and friendly. But this system did not suit the dominant race. The Deputy was accused to the Queen of seeking to betray the country to the Irish and the Spaniard. Recalled, and put upon his trial for treason, he was found guilty on suborned evidence, and sentenced to death. It is usually said that his real offence was some disrespectful language about the Queen, which he confessed. But it seems that she forbore to take his life precisely because she would not have it thought that she was influenced by personal resentment.
His successor, Fitzwilliam, was a Deputy of the old sort—greedy, violent, careless of consequences, and always acting on the principle that, as against an Englishman, a Celt had no rights. The execution of MacMahon in Monaghan, and the confiscation of his lands on a trivial pretext, alarmed the North. Ulster had not been bled white like the rest of Ireland. The O’Neills had a nephew of their old hero Shan for their chief, who had been brought up at the English Court and made Earl of Tyrone by Elizabeth. An educated and remarkably able man, he had none of his uncle’s illusions. He clung to his ancestral rights and dignity, but he hoped to preserve them by zealously discharging his obligations as a vassal of the Queen. He served in the war against Desmond, and exerted himself to maintain order in Ulster. But he had no mind to sink into the position of a mere dignified land-owner like the English nobles; nor indeed, under such a Deputy as Fitzwilliam, was he likely to preserve even his lands if he lost his power. Rather than that, he determined to enter into what he knew was a most unequal struggle, on the off-chance of pulling through by help from Spain. It is clear that he was driven into rebellion against his inclination. But when he had once drawn the sword he maintained the struggle against one Deputy after another with wonderful tenacity and resource. For the first time in Irish history, the rebel forces were disciplined and armed like those of the crown, and stood up to them in equal numbers on equal terms. At length, in August 1598, Tyrone inflicted upon Sir Henry Bagnall near Armagh the severest defeat that the English had ever suffered in Ireland; slaying 1500 of his men, and capturing all his artillery and baggage. Insurrections at once broke out all over Ireland.
This was the situation with which Essex undertook to deal. He had loudly blamed other Deputies for not vigorously attacking Tyrone in his own country. Vigour was the one military quality which he himself possessed. He went with the title of Lieutenant and Governor-General, and with extraordinary powers, at the head of 21,000 men—such an army as had never been sent to Ireland (April 1599). The Queen, who trembled at the expense, and did not wish to see any of her nobles, least of all Essex, permanently established in a great military command, enjoined him to push at once into Ulster, as he had himself proposed, and finish the war. Instead of doing this, he went south into districts that had been depopulated and desolated by the savage warfare of the last thirty years. Even here he met with discreditable reverses. When he got back to Dublin (July) his army was reduced by disease and desertion to less than 5000 men. Disregarding the Queen’s express prohibition, he made his friend Southampton General of horse. When she censured his bad management, he replied with impertinent complaints about the favour she was showing to Cecil, Raleigh, and Cobham, and began to consult with his friends about carrying selected troops over to England to remove them. Rumours of his intention to return reached the Queen. “We do charge you,” she wrote, “as you tender our pleasure, that you adventure not to come out of that kingdom.” He declared that he could not invade Ulster without reinforcements. They were sent, and at length he marched into Louth (September). There he was met by Tyrone, who, in an interview, completely twisted him round his finger, and obtained a cessation of arms and the promise of concessions amounting to what would now be called Home Rule. A few days later, on receipt of an angry letter from the Queen forbidding him to grant any terms without her permission, he deserted his post and hurried to England. The first notice Elizabeth received of this astounding piece of insubordination was his still more astounding incursion into her bedroom, all muddy from his ride, before she was completely dressed (September 28, 1599).
Elizabeth seems to have been so much taken aback by the Earl’s unparalleled presumption, that she did not blaze out as might have been expected. She gave him audience an hour or two later, and heard what he had to say. Probably he adopted an injured tone as usual, and inveighed against “that knave Raleigh” and “that sycophant Cobham.” But his insubordination had been gross, and no talking could make it anything else. It was more dangerous than Leicester’s disobedience in 1586, because it came from a vastly more dangerous person. The same afternoon the Queen referred the matter to the Council. Essex was put under arrest, and never saw her again. The more she reflected, the more indignant and alarmed she became. “By God’s son,” she said to Harington, “I am no Queen; this man is above me.” After a delay of nine months, occasioned by his illness, the fallen favourite was brought before a special Commission on the charge of contempt and disobedience, and sentenced to be suspended from his offices and confined to his house during the Queen’s pleasure (June 1600). In a few weeks he was released from arrest, but he could not obtain permission to appear at court, though he implored it in most abject letters.
There are persons who consider themselves to be intolerably wronged and persecuted if they cannot have precedence and power over their fellow-citizens. Essex was such a person. Instead of being thankful that he had escaped the punishment which under most sovereigns he would have suffered, he entered into criminal plots for coercing, if not overthrowing, the Queen. He urged the Scotch King to enforce the recognition of his title by arms. He tried to persuade Mountjoy, his successor in Ireland, to carry his army to Scotland to co-operate with James. These intrigues were not known to the Government. But it did not escape observation that he was collecting men of the sword in the neighbourhood of his house; that he was holding consultations with suspected nobles and gentlemen (some of whom were afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot); that the Puritan clergy were preaching and praying for his cause; and that there was a certain ferment in the city. Essex was therefore summoned to attend before the Council. Instead of obeying, he flew to arms, with Lords Southampton, Rutland, Sandys, Cromwell, and Monteagle, and about 300 gentlemen. But the citizens of London did not respond to his appeal, and the insurrection was easily suppressed, less than a dozen persons being slain on both sides (February 8, 1601). A more senseless and profligate attempt to overthrow a good government it would be difficult to find in history. It was not dignified by any semblance of principle, and it would sufficiently stamp the character of its author, even if it stood alone as an evidence of his vanity, egotism, and want of common sense.
The trial and execution of the principal malefactor followed as a matter of course and without delay (February 25). It would have been scandalous to spare him. Elizabeth had once been fond of him, and had no reason to be ashamed of it. To talk of her “passion” and her “amorous inclination,” as Hume and others have done, is revolting and malignant nonsense. It is creditable to old age when it can take pleasure in the unfolding of bright and promising youth. But royal favour was not good for such a man as Essex. It developed the worst features in his showy but faulty character. As he steadily deteriorated, her regard cooled; but so much of it remained that she tried to amend him by chastisement, “ad correctionem” as she said, “non ad ruinam.” She had long before warned him that, though she had put up with much disrespect to her person, he must not touch her sceptre, or he would be dealt with according to the law of England. She was as good as her word, and, though the memory of it was painful to her, there is not the smallest evidence that she ever repented of having allowed the law to take its course.[16] Only three of the accomplices of Essex were punished capitally. The five peers, none of them powerful or formidable, experienced Elizabeth’s accustomed clemency.