If this strange history were true, it would not be wanting in a moral; for if Leicester were himself this poisoner, there seems some reason to believe that the poisoner himself was poisoned. “The beast,” as Throgmorton called this earl, found but a frail countess in the Lady Lettice, whose first husband, the Earl of Essex, had suddenly expired. The Master of the Horse had fired her passion—a hired bravo, in cleaving his skull, did not succeed in despatching the wounded lover: where the blow came from they did not doubt. Leicester was conducting his countess to Kenilworth; stopping at Cornbury Hall, in Oxfordshire, the lady was possibly reminded of the tale of Cumnor Hall. To Leicester, after his usual excessive indulgence at table, the countess deemed it necessary to administer a cordial—it was his last draught! Such is the revelation of the page, and latterly the gentleman, of this earl. Certain it is that Leicester was suddenly seized with fever, and died on his way to Kenilworth, and that the Master of the Horse shortly after married the poisoning countess of the great poisoner.[5]
Had the writer unskilfully heaped together such atrocious acts or such ambiguous tales the libel had not endured; the life of this new Borgia is composed of richer materials than extravagant crimes. It furnishes a picture of eventful days and busied personages; truth and fiction brightening and shadowing each other. Some close observer in the court circle, one who sickened at the queen’s insolent favourite, was a malicious correspondent. Some realities lie on the surface; and Sir Philip Sidney was baffled or confounded when he would have sent forth his chivalric challenge to the veiled accuser.
The adversaries of the Jesuits referred to Busenbaum, a favourite author with the order, to inform the world that among the artifices of the political brotherhood was inculcated the doctrine of systematic calumny. “Whenever you would ruin a person or a government, you must begin by spreading calumnies to defame them. Many will incline to believe or to side with the propagator. Repetition and perseverance will at length give the consistency of probability, and the calumnies will stick to a distant day.” A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state-favourite. The libel was most diligently spread about—“La Vie Abominable” was read throughout Europe. This story of the “subject without subjection,” who “shoots at a diadem” in England or Scotland, and turns England into a “Leicesterian commonwealth,” raised princely anger: the queen condescended to have circular letters written to protest against it, considering the libel as reflecting on herself, in the choice of so principal a counsellor: and though her majesty discovered that the author was nothing less than “an incarnate devil,” yet to this day the state-favourite Leicester remains the most mysterious personage in our history; nor is there any historian from the days of Camden who dares to extenuate suspicions which come to us palpable as realities. In truth, the life of Leicester is darkness; his political intrigues probably were carried on with all parties, which probably he adopted and betrayed by turns: at last his caprice stood above law. And even in his domestic privacy there were strange incidents, dark and secret, which eye was not to see, nor ear to listen to; and we have a remarkable chance-evidence of this singular fact in that mysterious sonnet of Spenser, prefixed to his version of Virgil’s “Gnat,” whose sad tale was his own, dedicated “to the deceased lord;” his “cloudy tears” have left “this riddle rare” to some “future Œdipus” who has never arisen.[6]
The Armada flying from our coasts evinced to Spain and Rome that Elizabeth was not to be dethroned. What then remained to hold a flattering vision of the English crown to Philip, and to cast the heretical land into confusion? The genius of this new Machiavel rose with the magnitude of the subject and the singularity of the occasion.
The policy or the weakness of Elizabeth never consented to settle the succession; and as the queen aged, all Europe became more interested in that impending event. This was a cause of national uneasiness, and an implement for political mischief.
In 1594 was printed at Antwerp “A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England.” The purpose of this memorable tract is twofold. The first part inculcates the doctrine that society is a compact made by man with man for the good of the commonwealth; that the forms of government are diverse, and therefore are by God and nature left to the choice of the people; that kings do not derive their title from any birthright, or lineal descent, but from their coronation, with conditions and admissions by the consent of the people; and that kings may be deposed, or the line of succession may be altered, as many of our own and other monarchs have suffered from various causes, being accountable for their misgovernment or natural incompetency. “Commonwealths have sometimes chastised lawfully their lawful princes, though never so lawfully descended.” This has often been “commodious to the weal-public,” and “it may seem that God prospered the same by the good success and successors that hence ensued.”[7]
This theory of monarchical government was opposed to those “absurd flatterers who yield too much power to princes,” and was not likely, as we shall see, to be only a work of temporary interest. Let us, however, observe that this advocate of the people’s supremacy over their sovereign’s was himself the vowed slave to passive obedience, and the indefeasible and absolute rule of the sacerdotal suzerain.
The second division is a very curious historical treatise on the titles and pretensions of ten or eleven families of the English blood-royal, “what may be said for them, and what against them.” From its topics it was distinguished as “The Book of Titles.” It was well adapted to perplex the nation or raise up competitors, while, however, it reminded them “of the slaughter and the executions of the nobility of England.” In this uncertainty of the succession, Isabella of Spain, whose ancestry is drawn from the Conquest through many descents, is shown to have the best title, and James of Scotland the worst.
The book appeared in London with a dedication to the Earl of Essex—this was a stroke of refined malice, and produced its full effect on the queen. In this panegyric on the earl’s “eminence in place and in dignity, in favour of the prince and in high liking of the people,” the wily Jesuit intimated that “no man is like to have greater sway on deciding of this great affair (the succession), when time shall come for that determination, and those that shall assist you and are likest to follow your fame and fortune.” The jealous alarm of Elizabeth had often been roused by the imprudence of the earl, and on this occasion it thundered with all her queenly rage; she herself showed him the dangerous eulogiums of the insidious dedicator, till the hapless earl was observed to grow pale, and withdrew from court with a mind disturbed, and was confined by illness till the queen’s visit once more restored him to favour.
The immediate effect of the “Conference” appears by an act of Parliament of the 35th of Elizabeth, enacting that “whoever was found to have it in his house should be guilty of high treason;” but its more permanent influence is remarkable on several national occasions. This tract contributed to hasten the fate of the hapless Charles. The doctrine of cutting off the heads of kings, “the whole body being of more authority than the only head,” was too opportune for the business in hand to be neglected by the Independents. The first part, licensed by their licenser, was printed at the charge of the Parliament, disguised as “Several Speeches delivered at a Conference concerning the Power of Parliament to proceed against their King for Misgovernment.” The nine chapters of the Conference were turned into these nine pretended speeches![8] These furnished the matter of the speech of Bradshaw at the condemnation of the monarch; and even Milton, in his “Defence of the English People,” adopted the doctrines. Never has political pamphlet directed an event more awful, and on which the destiny of a nation was suspended. Even an abstract of it served for the nonce, under the title of “The Broken Succession of the Crown of England,” at the time that Cromwell was aiming at restoring the English monarchy in his own person. It was again renovated in 1681, at the time of agitating the bill of exclusion against James the Second. I believe it has appeared in other forms. Nor was the fortune of “Leicester’s Commonwealth” less remarkable in serving the designs of a party. It was twice reprinted, in 1641, as a melancholy picture of a royal favourite, and again, probably with the same political design, in 1706.