It is a curious instance of that alarm of jealousy prevalent with the favourites of those days, that during the time of Rawleigh’s disgrace at court merely his sudden appearance in the metropolis, as the news is cautiously indicated, “gave cause of discontent to some other”—that is, the reigning favourite, Essex; possibly there might be some cause, for the writer tells, that Rawleigh was “in good hope to return into grace;”[1] but this restorative was not then administered to the lorn stroller from Sherborne. The queen was imperturbable.
The royal anger of Elizabeth never interfered with her policy, nor dulled her sagacity. Two years after, in 1596, it was decided to attack the Spanish fleet in their own harbours, according to a plan laid down by Rawleigh, as far back as in 1588; he was now wanted, and therefore he was remembered, as far as his appointment, to be one of the four commanders in the famous expedition against Cadiz. Essex, as commander-in-chief, betrayed his incompetence, and Rawleigh the prompt energy of his military and his maritime abilities. Essex, at all times his rival, and never his friend, saw his own lustre dusked by the eminence of his inferior; and on his return fatally read in the eyes of his royal mistress the first omen of his decline. During his absence, his recommendation of Sir Thomas Bodley for the secretaryship of state had been rejected, and the hated Cecil had triumphed. Rawleigh now undertook a more difficult affair than the victory of Cadiz—he effected an amicable arrangement between Cecil and Essex; and this seems to have been a most grateful service to the queen, for a month afterwards, we find him again at court. Five years must have elapsed,—so long the queen could preserve the royalty of her anger.
Restored to the queen’s favour, the lover had lost nothing of his fascination. The very day on which Cecil led Rawleigh in “as captain of the guard,” he rode in the evening with the queen, and held a private conference; where, probably, many secrets and counsels were divulged, too long and too proudly suppressed.[2] All this was done in the absence of Essex, but not without his consent: for the three enemies were now to be friends.
The second great expedition followed. Again Essex betrayed his inexperience and his failure, while Rawleigh, in a brilliant action, took Fayal. The reception of Essex at court levelled his ambition, and he retreated from the queen’s reproaches, sick at heart, to bury himself in sullen seclusion. The remainder of his days exhibit a series of disturbed acts, in the continued conflict between his own popularity and the variable favour of the queen. To complete this tale of political intrigues, we have a letter, remarkable for its style, its matter, and its object, from Rawleigh to Cecil, urging the annihilation of “the tyrant,” before “it is too late,” in terms hardly ambiguous enough to save Rawleigh from the charge of having hurried on the fate of Essex, at whose execution he shed tears;[3] and in the confession of one of Essex’s desperate advisers, in their mad rising, we learn that the earl had fixed on Rawleigh to be got rid of.
If we reflect a moment on this triumvirate of political friends—and Cecil secretly assured the Scottish monarch, that “he and they would never live under one apple-tree”—we may see how the wiles and jealousies of love are not more fatal than those of intriguing statesmen. Rawleigh, for a purpose reconciles Essex with Cecil; but in reality, the three alike bear a mutual antipathy. When Essex in disgrace lay sick at home, and the queen half-repentant in her severity sent a friendly message to the earl, this appearance of returning favour towards Essex startled Rawleigh, who is seized with sickness in his turn; and the queen, at once the royal slave and mistress of her court-lovers, is compelled to send him a cordial of an equivalent kindness; and both these political patients were cured by the same prescription.
Cecil and Rawleigh paused not till they laid the head of Essex on the block; and that day sealed their own fortunes, for, left without a rival, they became rivals to each other. “Those,” said Rawleigh on the scaffold, “who set me against him, set themselves afterwards against me, and were my greatest enemies.” This may be placed among the confessions of criminal friendships!
Cecil “bore no love to Rawleigh,” tells a contemporary; but we know more than contemporaries, and we possess secrets which Rawleigh could not discover while Elizabeth was on the throne, though a lurking suspicion of the hollowness of his friend “Robin” may have lain on his mind when he wrote this verse on the ambidextrous Talleyrand, who through all changes
Still kept on the mountain, and left us on the plain.
It was while this subdolous minister was holding most intimate intercourse with Rawleigh, while his son was placed under his guardian care at Sherborne, and he himself, with Lord Cobham his brother-in-law, was there a guest, that this extraordinary Machiavel was daily working at the destruction of both his friends! This was effectually done by instilling into the Scottish monarch antipathies never to be uprooted. On the demise of the queen, Rawleigh was for raising up an English against a Scottish party; he was for keeping the government in their own hands, and, looking on the successor to the English throne as a foreigner, and his people as a needy race, would have only admitted him on terms; or, as Aubrey hints, was for “setting up a commonwealth.” Little dreamed Rawleigh that he was already sold and disposed of; that his friend, Secretary Cecil, was surrounding Durham-House, Rawleigh’s town residence, by domestic and midnight spies; and, as the secretary was wont, laying traps to decoy his associate in the councils of Elizabeth into something which might be shifted into a semblance of treason against the future sovereign.[4]
The train so covertly laid, the mine was sprung at the due hour. Rawleigh’s reception by the king was the prognostic of his fall. Rawleigh announced, James exclaimed, more suo,—“Rawleigh! Rawleigh! o’ my saul, mon, I have heard rawly of thee!”[5] Cecil, who had participated in the fall of Essex, the chief of the Scottish party, all expected would have shared in the same royal repulse. Lady Kildare once aptly described Cecil, when she threatened “to break the neck of that weasel;” and afterwards the Scottish monarch, admiring the quick shiftings and keen scent of the crafty creature in the playful style of the huntsman, characterised his minister, in his kennel of courtiers, as his “little beagle.” “The weasel,” had all along, moving to and fro, kept his unobserved course; and, to the admiration of all, now “came out of the chamber like a giant, to run his race for honour and fortune.” That astute Machiavel had long prepared staunch friends for himself in well-paid Scots. James was hardly seated on his new throne, when his minister opened one of his political exhibitions by the incomprehensible Cobham conspiracy; and this ingenious artificer of state-plots had knotted the present with one apparently more real; but though they would not hold together, they served to put his friend on his memorable trial. When the eloquence of Rawleigh had baffled his judges, and the evidence failed, Cecil, then sitting in court in the character of a friend, secretly conveyed an insidious letter, sufficient to serve as an ambiguous plea for a mysterious conviction. Rawleigh was judicially but illegally condemned; and the affair terminated in a burlesque execution, where men were led to the block, and no one suffered decapitation.[6]