Speaking of his letters and public papers, Naunton says, "I never yet saw a style or phrase more seeming religious and fuller of the streams of devotion;" and notwithstanding the charge of hypocrisy on this head usually brought against Leicester in the most unqualified terms, many reasons might induce us to believe his religious faith sincere, and his attachment for certain schemes of doctrine, zealous. On no other supposition does it appear possible to account for that steady patronage of the puritanical party,—so odious to his mistress,—which gave on some occasions such important advantages over him to his adversary Hatton,—the only minister of Elizabeth who appears to have aimed at the character of a high church-of-England man. The circumstance also of his devoting during his lifetime a considerable sum of ready money, which he could ill spare, to the endowment of a hospital, has much the air of an act of expiation prompted by religious fears. As a statesman Leicester appears to have displayed on some occasions considerable acuteness and penetration, but in the higher kind of wisdom he was utterly deficient. His moral insensibility sometimes caused him to offer to his sovereign the most pernicious counsels; and had not the superior rectitude of Burleigh's judgement interposed, his influence might have inflicted still deeper wounds on the honor of the queen and the prosperity of the nation.
Towards his own friends and adherents he is said to have been a religious observer of his promises; a virtue very remarkable in such a man. In the midst of that profusion which rendered him rapacious, he was capable of acts of real generosity, and both soldiers and scholars tasted largely of his bounty. That he was guilty of many detestable acts of oppression, and pursued with secret and unrelenting vengeance such as offended his arrogance by any failure in the servile homage which he made it his glory to exact, are charges proved by undeniable facts; but it has already been observed that the more atrocious of the crimes popularly imputed to him, remain, and must ever remain, matters of suspicion rather than proof.
His conduct during the younger part of life was scandalously licentious: latterly he became, says Camden, uxorious to excess. In the early days of his favor with the queen, her profuse donations had gratified his cupidity and displayed the fondness of her attachment; but at a later period the stream of her bounty ran low; and following the natural bent of her disposition, or complying with the necessity of her affairs, she compelled him to mortgage to her his barony of Denbigh for the expenses of his last expedition to Holland. Immediately after his death she also caused his effects to be sold by auction, for the satisfaction of certain demands of her treasury. From these circumstances it may probably be inferred, that the influence which Leicester still retained over her was secured rather by the chain of habit than the tie of affection; and after the first shock of final separation from him whom she had so long loved and trusted, it is not improbable that she might contemplate the event with a feeling somewhat akin to that of deliverance from a yoke under which her haughty spirit had repined without the courage to resist.
Leicester died, beyond all doubt, of a fever; but so reluctant were the prejudices of that age to dismiss any eminent person by the ordinary roads of mortality, that it was judged necessary to take examinations before the privy-council respecting certain magical practices said to have been employed against his life. The son of sir James Croft comptroller of the household, made no scruple to confess that he had consulted an adept of the name of Smith, to learn who were his father's enemies in the council; that Smith mentioned the earl of Leicester; and that a little while after, flirting with his thumbs, he exclaimed, alluding to this nobleman's cognisance, "The bear is bound to the stake;" and again, that nothing could now save him. But as it might after all have been difficult to show in what manner the flirting of a thumb in London could have exerted a fatal power over the life of the earl at Kennelworth, the adept seems to have escaped unpunished, notwithstanding the accidental fulfilment of his denunciations.
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM 1588 TO 1591.
Effects of Leicester's death.—Rise of the queen's affection for Essex.—Trial of the earl of Arundel.—Letter of Walsingham on religious affairs.—Death of Mildmay.—Case of don Antonio.—Expedition to Cadiz.—Behaviour of Essex.—Traits of sir C. Blount.—Sir H. Leigh's resignation.—Conduct of Elizabeth to the king of Scots.—His marriage.—Death and character of sir Francis Walsingham.—Struggle between the earl of Essex and lord Burleigh for the nomination of his successor.—Extracts of letters from Essex to Davison.—Inveteracy of the queen against Davison.—Robert Cecil appointed assistant secretary.—Private marriage of Essex.—Anger of the queen.—Reform effected by the queen in the collection of the revenue.—Speech of Burleigh.—Parsimony of the queen considered.—Anecdotes on this subject.—Lines by Spenser.—Succours afforded by her to the king of France.—Account of sir John Norris.—Essex's campaign in France.—Royal progress.—Entertainment at Coudray—at Elvetham—at Theobald's.—Death and character of sir Christopher Hatton.—Puckering lord-keeper.—Notice of sir John Perrot.—Puttenham's Art of Poetry.—Verses by Gascoigne.—Warner's Albion's England.
The death of Leicester forms an important æra in the history of the court of Elizabeth, and also in that of her private life and more intimate feelings. The powerful faction of which the favorite had been the head, acknowledged a new leader in the earl of Essex, whom his step-father had brought forward at court as a counterpoise to the influence of Raleigh, and who now stood second to none in the good graces of her majesty. But Essex, however gifted with noble and brilliant qualities totally deficient in Leicester, was on the other hand confessedly inferior to him in several other endowments still more essential to the leader of a court party. Though not void of art, he was by no means master of the profound dissimulation, the exquisite address, and especially the wary coolness by which his predecessor well knew how to accomplish his ends in despite of all opposition. His character was impetuous, his natural disposition frank; and experience had not yet taught him to distrust either himself or others.