At parting, the tenderness of the queen revived in full force; and she dismissed him with expressions of regret and affection which, as he afterwards professed to her, had "pierced his very soul." The people followed him with acclamations and blessings; and the flower of the nobility now, as in the Cadiz expedition, attended him with alacrity as volunteers.
It was in the end of March 1599 that he embarked; and landing after a dangerous passage at Dublin, his first act was the appointment of his dear friend the earl of Southampton to the office of general of the horse;—a step which he afterwards found abundant cause to repent.
An error of which the consequences were much more pernicious to himself, and fatal to the success of his undertaking, was his abandoning his original resolution of marching immediately against Tyrone, and spending his first efforts in the suppression of a minor revolt in Munster:—an attempt in which he encountered a resistance so much more formidable than he had anticipated, and found himself so ill supported by his troops, whom the nature of the service speedily disheartened, that its results were by no means so brilliant as to strike terror into Tyrone or the other insurgents. What was still worse, almost four months were occupied in this service, and the forces returned sick, wearied, and incredibly reduced in number by various accidents.
Learning that the queen was much displeased at this expedition into Munster, Essex addressed a letter to the privy-council, in which, after affirming that he had performed his part to the best of his abilities and judgement, he thus proceeded: "But as I said, and ever must say, I provided for this service a breastplate, and not a cuirass; that is, I am armed on the breast, but not on the back. I armed myself with confidence that rebels in so unjust a quarrel could not fight so well as we could in a good. Howbeit if the rebels shall but once come to know that I am wounded on the back, not slightly, but to the heart, as I fear me they have too true and too apparent advertisement of this kind; then what will be their pride and the state's hazard, your lordships in your wisdoms may easily discern."
In a subsequent letter, the warmth of his friendship for Southampton breaks out in the following eloquent and forcible appeal.—"But to leave this, and come to that which I never looked I should have come to, I mean your lordships' letter touching the displacing of the earl of Southampton; your lordships say, that her majesty thinketh it strange, and taketh it offensively, that I should appoint him general of the horse, seeing not only her majesty denied it when I moved it, but gave an express prohibition to any such choice. Surely, my lord, it shall be far from me to contest with your lordships, much less with her majesty. Howbeit, God and my own soul are my witnesses, that I had not in this nomination any disobedient or irreverent thought; that I never moved her majesty for the placing of any officer, my commission fully enabling me to make free choice of all officers and commanders of the army. I remember, that her majesty in her privy-chamber at Richmond, I only being with her, showed a dislike of his having any office; but my answer was, that if her majesty would revoke my commission, I would cast both it and myself at her majesty's feet. But if it pleased her majesty that I should execute it, I must work with my own instruments. And from this profession and protestation I never varied; whereas if I had held myself barred from giving my lord of Southampton place and reputation some way answerable to his degree and expense, there is no one, I think, doth imagine, that I loved him so ill as to have brought him over. Therefore if her majesty punish me with her displeasure for this choice, pœna dolenda venit. And now, my lords, were now, as then it was, that I were to choose, or were there nothing in a new choice but my lord of Southampton's disgrace and my discomfort, I should easily be induced to displace him, and to part with him. But when, in obeying this command, I must discourage all my friends, who now, seeing the days of my suffering draw near, follow me afar off, and are some of them tempted to renounce me; when I must dismay the army, which already looks sadly, as pitying both me and itself in this comfortless action; when I must encourage the rebels, who doubtless will think it time to hew upon a withering tree, whose leaves they see beaten down, and the branches in part cut off; when I must disable myself for ever in the course of this service, the world now perceiving that I want either reason to judge of merit, or freedom to right it, disgraces being there heaped where, in my opinion, rewards are due; give just grief leave once to complain. O! miserable employment, and more miserable destiny of mine, that makes it impossible for me to please and serve her majesty at once! Was it treason in my lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in like cases, can satisfy and appease? Or will no kind of punishment be fit for him, but that which punisheth, not him, but me, this army, and this poor country of Ireland? Shall I keep the country when the army breaks? Or shall the army stand when all the volunteers leave it? Or will any voluntaries stay when those that have will and cause to follow are thus handled? No, my lords, they already ask passports, and that daily." &c.
In spite of all this earnestness, in spite of the remaining affection of the queen for her favorite, she still persisted in requiring that he should displace his friend, and even chid him severely for having waited the result of his further representations and entreaties, after once learning her pleasure on the point. Success in the main object of his expedition might still have procured him a triumph over his court-enemies and a sweet reconciliation with his offended sovereign, but fortune had no such favor in store for Essex. The necessity of quelling some rebels in Leinster again impeded his march into Ulster; for which expedition he was obliged to solicit a further supply from England of two thousand foot, which was immediately forwarded to him, as if with the design of leaving him without excuse should he fail to reduce Tyrone. But by this time the season was so far advanced, and the army so sickly, that both the earl and the Irish council were of opinion that nothing effectual could be done; and at the first notice of his intended march great part of his forces deserted. He nevertheless proceeded, and in a few days during which a little skirmishing took place, came in sight of the rebel's main army, considerably more numerous than his own; Tyrone however would not venture to give him battle, but sent to request a parley. This, after some delay, the lord deputy granted; and a conference was held between them, Essex standing on the bank of a stream which separated the two hosts, while the rebel sat on his horse in the middle of the water. A truce was concluded, to be renewed from six weeks to six weeks, till terms of peace should be agreed on; those proposed by Tyrone containing several arrogant and unreasonable articles. At a second meeting with the Irish chief, Essex was attended by some of his principal officers; but it was afterwards proved that previously to the first conference, he had opened a very unwarrantable correspondence with this enemy of his queen and country, who took upon himself to promise that if Essex would come into his measures he would make him the greatest man in England. During the whole of this time, sharp letters were passing between Elizabeth and her privy-council and the earl; and it is hard to say on which side the heaviest list of grievances was produced. The queen remonstrated against his contemptuous disobedience of her orders, and the waste in frivolous enterprises of the vast supplies of men and money which she had intrusted to her deputy for a specific and momentous object;—the earl, in addition to his usual murmurings against the sinister suggestions of his enemies, amongst whom he singled out by name Raleigh and lord Cobham; found further grounds of complaint and alarm in the circumstance of her majesty's having caused some troops to be called out under the lord admiral, on pretext of fears from the Spaniard, but really with a view of protecting her against certain designs imputed to himself: and in her having granted to secretary Cecil during his absence the office of master of the wards, for which he was himself a suitor.
Apprehensive lest by his longer delay her affections should be irrecoverably alienated from him by the discovery of his traitorous correspondence with Tyrone, he rashly resolved to risk yet another act of disobedience;—that of deserting without license, and under its present accumulated circumstances of danger, his important charge, and hastening to throw himself at the feet of an exasperated, but he flattered himself, not inexorable mistress. At one time he had even entertained the desperate and criminal design of carrying over with him a large part of his army, for the purpose of intimidating his adversaries; but being diverted from this scheme by the earl of Southampton and sir Christopher Blount his step-father, he embarked with the attendance only of most of his household and a number of his favorite officers, and arrived at the court, which was then at Nonsuch, on Michaelmas eve in the morning.
On alighting at the gate, covered with mire and stained with travel as he was, he hastened up stairs, passed through the presence and the privy-chambers, and never stopped till he reached the queen's bed-chamber, where he found her newly risen with her hair about her face. He kneeled and kissed her hands, and she, in the agreeable surprise of beholding at her feet one whom she still loved, received him with so kind an aspect, and listened with such favor to his excuses, that on leaving her, after a private conference of some duration, he appeared in high spirits, and thanked God, that though he had suffered many storms abroad, he found a sweet calm at home. He waited on her again as soon as he had changed his dress; and after a second long and gracious conference, was freely visited by all the lords, ladies, and gentlemen at court, excepting the secretary and his party, who appeared somewhat shy of him. But all these fair appearances quickly vanished. On revisiting the queen in the evening, he found her much changed towards him; she began to call him to account for his unauthorised return and the hazard to which he had committed all things in Ireland; and four privy-councillors were appointed by her to examine him that night and hear his answers: but by them nothing was concluded, and the matter was referred to a full council summoned for the following day, the earl being in the meantime commanded to keep his chamber. Notwithstanding the natural impetuosity of his temper, Essex now armed himself with patience and moderation, and answered with great gravity and discretion to the charges brought against him, which resolved themselves into the following articles. "His contemptuous disobedience of her majesty's letters and will in returning: his presumptuous letters written from time to time: his proceedings in Ireland contrary to the points resolved upon in England, ere he went: his rash manner of coming away from Ireland: his overbold going the day before to her majesty's presence to her bed-chamber: and his making of so many idle knights[133]." The council, after hearing his defence, remained awhile in consultation and then made their report to her majesty, who said she should take time to consider of his answers: meanwhile the proceedings were kept very private, and the earl continued a prisoner in his own apartment. An open division now took place between the two great factions which had long divided the court in secret. The earls of Shrewsbury and Nottingham, lords Thomas Howard, Cobham, and Grey, sir Walter Raleigh, and sir George Carew, attended on the secretary; while Essex was followed by the earls of Worcester and Rutland, lords Montjoy, Rich, Lumley, and Henry Howard; the last of whom however was already suspected to be the traitor which he afterwards proved to the patron whom he professed to love, to honor, and almost to worship. Sir William Knolles also joined the party of his nephew, with many other knights and gentlemen, and lord Effingham, though son to the earl of Nottingham, was often with him, and "protested all service" to him. "It is a world to be here," adds Whyte, "and see the humors of the place." On October the second, Essex was "commanded from court," and committed to the lord keeper, with whom he remained at York house. At his departure from court few or none of his friends accompanied him.
"His lordship's sudden return out of Ireland," says Whyte, "brings all sorts of knights, captains, officers, and soldiers, away from thence, that this town is full of them, to the great discontentment of her majesty, that they are suffered to leave their charge. But the most part of the gallants have quitted their commands, places, and companies, not willing to stay there after him; so that the disorder seems to be greater there than stands with the safety of that service." Harrington the wit and poet had the misfortune to be one of the threescore "idle knights," dubbed by the lord deputy during his short and inglorious reign, and likewise one of the officers whom he selected to accompany him in his return; and we may learn from two of his own letters, written several years subsequently, after what manner he was welcomed on his arrival by his royal godmother.
"Sir John Harrington to Dr. Still, the bishop of Bath and Wells. 1603.