A letter from sir Robert Sidney to sir John Harrington, written some time in this year, affords some not uninteresting traits of her behaviour, mixed with other matters:
"Worthy knight;
"Your present to the queen was well accepted of; she did much commend your verse, nor did she less praise your prose.... The queen hath tasted your dainties, and saith you have marvellous skill in cooking of good fruits. If I can serve you in your northern suit, you may command me.... Our lawyers say, your title is well grounded in conscience, but that strict law doth not countenance your recovering those lands of your ancestors.... Visit your friends often, and please the queen by all you can, for all the great lawyers do much fear her displeasure.... I do see the queen often, she doth wax weak since the late troubles, and Burleigh's death doth often draw tears from her goodly cheeks; she walketh out but little, meditates much alone, and sometimes writes in private to her best friends. The Scottish matters do cause much discourse, but we know not the true grounds of state business, nor venture further on such ticklish points[137]. Her highness hath done honor to my poor house by visiting me, and seemed much pleased at what we did to please her. My son made her a fair speech, to which she did give most gracious reply. The women did dance before her, whilst the cornets did salute from the gallery; and she did vouchsafe to eat two morsels of rich comfit cake, and drank a small cordial out of a golden cup. She had a marvellous suit of velvet, borne by four of her first women-attendants in rich apparel; two ushers did go before; and at going up stairs she called for a staff, and was much wearied in walking about the house, and said she wished to come another day. Six drums and six trumpets waited in the court, and sounded at her approach and departure. My wife did bear herself in wonderous good liking, and was attired in a purple kirtle fringed with gold; and myself in a rich band and collar of needlework, and did wear a goodly stuff of the bravest cut and fashion, with an under body of silver and loops. The queen was much in commendation of our appearances, and smiled at the ladies who in their dances often came up to the step on which the seat was fixed to make their obeisance, and so fell back into their order again. The younger Markham did several gallant feats on a horse before the gate, leaping down and kissing his sword, then mounting swiftly on the saddle, and passing a lance with much skill. The day well nigh spent, the queen went and tasted a small beverage that was set out in divers rooms where she might pass, and then in much order was attended to her palace; the cornets and trumpets sounding through the streets." &c.
The fate of Essex was now drawing to a crisis. The mixture of severity and indulgence with which he had been treated;—her majesty's perseverance in refusing to readmit him to her presence, though all other liberty was restored to him;—her repeated assurances that she meant only to chastise, not to ruin him, contrasted with the tedious duration of her anger and the utter uncertainty when, or by what means, it was to be brought to an end;—had long detained him in the mazes of a tormenting uncertainty: but he at length saw the moment when her disposition towards him must be brought to a test which he secretly assured his adherents that he should regard as decisive.
The term for which the earl had held the lucrative farm of sweet wines would expire at Michaelmas; he was soliciting its renewal; and on the doubtful balance of success or failure his already wavering loyalty was suspended. He spared on this occasion no expressions of humility and contrition which might soften the heart of the queen:—He professed to kiss the hand and the rod with which he had been corrected; to look forward to the beholding again those blessed eyes, so long his Cynosure, as the only real happiness which he could ever enjoy; and he declared his intention with Nebuchodonosor, to make his habitation with the beasts of the field, to eat hay like an ox, and to be wet with the dews of heaven, until it should please the queen to restore him. To lord Henry Howard, who was the bearer of these dutiful phrases, Elizabeth expressed her unfeigned satisfaction to find him in so proper a frame of mind; she only wished, she said, that his deeds might answer to his words; and as he had long tried her patience, it was fit that she should make some experiment of his humility. Her father would never have endured such perversity:—but she would not now look back:—All that glittered was not gold, but if such results came forth from her furnace, she should ever after think the better of her chemistry. Soon after, having detected the motive of immediate interest which had inspired such moving expressions of penitence and devotion, her disgust against Essex was renewed; and in the end, she not only rejected his suit, but added the insulting words, that an ungovernable beast must be stinted of his provender, in order to bring him under management.
The spirit of Essex could endure no more;—rage took possession of his soul; and equally desperate in fortune and in mind, he prepared to throw himself into any enterprise which the rashness of the worst advisers could suggest. It was at this time that he is reported, in speaking of the queen, to have used the expression, maliciously repeated to her by certain court ladies,—that through old age her mind was become as crooked as her carcase:—words which might have sufficed to plunge him at once from the height of favor into irretrievable ruin.
The doors of Essex-house, hitherto closed night and day since the disgrace of the earl, were now thrown popularly open. Sir Gilly Merrick, his steward, kept an open table for all military adventurers, men of broken fortunes and malcontents of every party. Sermons were delivered there daily by the most zealous and popular of the puritan divines, to which the citizens ran in crowds; and lady Rich, who had lately been placed under restraint by the queen and was still in deep disgrace, on account of her intermeddling in the affairs of her brother, and on the further ground of her scandalous intrigue with lord Montjoy, became a daily visitant. The earl himself, listening again to the suggestions of his secretary Cuff, whom he had once dismissed on account of his violent and dangerous character, began to meditate new counsels.
An eye-witness has thus impressively described the struggles of his mind at this juncture. "It resteth with me in opinion, that ambition thwarted in its career doth speedily lead on to madness: herein I am strengthened by what I learn in my lord of Essex, who shifteth from sorrow and repentance to rage and rebellion so suddenly as well proveth him devoid of good reason or right mind; in my last discourse he littered such strange words, bordering on such strange designs, that made me hasten forth, and leave his presence. Thank heaven I am safe at home, and if I go in such troubles again, I deserve the gallows for a meddling fool. His speeches of the queen becometh no man who hath mens sana in corpore sano. He hath ill advisers, and much evil hath sprung from this source.
"The queen well knoweth how to humble the haughty spirit, the haughty spirit knoweth not how to yield, and the man's soul seemeth tossed to and fro like the waves of a troubled sea[138]."