[607] State Papers, Domestic.
[608] How deeply Lady Bacon resented her son’s friendship with Perez is seen in a letter of hers to Francis Bacon: “I pity your brother; but yet so long as he pities not himself, but keepeth that bloody Perez, yea, a court companion and a bed companion—a proud, profane, costly fellow, whose being about him I verily believe the Lord God doth mislike, and doth the less bless your brother in credit and in health. Such wretches as he is never loved your brother, but for his credit, living upon him” (Bacon Papers, Birch).
[609] Nichols’ Progresses, vol. iii.
[610] Burghley appears to have been very dangerously ill a few weeks afterwards at Windsor. Essex’s spy Standen wrote to his friend Antony Bacon (6th November) that he had gone up to the Lord Treasurer’s lodging to inquire after his health; but was refused admittance by the servants, who told him, however, that his Lordship had rested better than on the previous night. Whilst Standen “was going down the stairs, the Queen was at my back, who, unknown to me, had been visiting my Lord, so I stayed among the rest to see her Majesty pass. A little while after I met Mr. Cooke, who told me, that true it was that my Lord had somewhat rested the night past; but that this morning his Lordship had a very rigorous fit of pain, and dangerous” (Bacon Papers, Birch). We hear from the same source of similar attacks in December and January following.
[611] “I hope you will remember,” wrote Raleigh to Howard, “that it is the Queen’s honour and safety to assail rather than to defend” (Hatfield Papers).
[612] Frobisher was mortally wounded in the assault.
[613] See the extraordinary letters of Foulis, Cockburn, and other Scottish agents, to Bacon, &c., in the Bacon Papers (Birch). “Mr Bowes, the English Ambassador here (in Scotland), is very much scandalised at the behaviour of Crato (i.e. Burghley) and his son towards me, and assures me he will remonstrate with the Queen at his return,” writes Foulis to Bacon (Bacon Papers); and similar expressions in the letters of other French and Scotch agents show clearly that Essex took care to cultivate the idea that it was only the Cecils who prevented the adoption of a generous policy towards them.
[614] See the many confessions and declarations of spies and informers (1594) as to alleged plots for the murder of the Queen, Burghley, &c., at this time (State Papers, Domestic).
[615] It was here, and at Eton College, where he was lodged when the court was at Windsor, that he wrote his bitter “Relaciones” against Philip. He alleged that men were sent to London to assassinate him, and with indefatigable zeal of tongue and pen kept up and increased the ill-feeling in the court against Spain. His copious correspondence with Henry IV. leaves no doubt whatever either as to the real object of his mission or the utter baseness with which he executed it.
[616] See Burghley’s correspondence with Andrada, Da Vega, and others (State Papers, Domestic), and Mendoza’s references to the same men in the Spanish State Papers.