At length Elizabeth declared that she would be played with no longer by him, and he was forced to return to his infuriated mistress,[585] whilst the siege of Rouen dragged on for months longer, sometimes in the presence of Henry himself, until the arrival of Parma and Mayenne caused it to be abandoned (May 1592). The anger of the Queen with Essex and the war-party was increased by the ill success in the autumn (1591) of the attempt to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet off the Azores;[586] and for a time “the Cecils” had their way, which was to administer just so much aid, and no more, as should prevent Maurice of Nassau in Holland and Henry of Navarre in France from succumbing to the power of Spain, whilst the Queen in the meanwhile railed at Navarre for his shiftiness, and at Essex for his disobedience. Her Englishmen, she said, had been badly treated and exposed to undue hardships, her advances were unpaid, nobody was grateful to her; and in future she declared, that though Henry might have her prayers he should have no more of her money.
The determined efforts of Essex and his party, and more especially of the two Bacons, Francis and Antony, to wound and discredit the Cecils, stopped at no inconsistency. From their earliest childhood the Earl and the Bacons had been attached to the Puritan party, and still posed as its champions; and yet they were the first to endeavour to cast upon Burghley the odium of the severe proclamation and fresh persecution of the seminary priests that had been considered necessary.[587] From the action of Allen, Persons, and their friends at the time of the Armada, from the letters intercepted by Burghley disclosing the Jesuit plot in Scotland, and from the continued bitter writings of Person’s directed against Elizabeth and her minister, it was beyond question now, that whatever may have been the case at the beginning of their propaganda, the aim of the seminarists was simply to undermine and overturn the political government of the country.[588] And yet the Bacons, nephews of Burghley and sons of a fiercely Puritan mother, prompted by the double spy Standen and men of the same evil class, almost violently took up the cause of the persecuted Catholics when they thought it would injure the kinsman to whom they owed so much, and his son, of whom they were jealous.[589]
The renewed severity against the seminarists at this time was certainly not without justification. The shifty James Stuart was again listening to the charming of his Catholic nobles and the agents of Spain, though doubtless with the intention of outwitting them, and from all sides came the news of a powerful fleet being prepared in the Spanish ports either for England, Scotland, or Ireland. For a time in the autumn of 1592, whilst Lord Burghley was accompanying Elizabeth through the southern counties,[590] a perfect panic of apprehension fell upon the people; partly, it must be confessed, caused by the fear of reprisals for the ceaseless ravages of the English upon Spanish shipping. Burghley himself had always been opposed to these ravages,[591] and had steadily refused to accept any share in the profits of them; but when the prizes were brought back he took care that the Queen’s share was not forgotten. A good instance of this occurred in 1592. Ralegh and the Earl of Cumberland with some associates fitted out a powerful expedition to intercept the treasure galleons, and, if possible, to raid some of the Spanish settlements. When the squadron had sailed, Ralegh was suddenly recalled by the angry Queen and thrown into the Tower (May) for having married.
The Roebuck, Ralegh’s own ship, captured off Flores amongst other prizes the great carrack Madre de Dios, which reached Dartmouth on the 8th September. The riches she contained were beyond calculation; pearls, amber, musk, and precious stones, tapestries, silks, spices, and gold formed her cargo. Plunder began long before she reached England, and when the news came of the capture the great road to the west was crowded by Jew dealers, London tradesmen and fine ladies and gentlemen on their way to buy bargains. Ralegh’s sailors were already sulky at the imprisonment of their beloved master, and when attempts were made by the shore authorities to recover some of the plunder and prevent further peculation, they became unmanageable. Sir John Hawkins wrote to Lord Burghley that Ralegh was the only man who could bring them to order.[592] But Ralegh was in the Tower, “the Queen’s poor prisoner”; and it needed all the Lord Treasurer’s influence, working on Elizabeth’s greed, to obtain permission for Sir Walter, still under guard, to go down to Devonshire and set matters straight.[593] Preceding him by a few hours on the same errand went Sir Robert Cecil, whose letters to his father on his journey, detailing the measures he had adopted on the way to intercept the plunder, are extremely graphic and interesting.[594]
Such depredations upon Spanish shipping as this—and they were of constant occurrence—although they might enrich the adventurers, and to some extent even the Queen, were a means of keeping the English people generally in a constant state of apprehension, and rendering legitimate commerce dangerous and difficult. As we have seen, Lord Burghley had steadily set his face against piracy of all sorts, and Sir Robert Cecil followed his lead. Ralegh had from his first appearance at court been a friend of the Cecils, as against Leicester and Essex, and he still remained on their side; but he was greedy and unscrupulous, and certainly from the time of the capture of the great carrack the cordiality between the Cecil party and himself diminished.[595] The talk of the court generally was that Burghley was jealous of the rise of all men who might compete with his beloved son Robert; and Ralegh’s friend Spenser puts the thought in verse (“The Ruins of Time”) thus:—
“O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despisèd be
Of him that first was raised for virtuous parts,