The long letter from Sir Henry Lee gives a pathetic and vivid portrait of the old Government official who feels himself at last like a worn-out tool, unloved, unnecessary to the world—save when his position as a premier peer required him to raise levies for the defence and contest of Ireland, or county matters called him from retirement in his military and judicial capacity. To the very end he was a prompt official, and his family motto, “Prest d’Accomplir,” his watchword. In 1586 he was still among those who receive urgent orders to arm and prepare bodies of Derbyshire fighting men, and must give his attention to the most absurd details of uniform, such as the “convenient hose and doublet, and a cassock of motley ... either sea-green colour or russet,” noted among the regulations issued by his fellows of the Privy Council.
These things are, however, only flashes in the pan. He is getting old. All the world was growing old, and all his contemporaries, in the phrase of the day, were “a little thing sickish.” The intrepid and laborious Walsingham is described as being “troubled with his old diseases: the tympany and carnosity,” and so is absent from Court. Letters still flowed in to the Earl, news of the Netherlands campaign, from the now depressed Lord Leicester, the Governor, news of the Queen’s movements, of Spain, of the legal strife of his contemporaries and friends. They are only sticks and straws flung into the deep and turgid current of his lonely, embittered life.
It was in the midst of such disputes as these that the summons had come to him from Fotheringay.
CHAPTER XX
FADING GLORIES
His own household and many of his tenants were faithful to the Earl Marshal. Fortunately he had not at the moment much leisure for private broodings. The Babington conspiracy had churned up the old alarms about Mary, the Royal Commission for her trial was being appointed, and, though he was fortunately able to plead illness as an excuse for once more repairing to London to take his seat in this important meeting of the Council, he was obliged by letter to Burghley to assert his willingness to add his name to the decree of the Privy Council in regard to Mary’s sentence, at the same time enclosing his seal and giving the Lord Treasurer full authority to sign for him. Did he at the moment of writing recall that broidered motto which must have flashed at him many times from the dais which his prisoner contrived for herself in her imprisonment: “En ma fin est mon commencement”? If so, the pride and pathos of it must have struck home terribly. For he too was nearing his end. He too had naught but sorrow in his heir, and though Gilbert, Edward, and Henry Talbot still lived to carry on his name, it could not be in a very hopeful spirit that he thought upon the continuance of his line so long as he apprehended the renewal of family strife and could not forgive or love again his high-handed lady.
Many things had happened to Mary since they parted, notably the failure of the last great conspiracy for her freedom. Of all these he was fully informed, and sums up her affairs in a single phrase in the ensuing letter:—
“To the Right Honourable my verie good Lord the Lord Burghley, Lord Thresorer of England.
“My noble good Lord,
“I have received your Lordship’s letters both of the 12th November and the 14th of the same, whereby I find myself greatly beholden unto your Lordship for your good remembrance of me, with the proceeding of the foul matters of the Scots Queen; sentence whereof, I understand by your Lordship, is given and confirmed, and for execution to be had accordingly. I perceive it now resteth in her Majesty’s hands; for my own part I pray that God may so inspire her heart to take that course as may be for her Majesty’s own safety; the which I trust her Majesty’s grave wisdom will wisely foresee; which in my consent cannot be without speedy execution.
“And thus wishing to your good Lordship as to myself, do bid you right heartily farewell. Your Lordship’s assuredly,