“My Lord,—Conceiving that your Lordship comes now up in the person of a good servant to serve your sovereign mistress, which kind of compliments we many times instar magnorum meritorum, and therefore it would be hard for me to find you, I have committed to this poor paper the humble salutations of him that is more yours than any man’s, and more yours than any man. To these salutations I add a due and joyful gratulation, confessing that your Lordship in your last conference with me, before your journey, spake not in vain, God making it good, that you trusted we should say Quis putasset, which, as it is found true in a happy sense, or I wish you do not find another Quis putasset in the manner of taking this so great a service. But I hope it is, as he said, Nubecula est, cito transibit: and that your Lordship’s wisdom and obsequious circumspection and patience will turn all to the best. So referring all to some time that I may attend you, I commit you to God’s best preservations.”
We do not believe that Bacon was capable of an ardent friendship for any one; he was urbane and courteous to all, as is the manner with men of thought and equanimity. With regard to Essex, this letter alone would be sufficient proof to us that he had all along been more of the courtier than the friend. No friend, in these circumstances, could have written in this hollow strain of congratulation.
In a short time, however, this strain alters. Essex is examined before the Council, and is committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper. He remains in privacy at York House. The nubecula is growing into a very dark cloud. Bacon, in his interviews with the Queen, does all that a cautious man can do to bring about a reconciliation. But if a reconciliation is impossible, he must serve his sovereign, and not Essex. He now writes thus:—
“My Lord,—No man can better expound my doings than your Lordship, which maketh me need to say the less. Only I humbly pray you to believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of bonus civis, which with us is a good and true servant to the Queen; and next of bonus vir, that is an honest man. I desire your Lordship also to think that although I confess I love some things much better than I love your Lordship, as the Queen’s service, her quiet and contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like, yet I love few persons better than yourself, both for gratitude’s sake and your own virtues, which cannot hurt but by accident and abuse. Of which my good affections I was ever and am ready to yield testimony by any good offices, but with such reservations as yourself cannot but allow; for as I was ever sorry that your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus’s fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, specially ostrich’s, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be more glad.”
To which letter Essex returned a dignified answer, such as a man might have written who intended to retire from an unjust world into contemplative life.
Soon after this correspondence Essex was released from even the gentle confinement in which he had been held. He could have retired, with none to molest him, into contemplative life. His private fortune was untouched; his name was still popular with the multitude. Perhaps, after a short interval of retirement patiently endured, he might have returned to Court, and have been reinstated in all his honour and offices.
The truth was that he had been for some time past tampering with treason of the boldest and most criminal description. Before leaving Ireland he held a consultation with his friends Blount and Southampton, and told them “that he found it necessary for him to go to England, and thought it fit to carry with him as much of the army as he could conveniently transport, to go on shore with him to Wales, and there to make good his landing till he could send for more; not doubting but his army would so increase in a small time that he should be able to march to London and make his conditions as he desired.” The evidence for this treasonable scheme is stated by Mr Spedding, vol. ii. p. 147.
The time had passed for this “monstrous” project, as Mr Spedding justly calls it. But the scheme into which he now enters is still more monstrous; it is still more irrational, and, but for evidence of an unusually clear and stringent character, would be utterly incredible. That scheme was to force himself upon the Queen, and by an insurrectionary movement to be carried, in some way, to the highest position a subject could hold—perhaps to some still higher position. What was to be his pretence? what the cry by which he was to rouse the multitude? The succession to the English throne of James of Scotland had not been formally declared, and the cry was to be that the ministers were plotting to sell the crown of England to the Infanta!! It was too absurd, one would say, even for a mob zealous for the Protestant succession. Some overtures, or solicitations for aid, were made to James, but of what nature we know not. While the Protestants were to be alarmed, the Catholics were to be propitiated by promises of toleration. But Blount and other Catholics who entered into the plot were, no doubt, induced to do so by stronger motives than mere promises of toleration—by those vague expectations and hopes which a season of anarchy and confusion and civil war would open to a party who still amounted to a large minority of the nation. “By the end of January 1601,” to adopt the statement of Mr Spedding, “all their intrigues and secret consultations had ripened into a deliberate and deep-laid plan for surprising the Court, mastering the guard, and seizing the Queen’s person, and so forcing her to dismiss from her counsels Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, and others, and to make such changes in the State as the conspirators thought fit.” The several confessions of those engaged in the plot, and of Essex himself, leave no doubt whatever of the fact. How such a plot is to be rationally explained is still a perplexity. Sir Christopher Blount, with a company of armed men, was to take the Court gate; Sir John Davis was to master the hall and go up into the Great Chamber, where already some of the conspirators would have straggled in and seized upon the halberts of the guard, which usually stood piled up against the wall; Sir Charles Davers was to have taken possession of the Presence; whereupon Essex, with the Earls of Southampton, Rutland, and other noblemen, would have gone in to the Queen; they would have used her authority for calling a Parliament, condemned all whom they denounced as misgoverning the State, and made, it is added, changes in the government. If such a plot had succeeded, what else could have ensued than to set loose all the several parties, sects, and factions of which the country was composed, to struggle anew for the supremacy?
Meanwhile, some rumours of what was in preparation reached the Court; Essex was summoned to the Council; he excused himself on the plea of ill health. The conspirators were alarmed; it seemed to them that their plot was detected. It was not yet matured—the hour of action had not yet come. Still, it appeared to them that something must be done. His friends were assembled. To surprise the Court was impossible, if the Court was already on its guard. But the city might be raised; an insurrectionary movement might be excited if Essex, still an idol of the populace, went among the citizens proclaiming that his life was in danger from the machinations of his enemies. While this expedient was being debated there arrived from the Court the Lord Keeper, with three other lords, sent from the Queen to know the meaning of this unusual assemblage, and to demand its dismissal. Essex was invited to explain to them the cause of his present discontent. Their coming still further precipitated the action. Essex locked up the four noblemen in his library, and set off himself, accompanied with some two hundred gentlemen, to rouse the city to arms. But for the inopportune appearance of these noblemen, Essex and his friends would have proceeded in stately fashion on horseback to St Paul’s Cross; they would have arrived before the sermon was over (it was Sunday), and would have explained their case to the assembled people. Essex was not deficient as an orator, and he could, at all events, have obtained a solemn hearing. But the visit of the councillors spoilt even the execution of the after-plot. The party went on foot; Essex had no opportunity to address the people; he could only cry out as he passed along that his life was in danger. A nobleman running along the streets on a Sunday morning, followed by two hundred gentlemen with drawn swords, and exclaiming that his life was in danger, must have been a curious spectacle for the citizens of London. But it must have been as unintelligible as it was curious. No one joined him. The Queen’s troops were collected to oppose him. He made his way back to Essex House, where he was captured, and conveyed to prison.
Up to this time Bacon’s conduct towards Essex lies open to no peculiar censure. We have said that he does not appear to us in the light of a very wise counsellor, or a very warm friend; but, as regards Essex, no specific charge of ingratitude can be brought against him. It is after this abortive and miserable attempt at rebellion that his conduct to his former friend changes. And well, we think, it might. Of the character and designs of Essex there could be now no doubt whatever. He has thrown off all disguise. He stands there an enemy to the commonwealth. Nothing but the extreme absurdity of his conduct hides from us its extreme criminality.