Part 10 (1/2)
Essex was a popular idol Ralegh, till his fall, never was A conteh's successes seemed to deepen the public dislike The populace deluded itself with the fancy, absolutely groundless, that Essex's ruin was due to Ralegh, and that Ralegh nant anecdotes were current of his demeanour at his rival's last moments He was said to have snatched at the pleasure of conveying to the Lieutenant of the Tower the instructions for the execution He was described as, on February 25, standing in aover against the scaffold, and puffing out tobacco sed hireat boy died like a calf, and like a craven; to have vaunted to one who asked if in the Islands Voyage the Earl had not brought hiainst such gross tales Ralegh needs no defence He could not have behaved like a boorish ruffian to an adversary in the death agony
He could not have spoken unmannerly words of his dead Cadiz comrade He had been present at the Earl's trial as Captain of the Guard In spite of taunts, he had given his evidence with dignity and moderation As Captain of the Guard he had escorted several of the insurgents, though not Essex himself, to prison In his official capacity he carried the order for the execution In the same character he was present in the Tower At first he had stood near the scaffold, supposing that Essex ht wish to speak to him To avoid misconstruction by lookers-on he soon withdrew He stationed hi seen Afterwards he was sorry, he said, for it; since he heard that the Earl had inquired for hi to have been reconciled
[Sidenote: _His Part in the Catastrophe_]
His aspect is reported to have been sad and gloomy, as he was rowed back to Durhaination, he could not but have been awed by the consuic doom Later he believed he had always la of a new peril to hiainst a powerful rival He htly declare that the death was not his work
Essex was his own undoer A tiladly have become his firm friend His emphatic concurrence, recorded by Rowland Whyte, with Lady Ralegh's wish that there were 'love and concord ast all' was not hypocritical In all sincerity he had written twice in that spirit in the spring of 1600 to Lady Essex He had found it of no use; and a period came when he rejoiced in an inveterate enemy's discomfiture It is fanciful to affir aside the final shock of ruin His sentiments towards Essex at the end, unhappily, are too certain for the precisethe Hatfield papers, to be of much consequence Of its authenticity there is no real doubt, though Mr Charles Kingsley, whose enthusiashtful and unround that it is signed by initials, and that the style is, to his taste, unlike Ralegh's Its exactis much more open to dispute Here it is:--
[Sidenote: _Advice to Cecil_]
'I aive you advice; but if you take it for a good counsel to relent towards this tyrant, you will repent it when it shall be too late His malice is fixed, and will not evaporate by any your mild courses For he will ascribe the alteration to her Majesty's pusillani that you work but upon her humour, and not out of any love towards him The less you make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours And if her Majesty's favour fail hies fear them not; for your own father, that was esteemed to be the contriver of Norfolk's ruin, yet his son followeth your father's son and loveth hirow by occasions and accidents of tie on the Duke of Northumberland's heirs Northumberland, that now is, thinks not of Hatton's issue Kelloway lives that o by all his lifetime I could name you a thousand of those; and therefore after-fears are but prophecies, or rather conjectures, from causes remote Look to the present, and you do wisely
His son shall be the youngest Earl of England but one, and if his father be now kept down, Will Cecil shall be able to keep as many men at his heels as he, and more too He may also match in a better house than his; and so that fear is not worth the fearing But if the father continue, he will be able to break the branches, and pull up the tree, root and all Lose not your advantage; if you do, I rede your destiny Yours to the end, WR Let the Queen hold Bothhile she hath him He will ever be the canker of her estate and safety Princes are lost by security; and preserved by prevention I have seen the last of her good days, and all ours, after his liberty' By Bothwell is meant Essex The real Bothas a natural son of Ja, and been pardoned, and had plotted again
[Sidenote: _Difficulties of Construction_]
On the date of the letter depends whether it signify doing to death, or grinding into obscurity It is endorsed in Cecil's hand, 'Sir Walter Ralegh,' and in a later hand, '1601' That is hardly a possible date
The civil, ecclesiastical, and legal year in England, by which a secretary at Hatfield is likely to have reckoned, closed on March 24
Consequently '1601' had not begun when Essex was already dead The only question is, when in the legal year 1600 the letter ritten If at the end, when judgment had been pronounced, its object would be the accomplishment of the capital sentence If it ritten early in 1600 its e the Queen to strip Essex of all his dignities and offices Ralegh's apologists can adduce for the less bloodthirsty interpretation the passage: 'If her Majesty's favour fail hiain decline to a corace, not to death It has been iined that the plan was to incapacitate him by law for employment, and to hold hiest Earl of England but one,' re on either construction Advocates of that which treats the letter as a plea for imprisonment and disqualification for office have to sho he could have been kept a State prisoner for life for offences he had co of February, and,father was to e for the son On the other theory which presu Essex to the scaffold, it is as unintelligible how the father's fate, with its necessary attainder of blood, could legally transnity
The inherent inconsistencies of the docu than the circuested that the idea of the letter was Cecil's, and that he plotted to deceive posterity by inducing Ralegh to hold the pen In the crude shape, that is an incredible hypothesis But Cecil was of a nature to discuss questions of policy with his confidants, and extract their viehile he revealed only half his own Very possibly the letter may have arisen out of a conversation in which the Minister had canvassed the question of acting with prudent nanih to repeat in writing objections urged orally by him to such a course for the exposition of the case on both its sides
At all events, it would be convenient for Cecil to have the document if in future it should be doubted which of the confederates had been the h could easily be drawn to try his hand, between fancy and earnest, at an academic theme on the lines of fashi+onable Italian state-craft If the paper be indeed nothing but an exercise in pleading, the author deserves to be applauded for the artistic assumption of an air of sincerity which chills the reader's blood
CHAPTER XV
THE ZENITH (1601-1603)
[Sidenote: _Lord Oxford_]
From Essex's execution to the death of Elizabeth, on March 24, 1603, is a period of two years wanting a h's career NoCourt favourite, no Leicester, Essex, or mere Hatton, stood now in his way If even Elizabeth's vivacious temperament may have ceased to require attentions as frorace, versatility, and valour like his The jealousy he continued to arouse was a tribute to his power To this tims_, of Lord Oxford's insolence The malicious Earl had returned, the Mirror of Tuscanismo, froone thither to spite his father-in-law, Burleigh, by deserting his wife, and squandering his estate The Queen was playing on the virginals before hih was on duty near at hand The ledge in front happened to have been taken away, so that the jacks were seen Oxford and his companion smiled and whispered Elizabeth inquired the reason They were amused, answered Oxford, to see that when jacks went up heads went down The point of the sarcash's influence with the decapitation of Essex That the reference was to Ralegh ranted The fact of the favour of the Queen is certain
[Sidenote: _Sully and Biron_]
Courtiers wrote to one another how 'good his credit with the Queen had lately grown' He had a multiplicity of Court duties thrown upon hies brought hiners As Sir John Harington said of hinalways esti to relieve Ostend, which the Archduke and Infanta were besieging, Ralegh and Cobham paid his cae, and to have 'stolen over, having obtained leave with ilish envoy wrote to Cecil that the two gallants had been entertained with much honour and extraordinary respect, but had seen little Sir Henry Neville, however, told Winwood their journey was not for curiosity only
They 'carried soh, by the Queen's order, had been escorting a Spanish envoy, sent to negotiate a truce, round London Later, during the Queen's suress to Dover, he, with Cobham and Sidney, received Sully As Captain of the Guard he playfully took Sully into custody, and conducted hireat Minister had been privately sent over by King Henry, as at Calais On September 5, the Duc de Biron arrived, to announce to Elizabeth the e of Mary de Medici to Henry
Several noblemen had been directed by the Council to provide for the Marshal's solemn reception in London By soh, who had not been especially come and Sir Arthur Gorges, who spoke French fluently, ca them they amused the Frenchmen till horses were ready to convey theh wrote to Cecil: 'We have carried them to Westminster to see the monuments; and this Monday we entertained thereat pleasure to see I sent to and fro, and have laboured like a mule' On the Wednesday he rode with the Marshal and his nue house of Lord Sandys has for volume by its present owner, Mr Chaloner Chute It had been furnished frohbouring country houses, for the accoentry lent seven score beds Not when Ralegh had seen all housed were his cares over He told Cobham, 'The French wear all black, and no kind of bravery at all' His wardrobe, plentiful as assuredly it was, had not been equipped in unison with such deht, late,' he wrote on Septe to London to provide me a plain taffeta suit, and a plain black saddle'
Elizabeth rewarded his exertions in rendering the stay of the Frenchh, on her departure fro House Mr Benjamin Tichborne received the sah was a patron of literature, and had to devote evenings to the wits To hi of the seventeenth century, of the Mers in Bread Street, Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's, Camden's, and Donne's club It is very likely; so likely that the intrinsic probability of the fact uest it is more than likely he would take occasional part in the wit co We may lament that there was no Boswell, or even a Druh and Shakespeare Ralegh abhorred drunkenness
'It were better,' he has said, 'for a man to be subject to any vice than to drunkenness' But teetotalism had not been invented in the days of Elizabeth Not wholly unconnected with the social evenings at the Mermaid may have been the frequent trouble he experienced from bodily ailrievously ill to be able to travel to Bath for his annual cure His ail Cecil of a powerful Spanish fleet held ready, with 6000 or 7000 soldiers, to descend either upon Ireland or the Low Countries Fresh intelligence, which on September 26 he despatched to Cecil for transmission to the Lord Adned for Cork or Limerick He inferred from the presence of many women on board that a 'Plantation' was meant It was no false alar of a strong body of Spaniards, and their intrenchnosticated, outside the town of Kinsale His readiness to accept responsibility was met in the same spirit, particularly when Ireland was concerned Later, Cecil adh no Privy Councillor, was often invited to confer with the Council Only three months before Elizabeth was seized with her mortal sickness, in 1602, he, with Cecil, was consulted by her on the treatment of Corh advised that noworth the Queen's keeping Elizabeth accepted his frankly selfish advice
[Sidenote: _In Parliament_]
[Sidenote: _Monopolies_]