Part 11 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVI
COBHAM AND CECIL (1601-1603)
[Sidenote: _Impatience of Subordination_]
[Sidenote: _The Privy Council_]
He did not know it, but he was now at the culmination of his prosperity
His kinsinning of 1602 the _Survey of Cornwall_, in tererated He had a noble estate, his sovereign's renewed confidence, andthose who followed rather than led, who executed, and did not direct Of constant subordination he was beco uished and favoured His aim was to force his entrance within the citadel of adht on two main branches of national policy, Ireland and armaments His Irish policy has been refuted by events It is open to all the accusations which have been brought against it of cruelty and relish statesmen; and he understoodit in practice Had he been a Minister, and not only a royal confidant, hein Ireland a peace of silence He held as fixed and enerous views on the subject of national defences, and on the proper strategy in dealing with Spain He fretted at being condee them from the outside instead of within His exclusion from partnershi+p in responsible authority was, he felt, perpetual, unless he could break in Probably at no period did he aspire after supreh restricted to the hope of ad him into collision with the jealous Secretary He was reported in 1598 to be ae
He cared more for power than titles, and his ancient friends, like his ancient rivals, thwarted his plans We know that Cecil could not bear even so ular introduction into the Privy Council For that he had so long been craving and looking, that, according to Henry Howard's taunt, he by this time 'found no view for Paradise out of a Council board' In June, 1601, there had been, as in 1598, a prospect of his nomination Lords Shrewsbury and Worcester instead were sworn in Cecil intih should never have his consent to be a Councillor, unless he surrendered to Carew the Captaincy of the Guard
Ralegh's efforts for a line of his own in statesonisraphy His relations to the Cecils had always been inti differences concerning Ireland, encouraged him as a counterpoise to Leicester He repaid the kindness, it will be recollected, by interceding for the Lord Treasurer's son-in-law He was a guest at the entertainh's connexion was much closer
Cecil valued his help at Court, and his society In February, 1598, during his h as one 'hose kindness he has been long and truly fastened' 'If some idle errand,' he writes word, 'can send over Sir Walter, let us have hi sincerity he wrote in 1600 of hireat, as his person dear' He was a co speculations Lady Ralegh wrote of Lady Cecil as of a sy to her 'cousin'
Cecil as a support against Sir Walter's tribulations and hers He is 'a corieved' She 'presumes of his honourable favour ever'
She confided to hireat believer' In January, 1597, Ralegh condoled as a racious Lady Cecil's death His letter exhorting to iainst Essex The Earl's fiery anger had burnt against both alike Had his mad freak of treason succeeded, both would have been sacrificed in company
[Sidenote: _Intimacy with Robert Cecil_]
After Essex succumbed the alliance appeared as strict as before The two households, as well as the masters, were affectionately fauest at Sherborne No stronger proof of trust, it iven by the father There is talk how 'the beloved creature's stoest rightly;' how 'he is also better kept to his book' As one intih undertook in August, 1601, the supervision of his recently purchased estate at Rushh's behalf: 'Bess returns you her best wishes, notwithstanding all quarrels' 'Bess says that she loves but your own' There are threats froeh relied on Cecil to protect his ainst unlicensed Adventurers They cheapen, he complained, by their imports sassafras from its proper price of 20s to 12s a pound; they 'cloy thethe enterprise' of the plantation of Virginia, 'which I shall yet live to see an English nation' In addition they introduced contraband cedar-trees These, if the Lord Adh intended to divide 'into three parts--to ciel cabinets, and s' He asked for Cecil's aid; 'but what you think unfit to be done for me shall never be a quarrel either internal or external If we cannot have ould, reat bond to find a friend that will strain himself in his friend's cause in whatsoever--as this world fareth'
[Sidenote: _Cecil's Sentin, and beyond it, Ralegh's language to Cecil keeps the same tone of implicit faith In words Cecil was not behind his more fluent and continuous correspondent At heart he would appear, froh as a dangerous rival before the Queen's death Shrewd observers detected the growth of the sentiainst the common foe, and even, for reasons which are not obvious, in consequence of it
'Cecil,' wrote Harington, who had been a trusted coh in thethe Burleigh papers, without date or signature, but for good cause attributed to Lord Henry Howard, and probably written towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, sho eagerly Cecil and Ralegh were regarded by their respective partisans as hostile coh's arguh overthrow of Essex It seems to have been an elaborate written embodiment of a policy which the Minister may have heard before fro absolutely in harmony with Howard's conduct at the time and after In it the writer, with the 'Asiatic endless' prolixity which Ja that 'Cobhah, the cogging spirit that prompteth it,' should be set in responsible positions in which they would be sure to fail There is no reason to suppose that Cecil accepted the particular advice He would be inclined to doubt the certainty of Ralegh's failure, should an opportunity of distinction be afforded him
But the document could not have been written unless its author had been positive of Cecil's syh, by whatever means, to a condition of confirmed obscurity and dependence
[Sidenote: _Rival Can h seerow more and more widely separated Researches into the secret history of the final year or two reveal Ralegh and Cobham on one side, and Cecil and Lord Henry Howard on the other, as chiefs of opposite ca Jaarded by James as hostile to his proclamation as Elizabeth's heir The death of 'my martyr Essex' increased his dislike He was not assured of the baselessness of Essex's cry as he rode through the city: 'The crown of England is sold to the Spaniard!' He may have suspected the existence of scheht hi Howard, now remembered chiefly as the builder of Northu part in the ns As a Catholic, though at ti, and as brother of the hapless Duke of Norfolk, he had hated the Cecils His dislike of Robert Cecil had been inflamed by partizanshi+p for his kins, with his insatiable love of intrigue, he is said to have played off the two against one another Now, convinced that Cecil was too strong, or too necessary, to be discarded, and possessing Ja's distrust Finally Cecil became for James 'my dearest Cecil' James accepted him so entirely as to promise that Cecil's friends and foes should be his Thenceforward a league was for on one side and Cecil and Howard on the other, which are equally discreditable to all three
[Sidenote: _The Succession_]
The compact was not the work of a moment, and Cecil's rivals do not appear to the end to have understood how absolute it was Neither was it of very old standing For long Elizabeth's councillors hesitated to throw in their lot with the Scottish claim to the succession They could not read clearly the national inclination The country had been undecided As Cecil confessed he had once said, there were several coue The Suffolk family possessed some sort of Parliamentary title Arabella Stuart was not, like Jan Discussion, or even advocacy, of either title, whether by Cecil, Ralegh, or Cobham, was, till the actual proclamation of James, not treasonable But after the death of Mary Stuart, and, more plainly still, after that of Essex, it beca of Scots Cecil and Ralegh equally discerned the certainty Both acted accordingly, and each suspected the other's procedure Both started evenly with the same stain, in James's eyes, of ene of partnershi+p with Henry Howard, and Ralegh the disadvantage of partnershi+p with Cobham He had to overcome the more invincible obstacle of his possession of a character, deood features as well as bad, essentially distasteful to the Prince he had to conciliate
[Sidenote: _Prejudices of King Jae, Cecil kept up an active correspondence with the Scottish Court Ralegh had his concealed relations with it too
Neither is to be severely bla an attraction to the nearest heir to the throne So even of personal enthusiasm at the prospect was not so absurd a sentiment as it seems to posterity The nature of James was not well understood, and hope was placed in his youth Contrasts were drawn, as Ralegh expressed it at his trial, between a lady whonised that no other successor was possible Lord Northu to persuade Jah's ever allowance of the King's right' Ralegh indeed had never favoured any rival candidate, Arabella Stuart as little as the Infanta About Arabella there is no cause to doubt the veracity of his assertion, reported by Dudley Carleton, that 'of all women he ever saw he never liked her' Simply he had opposed, as Elizabeth herself opposed, and in his character of her faithful servant, the ternity of heir presumptive In the interest of her tranquillity he had addressed to Elizabeth a written arguainst the announcement of a successor Eventually, some time before Elizabeth's death, he had perceived that it was useless to act as if any successor but Jauine temperament he acquiesced in the inevitable as if it were positively advantageous He saw his way to render as excellent service to the State under King Ja now He was conscious of the obstacles in his path; he was unconscious that they were insuperable He knew he had been always ranked as of the anti-Scottish party He knew the specificJames would put upon his resistance to the foronisainst hi's mind But he overrated the amount of the resources at his disposal for his protection froht of aversion he had excited He equally underrated the inveteracy of the dislike, and the degree of additional suspicion which hislooked forward to a day when he should 'have account of the presumption of the base instruments about the Queen who abused her ear' That was his way of thinking of the Queen's favourite councillors Cecil kne to purchase his pardon
Ralegh, gathering strength about hi, only deepened the king's conviction that he could be mischievous; he did not implant a conviction that he was a desirable auxiliary The 'consultations of Durham House' became notorious They alarmed both Howard and James just sufficiently to induce them to temporise They fixed the resolution sooner or later to ruin the promoter The Duke of Lennox cah's acquaintance through Sir Arthur Savage Jae in a letter of 1602 to Howard as 'trucheh of a nature far different, and a very honest plain gentleh boasted he had rejected To Cecil he protested that he had been over-deeply engaged and obliged to his ownto Howard, Ralegh asked Cecil to divulge this to the Queen; but Cecil, with good sense, represented to him that the Queen 'would rather mark a weakness than praise his resolution'
[Sidenote: _Lord Henry Howard_]
Whatever he had done or left undone, whatever promises had been made, and however they had been entertained, the end would have been the same
Henry Howard infla felt for Ralegh Howard hated Ralegh with a virulence not easily explicable, which appeared to be doubled by its abateh and Cobham On the testimony of his own letters it is clear he did not mind how tortuously and perfidiously he worked He calculated upon Cobhah with 'so him into that snare which he would shun otherwise' He poisoned Jaainst 'those wicked villains,' 'that crew,' and its 'hypocrisy,' the 'accursed duality,' or 'the triplicity that denies the Trinity' By the triplicity he signified Ralegh, Cobha theer of Kildare, daughter of the Lord Admiral Henry Howard, who did not like her, ad Cecil to side with King Jah had 'an ancient acquaintance,' which had resulted in h_]