ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history (18 page)

Next day the Star Chamber met, and the statement of the Earl's misdoings was read aloud. It was declared that he had mismanaged the Irish operations, that he had made a disgraceful treaty with Tyrone, and that he had returned to England contrary to the Queen's express orders. Members of the public were admitted, but Francis Bacon did not attend. Elizabeth, running over the list of those who had been present, observed the fact. She sent him a message, asking the meaning of it. He replied that he had thought it wiser to keep away, in view of the threats of violence against his person. But she was not impressed by the excuse, and did not speak to him again for several weeks.

The Star Chamber declaration led to nothing. The weeks, the months, flowed by, and Essex was still a prisoner; the fatal evening at Nonesuch proved to have been the beginning of a captivity which lasted almost a year. Nor was it a mild one. None of the Earl's intimates were allowed to see him. Even Lady Essex, who had just borne him a daughter, and who haunted the Court dressed in the deep mourning of a suppliant, was forbidden to see her husband for many months. Elizabeth's anger had assumed a grimmer aspect than ever before. Was this still a lovers' quarrel? If so, it was indeed a strange one. For now contempt, fear, and hatred had come to drop their venom into the deadly brew of disappointed passion. With fixed resentment, as the long months dragged out, she nursed her wrath; she would make him suffer for his incompetence, his insolence, his disobedience; did he imagine that his charms were irresistible? She had had enough of them, and he would find that he had made a mistake.

With the new year - it was the last of the century - there were two developments. Essex began to recover, and by the end of January he had regained his normal health. At the same time the Queen made a new attempt to deal with the situation in Ireland. Tyrone had himself put an end to the truce of September, and had recommenced his manoeuvrings against the English. Something had to be done, and Elizabeth, falling back on her previous choice, appointed Mountjoy Lord Deputy. He tried in vain to escape from the odious office, but it was useless; Elizabeth was determined; go he must. Before doing so, however, he held a consultation with Southampton and Sir Charles Davers, another devoted follower of Essex, as to how he might best assist the imprisoned Earl. An extraordinary proposal was made. For some years past Essex had been in communication with James of Scotland, and Mountjoy himself, during the campaign in Ireland, had written to the King - whether with or without the knowledge of Essex is uncertain - asking him to make some move in Essex's behalf. James's answer having proved unsatisfactory, the matter was dropped; but it was now revived in an astonishing and far more definite manner. It was well known that the prime object of the King of Scotland's policy was to secure the inheritance of England. Mountjoy suggested that a message should be sent to James informing him that the Cecil party was hostile to his succession, that his one chance lay in the reinstatement of Essex, that if he would take action in Essex's favour Mountjoy himself would cross over from Ireland with an army of four or five thousand men, and that with their combined forces they could then impose their will upon the English Government. Southampton and Davers approved of the project, and there can be no doubt that Essex himself gave his consent to it, for the conspirators had found means of conveying letters in secret to and from York House. The messenger was despatched to Scotland; and Mountjoy actually started to take up the government of Ireland with this project of desperate treason in his mind. But James was a cautious person: his reply was vague and temporising; Mountjoy was informed; and the scheme was allowed to drop.

But not for long. For in the spring, Southampton went to Ireland, and Essex took the opportunity to send a letter to Mountjoy, urging him to carry out his original intention and to lead his army into England, with or without the support of James. Mountjoy, however, had changed his mind. Ireland had had its effect on him too - and an unexpected one. He was no longer the old Charles Blount, who had been content to follow in the footsteps of his dazzling friend; he had suddenly found his vocation. He was a follower no more; he was a commander; he felt that he could achieve what no one had achieved before him; he would pacify Ireland, he would defeat Tyrone. Penelope herself would not keep him from that destiny. His answer was polite, but firm. "To satisfy my lord of Essex's private ambition, he would not enter into an enterprise of that nature."

Meanwhile Elizabeth, unaware of these machinations, was wondering gloomily what she was going to do. The Tower? On the whole, she thought not; things were bad - but not quite so bad as that. Nevertheless, she would move the culprit out of York House. The poor Lord Keeper could not be made a gaoler for ever; and Essex was sent into his own house, after Anthony Bacon and all his other friends had been turned out of it, to be kept there in as close confinement as before. Then her mind again moved towards the Star Chamber. She summoned Bacon, who once more advised against it; once more he told her - not that the Earl's misdoings hardly deserved so terrible a form of prosecution - but that his power with the people was such as to make it dangerous. This time she agreed with him, and decided to set up a disciplinary tribunal of her own devising. There should be a fine show, and the miscreant should be lectured, very severely lectured, made to apologise, frightened a little, and then - let off. So she arranged it, and every one fell in with her plans. Never was the cool paternalism of the Tudors so curiously displayed. Essex was a naughty boy, who had misbehaved, been sent to his room, and fed on bread and water; and now he was to be brought downstairs, and, after a good wigging, told he was not to be flogged after all.

The ceremony took place (June 5th, 1600) at York House, and lasted for eleven hours without a break. Essex knelt at the foot of the table, round which the assembled lords of the Council sat in all their gravity. After some time the Archbishop of Canterbury moved that the Earl be allowed to stand; this was granted; later on he was allowed to lean, and at last to sit. The crown lawyers rose one after another to denounce his offences, which, with a few additions, were those specified in the Star Chamber declaration. Among the accusers was Bacon. He had written an ingenious letter, begging to be excused from taking a part in the proceedings, but adding that, if Her Majesty desired it, he could not refuse. Naturally enough, Her Majesty did desire it, and Bacon was instructed to draw the attention of the lords to the Earl's impropriety in accepting the dedication of Hayward's history of Henry IV. He knew full well the futility of the charge, but he did as he was bid. All was going well, and Essex was ready with a profound apology, when the dignity of the scene was marred by the excited ill-humour of Edward Coke, the Attorney-General. Essex found himself being attacked in such a way that he could not refrain from angry answers; Coke retorted; and the proceedings were degenerating into a wrangle, when Cecil intervened with some tactful observations. Then the judgment of the Court was given. Imprisonment in the Tower and an enormous fine were hung for a moment over the Earl's head; but on his reading aloud an abject avowal of his delinquencies, followed by a prayer for mercy, he was told that he might return to his house, and there await the Queen's pleasure.

He waited for a month before anything happened; at last his guards were removed, but he was still commanded to keep to his house. Not until the end of August was he given complete liberty. Elizabeth was relenting, but she was relenting as unpleasantly as possible. All through the summer she was in constant conference with Bacon, who had now taken up the rôle of intermediary between the Queen and the Earl. He had sent an apology to Essex for the part he had played at York House, and Essex had magnanimously accepted it. He now composed two elaborate letters, in Essex's name, addressed to the Queen and imploring her forgiveness. He did more. He invented a letter from his brother Anthony to Essex and the Earl's reply - brilliant compositions, in which the style of each was exquisitely imitated, and in which the Earl's devotion to his sovereign was beautifully displayed; and then he took these works and showed them to the Queen. Incidentally, there was much in them to the credit of Francis Bacon; but their effect was small. Perhaps Elizabeth was too familiar with the stratagems of plotters in the theatre to be altogether without suspicions when they were repeated in real life.

But Essex was not dependent upon Bacon's intervention; he wrote to the Queen himself, again and again. In varying tones he expressed his grief, he besought for an entire forgiveness, he begged to be allowed into the beloved presence once more.

"Now having heard the voice of your Majesty's justice, I do humbly crave to hear your own proper and natural voice of grace, or else that your Majesty in mercy will send me into another world."

"I receive no grace, your Majesty shows no mercy. But if your Majesty will vouchsafe to let me once prostrate myself at your feet and behold your fair and gracious eyes, though it be unknown to all the world but to him that your Majesty shall appoint to bring me to that paradise - yea, though afterwards your Majesty punish me, imprison me, or pronounce the sentence of death against your Majesty is most merciful, and I shall be most happy."

So he wrote, but it was not only to Elizabeth that he addressed himself. Even while he was pouring out these regrets and protestations, his mind kept reverting to Ireland. One day he sent for Sir Charles Davers and asked him to make yet one more attempt upon the fidelity of Mountjoy. Davers knew well enough how it would be; but he was absolutely devoted to the Earl who, as he said afterwards, "had saved my life, and that after a very noble fashion; he had suffered for me, and made me by as many means bound unto him, as one man could be bound unto another; the life he had saved, and my estate and means whatsoever, he should ever dispose of"; and the adoring vassal immediately took horse to do as his lord desired.

A moment of crisis was approaching, which, Essex perceived, would reveal the real state of Elizabeth's mind. The monopoly of the sweet wines, which she had granted him for ten years, would come to an end at Michaelmas; would she renew it? It brought him a great income, and if she cut that off she would plunge him into poverty. Favour and hope - disgrace and ruin - those were the alternatives that seemed to hang upon her decision in this matter. She was well aware of it herself. She spoke of it to Bacon. "My Lord of Essex," she said, "has written me some very dutiful letters, and I have been moved by them; but" - she laughed grimly - "what I took for the abundance of the heart I find to be only a suit for the farm of sweet wines."

One letter, however, perhaps moved her more than the rest. "Haste, paper, to that happy presence, whence only unhappy I am banished; kiss that fair correcting hand which lays new plasters to my lighter hurts, but to my greatest wound applieth nothing. Say thou comest from pining, languishing, despairing ESSEX." Did she find those words impossible to resist? It may have been so. From some phrases in another letter we may guess that there was indeed a meeting; but, if there was, it ended disastrously. In the midst of his impassioned speeches a fearful bitterness welled up within her; she commanded him from her presence; and with her own hands she thrust him out.*

(Note:* "This is but one of the many letters which, since I saw your Majesty, I wrote, but never sent unto you ... I sometimes think of running [i.e. in the tiltyard] and then remember what it will be to come in armour triumphing into that presence, out of which both by your own voice I was commanded, and by your hands thrust out." Essex to the Queen. Undated.)

She hesitated for a month, and then it was announced that the profits from the sweet wines would be henceforward reserved for the Crown. The effect upon Essex was appalling: he became like one possessed. Davers had already brought back word from Mountjoy that his decision was irreversible. "He desired my Lord to have patience, to recover again by ordinary means the Queen's ordinary favour; that, though he had it not in such measure as he had had heretofore, he should content himself." Patience! Content himself! The time for such words was past! He raved in fury, and then, suddenly recoiling, cursed himself in despair. "He shifteth," wrote Harington, who paid him at this time a brief and terrified visit, "from sorrow and repentance to rage and rebellion so suddenly as well proveth him devoid of good reason or right mind.... He uttered strange words, bordering on such strange designs that made me hasten forth and leave his presence.... His speeches of the Queen becometh no man who hath mens sana in corpore sano. He hath ill advisers and much evil hath sprung from this source. The Queen well knoweth how to humble the haughty spirit, the haughty spirit knoweth not how to yield, and the man's soul seemeth tossed to and fro, like the waves of a troubled sea."

His "speeches of the Queen" were indeed insane. On one occasion something was said in his presence of "Her Majesty's conditions."

"Her conditions!" he exclaimed. "Her conditions are as crooked as her carcase!" The intolerable words reached Elizabeth and she never recovered from them.

She, too, perhaps was also mad. Did she not see that she was drifting to utter disaster? That by giving him freedom and projecting him into poverty, by disgracing him and yet leaving him uncrushed, she was treating him in the most dangerous manner that could be devised? Her life-long passion for half-measures, which had brought her all her glory, had now become a mania, and was about to prove her undoing. Involved in an extraordinary paralysis, she ignored her approaching fate.