ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history

by Strachey, Lytton

  The Government, aware of everything, took its precautions, and on Sunday morning the guards were doubled at Whitehall. Sir Charles Davers went there early to reconnoitre, and returned with the news that it was no longer possible to surprise the Court; he recommended the Earl to escape secretly from London, to make his way into Wales, and there raise the standard of revolt. Sir Christopher Blount was for immediate action, and his words were strengthened by the ever-increasing crowd of armed men, who, since daybreak, had been pouring into the courtyard of Essex House. Three hundred were collected there by ten o’clock, and Essex was among them, when there was a knocking at the gate. The postern was opened, and four high dignitaries - the Lord Keeper, the Earl of Worcester, Sir William Knollys, and the Lord Chief Justice - made their appearance. Their servants were kept out, but they themselves were admitted. They had come, said Egerton, from the Queen, to enquire the cause of this assembly, and to say that if it arose through any grief against any persons whatsoever all complaints should be heard and justice be given. The noise and tumult were so great that conversation was impossible, and Essex asked the stately but agitated envoys to come up with him into his library. They did so, but hardly had they reached the room when the crowd burst in after them. There were cries of “Kill them! kill them!” and others of “Shop them up!” The Earl was surrounded by his shouting and gesticulating followers. He tried to speak, but they interrupted him. “Away, my Lord, they abuse you; they betray you; they undo you; you lose time!” He was powerless among them, and, while the Lords of the Council vainly adjured them to lay down their arms and depart in peace, he found himself swept towards the door. He bade Egerton and the others stay where they were; he would return ere long, he cried out, and go with them to the Queen. Then he was out of the room, and the door was shut and locked on the Councillors; they were “shopped up.” Down the stairs and into the courtyard streamed the frenzied mob. And then the great gates were opened and they all rushed out into the street. But even now, at this last moment, there was hesitation. Where were they to go? “To the Court! To the Court!” cried some, and all waited upon Essex. But he, with a sudden determination, turned towards the City. To the City, then, it was to be. But there were no horses for such a multitude; they must all walk. The Strand lay before them, and down the Strand they hurried, brandishing their weapons. In front of all strode the tall black figure of Sir Christopher Blount. “Saw! Saw! Saw! Saw! Tray! Tray!” he shouted, seeking with wild gestures and incoherent exclamations to raise up London for the Earl.

  The insurgents entered the City by Lud Gate; but the Government had been beforehand with them. Word had been sent to the preachers to tell the citizens to keep themselves within doors, armed, until further orders; and the citizens obeyed. Why should they do otherwise? The Earl was their hero; but they were loyal subjects of the Queen. They were quite unprepared for this sudden outbreak; they could not understand the causes of it; and then the news reached them that the Earl had been proclaimed a traitor; and the awful word and the ghastly penalties it carried with it struck terror into their souls. By noon Essex and his band were at St. Paul’s, and there was no sign of any popular movement. He walked onward, crying aloud as he went that there was a plot to murder him, and that the Crown had been sold to the Spanish Infanta. But it was useless; there was no response; not a creature joined him. Those who were in the street stood still and silent, while perplexed and frightened faces peered out at him from doors and windows on either side. He had hoped to make a speech at Paul’s Cross, but in such an atmosphere a set oration was clearly impossible; and besides, his self-confidence had now utterly gone. As he walked on down Cheapside, all men could see that he was in desperation; the sweat poured from his face, which was contorted in horror; he knew it at last - he was ruined - his whole life had crashed to pieces in this hideous fiasco.

  In Gracechurch Street he entered the house of one of his friends, Sheriff Smith, upon whose support he reckoned. But the Sheriff, though sympathetic, was not disloyal, and he withdrew, on the pretext of consulting the Lord Mayor. After refreshing himself a little, Essex emerged, to find that many of his followers had slipped away, while the forces of the Government were gathering against him. He determined to return to his house; but at Lud Gate he found that the way was blocked. The Bishop of London and Sir John Leveson had collected together some soldiers and well-disposed citizens, and had stretched some chains across the narrow entry. The rebels charged, and were repelled. Sir Christopher was wounded; a page was killed; and some others were mortally injured. Essex turned down to the river. There he took boat, and rowed to Essex House, which he entered by the water-gate. The Councillors, he found, had been set free, and had returned to Whitehall. Having hurriedly destroyed a mass of incriminating papers, including the contents of the black leather purse about his neck, he proceeded to barricade the house. Very soon the Queen’s troops, headed by the Lord Admiral, were upon him; artillery was brought up, and it was clear that resistance was useless. After a brief parley, Essex surrendered at discretion, and was immediately conveyed to the Tower.

  XV

  The Government had never been in any danger, though there must have been some anxious moments at Whitehall. It was conceivable that the City might respond to the Earl’s incitement and that a violent struggle would be the consequence; but Elizabeth, who was never lacking in personal courage, awaited the event with vigorous composure. When the news came that all was well, and she knew that she could depend upon the loyalty of the people, she found herself without a qualm. She gave orders that Essex and his adherents should be put upon their trial immediately.

  Nearly a hundred persons were in custody, and the Council proceeded at once with the examination of the ringleaders. Very soon the whole course of the intrigues of the last eighteen months, including the correspondence with James and the connivance of Mountjoy, had transpired. The trial of the two Earls, Essex and Southampton, was fixed to take place before a special commission of Peers on February 18th. What line was the prosecution to take? It was speedily decided that no reference whatever should be made to Scotland, and that the facts incriminating Mountjoy, whose services in Ireland could not be dispensed with, should be suppressed. There would be ample evidence of treason without entering upon such delicate and embarrassing particulars.

  Bacon had been employed in the preliminary examination of some of the less important prisoners, and was now required to act as one of the counsel for the prosecution. He had no hesitations or doubts. Other minds might have been confused in such a circumstance; but he could discriminate with perfect clarity between the claims of the Earl and the claims of the Law. Private friendship and private benefits were one thing; the public duty of taking the part required of him by the State in bringing to justice a dangerous criminal was another. It was not for him to sit in judgment: he would merely act as a lawyer - merely put the case for the Crown, to the best of his ability, before the Peers. His own opinions, his own feelings, were irrelevant. It was true, no doubt, that by joining in the proceedings he would reap considerable advantages. From the financial point of view alone the affair would certainly be a godsend, for he was still pressingly in debt; and, besides that, there was the opportunity of still further ingratiating himself with the man who now, undoubtedly, was the most powerful personage in England - his cousin, Robert Cecil. But was that an argument for declining to serve? It was nonsense to suppose so. Because a lawyer was paid his fee did it follow that his motives were disreputable? There was, besides, one further complication. It was clear that it would be particularly useful for the Government to number Francis Bacon among its active supporters. The Earl had been his patron, and was his brother’s intimate friend; and, if he was now ready to appear as one of the Earl’s accusers, the effect upon the public, if not upon the judges, would be certainly great; it would be difficult to resist the conclusion that the case against Essex must be serious indeed since Francis Bacon was taking a share in it. If, on the other hand, he refused, he would und
oubtedly incur the Queen’s displeasure and run the risk of actual punishment; it might mean the end of his career. What followed? Surely only a simpleton would be puzzled into hesitation. The responsibility for the Government’s acts lay with the Government; it was not for him to enquire into its purposes. And if, by doing his duty, he avoided disaster - so much the better! Others might be unable to distinguish between incidental benefits and criminal inducements: for him it was all as clear as day.

  Never had his intellect functioned with a more satisfactory, a more beautiful, precision. The argument was perfect; there was, in fact, only one mistake about it, and that was that it had ever been made. A simpleton might have done better, for a simpleton might have perceived instinctively the essentials of the situation. It was an occasion for the broad grasp of common humanity, not for the razor-blade of a subtle intelligence. Bacon could not see this; he could not see that the long friendship, the incessant kindness, the high generosity, and the touching admiration of the Earl had made a participation in his ruin a deplorable and disgraceful thing. Sir Charles Davers was not a clever man; but his absolute devotion to his benefactor still smells sweet amid the withered corruptions of history. In Bacon’s case such reckless heroism was not demanded; mere abstention would have been enough. If, braving the Queen’s displeasure, he had withdrawn to Cambridge, cut down his extravagances, dismissed Jones, and devoted himself to those sciences which he so truly loved … but it was an impossibility. It was not in his nature or his destiny. The woolsack awaited him. Inspired with the ingenious grandeur of the serpent, he must deploy to the full the long luxury of his coils. One watches, fascinated, the glittering allurement; one desires in vain to turn away one’s face.

  A State Trial was little more than a dramatic formality. The verdict was determined beforehand by the administration, and everyone concerned was well aware that this was so. Such significance as the proceedings had were of a political nature; they enabled those in power to give a public expression of their case against the prisoner - to lay before the world the motives by which they wished it to be supposed that they were actuated. In the present case there was no doubt whatever of the technical guilt of the accused. The Court of Peers had consulted the judges, who had pronounced that the conduct of Essex and his followers on Sunday the 8th, whatever their intentions may have been, in itself constituted treason, so that sentence might have been passed immediately a formal proof of that conduct had been made. But that a walk through the City should involve such fearful consequences would outrage public feeling; and it was the object of the prosecution to show that Essex had been guilty of a dangerous and deliberate conspiracy. The fact that the most serious feature in the case - the intrigue with the King of Scotland - was to be suppressed was a handicap for the Crown lawyers; but their position was an extremely strong one. The accused were allowed no counsel; their right of cross-examination was cut down to a minimum; and the evidence of the most important witnesses was given in the shape of depositions read aloud to the Court - depositions which had been extracted in the Tower, and which it was impossible to control or verify. On the whole, it seemed certain that with a little good management the prosecution would be able to blacken the conduct and character of the prisoners in a way which would carry conviction - in every sense of the word.

  It so happened, however, that good management was precisely what was lacking on the part of the Crown leader, Edward Coke. On this far more serious occasion, the Attorney-General repeated the tactical errors which he had committed at York House. He abused his antagonists so roughly as to raise sympathy on their behalf; and he allowed himself to be led away into heated disputations which obscured the true issues of the case. During these wranglings, Essex was more than once able to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. He declared fiercely that Raleigh had intended to murder him, and Raleigh was put into the witness-box to deny the irrelevant charge. A little later Essex brought up the story that the succession had been sold to the Spaniards by the Secretary. There followed a remarkable and unexpected scene. Cecil, who had been listening to the proceedings from behind a curtain, suddenly stepped forth, and, falling on his knees, begged to be allowed to clear himself of the slander. It was agreed that he should be heard, and, after a long altercation with Essex, Cecil elicited the fact that the informant upon whose report the charge was based was Sir William Knollys, the Earl’s uncle. Knollys in his turn was sent for, and his evidence exculpated the Secretary. All that had happened, he said, was that Cecil had once mentioned to him a book in which the Infanta’s title was preferred before any other. Essex’s accusations had collapsed; but the prosecution, after many hours, had come no nearer to a proof of his criminal intentions. It was useless for Coke to shout and hector. “It was your purpose,” he cried, shaking a menacing finger at Essex, “to take not only the Tower of London but the royal palace and the person of the prince - yea, and to take away her life!” Such exaggerations were only damaging to his own cause.

  Bacon saw what was happening, and judged that it was time to intervene. The real question at issue - the precise nature of the Earl’s motives - was indeed a complicated and obscure one. The motives of the most ordinary mortal are never easy to disentangle, and Essex was far from ordinary. His mind was made up of extremes, and his temper was devoid of balance. He rushed from opposite to opposite; he allowed the strangest contradictories to take root together, and grow up side by side, in his heart. He loved and hated - he was a devoted servant and an angry rebel - all at once. For an impartial eye, it is impossible to trace in his conduct a determined intention of any kind. He was swept hither and thither by the gusts of his passions and the accidents of circumstance. He entertained treasonable thoughts, and at last treasonable projects; but fitfully, with intervals of romantic fidelity and noble remorse. His behaviour in Ireland was typical of all the rest. After suggesting an invasion of England at the head of his troops, he veered completely round and led his army against Tyrone. It finally turned out that he had gone too far to draw back, and, pushed on by his own followers and the animosity of the Queen, he had plunged into a desperate action. But, till the last moment, he was uncertain, indefinite and distraught. There was no settled malignancy in his nature. It is possible that he believed in the treachery of Cecil; and, as it happened, there was some justification for the belief, for Cecil, with all his loyalty, was actually in receipt of a Spanish pension. Convinced of his own high purposes, the unrealistic creature may well have dreamed in his sanguine hours that, after all, he would manage to effect a bloodless revolution; that Cecil and Raleigh could be not too roughly thrust upon one side; and that then the way would be open once more for his true affection, his true admiration, his true ambition - that thenceforward the Queen would be his and he the Queen’s, in glorious happiness, until death parted them.

  Such were his inward workings, and Francis Bacon was the last man in the world to have understood them. They were utterly remote from the clear, bright ambit of that supremely positive intelligence. Wish as he might, the author of the “Essays or Counsels” could never have comprehended a psychology that was dominated by emotion instead of reason; but, on this occasion, he did not wish. Sympathy was far from him. What were the actual facts? By facts alone was it possible to judge of conduct, and the Court, led away by recrimination and irrelevancies, was beginning to lose sight of them. It was for him to brush aside, calmly but firmly, the excuses and the subterfuges of the prisoner, and to concentrate the attention of the judges - and of the public - on what was really the vital point in the whole business - the meaning of his deeds.

  With perfect tact Bacon paid homage to the education of the Peers by illustrating his remarks with an incident from the Classics. All history, he said, made it plain “that there was never any traitor heard of, but he always coloured his practices with some plausible pretence.” Essex had “made his colour the severing of some great men and counsellors from her Majesty’s favour, and the fear he stood in of his pretended enemies lest they s
hould murder him in his house. Therefore he saith he was compelled to fly into the City for succour and assistance.” He was “not much unlike Pisistratus, of whom it was so anciently written how he gashed and wounded himself, and in that sort ran crying into Athens that his life was sought and like to have been taken away; thinking to have moved the people to have pitied him and taken his part by such counterfeited harm and danger: whereas his aim and drift was to take the government of the city into his hands, and alter the form thereof. With like pretences of dangers and assaults, the Earl of Essex entered the City of London.” In reality “he had no such enemies, no such dangers.” The facts were plain, “and, my Lord” - he turned to the prisoner - “all whatsoever you have or can say in answer hereof are but shadows. And therefore methinks it were best for you to confess, not to justify.”

  Essex could never distinguish very clearly between a personality and an argument. “I call forth Mr. Bacon,” he replied, “against Mr. Bacon”; and then he told the Court how, but a few months previously, his accuser had written letters in his name, to be shown to the Queen, in which his case had been stated “as orderly for me as I could do myself.” “These digressions,” said Bacon coldly, “are not fit, neither should be suffered;” the letters were harmless; “and,” he added, “I have spent more time in vain in studying how to make the Earl a good servant to the Queen and state than I have done in anything else.”

  Then he sat down, and the case came once more under the guidance of Coke. The confessions of the other conspirators were read; but there was no order in the proceedings; point after point was taken up and dropped; and, at last, when the Attorney-General, after an harangue on the irreligion of the accused, offered to produce evidence upon the subject, the Peers declined to hear it. Once more confusion had descended, and once more Bacon rose to fix attention upon the central issue. “I have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to any prisoner,” he said, “so many digressions, such delivery of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons.” He then read aloud the opinion of the judges on the point of law, and continued: