THIRD PART
THIRD PART
On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had beenexecuted on the Queen of Scots, she showed the utmost grief and rage,drove her favourites from her with violent indignation, and sent Davisonto the Tower; from which place he was only released in the end by payingan immense fine which completely ruined him. Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but most basely reduced topoverty one of her faithful servants for no other fault than obeying hercommands.
James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a show likewise of being veryangry on the occasion; but he was a pensioner of England to the amount offive thousand pounds a year, and he had known very little of his mother,and he possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father, and he soontook it quietly.
Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater things than everhad been done yet, to set up the Catholic religion and punish ProtestantEngland. Elizabeth, hearing that he and the Prince of Parma were makinggreat preparations for this purpose, in order to be beforehand with themsent out ADMIRAL DRAKE (a famous navigator, who had sailed about theworld, and had already brought great plunder from Spain) to the port ofCadiz, where he burnt a hundred vessels full of stores. This great lossobliged the Spaniards to put off the invasion for a year; but it was nonethe less formidable for that, amounting to one hundred and thirty ships,nineteen thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two thousand slaves,and between two and three thousand great guns. England was not idle inmaking ready to resist this great force. All the men between sixteenyears old and sixty, were trained and drilled; the national fleet ofships (in number only thirty-four at first) was enlarged by publiccontributions and by private ships, fitted out by noblemen; the city ofLondon, of its own accord, furnished double the number of ships and menthat it was required to provide; and, if ever the national spirit was upin England, it was up all through the country to resist the Spaniards.Some of the Queen's advisers were for seizing the principal EnglishCatholics, and putting them to death; but the Queen--who, to her honour,used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her subjects, whicha parent would not believe of her own children--rejected the advice, andonly confined a few of those who were the most suspected, in the fens inLincolnshire. The great body of Catholics deserved this confidence; forthey behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely.
So, with all England firing up like one strong, angry man, and with bothsides of the Thames fortified, and with the soldiers under arms, and withthe sailors in their ships, the country waited for the coming of theproud Spanish fleet, which was called THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA. The Queenherself, riding in armour on a white horse, and the Earl of Essex and theEarl of Leicester holding her bridal rein, made a brave speech to thetroops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend, which was received with suchenthusiasm as is seldom known. Then came the Spanish Armada into theEnglish Channel, sailing along in the form of a half moon, of such greatsize that it was seven miles broad. But the English were quickly uponit, and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a little out ofthe half moon, for the English took them instantly! And it soon appearedthat the great Armada was anything but invincible, for on a summer night,bold Drake sent eight blazing fire-ships right into the midst of it. Interrible consternation the Spaniards tried to get out to sea, and sobecame dispersed; the English pursued them at a great advantage; a stormcame on, and drove the Spaniards among rocks and shoals; and the swiftend of the Invincible fleet was, that it lost thirty great ships and tenthousand men, and, defeated and disgraced, sailed home again. Beingafraid to go by the English Channel, it sailed all round Scotland andIreland; some of the ships getting cast away on the latter coast in badweather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages, plundered those vesselsand killed their crews. So ended this great attempt to invade andconquer England. And I think it will be a long time before any otherinvincible fleet coming to England with the same object, will fare muchbetter than the Spanish Armada.
Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of English bravery, hewas so little the wiser for it, as still to entertain his old designs,and even to conceive the absurd idea of placing his daughter on theEnglish throne. But the Earl of Essex, SIR WALTER RALEIGH, SIR THOMASHOWARD, and some other distinguished leaders, put to sea from Plymouth,entered the port of Cadiz once more, obtained a complete victory over theshipping assembled there, and got possession of the town. In obedienceto the Queen's express instructions, they behaved with great humanity;and the principal loss of the Spaniards was a vast sum of money whichthey had to pay for ransom. This was one of many gallant achievements onthe sea, effected in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh himself, aftermarrying a maid of honour and giving offence to the Maiden Queen thereby,had already sailed to South America in search of gold.
The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas Walsingham,whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow. The principal favourite was theEARL OF ESSEX, a spirited and handsome man, a favourite with the peopletoo as well as with the Queen, and possessed of many admirable qualities.It was much debated at Court whether there should be peace with Spain orno, and he was very urgent for war. He also tried hard to have his ownway in the appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland. One day, whilethis question was in dispute, he hastily took offence, and turned hisback upon the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which impropriety, the Queengave him a tremendous box on the ear, and told him to go to the devil. Hewent home instead, and did not reappear at Court for half a year or so,when he and the Queen were reconciled, though never (as some suppose)thoroughly.
From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the Queen seemedto be blended together. The Irish were still perpetually quarrelling andfighting among themselves, and he went over to Ireland as LordLieutenant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh among therest), who were glad to have so dangerous a rival far off. Not being byany means successful there, and knowing that his enemies would takeadvantage of that circumstance to injure him with the Queen, he came homeagain, though against her orders. The Queen being taken by surprise whenhe appeared before her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he wasoverjoyed--though it was not a very lovely hand by this time--but in thecourse of the same day she ordered him to confine himself to his room,and two or three days afterwards had him taken into custody. With thesame sort of caprice--and as capricious an old woman she now was, as everwore a crown or a head either--she sent him broth from her own table onhis falling ill from anxiety, and cried about him.
He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his books, and hedid so for a time; not the least happy time, I dare say, of his life. Butit happened unfortunately for him, that he held a monopoly in sweetwines: which means that nobody could sell them without purchasing hispermission. This right, which was only for a term, expiring, he appliedto have it renewed. The Queen refused, with the rather strongobservation--but she _did_ make strong observations--that an unruly beastmust be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry Earl, who had beenalready deprived of many offices, thought himself in danger of completeruin, and turned against the Queen, whom he called a vain old woman whohad grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. Theseuncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately snappedup and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in a better tempter,you may believe. The same Court ladies, when they had beautiful darkhair of their own, used to wear false red hair, to be like the Queen. Sothey were not very high-spirited ladies, however high in rank.
The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of his who usedto meet at LORD SOUTHAMPTON'S house, was to obtain possession of theQueen, and oblige her by force to dismiss her ministers and change herfavourites. On Saturday the seventh of February, one thousand sixhundred and one, the council suspecting this, summoned the Earl to comebefore them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it was then settledamong his friends, that as the next day would be Sunday, when many of thecitizens usually assembled at the Cross by St. Paul's Cathedral, heshould make one bold effort to induce them to rise and follow him to thePalace.
So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of adherents started outof his house--Essex House by the Strand, with steps to the river--havingfirst shut up in it, as prisoners, some members of the council who cameto examine him--and hurried into the City with the Earl at their headcrying out 'For the Queen! For the Queen! A plot is laid for my life!'No one heeded them, however, and when they came to St. Paul's there wereno citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners at Essex House had beenreleased by one of the Earl's own friends; he had been promptlyproclaimed a traitor in the City itself; and the streets were barricadedwith carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his house bywater, with difficulty, and after an attempt to defend his house againstthe troops and cannon by which it was soon surrounded, gave himself upthat night. He was brought to trial on the nineteenth, and found guilty;on the twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill, where he died, atthirty-four years old, both courageously and penitently. His step-fathersuffered with him. His enemy, Sir Walter Raleigh, stood near thescaffold all the time--but not so near it as we shall see him stand,before we finish his history.
In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen ofScots, the Queen had commanded, and countermanded, and again commanded,the execution. It is probable that the death of her young and gallantfavourite in the prime of his good qualities, was never off her mindafterwards, but she held out, the same vain, obstinate and capriciouswoman, for another year. Then she danced before her Court on a stateoccasion--and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing soin an immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. For anotheryear still, she held out, but, without any more dancing, and as a moody,sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March, one thousandsix hundred and three, having been ill of a very bad cold, and made worseby the death of the Countess of Nottingham who was her intimate friend,she fell into a stupor and was supposed to be dead. She recovered herconsciousness, however, and then nothing would induce her to go to bed;for she said that she knew that if she did, she should never get upagain. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on the floor, without anyfood, until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at last, partly bypersuasions and partly by main force. When they asked her who shouldsucceed her, she replied that her seat had been the seat of Kings, andthat she would have for her successor, 'No rascal's son, but a King's.'Upon this, the lords present stared at one another, and took the libertyof asking whom she meant; to which she replied, 'Whom should I mean, butour cousin of Scotland!' This was on the twenty-third of March. Theyasked her once again that day, after she was speechless, whether she wasstill in the same mind? She struggled up in bed, and joined her handsover her head in the form of a crown, as the only reply she could make.At three o'clock next morning, she very quietly died, in the forty-fifthyear of her reign.
That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever memorable by thedistinguished men who flourished in it. Apart from the great voyagers,statesmen, and scholars, whom it produced, the names of BACON, SPENSER,and SHAKESPEARE, will always be remembered with pride and veneration bythe civilised world, and will always impart (though with no great reason,perhaps) some portion of their lustre to the name of Elizabeth herself.It was a great reign for discovery, for commerce, and for Englishenterprise and spirit in general. It was a great reign for theProtestant religion and for the Reformation which made England free. TheQueen was very popular, and in her progresses, or journeys about herdominions, was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I think thetruth is, that she was not half so good as she has been made out, and nothalf so bad as she has been made out. She had her fine qualities, butshe was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had all the faults of anexcessively vain young woman long after she was an old one. On thewhole, she had a great deal too much of her father in her, to please me.
Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of thesefive-and-forty years in the general manner of living; but cock-fighting,bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were still the national amusements; and acoach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair whenit was seen, that even the Queen herself, on many high occasions, rode onhorseback on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor.