A.D. 1600. LIBERATION OF ESSEX. 35 whereas all the rest was matter of charge and accusation, this only was but matter of caveat and admonition." Though, "nolens volens, he could not avoid the part laid upon him by the Queen's pleasure," when the day came he made the most of it, and, admitting that "he did handle it not tenderly," he assures us that this seeming harshness "must be ascribed to the superior duty he owed to the Queen's fame and honour in a public proceeding, and partly to the intention he had to uphold himself in credit and strength with the Queen, the better to be able to do my Lord good offices afterwards! At the Queen's request he wrote out for her a report of this trial, which he read to her in two several afternoons; and when he came to Essex's defence, he says, she was much moved, and, praising the manner in which it was given, observed," she perceived old love could not easily be forgotten." Upon which, he tells us, he ventured to reply," that he hoped she meant that of herself." He really had a desire.-if not to satisfy his conscience, for the sake of his reputation, to assist in restoring Essex to favour. With this view he composed several letters for him to be addressed to the Queen, and a letter, supposed to be written by his brother to Essex,-with the answer from Essex to his brother, which were privately shown to the Queen with a view of mollifying her. 66 On one occasion, mentioning to her a doctor who had for a time cured his brother of the gout, but that the patient had afterwards found himself worse, she said, "I will tell you, Bacon, the error of it; the manner of these empirics is to continue one kind of medicine, which at the first is proper, being to draw out the ill humour, but after, they have not the discretion to change the medicine." Good Lord, Madam," said he, "how wisely and aptly can you speak and discern of physic ministered to the body, and consider not that there is the like occasion of physic ministered to the mind!" And then he went on to apply the doctrine to the case of Essex, from whom the humour had been sufficiently drawn, and who stood in need of having strength and comfort ministered to him. Essex was now liberated from custody, but soon began to set the Court at defiance, and Bacon became very unhappy at the double game he himself had been playing; for there was little prospect of the favourite being restored to power: and in the mean time Elizabeth testified great displeasure with his old "Mentor," under whose advice she believed he was - 66 acting. For three months she would not converse with her "counsel extraordinary," even on law matters, and "she turned away from him with express and purpose-like discountenance wheresoever she saw him." At last, after newyear's-tide, he boldly demanded an audience, with the evident intention of intimating to her that he was ready to renounce all connexion with Essex for ever. He tells us that he thus addressed her :- Madam, I see you withdraw your favour from me, and now I have lost many friends for your sake. I shall lose you too: you have put me like one of those that the Frenchmen call enfans perdus, that serve on foot before horsemen; so have you put me into matters of envy, without place or without strength; and I know at chess a pawn before the king is ever much played upon. A great many love me not because they think I have been against my Lord of Essex, and you love me not because you know I have been for him; yet will I never repent me that I have dealt in simplicity of heart towards you both, without respect of cautions to myself, and, therefore, vivus vidensque pereo. If I do break my neck, I shall do it in a manner as Mr. Dorrington did it, which walked on the battlements of the church many days, and took a view and survey where he should fall. And so, Madam, I am not so simple but that I take a prospect of my overthrow; only I thought I would tell you so much, that you may know that it was faith, and not folly, that brought me into it, and so I will pray for you." He says, that by this speech, uttered with some passion, her Majesty was exceedingly moved, and said to him, Gratia mea sufficit, with other sensible and tender words; but as touching my Lord of Essex, ne verbum quidem. "Whereupon," says he, "I departed, resting then determined to meddle no more in the matter, as that, I saw, would overthrow me, and not be able to do him any good." To this selfish resolve may be ascribed the fatal catastrophe which soon followed. Essex, irritated by the Queen's refusal to renew his patent for the monopoly of sweet wines, was beginning to engage in very criminal and very foolish projects; but if Bacon, whom he was yet inclined to love and honour, had continued to keep up an intercourse with him, had visited him in Essex House, had seen the desperate companions with whom he was there associating, and had warned him of the danger to which he was exposing himself and the state, it is utterly impossible that the mad attempt to raise an insur 4 Apology. Works, vol. vi. 231. A.D. 1600. COUNSEL AGAINST ESSEX. 37 rection in the city, and forcibly to get possession of the Queen's person, should ever have been hazarded. But the rash enthusiast, suddenly deserted by him on whose sagacity and experience he had relied ever since he had entered into public life, listened to the advice of men destitute alike of prudence and of virtue; and, after committing the clearest acts of treason and rebellion, was obliged to surrender himself to justice. It might have been expected that now, at any rate, struck with remorse and overcome by tenderness, Bacon would have hastened to the noble prisoner's cell in the Tower to comfort and console him,-to assist him in preparing an almost hopeless defence,—to devise schemes with him for assuaging the anger of the Queen,-to teach him how he might best avail himself for his deliverance of that ring which Bacon knew had been intrusted to him, with a promise that it should bend her to mercy whenever returned to her,-which she was anxiously looking to see till the very moment of his execution, and the thought of which embittered her own end. At all events, he might have helped his fated friend to meet death, and have accompanied him to the scaffold. Tranquillised by an assurance that he was to be employed, along with the Queen's Serjeant and the Attorney and Solicitor General, as counsel for the Crown, on the trial of Essex before the Lord High Steward, Bacon spent the ten days which elapsed between the commitment to the Tower and the arraignment, shut up in his chambers in Gray's Inn, studying the law of treason,-looking out for parallel cases of an aggravated nature in the history of other countries, and considering how he might paint the unpardonable guilt of the accused in even blacker colours than could be employed by the ferocious Coke, famous for insulting his victims. The 19th of February arrived. Bacon took his place early at the bar of the Court constructed for the Peers in Westminster Hall, - his mind filled with the precedents and the tropes he had accumulated. Even he must have felt a temporary pang when the object of general sympathy, as yet little turned of thirty years of age,-whose courage was so exalted, whose generosity was so unbounded, whose achievements were so brilliant, who had ever testified to him a friendship not exceeded by any mentioned in history or fiction, was conducted into the Hall by Sir Walter Raleigh and the officers of the Tower, preceded by the axe, its edge still turned from him till the certain verdict of Guilty should be pronounced. But if Bacon felt a little awkwardness when he first met the eye of his friend, he soon recovered his composure, and he conducted himself throughout the day with coolness, zeal, and dexterity. Yelverton, the Queen's Serjeant, and Coke, the Attorney General, first addressed the Peers, and adduced the evidence. Essex then, unassisted with counsel, made his defence, chiefly dwelling upon the provocation he had to right himself by force from the machinations of his enemies, who had plotted his destruction. The reply was intrusted to Bacon, although it ought to have been undertaken by Fleming, the Solicitor General. We have only a short sketch of it,-from which we learn, that, taunting Essex with having denied nothing material, he particularly addressed himself to the apology he had relied upon,-comparing him to Cain, the first murderer, who took up an excuse by impudency," and to Pisistratus, who, doting on the affections of the citizens, and wishing to usurp supreme power, wounded his own body that it might be thought he had been in danger. He thus concluded: 66 And now, my Lord, all you have said or can say in answer to these matters are but shadows, and therefore methinks it were your best course to confess, and not to justify.' 66 It so happened that the topics on which Essex had relied in his defence were chiefly taken from a letter which Bacon had penned for him to Queen Elizabeth. The simple-minded Earl, unprepared for such duplicity, and unable to distinguish between his private friend and the Queen's counsel, now exclaimed, May it please your Lordship, I must produce Mr. Bacon for a witness." He then went on to explain the contents of the letter, whereby, "it will appear what conceit he held of me, and now otherwise he here coloureth and pleadeth the contrary." 66 Bacon, a little abashed, thus retorted:-" My Lord, I spent more hours to make you a good subject than upon any man in the world besides; but, since you have stirred upon this point, my Lord, I dare warrant you this letter will not blush; for I did but perform the part of an honest man, and ever laboured to have done you good, if it might have been, and to no other end; for what I intended for your good was wished from the heart, without touch of any man's honour." Essex made a feeling appeal to the Peers sitting on his trial r Harl. MS. No. 6854. 1 St. Tr. 1350. 66 39 against "these orators, who, out of a form and custom of speaking, would throw so much criminal odium upon him, while answering at the peril of his life a particular charge brought against him." And," he said, in a manner that made a deep impression on all who heard him, "I protest before the ever-living God, as he may have mercy on me, that my conscience is clear from any disloyal thought or harm to her Majesty. My desire ever hath been to be free from bloodshed. If in all my thoughts and purposes I did not ever desire the good estate of my Sovereign and country as of my own soul, I beseech the Lord to set some mark upon me in this place for a just vengeance of my untruths to all the world. And God, which knoweth the secrets of all hearts, knoweth that I never sought the crown of England, nor ever wished to be a higher degree than a subject. I only sought to secure my access to the Queen, that I might speedily have unfolded my griefs unto her Majesty against my private enemies, but not to have shed one drop of their blood. For my religion it is sound, and as I live I mean to die in it." This appeal might, from sympathy, have produced a verdict of not guilty, or might have softened the resentment of Elizabeth; but, to deprive him of all chance of acquittal or of mercy, Bacon, after again pointing out how slenderly he had answered the objections against him, most artfully and inhumanly compared him to the Duke de Guise, the leader of the league in France, who kept in tutelage the last prince of the House of Valois, and who on "the day of the Barricadoes" at Paris, intending to take forcible possession of his Sovereign's person, with the purpose of dethroning him, had such confidence in the love of the citizens, that he appeared to lead the intended insurrection in his doublet and hose, attended with only eight men,-and who, when he was obliged to yield, the King taking arms against him, pretended that he had merely contemplated a private quarrel. Essex having been condemned, Elizabeth wavered to the last moment about carrying the sentence into execution. One while relenting, she sent her commands, by Sir Edward Carey, that he should not be executed;-then, remembering his perverse obstinacy,-that he scorned to ask her pardon or to send her the ring, the appointed pledge of love and reconciliation, -she from time to time recalled the reprieve. It is highly probable that, under these circumstances, Bacon might have saved the life of his friend, either by advising him or inter |