When

the Earl of Somerset, but on principles of | served, anxiety was expressed by Walsingpolicy; and to be better served by a number ham that they should be destroyed. of favorites, and making use of their recipro- the Babington conspiracy was first detected, cal jealousies to attach them all the more Leicester was in the Low Countries; but is firmly to her service; but that she had never stated to have written from thence advising truly loved any except the Earls of Devon- that Mary's life should be silently taken away shire and Essex." When Leicester was by poison, and to have sent a divine to satisfy spoken of as aspiring to her hand, she an- Walsingham of the carefulness of such a swered in a passion-"Dost thou think me course. On Leicester's return, he was unso unlike myself, and so unmindful of my derstood to have continued to give the same royal majesty, that I would prefer my ser- advice, Walsingham, on the pretence of illvant, whom I have myself raised, before the ness, absented himself from the deliberations greatest prince in Christendom, in choosing in which her execution was determined on, of a husband?"* and Leicester was also absent. They both endeavored to satisfy James that they were not parties to the act. So did Elizabeth. It was sought to throw the whole responsibility of the act on the Secretary of Council. But Walsingham s communications with Mary's jailers were made at the very time of his pretended sickness. The letters were first printed by Hearne, in the notes to his Robert of Gloucester," and are to be found in Kippis's Biographia Britannica, article DAVISON.

Elizabeth's vexation, when she discovered Leicester's marriage, was but temporary. It was not greater than she was in the habit of exhibiting whenever any marriage took place in the court circle. A burst of fretful impatience a strong expression of anger and indignation at the fact of a marriage, which, in any way in which it can be viewed, was most disgraceful to the parties contracting it, was all that exhibited Elizabeth's feeling; and warmth of temper is rather to be inferred from her conduct, than warmth of affection. In a few days he stood as high in the royal favor as ever; and, as Mr. Craik observes, his reputation continued unaltered with the general public. Radcliff, Earl of Sussex, died early in 1583. He was no friend of Leicester's; and on his death-bed he bade his friends "beware of the gipsy-he will be too hard for you; you know not the beast as I do." What can Sussex mean by giving the name of gipsy to Leicester? It was at the time interpreted into Leicester's employing the secret arts of witchcraft or medicated potions, in which a degraded and dreaded tribe were supposed to deal; and the old story of Leicester's employing poison to rid himself of an enemy was generally believed. It is strange with what pertinacity this impression of Leicester's character seized on the universal public mind. If there were anything like reasonable grounds for the imputation, the evidence has not come down to our times. In the case of Mary Queen of Scots, there can be no doubt that Walsingham wrote of ficially to Sir Amyas Poulet and Sir Drew Drury, in whose custody Mary was, that Elizabeth regarded it as a lack of zeal in her service that they did not find some way to shorten the life of that queen, considering the great peril she is in hourly, so long as queen should live." It is equally certain, that though the letters have been pre

that

་་

Camden's "Elizabeth."

We wish that the writer of an article such as this, in a popular magazine, could adopt the convenient division of his subject into chapters, and thus avoid the effect of abruptness; as before dismissing Leicester from the scene, it would be desirable to introduce to our readers a person with whom they must become acquainted, if they follow the future fortunes of Lettice Knollys. Christopher Blount, destined to be the last of the husbands of this polyandrian lady, had, in early life, been the pupil of Cardinal Allen. He had served in the Low Countries under Leicester, and after Leicester's final return to England, Blount had been knighted by Lord Willoughby, who succeeded Leicester as Captain-General of the English forces; but there was a stage of Blount's life that followed at a long interval his residence with Allen at Louvain, and interrupted his military service in the Netherlands, which his friends and his enemies were alike willing to pass over in silence, and which Mr. Craik tells us has escaped every writer who has hitherto dealt with his biography.

Blount had been mixed up in the Babington conspiracy, whether as an associate in their plans with the party who were endeavoring to rescue Mary, or a spy of Walsingham, which seems the more probable motive of his conduct, and that of the government, who kept his name studiously concealed. Mary's agent, Morgan, in writing to her, speaks highly of Blount as "a tall gentle

man, and valiant

of an ancient house." He describes him as "of kin to Leicester. Blount and his brother being both Catholics, are forced to fawn upon Leicester, to see if thereby they can live quiet." Morgan makes arrangements for a correspondence in cypher being carried on between Mary and Blount. It does not, however, appear by any means certain that such ever took place. Morgan's letters did not reach Mary for many months after they were written. She appears to have been distrustful. She speaks to Morgan of a letter that she says seemed to have been intended to be sent her by means of Blount; but "the letter being an unknown hand, without subscription of the name thereto, I am not assured whence it came, Blount himself being now with Leicester." Of these letters, through some treachery of her agents, or some system of espionage not perfectly explained, Walsingham obtained copies, and every one of them were deciphered before they were allowed to fall into Mary's hands. Blount seems, from everything we know of him, to have been a restless, intriguing character. At what time, or under what circumstances, he first became acquainted with the wife of Leicester, we have no means of knowing; but from a passage in Camden's "Elizabeth," there can be little doubt that Leicester's jealousy had been awakened, and that he "had sent a person into Holland to murder him."*

lieving that they were electing the husband of the Queen of England. Anjou, after a successful campaign in the Netherlands, returned to England. The Queen placed a ring on his finger in presence of the whole court-this looked like being in earnest. All England was convulsed at the thought of the bright accidental star thus shooting from its sphere. What was to become of the hope of the Reformation? Was Elizabeth to wed a Popish prince? Was England to become the slave of France? Maids of honor wept, and told Elizabeth of Philip and Mary, and how an English queen abjectly lost all authority in her own realm, and sacrificed the love of her subjects, and died of a broken heart. Was this cruel scene to be again repeated? The marriage was delayed and delayed. The Queen accompanied him to Canterbury-besought him to return speedily--" and the business slept." On arriving in the Netherlands, Anjou found that all real power was in the Prince of Orange—that his was but a nominal sovereignty, having no basis whatever but the belief, now fading away, of his being to become the husband of Elizabeth. While they were engaged with discussions arising from this strange state of facts, the Prince of Orange was assassinated, and Anjou was suspected of the murder. Papers found in the assassin's pocket disproved the imputation; but Anjou endeavored to seize the principal places of strength in The fluctuations of Elizabeth's power to- the Netherlands, and garrison them with ward Leicester were such as to baffle all French soldiers. The Flemings discovering calculation. That Leicester played for the his attempt, deprived him of the sovereignty. crown of England, and that his first thought His death soon after followed. The Netherwas to obtain it through a marriage with lands offered their crown to Elizabeth. She Elizabeth, scarcely admits of a doubt. That refused, but sent Leicester with six thousand he had long given up that precise means of men to their aid. He was made Governorobtaining the object, is, we think, equally General of the Netherlands, with absolute certain. His marriage was acknowledged; power. This was done, no doubt, with the and though we know little of his domestic purpose of gratifying Elizabeth; she was, life, he not only observed the ordinary cour- however, displeased at a proceeding, the tesy due to his wife, but was described as effect of which was likely to render her affectionate in his conduct and bearing to subject independent of herself. Both in her. As far as a clue can be discovered to military and civil matters, Leicester was a his it would seem that he contem- most inefficient governor. purposes, The difficulties plated destroying, if he could, the claim of in which Elizabeth was placed by the case of the Stuarts to the crown after the death of Mary Queen of Scots, caused Leicester to be Elizabeth; and the circumstances in which summoned home. On his return to the he found himself rendered this hope by no Netherlands, he found the Spaniards in posmeans one improbable of attainment. Eliza session of the fortresses which he had placed beth's contract of marriage with the Duke of in the hands of Stanley and York, and which Anjou was signed in July, 1581. The they had betrayed. When Leicester was Netherlands had thrown off the Spanish finally recalled to England, he felt the pruyoke, and elected Anjou their sovereign, be- dence of first procuring from the Queen a general pardon for all things done in the Netherlands.

* Camden's "Elizabeth," 632. Craik, vol. i. p. 189.

then.

the hand of the wife of his age?
"What if the wife of his youth was avenged by
It has been
averred that so it was."

The Dutch writers say that but for Eliza- | that very day eight-and-twenty years before. If beth's attention being engaged by prepara- the commonly received date of his birth may be tions against the Armada, Leicester would relied upon, he had just doubled his years since have been brought to trial. Whether, in his efforts to obtain an independent sovereignty in the Netherlands, he may not have done something inconsistent with his allegiance to England, or become liable to be plausibly accused of so doing, we have no means of determining. English writers describe him as seeking to make himself an independent prince, for the purpose of removing one of the objections to his marriage with Elizabeth. His existing wife seems not to have been taken into account as an obstacle that could be of any long continuance. Our own impression is, that he had long abandoned all thoughts of becoming king consort of England; but we think it by no means unlikely that he contemplated, with the aid of the Protestant party, of whom he was regarded as the acknowledged leader, the total exclusion of the Scottish family from the crown, and that either as regent, or possibly as king, under some testamentary appointment of Elizabeth, he might become practically sovereign. The disturbance introduced into all men's minds on the subject of hereditary right by the anomalies of Henry the Eighth's marriages, was enough to encourage such hopes, after all, scarcely more wild than those of his father, when he sought to place the crown on the head of Lady Jane Grey. Whatever might be the ultimate object of Leicester's ambition, no subject ever stood so high in the favor of his sovereign as he now did. It would seem that his presence was at any time enough to dispel whatever clouds disturbed his august mistress's serenity. She now appointed him her lieutenantgeneral. "He shall," said she, "be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or more worthy subject."

Leicester's will divided as equally as he could, such property as he could dispose of, between his wife and his son, by Douglas Howard. To Lettice Knollys the gift could have been of little value, for Leicester died encumbered with debt; but there seem to have been reasons which compelled her to immediate act. She administered to his will two days after his death, and she married Christopher Blount in her first year of widowhood. This precipitate marriage gave occasion to attributing to her and Blount the removal of Leicester. The report that he died by poison was so general, that the privy council examined into the matter. At the time of their investigation, suspicion fell on other people, and the inquiry came to nothing. In "Drummond's Conversations with Ben Jonson," the countess is mentioned in connection with the matter, but without the imputation of guilt:-"The Earl of Leicester gave a bottle of liquor to his lady, which he willed her to use in any faintness; while she, after his return from court, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died."* This falls in with Naunton's account Another statement, found in Bliss's edition of "Wood's Athena Oxonienses," describes Blount as her favored lover before Leicester's death; tells of Leicester's jealousy having been excited, and that Blount and the Countess, finding Leicester plotting against the life of Blount, resolved to get rid of him. "The countess"

Bliss quotes from a manuscript by some unknown author, written in the sixteenth century-" provided a cordial, which she had no fit opportunity to offer him, till he came to Cornbury Hall, in Oxfordshire, where the Earl, after his gluttonous manner, surfeiting

"So infatuated was she that, soon after this, at his own request, she agreed to create him her Lieutenant-General for England and Ireland, thus in fact putting the entire government of the king-with excessive eating and drinking, fell so ill, dom into his hands; but here, according to Cam- that he was forced to stay there. Then the den, Burleigh and the Lord Chancellor Hatton deadly cordial was propounded unto him by interfered with the strongest representations the Countess. As Mr. William Haynes, against such an appointment at such a crisis, and some time the Earl's page, and then a gentlethe letters-patent, which had been already drawn out, were stopped. On this Leicester left the court for Kenilworth; but stopping on the journey at a house which he had at Cornbury, in Oxfordshire, he died there after a short illness, on the 4th of September-within seven or eight miles of where Amy Robsart had met her death almost

* Speech at Tilbury.

* In the Hawthornden manuscripts is the following epitaph "of the Earl of Leister," probably communicated to Drummond by Ben Jonson :-"Here lies a valiant warrior, who never drew a swordHere lies a noble courtier, who never kept his wordHere lies the Earl of Leister, who governed the estates, Whom the earth could never living love, and the just heaven now hates."-DAVID LAING.

man of his chamber, told me, who protested he saw her give that fatal cup to the Earl, which was his last draught, and an end of his plot against the Countess, and his end of his journey and of himself.”

| wrath but boiled the higher. The Lord Keeper, in a letter (which letter exists to our day), quoted Seneca, and showed how much pleasanter it ought to be to receive chastisement when innocent than if guilty-that, in either case, submission was necessary: the guilty submits. to Justice, the innocent to Fortune. Essex was not, as when he abode in his solitudes of South Wales, a pensive Cambridge student: he had been to courts of kings, and thought little of Seneca for many a year. Every piaculum suggested by the Lord Keeper but seemed to irritate the sore and aggravate the disease. He ask a parac-don! as the Lord Keeper implored of himhe stoop to her anger for the present! which was the Lord Keeper's phrase. "No-no; there is no tempest," said Essex, "so boisterous as the resentment of an angry prince. The Queen is of a flinty temper. He well knew what was due to him as a subject, an earl, and Grand Marshal of England; but he did not understand the duties of a drudge, or a porter. To own himself a criminal would be to outrage truth, and the author of Truth." Such was his raving letter; but it did not stop here. The box which his Queen gave him was, if Camden be right, with the palm of her hand, on the ear, his back being turned to her at the time. That he did sustain some personal injury from the Queen is certain, from his letter, for he says his "body suffered in every part of it from the blow given him by his Prince, and that it would be a crime in him to continue in the service of a Queen who had given him so great an affront. Did not Solomon say, that he is a fool who laughs when he is stricken?"" Essex, however, suffered himself to be persuaded to ask the Queen's pardon. It was granted; but from that day, those who watch the smiles and frowns of Kings, and describe themselves as knowing human nature, date the ruin of Essex. The evidence of facts is, we think, against them; and, little as such insults can be forgiven by minds of ordinary cast, we think that there was that both in Elizabeth and Essex which renders it probable that, when the storm blew over, there was no remaining element of mischief in either mind, lurking there, and watching its opportunity to do mischief. The scene is almost that of an overgrown schoolboy rebelling against his Queen and governess.

At the period of Leicester's death, our heroine's eldest son, Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex of that name, was about twenty years of age. Essex had been educated in Cambridge, by Archbishop Whitgift. On leaving it, he lived for some time in retirement in South Wales, and was with difficulty won to leave his retreat. From the time of his coming to court he was received into favor by the Queen. In 1585 he companied Leicester to Holland, and distinguished himself in the siege of Zutphen, where Sir Philip Sidney lost his life. On his return, when a Spanish invasion was threatened, Essex was made Governor of the Horse, and received the Garter. The distinctions which he obtained during Leicester's life were, probably, owing to him. We are told of jealousies, and that the dark suspicions connected with his father's death were not without some effect on the son; but that such existed is scarcely consistent with the known facts of the case with Leicester's early and anxious care of his stepson's interests-with the kindly mention of him in his will, and with the exceedingly affectionate terms on which, through life, Essex and his brother lived. In the year after Leicester's death, Essex married the daughter of Walsingham, Sidney's widow; and we have the Queen enraged as Mr. Craik, in telling of her fury on this or some such occasion, says, "everybody's marriage seemed to vex her"-but she soon recovered her temper, and bore with equanimity what could not be helped. We cannot follow Essex in those parts of his story that more properly belong to the general history of the country; but that Elizabeth's affection was of a very capricious character, may appear from the fact, that in some discussion on the subject of Ireland, she, provoked by his turning his back on her, gave him a box on the ear, and bade him go and be hanged. He clapped his hand on his sword, and swore a great oath that he neither could nor would put up with an affront of that nature, nor would have taken it at the hands of Henry VIII. himself. Saying this, he left the court. The scene was one which Camden has described-would that we had it from some more graphic hand; still Camden was a cautious writer, and his information is generally from the best sources. The Lord High Admiral interposed-Essex's

Their squabble was about Ireland, the government of which has been, at all times, the perplexity of England. Elizabeth had wished to send Sir William Knollys, Essex's uncle, to govern that strange country. Essex rec

ommended Sir George Carew. He proba- | At sea, too, the weather was bad, and those