ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history (13 page)

A few days later De Maisse prepared to depart, having achieved nothing by his mission. He paid a visit of farewell to Essex, who received him with sombre courtesy. A great cloud, said the Earl, had been hanging over his head, though now it was melting away. He did not believe in the possibility of peace between Spain and England; but he was unwilling to take a part in those negotiations; it was useless - the Father and the Son alone were listened to. Then he paused, and added gloomily, "The Court is a prey to two evils - delay and inconstancy; and the cause is the sex of the sovereign." De Maisse, inwardly noting the curious combination of depression, anger, and ambition, respectfully withdrew.

The Earl might still be surly; but the highest of spirits possessed Elizabeth. The cruel suspense of the last two months - the longest and most anxious of those wretched separations - was over; Essex was back again; a new delightful zest came bursting into existence. France could wait. She would send Robert Cecil to talk to Henry. In the meantime - she looked gaily round for some object on which to vent her energy - yes, there was James of Scotland! That ridiculous young man had been up to his tricks again; but she would give him a lesson. It had come to her ears that he was actually sending out an envoy to the Courts of the Continent, to assert his right of succession to the English throne. His right of succession! It was positively a mania. He seemed to think she was already dead; but he would find he was mistaken. Lashing herself into a most exhilarating fury, she seized her pen, and wrote a letter to her brother of Scotland, well calculated to make him shake in his shoes. "When the first blast," she began, "of strange unused and seld heard-of sounds had pearsed my ears, I supposed that flyeing fame, who with swift quills ofte passeth with the worst, had brought report of some untrothe"; but it was not so. "I am sorry," she continued, "that you have so wilfully falen from your best stay, and will needs throwe yourself into the hurlpool of bottomless discredit. Was the haste soe great to hie to such oprobry? ... I see well wee two be of very different natures ... Shall imbassage be sent to forayne princes laden with instructions of your raishe advised charge? I assure you the travaile of your creased words shall passe the boundes of too many landes, with an imputation of such levytie, as when the true sonnshine of my sincere dealing and extraordinary care ever for your safety and honor shall overshade too far the dymme and mystic clowdes of false invectyves ... And be assured, that you deale with such a kinge as will beare no wronges and indure no infamy. The examples have been so lately seen as they can hardly be forgotten, of a farr mightier and potenter prince than many Europe hath. Looke you not therefore without large amends I may or will slupper-up such indignities ... And so I recomend you to a better mynde and more advysed conclusions."

Having polished off King James, she felt able to cope once more with King Henry. She told Robert Cecil that he should go to France as her special ambassador, and the Secretary was all assent and gratitude. Inwardly, however, he was uneasy; he did not relish the thought of a long absence abroad while the Earl remained at home in possession of the field; and, while he gravely sat over his dispatches, he wondered what could be done. He decided to be perfectly open - to approach his rival with a frank avowal of his anxieties. The plan worked; and Essex, in generous grandeur, remembering with a smile how, in his absence, both the Secretaryship and the Duchy of Lancaster had gone to Cecil, swore that he would steal no marches. Yet Cecil still felt uncomfortable. It happened that at that moment a large and valuable consignment of cochineal arrived from the Indies for the Queen. He suggested that Essex should be allowed the whole for £50,000, at the rate of eighteen shillings a pound, the market price of a pound of cochineal being between thirty and forty shillings; and he also recommended that Essex should be given £7000 worth of the precious substance as a free gift. Elizabeth readily consented, and the Earl found himself bound to the Secretary by something more than airy chivalry - by ties of gratitude for a very solid benefit.

Cecil had taken ship for France, when news of a most alarming nature reached London. A Spanish fleet of thirty-eight fly-boats with 5000 soldiers on board was sailing up the Channel. Elizabeth's first thought was for her Secretary. She sent an urgent message, forbidding him to leave England; but he had already sailed, had missed the Spanish fleet, and arrived at Dieppe in safety. From there he at once despatched to his father a full account of the enemy's armament, writing on the cover of his letter, "For life, for life, for very life," with a drawing of a gallows, as a hint to the messenger of what would happen to him if he dallied on the road. There was not a moment's hesitation in London. The consultations of the Government were brief and to the point: orders were sent out in every direction, and no one asked the advice of the theologians. Lord Cumberland, with all the ships he could collect, was told to pursue the enemy; Lord Nottingham hurried to Gravesend, and Lord Cobham to Dover; Raleigh was commissioned to furnish provisions all along the coast; Essex was to stand ready to repel an attack wherever it might be delivered. But the alarm passed as quickly as it had arisen. Cumberland's squadron found the Spaniards outside Calais, and sank eighteen of the fly-boats; the rest of them huddled into the harbour, from which they never ventured to emerge.

Essex kept his promise. During the Secretary's absence, he supplied his place with the Queen, but made no attempt to take an unfair advantage of the situation. For the time indeed, his interests seemed to be elsewhere, and politics gave way to love-making. During the early wintry months of 1598 he kept himself warm at Court, philandering with the ladies. The rumours of his proceedings were many and scandalous. It was known that he had had a child by Mistress Elizabeth Southwell. He was suspected of a passion for Lady Mary Howard and of another for Mistress Russell. A court gossip reported it as certain that "his fairest Brydges" had once more captured the Earl's heart. While he passed the time with plays and banquets, both Lady Essex and the Queen were filled with uneasiness. Elizabeth's high spirits had suddenly collapsed; neither the state of Europe nor the state of Whitehall gave her any satisfaction; she grew moody, suspicious, and violent. For the slightest neglect, she railed against her Maids of Honour until they burst out crying. She believed that she had detected love-looks between Essex and Lady Mary Howard, and could hardly control her anger. She did, however, for the moment, privately determining to have her revenge before long. Her opportunity came when Lady Mary appeared one day in a particularly handsome velvet dress, with a rich border, powdered with pearl and gold. Her Majesty said nothing, but next morning she had the dress secretly abstracted from Lady Mary's wardrobe and brought to her. That evening she electrified the Court by stalking in with Lady Mary's dress upon her; the effect was grotesque; she was far taller than Lady Mary and the dress was not nearly long enough. "Well, Ladies," she said, "how like you my new-fancied suit?" Then, amid the gasping silence, she bore down upon Lady Mary. "Ah, my Lady, and what think
you
? Is not this dress too short and ill-becoming?" The unfortunate girl stammered out an assent. "Why then," cried Her Majesty, "if it become not me, as being too short, I am minded it shall never become thee, as being too fine; so it fitteth neither well"; and she marched out of the room again.

Such moments were disturbing; but Essex still had the art to pacify the royal agitations. Then all was radiance again, and spring was seen to be approaching, and one could forget the perplexities of passion and politics, and one could be careless and gay. In a particularly yielding moment, the Earl had persuaded the Queen to grant him a great favour; she had agreed to see his mother - the odious Lettice Leicester, who had been banished from her presence for years. Yet, when it came to the point, Elizabeth jibbed. Time after time Lady Leicester was brought to the Privy Gallery; there she stood waiting for Her Majesty to pass; but, for some reason or other, Her Majesty always went out by another way. At last it was arranged that Lady Chandos should give a great dinner, at which the Queen and Lady Leicester should meet. Everything was ready; the royal coach was waiting; Lady Leicester stood at the entrance with a fair jewel in her hand, worth £300. But the Queen sent word that she should not go. Essex, who had been ill all day, got out of bed when he heard what had happened, put on a dressing-gown, and had himself conveyed to the Queen by a back way. It was all useless, the Queen would not move, and Lady Chandos's dinner party was indefinitely postponed. Then all at once Elizabeth relented. Lady Leicester was allowed to come to Court; she appeared before the Queen, kissed her hand, kissed her breast, embraced her, and was kissed in return. The reconciliation was a very pretty one; but how long would these fair days last?

In the meantime, Cecil had failed as completely in France as De Maisse in England. He returned, having accomplished nothing, and early in May the inevitable happened - Henry broke off from his allies, and, by the treaty of Vervins, made peace with Spain. Elizabeth's comments were far from temperate. The French King, she said, was the Antichrist of Ingratitude; she had helped him to his crown, and now he had deserted her; it was true enough - but the wily Bearnais, like everybody else, was playing his own game. Burghley, however, was convinced that the situation required something more than vituperative outbursts. He wished for peace, and believed that it was still not too late to follow Henry's example; Philip, he thought, would be ready enough to agree to reasonable terms. Such were Burghley's views, and Essex violently opposed them. He urged an exactly contrary policy - a vigorous offensive - a great military effort, which would bring Spain to her knees. To start off with, he proposed an immediate attack upon the Indies; whereupon Burghley made a mild allusion to the Islands Voyage. And so began once more a long fierce struggle between the Earl and the Cecils - a struggle that turned the Council board into a field of battle, where the issues of Peace and War, the destinies of England, and the ambitions of hostile ministers jostled and hurtled together, while the Queen sat in her high chair at the head of the table, listening, approving, fiercely disagreeing, veering passionately from one side to the other, and never making up her mind.

Week after week the fight went on. Essex's strong card was Holland. Were we, he asked, to play the same trick on the Dutch as Henry had played on us? Were we to leave our Protestant allies to the tender mercy of the Spaniard? Burghley replied that the Dutch might join in a general pacification; and he countered Holland with Ireland. He pointed out that the only hope of effectually putting a stop to the running sore of Irish rebellion, which was draining the resources of England, was to make peace with Spain, whereby the rebels would be deprived of Spanish money and reinforcements, while at the same time England would be able to devote all her energies to a thorough conquest of the country. Current events gave weight to his words. The Lord Deputy Borough had suddenly died; there was confusion in Dublin; and Tyrone, the leader of the rebels in Ulster, had, after a patched-up truce, re-opened hostilities. In June it was known that he was laying siege to the fort on the river Blackwater, one of the principal English strongholds in the North of Ireland, and that the garrison was in difficulties. No new Lord Deputy had been appointed; who should be selected for that most difficult post? Elizabeth, gravely troubled, found it impossible to decide. It looked as if the Irish question was soon to become as intolerable as the Spanish one. As the summer days grew hotter, the discussions in the Council grew hotter too. There were angry explosions on either side. One day, after Essex had delivered a feverish harangue on his favourite topic - the infamy of a peace with Spain - Burghley drew out a prayer-book from his pocket and pointed with trembling finger to a passage in the fifty-fifth psalm. "Bloodthirsty and deceitful men," read Essex, "will not live out half their days." He furiously brushed aside the imputation; but everyone was deeply impressed; and there were some who recollected afterwards, with awe and wonder, the prophetic text of the old Lord Treasurer.

Essex felt that he was misunderstood, and composed a pamphlet to explain his views. It was a gallantly written work, but it convinced no one who was not convinced already. As for the Queen, she still wavered. The Dutch sent an embassy, offering large sums of money if she would continue the war. This was important, and she appeared to be coming round finally to an anti-Spanish policy; but it was appearance and nothing more; she sheered away again with utter indecision.

Nerves grew jangled, and tempers dangerously short. Everything, it was clear, was working up towards one of those alarming climaxes, with which all at Court had grown so familiar; and, while they waited in dread, sure enough, the climax came. But this time it was of a nature undreamt of by the imagination of any courtier: when the incredible story reached them, it was as if the earth had opened at their feet. The question of the Irish appointment had become pressing, and Elizabeth, feeling that something really must be done about it, kept reverting to the subject on every possible occasion, without any result. At last she thought she had decided that Sir William Knollys, Essex's uncle, was the man. She was in the Council Chamber, with Essex, the Lord Admiral, Robert Cecil, and Thomas Windebank, clerk of the signet, when she mentioned this. As often happened, they were all standing up. Essex, who did not want to lose the support of his uncle at Court, proposed instead Sir George Carew, a follower of the Cecils, whose absence in Ireland would, he thought, inconvenience the Secretary. The Queen would not hear of it, but Essex persisted; each was annoyed; they pressed their candidates; their words grew high and loud; and at last the Queen roundly declared that, say what he would, Knollys should go. Essex, overcome with irritation, contemptuous in look and gesture, turned his back upon her. She instantly boxed his ears. "Go to the devil!" she cried, flaring with anger. And then the impossible happened. The mad young man completely lost his temper, and, with a resounding oath, clapped his hand to his sword. "This is an outrage," he shouted in his sovereign's face, "that I will not put up with. I would not have borne it from your father's hands." - He was interrupted by Nottingham, who pressed him backwards. Elizabeth did not stir. There was an appalling silence; and he rushed from the room.