ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history (20 page)

Essex interrupted. "If I had purposed anything against others than my private enemies," he said, "I would not have stirred with so slender a company."

Bacon paused a moment and then replied, addressing himself directly to the Earl. "It was not the company you carried with you, but the assistance which you hoped for in the City, which you trusted unto. The Duke of Guise thrust himself into the streets of Paris, on the day of the Barricadoes, in his doublet and hose, attended only with eight gentlemen, and found that help in the city, which (God be thanked) you failed of here. And what followed? The King was forced to put himself into a pilgrim's weeds, and in that disguise to steal away to escape their fury. Even such," he concluded, turning to the Peers, "was my Lord's confidence too; and his pretence the same
- an all-hail and a kiss to the City. But the end was treason, as hath been sufficiently proved."

The thrust was indeed a sharp one; but Bacon's words were no longer directed merely to the Court and the public. The parallel with Guise, whose rebellion had occurred within living memory, had in it an actuality far more deadly than the learned allusion to Pisistratus. There could be only one purpose in drawing it: it was precisely calculated to touch, in the most susceptible place, the mind of the Queen. To put Essex before her, with such verisimilitude, in the shape of the man who had raised up Paris against Henry III, was a master-stroke of detraction. The words, no doubt, would reach Elizabeth; but they were addressed, in reality, to some one else - to the invisible listener, who, after his dramatic appearance, had returned to his place behind the hangings. The Secretary's kindred intellect appreciated to the full the subtle implications of the speech; his cousin was doing admirably. The Earl was silent. Francis Bacon's task was over. The double tongue had struck, and struck again.

Both prisoners were inevitably found guilty, and the revolting sentence was passed in the usual form. During the ordeal of the trial Essex had been bold, dignified, and self-possessed; but now, back again in the Tower, he was seized by a violent revulsion; anguish and horror overpowered his mind. A puritan clergyman, who had been sent to minister to him, took the opportunity to agitate his conscience and fill his imagination with the fear of hell. He completely collapsed. Self-reliance - self-respect - were swept away in a flood of bitter lamentations. He wished, he said, to make a confession to the Lords of the Council. They came, and he declared to them that he was a miserable sinner, grovelling heart-broken before the judgment-seat of God. He cried out upon his inexcusable guilt; and he did more: he denounced the black thoughts, the fatal counsels, the evil doings of his associates. They, too, were traitors and villains, no less than himself. He raved against them all - his stepfather - Sir Charles Davers - Henry Cuffe - each was worse than the other; they had lured him on to these abominable practices, and now they were all to sink together under a common doom. His sister, too! Let her not be forgotten - she had been among the wickedest! Was she not guilty of more sins than one? "She must be looked to," he cried, "for she hath a proud spirit!" - adding dark words of Mountjoy, and false friendship, and broken vows of marriage. Then, while the grave Councillors listened in embarrassed silence, he returned once more to his own enormities. "I know my sins," he said, "unto her Majesty and to my God. I must confess to you that I am the greatest, the most vilest and most unthankful traitor that has ever been in the land."

While these painful scenes of weakness and humiliation were passing in the Tower, Elizabeth had withdrawn into deepest privacy at Whitehall. Every mind was turned towards her - in speculation, in hope, in terror; the fatal future lay now, spinning and quivering, within her formidable grasp.

It is not difficult to guess the steps by which she reached her final conclusion. The actual danger which she had run must have seemed to her - in spite of Bacon's reminder - the least important element in the case. The rising had been an act of folly, doomed from the first to ignominious failure - an act so weak and ineffective that, taken by itself, it could hardly be said to deserve the extreme penalty of the Law. If, for other reasons, she was inclined towards mercy, there would be ample justification for taking a lenient view of what had happened, and for commuting the punishment of death for one, perhaps, of imprisonment and sequestration. It is true that the intrigue with James of Scotland wore a more serious complexion; but this had proved abortive; it was unknown to all but a few in high places; and it might well be buried in oblivion. Were there, then, other reasons for mercy? Most assuredly there were. But these were not judicial reasons; neither were they political; they were purely personal; and, of course, in that very fact lay their strength.

To abolish, in a moment, the immediate miserable past - to be reconciled once more; to regain, with a new rapture, the old happiness - what was there to prevent it? Nothing, surely; she had the power for such an act; she could assert her will - extend her royal pardon; after a short eclipse, he would be with her again; not a voice would be raised against her; Cecil himself, she knew, would accept the situation without a murmur; and so - would not all be well? It was indeed a heavenly vision, and she allowed herself to float deliciously down the stream of her desires. But not for long. She could not dwell indefinitely among imaginations; her sense of fact crept forward - insidious - paramount; with relentless fingers it picked to pieces the rosy palaces of unreality. She was standing once again on the bleak rock. She saw plainly that she could never trust him, that the future would always repeat the past, that, whatever her feelings might be, his would remain divided, dangerous, profoundly intractable, and that, if this catastrophe were exorcised, another, even worse, would follow in its place.

And yet, after all, might she not take the risk? She had been a gambler all her life; there was little left of it now; why not live out that little in the old style, with the old hazard - the close-hauled boat tacking fiercely against the wind? Let him intrigue with James of Scotland, she could manage that! Let him do his worst - she would be equal to it; she would wrestle with him, master him, hold him at her mercy, and pardon him - magnificently, ecstatically, pardon him - again and again! If she failed, well, that would be a new experience, and - how often had she said it! -
per molto variare la natura e bella
. Yes, truly, she and nature were akin - variable, beautiful ... a hideous memory struck her; terrible outrageous words re-echoed in her mind. "Crooked" - "carcase" - so that was what he thought of her! While he was pouring out his sugared adorations, he loathed her, despised her, recoiled from her. Was it possible? Was the whole history of their relations, then, one long infamous deception? Was it all bitterness and blindness? Had he perhaps truly loved her once? - Once! But the past was over, and time was inexorable. Every moment widened the desperate abyss between them. Such dreams were utter folly. She preferred not to look in her looking-glass - why should she? There was no need; she was very well aware without that of what had happened to her. She was a miserable old woman of sixty-seven. She recognised the truth - the whole truth - at last.

Her tremendous vanity - the citadel of her repressed romanticism - was shattered, and rage and hatred planted their flag upon its ruins. The animosity which for so long had been fluctuating within her now flared up in triumph and rushed out upon the author of her agony and her disgrace. He had betrayed her in every possible way - mentally, emotionally, materially - as a Queen and as a woman - before the world and in the sweetest privacies of the heart. And he had actually imagined that he could elude the doom that waited on such iniquity - had dreamed of standing up against her - had mistaken the hesitations of her strength for the weaknesses of a subservient character. He would have a sad awakening! He would find that she was indeed the daughter of a father who had known how to rule a kingdom and how to punish the perfidy of those he had loved the most. Yes, indeed, she felt her father's spirit within her; and an extraordinary passion moved the obscure profundities of her being, as she condemned her lover to her mother's death. In all that had happened there was a dark inevitability, a ghastly satisfaction; her father's destiny, by some intimate dispensation, was repeated in hers; it was supremely fitting that Robert Devereux should follow Anne Boleyn to the block. Her father! ... but in a still remoter depth there were still stranger stirrings. There was a difference as well as a likeness; after all, she was no man, but a woman; and was this, perhaps, not a repetition but a revenge? After all the long years of her life-time, and in this appalling consummation, was it her murdered mother who had finally emerged? The wheel had come full circle. Manhood - the fascinating, detestable entity, which had first come upon her concealed in yellow magnificence in her father's lap - manhood was overthrown at last, and in the person of that traitor it should be rooted out. Literally, perhaps ... she knew well enough the punishment for high treason. But no! She smiled sardonically. She would not deprive him of the privilege of his rank. It would be enough if he suffered as so many others - the Lord Admiral Seymour among the rest - had suffered before him; it would be enough if she cut off his head.

And so it happened that this was the one occasion in her life on which Elizabeth hardly hesitated. The trial had taken place on February the 19th, and the execution was fixed for the 25th. A little wavering there had indeed to be - she would not have been Elizabeth without it; but it was hardly perceptible. On the 23rd she sent a message that the execution should be postponed; on the 24th she sent another that it should be proceeded with. She interfered with the course of the law no further.

Afterwards a romantic story was told, which made the final catastrophe the consequence of a dramatic mishap. The tale is well known: how, in happier days, the Queen gave the Earl a ring, with the promise that, whenever he sent it back to her, it would always bring forgiveness; how Essex, leaning from a window of the Tower, entrusted the ring to a boy, bidding him take it to Lady Scrope, and beg her to present it to her Majesty; how the boy, in mistake, gave the ring to Lady Scrope's sister, Lady Nottingham, the wife of the Earl's enemy; how Lady Nottingham kept it, and said nothing, until, on her deathbed two years later, she confessed all to the Queen, who, with the exclamation "God may forgive you, Madam, but I never can!" brought down the curtain on the tragedy. Such a narrative is appropriate enough to the place where it was first fully elaborated - a sentimental novelette;* but it does not belong to history. The improbability of its details is too glaring, and the testimony against it is overpowering. It is implicitly denied by Camden, the weightiest of contemporary historians; it is explicitly contradicted by Clarendon, who, writing in the succeeding generation, was in a position to know the facts; and it has been rejected by later writers, including the learned and judicious Ranke. And assuredly the grim facts stand better by themselves, without the aid of such adventitious ornaments. Essex made no appeal. Of what use would be a cry for mercy? Elizabeth would listen to nothing, if she was deaf to her own heart. The end came in silence: and at last he understood. Like her other victims, he realised too late that he had utterly misjudged her nature, that there had never been the slightest possibility of dominating her, that the enormous apparatus of her hesitations and collapses was merely an incredibly elaborate façade, and that all within was iron.

(*Note:  The Secret History of the most renowned Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex, by a Person of Quality, 1695. A reference to the legend in its rudimentary form occurs in The Devil's Law Case (circa 1620). Cf. The Works of John Webster, ed. Lucas, ii. 343.)

One request he made - that he should not be executed in public; and it was willingly granted, for there still seemed a chance of a popular movement on his behalf. He should be beheaded, like all the great state criminals before him, in the courtyard of the Tower.

And there, on the morning of February 25th, 1601, were gathered together all those who were qualified to witness the closing ceremony. Among them was Walter Raleigh. As Captain of the Guard, it was his duty to be present; but he had thought, too, that perhaps the condemned man would have some words to say to him, and he took up his station very near the block. There were murmurs around him. Was this as it should be? Now that the great Earl was brought so low, were his enemies to come pressing about him in scornful jubilation? A shameful sight! Raleigh heard, and in sombre silence immediately withdrew. He went into the White Tower, ascended to the Armoury, and thence, from a window, the ominous prophet of imperialism surveyed the scene.

It was not a short one. The age demanded that there should be a dignified formality on such occasions, and that the dreadful physical deed should be approached through a long series of ornate and pious commonplaces. Essex appeared in a black cloak and hat with three clergymen beside him. Stepping upon the scaffold, he took off his hat, and bowed to the assembled lords. He spoke long and earnestly - a studied oration, half speech, half prayer. He confessed his sins, both general and particular. He was young, he said - he was in his thirty-fourth year - and he "had bestowed his youth in wantonness, lust, and uncleanness." He had been "puffed up with pride, vanity, and love of this world's pleasure"; his sins were "more in number than the hairs on his head."