not over likely to end well: but he takes it, in spite of ill-usage, as a
kind-hearted man should. Again Essex makes a fool of himself. They are
to steer one way in order to intercept the Plate-fleet. Essex having
agreed to the course pointed out, alters his course on a fancy; then
alters it a second time, though the hapless Monson, with the whole
Plate-fleet in sight, is hanging out lights, firing guns, and shrieking
vainly for the General, who is gone on a new course, in which he might
have caught the fleet after all, in spite of his two mistakes, but that
he chooses to go a roundabout way instead of a short one; and away goes
the whole fleet, save one Carack, which runs itself on shore and burns,
and the game is played out and lost.
All want Essex to go home, as the season is getting late: but the wilful
and weak man will linger still, and while he is hovering to the south,
Philip’s armament has sailed from the Groyne, on the undefended shores of
England, and only God’s hand saves us from the effects of Essex’s folly.
A third time the Armadas of Spain are overwhelmed by the avenging
tempests, and Essex returns to disgrace, having proved himself at once
intemperate and incapable. Even in coming home there is confusion, and
Essex is all but lost on the Bishop and Clerks, by Scilly, in spite of
the warnings of Raleigh’s sailing-master, ‘Old Broadbent,’ who is so
exasperated at the general stupidity that he wants Raleigh to leave Essex
and his squadron to get out of their own scrape as they can.
Essex goes off to sulk at Wanstead; but Vere excuses him, and in a few
days he comes back, and will needs fight good Lord Howard for being made
Earl of Nottingham for his services against the Armada and at Cadiz.
Baulked of this, he begins laying the blame of the failure at the Azores
on Raleigh. Let the spoilt naughty boy take care; even that ‘admirable
temper’ for which Raleigh is famed may be worn out at last.
These years are Raleigh’s noon—stormy enough at best, yet brilliant.
There is a pomp about him, outward and inward, which is terrible to
others, dangerous to himself. One has gorgeous glimpses of that grand
Durham House of his, with its carvings and its antique marbles, armorial
escutcheons, ‘beds with green silk hangings and legs like dolphins,
overlaid with gold’: and the man himself, tall, beautiful, and graceful,
perfect alike in body and in mind, walking to and fro, his beautiful wife
upon his arm, his noble boy beside his knee, in his ‘white satin doublet,
embroidered with pearls, and a great chain of pearls about his neck,’
lording it among the lords with an ‘awfulness and ascendency above other
mortals,’ for which men say that ‘his næve is, that he is damnable
proud’; and no wonder. The reduced squire’s younger son has gone forth
to conquer the world; and he fancies, poor fool, that he has conquered
it, just as it really has conquered him; and he will stand now on his
blood and his pedigree (no bad one either), and all the more stiffly
because puppies like Lord Oxford, who instead of making their fortunes
have squandered them, call him ‘jack and upstart,’ and make impertinent
faces while the Queen is playing the virginals, about ‘how when jacks go
up, heads go down.’ Proud? No wonder if the man be proud! ‘Is not this
great Babylon, which I have built?’ And yet all the while he has the
most affecting consciousness that all this is not God’s will, but the
will of the flesh; that the house of fame is not the house of God; that
its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of glass mingled with
fire, which may crack beneath him any moment, and let the nether flame
burst up. He knows that he is living in a splendid lie; that he is not
what God meant him to be. He longs to flee away and be at peace. It is
to this period, not to his death-hour, that ‘The Lie’ belongs; {155}
saddest of poems, with its melodious contempt and life-weariness. All is
a lie—court, church, statesmen, courtiers, wit and science, town and
country, all are shams; the days are evil; the canker is at the root of
all things; the old heroes are dying one by one; the Elizabethan age is
rotting down, as all human things do, and nothing is left but to bewail
with Spenser ‘The Ruins of Time’; the glory and virtue which have
been—the greater glory and virtue which might be even now, if men would
but arise and repent, and work righteousness, as their fathers did before
them. But no. Even to such a world as this he will cling, and flaunt it
about as captain of the guard in the Queen’s progresses and masques and
pageants, with sword-belt studded with diamonds and rubies, or at
tournaments, in armour of solid silver, and a gallant train with
orange-tawny feathers, provoking Essex to bring in a far larger train in
the same colours, and swallow up Raleigh’s pomp in his own, so achieving
that famous ‘feather triumph’ by which he gains little but bad blood and
a good jest. For Essex is no better tilter than he is general; and
having ‘run very ill’ in his orange-tawny, comes next day in green, and
runs still worse, and yet is seen to be the same cavalier; whereon a
spectator shrewdly observes that he changed his colours ‘that it may be
reported that there was one in green who ran worse than he in
orange-tawny.’ But enough of these toys, while God’s handwriting is upon
the wall above all heads.
Raleigh knows that the handwriting is there. The spirit which drove him
forth to Virginia and Guiana is fallen asleep: but he longs for Sherborne
and quiet country life, and escapes thither during Essex’s imprisonment,
taking Cecil’s son with him, and writes as only he can write about the
shepherd’s peaceful joys, contrasted with ‘courts’ and ‘masques’ and
‘proud towers’—
‘Here are no false entrapping baits
Too hasty for too hasty fates,
Unless it be
The fond credulity
Of silly fish, that worlding who still look
Upon the bait, but never on the hook;
Nor envy, unless among
The birds, for prize of their sweet song.
‘Go! let the diving negro seek
For pearls hid in some forlorn creek,
We all pearls scorn,
Save what the dewy morn
Congeals upon some little spire of grass,
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass
And gold ne’er here appears
Save what the yellow Ceres bears.’
Tragic enough are the after scenes of Raleigh’s life: but most tragic of
all are these scenes of vain-glory, in which he sees the better part, and
yet chooses the worse, and pours out his self-discontent in song which
proves the fount of delicacy and beauty which lies pure and bright
beneath the gaudy artificial crust. What might not this man have been!
And he knows that too. The stately rooms of Durham House pall on him,
and he delights to hide up in his little study among his books and his
chemical experiments, and smoke his silver pipe, and look out on the
clear Thames and the green Surrey hills, and dream about Guiana and the
Tropics; or to sit in the society of antiquaries with Selden and Cotton,
Camden and Stow; or in his own Mermaid Club, with Ben Jonson, Fletcher,
Beaumont, and at last with Shakspeare’s self to hear and utter
‘Words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.’
Anything to forget the handwriting on the wall, which will not be
forgotten. But he will do all the good which he can meanwhile,
nevertheless. He will serve God and Mammon. So complete a man will
surely be able to do both. Unfortunately the thing is impossible, as he
discovers too late: but he certainly goes as near success in the attempt
as ever man did. Everywhere we find him doing justly and loving mercy.
Wherever this man steps he leaves his footprint ineffaceably in deeds of
benevolence. For one year only, it seems, he is governor of Jersey; yet
to this day, it is said, the islanders honour his name, only second to
that of Duke Rollo, as their great benefactor, the founder of their
Newfoundland trade. In the west country he is ‘as a king,’ ‘with ears
and mouth always open to hear and deliver their grievances, feet and
hands ready to go and work their redress.’ The tin-merchants have become
usurers ‘of fifty in the hundred.’ Raleigh works till he has put down
their ‘abominable and cut-throat dealing.’ There is a burdensome
west-country tax on curing fish; Raleigh works till it is revoked. In
Parliament he is busy with liberal measures, always before his
generation. He puts down a foolish act for compulsory sowing of hemp in
a speech on the freedom of labour worthy of the nineteenth century. He
argues against raising the subsidy from the three-pound men—‘Call you
this, Mr. Francis Bacon, _par jugum_, when a poor man pays as much as a
rich?’ He is equally rational and spirited against the exportation of
ordnance to the enemy; and when the question of abolishing monopolies is
mooted he has his wise word. He too is a monopolist of tin, as Lord
Warden of the Stannaries. But he has so wrought as to bring good out of
evil; for ‘before the granting of his patent, let the price of tin be
never so high, the poor workman never had but two shillings a week’; yet
now, so has he extended and organised the tin-works, ‘that any man who
will can find work, be tin at what price soever, and have four shillings
a week truly paid . . . Yet if all others may be repealed, I will give my
consent as freely to the cancelling of this as any member of this house.’
Most of the monopolies were repealed: but we do not find that Raleigh’s
was among them. Why should it be if its issue was more tin, full work,
and double wages? In all things this man approves himself faithful in
his generation. His sins are not against man, but against God; such as
the world thinks no sins, and hates them, not from morality, but from
envy.
In the meanwhile, the evil which, so Spenser had prophesied, only waited
Raleigh’s death breaks out in his absence, and Ireland is all aflame with
Tyrone’s rebellion. Raleigh is sent for. He will not accept the post of
Lord Deputy and go to put it down. Perhaps he does not expect fair play
as long as Essex is at home. Perhaps he knows too much of the ‘common
weal, or rather common woe,’ and thinks that what is crooked cannot be
made straight. Perhaps he is afraid to lose by absence his ground at
court. Would that he had gone, for Ireland’s sake and his own. However,
it must not be. Ormond is recalled, and Knollys shall be sent: but Essex
will have none but Sir George Carew; whom, Naunton says, he hates, and
wishes to oust from court. He and Elizabeth argue it out. He turns his
back on her, and she gives him—or does not give him, for one has found so
many of these racy anecdotes vanish on inspection into simple wind, that
one believes none of them—a box on the ear; which if she did, she did the
most wise, just, and practical thing which she could do with such a
puppy. He claps his hand—or does not—to his sword, ‘He would not have
taken it from Henry VIII.,’ and is turned out forthwith. In vain
Egerton, the Lord Keeper, tries to bring him to reason. He storms
insanely. Every one on earth is wrong but he: every one is conspiring
against him; he talks of ‘Solomon’s fool’ too. Had he read the Proverbs
a little more closely, he might have left the said fool alone, as being a
too painfully exact likeness of himself. It ends by his being worsted,
and Raleigh rising higher than ever. I cannot see why Raleigh should be
represented as henceforth becoming Essex’s ‘avowed enemy,’ save on the
ground that all good men are and ought to be the enemies of bad men, when
they see them about to do harm, and to ruin the country. Essex is one of
the many persons upon whom this age has lavished a quantity of
sentimentality, which suits oddly enough with its professions of
impartiality. But there is an impartiality which ends in utter
injustice; which by saying carelessly to every quarrel, ‘Both are right,
and both are wrong,’ leaves only the impression that all men are wrong,
and ends by being unjust to every one. So has Elizabeth and Essex’s
quarrel been treated. There was some evil in Essex; therefore Elizabeth
was a fool for liking him. There was some good in Essex; therefore
Elizabeth was cruel in punishing him. This is the sort of slipshod
dilemma by which Elizabeth is proved to be wrong, even while Essex is
confessed to be wrong too; while the patent facts of the case are, that
Elizabeth bore with him as long as she could, and a great deal longer
than any one else could. Why Raleigh should be accused of helping to
send Essex into Ireland, I do not know. Camden confesses (at the same
time that he gives a hint of the kind) that Essex would let no one go but
himself. And if this was his humour, one can hardly wonder at Cecil and
Raleigh, as well as Elizabeth, bidding the man begone and try his hand at
government, and be filled with the fruit of his own devices. He goes;
does nothing; or rather worse than nothing; for in addition to the
notorious ill-management of the whole matter, we may fairly say that he
killed Elizabeth. She never held up her head again after Tyrone’s
rebellion. Elizabeth still clings to him, changing her mind about him
every hour, and at last writes him such a letter as he deserves. He has
had power, money, men, such as no one ever had before. Why has he done
nothing but bring England to shame? He comes home frantically—the story
of his bursting into the dressing-room rests on no good authority—with a
party of friends at his heels, leaving Ireland to take care of itself.
Whatever entertainment he met with from the fond old woman, he met with
the coldness which he deserved from Raleigh and Cecil. Who can wonder?
What had he done to deserve aught else? But he all but conquers; and
Raleigh takes to his bed in consequence, sick of the whole matter; as one
would have been inclined to do oneself. He is examined and arraigned;
writes a maudlin letter to Elizabeth. Elizabeth has been called a fool
for listening to such pathetical ‘love letters’: and then hardhearted for
not listening to them. Poor Lady! do what she would, she found it hard
enough to please all parties while alive; must she be condemned over and
above _in æternum_ to be wrong whatsoever she did? Why is she not to
have the benefit of the plain straightforward interpretation which would
be allowed to any other human being; namely, that she approved of such
fine talk as long as it was proved to be sincere by fine deeds: but that
when these were wanting, the fine talk became hollow, fulsome, a fresh
cause of anger and disgust? Yet still she weeps over Essex when he falls
sick, as any mother would; and would visit him if she could with honour.
But a ‘malignant influence counteracts every disposition to relent.’ No
doubt, a man’s own folly, passion, and insolence has generally a very
malignant influence on his fortunes; and he may consider himself a very
happy man if all that befalls to him thereby is what befell Essex,
namely, deprivation of his offices and imprisonment in his own house. He
is forgiven after all; but the spoilt child refuses his bread and butter
without sugar. What is the pardon to him without a renewal of his
licence of sweet wines? Because he is not to have that, the Queen’s
‘conditions are as crooked as her carcase.’ Flesh and blood can stand no
more, and ought to stand no more. After all that Elizabeth has been to
him, that speech is the speech of a brutal and ungrateful nature. And
such he shows himself to be in the hour of trial. What if the patent for
sweet wines is refused him? Such gifts were meant as the reward of
merit; and what merit has he to show? He never thinks of that. Blind
with fury, he begins to intrigue with James, and slanders to him, under
colour of helping his succession, all whom he fancies opposed to him.
What is worse, he intrigues with Tyrone about bringing over an army of
Irish Papists to help him against the Queen, and this at the very time
that his sole claim to popularity rests on his being the leader of the
Puritans. A man must have been very far gone, either in baseness or in
hatred, who represents Raleigh to James as dangerous to the commonweal on
account of his great power in the west of England and Jersey, ‘places fit
for the Spaniard to land in.’ Cobham, as Warden of the Cinque Ports, is
included in his slander; and both he and Raleigh will hear of it again.
Some make much of a letter, supposed to be written about this time by
Raleigh to Cecil, bidding Cecil keep down Essex, even crush him, now that
he is once down. I do not happen to think the letter to be Raleigh’s.
His initials are subscribed to it; but not his name and the style is not
like his. But as for seeing ‘unforgiveness and revenge in it,’ whose
soever it may be, I hold and say there is not a word which can bear such
a construction. It is a dark letter: but about a dark matter and a dark
man. It is a worldly and expediential letter, appealing to low motives
in Cecil, though for a right end; such a letter, in short, as statesmen
are wont to write nowadays. If Raleigh wrote it, God punished him for
doing so speedily enough. He does not usually punish statesmen nowadays
for such letters; perhaps because He does not love them as well as
Raleigh. But as for the letter itself. Essex is called a ‘tyrant,’
because he had shown himself one. The Queen is to ‘hold Bothwell,’
because ‘while she hath him, he will even be the canker of her estate and
safety,’ and the writer has ‘seen the last of her good days and of ours
after his liberty.’ On which accounts, Cecil is not to be deterred from
doing what is right and necessary ‘by any fear of after-revenges’ and
‘conjectures from causes remote,’ as many a stronger instance—given—will
prove, but ‘look to the present,’ and so ‘do wisely.’ There is no real
cause for Cecil’s fear. If the man who has now lost a power which he
ought never to have had be now kept down, then neither he nor his son
will ever be able to harm the man who has kept him at his just level.
What ‘revenge, selfishness, and craft’ there can be in all this it is
difficult to see; as difficult as to see why Essex is to be talked of as
‘unfortunate,’ and the blame of his frightful end thrown on every one but
himself: the fact being that Essex’s end was brought on by his having
chosen one Sunday morning for breaking out into open rebellion, for the
purpose of seizing the city of London and the Queen’s person, and
compelling her to make him lord and master of the British Isles; in which
attempt he and his fought with the civil and military authorities, till
artillery had to be brought up and many lives were lost. Such little
escapades may be pardonable enough in ‘noble and unfortunate’ earls: but
readers will perhaps agree that if they chose to try a similar
experiment, they could not complain if they found themselves shortly
after in company with Mr. Mitchell at Spike Island or Mr. Oxford in
Bedlam. However, those were days in which such Sabbath amusements on the
part of one of the most important and powerful personages of the realm
could not be passed over so lightly, especially when accompanied by
severe loss of life; and as there existed in England certain statutes
concerning rebellion and high treason, which must needs have been framed
for some purpose or other, the authorities of England may be excused for
fancying that they bore some reference to such acts as that which the
noble and unfortunate earl had just committed, as wantonly, selfishly,
and needlessly, it seems to me, as ever did man on earth.
I may seem to jest too much upon so solemn a matter as the life of a
human being: but if I am not to touch the popular talk about Essex in
this tone, I can only touch it in a far sterner one; and if ridicule is
forbidden, express disgust instead.
I have entered into this matter of Essex somewhat at length, because on
it is founded one of the mean slanders from which Raleigh never
completely recovered. The very mob who, after Raleigh’s death, made him
a Protestant martyr—as, indeed, he was—looked upon Essex in the same
light, hated Raleigh as the cause of his death, and accused him of
glutting his eyes with Essex’s misery, puffing tobacco out of a window,
and what not—all mere inventions, so Raleigh declared upon the scaffold.
He was there in his office as captain of the guard, and could do no less
than be there. Essex, it is said, asked for Raleigh just before he died:
but Raleigh had withdrawn, the mob having murmured. What had Essex to
say to him? Was it, asks Oldys, shrewdly enough, to ask him pardon for
the wicked slanders which he had been pouring into James’s credulous and
cowardly ears? We will hope so; and leave poor Essex to God and the
mercy of God, asserting once more that no man ever brought ruin and death
more thoroughly on himself by his own act, needing no imaginary help
downwards from Raleigh, Cecil, or other human being.
And now begins the fourth act of this strange tragedy. Queen Elizabeth
dies; and dies of grief. It has been the fashion to attribute to her, I
know not why, remorse for Essex’s death; and the foolish and false tale
about Lady Nottingham and the ring has been accepted as history. The
fact seems to be that she never really held up her head after Burleigh’s
death. She could not speak of him without tears; forbade his name to be
mentioned in the Council. No wonder; never had mistress a better
servant. For nearly half a century have these two noble souls loved each
other, trusted each other, worked with each other; and God’s blessing has
been on their deeds; and now the faithful God-fearing man is gone to his
reward; and she is growing old, and knows that the ancient fire is dying
out in her; and who will be to her what he was? Buckhurst is a good man,
and one of her old pupils; and she makes him Lord Treasurer in Burleigh’s
place: but beyond that all is dark. ‘I am a miserable forlorn woman;
there is none about me that I can trust.’ She sees through Cecil;
through Henry Howard. Essex has proved himself worthless, and pays the
penalty of his sins. Men are growing worse than their fathers. Spanish
gold is bringing in luxury and sin. The last ten years of her reign are
years of decadence, profligacy, falsehood; and she cannot but see it.
Tyrone’s rebellion is the last drop which fills the cup. After fifty
years of war, after a drain of money all but fabulous expended on keeping
Ireland quiet, the volcano bursts forth again just as it seemed
extinguished, more fiercely than ever, and the whole work has to be done
over again, when there is neither time nor a man to do it. And ahead,
what hope is there for England? Who will be her successor? She knows in
her heart that it will be James: but she cannot bring herself to name
him. To bequeath the fruit of all her labours to a tyrant, a liar, and a
coward: for she knows the man but too well. It is too hideous to be
faced. This is the end then? ‘Oh that I were a milke maide, with a
paile upon mine arm!’ But it cannot be. It never could have been; and
she must endure to the end.
‘Therefore I hated life; yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken
under the sun; because I should leave it to the man that shall be after
me. And who knows whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he
have rule over all my labour wherein I have showed myself wise, in
wisdom, and knowledge, and equity . . . Vanity of vanities, and vexation
of spirit!’ And so, with a whole book of Ecclesiastes written on that
mighty heart, the old lioness coils herself up in her lair, refuses food,
and dies. I know few passages in the world’s history more tragic than
that death.
Why did she not trust Raleigh? First, because Raleigh, as we have seen,
was not the sort of man whom she needed. He was not the steadfast
single-eyed statesman; but the many-sided genius. Besides, he was the
ringleader of the war-party. And she, like Burleigh before his death,
was tired of the war; saw that it was demoralising England; was anxious
for peace. Raleigh would not see that. It was to him a divine mission
which must be fulfilled at all risks. As long as the Spaniards were
opposing the Indians, conquering America, there must be no peace. Both
were right from their own point of view. God ordered the matter from a
third point of view.