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more quarrelling with the Queen, and we find him so far adopting Bacon's advice that he "pretended a journey toward Wales," from which he desisted at the command of the Queen. But the abruptness of his behaviour neutralised the concession; and his passion for adventure and distinction in war induced him wholly to disregard that most valuable part of Bacon's warning which touched on " militar dependence."

During the next two years there is little extant correspondence between the two friends, and Bacon's Apology declares that Essex discontinued asking his advice. But such evidence as we possess tends rather to show that Essex continued to ask for it, but Bacon discontinued giving it. In 1598 we find Bacon writing that he has no time to attend his patron, "nor now to write fully;" in the same year Essex sends him information about affairs in Ireland and desires his advice thereon; and in the following year Essex even complains of Bacon's silence on matters affecting the Earl's interests. This is but one of many interests where Bacon's Apology seems to be at variance with his letters.

It is probably not without significance that the first edition of the Essays which appeared about this time (1597) was not dedicated to Essex, but to Anthony Bacon. There is no reason to suppose that Francis Bacon considered this little volume unworthy of being dedicated to the Earl. The second edition was dedicated (originally) to Prince Henry; the third, to Buckingham. Equally small, or smaller, treatises were inscribed with the names of the Marquis of Salisbury, and Prince Charles. The probability is, therefore, that he would not dedicate the book to the Earl of Essex for fear of offending the Cecilian faction; and this probability is increased by the manner in which Anthony, as it were, re-dedicates the work to Essex and begs "leave to transfer my interest unto your Lordship."

The special need of advice in 1598 arose from the critical position of Ireland at that time, owing to the rebellion of Tyrone. In a first letter Becon advises him to turn his attention to affairs in Ireland; in a second (March 1598) he goes further:

"But that your Lordship is too easy in such cases to pass from dissimulation to verity, I think if your Lordship lent your reputation in this case-that is to pretend that, if peace go not on, and the Queen mean not to make a defensive war, as in times past, but a full reconquest of those parts of the country, you would accept the charge--I think it would help to settle Tyrone in his seeking accord, and win you a great deal of honour gratis."

It is scarcely credible that in such a crisis the Cecilian and Essexian factions should have aimed at utilising the Irish troubles for mere party aggrandisement; still less that both parties should seek to impose the burdensome command of the forces in Ireland upon a political enemy. But a previous letter of Essex proves that he had some time before suspected the Cecils of a desire to ruin him by sending him away from the Court to fail in Ireland; and on the present occasion there was no disguise. Essex was for sending Carew, the friend of Cecil; Cecil named Knollys, Essex's uncle-each with the view of discrediting the opposite party by failure. In a stormy councilmeeting, the insolent conduct of Essex so infuriated the Queen that she struck him, and had him ignominiously thrust from the council chamber. He went into a sullen retirement, whence he did not emerge till after the death of Burghley, when the disaster of Blackwater (14 August 1598), and the consequent rebellion of the whole of Ireland, had caused "the full reconquest" of that country-to repeat the words of the Earl's counsellor to become the main problem of the time. In an evil hour Essex now adopted that counsellor's too subtle address to "pretend" that he would accept the command. In vain did he afterwards attempt to draw back. "Passing from dissimulation to verity" (the very danger against which Bacon had warned him, but to which he had exposed him) he committed himself irrevocably.

His genuine unwillingness to accept the command is proved by a recently published letter (1 January, 1599) from the Earl to his intimate friend Southampton, who vehemently dissuades him from going." "I am tied in my own reputation to use no tergiversation; the Queen hath irrevocably decreed it, the Council do passionately urge it." He is aware of all the dangers of absence from Court, and the designs of enemies, but there is no help for it; "into Ireland I go." Vain are his attempts to disengage himself by alleging pretexts of insufficient supplies and forces: "he could ask nothing," says Camden, "which he did not obtain by the officious, not to say crafty, assistance of his adversaries." Such was his dread of the Cecilian plots at Court in his absence, that even at the last moment he refused to depart without an express permission under the broad seal to return whenever he pleased.

1 This letter was communicated to me by the late Professor Brewer and first published in Bacon and Essex, p. 110, where it is given in full.

A few days before the Earl's departure (27 March, 1599) Bacon, in answer to his friend's complaint, that he had been "silent in his occasions," writes a letter in which he presages success, enlarges on the honour bestowed on him by the Queen in selecting him for this duty, and adds that the success is not to be depreciated by calling the Irish "barbarians;" for the Romans highly esteemed their triumphs gained over similar races, such as "the Germans, Britons, and divers others." It is a curious instance of Bacon's unphilosophic tendency to adapt his memory to his desires, that in the Apology, by a slight addition to the context, he completely reverses the tenor of this letter, and, in particular, the reference to the Britons and Germans. He did protest, he then writes, against the Earl's going, warning him that he would "exulcerate the Queen's mind" and adding that the Irish would prove no less troublesome enemies than "the ancient Gauls or Germans or Britons" had proved to the Romans in old times. This is but one among many reasons for preferring the indirect evidence of Bacon's letters to the direct testimony of the Apology wherever we have both, and for placing very little confidence in the Apology where it is unsupported by external evidence,1

1 Professor Gardiner (Dict. Nat. Biog., ii. 333) while admitting the possibility that Bacon's memory played him false, adds, "It is also possible that there were really two (letters) written, the one before Essex had made up his mind, and the other after he had determined on his course, and that Bacon might urge at one time that people like the Britons and Gauls were hard to conquer, and at the other that glory might be achieved by bringing them into order. Such repetitions are very much after Bacon's style.'

Here is the passage from the actual letter :

"And if any man be of opinion that the nature of the enemy doth extenuate the honour of the service, being but a rebel and a savage-I differ from him. For I see the justest triumphs that the Romans in their greatness did obtain were of such an enemy as this, that is, people barbarous and not reduced to civility, magnifying a kind of lawless liberty, prodigal in life, hardened in body, fortified in woods and bogs, and placing both justice and felicity in the sharpness of their swords. Such were the Germans and the ancient Britons and divers others."

Here is the account in the Apology:

The same administrative incapacity which in the French campaign of 1591 enabled Essex to waste away an army of four thousand Englishmen to one thousand, without having any result to show for it, now joined with bad weather and the Earl's ill-health to produce a no less miserable failure in Ireland. Indignant at his want of success, the Queen cancelled her promise of permission to return, and ordered him to advise her "particularly in writing" of the terms on which he had made a truce with Tyrone. But Essex had pledged his word to Tyrone (so he asserted) that the terms should not be committed to writing, lest his enemies should send them to Spain. Taking advantage of this dilemma, the Earl determined to act upon the Queen's cancelled promise, and to break her last orders by returning to Court to plead his cause in person. The Declaration of the Treasons of Essex accuses him of intending at this time to surprise the Court with the aid of " some two hundred resolute gentlemen." But he had no more than six attendants with him when, early in the morning of the 28th of September, 1599, he threw himself on his knees before the Queen.

§ 9 THE FALL OF ESSEX

For the next eleven months Essex was under restraint, and for the greater part of the time a close prisoner. The document entitled "Tyrone's Propositions," 1 on the ground of which it has been supposed that he was already practically committed to treason, has been shown to be devoid of all authority.1 Disobedience in returning to Court and miserable incapacity, were the only charges that could be brought against him; and no hint of anything treasonable was mentioned in the Declaration made in the Star Chamber (29 November, 1599,) of the grounds of the Queen's displeasure, nor in the quasi-judicial proceedings, before a special commission in the Lord Keeper's house, on 5 June, 1600.

"Touching his going into Ireland it pleased him expressly and in a set manner to desire mine opinion and counsel. And because I would omit no argument. I remember I stood also upon the difficulty of the action; setting before him out of histories that the Irish were such an enemy as the ancient Gauls or Germans or Britons were: and we saw how the Romans, yet when they came to do with enemies which placed their felicity only in liberty and the sharpness of their swords, and had the natural elemental advantages of bogs and woods and hardness of bodies, they ever found they had their hands full of them; and therefore concluded that going over with such expectation as he did, and through the churlishness of the enterprise not likely to answer, it would mightily diminish his reputation."

Is any one prepared to believe that there were two discourses addressed by Bacon to Essex, within the space of three or four months, both arising from the express request of Essex, and both mentioning the "Romans," the "Germans," and "Britons," the "bogs and woods," the "sharpness of their swords," and "hardness of their bodies "-but the one inferring success, the other failure, from these identical considerations? Surely such a "repetition" as this is not in Bacon's style, and would have been equally discreditable to his intelligence, and to the Earl's. Bacon often repeats the same or similar arguments, and uses the same language and figures of speech, to prove the same or similar conclusions; but never, so far as I know, does he thus use similar words to prove dissimilar, or rather opposite, conclusions.

1 Mr. Spedding's Life, vol. ii. p. 154.

But Essex was now fast drifting into treason. Even when released from restraint in August, 1600, he was informed that he must regard himself as still under the royal displeasure; and this, says Cecil, made "very few resort to him but those of his own blood." He was also overwhelmed with debt; and next month (Sept. 1600) the lease of wines whence he derived the principal part of his fortune was about to expire. If the Queen would not renew it, he was a ruined man. Oscillating between hope and despair, he at one time petitions, flatters, fawns; at another he execrates the Queen and raves of treason. Coming from the Earl in one of these latter fits, one of his friends declares that "the man's soul seemeth tossed to and fro like the waves of a troubled sea. His speech of the Queen became no man who hath mens sana in corpore sano."

Meantime, although we cannot be surprised that Bacon, with his avowed notions of friendship, should no longer hold communications with one whose fortunes no longer "comprehended" his own, we may nevertheless be hardly prepared to find him pointed at by the public suspicion as the enemy of his former patron. Yet such was the general belief. Even his own brother Anthony seems not to have been entirely free from it. At all events we find Anthony at this time writing a letter to the Earl, in which he assures Essex that, dearly as he loves his brother, he would sooner that Francis died than that he should live to the Earl's prejudice. And the author of the Sydney papers, speaking of some slight offered at this time by the Queen to Essex, says,

1 Bacon and Essex, pp. 134-147. The opinion of the late Mr. J. R. Green was that the document was not genuine; and I presume that the silence of Professor Gardiner, who makes no mention of it, amounts to the same verdict. If it were genuine, the treason of Essex would be unquestionable.

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