He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his books,and he did so for a time;not the least happy time,I dare say,of his life.But it happened unfortunately for him,that he held a monopoly in sweet wines:which means that nobody could sell them without purchasing his permission.This right,which was only for a term,expiring,he applied to have it renewed.The Queen refused,with the rather strong observation-but she DID make strong observations-that an unruly beast must be stinted in his food.Upon this,the angry Earl,who had been already deprived of many offices,thought himself in danger of complete ruin,and turned against the Queen,whom he called a vain old woman who had grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure.These uncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately snapped up and carried to the Queen,whom they did not put in a better tempter,you may believe.The same Court ladies,when they had beautiful dark hair of their own,used to wear false red hair,to be like the Queen.So they were not very high-spirited ladies,however high in rank.
The worst object of the Earl of Essex,and some friends of his who used to meet at LORD SOUTHAMPTON'S house,was to obtain possession of the Queen,and oblige her by force to dismiss her ministers and change her favourites.On Saturday the seventh of February,one thousand six hundred and one,the council suspecting this,summoned the Earl to come before them.He,pretending to be ill,declined;
It was then settled among his friends,that as the next day would be Sunday,when many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by St.Paul's Cathedral,he should make one bold effort to induce them to rise and follow him to the Palace.
So,on the Sunday morning,he and a small body of adherents started out of his house-Essex House by the Strand,with steps to the river-having first shut up in it,as prisoners,some members of the council who came to examine him-and hurried into the City with the Earl at their head crying out 'For the Queen!For the Queen!A plot is laid for my life!'No one heeded them,however,and when they came to St.Paul's there were no citizens there.In the meantime the prisoners at Essex House had been released by one of the Earl's own friends;he had been promptly proclaimed a traitor in the City itself;and the streets were barricaded with carts and guarded by soldiers.The Earl got back to his house by water,with difficulty,and after an attempt to defend his house against the troops and cannon by which it was soon surrounded,gave himself up that night.He was brought to trial on the nineteenth,and found guilty;on the twenty-fifth,he was executed on Tower Hill,where he died,at thirty-four years old,both courageously and penitently.His step-father suffered with him.His enemy,Sir Walter Raleigh,stood near the scaffold all the time-but not so near it as we shall see him stand,before we finish his history.
In this case,as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots,the Queen had commanded,and countermanded,and again commanded,the execution.It is probable that the death of her young and gallant favourite in the prime of his good qualities,was never off her mind afterwards,but she held out,the same vain,obstinate and capricious woman,for another year.Then she danced before her Court on a state occasion-and cut,I should think,a mighty ridiculous figure,doing so in an immense ruff,stomacher and wig,at seventy years old.For another year still,she held out,but,without any more dancing,and as a moody,sorrowful,broken creature.At last,on the tenth of March,one thousand six hundred and three,having been ill of a very bad cold,and made worse by the death of the Countess of Nottingham who was her intimate friend,she fell into a stupor and was supposed to be dead.She recovered her consciousness,however,and then nothing would induce her to go to bed;for she said that she knew that if she did,she should never get up again.There she lay for ten days,on cushions on the floor,without any food,until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at last,partly by persuasions and partly by main force.When they asked her who should succeed her,she replied that her seat had been the seat of Kings,and that she would have for her successor,'No rascal's son,but a King's.'
Upon this,the lords present stared at one another,and took the liberty of asking whom she meant;to which she replied,'Whom should I mean,but our cousin of Scotland!'This was on the twenty-third of March.They asked her once again that day,after she was speechless,whether she was still in the same mind?She struggled up in bed,and joined her hands over her head in the form of a crown,as the only reply she could make.At three o'clock next morning,she very quietly died,in the forty-fifth year of her reign.
That reign had been a glorious one,and is made for ever memorable by the distinguished men who flourished in it.Apart from the great voyagers,statesmen,and scholars,whom it produced,the names of BACON,SPENSER,and SHAKESPEARE,will always be remembered with pride and veneration by the civilised world,and will always impart (though with no great reason,perhaps)some portion of their lustre to the name of Elizabeth herself.It was a great reign for discovery,for commerce,and for English enterprise and spirit in general.It was a great reign for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation which made England free.The Queen was very popular,and in her progresses,or journeys about her dominions,was everywhere received with the liveliest joy.I think the truth is,that she was not half so good as she has been made out,and not half so bad as she has been made out.She had her fine qualities,but she was coarse,capricious,and treacherous,and had all the faults of an excessively vain young woman long after she was an old one.On the whole,she had a great deal too much of her father in her,to please me.
Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of these five-and-forty years in the general manner of living;but cock-fighting,bull-baiting,and bear-baiting,were still the national amusements;and a coach was so rarely seen,and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was seen,that even the Queen herself,on many high occasions,rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor.