Burleigh as chancellor of the university of Cambridge; and, going down, was there entertained with great magnificence*. This is reckoned one of the last instances of this great man's felicity, who was now advanced too high to sit at ease; and those who longed for his honours and employments, very closely applied themselves to bring about his fall. The first great shock he received came from the queen herself, and arose from a warm dispute with her majesty about the choice of some fit and able person to superintend the affairs of Ireland. Camden tells us, that there were only present on this remarkable occasion, the lord admiral, sir Robert Cecil, secretary; and Windebanke, clerk of the seal. The queen considered sir William Knolls, uncle to Essex, as the most proper person for that charge: Essex contended, that sir George Carew was a much fitter man for it. When the queen could not be persuaded to approve his choice, he so far forgot himself and his duty, as to turn his back upon her in a contemptuous manner; which insolence her majesty not being able to bear, gave him a box on the ear, and, somewhat in her father's language, bid him "go and be hanged." He immediately clapped his hand on his sword, and the lord admiral stepping in between, he swore a great oath, declaring that he neither could nor would put up an affront of that nature; that he would not have taken it at the hands of Henry VIII. and in a great passion immediately withdrew from court. The lord keeper advised him to apply himself to the queen for pardon. He sent the lord keeper his answer in a long and passionate letter, which his friends afterwards unadvisedly communicated; in which he appealed from the queen to God Almighty, in expressions to this purpose: "That there was no tempest so boisterous as the resentment of an angry prince; that * When Essex was no more than twenty-one years of age, he was competitor with the lord chancellor Hatton for the chancellorship of the university of Oxford, which had become vacant by the death of the earl of Leicester, on the 4th of September, 1588. Into this university our young earl had been incorporated master of arts in the preceding April. He did not succeed in the contest; for being generally considered as a patron of the puritan party, as his deceased father-in-law had been, the interest of the lord chan cellor, supported by that of archbishop Whitgift, carried the election against him. He was again disappointed in a similar attempt, which he made at the latter end of the year 1591, upon the death of sir Christopher Hatton. On this occasion, a majority of the electors would have declared in his favour, had they not been influenced by the authority of the queen, who recommended by letters Thomas Sackville, lord Buckhurst, and he was accordingly chosen. the queen was of a flinty temper; that he well enough knew what was due from him as a subject, an earl, and grand marshal of England, but did not understand the office of a drudge or a porter; that to own himself a criminal was to injure truth, and the author of it, God Almighty: that his body suffered in every part of it by that blow given by his prince; and that it would be a crime in him to serve a queen who had given him so great an affront." He was afterwards reconciled and restored in appearance to the queen's favour, yet there is good reason to doubt whether he ever recovered it in reality: and his friends have generally dated his ruin from this singular dispute *. The earl met with nothing in Ireland but disappointments, in the midst of which, an army was suddenly raised in England, under the command of the earl of Nottingham; nobody well knowing why, but in reality from the suggestions of the earl's enemies to the queen, that he rather meditated an invasion on his native country, than the reduction of the Irish rebels. This and other considerations made him resolve to quit his post, and come over to Eng *The total reduction of Ireland being brought upon the tapis soon after, the earl was pitched upon as the only man from whom it could be expected; an artful contrivance of his enemies, who hoped by this means to ruin him; nor were their expectations disappointed. He declined this fatal preferment as long as he could; but, perceiving that he should have no quiet at home, he accepted it, and his commission for Jord lieutenant passed the great seal in March 1598. His enemies now began to insinuate, that he had sought this command for the sake of greater things which he then was meditating; but there is a letter of his to the queen, preserved in the Harleian collection, which shews, that he was so far from entering upon it with alacrity, that he looked upon it rather as a banishment, and a place assigned him for a retreat from his sovereign's displeasure, than a potent government bestowed upon him by her favour: "To the queen. From a mind delighting in sorrow, from spirits wasted with passion, from a heart torn in pieces with care, grief, and travel, from a man that hateth himself, and all things else that keep him alive, what service can your majesty expect, since any service past deserves no more than banishment and proscription to the cursedest of all islands? It is your rebels' pride and succession must give me leave to ransom myself out of this hateful prison, out of my loathed body; which, if it happened so, your majesty shall have no cause to mislike the fashion of my death, since the course of my life could never please you. "Happy he could finish forth his fate, In some unhaunted desert most obscure From all society, from love and hate Of worldly folk; then should he sleep secure. Then wake again, and yield God ever praise. Content with hips, and hawes, and bramble-berry ; In contemplation passing out his days, And change of holy thoughts to make him merry. Who when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, Where harmless robin dwells with Your majesty's exiled servant, land; which he accordingly did, and presented himself before the queen. He met with a tolerable reception; but was soon after confined, examined, and dismissed from all his offices, except that of master of the horse. In the summer of 1600, he recovered his liberty; and in the autumn following, he received Mr. Cuffe, who had been his secretary in Ireland (See CUFFE), into his councils. Cuffe, who was a man of his own disposition, laboured to persuade him, that submission would never do him any good; that the queen was in the hands of a faction, who were his enemies; and that the only way to restore his fortune was to obtain an audience, by whatever means he could, in order to represent his case. The earl did not consent at first to this dangerous advice; but afterwards, giving a loose to his passion, began to declare himself openly, and among other fatal expressions let fall this, that the queen grew old and cankered; and that her mind was become as crooked as her carcase." His enemies, who had exact intelligence of all that he proposed, and had provided effectually against the execution of his designs, hurried him upon his fate by a message, sent on the evening of Feb. 7, requiring him to attend the council, which he declined. This appears to have unmanned him, and in his distraction of mind, he gave out, that they sought his life; kept a watch in Essex-house all night; and summoned his friends for his defence the next morning. Many disputes ensued, and some blood was spilt; but the earl at last surrendered, and was carried that night to the archbishop's palace at Lambeth, and the next day to the Tower. On the 19th, he was arraigned before his peers, and after a long trial was sentenced to lose his head : upon which melancholy occasion he said nothing more than this, viz. "If her majesty had pleased, this body of mine might have done her better service; however, I shall be glad if it may prove serviceable to her any way." He was executed upon the 25th, in his thirty-fourth year, leaving behind him one only son and two daughters. As to his person, he is reported to have been tall, but not very well made; his countenance reserved; his air rather martial than courtly; very careless in dress, and a little addicted to trifling diversions. He was learned, and a lover of learned men, whom he always encouraged and rewarded. He was sincere in his friendships, but not so careful as he ought to have been in making a right choice; sound in his morals, VOL. XII. C except in point of gallantry, and thoroughly well affected to the protestant religion. Historians inform us, that as to his execution, the queen remained irresolute to the very last, and sent sir Edward Carey to countermand it; but, as Camden says, considering afterwards his obstinacy in refusing to ask her pardon, she countermanded those orders, and directed that he should die. There is an odd story current in the world about a ring, which the chevalier Louis Aubrey de Mourier, many years the French minister in Holland, and a man of great parts and unsuspected credit, delivers as an undoubted truth; and that upon the authority of an English minister, who might be well presumed to know what he said. As the incident is remarkable, and has made much noise, we will report it in the words of that historian: "It will not, I believe, be thought either impertinent or disagreeable to add here, what prince Maurice had from the mouth of Mr. Carleton, ambassador of England in Holland, who died secretary of state; so well known under the name of lord Dorchester, and who was a man of great merit. He said, that queen Elizabeth gave the earl of Essex a ring, in the height of her passion for him, ordering him to keep it; and that whatever he should commit, she would pardon him when he should return that pledge. Since that time the earl's enemies having prevailed with the queen, who, besides, was exasperated against him for the contempt he had shewed her beauty, now through age upon the decay, she caused him to be impeached. When he was condemned, she expected to receive from him the ring, and would have granted him his pardon according to her promise. The earl, finding himself in the last extremity, applied to admiral Howard's lady, who was his relation; and desired her, by a person she could trust, to deliver the ring into the queen's own hands. But her husband, who was one of the earl's greatest enemies, and to whom she told this imprudently, would not suffer her to acquit herself of the commission; so that the queen consented to the earl's death, being full of indignation against so proud and haughty a spirit, who chose rather to die than implore her mercy. Some time after, the admiral's lady fell sick; and, being given over by her physicians, she sent word to the queen that she had something of great consequence to tell her before she died. The queen came to her bedside; and having ordered all her attendants to withdraw, the admiral's lady returned her, but too late, that ring from the earl of Essex, desiring to be excused for not having returned it sooner, since her husband had prevented her. The queen retired immediately, overwhelmed with the utmost grief; she sighed continually for a fortnight, without taking any nourishment, lying in bed entirely dressed, and getting up an hundred times a night. At last she died with hunger and with grief, because she had consented to the death of a lover who had applied to her for mercy." Histoire de Hollande, p. 215, 216. This account has commonly been treated as a fable; but late discoveries seem to have confirmed it. See the proofs of this remarkable fact, collected in Birch's Negociations, &c. p. 206, and Hume's History, at the end of Elizabeth's reign. Lord Orford has entered into a long disquisition on the proofs of queen Elizabeth's love for the earl of Essex, and certainly proves that she had a more than ordinary attachment to him, although in some of the circumstances it appears to savour more of the fondness of a capricious mother, than of a mistress. His lordship has done wiser in having placed the earl of Essex among the noble authors of England. The various pieces enumerated by lord Orford justly entitle him to that distinction; and he has a farther claim to it from the numerous letters of his which occur in the different collections of state papers, and especially in Birch's "Memoirs of the Reign of queen Elizabeth." "But of all his compositions," says Mr. Walpole, "the most excellent, and in many respects equal to the performances of the greatest geniuses, is a long letter to the queen from Ireland, stating the situation of that country in a most masterly manner, both as a general and statesman, and concluding with strains of the tenderest eloquence, on finding himself so unhappily exposed to the artifice of his enemies during his absence. It cannot fail to excite admiration, that a man ravished from all improvement and reflection at the age of seventeen, to be nursed, perverted, fondled, dazzled in a court, should, notwithstanding, have snatched such opportunities of cultivating his mind and understanding!" In another letter from Ireland, he says movingly, "I provided for this service a breast-plate, but not a cuirass; that is, I am armed on the breast, but not on the back." 66 It has been surmised that the earl of Essex used the pen, |