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reveal, especially of that injurious imputation to me, he vowed and protested that in his own conscience he did freely acquit me of any such matter, and was ashamed to have spoken it, having no better ground. He protested also to bear no malice to the Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Ralegh whom he had named his enemies; and by whom he knew no other than that they were true servants to the Queen and the state. After that, he made an humble suit to the Queen, that he might have the favour to die privately in the Tower; which her Majesty granted, and for which he gave her most humble thanks."1

Had this been all, no reasonable objection could be taken either to the confession itself or to the means which had been used to induce it. He was merely telling the truth which he had denied, and relieving the Government from a false charge of injustice which he had himself endeavoured to fix upon them. The disclosure of the correspondence with Scotland was more questionable; because it involved the betrayal of others who had entered into it only for his sake and had themselves betrayed nothing. Still, when he came to see it himself in its true light, it may have seemed a thing which the Queen had a right to be warned of. But when we find him volunteering such confessions as these-that Sir Henry Nevill had been a party to the treason (whose only offence was that he had known of the consultations and not betrayed them):—that "no man showed himself more forward in the streets, nor readier to fight and defend the house after their return against the Queen's forces, nor more earnest that they should not have submitted themselves, than the Lord Sandys: 2-that Sheriff Smith "had been as far engaged in the action as any of them," and being charged with not performing what he had promised, had excused himself saying that "in that confusion he could not draw his regiment together," and had "advised Essex to keep the streets: "3-when we find him accusing Henry Cuffe and Sir Christopher Blount of "having been his chief instigators to all those disloyal courses into which he had fallen:"4--with other things of the kind which, whether true or not, it was no business of his to proclaim,5-what shall we say? Those who think that

1 Win. Mem. i. 301.

2 "The effect of the Earl of Essex's speeches concerning the Lord Sandys, delivered before us whose names are underwritten." S. P. O.

3 "The proofs against Sheriff Smith,"-a paper in Coke's hand. S. P. O. 4 Camden.

5 The Earl of Nottingham, writing to Lord Montjoy on the 31st of May, 1601, gives the following account of Essex's first communication to the Councillors. "And thus he did begin to us. 'I do humbly thank her Majesty that it hath pleased her to send you unto me, and you are both most heartily welcome; and above all things I am most bound unto her Majesty that it hath pleased her to let me have this little man, Mr. Ashton, my minister, with me for my soul; for,' said he, this man in a few hours hath made me know my sins unto her Majesty and to my God; and I must confess to you that I am the greatest, the most vilest,

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he had even the shadow of an excuse for rebelling cannot but think that in thus turning informer against his associates he sinned past all excuse. His best apology must be that he was the same man still. The same want of ballast which had swayed him so far from his duty on one side now carried him as far over on the other. In his passion of discontented ambition he could think of nothing but how to displace his rivals; in his passion of penitence and dismay he could think of nothing but how to expiate his guilt. The sudden collapse of his inflated confidence, the vision suddenly revealed of his crime in its true character and proportions, with death, judgment, and eternity in the immediate background, brought on a fit of religious terror, and blinded him to all other considerations. And so it was to the end. For his behaviour on the scaffold is distinguished from that of almost all other performers on that stage by being natural and unaffected. At that hour he had no thought to spare for relations, friends, or spectators; no consciousness of his own position as principal figure in a public spectacle: but bore himself simply like a man who felt that he had committed a great sin and believed that he was passing straight to judgment.

2.

Of the remaining prisoners only five were brought to trial: Blount, Davers, Davis, Merick, and Cuffe. They were tried on the 5th of March; the only Counsel employed being Coke, Fleming, and Bacon; and the only part assigned to Bacon being the charge against Davis.

Of his speech on this occasion the only report, and indeed the only notice I have met with, is in the State Trials, and runs thus:

Against Sir John Davis Mr. Francis Bacon urged the evidence, beginning with discourse upon the former ground of Mr. Attorney's, that every rebellion implied destruction of the Prince, and that in the precedents of Edward II. and Henry IV. the preand most unthankful traitor that ever has been in the land: and therefore, if it shall please you, I shall deliver now the truth thereof. Yesterday, at the bar, like a most sinful wretch, with countenance and words I imagined all falsehood.' Then he began to lay open the practices for the surprising of her Majesty and the Court; who were at the councils at Drury House, the Earl of Southampton's lodging; that there were these appointed by the Earl to consider how it should be put in execution, the Earl of Southampton, Sir Charles Davers, Sir F. Gorges, Sir John Davis, Sir [Henry] Nevill, and Cuffe. Sir Christopher Blount he ever kept with him. He spared none of these to let us know how continually they laboured him about it. And now,' said he, 'I must accuse one who is most nearest unto me, my sister; who did continually urge me on with telling me how all my friends and followers thought me a coward, and that I had lost all my valour.' And then thus, 'that she must be looked to, for that she had a proud spirit;' and spared not to say something of her affection to you. Would your Lordship have thought this weakness and this unnaturalness in this man ?"-Tanner MSS. 76, fo. 22: the original letter.

tence in both was, as in this, against certain subjects; the Spencers in one and the Treasurer in the other. And this style of protestation, that no harm was intended to the person of the sovereign, was common in traitors. Manlius, the lieutenant of Catiline, had that very protestation. But the proceeding is such in this as no long discoursing needs to prove it treason: the act itself was treason.

The principal offences charged upon Sir John Davis were two: one, that he was a plotter and of the council at Drury House; another, that in the insurrection he had the custody of the Privy Councillors in Essex House; which had a correspondence with the action in the street.

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The plot and insurrection entered into was to give laws to the Queen the preparation was to have a choice band of men for action; men not met together by constellation; but assembled upon summons and letters sent. For, said Mr. Bacon, I will not charge Sir John Davis, although he be a man skilful in strange arts, that he sent spirits abroad; but letters were sent about this matter. The things to be acted were the matters consulted of, and then to design fit persons for every action: and for mutual encouragement there was a list of names drawn by the Earl; and these counsellors out of them were to elect fit persons to every office. The second plot was in taking of the Court, and in this consultation he was penna philosophi-scribentis; you were clerk of that council-table and wrote all: and in the detaining of the Privy Councillors you were the man only trusted. And, as the Earl of Rutland said, you held it a stratagem of war to detain pledges, and was (sic) meant to have carried the Lord Keeper with the Great Seal into London, and to have had with you the Lord Chief Justice, a man for his integrity honoured and well beloved of the citizens. And this Achitophel plot you thought to have followed.

This is all that is reported, and may perhaps have been all that Bacon spoke. For "hereupon," adds the reporter, "Sir John Davis told Mr. Bacon, If with good manners I might, I would long since have interrupted you, and saved you a great part of [your] labour: for my intent is not to deny anything I have said or excuse that I have done, but to confess myself guilty of all, and submit myself wholly to the Queen's mercy. But in that you call me clerk of that council,

1 Sic.

let me tell you that Sir Charles Davers was writing, but his hand being bad, I was desired to take the pen and write. But by-and-by the Earl said he would speed it himself; therefore we being together so long and doing so little, the Earl went to his house and set down all with his own hand, which was formerly set forth, touching the taking and possessing of the Court."

The only one of the prisoners who attempted to contest the charge was Cuffe, whose case, though he had been deeply implicated in the conspiracy, was in one respect different from the others, inasmuch as he had taken no part in the Sunday tumult, but remained all day in Essex House; but all five were found guilty and sentenced to death in the usual form.

3.

By this time the Government were satisfied that they had seen the bottom of the conspiracy. Formidable as it had seemed at first from the number and quality of the persons engaged and the darkness in which it had been conducted, yet being unconnected with any cause of public interest,-having in fact no object at all but to further the personal ambition of one man,-now that this one man was gone there was nothing left to conspire for. It was a great danger escaped; but the escape was complete. Public security did not require the sacrifice of more lives; private influence, Cecil's as well as Bacon's, was used on the side of mercy and with the execution of Essex himself, of Sir Christopher Blount, Sir Charles Davers, Sir Gilly Merick, and Henry Cuffe (who had all been more than followers in the enterprise) the work of the executioner stopped.

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But there was still one thing unprovided for. Popular feeling having run so strongly in favour of Essex, and the public exposition of the case having been so confused and weak, it was still necessary to satisfy the people-the reading, writing, and talking public-that their favourite had received no wrong. The freedom with which he had informed against his associates had indeed incidentally helped the cause of justice by releasing them on their parts from all obligations of secrecy, so far as he was concerned. Blount and Davers were thenceforth at liberty to reveal what they knew and being brave men who had given up all hope of life and did not mean either to deny what they had done or to justify it, they appear to have spoken out without any reserve. If any man still doubted whether treason had been committed, the additional facts now by them disclosed removed that doubt; and showed besides that the treason was of longer

1 State Trials, i. 1438. Ed. 1816.

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standing, of wider reach, of more dangerous and unscrupulous character, than at the time of the trial it appeared to be. But these disclosures had been made known as yet only by fractions, and mostly through the mouth of Coke, which was not the best medium of communication where the object was to conciliate opponents or to satisfy dissentients. They had not yet been put together so as to be seen in their true relation to each other and to the entire case. For the information and satisfaction of the public therefore, a clear, readable, and authentic narrative of the whole proceeding from the beginning to the end was still wanted; and the Queen resolved to have one put forth. Who was the fittest man to draw it up, if she had read any account of the trial, she could have little doubt; and on the 16th of March, Coke "delivered to Mr. Solicitor twenty-five papers concerning the Earl of Essex treasons, etc., to be delivered to Mr. Francis Bacon for her Majesty's service."l

This service was no doubt the drawing up of the "Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex and his Complices :" concerning Bacon's share in which we know thus much upon his own authority:-that he was commanded by the Queen to write it: that having received particular and minute instructions as to the manner of treatment, he drew it up accordingly; that his draft being then submitted "by the Queen's appointment to certain principal Councillors," was " perused, weighed, censured, altered, and made almost a new writing, according to their Lordships' better consideration:" after which it was "exactly perused by the Queen herself, and some alterations made again by her appointment," both in the manuscript and in the first-printed copy.

What the particular alterations were, or how far Bacon in his private judgment approved of them, we have no means of knowing, no part of the original draft being in existence. But in an official declaration which was to be put forth in the Queen's name and by her authority, it was fit that the Queen herself with the advice of her Council should both prescribe the form and superintend the execution. Even if Bacon had seriously disapproved of the proposed alterations, their right to make what alterations they thought proper in a document for which not he but they were responsible was too clear and obvious to be questioned. He might advise, warn, expostulate; but it would have been merely ridiculous to insist. Fortunately however differences of this serious kind do not appear to have arisen. The effect of the alterations prescribed by the Queen was apparently to impart to the composition a somewhat harder and 1 Memorandum, written in Coke's hand on the cover of a letter addressed to the Right Worshipful the Attorney-General. S. P. O.

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