BILL FOR MAINTENANCE OF HUSBANDRY. 91 1597. Worcesters, and Northumberlands to dispark their chaces IV. 20. and restore the plough! As well ask Regan for the hundred knights. At once they name a committee of Peers to oppose the two bills; which committee calls to its aid the legal dexterity of Chief Justice Popham and AttorneyGeneral Coke. 21. Though the foreign enemy is at the gate and every true man at his post, Vere in the Low Countries, Raleigh and Montjoy at Plymouth, Essex still sulks and pouts at Wanstead. In vain the Lord Treasurer coaxes him. In vain the Earl's friends remonstrate with him on the wickedness of dividing or distracting his country at such a time. They beg him to put aside his wrongs, if he has any wrongs, until the danger of a fresh invasion from Spain, of a fresh massacre in Ireland, shall have passed away. The Queen declares herself hurt more by this desertion than by his failures when at sea. But nothing moves him until Bacon's patriotic bills come up before the Peers, when he hastens to town, and, receiving the nomination of Earl Marshal, takes his seat in the House of Lords. As he was not named to the hostile committee, he begs that his name may be added to the list. For this committee Coke draws up thirty-one legal objections to Bacon's bills. Thus armed to contest his logic and deny his law, the Peers send Black Rod to request a conference with the Lower House. 22. Aware of these hostile preparations in the other House, the Commons, ere entering into conference, wish 21. Burghley to Essex, Nov. 9, 19, 30, 1597, S. P. O.; Remonstrance with Essex, Nov. 16, 1597, S. P. O.; Howard, Montjoy, and Raleigh to the Council, Nov. 9, 1597, S. P. O.; Hunsdon to Essex, Nov. 1597, S. P. O. 22. Lords' Jour., ii. 217; Statutes 39 Elizabethæ, c. 1 and 2. Nov. Dec. 1598. Jan. 1598. Jan. IV. 22. to have a copy of Coke's thirty-one legal objections to their bills. The Lords refuse to give it. But Bacon will not bend; if the Commons are to meet objections, they must know what these objections are. No copy, no conference! After much debate the Peers consent to give their written answer to the bills when the gentlemen of the Commons shall come up to confer. Feb. Feb. 27. Conference now meets: the burgesses employing Bacon as their champion, the barons employing Coke. After day on day of talk, after many proposals and some amendments, Coke gives way, and the worsted Peers accept the two bills with some slight modifications of title and clause. The bills did not pass, says Lord Campbell. They are in the Statute Book, 39 of Elizabeth, 1 and 2. 66 my 23. No love for enclosures which thin her hamlets of their strength prevents the Queen from receiving most graciously and rewarding most nobly this momentous service to her crown. Bacon knows her well. A law case being referred to some of the judges and counsel, she inquires his mind on the course she is pursuing. "Madam," says he, mind is known: I am against all enclosures, and especially against enclosed justice." Only two weeks after signing her name to his bill for replacing the yeomen on the soil from which they have been driven, she sets her hand to the grant of a third estate. This act of her princely grace confers on Bacon the rectory and church at Cheltenham, together with the chapel at Charlton Kings, in the lovely valley nestling under Cleve and Leckhampton hills; a valley not yet famed for those mineral springs, those shady walks, those pretty spas and gardens, which in the days of 23. Resuscitatio, 40; Patent Rolls, 40 Elizabethæ, Pars iii. 26. FURTHER GRANT FROM THE QUEEN. 1598. Feb. 27. 93 Victoria have transformed Lansdowne and Pittville into IV. 23. suburbs of delight; yet rich in the voluptuous charms of nature, and blessed with a prodigal fertility of corn and fruit, of kine and sheep. The rectory, the chapelry, are noble gifts. With them are granted all the land, houses, meadows, pastures, gardens, rents-all services-all views of frankpledge, courts leet, fines, heriots, mortuaries, and reliefs-all tithes of fruit and grain-all profits, all royalties -save only the usual crown rights reserved on crown lands, with a fee to the Archdeacon of Gloucester, and an obligation to support two priests and two deacons on the payment of a nominal rent of seventy-five pounds a year. CHAPTER V. V. 1. 1598. Sept. THE IRISH PLOT. 1. UNDER the eyes of Blount, Essex parts more and more from the good cause and from those who love it. His horses are not now seen in Gray's Inn Square. The correspondence with Anthony Bacon drops. The barges which float to Essex Stairs bring other company than the Veres and Raleighs, the Cecils, Nottinghams, and Greys. To sup with bold, bad men; to listen when he ought to strike; to waste his manhood on the frail Southwells and Howards, have become the feverish habits of his life. Sir Charles Danvers, Sir Charles and Sir Jocelyn Percy, Sir William Constable, Captain John Lee-all discontented and disloyal Roman Catholicsare now his household and familiar friends. The young apostate Lord Monteagle sits at his board; though merely, it is guessed from what comes after, in the shameful character of Cecil's tool and spy. But in rear of Danvers and Percy, Constable and Lee, wicked and dangerous as these men are, lurks a crowd of ruffians at whose side they seem respectable. Tresham is seen at Essex House. Catesby sits at the Earl's table. All the slums and jails of London stir with a new life. As a Privy Councillor, Essex can send into the prisons and fetch their inmates to his private house. Light breaks into the cells of Bride 1. Lodge's Illustrations, ii. 545; Devereux, i. 475; Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, ii. 70; Vaughan to Cecil, Jan. 29, 1598, S. P. O.; Vaughan to Hesketh, Jan. 29, 1598, S. P. O.; Council Reg., Mar. 16, 1600. well and the Fleet. Sir John Smyth is liberated on bond: Essex himself coming forward as the traitor's friend and surety. Father Thomas Wright, a Jesuit agent, deep in the secrets, high in the confidence, of the two Courts of Rome and Madrid, who has been for many months in trouble, at first confined in Dean Goodman's house, but of late transferred to a common jail, steals after dusk from the Bridewell to Essex House for secret interviews with the Earl and Blount. Nor is this bustle limited to the London taverns and the London jails. The cloughs of Lancashire, the ridges and heaths of Wales, send up to London the most restless of their recusants and priests. Vaughan, the Bishop of Chester, notes a mysterious change in that Papist district, and warns the head of the Government to look for sudden storms. The recusants of his diocese, he says, refuse to pay their usual fines, defy the clergy and magistrates, and talk of the support which they expect from new and powerful friends. When pressed too hard, instead of bowing to the laws as they have been wont to do, they jump to horse and spur away. 2. The gangs of Papist conspirators which now begin to gather into force round the Earl of Essex, propose to themselves not only to escape from fine and imprisonment, but to dethrone the Queen, to restore the faggot to Smithfield and the mass to St. Paul's. They hope to effect this change by a military surprise and a secret understanding with the Pope. Essex tells the Jesuit Father Wright, in their midnight meetings, that he could become a Roman Catholic, were it not that the Roman Catholics have always been against him. Wright assures 2. Examination of Thomas Wright, July 24, 1600, S. P. O.; Abstract of Evidence against the Earl of Essex [July 22, 1600], S. P. O. V. 1. 1598. Sept. |