Kitabı oku: «Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth», sayfa 44

CHAPTER XXIV

FROM 1593 TO 1597

A parliament.—Haughty language of the queen.—Committal of Wentworth and other members—of Morice.—His letter to lord Burleigh.—Act to retain subjects in their due obedience.—Debates on the subsidy.—Free speeches of Francis Bacon and sir E. Hobby.—Queen's speech.—Notice of Francis Bacon—of Anthony Bacon.—Connexion of the two Bacons with Essex.—Francis disappointed of preferment.—Conduct of Burleigh towards him.—Of Fulk Greville.—Reflections.—Conversion of Henry IV.—Behaviour of Elizabeth.—War in Bretagne.—Anecdote of the queen and sir C. Blount.—Affair of Dr. Lopez.—Squire's attempt on the life of the queen.—Notice of Ferdinando earl of Derby.—Letter of the queen to lord Willoughby.—Particulars of sir Walter Raleigh.—His expedition to Guiana.—Unfortunate enterprise of Drake and Hawkins.—Death of Hawkins.—Death and character of Drake.—Letters of Rowland Whyte.—Case of the earl of Hertford.—Anecdote of Essex.—Queen at the lord keeper's.—Anecdote of the queen and bishop Rudd.—Case of sir T. Arundel.

Notwithstanding all the frugal arts of Elizabeth, the state of her finances compelled her in the spring of 1593 to summon a parliament. It was four entire years since this assembly had last met: but her majesty took care to let the commons know, that the causes of offence which had then occurred were still fresh in her memory, and that her resolution to preserve her own prerogative in its rigor, and the ecclesiastical commission in all its terrors, was still inflexible.

It even appeared, that an apprehension lest her present necessities might embolden the parliament to treat her despotic mandates with a deference less profound than formerly, irritated her temper, and prompted her to assume a more haughty and menacing style than her habitual study of popularity had hitherto permitted her to employ. In answer to the three customary requests made by the speaker, for liberty of speech, freedom from arrests, and access to her person, she replied by her lord keeper, That such liberty of speech as the commons were justly entitled to,—liberty, namely, of aye and no,—she was willing to grant; but by no means a liberty for every one to speak what he listed. And if any idle heads should be found careless enough of their own safety to attempt innovations in the state, or reforms in the church, she laid her injunctions on the speaker to refuse the bills offered for such purposes till they should have been examined by those who were better qualified to judge of these matters. She promised that she would not impeach the liberty of their persons, provided they did not permit themselves to imagine that any neglect of duty would be allowed to pass unpunished under shelter of this privilege; and she engaged not to deny them access to her person on weighty affairs, and at convenient seasons, when she should have leisure from other important business of state.

But threats alone were not found sufficient to restrain all attempts on the part of the commons to exercise their known rights and fulfil their duty to the country. Peter Wentworth, a member whose courageous and independent spirit had already drawn upon him repeated manifestations of royal displeasure, presented to the lord keeper a petition, praying that the upper house would join with the lower in a supplication to the queen for fixing the succession. Elizabeth, enraged at the bare mention of a subject so offensive to her, instantly committed to the Fleet prison Wentworth, sir Thomas Bromley who had seconded him, and two other members to whom he had imparted the business; and when the house was preparing to petition her for their release, some privy-councillors dissuaded the step, as one which could only prove injurious to these gentlemen by giving additional offence to her majesty.

Soon after, James Morice, an eminent lawyer, who was attorney of the court of Wards and chancellor of the Duchy, made a motion for redress of the abuses in the bishops' courts, and especially of the monstrous ones committed under the High Commission. Several members supported the motion: but the queen, sending in wrath for the speaker, required him to deliver up to her the bill; reminded him of her strict injunctions at the opening of the sessions, and testified her extreme indignation and surprise at the boldness of the commons in intermeddling with subjects which she had expressly forbidden them to discuss. She informed him, that it lay in her power to summon parliaments and to dismiss them; and to sanction or to reject any determination of theirs; that she had at present called them together for the twofold purpose, of enacting further laws for the maintenance of religious conformity, and of providing for the national defence against Spain; and that these ought therefore to be the objects of their deliberations.

As for Morice, he was seized by a serjeant at arms in the house itself, stripped of his offices, rendered incapable of practising as a lawyer, and committed to prison, whence he soon after addressed to Burleigh the following high-minded appeal:

"Right honorable my very good lord;

"That I am no more hardly handled, I impute next unto God to your honorable good will and favor; for although I am assured that the cause I took in hand is good and honest, yet I believe that, besides your lordship and that honorable person your son, I have never an honorable friend. But no matter; for the best causes seldom find the most friends, especially having many, and those mighty, enemies.

"I see no cause in my conscience to repent me of that I have done, nor to be dismayed, although grieved, by this my restraint of liberty; for I stand for the maintenance of the honor of God and of my prince, and for the preservation of public justice and the liberties of my country against wrong and oppression; being well content, at her majesty's good pleasure and commandment, (whom I beseech God long to preserve in all princely felicity,) to suffer and abide much more. But I had thought that the judges ecclesiastical, being charged in the great council of the realm to be dishonorers of God and of her majesty, perverters of law and public justice, and wrong-doers unto the liberties and freedoms of all her majesty's subjects, by their extorted oaths, wrongful imprisonments, lawless subscription, and unjust absolutions, would rather have sought means to be cleared of this weighty accusation, than to shrowd themselves under the suppressing of the complaint and shadow of mine imprisonment.

"There is fault found with me that I, as a private person, preferred not my complaint to her majesty. Surely, my lord, your wisdom can conceive what a proper piece of work I had then made of that: The worst prison had been I think too good for me, since now (sustaining the person of a public counsellor of the realm speaking for her majesty's prerogatives, which by oath I am bound to assist and maintain) I cannot escape displeasure and restraint of liberty. Another fault, or error, is objected; in that I preferred these causes before the matters delivered from her majesty were determined. My good lord, to have stayed so long, I verily think, had been to come too late. Bills of assize of bread, shipping of fish, pleadings, and such like, may be offered and received into the house, and no offence to her majesty's royal commandment (being but as the tything of mint); but the great causes of the law and public justice may not be touched without offence. Well, my good lord, be it so; yet I hope her majesty and you of her honorable privy-council will at length thoroughly consider of these things, lest, as heretofore we prayed, From the tyranny of the bishop of Rome, good Lord deliver us, we be compelled to say, From the tyranny of the clergy of England, good Lord deliver us.

"Pardon my plain speech, I humbly beseech your honor, for it proceedeth from an upright heart and sound conscience, although in a weak and sickly body: and by God's grace, while life doth last, which I hope now, after so many cracks and crazes, will not be long, I will not be ashamed in good and lawful sort to strive for the freedom of conscience, public justice, and the liberty of my country. And you, my good lord, to whose hand the stern of this commonwealth is chiefly committed, I humbly beseech, (as I doubt not but you do,) graciously respect both me and the causes I have preferred, and be a mean to pacify and appease her majesty's displeasure conceived against me her poor, yet faithful, servant and subject." &c.¹¹³ In October following, the earl of Essex ventured to mention to her majesty this persecuted patriot amongst lawyers qualified for the post of attorney-general, when "her majesty acknowledged his gifts, but said his speaking against her in such manner as he had done, should be a bar against any preferment at her hands." He is said to have been kept for some years a prisoner in Tilbury castle; and whether he ever recovered his liberty may seem doubtful, since he died in February 1596, aged 48.

The house of commons, unacquainted as yet with its own strength, submitted without further question to regard as law the will of an imperious mistress, and passed with little opposition "An act to retain her majesty's subjects in their due obedience," which vied in cruelty with the noted Six Articles of her tyrannical father.

By this law, any person above sixteen who should refuse during a month to attend the established worship was to be imprisoned; when, should he further persist in his refusal during three months longer, he must abjure the realm; but in case of his rejecting this alternative, or returning from banishment, his offence was declared felony without benefit of clergy.

The business of supplies was next taken into consideration, and the commons voted two subsidies and four fifteenths; but this not appearing to the ministry sufficient for the exigencies of the state, the peers were induced to request a conference with the lower house for the purpose of proposing the augmentation of the grant to four subsidies and six fifteenths. The commons resented at first this interference with their acknowledged privilege of originating all money bills; but dread of the well-known consequences of offending their superiors, prevailed at length over their indignation; and first the conference, then the additional supply, was acceded to. Some debate, however, arose on the time to be allowed for the payment of so heavy an imposition; and the illustrious Francis Bacon, then member for Middlesex, enlarged upon the distresses of the people, and the danger lest the house, by this grant, should be establishing a precedent against themselves and their posterity, in a speech to which his courtly kinsman sir Robert Cecil replied with much warmth, and of which her majesty showed a resentful remembrance on his appearing soon after as a candidate for the office of attorney-general. His cousin sir Edward Hobby also, whose speeches in the former parliament had been ill-received by certain great persons, took such a part in some of the questions now at issue between the crown and the commons, as procured him an imprisonment till the end of the sessions, when he was at length liberated; "but not," as Anthony Bacon wrote to his mother, "without a notable public disgrace laid upon him by her majesty's royal censure delivered amongst other things, by herself, after my lord keeper's speech¹¹⁴."

In this parting harangue to her parliament, the queen, little touched by the unprecedented liberality of the supplies which it had granted her, and the passing of her favorite bill against the schismatics and recusants, animadverted in severe terms on the oppositionists, reiterated the lofty claims with which she had opened the sessions, and pronounced an eulogium on the justice and moderation of her own government. She also entered into the grounds of her quarrel with the king of Spain; showed herself undismayed by the apprehension of any thing which his once dreaded power could attempt against her; and characteristically added, in adverting to the defeat of the armada, the following energetic warning: "I am informed, that when he attempted this last invasion, some upon the sea coast forsook their towns, fled up higher into the country, and left all naked and exposed to his entrance.

But I swear unto you by God, if I knew those persons, or may know hereafter, I will make them know what it is to be fearful in so urgent a cause."

The appearance of Francis Bacon in the house of commons affords a fit occasion of tracing the previous history of this wonderful man, and of explaining his peculiar situation between the two great factions of the court and the influence exerted by this circumstance on his character and after fortunes. That early promise of his genius which in childhood attracted the admiring observation of Elizabeth herself, had been confirmed by every succeeding year. In the thirteenth of his age, an earlier period than was even then customary, he was entered, together with his elder brother Anthony, of Trinity college Cambridge. At this seat of learning he remained three years, during which, besides exhibiting his powers of memory and application by great proficiency in the ordinary studies of the place, he evinced the extraordinary precocity of his penetrating and original intellect, by forming the first sketch of a new system of philosophy in opposition to that of Aristotle.

His father, designing him for public life, now sent him to complete his education in the house of sir Amias Paulet, the queen's ambassador in France. He gained the confidence of this able and honorable man to such a degree, as to be intrusted by him with a mission to her majesty requiring secrecy and dispatch, of which he acquitted himself with great applause. Returning to France, he engaged in several excursions through its different provinces, and diligently occupied himself in the collection of facts and observations, which he afterwards threw together in a "Brief View of the State of Europe;" a work, however juvenile, which is said to exhibit much both of the peculiar spirit and of the method of its illustrious author. But the death of his father, in 1580, put an end to his travels, and cast a melancholy blight upon his opening prospects.

For Anthony Bacon, the eldest of his sons by his second marriage, the lord keeper had handsomely provided by the gift of his manor of Gorhambury, and he had amassed a considerable sum with which he was about to purchase another estate for the portion of the younger, when death interrupted his design; and only one-fifth of this money falling to Francis under the provisions of his father's will, he unexpectedly found himself compelled to resort to the practice of some gainful profession for his support. That of the law naturally engaged his preference. He entered himself of Gray's Inn, and passed within its precincts several studious years, during which he made himself master of the general principles of jurisprudence, as well as of the rules of legal practice in his own country; and he also found leisure to trace the outlines of his new philosophy in a work not now known to exist in a separate state, but incorporated probably in one of his more finished productions. In 1588 her majesty, desirous perhaps of encouraging a more entire devotion of his talents to the study of the law, distinguished him by the title of her Counsel extraordinary,—an office of little emolument, though valuable as an introduction to practice. But the genius of Bacon disdained to plod in the trammels of a laborious profession; he felt that it was given him for higher and larger purposes: yet perceiving, at the same time, that the narrowness of his circumstances would prove an insuperable bar to his ambition of becoming, as he once beautifully expressed it, "the servant of posterity," he thus, in 1591, solicited the patronage of his uncle lord Burleigh: "Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful; yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get: Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries, the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or, if one take it favorably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than a man's own; which is the thing I do greatly affect."

Burleigh was no philosopher, though a lover of learning, and it could not perhaps be expected that he should at once perceive how eminently worthy was this laborer of the hire which he was reduced to solicit. He contented himself therefore with procuring for his kinsman the reversion of the place of register of the Star-chamber, worth about sixteen hundred pounds per annum. Of this office however, which might amply have satisfied the wants of a student, it was unfortunately near twenty years before Bacon obtained possession; and during this tedious time of expectation, he was wont to say, "that it was like another man's ground abutting upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn." He made however a grateful return to the lord treasurer for this instance of patronage, by composing an answer to a popish libel, entitled "A Declaration of the true Causes of the late Troubles," in which he warmly vindicated the conduct of this minister, of his own father, and of other members of the administration; not forgetting to make a high eulogium on the talents and dispositions of Robert Cecil,—now the most powerful instrument at court to serve or to injure. Unhappily for the fortunes of Bacon, and in some respects for his moral character also, this selfish and perfidious statesman was endowed with sufficient reach of intellect to form some estimate of the transcendent abilities of his kinsman; and struck with dread or envy, he seems to have formed a systematic design of impeding by every art his favor and advancement. Unmoved by the eloquent adulation with which Bacon sought to propitiate his regard, he took all occasions to represent him to the queen, and with some degree of justice though more of malice, as a man of too speculative a turn to apply in earnest to the practical details of business; one moreover whose head was so filled with abstract and philosophical notions, that he would not fail to perplex any public affairs in which he might be permitted to take a lead. The effect of these suggestions on the mind of Elizabeth was greatly aggravated by the conduct of Bacon in the parliament of 1593, in consequence of which her majesty for a considerable time denied him that access to her person with which he had hitherto been freely and graciously indulged.

Some years before this period, Francis Bacon had become known to the earl of Essex, whose genuine love of merit induced him to offer him his friendship and protection. The eagerness with which these were accepted had deeply offended the Cecils; and their displeasure was about this time increased, on seeing Anthony Bacon, by his brother's persuasion, enlist himself under the banner of the same political leader.

Anthony, whose singular history is on many accounts worthy of notice, was a man of an inquisitive and crafty turn of mind, and seemingly born for a politician. He, like his brother, had been induced to pay a visit to France, as the completion of a liberal education; and not finding himself involved in the same pecuniary difficulties, he had been enabled to make his abode in that country of much longer duration. From Paris, which he first visited in 1579, he proceeded to Bourges, Geneva, Montpelier, Marseilles, Montauban and Bordeaux, in each of which cities he resided for a considerable length of time. At the latter place he rendered some services to the protestant inhabitants at great personal hazard. In 1584 he visited Henry IV., then king of Navarre, at Bearn, and in 1586 he contracted at Montauban an intimacy with the celebrated Hugonot leader, du Plessis de Mornay. As Anthony Bacon was invested with no public character, his continued and voluntary abode in a catholic country began at length to excite a suspicion in the mind of his mother, his friends, and the queen herself, that his conduct was influenced by some secret bias towards the Romish faith;—an impression which received confirmation from the intimacies which he cultivated with several English exiles and pensioners of the king of Spain. This idea appears, however, to have been unfounded. It was often by the express, though secret, request of Burleigh that he formed these connexions; and he had frequently supplied this minister with important articles of intelligence procured from such persons, with whom it was by no means unusual to perform the office of spy to England and to Spain alternately, or even to both at the same time. At length, the urgency of his friends and the clamors of his mother, whose protestant zeal, setting a sharper edge on a temper naturally keen, prompted her to employ expressions of great violence, compelled him, after many delays, to quit the continent; and in the beginning of 1592 he returned to his native country. His miserable state of health, from the gout and other disorders which rendered him a cripple for life, prevented his encountering the fatigues of the usual court attendance: yet he lost no time in procuring a seat in parliament; and his close connexion with the Cecils, joined to the opinion entertained of his political talents, seems to have excited a general expectation of his rising to high importance in the state. But he was not long in discovering, that for some unknown reason the lord treasurer was little his friend; and offended at the coolness with which his secret intelligence from numerous foreign correspondents was received by this minister and his son, in their joint capacity of secretaries of state, he was easily prevailed upon to address himself to Essex.

The earl had by this time learned, that there was no surer mode of recommending himself to her majesty, and persuading her of his extraordinary zeal for her service, than to provide her with a constant supply of authentic and early intelligence from the various countries of Europe, on which she kept a vigilant and jealous eye. He was accordingly occupied in establishing news-agents in every quarter, and the opportune offers of Anthony Bacon were accepted by him with the utmost eagerness. A connexion was immediately established between them, which ripened with time into so confidential an intimacy, that in 1595 the earl prevailed on Mr. Bacon to accept of apartments in Essex-house, which he continued to occupy till commanded by her majesty to quit them on the breaking out of the last rash enterprise of his patron.

Struck with the boundless affection manifested by Anthony towards his brother, with whom he had established an entire community of interests, Essex now espoused with more warmth than ever the cause of Francis. He strained every nerve to gain for him, in 1592, the situation of attorney-general: but Burleigh opposed the appointment; Robert Cecil openly expressed to the earl his surprise that he should seek to procure it for "a raw youth;" and her majesty declared that, after the manner in which Francis Bacon had stood up against her in parliament, admission to her presence was the only favor to which he ought to aspire. She added, that in her father's time such conduct would have been sufficient to banish a man the court for life. Lowering his tone, Essex afterwards sought for his friend the office of solicitor-general; but the same prejudices and antipathies still thwarted him: and finding all his efforts vain to establish him in any public station of honor or emolument, he nobly compensated his disappointment and relieved his necessities by the gift of an estate.

The spirit of Bacon was neither a courageous nor a lofty one. He too soon repented of his generous exertions in the popular cause, and sought to atone for them by so entire a submission of himself to her majesty, accompanied with such eloquent professions of duty, humility and profound respect, that we can scarcely doubt that a word of solicitation from the lips of Burleigh might have gained him an easy pardon. It is painful to think that any party jealousies, or any compliance with the malignant passions of his son, should so have poisoned the naturally friendly and benevolent disposition of this aged minister, that he could bear to withhold the offices of kindness from the nephew of his late beloved wife, and the son of one of his nearest friends and most cordial coadjutors in public life. But according to the maxims of court-factions his desertion of the Bacons might be amply justified;—they had made their election, and it was the patronage of Essex which they preferred. Experience taught them too late, that for their own interests they had chosen wrong. Since the death of Leicester, the Cecils had possessed all the real power at the court of Elizabeth: they and they only could advance their adherents. Essex, it is true, through the influence which he exerted over the imagination or the affections of the queen, could frequently obtain grants to himself of real importance and great pecuniary value. But her majesty's singular caprice of temper rendered her jealous of every mark of favor extorted from the tender weakness of her heart; and she appears to have almost made it a rule to compensate every act of bounty towards himself, by some sensible mortification which she made him suffer in the person of a friend. So little was his patronage the road to advancement, that sir Thomas Smith, clerk of the council, is recorded as the solitary instance of a man preferred out of his household to the service of her majesty; and Bacon himself somewhere says, speaking of the queen, "Against me she is never positive but to my lord of Essex."

Fulk Greville was one of the few who did honor to themselves by becoming at this time the advocate of Francis Bacon with the queen; and his solicitations were heard by her with such apparent complacency, that he wrote to Bacon, that he would wager two to one on his chance of becoming attorney, or at least solicitor-general. But Essex was to be mortified, and the influence of this generous Mæcenas was exerted finally in vain. To his unfortunate choice of a patron then, joined to the indiscreet zeal with which that patron pleaded his cause "in season and out of season," we are to ascribe in part the neglect experienced by Bacon during the reign of Elizabeth. But other causes concurred, which it may be interesting to trace, and which it would be injustice both to the queen and to Burleigh to pass over in silence.

At the period when Bacon first appealed to the friendship of the lord treasurer in the letter above cited, he was already in the thirtieth year of his age, and had borne for two years the character of queen's counsel extraordinary; but to the courts of law he was so entire a stranger that it was not till one or two years afterwards that we find him pleading his first cause. It was pretty evident therefore in 1592, when he sought the office of attorney-general, that necessity alone had made it the object of his wishes; and his known inexperience in the practice of the law might reasonably justify in the queen and her ministers some scruple of placing him in so responsible a post. As a philosopher indeed, no encouragement could exceed his deserts; but this was a character which very few even of the learned of that day were capable of appretiating. Physical science, disgraced by its alliance with the "blind experiments" of alchemy and the deluding dreams of judicial astrology, was in possession of few titles to the respect of mankind; and its professors,—credulous enthusiasts, for the most part, or designing impostors,—usually ended by bringing shame and loss on such persons as greedy hopes or vain curiosity bribed to become their patrons.

That general "Instauration" of the sciences which the mighty genius of Bacon had projected, was a scheme too vast and too profound to be comprehended by the minds of Elizabeth and her statesmen; and as it was not of a nature to address itself to their passions and interests, we must not wonder if they should have regarded it with indifference. At this period, too, it existed only in embryo; and so little was the public intellect prepared to seize the first hints thrown out by its illustrious author, that even many years afterwards, when his system had been produced to the world nearly in a state of maturity, the general sentiment seems pretty much to have corresponded with the judgement of king James, "that the philosophy of Bacon was like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding."

All these considerations, however, are scarcely sufficient to vindicate the boasted discernment of Elizabeth from disgrace, in having suffered the most illustrious sage of her reign and country, who was at the same time its brightest wit and most accomplished orator, known to her from his birth, and the son of a wise and faithful servant whose memory she held in honor,—to languish in poverty and discouragement;

useless to herself and to the public affairs, and a burthen to his own thoughts.

The king of France found it expedient about this time to declare himself a convert to the church of Rome. For this change of religion, whether sincere or otherwise, he might plead, not only the personal motive of gaining possession of the throne of his inheritance, which seemed to be denied to him on other terms, but the patriotic one of rescuing his exhausted country from the miseries of a protracted civil war; and whatever might be the decision of a scrupulous moralist on the case, it is certain that Elizabeth at least had small title to reprobate a compliance of which, under the reign of her sister, she had herself set the example. But the character of the protestant heroine with which circumstances had invested her, obliged her to overlook this inconsistency; and as demonstrations cost her little, she not only indicted on the occasion a solemn letter of reproof to her ally, but actually professed herself so deeply wounded by his dereliction of principle, that it was necessary for her to tranquillize her mind by the perusal of many pious works, and the study of Boethius on consolation, which she even undertook the task of translating. Essex, whom she honored with a sight of her performance, was adroit enough to suggest to the royal author, as a principal motive of his urgency with her to restore Francis Bacon to her favor, the earnest desire which he felt that her majesty's excellent translations should be viewed by those most capable of appretiating their merits.