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this occasion seems exactly consistent with her actions throughout her reign, and with her treatment of the Earl in particular. Though her personal feelings might occasionally predominate, they were only transient. In the end, the Queen universally rose above the woman, as in Mary she invariably sank below. In Elizabeth the responsibility of a great ruler predominated over her weaker inclinations. To use her own language on another occasion, she could in her own nature dispense with severity as well as any power that liveth,' where error had been committed, 'not out of lack of duty but of circumspection;' but she could not 'allow her kingdom and the lives of her subjects to be dallied with, for God had given her these upon other conditions; and whilst He vouchsafeth to continue us over them we will not be accusable for any thing within our power to perform.' Passer solitarius, as Cecil calls her, and as all great rulers and great thinkers must be, the melancholy observable at the close of her life had more or less taken possession of her long before the fall of Essex. How could it be otherwise? She had a great task before her-formidable enemies on every side-a kingdom of small dimensions, assailed by the Scotch and the Irish nearer home--by the Spaniard, the Pope, and the Jesuit, abroad. In her fearlessness, in her confidence in God and her people, she never fenced herself round with guards or ramparts. The most accessible person in her kingdom, her ears, like her palace, were open to all comers—she trusted her safety and her life to her subjects, reposing implicit confidence in their loyalty. If she reaped ingratitude, where she had shown the greatest indulgence-if in the man the most boastful of devotion to herself and her service she had found treason and disloyalty is it so surprising that the retrospect should sometimes have filled her with melancholy? But that to the very last she maintained her composure, her dignity, her strength of mind and sense of duty unimpaired, is clear from her interview with Sir W. Browne, to which we have already referred, and with Scaramelli, the Venetian envoy, only one short month before she died-and no idle impure gossip of Spanish malignants or of other traducers of her memory can impair this evidence. If she exacted from those who served her the strict fulfilment of their obligations, if she was less tolerant to those who failed to make good what they had undertaken to perform, she set them an example in her own person of rigorous attention to the duties of her station. No melancholy, no plea of indisposition, no infirmities of advancing age were sufficient to withdraw her from the burdens of royalty, or could tempt her to sacrifice them to personal ease and convenience. To the last she

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sat at the Council table; to the last she was ready to receive every foreign ambassador who visited these shores. To the last she maintained the dignity, the splendour, and the majesty of royalty; strong in the loftiness of her resolution, victorious over weakness and infirmity; a Queen to the end, associating monarchy in the minds of her subjects with national greatness, magnanimity, and vigour, which no faults of her own, no failings of succeeding ages could diminish or extinguish.

We have come to the closing scenes of her reign, and to that event in it with which the name of Sir Robert Cecil has been often intermingled, and his love of intrigue is supposed to have had full scope for its development. Whatever judgment men may be inclined to pass on his secret correspondence with the Scotch King, his own statement cannot be questioned, that nothing tended more than the course he adopted 'to quiet the expectation of a successor,' and save the nation from the disturbances incidental to a disputed succession. It secured the failing years of Elizabeth from numerous mortifications; for among so many claimants, the declaration of a successor involved greater inconveniences than is sometimes imagined. It removed needless jealousies between the Queen and her successor, fomented by the interested adherents of both. It prevented James from entering upon foolish intrigues to secure his right, which might have plunged him into insuperable difficulties at the outset of his reign. If Sir Robert in thus consulting the truest interest of the nation, advanced his own; if he employed the opportunity thus offered him in repressing the designs of Cobham and Raleigh, it must be remembered that the first advances did not proceed from himself, but from James. Never once did he imagine a thought which could amount to a grain of error towards' his Sovereign, or vary from his duty and affection. With one single exception, no allusion to Raleigh is found in Cecil's portion of the correspondence; for he cannot, in justice, be held accountable for the contemptuous expressions in the letters of Lord Henry Howard.* Of Raleigh it is hard to speak with justice and moderation; and his unhappy end makes the task still harder. Sailor, poet, historian, statesman-qualified to

Cecil's own correspondence with James was first published by Mr. Bruce from the originals at Hatfield. But Sir David Dalrymple published in 1766 a small volume which he was pleased to entitle, The Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI. of Scotland,' though not a single letter from Cecil appears in the whole collection. Sir David states in his preface: 'By what arts it was that Cecil established himself in the favour of King James, and at the same time supplanted his rivals, will appear from the perusal of the following sheets. This was not Sir David's only offence against accuracy. He was guilty of one more gross and unpardonable still in his Memorials for that reign.

shine alike in the arts of peace and in the perils of war-to a spirit of adventure he added a tinge of romance, a fervour of imagination, a passionate valour which no dangers could daunt, no disasters extinguish. The charm of his conversation was acknowledged by all, from the highest to the lowest; by Elizabeth, who took him for a kind of oracle;' by the poet Spenser; by evidence more unexceptionable still. Among the papers at Hatfield there is an invitation addressed to him from the little Lord Cranborne, then quite a child, begging Raleigh to come, for without him they were like soldiers deprived of their General. 'Come, do come,' he says, with the pardonable impertinence of childhood, ' and lay aside your idle occupations.' Yet with all these claims on the love and admiration of his contemporaries, Raleigh had few friends, and of those few his most intimate associate was, of all men, the Lord Cobham. His quarrel with Essex, which terminated in such bitter and implacable hatred, is well known. His friendship with Cobham ended in mutual recriminations equally bitter. He was not always scrupulous in the means he employed for enriching himself, and securing his own advancement; and thus he alienated friends and created enemies. Conscious that, in consequence of his hostility to Essex, he was in ill odour with James, believing that James would espouse the dislikes and the friendships of Essex, Raleigh was anxious to secure himself against the change which must inevitably follow on the death of the Queen. To regain his credit with her, he complained that he was abandoned and his faithful services were left unrewarded.* To fathom the designs of Cecil and obtain some avowal of his intentions, which might turn to his own advantage as occasion served, Raleigh boasted that he would never consent to James's accession. Such professions, intended for the ears of Elizabeth, were not wholly disinterested; were, in fact, to be interpreted in an opposite sense to King James. But whatever secret intrigues Raleigh and Cobham engaged in were revealed by James to his new ally. Cecil shunned rather than courted such expressions of confidence. 'I would,' he writes to the King, most humbly crave it of your Majesty that I might rather be left to mine own discoveries of their greatest secrets, than to receive any light from you of their deepest

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*See his letter to Elizabeth in Edwards's 'Life of Raleigh,' ii. 258, from the Hatfield MSS. In this letter he evidently glances at Cecil as one of those seeming great friends,' from whose supposed amity he reaped only ‘lean effects.” He afterwards confessed that he had acted ungratefully, and failed both in friendship and in judgment. . . . I must never forget what I find was in your Lordship's desire, what in your will, what in your words and works, so far as could become you as a Councillor, and far beyond all due to me.' (Letter to Cecil, printed by Edwards from the Hatfield MSS., ii. 288.)

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mysteries.' James, in fact, was inclined to be too confidential. In the pride of his own wisdom, in the satisfaction he felt on gaining Cecil to his cause, he was beginning to be fussy and officious, little aware what eager, watchful eyes were fixed upon him, ready to take advantage of the least incautiousness, and carry their revelations to the Queen.

Sir Robert wisely kept his own counsel, 'dropping a stone,' to use his own phrase, 'into the mouths of these gaping crabs,' who thought to betray him into a less reserved communication of his confidence by exaggerated professions of love and loyalty. He quietly reminded them that James had often asserted, it was not possible for any one to be a loyal subject to Elizabeth who paid court to himself; and when the season for action was come it would be time enough to declare his intentions.

He was amply rewarded for his peril and anxiety on the accession of James. Elizabeth was parsimonious in her distribution of rewards, and, notwithstanding his arduous services, conferred no distinctions on Cecil. In the reign of James honours fell rapidly upon him. He was created Baron of Essingdon in May 1603; Viscount Cranborne, 20th of August, 1604; Earl of Salisbury, 4th of May, 1605; was Lord Treasurer and Secretary in 1608. Meanwhile Raleigh disappointed in his expectations, coldly received by James, as his wife was by Queen Ann-forgetful of the fate of Essex, if not actually following in his footsteps-was so far compromised in Cobham's proceedings as justly to fall under suspicion. He was still on the most intimate footing with Cobham, at that time making great efforts to leave England for Brussels, the great focus of intrigue for the Jesuits and their English adherents. Again and again. he had importuned Cecil without success. In the meantime the Government had obtained intelligence of a plot called 'The Bye Plot,' probably from some of those who were engaged in it; -for in these plots the Roman Catholics proved false to each other—and in the examination of the prisoners the Council came upon traces of another conspiracy in which Cobham and Raleigh were implicated. Raleigh was brought before them, and after his examination was concluded, he wrote to Cecil, accusing his former friend Cobham of carrying on treasonable communications with Aremberg, the ambassador from the Archduke. seems to us that in thus accusing his friend-an act by no means creditable to Raleigh-he imagined that Cobham had betrayed him. He was not aware that it was not Cobham, but his brother, George Brooke, who had played the traitor. To save himself or to obtain his brother's estate Brooke had accused Vol. 141.-No. 281.

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his associates to Cecil.* He made a merit of his discovery, urging Cecil to move the King for grace, and asserting that Cecil knew what he had done to redeem his offences.† Stung by the infidelity and ingratitude of Raleigh, Cobham recriminated. When he was shown the accusation under Raleigh's hand, Oh traitor! oh villain!' he exclaimed ; and then added, that he had only entered on these courses at Raleigh's instigation, who would never let him alone.

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An attempt has been made to get rid of this charge against Raleigh by assuming that Cobham, who varied in his statements, was such an impudent liar,' that his word could not be trusted. At the same time it must be remembered that Cobham and Raleigh had lived for many years upon the most intimate terms; and if the maxim noscitur a sociis be of any value, this is not a very satisfactory mode of exculpating Raleigh at Cobham's expense. The variations in his story were probably the effect of mortal terror. Moreover, Raleigh admitted his knowledge of Cobham's designs: 'Lost I am,' he says, in his letter to James, 'for hearing a vain man; for hearing only, but never believing or accepting.' Evidently, then, he had listened, on his own admission, to Cobham's suggestions. But though he had been so extremely intimate with Cobham, he never remonstrated with him for harbouring such dangerous designs; and if Cobham's account cannot be accepted, neither can we place implicit confidence in Raleigh's,' as Mr. Gardiner observes. We gladly conclude our remarks on this subject with the words of the same candid and able historian: Whatever may be the truth on this difficult subject, there is no reason to doubt that Cecil at least acted in perfect good faith.' §

We would gladly have found space for a few observations on the character of James I., whose councils for the first few years of his reign were directed by Cecil. More familiar and sociable, James was cast in a weaker mould than Elizabeth, and loved ease and hunting better than business. Coming from Scotland with exaggerated notions of the wealth of England, haunted by hungry followers who expected to be rewarded, he, like they, looked upon this kingdom as the Promised Land, of which the milk and honey were inexhaustible. He had the good sense to see that he could not remove from their

This is tolerably certain. Brooke and Gray had already confessed the plot before the 16th July. Raleigh was committed to the Tower the day after, and Cobham about the same time.

† Brooke to Cecil, 22nd July, among the Hatfield Papers.

21st January, 1603-4. Printed by Edwards from the Hatfield Collection.

§ History of England, i. 87.

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