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9

THE TWO ADVENTURERS.

a point or two to serve himself. Against this testimony of Francis Bacon, here is Anthony's account of it to Essex, Sept. 12, 1596, who of all men is the best able to prove or disprove the truth of what he (Anthony) alleges.

"On the one side coming over (from France) I found nothing but fair words, which make fools fain, and yet even in these, no offer or hopeful assurance of real kindness, which I thought I might justly expect at the lord treasurer's hands, who had turned my ten years' harvest into his own barn without any halfpenny charge. And on the other side having understood the Earl of Essex's rare virtues and perfections, and the interest he had worthily in my sovereign's favour, together with his special noble kindness to my Germaine brother,* whereby he was no less bound and in deep arrearages to the Earl, than I knew myself to be free and beforehand with my Lord Treasurer; I did extremely long to meet with some opportunity to make the honourable Earl know how much I honoured and esteemed his excellent gifts, and how earnestly I desired to deserve his good opinion and love, and to acknowledge thankfully my brother's debt, presuming always that my Lord Treasurer would not only dislike, but commend and further this my honest desire and purpose."

Here is a reason why the Bacons should throw in their fortunes with Essex. They are what men in all ages, being wealthy and assured, call needy adventurers ; that is, men of large desires and large necessities, with capacities of the noblest kind, seeking power, striving to overthrow the inequalities of fortune, and not too * Nathaniel, query.

LORD AND VASSALS.

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scrupulous how they gain their end, so that they do gain it. They are adventurers as distinguished from patriots. But then as patriotism, like love, is rarely seen dissevered from selfish consideration, or baser motive, rarely, perhaps never; they may be called, if it is preferable, patriots. Anthony at least was a patriot: he had stood by the Protestant cause. So had Francis when it cost him no danger but was gain. There are degrees in patriotism, and without claiming any high merit, the brothers may be styled conventionally patriots.

Many many years after, when Essex is dead, when his friends come into power, when James I. expresses his belief that the Earl was martyred for his cause, then, and not till then, Bacon expresses to Essex's dear friend, powerful at court, that his motive for joining Robert Devereux was patriotism, because he thought "the earl was the fittest person to do good to the state," a very likely and probable reason to impose on an elderly lady, but hardly likely to deceive any more discriminative person. Could the keen and sagacious Bacon, a statesman, a courtier, a lawyer, now in his thirty-third year, really believe that the pampered boy Essex, twenty-five years of age, was more fitted than Burleigh to guide the helm of the state-Burleigh, the wisest minister of his time, whose counsels had brought the land through all her dangers for forty years? Credat Judæus. The two Bacons became the Earl's feudatories, and do him homage and service, and he shall be their liege lord. They have both been disappointed, and found Burleigh's place and pay unprofitable. Francis is without promotion at thirty-one, Anthony without requital even for the money he has spent. Essex

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FRIENDSHIP FOUNDED ON INTEREST.

is favourite. His star is in the ascendant: Raleigh, early in 1592, loses fame. These young politicians know how Leicester's and Hatton's stars went up on the strength of a good person, and they have seen Essex already drive out Raleigh. The Queen is but a woman. Qu'elle est moins folle que les autres; car toutes en tiennant de la folie.* Essex is young; Burleigh is old. The star of the one ascends, the other's light wanes. The veteran statesman has even been heard to complain of her Majesty's treatment of him for the sake of that rash, ill-advised boy. What say the courtiers and the wits about town? They say that Essex, the popular idol, will supplant the testy old Lord Treasurer-that Burleigh is old, and, in the course of nature, will not live long. Young Robert Cecil is no man to wear his father's shoes, and he moreover loves not his cousin, and is jealous of Francis. So the lawyer of thirty-two and the politician of thirty-five, keen diplomatists both, trained in a good school, throw in with Essex. Essex is liberality itself personified. Timon's self is not more bountiful. He needs older heads; then let Francis go into the best market.

Francis did go into the best market. Essex and Francis Bacon became friends; first, lord and feudatory, then client and patron, afterwards intimates. Anthony becomes an inmate of Essex House, a home, no doubt, more comfortable than his poor lodgings in Gray's Inn, and henceforth we must trace the stars of Essex and Francis in conjunction, as they choose their precipitous path up through the heaven of politics, high destiny, and great affairs.

*Standen to Bacon, 1591.

ESSEX'S INTRODUCTION TO THE QUEEN.

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CHAPTER V.

ROBERT DEVEREUX, second Earl of Essex, was the son of Walter Devereux, first Earl, who died in 1576, in the Queen's service in Ireland. Two years after her husband's death his mother married again, to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favourite of the Queen.

Spite of the dark nature imputed to Robert Dudley by his contemporaries, his unpopularity, the charges made against him of poisoning all whom he had an interest or malice to injure, he seems to have been a kind and affectionate husband.

Notwithstanding the boy Robert's natural dislike to his father-in-law, the great Earl stood honestly in place of a father to him. In the year fifteen hundred and eighty-five, being then eighteen years of age, he served his first campaign as general of the horse and field marshal, under Leicester, in the Low Countries. Two years after his general introduced him to his Queen. Whether owing to his early natural grace of manner, unusual generosity of temper, boldness and promptitude, or the Earl's recommendation skilfully tempered, her Majesty at once took him into her favour a fact the more singular that he was neither of

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CAREER OF ROBERT DEVEREUX.

a fine person nor of a handsome face, having only very expressive eyes and small and delicate hands to recommend him. He was a tall, slender lad; eager and energetic; walking with his head forward; ever in a hurry; full of animal spirits; bold and outspoken, carrying alike his loves and his hatred bare upon his forehead. Between him and Elizabeth there was a tinge of kinship, but not such as was likely to benefit him, for Elizabeth hated his mother Lettice Knollys, and so was hardly likely to love her

son.

That his kinship subsequently furthered her love for him there can, however, be little doubt. Finding him bold, ready, and free from guile, a contrast to the courtiers about her, she took him at once into favour and, in 1588, at the great camp at Tilbury, before the assembled armies of England, graced him above his father-in-law, as was ever her way with a new favourite, and made him a knight of the garter. In fifteen hundred and eighty-nine, being bent on adventure, he departed with Drake's expedition to Portugal, équipping several ships at his own charge. Two years after he was commissioned by the Queen to assist Henry IV. of France with four thousand men. Intermediately he had married Frances, the daughter of the great Sir Francis Walsingham, and the widow of Sir Philip Sidney. This marriage, unquestionably, injured his cause with Elizabeth, who expressed herself much incensed with his conduct, at a marriage so much below his station; but he has again received favour, and is now the mould of fashion and of form, the courtiers', soldiers', scholars', eye, tongue, sword; the expectancy and rose of the fair state, &c., and the royal favourite.

In Feb. 1592, Anthony Bacon returned to London, as