Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/520

506 power which would bind James was money. Moral principle he had none; but as money was the all-persuasive argument, they only were sure of him who gave the most. Elizabeth had already a majority of James's council in her pay, and might have had more if she could have calculated on them, but she found them ready to receive her cash and to betray her. She, therefore, sent thither Wotton to study the movements and movers of the Scottish Court, and having made himself acquainted with them, to strengthen her party. A border raid, in which Lord Russell, the son of the Earl of Bedford, had fallen, enabled Wotton to lodge a complaint, and demand that the asserted instigators of it, Arran and Fernihurst, should be given up to him. James did not consent to that, but arrested them both himself. Whilst the able Arran was thus withdrawn from Court, Wotton seized the opportunity to persuade the courtiers in the pay of Elizabeth to seize James and send him to England, or confine him in the castle of Stirling, by which the English faction would possess the chief power. Unfortunately for Wotton, his plot was discovered, and he fled; but he left behind him trusty friends who, inspired by English gold, contrived to work out his schemes. Arran had returned to power on the disappearance of Wotton, but the partisans of Elizabeth opposed him, and others returning across the border with plenty of English money, they mustered in numbers sufficient to surprise James in Stirling, and recover their influence and their estates. Under the circumstances James found it to his interest to conclude a treaty with Elizabeth, the ostensible object of which was to defend Protestantism, the real one—that which both Elizabeth and James had at heart—the firm exclusion of Mary from any hope of liberty, or of receiving any aid from abroad.

To conduct her campaign in the Netherlands, Elizabeth had appointed the Earl of Leicester; for since she had discovered his marriage with the Countess of Essex, she was sufficiently disgusted with him to send him out of her sight. The way in which he conducted himself there was not calculated to increase his reputation for honesty or military talent. No sooner did he arrive, than, without consulting the queen, he induced the States to nominate him governor-general of the United Provinces, with the title of excellency, and with supreme power over the army, the State, and the executive. In fact, his ambition rested with nothing short of being a king: with nothing but possessing all the title and authority enjoyed by the Duke of Anjou. When this news reached Elizabeth, that he had sent for the countess, and was organising a Court fit for a monarch, she flew into a terrible rage, charged him with presumption and vanity, with contempt of her authority, and "swore great oaths that she would have no more Courts under her abeyance than one;" desired him to remember the dust from which she had raised him, and let him know if he were not obedient to her every word, she would beat him to the ground as quickly as she had raised him.

The unfortunate States, who thought they were gratifying the Queen of England when they were honouring her favourite, were confounded at this discovery; but Leicester, as if he really thought that he could render himself independent of his royal patroness, remained lofty, insolent, and silent. Trusting to the position into which he had thus stepped, he left it to the ministers at home to pacify the queen. He had so long ruled her that he appeared to think he could still do as he pleased. The great Burleigh and the cunning Walsingham were at their wits' end to satisfy Elizabeth: the only letter which they got from Leicester being one to Hatton, so insolent and arrogant that they dared not present it till they had remodelled it. Meantime, Elizabeth continued to write to the new captain-general the most bitter reproaches and menaces, and to heap upon his friends fierce epithets which could not reach, or produced no effect on him. With all the airs of a great monarch, Leicester progressed from one city to another, receiving solemn deputations, and giving and receiving grand entertainments.

In the field his conduct was as contemptible as in the Government. He had an accomplished general, Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma, to contend with, and never did a British general present so pitiable a spectacle in a campaign as did Leicester. His great object appeared to be to avoid a battle, and the only conflict which he engaged in, which has left a name, is the attack upon Zutphen, because there fell the gallant and gifted Sir Philip Sidney, in the twenty-fifth year of his age.

As autumn approached, Leicester marched back his forces to the Hague, and was greatly disgusted and astonished to be called to account by what he pleased to name an assembly of shopkeepers and artisans. Not the less loudly, however, did the merchants and shopkeepers of the Netherlands upbraid him with the utter failure of the campaign, with the waste of their money, the violation of their privileges, the ruin of their trade, and the extorting of the people's money in a manner equally arbitrary and irritating. In a fit of ineffable disgust he broke up the assembly: the assembly continued to sit. He next resorted to entreaties and promises; it regarded these as little. He announced his intention to return to England, and in his absence nominated one of his staff to exercise the supreme government. The assembly insisted on his resigning that charge to them; he complied, yet, by a private deed, reserved it to himself; and thus did this proud, empty, inefficient upstart dishonour the queen who had raised him, the country which tolerated him, and which had long impatiently witnessed his arrogance, his lasciviousness, his abuse of the queen's favour, and his murders; and at length, on the approach of winter, obey the call of his sovereign and return home. Scarcely had he quitted the Netherlands, when the officers whom he had left in command surrendered the places of strength to the Prince of Parma, and went over to the Spaniards. The campaign was, from first to last, a scandal and a disgrace to our name and government.

On the arrival of Leicester, the Court and public mind were so engrossed by plots and rumours of plots for the assassination of Elizabeth and the liberation of the Queen of Scots, that his faults were to a great degree forgotten in the necessity for all the queen's friends uniting for the determination of the best course to pursue amid accumulating perplexities. The amount of truth and falsehood, in the assertion of all the schemes afloat in the great conflict which was going on betwixt the Protestant and Roman Catholic parties, it is difficult to determine. There were so many agents on both sides at work, so