Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/563

] which his father and ancestors have taken with us, and which, peradventure, shall be observed by those that come to live after him. And as for you, although I perceive that you have read many books to fortify your arguments in this case, yet I am apt to believe that you have not lighted upon that chapter which prescribes the forms to be observed between kings and princes. But were it not for the place you hold, to have so public an imputation thrown upon our justice, which has never yet failed, we would answer this audacity of yours in another style; and for the particulars of your negotiations, we will appoint some of our council to confer with you, to see upon what grounds this clamour of yours has its foundations, who have shown yourself rather a herald than an ambassador." "And thus," says Speed, "lion-like rising, she daunted the malapert orator no less with her stately port and majestical departure than with the hastiness of her princely check; and, turning to her Court, esclaimed, "God's death, my lords! I have this day been enforced to scour up my old Latin, that hath lain long rusting."

Amongst the plots and pretended plots which still disturbed the reign of Elizabeth, there was a strange one reported this year. A soldier of the name of Squires, who had been out with Essex at Tercera, was accused by one Stanley of the most extraordinary design to poison the queen by anointing the pommel of her saddle with so active and deadly a liquid, that on her laying her hand on the pommel, and afterwards putting her hand to her mouth or nose, it would instantly destroy her. It must have been something as instantaneous as the Prussia acid of the present day. Leicester was to have been put an end to in the same way by anointing his chair. The poison was declared to have been enclosed in a double bladder, and was to be pricked with a pin. Squires protested his ignorance of the whole affair; but after having been racked for five hours, he confessed that he had rubbed some of this poison on the queen's saddle, and that he had been engaged to do it by one Walpole, a Jesuit, at Seville, who furnished him with the poison. The counsel who stated this ridiculous story on the trial, was, or pretended to be, so much affected that he burst into tears and was obliged to sit down. The next who rose declared that the miracle of the queen's escape was as striking as that of St. Paul, when he shook the viper from his fingers into the fire. Squires was convicted, and executed as a traitor, declaring on the scaffold as he had done on his defence that the whole story was a fiction, and that the rack could have made him confess anything they pleased. Stanley also, on being put on the rack, declared that he himself had been sent by Christopher de Mora to shoot the queen.

Not even James of Scotland could remain free from charges of conspiracy against Elizabeth. Ever since the death of his mother he had continued to trim betwixt the Papists and the Protestants; betwixt Elizabeth, his own subjects, and Philip, as well as he could. To the Pope he professed to be studying the grounds of the Roman Catholic religion; to Philip, to be ready to join any efficient movement for revenge on Elizabeth; to Elizabeth, to be her admirer and humble servant. All sides, by their spies, were well aware of his professions to the others, and all equally despised him. The Highland chiefs, at the head of whom were the Earls of Huntly, Angus, and Errol, were constantly plotting with the Pope and Philip, through the Jesuits Gordon, Tyrie, and Creighton; and Elizabeth called on James to punish them: but James knew that if he put down the Popish party in Scotland, he should have a poor life of it with Elizabeth and his Presbyterian subjects who would unite against him. At length, in the present year, Elizabeth got hold of one Valentine Thomas, who confessed that he was hired by James to murder the queen. The discovery, or pretended discovery, excited vast horror in England. An indictment was preferred against Thomas, and a true bill found by the grand jury. Elizabeth now sent a statement of these facts to James, at the same time declaring that she did not believe him capable of so atrocious a crime. James at first treated the charge with silent contempt; but eventually, to prevent it being received as a fact, and operate against his succession to the English throne, he demanded that an attestation of the falsehood of the charge, as admitted by the queen, should be sent him under the great seal. A document of the kind was forwarded; but it read so like a pardon for the crime rather than a denial of it, that James returned it, much to Elizabeth's disgust. The man was never brought to trial, but was retained in prison, as if ready at any time, should James prove too independent, to be brought forward; and James, finding him still in prison on his accession to the English throne, took care to execute him.

Ireland, in almost every age of our history a misery to the country which had it, but did not know how to rule it, was now at such a pitch of confusion that the English Government was at its wit's end about it, and no one liked to undertake its vice-royalty. It was come to such a pass that it was even worse than when Walsingham wished it four-and-twenty hours under water. The Lord Gray, though eulogised by Spenser, had left it with the character of a cruel and rapacious tyrant. Sir John Perrot, reputed to be an illegitimate brother of Elizabeth, succeeded him, and dispensed justice with a stern hand. He was as ready to punish the English for their excesses as to do justice to the Irish under their wrongs; and the enmity of his own domineering and avaricious countrymen became much more effective than the respect of the natives. In 1581 the clamours and intrigues of his enemies occasioned his recall. At home, however, he suffered himself to speak incautiously of the queen and of Chancellor Hatton, and a secret inquiry was instituted into his late administration of Ireland. All sorts of charges of a treasonable nature were advanced against him by those whose rapacity he had punished during his deputyship—such as favouring the Roman Catholic clergy, plotting with Parma and the Spaniards, and encouraging the insurrections of the O'Ruarcs and the Burkes. They could establish none of these, but they managed to touch him in a still more dangerous quarter. They proved that in his irritation at the obstructions thrown in his way by the Court, he had spoken sometimes freely of the queen and her ministers. Essex, whose sister his son had married, exerted all his influence in his favour; but where Elizabeth's vanity was wounded she was unforgiving. Sir John was condemned to death, and soon after died in the Tower from chagrin at his unjust treatment, or, as was suspected, from poison.

The most formidable Irish chieftain with whom the