Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/48

Rh restraint of his position, free, but still under a cloud, was peculiarly galling to a man of Essex's high spirit. Bacon counselled patience, but Bacon at this time was occupying an impossible position between an old friend whom he had just helped to prosecute and the Queen who suspected everybody in the Essex connection. Elizabeth had no intention of restoring Essex to favor, as she took occasion to show when his patent for the monopoly of sweet wines expired a few months after his dismissal from Court. He petitioned for a renewal of the lease, and received the ungracious answer,—"No, an unruly beast must be stinted of his provender."

The Earl of Essex, out of favor completely and nursing his grievances, was soon surrounded with other disaffected men who made Essex House a centre of conspiracy against the government. These gatherings were watched by the Court, and on Saturday, February 7, 1601, Essex was summoned before the Privy Council. He refused to attend. That same night there was a performance of "the deposing and killing of King Richard the Second," possibly Shakspere's tragedy, at the Globe Theatre. It developed at Essex's trial that his friends had paid the actors forty shillings to present this particular play that night, in the hope that the sight of the deposition of the king on the stage might stir up the populace. The next day, Sunday, the Earl of Essex, with some two hundred followers, made his abortive attempt to raise the city. He rode through London crying out that his life was in danger and Rh