Christmas was undoubtedly not a joyous one for the Queen, or for the Earl of Essex and his family. His New Year’s gift to her Majesty was not accepted. The fact that his health was mending, despite the tolling of those December bells and the solemn prayers in church, inclined the sovereign to believe that his illness had been exaggerated, a mere pretence to win her sympathy.

  Amongst the gifts offered to the Queen that new year of 1600 was the following: ‘By Mr Francis Bacon, one pettycote of white satten, embrothered all over like feathers and billets, with three brode borders, faire embrothered with snakes and frutage.’ It was the custom to send the sovereign gifts at the new year; nevertheless there is something touching about Francis’s effort to appease, to atone, in the new year of 1600, the beginning of a new century which would be fateful to Elizabeth and to all her loyal subjects. ‘A pettycote of white satten’ to the monarch of sixty-eight. The letter that accompanied the gift was not published until after the donor’s death.

  Most excellent Sovereign Mistress,

  The only new year’s gift which I can give your Majesty is that which God hath given to me; which is a mind in all humbleness to wait upon your commandments and business: wherein I would to God that I were hooded; that I saw less, or that I could perform more: for now I am like a hawk, that baits, when I see occasion of service, but cannot fly because I am tied to another’s wrist. But meanwhile I continue my presumption of making to your Majesty my poor oblation of a garment, as unworthy the wearing as his service that sends it: but that approach to your excellent person may give worth to both; which is all the happiness I aspire unto.

  Tied to another’s wrist… the metaphor is a curious one. Tied to whose wrist? If the law was so personified, the law also served her Majesty. And Francis Bacon, unlike his brother, was bound to no man, so his meaning remains obscure. Perhaps her Majesty, standing in front of a long mirror in the satin petticoat while her ladies robed her for the day, understood the reference.

  The Earl of Essex was so far recovered by January 5th that he was able to sit up and eat at table. His wife, however, was still only permitted to visit him at stated times, and his mother and sisters not at all; while his eldest boy Robert, now nine years old, went back to school at Eton without having seen his father either at Christmas or in the new year.

  If the Earl’s bodily health improved his mind seems to have become more unbalanced as the months passed. He was cut off from all serious counsel or good advice, and whatever medical attention he received certainly did nothing, could do nothing, to counteract his increasing paranoia. Robert Cecil and Lord Cobham were the chief objects of his unreasoning hostility. He believed that neither man would rest until he, Essex, was destroyed. Plotters were everywhere, in England, on the continent. Now that he no longer received foreign intelligence from Anthony the rumours that came to him at York House were garbled and distorted.

  It was said that peace was to be made with Spain at last. King Philip II had died in September 1598, and some pro-Spanish factions in England were known to have murmured amongst themselves that his daughter, the Infanta, had a better right to the succession on the death of Queen Elizabeth than had King James VI of Scotland. Essex began persuading himself that Robert Cecil, Cobham and others had the Infanta in mind when considering plans for peace between the two countries. Yes, there was evidently a scheme of this nature to be carried into effect once he, Essex, was put out of the way for good. He must get messages to Scotland. King James, his especial friend, must be warned. Some trusted messenger must be sent. And so his mind raged to and fro, himself the victim of his own fevered imagination.

  The Queen, hearing that he was once more ill, relented, and the order she gave was to prove fatal in its ultimate consequences.

  10th March. By her Majesty’s express command, Lady Leicester, Lord and Lady Southampton, Mr Greville, Mr Bacon, are all removed from Essex House; and this day my Lord of Essex is looked for there, to remain with two keepers, Sir Drue Drury and Sir Richard Barkely, and none to come to speak with him but by her Majesty’s leave. Whether my Lady shall remain with him, or come in daytime to him as she now doth, is not yet known.

  On Maundy Thursday, March 19th, at about 8 o’clock at night, the Earl was removed to Essex House, Sir Richard Barkely having all the keys and his servant being porter. Nobody to be admitted without leave, and Lady Essex only in the day. At the end of March his mother, Lady Leicester, also obtained leave to see him.

  Meanwhile Lady Leicester presumably went to her house at Wanstead, and the Countess his wife either to Barn Elms or her mother’s house in London. And Anthony Bacon? If he was on good terms with brother Francis, then surely to Gray’s Inn or to Twickenham Lodge. The silence continues. The man who, in his own words, could ‘never hope to live but like a bird in a cage’ was removed to an unnamed lodging.

  22

  The assumption by historians that on quitting Essex House in March 1600 Anthony Bacon destroyed all correspondence after 1598 which might in any way be compromising is a reasonable one, though why personal letters from his mother, his brother, and his friends should also have disappeared is puzzling. The massive pile of documents before this date was presented to the Lambeth Palace library by Archbishop Tenison some time after 1695, and has reposed there to the present day. How he acquired them in the first place is not known. It is possible that they came in some way through William Rawley, a personal friend, and son of the Dr Rawley who became Francis Bacon’s chaplain and amanuensis when the latter was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1618. It is unlikely that Anthony neither received nor wrote any letters after March 10th 1600. If he was crippled he was at least capable of attending to his personal business, as the Hertfordshire Manorial County Records show; for on April 30th, along with Edward Selwyn of West Dean, his old friend, and Thomas Crewe of Gray’s Inn, he witnessed a release of land comprising a house, orchard and some fifty acres of land to Thomas Fynche and Richard Laseby.

  He had already sold the manor of Redbourne; now he was selling still more land. And that he was hard pressed financially is corroborated by Francis himself, who, in a letter to the Queen on March 12th, writes frankly as a suppliant. His suit is for a gift of certain manorial lands belonging to the Crown. This letter, like others from his pen, remained in obscurity until 1729, 130 years later. The request was modest, the value of the Crown land being £80 or so, and he gives three reasons for his supplication.

  First my love to my mother, whose health being worn, I do infinitely desire she might carry this comfort to the grave, not to leave my estate troubled and engaged. Secondly, these perpetuities being now overthrown, I have just fear my brother will endeavour to put away Gorhambury, which if your Majesty enable me by this gift I know I shall be able to get into mine own hands, where I do figure to myself that one day I may have the honour and comfort to bid your Majesty welcome, and to trim and dress the grounds for your solace. Thirdly, your Majesty may by this redemption—for so I may truly call it—free me from the contempt of the contemptible, that measure a man by his state, which I daily find a weakening of me both in courage and means to do your Majesty service.

  The result of his suit is unknown, but the information the letter contains is valuable. His mother’s health was worn, but, more important still, Anthony had it in mind to sell Gorhambury, which his brother naturally expected to inherit. As to Lady Bacon, the last letter in Volume VIII of the Lambeth correspondence—undated, but presumed to have been written some time in 1598 or 1599—certainly gives proof of this. It is written in a style even more rambling than usual, the meaning sometimes quite obscure; and for almost the first time she speaks of her own failing health.

  Though my increased pain in superficie cutis be extraordinary to me, and may partly support some venom to be drunk with those black worms I took in drink and twice, about half a pint of them, yet you know the learned do call senet gipsum morby. Since my quartan fever I find by diverse accidents to be true and very painful and I humbly acknowledge God’s mercy that moveth my mind to take age, sickliness and infirmities being natural as well as you. And yet I use such good means by counsel and diet as may make my uneasy warranted pain more tolerable, and I find much ease by the diet wholesome and earlier suppers before six, and clean usual drink never in the night and seldom in morning or betwixt meals. Your continual uncomfortable state of body doubleth what griefs God sendeth me, therefore patience in your disease, and the Lord have pity on his children… I lament your continual bodily impotence the more because you are so thereby as it were cast off and unabled… Labour therefore by hearty prayers… God keep the good Earl safe.

  This last line suggests that the letter may have been written in the summer of 1599 while the Earl was in Ireland. In any event, it is the last we have from her, although she had some ten more years to live.

  As for Gorhambury, while Anthony was living in Essex House his creditors could probably not have gained access to him. Once he had left there—and it is significant that his brother’s suit to the Queen was written on March 12th, two days after the household had been commanded by her Majesty to leave—he was prey to anyone with a sheaf of unpaid bills in his pouch. That there were many such solicitors is obvious. Merchants who had brought back messages from agents on foreign service; the agents themselves, unpaid by the Earl of Essex; tradesmen, clothiers, hangers-on: all knew the Earl had fallen into disgrace and could no longer employ Mr Anthony Bacon. Those who had fawned upon him once because of his position as friend and personal confidant were now ready to turn and rend him. No man is more scorned by underlings than one who has lost position, who has no means of defence.

  It is possible that he did, during the month of March, become Sir William Cornwallis’s tenant in Bishopsgate, and return to the quarter that he had known so well in 1594. He need never have stirred abroad—indeed, it is doubtful if he could—and the secret of his whereabouts would have been close guarded. Anthony could never have broken off all contact with Essex, to whom he was so devoted; and once the Earl had returned to Essex House, despite the security measures commanded by her Majesty, there must have been some means of communication between them, and Anthony’s whereabouts known to his former employer. Anthony knew too many secrets, and even if the papers relating to these secrets had been destroyed, much of their contents would be stored in his memory. It was Anthony who had gathered and sent information to Scotland, even to King James himself. In March of 1596, for instance, Mr Hudson, the King’s Scottish agent, delivered letters from Anthony personally to his Majesty, all other persons being forbidden the chamber and a guard kept upon the door. King James, so Hudson reported back, ‘read some of them with great respect, and some with much mirth, thankfully and kindly accepting of them, and commanding Mr Hudson to return Mr Bacon his very hearty and loving thanks for them, and for many acceptable courtesies and good offices done by him’. These papers, said Mr Hudson, had won a promise from the King that he would continue a full and sound correspondence with Mr Bacon, and the papers were then burnt in his Majesty’s presence.

  The question arises, therefore, to what extent it came to the knowledge of others that letters had passed between Anthony Bacon, acting on behalf of the Earl, and his Majesty of Scotland. Spies were everywhere, and those who during the summer of 1600 believed that the Earl of Essex, despite all precautions, was in secret correspondence with King James VI may have wondered if a sick man in his bed, crippled with gout, his hiding-place unknown, could have been the brain behind the pen.

  In November of the preceding year, when the case of the Earl of Essex had come up before the Star Chamber, Francis Bacon had not been present. On June 5th 1600 the Queen decided to bring the case before eighteen Commissioners at York House. This time Francis was instructed to speak for the Crown after the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General had concluded their accusations against the Earl of Essex, and that he consented to do so was not forgiven him either by his contemporaries then or by historians later. However, in 1600 a lawyer of small renown did not disobey the command of her Majesty herself, and that she did so order him is evident from Francis’s own testimony three years later.

  Once again he was in attendance upon her over some business, and she told him she was thinking of bringing up the Earl’s case before an assembly of Councillors. This would be towards the end of the Easter Term.

  ‘Madam,’ Francis replied, ‘it is now far too late, the matter is cold, and hath taken too much wind.’

  Her Majesty was offended, but later on, in May, mentioned the matter once more.

  ‘Why, Madam,’ he said on this occasion, ‘if you will needs have a proceeding, you were best have it in some such sort as Ovid spake of his mistress, est aliquid luce patente minus, to make a counsel-table matter of it, and there an end.’

  The Queen was not so pleased to have the proceedings informal, and the assembly was commanded for June 5th. Francis wrote privately to the Queen asking that he might be spared from appearing for the Crown, but this request was not granted. Indeed, his instructions were explicit: to bring before the Commissioners the affair of John Hayward’s book, with its theme of Bolingbroke’s deposition of Richard II. This book, dedicated as it was to the Earl, had already been discussed by Francis and the Queen when she had visited him at Twickenham Lodge the previous year. Her Majesty’s curiosity about the book is significant. If the subject of Richard II’s deposition so riled her why did she not also allude to the play of Richard II, which had been published in quarto and had been acted by the Lord Chamberlain’s players? Or did she? Were these frequent encounters between the Queen and Francis a further attempt to probe the authorship of John Hayward’s book? She believed that some other ‘mischievous author’ was involved, and suspected some sinister motive in the writing of it, a motive that might bring into question the right of succession to her own Crown. The Earls of Essex and Southampton had always been keen play-goers; they were on familiar terms with writers and actors, who had been invited to perform in the past at Essex House. The Queen knew this, and she knew also that Anthony Bacon, before living at Essex House, had lodged in Bishopsgate amongst the acting fraternity. Clearly, then, Mr Anthony Bacon must know more about matters of plays and books and dedications to his master than most men; and if Mr Anthony Bacon was so sick that he could not hold a pen or leave his bed, then his brother Francis must answer for him. Indeed, Mr Anthony Bacon’s name need not be mentioned in the proceedings at all at any time, if his brother Francis would guarantee to speak for the Crown. This would seem to be the reason for Francis’s appearance on June 5th.

  For Francis to take the stand after his hated rival Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, had made a harsh and embittered speech for the Crown, listing the Earl’s alleged misdemeanours and disloyalty to her Majesty, combined with his disregard for the state of the army, his shameful treaty with a rebel, etc, etc, was certainly the most difficult moment of the thirty-nine-year-old barrister’s career. It did not matter to the Attorney-General if he was disliked, even hated, by the Earl’s supporters and the public as a whole; it did matter to a lawyer without means or position that he should be shunned as one who, having received much favour and kindness from the Earl, must now accuse him. Nor could the sight of Essex himself, who stood to hear the proceedings, carrying himself with great calm and dignity, have made the situation any the easier.

  Francis’s speech was brief, coming as it did after the tirade from the Attorney-General and a more temperate address by Solicitor-General Fleming. He began by praising her Majesty for allowing the Earl to appear before his peers and the assembly rather than before the Star Chamber, and continued by quoting passages from a letter which Essex had written to the Lord Keeper in 1598 in which he had said, ‘Her Majesty’s heart was obdurate’. If, declared Francis, ‘his Lordship intended comparing her Majesty to Pharaoh, such a comparison was odious… By the common law of England, a prince can do no wrong.’

  He concluded his address, as he had been told to do, by alluding to the book by John Hayward. This, he affirmed, was an old matter, and was not relevant to the rest of the charge; but his lordship had been in error in not suppressing the book immediately, instead of waiting for a week after publication, and then only drawing the Archbishop’s attention to it in a formal letter. Forbidden things, said Francis, are the most sought after.

  The speech was mild and inoffensive, and could have carried little weight as far as the Assembly was concerned; while the Earl himself, kneeling, and speaking in his own defence, was so humble in confessing his many errors, and so sincere in his expressions of loyalty and devotion to her Majesty, that his speech drew tears from many eyes. He showed passion only in refuting with great firmness some of the more bitter accusations of the Attorney-General. In conclusion, he gave himself to her Majesty’s mercy and favour, and was ready to suffer whatever punishment she should inflict upon him.

  The Lord Keeper, the Lord Treasurer and Secretary Cecil all spoke, and finally censure was passed, emphasis being laid that it was censure only and not a sentence, as it would have been in the Star Chamber. Essex would be barred from the Council and dismissed from his position as Earl Marshal, and he must return to his own house, there to remain a prisoner until it should please her Majesty to release him. The proceedings then finished, having lasted from eight in the morning until nearly nine at night.