Now Mountjoy was making plans for Essex to escape from York House and go to France. Southampton, on whose account Essex had incurred the Queen's wrath, declared he would go with him.
Essex, however, scornfully—and wisely for once—refused to run away.
Poor Frances was in great distress. She wanted to be with him but he would not have her. In desperation she went to Court to sue for the Queen's clemency.
Essex's wife, who was disliked by the Queen, though not as fiercely as I was, of course, was the last person who should have attempted to plead with her, although certainly I, his mother, would have been even more unwelcome. But of course these young people didn't know Elizabeth as I did. They would have laughed to scorn my certainty that Essex's present disgrace was in some measure due to the fact that he had burst into her bedchamber and seen her unadorned.
Frances was naturally sent away with orders not to come to Court again.
My son's case was tried at the Star Chamber. The accusation was that he had, at great cost, been given the forces he had demanded; he had disobeyed instructions and returned to England without permission; he had entered into conference with the traitor Tyrone and made terms which were not fit to be listened to.
This was the fall of Essex. A few days later his household was broken up and his servants told to look elsewhere for masters whom they could serve. He had become so ill that we despaired of his life.
I believed that the Queen's conscience would smite her. She had once loved him well and I knew how faithful she was in her affections.
"Is he really as ill as you tell me he is?" she asked Mountjoy, who assured her that he was.
She said: "I will send my doctors to him."
Mountjoy answered: "It is not doctors he needs, Madam. But kind words from Your Majesty."
At this she sent him some broth from her own kitchens with a message that she would consider visiting him.
During those early days of December we really thought he was dying. He was prayed for in the churches, a fact which irritated the Queen because permission had not been asked of her that this should be done.
She said that his wife might visit him and tend him; then she sent for Penelope and Dorothy and received them kindly.
"Your brother is a much misguided man," she said to them. "I understand well your grief and I share it."
I often think it might have been better if Essex had died then, but when he saw Frances at his bedside, and understood that the Queen had given her permission to come to him and when he heard that Penelope and Dorothy had been received by the Queen, he began to be hopeful, and hope was the best medicine he could have had.
I was not allowed to see him, but Frances came to tell me that his health was improving and that he was planning to send the Queen a New Year's gift.
I thought of all the elaborate New Year's gifts Leicester had bestowed on her and how I had had to sell my treasures to pay for these. However, it was a good thing to send the gift, and I was eager to know how it was received.
It was neither accepted nor rejected.
It was pathetic to see the effect on him when he heard that his gift had not been rejected. He rose from his bed and in a few days was walking about. He looked better every day.
Frances, knowing how anxious I was, sent frequent messages. I would sit at my window waiting for them and thinking of the Queen, who would be anxious too, for she did love him. And I had seen with Leicester that she was capable of deep feelings. Yet she would not allow me, his mother, to go to him. She was almost as jealous of his love for me as she had been of Leicester's.
I heard, in due course, the alarming news that the Queen had sent his gift back to him. It was only when she feared his life was in danger that she relented.
Now that he was no longer sick, he must continue to feel the weight of her anger. So, though recovered from his illness, he was in equal danger from the Queen and her enemies.
Fate seemed determined to rain blow after blow on my poor boy. I wished that Leicester were living. He would have been able to advise and plead Essex's cause with the Queen. It was heartbreaking to see this proud man dejected, almost—though not quite—accepting defeat. Christopher was of little use. Although we had been married so long, he seemed the boy he had been at that time when his youth had appealed to me. Now I longed for maturity. I thought constantly and longingly of Leicester. Essex was a hero to Christopher; he could see no wrong in him; he believed that everything that had brought him to this pass was due to ill fortune and his enemies. He could not see that Essex's greatest enemy was himself, and that fortune will not keep smiling on one who abuses her.
Events were moving to a swift and terrifying climax. There was a great deal of talk about a book which had been written by Sir John Hayward. When I read it, I could see how dangerous it was at such a time, for it dealt with the deposition of Richard II and the accession of Henry IV, the implication being that if a monarch were unworthy to rule, it was justifiable for the next in succession to take the throne. It was most unfortunate that Hayward had dedicated this book to the Earl of Essex.
I could see how Essex's enemies, such as Raleigh, would seize on this and use it against him. I could hear their telling the Queen that the book implied that she was unfit to rule. As it had been dedicated to Essex, had he had a hand in writing it? Did the Queen know that Essex, with his sister Lady Rich, had been in correspondence with the King of Scotland?
The book was withdrawn and Hayward imprisoned, and the Queen remarked that he might not be the author but was pretending to be in order to shield some mischievous person.
Penelope and I would sit together, talking of these matters until we slept for very exhaustion, but we arrived at no conclusion and could see no end to the problem.
Mountjoy was in Ireland, succeeding where Essex had failed, and Penelope reminded me that Essex had said Mountjoy would be no good for the task, being too literary minded and caring more for books than battles. How wrong he had been! Indeed, had my poor Essex ever been right?
He was in debt, for the Queen had refused to renew the license on the farm of sweet wines which she had bestowed on him; and on this he was relying to pay his creditors. It seemed his fortunes could not be lower—but of course they could.
He had never been able to see himself clearly. In his opinion he was ten feet high and other men pygmies. I realized during those terrible days that I loved him as I loved no one else—since that time when I had been obsessed by Leicester. This was a different kind of love, though. When Leicester had coarsened and neglected me for Elizabeth, I had fallen out of love with him. I could never stop loving Essex.
He was in Essex House now and all sorts of people were congregating there. It was beginning to be known as the meeting place for malcontents. Southampton was constantly with him, and he was one of those who were out of favor with the Queen. All men and women who were disgruntled, who believed that they had not received their dues, gathered together and murmured against the Queen and her ministers.
Oh, my reckless, thoughtless son! In an access of rage against the Queen, in his anguish for lost favor, he shouted in the hearing of several that he could not trust her, that her conditions were as crooked as her carcass.
I wished that I could have reached him. I wanted to tell him that John Stubbs had lost his right hand, not because he had written against the Queen's marriage, but because he had said she was too old for childbearing. But it would have been useless. That remark could take him to the scaffold, I knew, if ever his steps should be turned that way; and of course he was rushing headlong towards it.