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DR. ABBOTT AND QUEEN ELIZABETH.

THE 'discourse in writing, containing a Declaration of the late Earl of Essex treasons,' which on the 14th of April, 1601, Queen Elizabeth ordered to be published for the better satisfaction of the world,' answered its proper purpose at the time. The survivors of the party gave no more trouble to the Government during her life. After her death the government passed peaceably into the hands of their own friends. Her first historian, in relating that passage of her reign, took her Declaration for his guide, and his narrative keeps its place in the national annals. But the Declaration itself has fallen into discredit with posterity.

In the next generation, the anti-Spanish party--having nothing to do with the domestic troubles of Queen Elizabeth's later days, but wanting a faultless hero of the past to rebuke the present-raised the 'ghost of Essex' for that office ;-investing his memory with all the virtues, and of course denouncing the story of his misdeeds as a slanderous libel. The sons of that generation, having no concern with the politics of either period, took the story from their fathers, and told it to their children; who accepted it without suspicion or inquiry; and thus it became the creed of posterity-no one calling it in question, because it crossed the path of no cause in which anybody was interested.

There is one cause, however, in which (so far as interest can attach to the past) we are all interested; and that is the historic character and reputation of our country. We are ready enough to take credit for the virtues of our ancestors; and their vices being as much ours as their virtues are, we ought to be prepared to take shame for them. The question, therefore, whether in the days of Shakespeare the greatest and most popular of English queens, under pretence of telling her subjects the true history (known to her, but not yet known to them) of a great proceeding of public justice, did or did not deliberately put forth a history which she knew to be false and calumnious, is a question which involves the national character of England. It is vain to lay it to the charge of this or that councillor or secretary, and to say

that his individual reputation is alone concerned. It was the act of the first person in the kingdom, the person who represented England among the nations, and had authority to speak and act in her name. Elizabeth knew the whole truth with regard to Essex as well as any of her councillors-probably better than any. She ordered the narrative to be drawn up; and took so much personal interest in the execution as to have the first copies cancelled and reprinted, to make room for alterations dictated by herself. If anything was left in that ought to have been put out, or anything left out that ought to have been put in, it was her fault; for she could have prevented it. If the effect was to cast unjust aspersions upon Essex, she must have known it, and must be judged accordingly; and we must at the same time own with shame that we are the sons of fathers among whom, not 300 years ago, such a thing could be done by such a person in such a place.

But before we proceed to judgment we must know what these aspersions were, and how it appears that they were unjust.

Now when I undertook to tell the story myself, I got together all the independent evidence that I could find in print or in manuscript; compared it carefully with the account given in the Declaration; printed it all in the most convenient form I could devise for comparison of the two by others; and asked to have an instance shown me in which the true effect of the evidence had been in any material circumstance misrepresented in the narrative: for I had not been able to find one. Dr. Abbott undertook to supply me; and in a little book, published in 1877 under the title of Bacon and Essex, quoted twelve passages by which he conceives that the character of the Declaration as a pestilent libel' is established beyond dispute ’— an opinion which, it now appears, is not confined to himself. For I find a writer in the October number of the Edinburgh Review not only arriving at the same general conclusion (which he may have adopted from others before Dr. Abbott was born), but attempting to justify it, so far as he cares to offer anything in justification, by a process so very like Dr. Abbott's that I think he must have had it from him; though he does not say so. Two independent inquirers could hardly have followed so nearly the same path unless one followed the other's track. But however that may be-whether the reviewer be giving his own judgment or only endorsing Dr. Abbott's— it is the judgment of the Edinburgh Review in the latest edition. And since, among the many who will be ready to believe on that authority that the reasons are conclusive, there are few who will care to ask what they are, it may be worth while to offer them the information. For which purpose I propose to take them in order; setting down, first, each extract as quoted by Dr. Abbott (with the occasional insertion, between brackets, of words which he has omitted); then his comment on it; and then my own comment upon his.

I.

'It hath been thought fit [to publish to the world a brief declaration of the practices and treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex and his complices against her Majesty and her kingdoms, and of the proceedings at the convictions of the said late Earl and his adherents upon the same treasons: and not so only, but therewithal, for the better warranting and verifying of the narration,] to set down in the end the very confessions and testimonies themselves, word for word taken out of the originals.'

The confessions, as has been shown above, are systematically mutilated by suppressions, and occasionally perverted.

And

As the omission of a part does not necessarily involve any misrepresentation of the whole, we must wait to hear what the effect of these alleged suppressions and perversions really is in each case. we may in the meantime set this general allegation aside, as failing altogether to prove anything as to the veracity of the authors of the Declaration. The evidence upon which they founded their narrative was contained in depositions made by various witnesses in answer to interrogations put by several parties of examiners, and framed for the purpose of discovering the truth when as yet it was only known to those who had a vital interest in concealing it. Under such circumstances, many questions, being wide of the mark, would of course elicit answers that threw no light upon the case, and being irrelevant to the allegations would not be produced in support of them. We are not to be surprised, therefore, if we find that there are many passages in these depositions which were not included in the evidence for the indictment; or that in copies which profess to be the voluntary confessions themselves, such as were given in evidence at both the several arraignments, taken forth word for word out of the originals,' those parts which were not given in evidence are omitted. Nor must we expect to know with certainty what parts were given in evidence and what were not; for we have no report of the proceedings at once authentic enough and particular enough to furnish the information. But even if it could be proved that any of the passages omitted in the appendix to the Declaration had been read at the trial, the omission (taken by itself) would be no proof of bad faith. When I profess to give a statement of Dr. Abbott's 'in his own words,' or when he quotes a statement of mine between inverted commas, we both mean that the passage istaken forth word for word out of the original;' but we neither of us mean that there is nothing more to be found there, before or after. We mean that it is a passage which bears upon the question with which we are dealing, and that we have omitted nothing which tends to alter or modify its apparent sense, as we understand it. By the same rule, when we are told in an official manifesto that a deposition is taken word for word from the original, we are not to understand

that the deponent said nothing more; but only that he said that, and said it in those words, and said nothing before or after which tended to give them a different meaning. The discovery in one of the original confessions, therefore, of a sentence marked for omission will not convict the Declaration of falsehood, without proof of two things more--first, that without those words the passage might seem to bear out some statement which with those words it would not; and secondly, that such is the statement in the Declaration in support of which it is cited. In an action which implicated so many persons in different ways and degrees, the confession of one man trying to shift the fault off himself might easily shift it on to an innocent neighbour who had no opportunity of explanation; and in a publication like the Declaration (which was a history, not a trial), many passages might be properly omitted upon considerations of simple justice and humanity. If such omission happened to have the effect of altering the complexion of the confession as regarded the confessant himself, that effect ought, no doubt, to have been allowed for and corrected in the narrative; and if it can be shown that any part of the story is mistold from not taking the omitted passages duly into account, I admit it to be a fault: whether a fault of malice and falsehood, or of misjudgment, or only of inattention, will depend on the circumstances. But this is a point which has in each case to be made out. In our own times, when papers are moved for, or presented by command, they consist commonly of 'copies or extracts.' The confessions in the appendix to the Declaration, from which words have been omitted, are exactly what would now be described as 'extracts.' Extracts may, no doubt, be managed so as to convey a false impression of the whole piece. But the question is whether in this case (in which we have the means of judging) they do. No attempt has been made as yet to produce evidence of it. What kind of evidence Dr. Abbott has to show we shall now see.

His first instance is so peculiarly unlucky that a judicious reader might be tempted to think it enough, and proceed no further; but I mean to go through the list.

II.

[So likewise] those points of popularity which every man took notice and note of, [as his affable gestures, open doors, making his table and his bed so popularly places of audience to suitors, denying nothing when he did nothing, feeding many men in their discontentments against the Queen and the State, and the like, as they ever were since Absalon's time the forerunners of treasons following, so in him] were [they] either the qualities of a nature disposed to disloyalty, or the beginnings and conceptions of that which afterwards grew to shape and form.'

Contrast this with Bacon's own advice to Essex, to speak against popularity and popular courses vehemently, and to tax it in all others; but nevertheless to go on in your honourable commonwealth courses as you do. (See p. 75.)

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The words between the brackets are omitted by Dr. Abbott here, though he quotes them in p. 75; but I give them here as they stand in the original, being in my opinion not altogether irrelevant to the question in hand, which is this: Can the authors of the Declaration, having seen Essex's courses end in an act of open treason, and having learned since that he had secretly but seriously meditated some such act for at least a year and a half before, have really suspected that his previous assiduities in courting popular favour had been stimulated by some vague design tending that way? I say suspected, because they do not pretend to know. On the contrary, they expressly say in the very next sentence that it is one. of the things which no man can know; secrets known to none but God that knows the heart, and the devil that gives the instigation.' Dr. Abbott assumes that they could not have really suspected any such thing, and thereupon sets down the suggestion as an overt act of mendacity, proving that the Declaration was not a veracious narrative-not a narrative which the narrator believed to be true. But why am I to believe that the Queen and her councillors could not really have entertained such a suspicion in April 1601? The answer is worth considering by anybody who proposes to take Dr. Abbott as his guide in matters of this kind, and should have been a warning to the Edinburgh Reviewer. Because in 1596, when Essex's ambition was still to be the greatest subject of the Queen as well as to be the greatest favourite of the people, Bacon, believing his 'commonwealth courses' to be 'honourable,' had encouraged him 'to go on' in them! Even if Bacon continued in the belief that those earlier courses were as honourable as he had supposed them to be before he saw how they ended, the Queen, at least, whose Declaration it was, and who had never liked them, might be allowed to have her suspicions. If Sisera had waked when Jael had already put her hand to the nail and was in the act of putting her right hand to the workman's hammer, he might surely have suspected a treacherous intention in her previous hospitality, in spite of the 'contrast between such a suspicion and his own request a few minutes before, that she would stand in the door of the tent and protect him from pursuit.

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We must have a better instance than this. And the next is better in one respect for Dr. Abbott's purpose, inasmuch as it is not self-convictive, like the last, but turns upon the balance of conflicting evidence in circumstances which make it difficult to weigh.

III.

'It was strange with what appetite and thirst he did affect and compass the government of Ireland, which he did obtain.'

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