XCIV. TO SECRETARY SIR ROBERT CECIL. From the Original. Cecil Papers, Pillar C, b ii. § 107. (Hatfield.) In the hand of an amanuensis. With autograph subscription and signature. SIR, THIS gentleman, Mr. CRYMES, hath erected certein clash-mylls upon Roburghe Down, to worke the tynn which upon that place is gott with extreame labor and charge out of the ground. And because the townsemen of Plymouth seeke to procure all the commoditie thereabouts into their own hands, they alleage that theis mylls are prejudiciall to them, and that the course of their water, which runneth through Plymouth, is diverted, contrary to a Statute. I I tooke the paines to view the river and mylls. found that, in my opinion,-they could not disallow the building or using the same: for that there are about 200 works which must be unwrought, without the use of such clash-mylls and the benefytt of that river, and no hindraunce at all to the water-course. Otherwise, her Highness can receave no commodotie therebie, and the poore Tynners wilbe undone. I had an especial care to satisfie them; and the Tynners made an Act that those clash-mylls shold not be prejudiciall to the towne. Notwithstanding, they have procured sub penas out of the Starre Chamber, to call the matter in question there; the matter being tryable and determinable in the Stannery Courts, where it LETTER XCIV. - 1600. Nov. 15. now dependeth. But, if this be suffered to proceed in the Starre Chamber, it will not be avaylable to speake of her Majesties late imposicion or encrease of Custome, or i to establish good lawes amongst Tynners; when others who can by a great purse, or procuring extraordinary meanes, deminish to their power her Majesties duties and the common benefytt of the people. I do humblie therefore desire your honorable favour in their behalfe that, when the question shall grow for this matter in the Starre Chamber, that1 it maie be either respited untill my comming, or dismissed to the place and nature of the proper tryall. And so do humblie take my leave. From my house at Shyrebourne, the 15th of November, 1600. Your Honor's to do yow service, W. RALEGH. Addressed: To the right honorable Sir ROBERT CECYLL, Knight, Her Majesties PREFATORY NOTE TO LETTER XCV. —RALEGH'S COUN- ALL PREFA TORY LETTER XCV. 1600. LL that it seems needful here to add to what has been said heretofore [Vol. I. Life, pp. 258, 259] as to the NOTE TO true date at which this letter was written, relates to the succession of those events in the life of the Earl of Essex which intervened between his return from Ireland and his fatal insurrection. Essex reached the Court on the 28th of September, 1599. He appeared before the Council on the following day. On the 1st of October he was committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper at York House. On the 5th, he was again examined, by the Lord Keeper, the Lord Treasurer, and Secretary Cecil. On some subsequent day he wrote a letter to the Queen (undated), in which he says: "To redeem this offence and recover your Majesty's gracious favour, I would do, I protest, whatsoever is possible for flesh and blood." The Court letters of these months of October and November 1599 abound in expressions which make two things obvious: first, that growing murmurs, both in the metropolis and beyond it, at the continuance of the Earl's imprisonment-without any open trial or inquiry-excited the Queen's anger, and made the intercession of his friends with her more difficult; secondly, that, this fact notwithstanding, there was amongst the courtiers a fluctuating but general expectation of his speedy release; varied, at intervals, by rumours that he was after all to be sent to the Tower. The letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Henry Sydney, and those of Chamberlain to Carleton, may be especially referred to in illustration of these statements. PREFA- NOTE TO 1600. On the 28th of November, the Queen, attended by the Earl of Worcester and the Countess of Warwick, visited Essex at York House, and on the following day a Court of Star Chamber was held, at which a public declaration of the "Causes of the imprisonment of the Earl of Essex" was agreed upon. One of the Earl's officers, William Trew, wrote on that day a letter in which he expresses his hope that the meeting of this Court would turn out well for his master, and connects both its assembling and the Queen's unexpected visit to the Earl with the unknown contents of some mysterious letter which had been laid in the Queen's way, and upon the finding of which, he says, "there was a great stir in the Court that night, and some of the Guard that gave out they must wait upon my Lord to the Tower had their coats plucked off."1 "The bright sunshine," writes Chamberlain in February 1600,"that seemed so to dazzle the friends of my Lord of Essex was indeed but a glimmering light, that was suddenly overshadowed again. . . . They thought they saw a reconciliation between him and Mr. Secretary; whereupon they built many idle fancies and liberal discoursings, yet either their eyes were not their own, or else they had false spectacles." And he goes on to add that all that Cecil had really done for the Earl (as far as Chamberlain's own information went) was to carry to the Queen "his letter of submission, that kept him from the Star Chamber." Chamberlain's letter is dated,according to New Style,-" 22nd of February, 1600." The evidence that during some part of that month it had been intended to bring the Earl personally before the Star Chamber, and that Cecil had been the means, or the channel, of changing the Queen's intention, appears to be conclusive. This fact, when coupled with the internal evidence of the document itself, leaves little room for doubt that the ensuing letter belongs to the period of the Earl's first imprisonment, and, 1 Letter now at Blithfield, quoted in Lives of the Devereux, . 92. TORY NOTE 10 XCV. to speak more exactly, to some time during that imprisonment PREFAwhen rumours of a reconciliation between him and Cecil were current; and not to the imprisonment which followed the LETTER insurrection of February 1601. For its transfer-recently attempted-to the later date there is no evidence, or shadow of evidence, at all. It is an arbitrary conjecture in the teeth of the evidence. It was not until the 19th of March, 1600 [N.S.], that the Earl of Essex was permitted to leave York House for Essex House. He was still to remain in strict custody, and to be visited by such persons only as received the Queen's permission. On the 5th of June he was brought before a Special Commission, which met at York House to hear and determine five several accusations of misgovernment in Ireland and of disobedience to the Queen's commands. The decision of the Commissioners was conveyed to the accused Earl and to the auditory by the Lord Keeper Egerton, in these words: "If this cause had been heard in the Star Chamber, my sentence must have been as great a fine as ever was set upon any man's head in that Court, and perpetual imprisonment in that place which belongeth to a man of his quality,—that is, the Tower. But now that we are in another place, and in a course of favour, my censure is that he is not to execute the office of a Councillor, nor to hold himself for a Councillor of Estate, nor to execute the office of Earl Marshal of England, nor of Master of the Ordnance; and to return to his own house, there to continue a prisoner, as before, till it shall please her Majesty to release both this and all the rest." Of the effect of this proceeding on the Queen's mind Bacon has given a striking account: "The Queen," he says, "willed me to set down in writing all that passed that day. . . . I read the narration to her in two several afternoons; and when I came to that part which set down my Lord's own answer, which was my principal care, I do well bear in mind that she was extraordinarily moved with it, in kindness and relenting towards my Lord. She told me afterwards-speaking how 1600. |