Elizabeth wavered for several months, and then reluctantly decided that Henry must be supported - but only with the absolute minimum of expenditure. She agreed that four thousand men should be sent to Normandy to act with the Huguenots; and Essex, who had done all he could to bring her to this resolution, now begged to be put in command of the force. Three times the Queen refused his entreaties; at last he knelt before her for two hours; still she refused - then suddenly consented. The Earl went off in high feather, but discovered before very long that the command even of the smallest army needs something more than knight errantry. During the autumn and winter of 1591, difficulties and perplexities crowded upon him. He was hasty, rash and thoughtless. Leaving the main body of his troops, he galloped with a small escort through a hostile country to consult with the French King about the siege of Rouen and on his return was almost cut off by the Leaguers. The Council wrote from England upbraiding him with needlessly risking his life, with "trailing a pike like a common soldier," and with going a-hawking in districts swarming with the enemy. The Queen despatched several angry letters; everything annoyed her; she suspected Essex of incompetence and the French King of treachery; she was on the point of ordering the whole contingent home. Once more, as in the Portuguese expedition, it turned out that foreign war was a dreary and unprofitable business. Essex lost his favourite brother in a skirmish; he was agonised by the Queen's severity; his army dwindled, from death and desertion, to one thousand men. The English fought with reckless courage at Rouen; but the Prince of Parma, advancing from the Netherlands, forced Henry to raise the siege. The unfortunate young man, racked with ague, was overcome by a sudden despair. "Unkindness and sorrow," he told the Queen, "have broken both my heart and my wits." "I wish," he declared to one of his friends, "to be out of my prison, which I account my life." Yet his noble spirit soon re-asserted itself. His reputation was retrieved by his personal bravery. He challenged the Governor of Rouen to single combat - it was his one and only piece of strategy - amid general applause. The Queen, however, remained slightly cynical. The Governor of Rouen, she said, was merely a rebel, and she saw no occasion for the giving or receiving of challenges. But Essex, whatever the upshot of the expedition, would be romantic to the last; and, when the time came for him to return to England, he did so with a gesture of ancient chivalry. Standing on the shore of France before his embarkation, he solemnly drew his sword from its scabbard, and kissed the blade.

 


V

 

The spring of youth was almost over; in those days, at the age of twenty-five, most men had reached a full maturity. Essex kept something of his boyishness to the end, but he could not escape the rigours of time, and now a new scene - a scene of peril and gravity appropriate to manhood - was opening before him.

 

The circumstances of a single family - it has happened more than once in English history - dominated the situation. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who had filled, since the beginning of the reign, the position of Prime Minister, was over seventy; he could not last much longer; who would succeed him? He himself hoped that his younger son, Robert, might step into his place. He had brought him up with that end in view. The sickly, dwarfed boy had been carefully taught by tutors, had been sent travelling on the Continent, had been put into the House of Commons, had been initiated in diplomacy, and gently, persistently, at every favourable moment, had been brought before the notice of the Queen. Elizabeth's sharp eye, uninfluenced by birth or position, perceived that the little hunchback possessed a great ability. When Walsingham died, in 1590, she handed over to Sir Robert Cecil the duties of his office; and the young man of twenty-seven became in fact, though not in name, her principal secretary. The title and emoluments might follow later - she could not quite make up her mind. Burghley was satisfied; his efforts had succeeded; his son's foot was planted firmly in the path of power.

 

But Lady Burghley had a sister, who had two sons - Anthony and Francis Bacon. A few years older than their cousin Robert, they were, like him, delicate, talented, and ambitious. They had started life with high hopes: their father had been Lord Keeper - the head of the legal profession; and their uncle was, under the Queen, the most important person in England.