ned that the plan was to incapacitate him by law for employment,
and to hold him a State prisoner. The remark, 'His son shall be the
youngest Earl of England but one,' remains equally puzzling on either
construction. Advocates of that which treats the letter as a plea for
imprisonment and disqualification for office have to show how he could
have been kept a State prisoner for life for offences he had committed
before the rising of February, and, moreover, how the imprisoned living
father was to make way in his peerage for the son. On the other theory
which presumes it to have been an argument for sending Essex to the
scaffold, it is as unintelligible how the father's fate, with its
necessary attainder of blood, could legally transmit his dignity.

The inherent inconsistencies of the document are scarcely more
perplexing than the circumstances of its origin. It has been suggested
that the idea of the letter was Cecil's, and that he plotted to deceive
posterity by inducing Ralegh to hold the pen. In the crude shape, that
is an incredible hypothesis. But Cecil was of a nature to discuss
questions of policy with his confidants, and extract their views, while
he revealed only half his own. Very possibly the letter may have arisen
out of a conversation in which the Minister had canvassed the question
of acting with prudent magnanimity towards the fallen favourite. He may
have requested Ralegh to repeat in writing objections urged orally by
him to such a course for the exposition of the case on both its sides.
At all events, it would be convenient for Cecil to have the document if
in future it should be doubted which of the confederates had been the
more vindictive. Ralegh could easily be drawn to try his hand, between
fancy and earnest, at an academic theme on the lines of fashionable
Italian state-craft. If the paper be indeed nothing but an exercise in
pleading, the author deserves to be applauded for the artistic
assumption of an air of sincerity which chills the reader's blood.

CHAPTER XV.

THE ZENITH (1601-1603).

[Sidenote: _Lord Oxford._]

From Essex's execution to the death of Elizabeth, on March 24, 1603, is
a period of two years wanting a month. It constitutes another stage in
Ralegh's career. No more fascinating Court favourite, no Leicester,
Essex, or mere Hatton, stood now in his way. If even Elizabeth's
vivacious temperament may have ceased to require attentions as from a
lover, she never grew ins