t, seemed rather to be increased
than diminished by his misfortunes. Elizabeth, in order to justify
to the public her conduct with regard to him, had often expressed her
intentions of having him tried in the star chamber for his offences: but
her tenderness for him prevailed at last over her severity; and she
was contented to have him only examined by the privy council. The
attorney-general, Coke, opened the cause against him, and treated him
with the cruelty and insolence which that great lawyer usually exercised
against the unfortunate. He displayed in the strongest colors all the
faults committed by Essex in his administration of Ireland: his making
Southampton general of the horse, contrary to the queen's injunctions;
his deserting the enterprise against Tyrone, and marching to Leinster
and Munster, his conferring knighthood on too many persons; his secret
conference with Tyrone; and his sudden return from Ireland, in contempt
of her majesty's commands. He also exaggerated the indignity of
the conditions which Tyrone had been allowed to propose; odious and
abominable conditions, said he; a public toleration of an idolatrous
religion, pardon for himself and every traitor in Ireland, and
full restitution of lands and possessions to all of them.[*] The
solicitor-general, Fleming, insisted upon the wretched situation in
which the earl had left that kingdom; and Francis, son of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, who had been lord keeper in the beginning of the present reign,
closed the charge with displaying the undutiful expressions contained in
some letters written by the earl.

* Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 449.

Essex, when he came to plead in his own defence renounced, with great
submission and humility, all pretensions to an apology;[*] and declared
his resolution never, on this or any other occasion, to have any contest
with his sovereign. He said, that having severed himself from the world,
and abjured all sentiments of ambition, he had no scruple to confess
every failing or error into which his youth, folly, or manifold
infirmities might have betrayed him; that his inward sorrow for his
offences against her majesty was so profound, that it exceeded all his
outward crosses and afflictions, nor had he any scruple of submitting to
a public confession of whatever she had been pleased to impute to him;
that in his acknowledgments he retained only one reserve, which he
never would relinquish but with his life, the assertion o