ces of her
utmost indignation in case of disobedience; but even to this pressing
mandate he had dared to turn a deaf ear. During the four or five months
therefore of his absence, the whole court had remained in fearful or
exulting anticipation of the thunderbolt about to fall on his devoted
head. But the laurels with which he had encircled his brows proved his
safeguard: Elizabeth had listened with a secret complacency to the
reports of his valor and generosity which reached her through various
channels; her tenderness had been strongly excited by the image of the
perils to which he was daily exposing himself; and her joy at his safe
return, too genuine and too lively for concealment, left her so little
of the power or the wish to chide, that his pardon seemed granted even
before it could be implored. Essex had too much sensibility not to be
deeply touched by this affectionate behaviour on the part of his
sovereign; he redoubled his efforts to deserve the oblivion of his past
offence, and with a success so striking, that it was soon evident to all
that the temerity which might have ruined another had but heightened and
confirmed his favor.

Essex possessed, as much as Leicester himself, the art of stimulating
Elizabeth in his own behalf to acts of munificence; and she soon
consoled him by some valuable grants for any anxiety which her
threatened indignation might have occasioned him, or any disappointment
which he might have conceived in seeing sir Christopher Hatton
preferred by her to himself as Leicester's successor in the office of
chancellor of the university of Cambridge.

Among the gallant adventurers in the cause of don Antonio sir Walter
Raleigh had made one, and he also was received by her majesty on his
return with tokens of distinguished favor. But not long after he
embarked for Ireland, in which country he remained without public
employment till the spring of 1592, when he undertook an expedition
against the Spanish settlements in South America.

The ostensible purpose of his visit to Ireland was to superintend the
management of those large estates which had been granted him in that
country; but it was the story of the day, that "the earl of Essex had
chased Raleigh from court and confined him into Ireland[100]:" and the
length of his absence, with the known enmity between these
rival-favorites, lends some countenance to the suggestion.

[Note 100: Birch's Memoirs.]

That Essex, even in the early days