e of self-justification assumed by Essex on this memorable occasion,
when his pride was roused and his temper exasperated, by the open war of
recrimination and reproaches into which he had so unadvisedly plunged
with his personal enemies; and by the cruel and insolent invectives of
the crown lawyers. But he was soon to undergo on this point a most
remarkable and total change.

The mind of the earl of Essex was deeply imbued with sentiments of
religion: from early youth he had conversed much with divines of the
stricter class, whom he held in habitual reverence; and conscious in the
conduct of his past life of many deviations from the Gospel rule of
right, he now, in the immediate prospect of its violent termination,
surrendered himself into the hands of these spiritual guides with
extraordinary humility and implicit submission. To the criminality of
his late attempt, his conscience was not however awakened; he seems to
have believed, that in contriving the fall of his enemies, he was at the
same time deserving the thanks of his country, oppressed by their
maladministration; and he repelled all the efforts of Dr. Dove, by whom
he was first visited, to inspire him with a different sense of this part
of his conduct. Cut his favorite divine, Mr. Aston,--who is described
by a contemporary as "a man base, fearful and mercenary," in whom the
earl was much deceived,--practised with more success upon his mind. By
an artful pretext of believing him to have aimed at the crown, he first
drew him into a warm defence of his conduct on this point; then by
degrees into a confession of all that he had really plotted, and the
concurrence which he had found from others. This was the end aimed at by
Aston, or by the government which employed him: he professed that he
could not reconcile it to his conscience to conceal treasons so foul and
dangerous; alarmed the earl with all the terrors of religion; and
finally persuaded him, that a full discovery of his accomplices was the
only atonement which he could make to heaven and earth. The humbled
Essex was brought to entreat that several privy-councillors, of whom
Cecil by name was one, should be sent to hear his confessions; and so
strangely scrupulous did he show himself to leave nothing untold, that
he gave up even the letters of the king of Scots, and betrayed every
private friend whom attachment to himself had ever seduced into an
acquiescence in his designs, or a nice sense of honor withhel