y others who
were not indeed his friends but were enemies of Essex. It was
unwillingly that Essex quitted the court and thus left the field open
to them: especially as his personal relation to the Queen was no
longer what it had been of old. Aspiring by nature, supported by the
good opinion of the people (on which his grand appearance and his bold
spirit of enterprise had made much impression), and by the devotion
of brave officers who were ready to follow him in any undertaking by
land or sea, he presumed to desire to be something for himself. He
wished to be no longer absolutely dependent on the nod of his
mistress. The story goes that she once, in a violent passion at his
disrespectful conduct, gave him a box on the ear, and that he laid his
hand on his sword. Even in his letters expressions indicating
resistance break through his declarations of submission. His friends
indeed advised him to return to absolute obedience: then the Queen
would raise the man whom she honoured above all others. He rejected
this advice because he held that the Queen was a woman, from whom one
gets nothing but by superior authority. It almost appears as though he
thought he might obtain such an authority by the Irish war.

But he found this expedition far harder than he had expected.
Previously he had always said that the great rebel, Tyrone, must be
tracked to Ulster, where were the roots of his power, and conquered
there: then the rest of the country would return to obedience of
itself. How great was the astonishment when he now nevertheless began
with a march into Munster and Leinster, in which he wasted his
resources without obtaining any great success! He maintained that the
Privy Council of Ireland had urged him on to this: its members denied
it. At last the campaign to the North was undertaken: but in this
region the Irish were found to have the complete superiority: the
Queen's newly-levied troops on the other hand were neither adapted,
nor quite willing, to venture on a decisive action: the officers
signed a protest against it: and Essex saw himself obliged to enter
into negociations with Tyrone.

The conditions which that chief demanded in return for his submission
are exceedingly comprehensive: complete freedom of the Catholic church
under the Pope, and a transfer of the dignities of state to the
natives, so that only a viceroy, who should always belong to the high
nobility, was to come from England: the chief Irish families w