t with the fanciful Platonism of the time he saw in
the grace of the outer form evidence of a corresponding fairness in the
soul within. If so, he was egregiously deceived. The first favourite
whom he raised to honour, a Scotch page named Carr, was as worthless as
he was handsome. But his faults passed unheeded. Without a single claim
to distinction save the favour of the king, Carr rose at a bound to
honours which Elizabeth had denied to Ralegh and to Drake. He was
enrolled among English nobles, and raised to the peerage as Viscount
Rochester. Young as he was, he at once became sole minister. The lords
of the Council found themselves to be mere ciphers. "At the
Council-table," writes the Spanish Ambassador only a year after Cecil's
death, "the Viscount Rochester showeth much temper and modesty without
seeming to press or sway anything; but afterwards the king resolveth all
business with him alone." So sudden and complete a revolution in the
system of the state would have drawn ill-will on the favourite, even had
Rochester shown himself worthy of the king's trust. But he seemed only
eager to show his unworthiness. Through the year 1613 all England was
looking on with wonder and disgust at his effort to break the marriage
of Lord Essex with his wife, Frances Howard. Both had been young when
they wedded; the passionate girl soon learned to hate her cold and
formal husband; and she yielded readily enough to the seductions of the
brilliant favourite. The guilty passion of the two was greedily seized
on by the political intriguers of the court. Frances was daughter of a
Howard, the Earl of Suffolk; and her father and uncle, the Earl of
Northampton, who had already felt the influence of the favourite
displacing their own, saw in the girl's shame a chance of winning this
influence to their side. With this view they resolved to break the
marriage with Essex, and to wed her to Rochester. A charge of impotency
was trumped up against Essex as a ground of divorce, and a commission
was named for its investigation. The charge was disproved, and with this
disproof the case broke utterly down; but a fresh allegation was made
that the Earl lay under a spell of witchcraft which incapacitated him
from intercourse with his wife, though with her alone. The scandal grew
as it became clear that the cause of Lady Essex was backed by the king.
The resolute protest of Archbishop Abbot against the proceedings was met
by a petulant scolding from Jam