edience, if not the treacherous complicity, of the Queen's
lieutenant, the young Earl of Essex. His successor, Lord Mountjoy, found
himself master on his arrival of only a few miles round Dublin. But in
three years the revolt was at an end. A Spanish force which landed to
support it at Kinsale was driven to surrender; a line of forts secured
the country as the English mastered it; all open opposition was crushed
out by the energy and the ruthlessness of the new Lieutenant; and a
famine which followed on his ravages completed the devastating work of
the sword. Hugh O'Neill was brought in triumph to Dublin; the Earl of
Desmond, who had again roused Munster into revolt, fled for refuge to
Spain; and the work of conquest was at last brought to a close.

[Sidenote: The last years of Elizabeth.]

The triumph of Mountjoy flung its lustre over the last days of
Elizabeth, but no outer triumph could break the gloom which gathered
round the dying Queen. Lonely as she had always been, her loneliness
deepened as she drew towards the grave. The statesmen and warriors of
her earlier days had dropped one by one from her Council-board.
Leicester had died in the year of the Armada; two years later Walsingham
followed him to the grave; in 1598 Burleigh himself passed away. Their
successors were watching her last moments, and intriguing for favour in
the coming reign. Her favourite, Lord Essex, not only courted favour
with James of Scotland, but brought him to suspect Robert Cecil, who had
succeeded his father at the Queen's Council-board, of designs against
his succession. The rivalry between the two ministers hurried Essex into
fatal projects which led to his failure in Ireland and to an insane
outbreak of revolt which brought him in 1601 to the block. But Cecil had
no sooner proved the victor in this struggle at Court than he himself
entered into a secret correspondence with the king of Scots. His action
was wise: it brought James again into friendly relations with the Queen;
and paved the way for a peaceful transfer of the crown. But hidden as
this correspondence was from Elizabeth, the suspicion of it only added
to her distrust. The troubles of the war in Ireland brought fresh cares
to the aged Queen. It drained her treasury. The old splendour of her
Court waned and disappeared. Only officials remained about her, "the
other of the Council and nobility estrange themselves by all occasions."
The love and reverence of the people itself l