them brought before the queen. But Bacon did not
know the true character of the transactions in which Essex had been
engaged. The latter had been released from all custody in August, but in
the meantime he had been busily engaged in treasonable correspondence with
James of Scotland, and was counting on the Irish army under his ally,
Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy (afterwards earl of Devonshire), the new
deputy. But Mountjoy had apparently come to see how useless the attempt
would be to force upon the queen a settlement of the succession and
declined to go farther in the matter. Essex was thus thrown upon his own
resources, and his anger against the queen being roused afresh by the
refusal to renew his monopoly of sweet wines, he formed the desperate
project of seizing her person and compelling her to dismiss from her
council his enemies Raleigh, Cobham, and Cecil. As some pretext, he
intended to affirm that his life was in danger from these men, who were in
league with the Spaniards. The plot was forced on prematurely by the
suspicions excited at court, and the rash attempt to rouse the city of
London (8th of February 1601), proved a complete _fiasco_. The leaders were
arrested that night and thrown into prison. Although the actual rising
might have appeared a mere outburst of frantic passion, the private
examinations of the most prominent [v.03 p.0138] conspirators disclosed to
the government a plot so widely spread, and involving so many of the
highest in the land, that it would have been perilous to have pressed home
accusations against all who might be implicated. Essex was tried along with
the young earl of Southampton, and Bacon, as one of her majesty's counsel,
was present on the occasion. Coke, who was principal spokesman, managed the
case with great want of skill, incessantly allowing the thread of the
evidence to escape, and giving the prisoners opportunity to indulge in
irrelevant justifications and protestations which were not ineffectual in
distracting attention from the real question at issue. On the first
opportunity Bacon rose and briefly pointed out that the earl's plea of
having done nothing save what was absolutely necessary to defend his life
from the machinations of his enemies was weak and worthless, inasmuch as
these enemies were purely imaginary; and he compared his case to that of
Peisistratus, who had made use of a somewhat similar stratagem to cloak his
real designs upon the city of Athens. He wa