beggary, was rigorously exacted; some scanty supplies for the relief of
his immediate necessities, while in prison, were all that her majesty
would vouchsafe him; and neither the zealous attestations of Burleigh in
the beginning to his merit and abilities and the importance of his
public services, nor the subsequent earnest pleadings of her own beloved
Essex for his restoration, could ever prevail with Elizabeth to lay
aside the appearances of perpetual resentment which she thought good to
preserve against him. She would neither reinstate him in office nor ever
more admit him to her presence; unable perhaps to bear the pain of
beholding a countenance which carried with it an everlasting reproach to
her conscience.

From the formidable responsibilities of this unprecedented action, the
wary Walsingham had withdrawn himself by favor of an opportune fit of
sickness, which disabled him from taking part in any thing but the
application to sir Amias Paulet, by which he could incur, as he well
knew, no hazard. A still more crafty politician, Leicester, after
throwing out in the privy-council hints of her majesty's wishes, which
served to accelerate the decisive steps there taken, had artfully
contrived to escape from all further participation in their proceedings.
Both ministers, in secret letters to Scotland, washed their hands of the
blood of Mary. But Leicester, not content with these defensive measures,
sought to improve the opportunity to the destruction of a rival whom he
had never ceased to hate and envy. To his insidious arts the temporary
disgrace of Burleigh is probably to be imputed; and it seems to have
been from the apprehension of his malignant misconstructions that the
lord treasurer refused to put on paper the particulars of his defence,
and never ceased to implore admission to plead his cause before his
sovereign in person. His perseverance at length prevailed: the queen saw
him; heard his justification, and restored him to her wonted grace;
after which the tacit compromise between the minister and the favorite
was restored;--that compromise by which, during eight-and-twenty years,
each had vindicated to himself an equality of political power, personal
influence, and royal favor, with the secret enemy whom he vainly wished,
or hoped, or plotted, to displace.

To relate again those melancholy details of Mary's closing scene, on
which the historians of England and of Scotland, as well as the numerous
biographer