of Essex to the lord keeper.--Dispute
between Burleigh and Essex.--Agreement with the Dutch.--Death and
character of Burleigh.--Transactions between the queen and the king of
Scots, and an extract from their correspondence.--Anecdote of sir Roger
Aston and the queen.--Anecdote of archbishop Hutton.--Death of
Spenser.--Hall's satires.--Notice of sir John Harrington.--Extracts from
his note-book.

A fresh expedition against the Spaniards was in agitation from the
beginning of this year, which occasioned many movements at court, and,
as usual, disturbed the mind of the queen with various perplexities. Her
captious favor towards Essex, and the arts employed by him to gain his
will on every contested point, are well illustrated in the letters of
Rowland White, to which we must again recur.

On February twenty-second he writes: "My lord of Essex kept his bed the
most part of all yesterday; yet did one of his chamber tell me, he could
not weep for it, for he knew his lord was not sick. There is not a day
passes that the queen sends not often to see him, and himself every day
goeth privately to her." Two days after, he reports that "my lord of
Essex comes out of his chamber in his gown and night-cap.... Full
fourteen days his lordship kept in; her majesty, as I heard, resolved to
break him of his will and to pull down his great heart, who found it a
thing impossible, and says he holds it from the mother's side; but all
is well again, and no doubt he will grow a mighty man in our state."

The earl of Cumberland made "some doubt of his going to sea," because
lord Thomas Howard and Raleigh were to be joined with him in equal
authority; the queen mentioned the subject to him, and on his repeating
to herself his refusal, he was "well chidden."

In March, Raleigh was busied in mediating a reconciliation between Essex
and Robert Cecil, in which he was so far successful that a kind of
compromise took place; and henceforth court favors were shared without
any open quarrels between their respective adherents. The motives urged
by Raleigh for this agreement were, that it would benefit the country;
that the queen's "continual unquietness" would turn to contentment, and
that public business would go on to the hurt of the common enemy.

Essex however was malcontent at heart; he began to frequent certain
meetings held in Blackfriars at the house of lady Russel, a busy
puritan, who was one of the learned daughters of sir Anthony Cook.
"