consequence obliged
to excuse the failure on the ground of the delicate health of the young
lady, the reluctance of her brother to part with her, and, what must
have filled the despot with astonishment, her own inability to dispose
of her female subjects in marriage against the consent of their own
relations.

About this time died the earl of Sussex. In him the queen was deprived
of a faithful and honorable counsellor and an affectionate kinsman;
Leicester lost the antagonist whom he most dreaded, and the nobility one
of its principal ornaments. Dying childless, his next brother succeeded
him, in whom the race ended; for Egremond Ratcliffe, his youngest
brother, had already completed his disastrous destiny. This unfortunate
gentleman, it will be remembered, was rendered a fugitive and an outlaw
by the part which he had taken, at a very early age, in the Northern
rebellion. For several years he led a forlorn and rambling life,
sometimes in Flanders, sometimes in Spain, deriving his sole support
from an ill paid pension and occasional donations of Philip II., and
often enduring extremities of poverty and hardship.

Wearied with so many sufferings in a desperate cause, he then employed
all his endeavours to make his peace at home; and impatient at length of
the suspense which he endured, he took the step of returning to England
at all hazards and throwing himself on the compassion of lord Burleigh.
The treasurer, touched with his misery and his expressions of
penitence, interceded with the queen for his pardon; but she, on some
fresh occasion of suspicion, caused him to be advised to steal out of
the kingdom again; and neglecting this intimation, he was committed to
the Tower. After some months he was released, possibly under a promise
of attempting some extraordinary piece of service to his country, and
was sent back to Flanders, where he was soon after apprehended on a
charge of conspiring against the life of don John of Austria: some say,
and some deny, that he confessed his guilt, and accused the English
ministry of a participation in the design: however this might be, he
perished by the hand of public justice, a lamentable victim to the
guilty violence of the popish faction which first beguiled his
inexperience; to the relentless policy of Elizabeth, which forbade the
return of offenders perhaps not incorrigible; and to the desperation
which gaining dominion over his mind had subverted all its moral
principles.