To which letter Essex returned a dignified answer, such as a man might have written who intended to retire from an unjust world into contemplative life. Soon after this correspondence Essex was released from even the gentle confinement in which he had been held. He could have retired, with none to molest him, into contemplative life. His private fortune was untouched; his name was still popular with the multitude. Perhaps, after a short interval of retirement patiently endured, he might have returned to Court, and have been reinstated in all his honour and offices. The truth was that he had been for some time past tampering with treason of the boldest and most criminal description. Before leaving Ireland he held a consultation with his friends Blount and Southampton, and told them “that he found it necessary for him to go to England, and thought it fit to carry with him as much of the army as he could conveniently transport, to go on shore with him to Wales, and there to make good his landing till he could send for more; not doubting but his army would so increase in a small time that he should be able to march to London and make his conditions as he desired.” The evidence for this treasonable scheme is stated by Mr Spedding, vol. ii. p. 147. The time had passed for this “monstrous” project, as Mr Spedding justly calls it. But the scheme into which he now enters is still more monstrous; it is still more irrational, and, but for evidence of an unusually clear and stringent character, would be utterly incredible. That scheme was to force himself upon the Queen, and by an insurrectionary movement to be carried, in some way, to the highest position a subject could hold—perhaps to some still higher position. What was to be his pretence? what the _cry_ by which he was to rouse the multitude? The succession to the English throne of James of Scotland had not been formally declared, and the _cry_ was to be that the ministers were plotting to sell the crown of England to the Infanta!! It was too absurd, one would say, even for a mob zealous for the Protestant succession. Some overtures, or solicitations for aid, were made to James, but of what nature we know not. While the Protestants were to be alarmed, the Catholics were to be propitiated by promises of toleration. But Blount and other Catholics who entered into the plot were, no doubt, induced to do so by stronger motives than mere promises of toleration—by those vague expectations and hopes which a season of anarchy and confusion and civil war would open to a party who still amounted to a large minority of the nation. “By the end of January 1601,” to adopt the statement of Mr Spedding, “all their intrigues and secret consultations had ripened into a deliberate and deep-laid plan for surprising the Court, mastering the guard, and seizing the Queen’s person, and so forcing her to dismiss from her counsels Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, and others, and to make such changes in the State as the conspirators