thought fit.” The several confessions of those engaged in the plot, and of Essex himself, leave no doubt whatever of the fact. How such a plot is to be rationally explained is still a perplexity. Sir Christopher Blount, with a company of armed men, was to take the Court gate; Sir John Davis was to master the hall and go up into the Great Chamber, where already some of the conspirators would have straggled in and seized upon the halberts of the guard, which usually stood piled up against the wall; Sir Charles Davers was to have taken possession of the Presence; whereupon Essex, with the Earls of Southampton, Rutland, and other noblemen, would have gone in to the Queen; they would have used her authority for calling a Parliament, condemned all whom they denounced as misgoverning the State, and made, it is added, changes in the government. If such a plot had succeeded, what else could have ensued than to set loose all the several parties, sects, and factions of which the country was composed, to struggle anew for the supremacy? Meanwhile, some rumours of what was in preparation reached the Court; Essex was summoned to the Council; he excused himself on the plea of ill health. The conspirators were alarmed; it seemed to them that their plot was detected. It was not yet matured—the hour of action had not yet come. Still, it appeared to them that something must be done. His friends were assembled. To surprise the Court was impossible, if the Court was already on its guard. But the city might be raised; an insurrectionary movement might be excited if Essex, still an idol of the populace, went among the citizens proclaiming that his life was in danger from the machinations of his enemies. While this expedient was being debated there arrived from the Court the Lord Keeper, with three other lords, sent from the Queen to know the meaning of this unusual assemblage, and to demand its dismissal. Essex was invited to explain to them the cause of his present discontent. Their coming still further precipitated the action. Essex locked up the four noblemen in his library, and set off himself, accompanied with some two hundred gentlemen, to rouse the city to arms. But for the inopportune appearance of these noblemen, Essex and his friends would have proceeded in stately fashion on horseback to St Paul’s Cross; they would have arrived before the sermon was over (it was Sunday), and would have explained their case to the assembled people. Essex was not deficient as an orator, and he could, at all events, have obtained a solemn hearing. But the visit of the councillors spoilt even the execution of the after-plot. The party went on foot; Essex had no opportunity to address the people; he could only cry out as he passed along that his life was in danger. A nobleman running along the streets on a Sunday morning, followed by two hundred gentlemen with drawn swords, and exclaiming that his life was in danger,