Essex before this, on June 25, 1599, had been writing to Elizabeth: 'Is it not lamented by your Majesty's faithfullest subjects, both there and here, that a Cobham and Ralegh--I will forbear others for their places' sakes--should have such credit and favour with your Majesty, when they wish the ill success of your Majesty's most important action, the decay of your greatest strength, and the destruction of your faithfullest servants?' His fury against Ralegh seems too excessive to have been genuine. In part it may be explained by his knowledge, on which Sir John Pope Hennessy has laid inordinate stress, that Ralegh was the most strenuous opponent of his Irish policy. He would detect the voice and hand of Ralegh in all the hindrances to, and in every criticism upon, his measures. He would imagine he heard him arguing adversely at sittings of the Council, to which he was informally admitted, and in the Queen's chamber. Sympathy may reasonably be felt now both with his special difficulties, and with his general tendencies in Irish administration, rather than with his rival's doctrines. His, however, were only tendencies. His conduct both in Ireland and in England proves that he thought of Irish administration as a weapon of combat for Court ascendency, not as a means of correcting the wrongs of ages. The tone of his tirades upon his condemnation to residence in Ireland is wholly inconsistent with the romantic theory that he had undertaken the government as a humanitarian mission of peace and benevolence to the Celt. [Sidenote: _Despair and Cabals._]