The Essex Crisis

On 22 February 1601, Sir Thomas Fane added a postscript to his letter from Dover Castle to Sir Robert Cecil:

While I sought to prevent his passage by sea, he on the sudden took horse, leaving his wife and children here with the gentlemen of his retinue.¹

Henry Neville, the queen’s ambassador to France, was riding back to court under Cecil’s recall. Two weeks earlier, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, had risen against the government. Neville had heard a plan from the earl’s associates. On 2 March he wrote out, in his own hand, an account of what they had told him and how he had answered. Much of the following reconstruction comes from that declaration: it preserves his recollection while also making his defence.²

The plan Neville heard and the rising that followed were different events. His declaration must be read with that distinction in view.³⁴⁵

Cuffe and foreign intelligence

Henry Cuffe, the Merton scholar introduced in Chapter 3, moved from Savile’s scholarly circle into Essex’s service by 1595. His journeys through France and Italy produced reports on the grand duke of Tuscany, Spanish preparations and finance, the prospect of Franco-Spanish peace, and Italian fears. He sent intelligence to Savile for transmission to his patron. In a June report he described the order explicitly: Savile first, then Essex “so far as you shall think fit.” The scholar was being asked to judge what the earl should receive.⁶

A March 1598 letter makes the connection between reporting and history explicit. Cuffe reports that the grand duke wants Elizabeth to obstruct the Franco-Spanish peace, but doubts whether the proposed means could work. Writing for his “most honourable Lord,” he invokes the rule “Nemo irascitur historico”—no one is angry with the historian. The historian should not be blamed for the news he reports. The man who would approach Neville had already learned to turn a scholarly relationship into a channel of political intelligence.⁷

Reading Aristotle with Southampton

Essex also sent Cuffe to teach Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, in Paris. In a later report to Robert Cecil, Sir Thomas Arundel wrote:

This Cuff was sent by my lord of Essex to read to my lord of Southampton in Paris, where he read Aristotle’s Politics to him with such expositions as, I doubt, did him but little good: afterwards he read to my lord of Rutland.⁸

Southampton’s own letter to Essex from Paris on 19 September 1598 confirms that he had kept Cuffe with him:

I beseech you to impute not the stay here of your servant Mr. Cuff as his fault, for I have taken on me the boldness to hold him here until my departure.⁹

Cuffe’s teaching and intelligence work brought Savile’s circle into Essex’s political household. In 1600 he would approach Neville on the earl’s behalf.

Cuffe’s approaches

More than a year before the recall, another ambassador had reported on Neville’s position. Writing from France on 12 December 1599, Francesco Contarini, Venice’s ambassador at the French court, told the Doge and Senate:

The ambassador here resident, who is of the Earl’s party, has had his despatches stopped for many days, and has sent his secretary in all haste to keep an eye on what is taking place in England and to put an end to such irregularities.¹⁰

Neville returned to London from the Boulogne negotiations in August 1600—“as I remember the sixth of August,” he later wrote. Henry Cuffe, Essex’s secretary, had left a message at his lodging. According to Cuffe, the earl had learned that Neville would be blamed for the breakdown of the negotiations. Neville went to court and found “no such matter but rather altogether the contrary.” Cuffe maintained that the intention had existed, whatever had since changed.²

Cuffe was someone with whom Neville had “had long acquaintance.” Both men had connections with Henry Savile and Merton College. Cuffe brought a letter from Essex asking for Neville’s love and promising to hold it “as a great treasure.” Neville replied with compliments and offers of service. Later, Cuffe visited his house and proposed staying two or three days, but Neville had business in the Vale; they parted at Nettlebed.¹¹

After the middle of October, when Neville was again in London, Cuffe repeatedly urged him to visit Essex. At last he appointed a time. Glascock, the earl’s servant, met Neville at about eight in the evening and took him to the study. Essex joined him half an hour or more later, asked “many questions of foreign matters,” and spoke of his hopes of renewing his lucrative royal concession on sweet-wine imports and of returning to the queen’s presence.¹² He conducted Neville to the back gate himself. Neville insisted that Essex had used no disloyal language during the visit, and that afterwards they neither spoke nor exchanged letters.²

Cuffe continued to call. Sometimes he offered hope about Essex’s prospects; sometimes he spoke angrily. Once he quoted Lucan:

Arma tenenti, omnia dat qui iusta negat.

Whoever denies justice to one holding arms grants him everything.

Neville answered in French, “tout beau”—easy; not so fast. Cuffe said such treatment would give Essex cause to think sooner of “other courses.” In Lucan, Caesar speaks these words after crossing the Rubicon.¹³

Around Christmas, Cuffe reported a supposed intention to imprison Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and then Essex. In January he pressed Neville to hear a proposal from Southampton and Sir Charles Danvers, assuring him that nothing would be attempted against the queen’s person or estate. Neville agreed to listen on that condition. Meetings were delayed by his work with Secretary John Herbert and the French ambassador, and by private business.²

Neville was meanwhile preparing to resume his embassy. On 23 January he wrote to Ralph Winwood, his colleague in France:

I look now to be dispatched forthwith, and to set forward, about the morrow after Candlemas-day. I mean to come by Rouen wheresoever I land.

At Rouen he intended to seek redress for English merchants’ grievances. Candlemas fell on 2 February; he expected to leave about the following day.¹⁴

Candlemas: the plan at Drury House

On Monday, 2 February 1601, Candlemas, Neville left Serjeants’ Inn at about four in the afternoon. He had acknowledged a statute before the judge, Sir Edmund Anderson, and sealed other papers. A coach passed carrying Essex, Southampton, Sir Christopher Blunt and Danvers. Neville had told Cuffe he would come that day; the men in the coach had now seen him nearby. He went to Drury House, where he met Southampton and Danvers. His account does not place Essex in that conversation.³

Southampton, whom Neville had not spoken with since Southampton was a child in Lord Burghley’s household, said Essex trusted Neville’s honesty, discretion and secrecy. The earl’s enemies, he claimed, controlled access to the queen and prevented his grievances from reaching her. Essex would therefore approach her with enough supporters to ensure that he could not be excluded.

Southampton described forty men waiting in separate groups at the Mews. When Essex and Southampton approached in a coach, these men would seize the court gate. Others already in the hall would enter the guard chamber and take the guards’ halberds. Lords and supporters in the presence chamber would welcome Essex and accompany him to the queen.³

Among his objections, Neville invoked Tacitus:

This was an action of the nature of those which, as Tacitus saith, non laudantur nisi peracta, and would be interpreted by the success.

Such actions “are not praised until accomplished.” The words condense Histories 1.38, where Otho urges his soldiers to complete their coup against Galba.¹⁵

Neville raised three practical objections. Recruiting enough men would risk discovery. A closed door could stop the movement through the palace. Even if they took the gate, a force from nearby Westminster could dislodge them. Southampton and Danvers answered that their followers would assemble under another pretext and learn the purpose only that morning. Surprise and supporters inside would prevent doors being closed. Once they held the court and had “the show of the state on their side,” they expected no resistance.³

Neville understood the aim to be the arrest of Essex’s enemies and their replacement in office. For the operation as a whole, he remembered no more than 120 men being discussed. Seizure of the Tower through Sir John Davies was mentioned, but no definite time or arrangements appeared to have been settled. He could not be certain whether Parliament had been mentioned at Drury House; Cuffe spoke of it afterwards. Danvers was to visit him again, but Neville said that he never subsequently saw either Danvers or Southampton, or exchanged messages with them.³

What Neville agreed to—and refused

Within a day or two, Cuffe returned. Neville said he would not approve the enterprise unless its undertakers swore to attempt nothing against the queen’s person or estate, “as they had done in the enterprise of Amboise, a precedent whereof was to be seen in the story.” The French conspiracy of 1560 had sought to remove Francis II from the control of the Guise; an oath protecting king and state appeared in accounts of it.¹⁶

Neville also refused to act against Cecil:

I would have no hand nor be no actor in it, because I was near allied unto him and had been beholden to him, as all the world took knowledge. And I would not blot my reputation to be false unto him or any man.

The “blot” would be a breach of loyalty visible to others: Neville invokes his publicly known obligations to Cecil. His defence distinguishes what he had done from the character the world might assign him for it. That distinction would become urgent when he sought to prevent his declaration from reaching print.

Cuffe said they would not press him, but wanted him in the presence chamber because Essex meant to name him “to supply some place there.” Neville replied that his dispatches had been signed and he would shortly leave for France. Cuffe suggested feigning sickness. Neville said he instead pressed for his money from the Exchequer, naming Mr Skinner as a witness to his efforts to obtain it.⁴

Cuffe asked him to sound a minister about support for Essex in the city. Neville said he had not done so; the minister was out of town. Cuffe also claimed that twenty or twenty-one of London’s twenty-four aldermen were on the earl’s side. Finally, he asked Neville to instruct his servants to support Essex, or at least not oppose him, if the encounter occurred at court. Neville recorded his answer and his denial together:

Whereunto I answered very well. Which how he construed I know not. But God is my witness that I neither did it nor ever meant it. And I humbly desire that my servants, if it be thought meet, may be examined of it.⁴

8 February: the rising

On Sunday, 8 February, Essex and his company entered London. The rising failed. At about three the following morning, Essex and Southampton were brought to the Tower with the Earl of Rutland and Lord Sandys.⁵

During the rising, Neville said he was at court. He denied knowing in advance what Essex would do:

I knew nothing neither of the matter, manner, time nor any circumstance of their attempt that Sunday.

He said he had gone to court that morning with Otwell Smith to speak to Cecil about the merchants’ business at Rouen. He maintained that, after learning what Essex had done, he stayed until ten at night, ready to defend the queen.⁵

Recalled from Dover

Neville set out on the journey to France he had been preparing since January. On 19 February he wrote to Cecil from Rochester about a passport for Mr Tiery.¹⁷ On 22 February Fane sent the letter from Dover Castle:

Sir Henry Neville in satisfying of your letters is posted with some three or four men to the Court to you, after whom I have sent Captain Windebank and one of my servants in post to observe him and such course as he shall take; which if the same be direct, then to pass as unknown persons; otherwise to make stay of him by force of your warrant.¹

Anne and the children remained at Dover. Within days of Fane’s letter, her father had to be instructed to receive her. On Shrove Tuesday the Privy Council directed Killigrew to put aside his displeasure against her husband and treat her with his former “countenance and comfort.”¹⁸

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On 25 February Essex was beheaded inside the Tower.⁵

Examined on 2 March 1601, Cuffe said that Essex had proposed Neville or Thomas Bodley as Robert Cecil’s replacement as secretary.¹⁹

By 6 March Neville was in custody at Chelsea, with Zachary Lok as his keeper. Embassy business continued. Lok reported that he had admitted Winwood’s servant and sent for a cabinet of Neville’s writings from Killigrew’s house. Anne supplied the key. Neville selected the papers he needed in Lok’s presence:

Every till in the cabinet was full of several writings touching his employments and private estate. All are safe in the cabinet, the key whereof he delivered presently to my keeping.

Winwood was to remain in France until the queen gave further instructions. Neville’s French household was to be dissolved and its furniture and utensils sent away.²⁰

Anne’s appeals and Cuffe’s execution

That same day, 6 March, Anne asked Thomas Windebank, her “good friend and kind neighbour,” to speak for her to Cecil, her kinsman. She had heard that Neville had lost the office of custos rotulorum, keeper of the county records, and that Sir Edward Norris had taken his place in the commission of peace. She appealed to Cecil’s earlier kindness and asked Windebank to “polish my rough-hewn speech.”²¹

On 11 March she asked permission to consult Neville about the people retained for his French employment and the settlement of household affairs. She pointed to his continuing expenses in the country. She offered to speak in his keeper’s presence, adding that her deafness would make Neville speak loudly enough to be heard.²²

Cuffe was executed on 13 March. A surviving report records his attempts to distinguish the earlier design from the action of 8 February. When he separated intention from means, Lord Grey interrupted: “This is no time for logic.”

Questioned about Neville, Cuffe acknowledged drawing him into the unfortunate action and asked his forgiveness. He also qualified his earlier claim about the aldermen: their affection for Essex had not meant that they were prepared to take arms for him.

As Cuffe continued, another interruption warned him to leave these matters and not “shorten his own time.” He turned to prayer. The report records his request for pardon from God, the queen and those involved,

but principally of Sir H. Nevill, who was drawn into trouble by him as an instrument.²³

On 22 March the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, together with Cecil, authorized Lok to admit Anne privately to her husband, accompanied by no more than one or two servants. A note on the warrant records that she came that Sunday. Two days later, writing from Lothbury, she asked Cecil to weigh Neville’s first fault against his earlier life and service. She reported hearing that Cuffe had cleared him at his death. That was part of her appeal, rather than the wording of the surviving scaffold report.²⁴

The declaration he did not want printed

On 22 April 1601 Neville wrote to Cecil about the expected publication of an account of the conspiracy. He asked to be mentioned sparingly and wanted his own declaration withheld—probably his declaration of 2 March. He feared that public disgrace would prevent his return to royal service.

The declaration, he explained, had been prepared in haste. Mr Browne, the Lord Admiral’s servant, arrived to collect it when Neville had barely begun, with instructions to deliver it at the Tower by eleven. The previous evening some of the councillors had assured Neville that it was wanted for another purpose, rather than to be used against him. In those circumstances, he wrote:

I omitted both matter and circumstances which would much have justified me and cleared mine intention from consent or participation in these actions.

So as if it should be published in that naked sort as it is set down, it would be to my infinite disadvantage, and lay me open to the censure of every common person, even for that whereof I am not guilty. Therefore chiefly I desire it may not be published; or if that must needs be—as I verily hope there is no such necessity, matters being otherwise clear enough, and my knowledge of the Earl’s designs being but at the second or third hand, and that only in generalities—I humbly desire that I may be permitted to revise it and to add some circumstances which I have either by word or writing already declared unto your Honours, that so the world may know the best of me as well as the worst.²⁵

Neville was asking to influence the account on which strangers would judge him. The “blot” he feared was more than an accusation before the Council: publication could give a partial account lasting authority. His insistence that the world know his best as well as his worst returns in the comparisons with Hamlet and Othello (Chapters 26–27).

On 27 April John Packer wrote to Winwood that “our good lady,” apparently Anne, had narrowly survived a grave illness and remained too weak to leave her bed. The same letter conveyed instructions from “my master” about Winwood’s continued service in France, his account and payment from the sale of household goods.²⁶

On 1 May Neville was brought to the Tower. The contemporary chronological notes record his arrival:

The first of May Sir Henry Nevill, late lord ambassador for France, was brought to the Tower.²⁷