XxX : PREFACE, 
Court,’ he says with quiet irony, ‘it was given out that I 
was one of them that incensed the Queen against my Lord 
of Essex.’ To Elizabeth’s plan of having ‘somewhat pub- 
lished in the Star-Chamber, for the satisfaction of the world 
touching my Lord of Essex his restraint,’ Bacon was firmly 
opposed, and his opposition gave her great offence. She 
charged him with being absent from the Star-Chamber when 
the declaration was made on the 29th of November. That 
he was absent we have his own evidence to prove, and he 
pleaded indisposition as the cause. An unjust suspicion fell 
upon him of having given the Queen an opinion in the cause 
of Essex in opposition to that of the Lord Chief Justice and 
the Attorney-General. His life was even threatened; but he 
had ‘the privy coat of a good conscience,’ and felt that these 
falsehoods would recoil upon their authors. Essex still re- 
mained in the custody of the Lord Keeper, and for some 
months not a word passed between the Queen and Bacon 
about him. But neither of them at this time knew the depth 
of Essex’s guilt. They knew nothing of his first design of 
landing in England with two or three thousand men, to make 
good his position till he could gain support. They knew 
nothing of the treasonable intention with which Montjoy 
succeeded to Essex’s command in Ireland; an intention 
_which had no less a scope than with half his army to join the 
King of Scots in an armed demonstration to support his 
right to the succession, the party headed by Essex in England 
working to the same end. James was too timid or too wary 
to listen to such a proposal, and the plot was for the time 
abandoned. Before it was revived Montjoy had come to his 
senses, and then ‘utterly rejected it as a thing which he could 
no way think honest.’ 
In the meantime Essex was released from custody and 
allowed to retire to his own house, still however remaining 
under surveillance. Towards the end of the Easter term the 
Queen admitted to Bacon that the former ‘ proceeding in the 
Star-Chamber had done no good, but rather kindled factious 
bruits (as she termed them) than quenched them.’ She now 
=" rote: 
