OF ROBERT EARL OF ESSEX. 327 



This being the platform of their enterprise, the 

 second act of this tragedy was also resolved, which 

 was, that my lord should present himself to her ma 

 jesty, as prostrating himself at her feet, and desire 

 the remove of such persons as he called his enemies 

 from about her. And after that my lord had ob 

 tained possession of the queen, and the state, he 

 should call his pretended enemies to a trial upon 

 their lives, and summon a parliament, and alter the 

 government, and obtain to himself and his associa 

 tes such conditions as seemed to him and them 

 good. 



There passed a speech also in this conspiracy of 

 possessing the city of London, which Essex himself, 

 in his own particular and secret inclination, had ever 

 a special mind unto : not as a departure or going 

 from his purpose of possessing the court, but as an 

 inducement and preparative to perform it upon a 

 surer ground ; an opinion bred in him, as may be 

 imagined, partly by the great over weaning he had 

 of the love of the citizens ; but chiefly, in all likeli 

 hood, by a fear, that although he should have pre 

 vailed in getting her majesty s person into his hands 

 for a time, with his two or three hundred gentle 

 men, yet the very beams and graces of her majesty s 

 magnanimity and prudent carriage in such disaster, 

 working with the natural instinct of loyalty, which 

 of course, when fury is over, doth ever revive in the 

 hearts of subjects of any good blood or mind, such 

 as his troop for the more part was compounded of, 

 though by him seduced and bewitched, would quick- 



