Essex knew well what the stake was. He lost it, and deserved to lose it,
little as his enemies deserved to win it; for they, too, were doing what
would have cost them their heads if Elizabeth had known
it--corresponding, as Essex was accused of doing, with Scotland about
the succession, and possibly with Spain. But they were playing
cautiously and craftily; he with bungling passion. He had been so long
accustomed to power and place, that he could not endure that rivals
should keep him out of it. They were content to have their own way,
while affecting to be the humblest of servants; he would be nothing less
than a Mayor of the Palace. He was guilty of a great public crime, as
every man is who appeals to arms for anything short of the most sacred
cause. He was bringing into England, which had settled down into
peaceable ways, an imitation of the violent methods of France and the
Guises. But the crime as well as the penalty belonged to the age, and
crimes legally said to be against the State mean morally very different
things, according to the state of society and opinion. It is an
unfairness verging on the ridiculous, when the ground is elaborately
laid for keeping up the impression that Essex was preparing a real
treason against the Queen like that of Norfolk. It was a treason of the
same sort and order as that for which Northumberland sent Somerset to
the block: the treason of being an unsuccessful rival.

Meanwhile Bacon had been getting gradually into the unofficial employ of
the Government. He had become one of the "Learned Counsel"--lawyers with
subordinate and intermittent work, used when wanted, but without patent
or salary, and not ranking with the regular law officers. The Government
had found him useful in affairs of the revenue, in framing
interrogatories for prisoners in the Tower, in drawing up reports of
plots against the Queen. He did not in this way earn enough to support