The Queen,
Missing Of The Men, Was Very Curious To Learn The Truth, But At Last
It Was Whispered Out;
She sware by God's death, it was fit that some
one or other should take him down and teach him
Better manners,
otherwise there would be no rule with him; and here I note the
imminution of my lord's friendship with Mountjoy, which the Queen
herself did then conjure.
Now for his fame we need not go far, for my Lord of Essex, having
borne a grudge to General Norris, who had unwittingly offered to
undertake the action of Brittany with fewer men than my lord had
before demanded; on his return with victory, and a glorious report
of his valour, he was then thought the only man for the Irish wars;
wherein my Lord of Essex so wrought, by despising the number and
quality of the rebels, that Norris was sent over with a scanty
force, joined with the relics of the veteran troops of Britain, of
set purpose, and as it fell out, to ruin Norris; and the Lord
Burrows, by my lord's procurement, sent at his heels, and to command
in chief, and to convey Norris only to his government at Munster;
which aggravated the great heart of the general to see himself
undervalued, and undermined, by my lord and Burrows, which was, as
the Proverb speaks, JUVENES DOCERE SENES.
Now my Lord Burrows in the beginning of his prosecution died,
whereupon the Queen was fully bent to send over my Lord Mountjoy;
which my Lord of Essex utterly misliked, and opposed with many
reasons, and by arguments of contempt towards Mountjoy (his then
professed friend and familiar) so predominant was his desire to reap
the whole honour of closing up that war, and all others; now the way
being paved and opened by his own workmanship, and so handled, that
none durst appear to stand in the place; at last, and with much ado,
he obtained his own ends, and therewith his fatal destruction,
leaving the Queen and the court, where he stood impregnable and firm
in her grace, to men that long had fought and waited their times to
give him a trip, and could never find any opportunity, but this of
his absence, and of his own creation; and those are true
observations of his appetite and inclinations, which were not of any
true proportion, but hurried and transported, with an over desire,
and thirstiness after fame, and that deceitful fame of popularity;
and, to help on his catastrophe, I observe likewise two sorts of
people that had a hand in his fall:
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