Note 282 — Chapter XLVII
Reading edition
Letter of advice to the Earl of Essex, to take upon him the care of Irish causes, when Mr. Secretary Cecil was in France (February to April, 1598), and a second letter from Bacon a little later, both printed by Spedding, vol. ii. pp. 94-1_0. There are many significant passages in Rowland Whyte’s letters in Sidney Papers, vol. ii. pp. 82-97. Essex was busy with Ireland before Cecil’s departure and before Bacon’s first letter, for Whyte wrote on Jan. 19: ‘Yesterday in the afternoon I went to the Court to attend my Lord of Essex, and he no sooner began to hearken unto me, but in comes my Lord of Thomond, in post from Ireland, and then was I commanded to take some other time.’ And see Chamberlain’s Letters, May 4, 1598. Spenser, who wrote in 1596 proposes that Essex should be Lord-Lieutenant, ‘upon whom the eye of all England is fixed, and our last hopes now rest.’