CHAPTER II.

THE TREASONABLE HISTORY OF HENRY IV, WRITTEN BY

DR. HAYWARD.

My breast can better brook thy dagger's point

Than can my ears thy tragic history.

3d Henry VI., v, 6.

UDGE HOLMES gives the following interesting account of the pamphlet supposed to have been written by Dr. John Hayward, with, it was claimed, an intent to incite the Essex faction to the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth:

Her disposition toward Essex had been kindly and forgiving, but she was doubtful of him, and kept a watchful eye upon his courses. As afterward it became evident enough, all his movements had reference to a scheme already formed in his mind to depose the Queen by the help of the Catholic party and the Irish rebels. He goes to Ireland in March, 1599, and after various doubtful proceedings and a treasonable truce with Tyrone, he suddenly returns to London, in October following, with a select body of friends, without the command, and to the great surprise and indignation of the Queen; and a few days afterward finds himself under arrest, and a quasi-prisoner in the house of the Lord Keeper. During this year Dr. Hayward's pamphlet appeared. It was nothing more than a history of the deposing of King Richard II., says Malone. It was dedicated to the Earl of Essex, without the author's name on the title-page; but that of John Hayward was signed to the dedication. This Hayward was a Doctor of Civil Law, a scholar, and a distinguished historian of that age, who afterward held an office in Chancery under Bacon. This pamphlet followed on the heels of the play, and it may have been suggested by the popularity of the play on the stage, or by the suppression of the deposing scene in the printed copy.

According to Mr. Dixon, "it was a singular and mendacious tract, which, under ancient names and dates, gives a false and disloyal account of things and persons in his own age; the childless sovereign; the association of defense; the heavy burden of taxation; the levy of double subsidies; the prosecution of an Irish war, ending in a general discontent; the outbreak of blood; the solemn deposition and final murder of the Prince." Bolingbroke is the hero of the tale, and the exist ence of a title to the throne superior to that of the Queen is openly affirmed in it. A second edition of the Richard II. had been printed in 1598, under the name of Shakespeare, but with the obnoxious scene still omitted; and it is not until 1608, in the established quiet of the next reign, that the omitted scene is restored in print. It is plain that during the reign of Elizabeth it would have been dangerous to have printed it in full; nevertheless, it had a great run on the stage during these years.

Now, Camden speaks of both the book of Hayward and the tragedy of Richard II. He states that, on the first informal inquiry, held at the Lord Keeper's house, in June, 1600, concerning the conduct of Essex, besides the general charges of dis

obedience and contempt, "they likewise charged him with some heads and articles taken out of a certain book, dedicated to him, about the deposing Richard II." This was doubtless Hayward's book. But in his account of the trial of Merrick (commander at Essex' house), he says he was indicted also, among other things, "for having procured the outdated tragedy of Richard II. to be publicly acted at his own charge, for the entertainment of the conspirators, on the day before the attack on the Queen's palace." "This," he continues, "the lawyers construed as done by him with a design to intimate that they were now giving the representation of a scene, upon the stage, which was the next day to be acted in reality upon the person of the Queen. And the same judgment they passed upon a book which had been written some time before by one Hayward, a man of sense and learning, and dedicated to the Earl of Essex, viz.: that it was penned on purpose as a copy and an encouragement for deposing the Queen." He further informs us that the judges in their opinion "produced likewise several instances from the Chronicles of England, as of Edward II. and Richard II., who, being once betrayed into the hands of their subjects, were soon deposed and murdered." And when Southampton asked the Attorney-General, on his trial, what he supposed they intended to do with the Queen when they should have seized her, Coke replied: "The same that Henry of Lancaster did with Richard II.: . . . when he had once got the King in his clutches, he robbed him of his crown and life." This account of Camden may be considered the more reliable in that, as we know from manuscript copy of his Annals, which (according to Mr. Spedding) still remain in the Cottonian Library, containing additions and corrections in the handwriting of Bacon, it had certainly passed under his critical revision before it was printed in 1627. And this may help us to a more certain understanding of the allusions which Bacon himself makes to those same matters in his Apology and in his account of the trial of Merrick; for, while in the latter he expressly names the tragedy of Richard II., in the former, as also in the Apophthegms, the book of Dr. Hayward only is mentioned by name, and there is, at the same time, a covert (yet very palpable) allusion in them both to the tragedy also, and to his personal connection with it.1

And we find Bacon referring again to this same book of Dr. Hayward, in his Apology. After telling how he wrote a sonnet in the name of Essex, and presented it to the Queen, with a view to bringing about a reconciliation with the great offender, he adds:

But I could never prevail with her, though I am persuaded she saw plainly whereat I leveled; and she plainly had me in jealousy, that I was not hers entirely, but still had inward and deep respect toward my Lord, more than stood at that time with her will and pleasure. About the same time I remember an answer of mine in a matter which had some affinity with my Lord's cause, which, though it grew from me, went after about in others' names. For her Majesty being mightily incensed with that book which was dedicated to my Lord of Essex, being a story of the first year of King Henry IV.; thinking it a seditious prelude to put into the people's heads boldness and faction, said she had an opinion that there was treason in it, and asked me if I could not find any places in it which might be drawn within case of treason. Whereto I answered: For treason, surely I found none; but for felony, very many. And when her Majesty hastily asked me wherein, I told her the author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken most of

1 The Authorship of Shakespeare - Holmes, vol. 1, pp. 243-6.

the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus and translated them into English, and put them into his text.1

Judge Holmes shows that this jest did not apply to Dr. Hayward's book, but that it does apply to the play of Richard II., which is full of suggestions from Tacitus. But Bacon did not want to touch too closely upon the play; although one can readily see that if the Queen was thus moved against a mere pamphlet, she must have been much more incensed against that popular dramatic representation, which had been acted "more than forty times in houses and the public streets," as she told Lambarde, and which showed, in living pictures, the actual deposition and murder of her prototype, Richard II.

Judge Holmes seems to think that the words, "a matter which had some affinity with my Lord's cause, which, though it grew from me, went after about in others' names," meant that the pamphlet or play "grew from him;" but Mr. Spedding claims that it was the "answer" which "grew from him and went after about in others' names," and the sentence seems to be more reasonably subject to this construction. Bacon would hardly have dared to thus boldly avow that he wrote the pamphlet or play, although as a pregnant jest he may have constructed a sentence that could be read either way. Judge Holmes continues:

So capital a joke did this piece of wit of his appear to Bacon, that he could not spare to record it among his Apophthegms, thus:

58. The book of deposing King Richard II. and the coming in of Henry IV., supposed to be written by Dr. Hayward, who was committed to the Tower for it, had much incensed Queen Elizabeth, and she asked Mr. Bacon, being of her learned counsel, whether there was any treason contained in it? Mr. Bacon, intending to do him a pleasure, and to take off the Queen's bitterness with a merry conceit, answered, "No, Madam, for treason I cannot deliver an opinion that there is any, but very much felony." The Queen, apprehending it, gladly asked, How? and wherein? Mr. Bacon answered, Because he hath stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus."

The designation here given to the book comes much nearer to a correct naming of the play than it does to the title of Dr. Hayward's pamphlet, and the suggestion that the Doctor was committed to the Tower for only being supposed to be the author, and that he, in his answer, intended to do the Doctor a pleasure, looks very much like an attempt at a cover; and is, to say the least, a little curious in itself. That Dr. Hayward had translated out of Tacitus was, of course, a mere pretense; but that the play drew largely upon the "sentences and conceits of Cornelius Tacitus," will be shown to be quite certain.

And Bacon alludes to this matter again, in his Apology, as follows: 1 Holmes, The Authorship of Shak., p. 250.

2 Ibid., p. 252.