His campaign was an unsuccessful one, and by acting in various ways in opposition to the commands of the queen and the council, agreeing with Tyrone on a truce in September, and suddenly leaving the post of duty with the object of privately vindicating himself before the queen, he laid himself open to charges more serious than that of mere incompetency. For these misdemeanours he was brought in June 1600 before a specially constituted court, deprived of all his high offices, and ordered to live a prisoner in his own house during the queen’s pleasure. Chiefly through the intercession of Bacon his liberty was shortly afterwards restored to him, but he was ordered not to return to court. For some time he hoped for an improvement in his prospects, but when he was refused the renewal of his patent for sweet wines, hope was succeeded by despair, and half maddened by wounded vanity, he made an attempt (Feb. 7, 1601) to incite a revolution in his behalf, by parading the streets of London with 300 retainers, and shouting, “For the queen! a plot is laid for my life!” These proceedings awakened, however, scarcely any other feelings than mild perplexity and wonder; and finding that hope of assistance from the citizens was vain, he returned to Essex House, where after defending himself for a short time he surrendered. After a trial—in which Bacon, who prosecuted, delivered a speech against his quondam friend and benefactor, the bitterness of which was quite unnecessary to secure a conviction entailing at least very severe punishment—he was condemned to death, and notwithstanding many alterations in Elizabeth’s mood, the sentence was carried out on the 25th of February 1601.
Essex was in person tall and well proportioned, with a countenance which, though not strictly handsome, possessed, on account of its bold, cheerful and amiable expression, a wonderful power of fascination. He was a patron of literature, and himself a poet. His carriage was not very graceful, but his manners are said to have been “courtly, grave and exceedingly comely.” He was brave, chivalrous, impulsive, imperious sometimes with his equals, but generous to all his dependants and incapable of secret malice; and these virtues, which were innate and which remained with him to the last, must be regarded as somewhat counterbalancing, in our estimation of him, the follies and vices created by temptations which were exceptionally strong.
See Hon. W. B. Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex (1853); and Bacon and Essex, by E. A. Abbott (1877). Also the article Bacon, Francis, and authorities there.
ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, 3rd[1] Earl of (1591–1646), son of the preceding, was born in 1591. He was educated at Eton and at Merton College, Oxford. Shortly after the arrival of James I. in London, Essex (whose title was restored, and the attainder on his father removed, in 1604) was placed about the
prince of Wales, as a sharer both in his studies and amusements.
At the early age of fifteen he was married to Frances Howard,
daughter of the earl of Suffolk, but she was his wife only in name;
during his absence abroad (1607–1609) she fell in love with
Sir Robert Carr (afterwards earl of Somerset), and on her charging
her husband with physical incapacity, the marriage was annulled
in 1613. A second marriage which he contracted in 1631 with
Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Paulet, also ended unhappily.
From 1620 to 1623 he served in the wars of the Palatinate, and
in 1625 he was vice-admiral of a fleet which made an unsuccessful
attempt to capture Cadiz. In 1639 he was lieutenant-general of
the army sent by Charles against the Scottish Covenanters;
but on account of the irresolution of the king no battle occurred,
and the army was disbanded at the end of the year. Essex
was discharged “without ordinary ceremony,” and refused an
office which at that time fell vacant, “all which,” says Clarendon,
“wrought very much upon his rough, proud nature, and made
him susceptible of some impressions afterwards which otherwise
would not have found such easy admission.” Having taken the
side of the parliament against Charles, he was, on the outbreak
of the civil war in 1642, appointed to the command of the parliamentary
army. At the battle of Edgehill he remained master
of the field, and in 1643 he captured Reading, and relieved
Gloucester; but in the campaign of the following year, on
account of his hesitation to fight against the king in person,
nearly his whole army fell into the hands of Charles. In 1645,
on the passing of the self-denying ordinance, providing that no
member of parliament should hold a public office, he resigned
his commission; but on account of his past services his annuity
of £10,000 was continued to him for life. He died on the 14th
of September 1646, of a fever brought on by over-exertion in a
stag-hunt in Windsor Forest; his line becoming extinct.
See the “Life of Robert Earl of Essex,” by Robert Codrington, M.A., printed in Hart. Misc.; Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, and Hon. W. B. Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex (1853).
ESSEX, WALTER DEVEREUX, 1st[2] Earl of (1541–1576), the eldest son of Sir Richard Devereux, was born in 1541. His grandfather was the 2nd Baron Ferrers, who was created Viscount Hereford in 1550 and by his mother was a nephew of Henry Bourchier, a former earl of Essex. Walter Devereux succeeded as 2nd Viscount Hereford in 1558, and in 1561 or 1562 married Lettice, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys. In 1569 he served as high marshal of the field under the earl of Warwick and Lord Clinton, and materially assisted them in suppressing the northern insurrection. For his zeal in the service of Queen Elizabeth on this and other occasions, he in 1572 received the Garter and was created earl of Essex, the title which formerly belonged to the Bourchier family. Eager to give proof of “his good devotion to employ himself in the service of her majesty,” he offered on certain conditions to subdue and colonize, at his own expense, a portion of the Irish province of Ulster, at that time completely under the dominion of the rebel O’Neills, under Sir Brian MacPhelim and Tirlogh Luineach, with the Scots under their leader Sorley Boy MacDonnell. His offer, with certain modifications, was accepted, and he set sail for Ireland in July 1573, accompanied by a number of earls, knights and gentlemen, and with a force of about 1200 men. The beginning of his enterprise was inauspicious, for on account of a storm which dispersed his fleet and drove some of his vessels as far as Cork and the Isle of Man, his forces did not all reach the place of rendezvous till late in the autumn, and he was compelled to entrench himself at Belfast for the winter. Here, by sickness, famine and desertions, his troops were diminished to little more than 200 men. Intrigues of various sorts, and fighting of a guerilla type, followed with disappointing results, and Essex had difficulties both with the deputy Fitzwilliam and with the queen. Essex was in straits himself, and his offensive movements in Ulster took the form of raids and brutal massacres among the O’Neills; in October 1574 he treacherously captured MacPhelim at a conference in Belfast, and after slaughtering his attendants had him and his wife and brother executed at Dublin. Elizabeth, instigated apparently by Leicester, after encouraging Essex to prepare to attack the Irish chief Tirlogh Luineach, suddenly commanded him to “break off his enterprise”; but, as she left him a certain discretionary power, he took advantage of it to defeat Tirlogh Luineach, chastise Antrim, and massacre several hundreds of Sorley Boy’s following, chiefly women and children, discovered hiding in the caves of Rathlin. He returned to England in the end of 1575, resolved “to live henceforth an untroubled life”; but he was ultimately persuaded to accept the offer of the queen to make him earl marshal of Ireland. He arrived in Dublin in September 1576, and three weeks afterwards died of dysentery. There were suspicions that he had been poisoned by Leicester, who shortly after his death married his widow, but these were not confirmed by the post-mortem examination. The endeavours of Essex to better the condition of Ireland were a dismal failure; and the massacres of the O’Neills and of the Scots of Rathlin leave a dark stain on his reputation.
See Sidney Lee’s article in the Dict. Nat. Biog.; Lives of the Devereux Earls of Essex, by Hon. Walter B. Devereux (1853); Froude’s History of England, vol. x.; J. S. Brewer, Athenaeum (1870), part i. pp. 261, 326.
ESSEX, an eastern county of England, bounded N. by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, E. by the North Sea, S. by the Thames,
