Background
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, son of the 1st Devereux earl, was born at Netherwood, Herefordshire, United Kingdom, on the 19th of November 1566.
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, son of the 1st Devereux earl, was born at Netherwood, Herefordshire, United Kingdom, on the 19th of November 1566.
He entered the university of Cambridge and graduated in 1581.
Robert Devereux was second in command of the royal army in the first of the Bishops' Wars in Scotland (1639) and was made privy councilor (1641), but Charles could not keep his allegiance thereafter.
Essex commanded the parliamentary forces at the battle of Edgehill (1642).
In 1643 he took Reading, relieved Gloucester, and took part in the first battle of Newbury.
The next year, however, he quarreled bitterly with Sir William Waller and, disobeying orders, pursued the royalists into the southwest.
He was cut off in Cornwall and forced to escape with as many of his men as he could by sea.
He opposed the formation of the New Model Army and reluctantly relinquished his command in 1645.
He now took his place at court, where so handsome a youth soon found favour with Queen Elizabeth, and in consequence was on bad terms with Raleigh.
While Elizabeth was approaching the mature age of sixty, Essex was scarcely twenty-one.
In 1591 he was appointed to the command of a foice auxiliary to one formerly sent to assist Henry IV of France against the Spaniards; but after a fruitless campaign he was finally recalled from the command in January 1592.
For some years after this most of his time was spent at court, where he held a position of unexampled influence, both on account of the favour of the queen and from his own personal popularity.
It would seem to have been shortly after this exploit that the beginnings of a change in the feelings of the queen towards him came into existence.
She doubtless was offended at his growing tendency to assert his independence, and jealous of his increasing popularity with the people; but it is also probable that her strange infatuation regarding her own charms, great as it was, scarcely prevented her from suspecting either that his professed attachment had all along been somewhat alloyed with considerations of personal interest, or that at least it was now beginning to cool.
Francis Bacon, at that time his most intimate friend, endeavoured to prevent the threatened rupture by writing him a long letter of advice; and although perseverance in a long course of feigned action was for Essex impossible, he for some time attended pretty closely to the hints of his mentor, so that the queen " used him most graciously. "
In 1597 he was appointed master of the ordnance, and in the following year he obtained command of an expedition against Spain, known as the Islands or Azores Voyage.
He gained some trifling successes, but as the Plate fleet escaped him he failed of his main purpose; and when on his return the queen met him with the usual reproaches, he retired to his home at Wanstead.
That, nevertheless, the irritated feelings neither of Essex nor of the queen were completely healed was manifested shortly afterwards in a manner which set propriety completely at defiance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
His carriage was not very graceful, but his manners are said to have been " courtly, grave and exceedingly comely. "
In 1590 Essex married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but in dread of the queen's anger he kept the marriage secret as long as possible.
The marriage ended in a famous trial when the countess, who had fallen in love with Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, sued for and obtained (1613) an annulment.
