lord Montjoy and earl of Devonshire, cost him some blood; for Sir Charles, thinking himself affronted by the earl, challenged him, and, after a short dispute, wounded him in the knee. The queen, so far from being displeased with it, is said to have sworn a good round oath, that it was fit somebody should take him down, otherwise there would be no ruling him. However, she reconciled the rivals; who, to their honour, continued good friends as long as they lived.

The gallant Essex however was not so entirely captivated with his situation, as to become insensible to the allurements of military glory. In 1589, Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake having failed on an expedition against Spain, our young favourite, without the permission or knowledge of his royal mistress, followed the fleet; which he joined as they were sailing towards Lisbon, and acted with great resolution in the repulse of the Spanish garrison of that city. The queen wrote him a very severe letter on the occasion; but she was, after his return, soon appeased. Yet it was not long before he again incurred her displeasure, by marrying the widow of Sir Philip Sidney. In 1591, he was sent to France with the command of 4000 men to the assistance of Henry IV. In 1596, he joined with the lord high admiral Howard in the command of the famous expedition against Cadiz, the success of which is universally known. In 1597, he was appointed master of the ordnance; and the same year commanded another expedition against Spain, called the Island voyage, the particulars of which are also well known.

Soon after his return, he was created earl marshal of England; and on the death of the great lord Burleigh, in 1598, elected chancellor of the university of Cambridge. This is reckoned one of the last instances of this great man's felicity, who was now advanced too high to sit at ease; and those who longed for his honours and employments, very closely applied themselves to bring about his fall. The first great shock he received, in regard to the queen's favour, arose from a warm dispute between her majesty and himself, about the choice of some fit and able person to superintend the affairs of Ireland. The affair is related by Camden; who tells us, that nobody was present but the lord admiral, Sir Robert Cecil secretary, and Windebank clerk of the seal. The queen looked upon Sir William Knolls, uncle to Essex, as the most proper person for that charge: Essex contended, that Sir George Carew was a much fitter man for it. When the queen could not be persuaded to approve his choice, he so far forgot himself and his duty, as to turn his back upon her in a contemptuous manner; which insolence her majesty not being able to bear, gave him a box on the ear, and bid him go and be hanged. Essex, like a blockhead, put his hand to his sword, and swore revenge. Where was his gallantry on this occasion? Could a stroke from an angry woman tinge the honour of a gallant soldier? This violent storm, however, soon subsided; and they were again reconciled, at least apparently.

The total reduction of Ireland being brought upon the tapis soon after, the earl was pitched upon as the only man from whom it could be expected. This was an artful contrivance of his enemies, who hoped by this means to ruin him; nor were their expectations disappointed. He declined this fatal preferment as long as he could; but, perceiving that he should have no quiet at home, he accepted it; and his commission for lord lieutenant passed the great seal on the 12th of March 1598. His enemies now began to insinuate, that he had sought this command, for the sake of greater things which he then was meditating; but there is a letter of his to the queen, preserved in the Harleian collections, which shews, that he was so far from entering upon it with alacrity, that he looked upon it rather as a banishment, and a place assigned him for a retreat from his sovereign's displeasure, than a potent government bestowed upon him by her favour.

"To the Queen. From a mind delighting in sorrow; from spirits waited with passion; from a heart torn in pieces with care, grief, and travail; from a man that hateth himself, and all things else that keep him alive; what service can your majesty expect, since any service past deserves no more than banishment and proscription to the cursedest of all islands? It is your rebels pride and succession must give me leave to ransom myself out of this hateful prison, out of my loathed body; which, if it happen so, your majesty shall have no cause to dislike the fashion of my death, since the course of my life could never please you.

Happy he could finish forth his fate, In some unhaunted desert most obscure; From all society, from love and hate; Of worldly folk; then should he sleep secure. Then wake again, and yield God ever praise, Content with hips, and hawses, and brambleberry; In contemplation passing out his days, And change of holy thoughts to make him merry. Who, when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, Where harmless robin dwells with gentle truth.

Your Majesty's exiled servant,

Robert Essex."

The earl met with nothing in Ireland but ill success and crosses; in the midst of which, an army was suddenly raised in England, under the command of the earl of Nottingham; no-body well knowing why, but in reality from the suggestions of the earl's enemies to the queen, that he rather meditated an invasion on his native country, than the reduction of the Irish rebels. This and other considerations made him resolve to quit his post, and come over to England; which he accordingly did without leave. He burst into her majesty's bed-chamber as she was rising, and she received him with a mixture of tenderness and severity; but she, soon after, thought fit to deprive him of all his employments, except that of master of the horse. He was committed to the custody of the lord-keeper, with whom he continued six months. No sooner had he regained his liberty, than he was guilty of many extravagancies; to which he was inflamed by knaves and fools, but perhaps more powerfully by his own passions. He first determined to obtain an audience of the queen by force. He refused to attend the council when summoned. When the queen sent the lord-keeper, the lord chief-justice, and two others, to know his grievances, he confined them; and then marched with his friends into the city, in expectation that the people would rise in his favour; but in that he was disappointed. He was at last besieged, and taken in his house in Essex-street; committed to the Tower; tried by... Devereux by his peers, condemned, and executed. Thus did this brave man, this favourite of his queen, this idol of the people, fall a sacrifice to his want of that dissimulation, that cunning, that court-policy, by which his enemies were enabled to effect his ruin. He was a polite scholar, and a generous friend to literature.

To those who have not taken the trouble to consult and compare the several authors who have related the story of this unfortunate earl, it must appear wonderful, if, as hath been suggested, he was really beloved by queen Elizabeth, that she could consent to his execution. Now, that she had conceived a tender passion for him, is proved beyond a doubt by Mr Walpole in his very entertaining and instructive Catalogue of Noble Authors.—“I am aware,” says that author, “that it is become a mode to treat the queen’s passion for him as a romance. Voltaire laughs at it; and observes, that when her struggle about him must have been the greatest (the time of his death), she was sixty-eight.—Had he been sixty-eight, it is probable she would not have been in love with him.”—“Whenever Essex acted a fit of sickness, not a day passed without the queen’s sending often to see him; and once went so far as to sit long by him, and order his broth and things.” It is recorded by a diligent observer of that court, that in one of his sick moods, he took the liberty of going up to the queen in his night-gown. In the height of these frivolous fooleries, there was a mask at Black Friars on the marriage of lord Herbert and Mrs Ruffell. Eight lady-maikers chose eight more to dance the measures. Mrs Fitton, who led them, went to the queen, and wooed her to dance. Her majesty asked what she was?—Affection, she said. Affection! said the queen; Affection is false. Were not there the murmurs of a heart ill at ease? Yet her majesty rose, and danced. She was then sixty-eight. Sure it was as natural for her to be in love.”

Mr Walpole farther observes, that her court and contemporaries had an uniform opinion of her passion for Essex, and quotes several instances from a letter written by Sir Francis Bacon to the earl; in which, among other things, he advises him to consult her taste in his very apparel and gestures, and to give way to any other inclination she may have. Sir Francis advised the queen herself, knowing her inclination, to keep the earl about her for society. What Henry IV. of France thought of the queen’s affection for Essex, is evident from what he said to her ambassador—“Que sa majesté ne laissez jamais son cousin d’Essex échapper de son cotillon.” After his confinement, on hearing he was ill, she sent him word, with tears in her eyes, that if she might with her honour, she would visit him.

“If,” says Mr Walpole, “these instances are problematical, are the following so? In one of the curious letters of Rowland White, he says, the queen hath of late used the fair Mrs Bridges with words and blows of anger. In a subsequent letter, he says, the earl is again fallen in love with his fairest B. It cannot chuse but come to the queen’s ears, and then be undone.”—Essex himself says, that her fond parting with him when he set out for Ireland, pierced his very soul.

Probably the reader has now very little doubt as to queen Elizabeth’s affection for the unfortunate Essex; but, in proportion to our belief of the existence of this affection, her motives for consenting to his execution become more inexplicable. Queen Elizabeth had a very high opinion of her beauty and personal attractions, and probably expected more entire adoration than the earl’s passion for variety would suffer him to pay. Towards the latter end of her life, she was certainly an object of disgust. He had too much honest simplicity in his nature, to feign a passion which he did not feel. She foolishly gave credit to the stories of his ambitious projects incompatible with her safety; and was informed that he had once inadvertently said, that she grew old and cankered, and that her mind was become as crooked as her carcase. If this be true, where is the woman that would not sacrifice such a lover to her resentment?

It is said, however, that, concerning his execution, her majesty was irrefutable to the last, and sent orders to countermand it; but, considering his obstinacy in refusing to ask her pardon, afterwards directed that he should die. It is reported, that the queen, in the height of her passion for the earl of Essex, had given him a ring, ordering him to keep it, and that whatever crime he should commit, she would pardon him when he should return that pledge. The earl, upon his condemnation, applied to admiral Howard’s lady, his relation, deferring her, by a person whom she could trust, to return it into the queen’s own hands; but her husband, who was one of the earl’s greatest enemies, and to whom she had imprudently told the circumstance, would not suffer her to acquit herself of the commission; so that the queen consented to the earl’s death, being full of indignation against so proud and haughty a spirit, who chose rather to die than implore her mercy. Some time after, the admiral’s lady fell sick, and being near her death, she sent word to the queen that she had something of great consequence to communicate before she died. The queen came to her bed-side, and having ordered all her attendants to withdraw, the lady returned, but too late, the ring, deferring to be excused that she did not return it sooner: on which, it is said, the queen immediately retired, overwhelmed with grief.

The earl of Essex died in the thirty-fourth year of his age; leaving by his lady, one son and two daughters.