ROBERT, Earl of Essex, the son of Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, was born at Netherwood, in Herefordshire, in the year 1567. He succeeded to the title of Earl of Essex at the age of ten; and about two years afterwards was sent by his guardian, Lord Burghley, to Trinity College, Cambridge. He took the degree of master of arts in 1582, and soon afterwards retired to his seat at Lampise, in South Wales. He did not, however, continue long in this retreat; for we find him, in his seventeenth year, at the court of Queen Elizabeth, who immediately honoured him with singular marks of her favour. Authors seem very unnecessarily perplexed to account for this young earl's gracious reception at the court of Elizabeth. But the reasons seem pretty obvious; he was her relation, the son of one of her most faithful servants, the son-in-law of her favourite Leicester, and a very handsome and accomplished youth. Towards the end of the following year, 1585, he attended the Earl of Leicester to Holland; and gave signal proofs of his personal courage during the campaign of 1586, particularly at the battle of Zutphen, where the gallant Sir Philip Sidney was mortally wounded. On this occasion the Earl of Leicester conferred on him the honour of knight banneret.

In the year 1587, Leicester being appointed lord steward of the household, Essex succeeded him in the honourable post of master of the horse; and the year following, when the queen assembled an army at Tilbury to oppose the Spanish invasion, Essex was made general of the horse. From this time he was considered as the favourite of the queen; and if any mark was yet wanting to fix the opinion of the people in this respect, it was shown by the queen's conferring on him the honour of the garter.

It is not to be wondered at, that so rapid an elevation should have affected so young a man as the Earl of Essex, who henceforward showed a very high spirit, and often behaved petulantly enough to the queen herself, who yet did not choose to be controlled by her subjects. His eagerness about this time to dispute her favour with Sir Charles Blount, afterwards Lord Mountjoy and Earl of Devonshire, cost him some blood; for Sir Charles, thinking himself affronted by the earl, challenged him, and after a short contest wounded him in the knee. The queen, so far from being displeased with this occurrence, 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 credit, 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 sailed on an expedition against Spain, the 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, after his return, she was 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 was 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 Devicotta, 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 Burghley in 1598, elected chancellor of the university of Cambridge. This is reckoned one of the last instances of the good fortune of a man who had 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 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 except the lord admiral, Sir Robert Cecil, secretary, and Windenbank, clerk of the seal. The queen looked upon Sir William Knolls, uncle of Essex, as the most proper person for the charge; but Essex contended that Sir George Carew was a much fitter man for the situation. 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 put his hand to his sword and swore revenge. This violent storm, however, soon subsided, and they were again, at least apparently, reconciled.

The total reduction of Ireland being proposed soon afterwards, the earl was pitched upon as the only man by whom it could be accomplished. This was an artful contrivance of his enemies, who hoped to ruin him, by employing him in a desperate undertaking; 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 as lord lieutenant passed the great seal on the 12th of March 1598. The earl met with nothing in Ireland but ill success and disasters; in the midst of which an army was suddenly raised in England, under the command of the Earl of Nottingham, by the suggestions of the earl's enemies, who insinuated that he meditated an invasion of his native country, rather than the reduction of the Irish rebels. This and other considerations induced him to quit his post and to come over to England, which he accordingly did without leave. On his arrival he burst into her majesty's bed-chamber as she was rising, and was received with a mixture of tenderness and severity; but she soon afterwards thought fit to deprive him of all his employments except that of master of the horse; and 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 plunged into many extravagancies, to which he was instigated 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; and 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 this he was completely disappointed. He was at last besieged and taken in his house in Essex Street, and being committed to the Tower, he was tried by his peers, condemned, and executed. He was a polite scholar, and a generous friend to literature. The Earl of Essex died in the thirty-fourth year of his age, leaving by his lady one son and two daughters.