Essex, EARL OF, a title conferred in 1572 on Walter Devereux (1541–76), scion of a very old Herefordshire house, the daring but luckless coloniser of Ulster. The title had been previously borne by the Mandevilles, the Bohuns, the Bourchiers (Devereux's ancestors), and by Thomas Cromwell (q.v.).
ROBERT DEVEREUX, Walter's eldest son and successor, was born at Netherwood, near Bromyard, on 10th November 1567, at nine was sent by Burgley, his guardian, to Trinity College, Cambridge, and at thirteen got his M.A. He had been taken to court the Christmas of 1577; in 1580 Leicester had become his step-father; and under Leicester he first saw service in the Netherlands (1585–86), for his valour at Zutphen being made a knight-banneret. Back at court, the young gallant quickly won the 'singular countenance' of the elderly queen. In the words of his college-friend Bagot, 'when she is abroad, nobody near her but my L. of Essex; and at night my Lord is at cards or one game or another with her, that he cometh not to his own lodging till birds sing in the morning.' There were tiffs between them, over his bickerings with Raleigh, his duel with Blount, his stealing off to fight in Portugal, moneys lent by Elizabeth, his favouring of Puritanism, and, worst of all, his clandestine marriage in 1590 with Walsingham's daughter, Sir Philip Sidney's widow. Ere long, however, he was once more 'in very good favour,' and in 1591 commanded the forces despatched to help Henry IV. in Normandy against the League; in 1593 was sworn a privy-councillor; and by 1594, thanks to Bacon, who made him his stalking-horse, was acting as a sort of foreign secretary. His was the principal glory of the brilliant capture of Cadiz (1596); but his, too, largely the failure next year of the 'Islands Voyage' (see RALEIGH). In 1597 Essex became Earl Marshal, in 1598 Chancellor of Cambridge; but meanwhile occurred his great quarrel with Elizabeth, when he turned his back on her, exclaiming that her conditions were as crooked as her carcass. A box on the ear and 'Go and be hanged' was her answer; and, clapping hand to sword, Essex vowed he would never put up with so great an indignity. They never were properly reconciled. His six months' lord-lieutenancy of Ireland proved an utter fiasco; his army of sixteen thousand dwindled to barely four; and, concluding a truce with the arch-rebel Tyrone, he hurried back to England, and burst into Elizabeth's bedchamber. She received him not ungraciously at first; still, imprisonment followed, and deprivation of all his dignities. And now he formed the mad plot for removing Elizabeth's counsellors, in pursuance of which, on Sunday, 8th February 1601, he attempted vainly to raise the city of London. On the 19th he was found guilty of high-treason, on the 25th beheaded in the Tower. Elizabeth signed his death-warrant reluctantly; but the story of the ring, given him by the queen for a safe-guard, but kept back by the Countess of Nottingham, is an invention of fifty years afterwards. A patron of letters, Essex was himself a sonneteer; and Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses (1861) gives a longish list of his writings. See the authorities cited there and in our articles BACON and ELIZABETH.
ROBERT DEVEREUX, eldest son of the preceding, was born in January 1591, and in 1604, soon after James I.'s accession, was restored in blood as third Earl of Essex. When just fifteen, he was married to a daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, but during his two years' travels on the Continent (1607-9) she and Carr fell in love with each other, and Carr, on getting a divorce, she married (1613). Essex's own second marriage (1631) was almost as unhappy as the first. From 1626 he had attached himself to the popular party, and the Long Parliament brought him to the front; in July 1642, withstanding all Charles's blandishments, he received the command of the parliamentary army. A dull, worthy soul, a striking contrast to his brilliant sire, he was brave enough personally, but a very poor general; and to his hesitancy and inactivity the prolongation of the war was largely due. The drawn battle of Edgehill, the capture of Reading, and the relief of Gloucester were followed by his blundering march into Cornwall, whence he himself fled by sea. On 2d April 1646 he resigned the command, and on 14th September he died. The title died with him; but in 1661 it was revived in favour of Arthur, second Lord Capell (1635-83), the ancestor of the present earl. See works cited at CHARLES I., and
Walter Bouchier Devereux's Lives of the Devereux, Earls of Essex (2 vols. 1853).