except in point of gallantry, and thoroughly well affected to the protestant religion. Historians, inform us, that as to his execution, the queen remained irresolute to the very last, and sent sir Edward Carey to countermand it; but, as Camden says, considering afterwards his obstinacy in refusing to ask her pardon, she countermanded those orders, and directed that he should die. There is an odd story current in the world about a ring, which the chevalier Louis Aubrey de Mourier, many years the French minister in Holland, and a man of great parts and unsuspected credit, delivers as an undoubted truth; and that upon the authority of an English minister, who might be well presumed to know what he said. As the incident is remarkable, and has made much noise, we will report it in the words of that historian: "It will not, I believe, be thought either impertinent or disagreeable to add here, what prince Maurice had from the mouth of Mr. Carleton, ambassador of England in Holland, who died secretary of state; so well known under the name of lord Dorchester, and who was a man of great merit. He said, that queen Elizabeth gave the earl of Essex a ring, in the height of her passion for him, ordering him to keep it; and that whatever he should commit, she would pardon him when he should return that pledge. Since that time the earl's enemies having prevailed with the queen, who, besides, was exasperated against him for the contempt he had shewed her beauty, now through age upon the decay, she caused him to be impeached. When he was condemned, she expected to receive from him the ring, and would have granted him his pardon according to her promise. The earl, finding himself in the last extremity, applied to admiral Howard's lady, who was his relation; and desired her, by a person she could trust, to deliver the ring into the queen's own hands. But her husband, who was one of the earl's greatest enemies, and to whom she told this imprudently, 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 given over by her physicians, she sent word to the queen that she had something of great consequence to tell her before she died. The queen came to her bedside; and having ordered all her attendants to withdraw,

the admiral's lady returned her, but too late, that ring from the earl of Essex, desiring to be excused for not having returned it sooner, since her husband had prevented her. The queen retired immediately, overwhelmed with the utmost grief; she sighed continually for a fortnight, without taking any nourishment, lying in bed entirely dressed, and getting up an hundred times a night. At last she died with hunger and with grief, because she had consented to the death of a lover who had applied to her for mercy." Histoire de Hollande, p. 215, 216.

This account has commonly been treated as a fable; but late discoveries seem to have confirmed it. See the proofs of this remarkable fact, collected in Birch's Negociations, &c. p. 206, and Hume's History, at the end of Elizabeth's reign.

Lord Orford has entered into a long disquisition on the proofs of queen Elizabeth's love for the earl of Essex, and certainly proves that she had a more than ordinary attachment to him, although in some of the circumstances it appears to savour more of the fondness of a capricious mother, than of a mistress. His lordship has done wiser in having placed the earl of Essex among the noble authors of England. The various pieces enumerated by lord Orford justly entitle him to that distinction; and he has a farther claim to it from the numerous letters of his which occur in the different collections of state papers, and especially in Birch's "Memoirs of the Reign of queen Elizabeth." "But of all his compositions," says Mr. Walpole, "the most excellent, and in many respects equal to the performances of the greatest geniuses, is a long letter to the queen from Ireland, stating the situation of that country in a most masterly manner, both as a general and statesman, and concluding with strains of the tenderest eloquence, on finding himself so unhappily exposed to the artifice of his enemies during his absence. It cannot fail to excite admiration, that a man ravished from all improvement and reflection at the age of seventeen, to be nursed, perverted, fondled, dazzled in a court, should, notwithstanding, have snatched such opportunities of cultivating his mind and understanding!" In another letter from Ireland, he says movingly, "I provided for this service a breast-plate, but not a cuirass; that is, I am armed on the breast, but not on the back."

It has been surmised that the earl of Essex used the pen,

first, of Francis Bacon, and afterwards of Cuffe. Speaking of Bacon, Dr. Birch observes, that it is certain that Essex did not want any such assistance, and could not have had it upon many and most important occasions, which required him to write some of the most finished of his epistolary performances, the style of which is not only very different from, but likewise much more natural, easy, and perspicuous than that of his friend, who acknowledges it to be "far better than his own." With regard to Cuffe, Mr. Walpole remarks, that he might have some hand in collecting the materials relative to business, but that there runs through all the earl's letters a peculiarity of style, so adapted to his situation and feelings, as could not have been felt for him or dictated by any body else.

It was as a prose-writer that the earl of Essex excelled, and not as a poet. He is said to have translated one of Ovid's Epistles; and a few of his sonnets are preserved in the Ashmolean museum. They display, however, no marks of poetic genius. "But if Essex," says Mr. Warton, "was no poet, few noblemen of his age were more courted by poets. From Spenser to the lowest rhymer he was the subject of numerous sonnets, or popular ballads. I will not except Sydney. I could produce evidence to prove, that he scarcely ever went out of England, or even left London, on the most frivolous enterprize, without a pastoral in his praise, or a panegyric in metre, which were sold and sung in the streets. Having interested himself in the fashionable poetry of the times, he was placed high in the ideal Arcadia now just established; and, among other instances which might be brought, on his return from Portugal in 1589 he was complimented with a poem called "An Egloge gratulatorie entituled to the right honorable and renowned shepherd of Albion's Arcadia, Robert earl of Essex, and for his returne lately into England." This is a light in which lord Essex is seldom viewed. I know not if the queen's fatal partiality, or his own inherent attractions, his love of literature, his heroism, integrity, and generosity, qualities which abundantly overbalance his presumption, his vanity, and impetuosity, had the greater share in dictating these praises. If adulation were any where justifiable, it must be when paid to the man who endeavoured to save Spenser from starving in the streets of Dublin, and who buried him in Westminster-abbey with

becoming solemnity. Spenser was persecuted by Burleigh because he was patronised by Essex."

No small degree of popularity has always adhered to the character and memory of the earl of Essex. A strong proof of this is his having been the subject of four different tragedies. We refer to the "Unhappy favourite," by John Banks; the "Fall of the Earl of Essex," by James Ralph; the "Earl of Essex," by Henry Jones; and the "Earl of Essex," by Henry Brooke. 1

DEVEREUX (ROBERT), son to the former, and third earl of Essex, was born in 1592, at Essex-house, in the Strand; and at the time of his father's unhappy death, was under the care of his grandmother, by whom he was sent to Eton school, where he was first educated. In the month of January 1602, he was entered a gentleman-commoner of Merton-college, Oxford, where he had an apartment in the warden's lodgings, then Mr. Savile, afterwards the celebrated sir Henry Savile, his father's dear friend, and who, for his sake, was exceedingly careful in seeing that he was learnedly and religiously educated. The year following, he was restored to his hereditary honours; and in 1605, when king James visited the university of Oxford, our young earl of Essex was created M. A. on the 30th of August, for the first time, which very probably he had forgotten, or he would not have received the same honour above thirty years afterwards. He was already in possession of his father's high spirit, of which he gave a sufficient indication in a quarrel which he had with prince Henry. Some dispute arose between them at a game at tennis; the prince called his companion the son of a traitor; who retaliated by giving him a severe blow with his racket; and the king was obliged to interfere to restore peace. At the age of fourteen, he was betrothed to lady Frances Howard, who was still younger than himself; but he immediately set out on his travels, and during his absence the affections of his young wife were estranged from him, and fixed upon the king's favourite, Carr, afterwards earl of Somerset. The consequence was a suit instituted against the husband for impotency, in which, to the disgrace of the age, the king interfered, and which ended in

1 Biog. Brit.-Birch's Memoirs of queen Elizabeth.-Hume's and other histories of England.-Park's edition of the Royal and Noble Authors.-Seward's Anecdotes and Biographiana.-Ellis's Specimens, &c.

a divorce. The earl of Essex, feeling himself disgraced by the sentence, retired to his country seat, and spent some years in rural sports and amusements. In 1620, being wearied of a state of inaction, he joined the earl of Oxford in a military expedition to the Palatinate, where they served with companies of their own raising, under sir Horatio Vere, and in the following year they served in Holland, under prince Maurice. In the course of the winter they returned to England, and lord Essex appeared in the ranks of the opposition in parliament. On this account he was not favourably received at court, which was the mean of attaching him the more closely to foreign service. commanded a regiment raised in England for the United States in 1624, and though nothing very important was atchieved by the English auxiliaries, yet he acquired experience, and distinguished himself among the nobility of the time. On the accession of Charles I. he was employed as vice-admiral in an expedition against Spain, which proved unsuccessful. In 1626, he made another campaign in the Low Countries, and shortly after he formed another unhappy match, by marrying the daughter of sir William Paulet, from whom, owing to her misconduct, he was divorced within two years. He now resolved to give himself up entirely to public life; he courted popularity, and made friends among the officers of the army and the puritan ministers. He was, however, employed by the king in various important services; but when the king and court left the metropolis, lord Essex pleaded in excuse his obligation to attend in his place as a peer of the realm, and was accordingly deprived of all his employments; a step which alone seemed wanting to fix him in opposition to the king; and in July 1642 he accepted the post of general of the parliamentary army. He opposed the king in person at Edge-hill, where the victory was so indecisive, that each party claimed it as his own. After this he was successful in some few instances, but in other important trusts he did little to recommend him to the persons in whose interests he was employed. He was, however, treated with external respect, until the self-denying ordinance threw him entirely out of the command: he resigned his commission, but not without visible marks of discontent. Unwilling to lose him altogether, the parliament voted that he should be raised to a dukedom, and be allowed 10,000l. per annum, to support his new dignity; but these were pre