Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/445

Devereux Gentry, and Commonaltie of England,' a warning against Prince Charles's Spanish marriage, and the maintenance of peaceful relations with Spain. A second part was added in 1642.

Essex left three sons, Robert (baptised 22 Jan. 1591), Walter (baptised 21 Jan. 1592), and Henry (baptised 14 April 1595), and two daughters, Frances (b. 30 Sept. 1599) and Dorothy (b. about 20 Dec. 1600). Walter and Henry died young. Robert is separately noticed. Frances married, 3 March 1617, Sir William Seymour, afterwards Marquis of Hertford and Duke of Somerset, whose first wife was Arabella Stuart; she died in 1674. Dorothy married, 18 May 1615, first, Sir Henry Shirley (d. 1634), and secondly, William Stafford; she died 30 March 1636. Essex's widow married, early in 1603, Richard de Burgh, earl of Clanricarde, who was said to resemble Essex in person.

Essex's character is a simple one. He was devoid of nearly every quality of which statesmen are made. Frank, passionate, and impulsive as a schoolboy, he had no control whatever over his feelings; and at a court like Elizabeth's, split into warring factions, whose members strove to supplant one another by intricate diplomacy, his attempt to make a great political position by force of his personal character was doomed to failure. He had no large political views on home affairs. Vain of the influence he exercised over most women, and misled by the personal attentions paid him by the queen, he sought to rule her and thus to vanquish his rivals. For a time she played with him, as though he were a jealous lover; but she despised his political advice. On foreign affairs he imbibed ideas from the Bacons; but he formulated no policy, except one of active aggression against Spain, and of offensive alliances with the protestant powers of Europe. Physically brave, even to recklessness, he was no military tactician, and could not support a general's responsibilities. As soon as he perceived himself worsted in the struggle for the control of the queen, he proved his intellectual helplessness, and, placing himself in the hands of reckless advisers, was rapidly hurried into crime. His generosity to his friends is the best trait in his character, although beside it must be set his habitual extravagance. Sir Henry Wotton describes Essex as tall and able-bodied, stooping a little from the shoulders, and with very delicate hands. In later life he was always thoughtful and reserved, especially at meal times, and grew indifferent to matters of dress and diet.

According to Wotton, `to evaporate his thoughts in a sonnet' was Essex's `common way,' and several short poems appear in many seventeenth-century manuscript collections with his name attached to them. A love song, `There is none. Oh! none but you;' `a passion of my lord of Essex' beginning `Happy were he could finish forth his fate; ' and `verses made … in his trouble' (a sonnet), show some poetic feeling. Two other pieces —`Change thy mind since she doth change' and `To plead my faith, where faith hath no reward'—are printed as by Essex in John Dowland's `Musical Banquet,' 1610. A sixth poem attributed to Essex (`It was a time when silly bees could speak') was also printed in Dowland's `Third Book of Songs and Airs,' 1603, but in Egerton MS. 923, f. 5, this is attributed to [q. v.] Essex's `Last Voyage to the Haven of Happiness' is undoubtedly an elegy on his death, and not his own composition. Wotton quotes the final couplet of one of Essex s sonnets. These lines are not met with elsewhere (cf., Poems of Raleigh, &c., 176-7, 248-9, and , Fuller Worthies Library Miscellany, iv. 82-102, where all the poems attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Essex are printed). Wotton also credits Essex with special skill in masques or `devices.' The `darling piece of love and self love' described by Wotton as one of Essex's literary achievements is perhaps identical with the device with which he entertained the queen in 1595. Some examples of his ingenuity in constructing `impreses' are given by Ben Jonson (Conversations with Drummond, p. 35). Jonson (ib. p. 25) also ascribes to Essex `the epistle to the reader' signed `A. B.' in Greenway's translation of Tacitus's `Annals,' 1598.

Of Essex's patronage of literature and the drama much evidence is extant. Numberless books are dedicated to him. Spenser, who prefixed a sonnet in his honour to the `Faery Queene,' is stated to have refused, just before his death, `twenty pieces' sent him by Essex (ib. p. 12). His intimacy with Southampton doubtless brought him into personal relations with Shakespeare. Daniel knew him and panegyrised him in his `Civill Warres.' Chapman refers to him with affection in `Biron's Tragedie;' Barnabe Barnes writes enthusiastically of him in `Four Bookes of Offices' (1606); and in `England's Hope' (1600) and Sir William Vaughan's `Poematum Libellus' (1598) like reference is made to him. Mr.J.P. Collier has described a copy of Michael Drayton's `Idea' (1599) which bears Essex's autograph (Bibl. Cat. i. 227), and in the archives of the College of Physicians are many letters introducing foreign men of science. Sir Thomas Bodley was an intimate friend.