Other circumstances were soon added, which precipitated his fall. His sister, the Lady Rich, one of the queen's ladies of the bedchamber, and notorious for her infidelities, had entered into a correspondence along with her husband—with whom on all other points she was always at variance—with the King of Scots. Rich was called "Ricardo," Lady Rich, "Rialta;" James, "Victor;" and every person in the English Court had a nickname. Elizabeth they termed "Venus," and Essex, "The Weary Knight," because, they said, he was so weary of his post as favourite, in which he was a mere slave, and hoped for a change, which was that the queen would die in a year or two. The correspondence was carried on in cipher; but Burleigh got hold of it, and must have felt the long-deferred hour of revenge had arrived at last. He knew Elizabeth too well to believe that she would ever forgive such a stab to her self-love. Meantime, whilst his sister and brother-in-law were thus unconsciously cutting the very ground from under his feet, Essex was acting every day with increasing assurance in the Court and Council-room.
Essex House, in the Strand. From Hollar’s View of London.
A scene soon occurred in the Council-chamber which hastened this event. There was a warm debate on the appointment of a new lord-deputy for Ireland. That country was in such a cruelly distracted state, and the population, both English and Irish, so hostile to the English Government, that no one would willingly accept the office. At this moment the Cecils were warmly recommending Sir William Knollys to that unenviable office, Essex still more vehemently urging the appointment on Sir George Carew. But each party was not striving to confer the host as a favour, but as an annoyance. Sir William Knollys was Essex's uncle, and, therefore, when the queen named him, the Cecils supported the nomination; and Essex, on the contrary, named Sir George Carew as a partisan of the Cecils. The debate grew vehement, and Essex, without regard to the wishes of the queen, spoke violently against the appointment of Sir William. The queen made a sarcastic observation on Essex's advocacy, and the petted favourite turned his back upon her with an expression neither respectful nor prudent. The soul of "the Royal virago," as Agues Strickland terms her, rose in all its Tudor fury, and she fetched the rash and forgetful youth a sound buffet on the ear. Instead of being called to his senses by this action, the fiery earl started to his feet and clapped his hand on his sword; but the lord admiral threw himself betwixt the ungallant earl and the queen; and Essex, exclaiming that "it was an insult which he would not have taken from her father, much less from a king in petticoats," rushed out of the room.
The sensation produced by this violent breach in the Court was intense. Every one prognosticated the ruin of Essex, who retired to his house at Wanstead, and would listen to no persuasions of his friends to humble himself and make an apology. His mother and sisters implored him to forget what had occurred, and make his peace with the incensed queen. Egerton, the lord-keeper, wrote him a long letter, counselling him to forget his wrath and remember his duty to a sovereign who had conferred so many obligations upon him. From the fact that the lord-keeper does not use in his letter the most natural of all arguments—the reverence due from a young man to a princess of her advanced age, and his
