those about him was one of the chief weaknesses in his high character.
It is not likely that Essex looked with other than aversion upon the political and ecclesiastical proceedings of Charles; but as a nobleman he was bound to certain occasional courtly duties. He bore the sword before the king at his visit to Oxford in 1636, and in what is usually known as the first bishops' war in 1639 he was appointed second in command. Fighting there was none, but on 24 April he received a letter from the covenanters which he handed unopened to the king.
On the whole the scanty records of Essex's life thus far proclaim him a man with a punctilious sense of duty and a retiring disposition, which was in remarkable contrast with the popularity-hunting disposition of his father. The time was now coming when every man of position must of necessity declare himself.
The opportunity came on 24 April 1640, when Charles appealed to the House of Lords in the Short parliament to support him against the commons. Essex gave his vote in the minority, which wished to refuse the king's request. On 8 July he took a more decided step, if, as there can be little doubt, the letter sent to Scotland by seven peers, among whom was Essex, is a genuine one. Yet this letter contained a refusal to commit a treasonable act, such as a direct invitation to the Scots to invade England would have been; and it was only upon a further letter, to which the name of Essex as well as of other peers was forged by Savile, that the invasion actually took place. In the conferences with the other leaders of the opposition and in the movement for the gathering of another parliament Essex took part, and he was one of the twelve peers who on 28 Aug. signed the petition drawn up by Pym and St. John to urge Charles to summon parliament.
When the Long parliament met, Essex naturally worked with those with whom he had been hitherto co-operating, and he was one of those leaders of the opposition who, on 19 Feb. 1641, were created privy councillors by Charles in the hope that they might be won over to take a lenient view of the charges against Strafford. It is not unlikely that, if he could have been assured that the king would really have banished Strafford from his presence for ever, he would have joined in voting for a penalty less than death; but his language to Hyde, ‘Stone-dead hath no fellow,’ only gave expression to a feeling which was widely entertained of the difficulty of dealing with a king like Charles.
Charles could never understand that political principle could be conscientiously held by those who differed from him, when it made against himself, and he was too prone to attempt to conciliate his opponents by personal favours, rather than by meeting them halfway in their public efforts. In July he made Essex lord chamberlain, and nominated him as commander of all the forces south of the Trent, if any need should arise for their employment during his own visit to Scotland. Essex was, however, entirely unmoved by these compliments. When the houses met after the summer adjournment, he expressed his fear of the danger of a repetition in England of the attack which was then believed to have been made by Charles upon three Scottish lords. The king's opponents came to look upon him as a man who could be trusted. On 6 Nov. Cromwell carried a motion calling on Essex to assume the authority given him by the king over the forces south of the Trent, and to retain that power ‘till this parliament shall take further orders.’ As yet, however, the assent of the lords was lacking to the bold proposal, as it was also lacking to a resolution of the commons that Essex should command a guard placed at the disposal of the houses.
When the struggle could no longer be carried on on purely parliamentary ground, it was Essex who conveyed to the accused five members the warning of the king's intention to arrest them, and though he accompanied Charles on his journey to the city after his failure, and tried to induce him to abandon his intention of leaving Whitehall, he was nothing loth to obey the orders to the House of Lords to remain at Westminster when the king summoned him to York. On 4 July 1642 he took a further step, and became a member of the parliamentary committee of safety. On the 12th he was appointed general of the parliamentary army, and was consequently declared a traitor by the king.
On 9 Sept. Essex took leave of the houses to take up his command at Northampton. His military experience was of the slightest, but it was character not soldiership which was chiefly in demand, and Essex was not long in showing that he could be relied on. At Edgehill, when others fled, he snatched a pike from a soldier and took up his place at the head of a regiment of foot to die if the battle went against him. At Turnham Green he was somewhat distracted by opposing advice from different quarters, but he maintained his ground, and after the king's retreat threw a bridge of boats across the Thames to enable his army to operate on both sides of the river.
The summer campaign of 1643 was opened by Essex's advance from Windsor on 13 April. He laid siege to Reading, which capitulated
