Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex

In particular, she occurs, occurs frequently in the context of her first husband, Sir Philip Sidney, uh, a renowned poet and soldier, remembered now as a poet rather than a soldier.

Or her second husband, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, ambitious Eli-Elizabethan courtier and not great military leader.

[laughing] Um, her third husband, Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde, one of Ireland's wealthiest men, is rarely mentioned in modern publications.

I first became curious to know more about Frances Walsingham, who became the Countess of Clanricarde in 1603, because of a letter her hus- her Irish husband wrote to his Galway land agent, Sir Henry Lynch, in April 1632, a month or two after she had died.

For example, in a batch of leases that survive for the late 1620s for property they owned on the Anglo-Welsh border, each lease is signed jointly by the Earl and Countess of Clanricarde.

There are other indications that Frances, Countess of Clanricarde, was an active force in their business dealings.

Not long after her marriage to Clanricarde at the end of 1603, she compiled a list of the major financial transactions she had entered into following the death of her second husband, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Now, I obviously don't expect you to read any of this, just, but her signature is at the bottom of the page, and it is in her own handwriting.

Lord Leicester, who had been a great friend of the queen's and had at times thought he could get her for his wife, was dead.

Elizabeth took his stepson, the Earl of Essex, a brave young man for her best friend.

He had the ill luck at last not to please her, and she sent him to rule Ireland.

From the harsh way she wrote to him, he thought he must have some foes at court.

She let him live at Durham House, this very posh mansion in London.

She made him captain of the Queen's Guard, which annoyed some of her other courtiers who had been around much longer, like Robert Devereaux.

He sort of got passed over for that position.

And so really, Raleigh rose through the ranks really, really quickly because the queen just took a special liking to him.

By 1594, a rebellion in Ulster had erupted, spurred by land disputes and the threat of Spanish Catholic support.

The Earl of Essex was sent to quell the unrest.

His failure and subsequent reckless flirtation with Elizabeth herself illustrates how precarious Elizabeth's grasp on her realm remained beyond maritime affairs.

In this sense, the Armada victory offered only a fleeting respite while domestic challenges persisted.

The first major battle of the English Civil War, fought on the twenty-third of October sixteen forty-two, left more than a physical scar on Warwickshire.

It was a chaotic melee between Charles I, Royalist cavalry, and the Parliamentarians under Earl Essex, with cannon fire shattering the countryside and men dying in heaps across the heath.

The landscape itself became the backdrop for some of England's most enduring ghost lore.

A few months after the clash, reports surfaced that a phantom army had descended from the clouds above Edge Hill, reenacting the battle under moonlight.

A higher name was equally unfortunate in the same field of adventure.

Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, father of the Essex still more unfortunate, obtained in 1573 a grant of one moiety of Farney in Clandeboy, and having mortgaged his English estates to the Queen for ten thousand pounds, associated with himself many other adventurers.

On the 16th of August he set sail from Liverpool, accompanied by the Lords Dacre and Rich, Sir Henry Nollis, the three sons of Lord Norris, and a multitude of the common people.

But as he had left one powerful enemy at court in Leicester, so he found a second at Dublin, in the acting deputy Fitzwilliam.

These successes synchronized exactly with the expectation of a second Spanish armada, which filled Elizabeth with her old apprehensions.

Philip was persuaded again to tempt the fortune of the seas, and towards the end of October his fleet, under the adelitado of Castilla, appeared off the Scilly Islands, with a view to secure the Isle of Wight, or some other station, from which to operate an invasion in the ensuing spring.

extraordinary means were taken for defence the english troops in france were recalled new levies raised and the queen's favourite the young earl of essex appointed to command the fleet with raleigh and lord thomas howard as vice-admirals but the elements again fought for the northern island a storm which swept the channel for weeks drove the english ships into their ports but scattered those of spain over the bay of biscay in this second expedition sailed florence conroy and other irish exiles who had maintained for years a close correspondence with the catholic leaders their presence in the fleet the existence of the correspondence and the progress of the revolt itself will sufficiently account for the apparent vacillations of english policy in ulster in the last months of fifteen ninety seven Shortly before Christmas, Ormond, now Lord Lieutenant, accompanied by the Earl of Thoman, attended only by their personal followers, visited Dungannon, and remained three days in conference with O'Neill and O'Donnell.

The Irish chiefs reiterated their old demands, freedom of worship, and the retention of the substantial power attached to their ancient rank.

the young gentleman promised obedience and going to his pillow with his head full of the familiar spirits that used to be worn in rings watches and sword-hilts he had the good fortune to possess himself of an available idea in a dream connecting this with what he himself chanced to know of the ring's real history his task was done clara pemberton invited a select few of her friends all holding the staunchest faith in edward's genius and therefore the most genial auditors if not altogether the fairest critics that a writer could possibly desire blessed be woman for her faculty of admiration and especially for her tendency to admire with her heart when man at most grants merely a cold approval with his mind Drawing his chair beneath the blaze of a solar lamp, Edward Carl untied a roll of glossy paper and began as follows.

THE LEGEND after the death warrant had been read to the earl of essex and on the evening before his appointed execution the countess of shrewsbury paid his lordship a visit and found him as it appeared toying childishly with a ring the diamond that encircled it glittered like a little star but with a singular tinge of red The gloomy prison chamber in the tower, with its deep and narrow windows piercing the walls of stone, was now all that the earl possessed of worldly prospect, so that there was the less wonder that he should look steadfastly into the gym and moralize upon earth's deceitful splendor, as men in darkness and ruin seldom fail to do.

but the shrewd observations of the countess an artful and unprincipled woman the pretended friend of essex but who had come to glut her revenge for a deed of scorn which he himself had forgotten her keen eye detected a deeper interest attached to this jewel even while expressing his gratitude for her remembrance of a ruined favorite and condemned criminal the earl's glance reverted to the ring as if all that remained of time and its affairs were collected within that small golden circlet.

My dear lord,

It has been our good luck to recover a portion of that history.

after transmitting misfortune from one possessor to another ever since the days of British Merlin.

The identical ring which Queen Elizabeth gave to the Earl of Essex was finally thrown into the contribution box of a New England church.

The two deacons deposited it in the glass case of a fashionable jeweller, of whom it was purchased by the humble rehearser of this legend, in the hope that it may be allowed to sparkle on a fair lady's finger.