Lesson 7: The Road to War 1642
Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux was born in 1591 in London - an Elizabethan splendoured world. Son of the great Essex, his father was one of the most powerful men in the country, through his good relations and flirtatious affairs with the Tudor Queen, Elizabeth I.
Eventually his father was remembered for a traitor, being beheaded for attempting to remove Elizabeth from the throne in a coup during her later years. Essex would have grown up knowing of his family's now tarnished past.
He was so different from his handsome, dashing and charismatic father, who strutted around Elizabeth’s court as though he were her husband, although being a terrible womaniser.
At the age of 13, Robert married Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. It was a political match, designed no doubt to enrich the Devereux family and Frances was sensual yet slightly highly strung.
Soon after her marriage, Frances became the mistress of Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester and one of King James’s favourites. Essex took no interest in politics, yet Frances loved gossip and intrigue, anxious to climb the social ladder.
She applied to Parliament and the King for an annulment of her marriage, which was gained with the intervention of her influential family. To make things worse for Essex, she claimed it was on the grounds of impotency.
Essex then eagerly married another Frances, daughter of Sir William Paulet, yet for some reason this marriage was bleak and she eventually took a lover, Sir Thomas Uvedale. It was rumoured that she took Uvedale because of Essex’s impotency. She became pregnant by Uvedale, while Essex melancholy accepted the baby as his own, but it died soon after.
Essex moved out and left Frances and went to live with his sister, who was married to the Marquis of Hertford (a future Royalist) in their grand house in London’s Strand. Essex would be tainted with these failed marriages and became commonly known as The Great Cuckold.
Up to that point, Essex had seen service on the continent in Holland and when he attended the radical Parliaments of King Charles I’s reign in the 1640’s, he sat regularly in the House of Lords. He was still well known for military flair, even though he had had no real successes, but he had fostered a sense of admiration in his men. People saw him as honest, although dull and bleak, and thought him reliable.
As he sat in the House of Lords with his pipe, deep in thought, he was now stout and retiring, yet still retained that undercurrent of magnetism. He was singled out by Pym, the King’s leading opponent in the Parliament, to lead the Roundhead army and was given orders to rescue the King’s person out of the hands of his evil councillors.
After receiving the orders, he went slowly to the House of Lords, addressing a few words to the eager members, before he was due to join the army. No sooner had he finished, than he stood and left before they could reply. He totally ignored the Commons and they went in search of the elusive figure of their commander-in-chief. After finding him puffing on his pipe, he stood, acknowledged them in silence and walked away with pipe in one hand and hat in the other.
As he entered the arena of the English Civil War, he was destined to play a major part. His Presbyterian religious views had brought him into opposition to the King’s views and he found his men eager to fight under him, which re-invigorated him.
