e graces, and must depend for
Court favour, to a yet greater degree than his father, upon his own
powers of mind and will. To combat Essex's social influence at Court,
these two more clerkly politicians, soon after Essex's appearance,
proceeded to supplement their own power by making an ally of the
accomplished Raleigh; to whom, previous to this, they had shown little
favour. They soon succeeded in fomenting a rivalry between these two
courtiers which, with some short periods of truce, continued until their
combined machinations finally brought Essex to the block. How Sir Robert
Cecil, having used Raleigh as a tool against Essex, in turn effected his
political ruin shall be shown in due course.

We shall now return to Southampton and to the period of his coming to
London and the Court, towards the end of October, in the year 1590. A
recent biographer of Shakespeare, writing of Southampton, sums up the
incidents of this period in the following generalisation: "It was
naturally to the Court that his friends sent him at an early age to
display his varied graces. He can hardly have been more than seventeen
when he was presented to his Sovereign. She showed him kindly notice,
and the Earl of Essex, her brilliant favourite, acknowledged his
fascination. Thenceforth Essex displayed in his welfare a brotherly
interest which proved in course of time a very doubtful blessing." This
not only hurries the narrative but also misconstrues the facts and
ignores the most interesting phases of the friendship between these
noblemen, as they influenced Southampton's subsequent connection with
Shakespeare. Essex may have acknowledged Southampton's fascination at
this date, though I find no evidence that he did do so, but for the
assertion that he "_thenceforth_" displayed in his welfare a brotherly
interest there is absolutely no basis. All reasonable inference, and
some actual evidence, lead me to quite divergent conclusions regarding
the relations that subsisted between these young noblemen at this early
date. Southampton's interests, it is true, became closely interwoven
with those of Essex at a somewhat later period when he had become
enamoured of Essex's cousin, Elizabeth Vernon, whom he eventually
married. The inception of this latter affair cannot, however, at the
earliest, be dated _previous to the late spring of 1594_. At whatever
date Southampton and Essex became intimate friends, there can be no
doubt _that such a conjunction was