sensation
as the death of Walter Devereux earl of Essex, which took place at
Dublin in the autumn of the year 1576. This nobleman is celebrated for
his talents, his virtues, his unfortunate and untimely death, and also
as the father of a son still more distinguished and destined to a fate
yet more disastrous. He was of illustrious descent, deriving a part of
his hereditary honors from the lords Ferrers of Chartley, and the rest
from the noble family of Bourchier, through a daughter of Thomas of
Woodstock youngest son of Edward III. In his nineteenth year he
succeeded his grandfather as viscount Hereford, and coming to court
attracted the merited commendations of her majesty by his learning, his
abilities, and his ingenuous modesty.

During a short period the viscount was joined in commission with the
earls of Huntingdon and Shrewsbury for the safe keeping of the queen of
Scots. On the breaking out of the northern rebellion, he joined the
royal army with all the forces he could raise; and in reward of this
forwardness in her service her majesty conferred on him the garter, and
subsequently invested him, after the most solemn and honorable form of
creation, with the dignity of earl of Essex, long hereditary in the
house of Bourchier.

By these marks of favor the jealousy of Leicester and of other courtiers
was strongly excited; but with little cause. The spirit of the earl had
too much of boldness, of enterprise, of a high-souled generosity, to
permit him to take root and flourish in that scene of treachery and
intrigue--a court; it quickly prompted him to seek occupation at a
distance, in the attempt to subdue and civilize a turbulent Irish
province.

He solicited and obtained from the queen, by a kind of agreement then
not unusual, a grant to himself and the adventurers under him of half of
the district of Clandeboy in Ulster, on condition of his rescuing and
defending the whole of it from the rebels and defraying half the
expenses of the service. Great things were expected from his expedition,
on which he embarked in August 1573: but sir William Fitzwilliams,
deputy of Ireland, viewed the arrival of the earl with sentiments which
led him to oppose every possible obstacle to his success. Probably, too,
Essex himself found, on trial, the task of subduing the _Irishry_ (as
the natives of the island were then called) a more difficult one than he
had anticipated. Some brilliant service, however, amid many delays and
di