as
universally believed that some villain had administered to him "an ill
drink."

As Leicester was known to be his enemy, strongly suspected of an
intrigue with his wife, and believed capable of any enormity, the
friends and partisans of Essex seem immediately to have pointed at him
as the contriver of his death; yet I find no contemporary evidence of
the imputation, except in the conduct of sir Henry Sidney on this
occasion, which indicates great anxiety for the reputation of his patron
and brother-in-law.

The lord-deputy was unfortunately absent from Dublin at the time of the
earl of Essex's death, and before he could institute a regular
examination into the manner of it, a thousand false tales had been
circulated which were greedily received by the public. On his return,
however, he entered into the investigation with great zeal and
diligence:--the decisive test of an examination of the body was not
indeed applied, for it was one with which that age seems to have been
unacquainted; but many witnesses were called, reports were traced to
their source and in some instances disproved, and the result of the
whole was transmitted by the deputy to the privy-council in a letter
which appears satisfactorily to prove that there was no solid ground to
ascribe the event to any but natural causes. That the deputy himself was
convinced of the correctness of this representation is seen from one of
his private letters to Leicester, published long after in the "Sidney
Papers."

In all probability, posterity would scarcely have heard of this
imputation on the character of Leicester, had not his marriage with the
widow of Essex served as corroboration of the charge, and given occasion
to the malicious comments of the author of "Leicester's Commonwealth."
This union, however, was not publicly celebrated till two years
afterwards; and we have no certain authority for the fact of the
criminal connexion of the parties during the life of the earl of Essex,
nor for the private marriage said to have been huddled up with indecent
precipitation on his decease.

Walter earl of Essex left Robert his son and successor, then in the
tenth year of his age, to the care and protection of the earl of Sussex
and lord Burleigh; but Mr. Edward Waterhouse, a person of great merit
and abilities, then employed in Ireland and distinguished by the favor
both of lord Burleigh and sir Henry Sidney, had the immediate management
of the fortune and affairs o