The Fall of Essex
Penry Williams describes how, in February 1601, Essex and his discontented faction at court attempted a coup which ended in dismal failure.
During the last decade of the sixteenth century, politics at the court of Queen Elizabeth were dominated by the disruptive personality of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex. Brilliant, compelling, thirsty for popularity and praise, easily unbalanced by slights real or imagined, he concealed, like Proust’s Saint-Loup, an hysterical streak which drove him on to a seemingly inevitable doom.
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