Walpole, a Jesuit priest, had bribed a groom in the royal stables, named Edward Squire, to rub some poison on the pommel of the Queen’s saddle, but, as may be supposed, the poison had no harmful effect, and priest and groom, being convicted, were hanged at Tyburn.
The last year of the sixteenth century saw the fall of one of Elizabeth’s most brilliant courtiers, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. After forty years of stern repression, Ireland, towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, had become more Irish than ever. All the cruelties committed in that country by the Government of the Queen, cruelties in which Raleigh played so flagrant a part, had not crushed the Irish, and a larger army of occupation was found necessary.
Essex and Raleigh were bitter enemies. The chief cause of their dissension was the treatment of the Irish, Raleigh advising that they should be completely trodden under foot, whilst Essex urged a show of justice and some degree of goodwill towards the country and its inhabitants; but the favour shown by the Queen to both these remarkable men was also an additional cause for their mutual jealousy. Both were extremely self-willed, and their immense egotism, and lust for place and power, was the common ruin of each of them.
Essex was the youngest and last of that brilliant combination of soldier, statesman, and courtier, that added to the glory and charm of those “spacious days.”
Robert Devereux had many personal claims to Elizabeth’s good will. Strikingly handsome in face and form, he shone equally in the Court or in the field, and both by birth and marriage he was related to some of the most prominent persons attached to the Court. His father had been a personal friend of Elizabeth’s; his step-father was the Earl of Leicester; Sir Francis Knollys was his grandfather; Walsingham his father-in-law; Lord Hemsdon was his great-uncle, and the all-powerful Burleigh his guardian. To us Essex’s most conspicuous merit was that Shakespeare called him his friend. The poet was closely linked in the bonds of friendship both with Essex and with his dearest friend Southampton, and their fall is thought to have thrown the shadow of their misfortunes over the drama composed about the time of Essex’s execution, and Southampton’s disgrace and imprisonment. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ had been written in honour of Essex’s marriage, and the only two books of verse that Shakespeare published had been dedicated to Southampton; and it was probably to the latter that the Sonnets were addressed, if he was not their actual inspirer.