The repose enjoyed in this precinct since the Restoration has been like silence after a succession of storms, for the house was of a turbulent reputation. The first bishop who had it after the Templars, being a favourite of Edward II., was seized by the mob, hurried to Cheapside, where they beheaded him, and then carried back a corpse, and buried in a heap of sand at his door. Lord Paget got into trouble, together with his friend the Duke of Somerset, who was accused of intending to assassinate Northumberland and others at this house. Norfolk possessed it while he formed his designs on Mary, Queen of Scots, for which he was brought to the scaffold; Leicester was always having some ill design or other--perhaps poisoned a visitor or so occasionally (for he is said to have thought nothing of that gentle expediency); and Essex made the house famous by standing a siege in it against the troops of his mistress. The siege was not long, nor any of his actions in the business very wise, though he was a man of an exalted nature. Essex got into his troubles partly from heat and ambition, partly from the inferior and more cunning nature of some of his rivals at court. There is no doubt that all these causes, together with his confidence in Elizabeth's inability to proceed to extremities, conspired to lead him into rebellion. His first offence that we hear of, next to a general petulance of manner, which the Queen's own mixture of fondness and petulance was calculated enough to provoke, was a quarrel with some young lords for her favour; the second, his joining the expedition to Cadiz without leave; and the third, his marriage with the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham: for Elizabeth never thought it proper that her favourites should be married to any thing but her "fair idea."
His next dispute with her, which was on the subject of an assistant in the affairs of Ireland, to which he was going as lord deputy, terminated in the singular catastrophe of his receiving from her a box on the ear, with the encouraging addition of bidding him "Go, and be hanged." It is said to have been occasioned by his turning his back upon her. He clapped his hand to his sword, and swore he would not have put up with such an insult from her father. His fall is generally dated from this circumstance, and it is thought he never forgave it. But surely this is not a correct judgment: for the blow which might have been intolerable from the hand of a king, implied, in its very extravagance, something not without flattery and self-abasement from that of a princess. It was as if Elizabeth had put herself into the situation of a termagant wife. The quarrel preceded the violence. Essex went to Ireland against the rebels, but apparently with great unwillingness, calling it, in a letter to the Queen, the "cursedest of all islands," and insinuating that the best thing that could happen both to please her and himself was the loss of his life in battle. The conclusion of this letter is a remarkable instance of the mixture of romance with real life in those days. It is in verse, terminating with the following pastoral sentiment. Essex wishes he could live like a hermit, "in some unhaunted desert most obscure"--