VOLUME IX SLICE VII Equation to Ethics (continued 7)

The battle with “the Spaniards on the sea” is a very typical example of a medieval sea-fight, when the ships were of the size of a small coaster or a fishing smack, were crowded with men, and when the personal prowess of a single knight or squire was an important element of strength.

The only real authority for the battle is Froissart, who was at different times in the service of King Edward or of his wife, Philippa of Hainaut, and of the counts of Namur. He repeated what was told him by men who had been present, and dwells as usual on the “chivalry” of his patrons. See his Chroniques, iv. 91.

(D. H.)

ESPALIER (a French word, derived from the Ital. spalliera, something to rest the spalla or shoulder against; the word is ultimately the same as épaulière, a shoulder-piece), a lattice-work or row of stakes, originally shoulder high, on which fruit trees, shrubs and flowers, particularly roses and creepers, are trained. Espaliers are usually made of larch or other wood, iron and metal rails being too great conductors of heat and cold. The advantage of this method of training is that the fruit, &c, is more easily got at, and while protected from wind, is freely exposed to sun and air, and not so open to extreme changes of temperature as when trained on a wall. (See Horticulture.)

ESPARTERO, BALDOMERO (1792-1879), duke of Vitoria, duke of Morella, prince of Vergara, Count Luchana, knight of the Toison d’Or, &c. &c., Spanish soldier and statesman, was born at Granatulu, a town of the province of Ciudad Real, on the 27th of February 1792. He was the ninth child of a carter, who wanted to make him a priest, but the lad at fifteen enlisted in a battalion of students to fight against the armies of Napoleon I. In 1811 Espartero was appointed a lieutenant of Engineers in Cadiz, but having failed to pass his examination he entered a line regiment. In 1815 he went to America as a captain under General Morillo, who had been made commander-in-chief to quell the risings of the colonies on the Spanish Main. For eight years Espartero distinguished himself in the struggle against the colonists. He was several times wounded, and was made major and colonel on the battlefields of Cochabamba and Sapachni. He had to surrender to Sucre at the final battle of Ayacucho, which put an end to Castilian rule. He returned to Spain, and, like most of his companions in arms, remained under a cloud for some time. He was sent to the garrison town of Logroño, where he married the daughter of a rich landowner, Doña Jacinta Santa Cruz, who eventually survived him. Henceforth Logroño became the home of the most prominent of the Spanish political generals of the 19th century. Espartero became in 1832, on the death of King Ferdinand VII., one of the most ardent defenders of the rights of his daughter, Isabella II. The government sent him to the front, directly the Carlist War broke out, as commandant of the province of Biscay, where he severely defeated the Carlists in many encounters. He was quickly promoted to a divisional command, and then made a lieutenant-general. At times he showed qualities as a guerillero quite equal to those of the Carlists, like Zumalacarregui and Cabrera, by his daring marches and surprises. When he had to move large forces he was greatly superior to them as an organizer and strategist, and he never disgraced his successes by cruelty or needless severity. Twice he obliged the Carlists to raise the siege of Bilbao before he was appointed commander-in-chief of the northern army on the 17th of September 1836, when the tide of war seemed to be setting in favour of the pretender in the Basque provinces and Navarre, though Don Carlos had lost his ablest lieutenant, the Basque Zumalacarregui. His military duties at the head of the principal national army did not prevent Espartero from showing for the first time his political ambition. He displayed such radical and reforming inclinations that he laid the foundations of his popularity among the lower and middle classes, which lasted more than a quarter of a century, during which time the Progressists, Democrats and advanced Liberals ever looked to him as a leader and adviser. In November 1836 he again forced the Carlists to raise the siege of Bilbao. His troops included the British legion under Sir de Lacy Evans. This success turned the tide of war against Don Carlos, who vainly attempted a raid towards Madrid. Espartero was soon at his heels, and obliged him to hurry northwards, after several defeats. In 1839 Espartero carefully opened up negotiations with Maroto and the principal Carlist chiefs of the Basque provinces. These ended in their accepting his terms under the famous convention of Vergara, which secured the recognition of their ranks and titles for nearly 1000 Carlist officers. Twenty thousand Carlist volunteers laid down their arms at Vergara; only the irreconcilables led by Cabrera held out for a while in the central provinces of Spain. Espartero soon, however, in 1840, stamped out the last embers of the rising, which had lasted seven years. He was styled “El pacificador de España,” was made a grandee of the first class, and received two dukedoms.

During the last three years of the war Espartero, who had been elected a deputy, exercised from his distant headquarters such influence over Madrid politics that he twice hastened the fall of the cabinet, and obtained office for his own friends. At the close of the war the queen regent and her ministers attempted to elbow out Espartero and his followers, but a pronunciamiento ensued in Madrid and other large towns which culminated in the marshal’s accepting the post of prime minister. He soon became virtually a dictator, as Queen Christina took offence at his popularity and resigned, leaving the kingdom very soon afterwards. Directly the Cortes met they elected Espartero regent by 179 votes to 103 in favour of Arguelles, who was appointed guardian of the young queen. For two years Espartero ruled Spain in accordance with his Radical and conciliatory dispositions, giving special attention to the reorganization of the administration, taxation and finances, declaring all the estates of the church, congregations and religious orders to be national property, and suppressing the diezma, or tenths. He suppressed the Republican risings with as much severity as he did the military pronunciamientos of Generals Concha and Diego de Leon. The latter was shot in Madrid. Espartero crushed with much energy a revolutionary rising in Barcelona, but on his return to Madrid was so coldly welcomed that he perceived that his prestige was on the wane. The advanced Progressists coalesced with the partisans of the ex-regent Christina to promote pronunciamientos in Barcelona and many cities. The rebels declared Queen Isabel of age, and, led by General Narvaez, marched upon Madrid. Espartero, deeming resistance useless, embarked at Cadiz on the 30th of July 1843 for England, and lived quietly apart from politics until 1848, when a royal decree restored to him all his honours and his seat in the senate. He retired to his house in Logroño, which he left six years later, in 1854, when called upon by the queen to take the lead of the powerful Liberal and Progressist movement which prevailed for two years. The old marshal vainly endeavoured to keep his own Progressists within bounds in the Cortes of 1854-1856, and in the great towns, but their excessive demands for reforms and liberties played into the hands of a clerical and reactionary court and of the equally retrograde governing classes. The growing ambition of General O’Donnell constantly clashed with the views of Espartero, until the latter, in sheer disgust, resigned his premiership and left for Logroño, after warning the queen that a conflict was imminent between O’Donnell and the Cortes, backed by the Progressist militia. O’Donnell’s pronunciamiento in 1856 put an end to the Cortes, and the militia was disarmed, after a sharp struggle in the streets of the capital. After 1856 Espartero resolutely declined to identify himself with active politics, though at every stage in the onward march of Spain towards more liberal and democratic institutions he was asked to take a leading part. He refused to allow his name to be brought forward as a candidate when the Cortes of 1868, after the Revolution, sought for a ruler. Espartero, strangely enough, adopted a laconic phrase when successive governments on their advent to power invariably addressed themselves to the venerable champion of liberal ideas. To all—to the Revolution of 1868, the Constituent Cortes of 1869, King Amadeus, the Federal Republic of 1873, the nameless government of Marshal Serrano in 1874, the Bourbon restoration in 1875—he simply said: “Cumplase la voluntad nacional” (“Let the national will be accomplished”). King Amadeus made him prince of Vergara. The Restoration raised a statue to him near the gate of the Retiro Park in Madrid. Spaniards of all shades, except Carlists and Ultramontanes, paid homage to his memory when he passed away at his Logroño residence on the 8th of January 1879. His tastes were singularly modest, his manners rather reserved, but always kind and considerate for humble folk. He was a typical Spanish soldier-politician, though he had more of the better traits of the soldier born and bred than of the arts of the statesman. His military instincts did not always make it easy for him to accommodate himself to courtiers and professional politicians.

(A. E. H.)

ESPARTO, or Spanish Grass, Stipa tenacissima, a grass resembling the ornamental feather-grass of gardens. It is indigenous to the south of Spain and the north of Africa (where it is known as Halfa or Alfa), and is especially abundant in the sterile and rugged parts of Murcia and Valencia, and in Algeria, flourishing best in sandy, ferruginous soils, in dry, sunny situations on the sea coast. Pliny (N.H. xix. 2) described what appears to have been the same plant under the name of spartum, whence the designation campus spartarius for the region surrounding New Carthage. It attains a height of 3 or 4 ft. The stems are cylindrical, and clothed with short hair, and grow in clusters of from 2 to 10 ft. in circumference; when young they serve as food for cattle, but after a few years’ growth acquire great toughness of texture. The leaves vary from 6 in. to 3 ft. in length, and are grey-green in colour; on account of their tenacity of fibre and flexibility they have for centuries been employed for the making of ropes, sandals, baskets, mats and other articles. Ships’ cables of esparto, being light, have the quality of floating on water, and have long been in use in the Spanish navy.

Esparto leaves contain 56% by weight of fibre, or about 10% more than straw, and hence have come into requisition as a substitute for linen rags in the manufacture of paper. For this purpose they were first utilized by the French, and in 1857 were introduced into Great Britain. When required for paper-making the leaves should be gathered before they are quite matured; if, however, they are obtained too young, they furnish a paper having an objectionable semi-transparent appearance. The leaves are gathered by hand, and from 2 to 3 cwt. may be collected in a day by a single labourer. They are generally obtained during the dry summer months, as at other times their adherence to the stems is so firm as often to cause the uprooting of the plants in the attempt to remove them. Esparto may be raised from seed, but cannot be harvested for twelve or fifteen years after sowing.

Another grass, Lygeum Spartum, with stiff rush-like leaves, growing in rocky soil on the high plains of countries bordering on the Mediterranean, especially of Spain and Algeria, is also a source of esparto.

For the processes of the paper manufacturer esparto is used in the dry state, and without cutting; roots and flowers and stray weeds are first removed, and the material is then boiled with caustic soda, washed, and bleached with chlorine solution. Sundry experiments have been made to adapt esparto for use in the coarser textile fabrics. Messrs A. Edger and B. Proctor in 1877 directed attention to the composition of the slag resulting from the burning of esparto, which they found to be strikingly similar to that of average medical bottle glass, the latter yielding on analysis 66.3% of silica and 25.1% of alkalies and alkaline earths, and the slag 64.6 and 27.45% of the same respectively.

ESPERANCE, a small seaport on a fine natural harbour on the south coast of West Australia, 275 m. north-east from Albany. It is a summer resort, and in the neighbourhood are interesting caves. Its importance as a seaport is due to its being on the high road between the eastern states and the gold-fields, and the nearest place for the shipment of gold from the Coolgardie fields.

ESPERANTO, an artificial international auxiliary language (see Universal Languages), first published in 1887, seven years after the appearance of its predecessor Volapük (q.v.), which it has now completely supplanted. Its author was a Russian physician, Dr L. Zamenhof, born in 1859 at Bielostok, where the spectacle of the feuds of the four races—each speaking different languages—which inhabit it (Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews) at an early date suggested to him the idea of remedying the evil by the introduction of a neutral language, standing apart from the existing national languages. His first idea was to resuscitate some dead language. Then he tried to construct a new language on an a priori basis. At the same time he made what he appears to have considered the great discovery that the bulk of the vocabulary of a language consists not of independent roots, but of compounds and derivatives formed from a comparatively small number of roots.

At first he tried to construct his roots a priori by arbitrary combinations of letters. Then he fell back on the plan of taking his roots ready-made from existing languages, as the inventor of Volapük had done before him. But instead of taking them mainly from one language, he has selected them from the chief European languages, but not impartially. Like all inventors of artificial languages, he is more ready to experiment with foreign languages than with his own; and hence the Slavonic roots in Esperanto are much less numerous than those taken from the other European languages. Here his choice has been to some extent guided by considerations of internationality, although he has not fully grasped the importance of the principle of maximum internationality, so well worked out in the latest rival of Esperanto—Idiom Neutral (see Universal Languages). Thus he adopts a large number of international words—generally unaltered except in spelling—such as teatr, tabak, even when it would be easy to form equivalent terms from the roots already existing in the language. Where there is no one international word, he selects practically at random, keeping, however, a certain balance between the Romance words, taken chiefly from Latin (tamen) and French (trotuar), on the one hand, and the Germanic on the other hand, the latter being taken sometimes from German (nur, “only”), sometimes from English, the words being generally written more or less phonetically (rajt = right). Most of the Germanic words are badly chosen from the international point of view. Thus the German word quoted above would not be intelligible to any one ignorant of German. Indeed, from the international point of view all specially German words ought to be excluded, or else reduced to the common Germanic form; thus trink ought to be made into drink, the t being a specially German modification of the d, preserved not only in English but in all the remaining Germanic languages. This incongruous mixture of languages is not only jarring and repulsive, but adds greatly to the difficulty of mastering the vocabulary for the polyglot as well as the monolingual learner.

The inventor has taken great pains to reduce the number of his roots to a minimum; there are 2642 of them in his dictionary, the Universala Vortaro (from Ger. Wort, “word”), which does not include such international words as poezio, telefono; these the learner is supposed to recognize and form without help. The most eccentric feature of the vocabulary, and the one to which it owes much of its brevity, is the extensive use of the prefix mal- to reverse the meaning of a word, as in malamiko, “enemy,” and even malbona, “bad.”

The phonology of the language is very simple. The vowels are only five in number, a, e, i, o, u, used without any distinction of quantity, as in Russian. There are six diphthongs, expressed by an unnecessarily complicated notation. The consonant-system is simple enough in itself, but is greatly complicated in writing by the excessive and mostly unnecessary use made of diacritical letters not only for simple sounds but also for consonant-groups. c is used for ts, as in Polish.

The grammar is, like that of Volapük, partly borrowed from existing languages, partly a priori and arbitrary. The use of the final vowels belongs to the latter category. The use of -a to indicate adjectives and of -o to indicate nouns as in kara amiko, “dear (male) friend,” is a source of confusion to those familiar with the Romance languages, and has proved a bar to the diffusion of Esperanto among the speakers of these languages. On the other hand, the following paradigm will show how faithfully Esperanto can reproduce the defects of conventional European grammar:—

Singular. Plural.

Nominative la bona patro la bonaj patroj

Accusative la bonan patron la bonajn patrojn.

It is difficult to see why the accusative should be kept when all the other cases are replaced by prepositions.

The verb is better than the noun. Its inflections are -as present, -is preterite, -os future, -us conditional, -u imperative and subjunctive, -i infinitive, together with the following participles:—

Active. Passive.

Present -anta -ata

Preterite -inta -ita

Future -onta -ota

The inventor has followed the good example of his native language in using esti, “to be,” as the auxiliary verb both in the passive, where it is combined with passive participles, and in the secondary tenses of the active (perfect, pluperfect, &c.), where it is of course combined with the active participles. The participles can be made into nouns and adverbs by changing the final -a into -o and -e respectively: thus tenonto, “the future holder,” perdinte, “through having lost.”

The table of the forty-five correlative pronouns, adjectives and adverbs is also elaborate and ingenious.

Much ingenuity is displayed in the syntax, as well as some happy simplifications. But, on the other hand, there is much in it that is fanciful, arbitrary and vague, as in the use of the definite article—where the author has unfortunately followed French rather than English usage—and in the moods of the verb.

The following specimens will show the general character of this easy-flowing but somewhat heavy and monotonous language—“bad Italian,” as it is called by its detractors:—

Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, sankta estu via nomo; venu regeco via; estu volo via, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero. Panon nian ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ; kaj pardonu al ni ŝuldojn niajn, kiel ni ankaŭ pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj; kaj ne konduku nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malbono.

Estimata Sinjoro. Per tiu ĉi libreto mi havas la honoron prezenti al vi la lingvon internacian Esperanto. Esperanto tute ne havas la intencon malfortigi la lingvon naturan de ia popolo. Ĝi devas nur servi por la rilatoj internaciaj kaj por tiuj verkoj aŭ produktoj, kiuj interesas egale la tutan mondon.

In summing up the merits and defects of Esperanto we must begin by admitting that it is the most reasonable and practical artificial language that has yet appeared. Its inventor has had the double advantage of being able to profit by the mistakes of his predecessors, and of being himself, by force of circumstances, a better linguist. It must further be admitted that he has made as good a use of these advantages as was perhaps possible without systematic training in scientific philology in its widest sense. This last defect explains why the enthusiasm which his work has excited in the great world of linguistic dilettantes has not been shared by the philologists: in spite of its superiority to Volapük, they see in it the same radical defects. Whether they are rash or not in predicting for it a similar fate, remains to be seen. The Esperantists, warned by the fate of Volapük, have adopted the wise policy of suppressing all internal disunion by submitting to the dictatorship of the inventor, and so presenting a united front to the enemy. One thing is clear: either Esperanto must be taken as it is without change, or else it must crumble to pieces; its failure to work out consistently the principle of the maximum of internationality for its root-words is alone enough to condemn it as hopelessly antiquated even from the narrow point of view which regards “international” as synonymous with “European”—a view which political development in the Far East has made equally obsolete.

(H. Sw.)

ESPINAY, TIMOLÉON D’ (1580-1644), French soldier, was the eldest of the four sons of François d’Espinay, seigneur de Saint Luc (1554-1597), and was himself marquis de Saint Luc. In 1603 he accompanied Sully in his embassy to London. In 1622, in his capacity as vice-admiral of France, he gained some advantages over the defenders of La Rochelle, obliging the Huguenot commander, Benjamin de Rohan, seigneur de Soubise, to evacuate the islands of Ré and Oléron. In 1627 he was named lieutenant-general of Guienne and marshal of France.

ESPINEL, VICENTE MARTINEZ (1551-1624), Spanish poet and novelist, was baptized on the 28th of December 1551, and educated at Salamanca. He was expelled from the university in 1572, and served as a soldier in Flanders, returning to Spain in 1584 or thereabouts. He took orders in 1587, and four years later became chaplain at Ronda, absented himself from his living, and was deprived of his cure; but his musical skill obtained for him the post of choirmaster at Plasencia. His Diversas Rìmas (1591) are undeniably good examples of technical accomplishment and caustic wit. Espinel, however, survives as the author of a clever picaresque novel entitled Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregón (1618). It is, in many passages, an autobiography of Espinel with picturesque embellishments. Marcos is not a chivalresque “esquire,” but an adventurer who seeks his fortune by attaching himself to great men; and the object of the author is to warn young men against such a life. Apart from the unedifying confessions of the hero, the book contains curious anecdotes concerning prominent contemporaries, and the episodical stories are told with great spirit; the style is extremely correct, though somewhat diffuse. Le Sage has not scrupled to borrow from Marcos de Obregón many of the incidents and characters in Gil Blas—a circumstance which induced Isla to give to his Spanish translation of Le Sage’s work the jesting title, Gil Blas restored to his Country and his Native Tongue. In the 1775 edition of the Siècle de Louis XIV. Voltaire grossly exaggerates in saying that Gil Blas is taken entirely from Marcos de Obregón. Espinel was a clever musician and added a fifth string to the guitar. He revived the measure known as décimas or espinelas, consisting of a stanza of ten octosyllabic lines. Most of the poems which he left in manuscript remain unpublished owing to their licentious character.

Bibliography.—J. Perez de Guzmán’s edition of Marcos de Obregón (Barcelona, 1881) includes a valuable introduction; Léo Claretie, Le Sage romancier (Paris, 1890), discusses exhaustively the question of Le Sage’s indebtedness to Espinel. For some previously unpublished poems see Pedro Salvá y Mallén, Catálogo de la biblioteca de Salvá (Valencia, 1872).

ESPIRITO SANTO, a maritime state of Brazil, bounded N. by Bahia, E. by the Atlantic Ocean, S. by Rio de Janeiro, and W. by Minas Geraes. Pop. (1890) 135,997; (1900) 209,783; area, 17,316 sq. m. With the exception of Sergipe it is the smallest of the Brazilian states. The western border of the state is traversed by low ranges of mountains forming a northward continuation of the Serra do Mar. The longest and most prominent of these ranges, which are for the most part the eastern escarpments of the great Brazilian plateau, is the Serra dos Aymores, which extends along fully two-thirds of the western frontier. Farther S. the ranges are much broken and extend partly across the state toward the seaboard; the more prominent are known as the Serra do Espigão, Serra da Chibata, Serra dos Pilões and Serra dos Purys. The eastern and larger part of the state belongs to the coastal plain, in great part low and swampy, with large areas of sand barrens, and broken by isolated groups and ranges of hills. With the exception of these sandy plains the country is heavily forested, even the mountain sides being covered with vegetation to their summits. The northern and southern parts are fertile, but the central districts are comparatively poor. The coastal plain comprises a sandy, unproductive belt immediately on the coast, back of which is a more fertile tertiary plain, well suited, near the higher country, to the production of sugar and cotton. The inland valleys and slopes are very fertile and heavily forested, and much of the Brazilian export of rosewood and other cabinet woods is drawn from this state. There is only one good bay on the coast, that of Espirito Santo, on which the port of Victoria is situated. The river-mouths are obstructed by sand bars and admit small vessels only. The principal rivers of the state are the Mucury, which rises in Minas Geraes and forms the boundary line with Bahia, the Itaunas, São Domingos, São Matheus, Doce, Timbuhy, Santa Maria, Jucú, Benevente, Itapemirim, and Itabapoana, the last forming the boundary line with Rio de Janeiro. The Doce, São Matheus, and Itapemirim rise in Minas Geraes and flow entirely across the state. The lower courses of these rivers are generally navigable, that of the Rio Doce for a distance of 90 m. The climate of the coastal zone and deeper valleys is hot, humid and unhealthy, malarial fevers being prevalent. In the higher country the temperature is lower and the climate is healthy. Espirito Santo is almost exclusively agricultural, sugar-cane, coffee, rice, cotton, tobacco, mandioca and tropical fruits being the principal products. Agriculture is in a very backward condition, however, and the state is classed as one of the poorest and most unprogressive in the republic. The rivers and shallow coast waters are well stocked with fish, but there are no fishing industries worthy of mention. There are three railway lines in operation in the state—one running from Victoria to Cachoeira do Itapemirim (50 m.), and thence, by another line, to Santo Eduardo in Rio de Janeiro (58 m.), where connexion is made with the Leopoldina system running into the national capital, and a third running north-westerly from Victoria to Diamantina, Minas Geraes, about 450 m. The chief cities and towns of the state, with their populations in 1890, are Victoria, São Matheus (municipality, 7761) on a river of the same name 16 m. from the sea, Serra (municipality, 6274), Guarapary (municipality, 5310), a small port S. by W. of the capital, Conceicão da Barra (municipality, 5628), the port of São Matheus and Cachoeira do Itapemirim (4049), an important commercial centre in the south.

Espirito Santo formed part of one of the original captaincies which were given to Vasco Fernandes Coutinho by the Portuguese crown. The first settlement (1535) was at the entrance to the bay of Espirito Santo, and its name was afterwards given to the bay and captaincy. It once included the municipality of Campos, now belonging to the state of Rio de Janeiro.

The islands of Trinidade and Martim Vaz, which lie about 715 m. E. of Victoria, belong politically to this state. They are uninhabited, but considerable importance is attached to the former because Great Britain has twice attempted to take possession of it. It rises 1200 ft. above sea-level and is about 6 m. in circumference, but it has no value other than that of an ocean cable station. An excellent description of this singular island is to be found in E.F. Knight’s Cruise of the “Alerte” (London, 1895).

ESPRONCEDA, JOSÉ IGNACIO JAVIER ORIOL ENCARNACIÓN DE (1808-1842), Spanish poet, son of an officer in the Bourbon regiment, was born at or near Almendralejo de los Barros on the 25th of March 1808. On the close of the war he was sent to the preparatory school of artillery at Segovia, and later became a pupil of the poet Lista, then professor of literature at St Matthew’s College in Madrid. In his fourteenth year he had attracted his master’s attention by his verses, and had joined a secret society. Sentenced to five years’ seclusion in the Franciscan convent at Guadalajara, he began an epic poem entitled Pelayo, of which fragments survive. He escaped to Portugal and thence to England, where he found the famous Teresa whom he had met at Lisbon; here, too, he became a student of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron. In 1830 he eloped with Teresa to Paris, took part in the July revolution, and soon after joined the raid of Chapalangarra on Navarre. In 1833 he returned to Spain and obtained a commission in the queen’s guards. This, however, he soon forfeited by a political song, and he was banished to Cuéllar, where he wrote a poor novel entitled Sancho Saldaña ó el Castellano de Cuéllar (1834). He took an active part in the revolutionary risings of 1835 and 1836, and, on the accession to power of the Liberal party in 1840, was appointed secretary of legation at the Hague; in 1842 he was elected deputy for Almería, and seemed likely to play a great part in parliamentary life. But his constitution was undermined, and, after a short illness, he died at Madrid on the 23rd of May 1842. His poems, first published in 1840, at once gained for him a reputation which still continues undiminished. The influence of Byron pervades Espronceda’s life and work. It is present in an ambitious variant on the Don Juan legend, El Estudiante de Salamanca, Elvira’s letter being obviously modelled on Julia’s letter in Don Juan; the Canción del Pirata is suggested by The Corsair; and the Byronic inspiration is not wanting even in the noble fragment entitled El Diablo Mundo, based on the story of Faust. But in El Mendigo, in El Reo de Muerte, in El Verdugo, and in the sombre vehement lines, A Jarifa en una orgía, Espronceda approves himself the most potent and original lyrical poet produced by Spain during the 19th century.

Bibliography.—Obras poéticas y escritos en prosa (Madrid, 1884), edited by Blanca Espronceda de Escosura, the poet’s daughter (the second volume has not been published); E. Rodriguez Solís, Espronceda; su tiempo, su vida, y sus obras (Madrid, 1883); E. Piñeyro, El Romanticismo en España (Paris, 1904).

ESQUIRE (O. Fr. escuyer, Mod. Fr. écuyer, derived through the form escudier from Med. Lat. scutarius, “shield-bearer”), originally the attendant on a knight, whose helm, shield and lance he carried at the tournament or in the field of battle. The esquire ranked immediately below the knight bachelor, and his office was regarded as the apprentice stage of knighthood. The title was regarded as one of function, not of birth, and was not hereditary. In time, however, its original significance was lost sight of, and it came to be a title of honour, implying a rank between that of knight and valet or gentleman, as it technically still remains. Thus in the later middle ages esquire (armiger) was the customary description of holders of knight’s fees who had not taken up their knighthood, whence the surviving custom of entitling the principal landowner in a parish “the squire” (see Squire). Camden, at the close of the 16th century, distinguished four classes entitled to bear the style: (1) The eldest sons of knights, and their eldest sons, in perpetual succession; (2) the eldest sons of the younger sons of peers, and their eldest sons, in like perpetual succession; (3) esquires created by royal letters patent or other investiture, and their eldest sons; (4) esquires by office, e.g. justices of the peace and others who bear any office of trust under the crown. To these the writer in the 3rd edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797) added Irish peers and the eldest sons of British peers, who, though they bear courtesy titles, have in law only the right to be styled esquires. Officers of the king’s courts, and of the royal household, counsellors at law and justices of the peace he described as esquires only “by reputation”; and justices of the peace have the title only as long as they are in commission; while certain heads of great landed families are styled “esquires” by prescription. “But the meaner ranks of people,” he adds indignantly, “who know no better, do often basely prostitute this title; and, to the great confusion of all rank and precedence, every man who makes a decent appearance, far from thinking himself in any way ridiculed by finding the superscription of his letters thus decorated, is fully gratified by such an address.”

It is clear, however, that the title of esquire was very loosely used at a much earlier date. On this point Selden is somewhat scornfully explicit. “To whomsoever, either by blood, place in the State or other eminency, we conceive some higher attribute should be given, than that sole Title of Gentleman, knowing yet that he hath no other honorary title legally fixed upon him, we usually style him an Esquire, in such passages as require legally that his degree or state be mentioned; as especially in Indictments and Actions whereupon he may be outlawed. Those of other nations who are Barons or great Lords in their own Countries, and no knights, are in legal proceedings stiled with us, Esquires only. Some of our greatest Heralds have their divisions of Esquires applied to this day. I leave them as I see them, where they may easily be found.” Coke, too, says that every one is entitled to be termed esquire who has the legal right to call himself a gentleman (2. Institutes, 688).

At the present time the following classes are recognized as esquires on occasions of ceremony or for legal purposes:—(1) All sons of peers and lords of parliament during their fathers’ lives, and the younger sons of such peers, &c., after their fathers’ deaths; the eldest sons of peers’ younger sons, and their eldest sons for ever. (2) Noblemen of all other nations. (3) The eldest sons of baronets and knights. (4) Persons bearing arms and the title of esquire by letters patent. (5) Esquires of the Bath and their eldest sons. (6) Barristers-at-law. (7) Justices of the peace and mayors while in commission or office. (8) The holders of any superior office under the crown. (9) Persons styled esquires by the sovereign in their patents, commissions or appointments.1 (10) Attorneys in colonies where the functions of counsel and attorney are united (in England solicitors are “gentlemen,” not “esquires”).

In practice, however, the title of esquire, now to all intents and purposes meaningless, is given to any one who “can bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman.” The word has followed the same course as that of “gentleman” (q.v.), and for very similar reasons. It is still not customary in Great Britain to address e.g. a well-to-do person engaged in trade as esquire at his shop; it would be offensive not to do so at his private residence. In America, on the other hand, the use of the word “esquire” is practically obsolete, “Mr” (“Mister” or “Master,” at one time the title special to a “gentleman”) being the general form of address.

See Selden, Titles of Honor (1672); Camden, Britannia (ed. London, 1594); Coke, Institutes; Enc. of the Laws of England, s. “Esquire”; Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1886), s. “Scutarius,” “Scutifer” and “Armiger”; New English Dictionary, s. “Esquire.”

(W. A. P.)

1 In practice this means every one receiving such a patent, commission or appointment.

ESQUIROL, JEAN ÉTIENNE DOMINIQUE (1772-1840), French alienist, was born at Toulouse on the 3rd of February 1772. In 1794 he became a pupil of the military hospital of Narbonne, and subsequently studied in Paris at the Salpêtrière under P. Pinel, whose assistant he became. In 1811 he was chosen physician to the Salpêtrière, and in 1817 he began a course of lectures on the treatment of the insane, in which he made such revelations of the abuses existing in the lunatic asylums of France that the government appointed a commission to inquire into the subject. Esquirol in this and other ways greatly assisted Pinel’s efforts for the introduction of humaner methods. The asylums of Rouen, Nantes and Montpellier were built in accordance with his plans. In 1823 he became inspector-general of the university of Paris for the faculties of medicine, and in 1826 chief physician of the asylum at Charenton. He died at Paris on the 13th of December 1840. Besides contributing to the Dictionnaire des sciences médicales and the Encyclopédie des gens du monde, Esquirol wrote Des maladies mentales, considérées sous les rapports médical, hygiénique, et médico-légal (2 vols., Paris, 1838).

ESQUIROS, HENRI FRANÇOIS ALPHONSE (1812-1876), French writer, was born in Paris on the 23rd of May 1812. After some minor publications he produced L’Évangile du peuple (1840), an exposition of the life and character of Jesus as a social reformer. This work was considered an offence against religion and decency, and Esquiros was fined and imprisoned. He was elected in 1850 as a social democrat to the Legislative Assembly, but was exiled in 1851 for his opposition to the Empire. Returning to France in 1869 he was again a member of the Legislative Assembly, and in 1876 was elected to the senate. He died at Versailles on the 12th of May 1876. He turned to account his residence in England in L’Angleterre et la vie anglaise (5 vols., 1859-1869). Among his numerous works on social subjects may be noted:—Histoire des Montagnards (2 vols., 1847); Paris, ou les sciences, les institutions et les mœurs au XIXe siècle (2 vols., 1847); and Histoire des martyrs de la liberté (1851).

ESS, JOHANN HEINRICH VAN (1772-1847), German Catholic theologian, was born at Warburg, Westphalia, on the 15th of February 1772. He was educated at the Dominican gymnasium of his native town, and in 1790 entered, as a novice, the Benedictine abbey of Marienmünster, in the bishopric of Paderborn. His Benedictine name was Leander. He was priest at Schwalenberg from 1799 to 1812, after which he became extraordinary professor of theology and joint-director of the teachers’ seminary at Marburg. In 1818 he received the doctorate of theology and of canonical law. In 1807, in conjunction with his cousin Karl van Ess, he had published a German translation of the New Testament, and, as its circulation was discountenanced by his superiors, he published in 1808 a defence of his views, entitled Auszüge aus den heiligen Vätern und anderen Lehrern der katholischen Kirche über das nothwendige und nützliche Bibellesen. An improved edition of this tractate was published in 1816, under the title Gedanken über Bibel und Bibellehre, and in the same year appeared Was war die Bibel den ersten Christen? In 1822 he published the first part of a German translation of the Old Testament, which was completed in 1836. In 1822 he resigned his offices at Marburg in order to devote his whole time to the defence of his views regarding Bible reading by the people, and to endeavour to promote the circulation of the scriptures. He was associated first with the Catholic Bible Society of Regensburg, and then with the British and Foreign Bible Society. He died at Affolderbach in the Odenwald on the 13th of October 1847.

ESSAY, ESSAYIST (Fr. essai, Late Lat. exagium, a weighing or balance; exigere, to examine; the term in general meaning any trial or effort). As a form of literature, the essay is a composition of moderate length, usually in prose, which deals in an easy, cursory way with the external conditions of a subject, and, in strictness, with that subject, only as it affects the writer. Dr Johnson, himself an eminent essayist, defines an essay as “an irregular, undigested piece”; the irregularity may perhaps be admitted, but want of thought, that is to say lack of proper mental digestion, is certainly not characteristic of a fine example. It should, on the contrary, always be the brief and light result of experience and profound meditation, while “undigested” is the last epithet to be applied to the essays of Montaigne, Addison or Lamb. Bacon said that the Epistles of Seneca were “essays,” but this can hardly be allowed. Bacon himself goes on to admit that “the word is late, though the thing is ancient.” The word, in fact, was invented for this species of writing by Montaigne, who merely meant that these were experiments in a new kind of literature. This original meaning, namely that these pieces were attempts or endeavours, feeling their way towards the expression of what would need a far wider space to exhaust, was lost in England in the course of the eighteenth century. This is seen by the various attempts made in the nineteenth century to coin a word which should express a still smaller work, as distinctive in comparison with the essay as the essay is by the side of the monograph; none of these linguistic experiments, such as essayette, essaykin (Thackeray) and essaylet (Helps) have taken hold of the language. As a matter of fact, the journalistic word article covers the lesser form of essay, although not exhaustively, since the essays in the monthly and quarterly reviews, which are fully as extended as an essay should ever be, are frequently termed “articles,” while many “articles” in newspapers, dictionaries and encyclopaedias are in no sense essays. It may be said that the idea of a detached work is combined with the word “essay,” which should be neither a section of a disquisition nor a chapter in a book which aims at the systematic development of a story. Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding is not an essay at all, or cluster of essays, in this technical sense, but refers to the experimental and tentative nature of the inquiry which the philosopher was undertaking. Of the curious use of the word so repeatedly made by Pope mention will be made below.

The essay, as a species of literature, was invented by Montaigne, who had probably little suspicion of the far-reaching importance of what he had created. In his dejected moments, he turned to rail at what he had written, and to call his essays “inepties” and “sottises.” But in his own heart he must have been well satisfied with the new and beautiful form which he had added to literary tradition. He was perfectly aware that he had devised a new thing; that he had invented a way of communicating himself to the world as a type of human nature. He designed it to carry out his peculiar object, which was to produce an accurate portrait of his own soul, not as it was yesterday or will be to-morrow, but as it is to-day. It is not often that we can date with any approach to accuracy the arrival of a new class of literature into the world, but it was in the month of March 1571 that the essay was invented. It was started in the second story of the old tower of the castle of Montaigne, in a study to which the philosopher withdrew for that purpose, surrounded by his books, close to his chapel, sheltered from the excesses of a fatiguing world. He wrote slowly, not systematically; it took nine years to finish the two first books of the essays. In 1574 the manuscript of the work, so far as it was then completed, was nearly lost, for it was confiscated by the pontifical police in Rome, where Montaigne was residing, and was not returned to the author for four months. The earliest imprint saw the light in 1580, at Bordeaux, and the Paris edition of 1588, which is the fifth, contains the final text of the great author. These dates are not negligible in the briefest history of the essay, for they are those of its revelation to the world of readers. It was in the delightful chapters of his new, strange book that Montaigne introduced the fashion of writing briefly, irregularly, with constant digressions and interruptions, about the world as it appears to the individual who writes. The Essais were instantly welcomed, and few writers of the Renaissance had so instant and so vast a popularity as Montaigne. But while the philosophy, and above all the graceful stoicism, of the great master were admired and copied in France, the exact shape in which he had put down his thoughts, in the exquisite negligence of a series of essays, was too delicate to tempt an imitator. It is to be noted that neither Charron, nor Mlle de Gournay, his most immediate disciples, tried to write essays. But Montaigne, who liked to fancy that the Eyquem family was of English extraction, had spoken affably of the English people as his “cousins,” and it has always been admitted that his genius has an affinity with the English. He was early read in England, and certainly by Bacon, whose is the second great name connected with this form of literature. It was in 1597, only five years after the death of Montaigne, that Bacon published in a small octavo the first ten of his essays. These he increased to 38 in 1612 and to 58 in 1625. In their first form, the essays of Bacon had nothing of the fulness or grace of Montaigne’s; they are meagre notes, scarcely more than the headings for discourses. It is possible that when he wrote them he was not yet familiar with the style of his predecessor, which was first made popular in England, in 1603, when Florio published that translation of the Essais which Shakespeare unquestionably read. In the later editions Bacon greatly expanded his theme, but he never reached, or but seldom, the freedom and ease, the seeming formlessness held in by an invisible chain, which are the glory of Montaigne, and distinguish the typical essayist. It would seem that at first, in England, as in France, no lesser writer was willing to adopt a title which belonged to so great a presence as that of Bacon or Montaigne. The one exception was Sir William Cornwallis (d. 1631), who published essays in 1600 and 1617, of slight merit, but popular in their day. No other English essayist of any importance appeared until the Restoration, when Abraham Cowley wrote eleven “Several Discourses by way of Essays,” which did not see the light until 1668. He interspersed with his prose, translations and original pieces in verse, but in other respects Cowley keeps much nearer than Bacon to the form of Montaigne. Cowley’s essay “Of Myself” is a model of what these little compositions should be. The name of Bacon inspires awe, but it is really not he, but Cowley, who is the father of the English essay; and it is remarkable that he has had no warmer panegyrists than his great successors, Charles Lamb and Macaulay. Towards the end of the century, Sir George Mackenzie (1636-1691) wrote witty moral discourses, which were, however, essays rather in name than form. Whenever, however, we reach the eighteenth century, we find the essay suddenly became a dominant force in English literature. It made its appearance almost as a new thing, and in combination with the earliest developments of journalism. On the 12th of April 1709 appeared the first number of a penny newspaper, entitled the Tatler, a main feature of which was to amuse and instruct fashionable readers by a series of short papers dealing with the manifold occurrences of life, quicquid agunt homines. But it was not until Steele, the founder of the Tatler, was joined by Addison that the eighteenth-century essay really started upon its course. It displayed at first, and indeed it long retained, a mixture of the manner of Montaigne with that of La Bruyère, combining the form of the pure essay with that of the character-study, as modelled on Theophrastus, which had been so popular in England throughout the seventeenth century. Addison’s early Tatler portraits, in particular such as those of “Tom Folio” and “Ned Softly,” are hardly essays. But Steele’s “Recollections of Childhood” is, and here we may observe the type on which Goldsmith, Lamb and R.L. Stevenson afterwards worked. In January 1711 the Tatler came to an end, and was almost immediately followed by the Spectator, and in 1713 by the Guardian. These three newspapers are storehouses of admirable and typical essays, the majority of them written by Steele and Addison, who are the most celebrated eighteenth-century essayists in England. Later in the century, after the publication of other less successful experiments, appeared Fielding’s essays in the Covent Garden Journal (1752) and Johnson’s in the Rambler (1750), the Adventurer (1752) and the Idler (1759). There followed a great number of polite journals, in which the essay was treated as “the bow of Ulysses in which it was the fashion for men of rank and genius to try their strength.” Goldsmith reached a higher level than the Chesterfields and Bonnel Thorntons had dreamed of, in the delicious sections of his Citizen of the World (1760). After Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century essay declined into tamer hands, and passed into final feebleness with the pedantic Richard Cumberland and the sentimental Henry Mackenzie. The corpus of eighteenth-century essayists is extremely voluminous, and their reprinted works fill some fifty volumes. There is, however, a great sameness about all but the very best of them, and in no case do they surpass Addison in freshness, or have they ventured to modify the form he adopted for his lucubrations. What has survived of them all is the lightest portion, but it should not be forgotten that a very large section of the essays of that age were deliberately didactic and “moral.” A great revival of the essay took place during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and foremost in the history of this movement must always be placed the name of Charles Lamb. He perceived that the real business of the essay, as Montaigne had conceived it, was to be largely personal. The famous Essays of Elia began to appear in the London Magazine for August 1820, and proceeded at fairly regular intervals until December 1822; early in 1823 the first series of them were collected in a volume. The peculiarity of Lamb’s style as an essayist was that he threw off the Addisonian and still more the Johnsonian tradition, which had become a burden that crushed the life out of each conventional essay, and that he boldly went back to the rich verbiage and brilliant imagery of the seventeenth century for his inspiration. It is true that Lamb had great ductility of style, and that, when he pleases, he can write so like Steele that Steele himself might scarcely know the difference, yet in his freer flights we are conscious of more exalted masters, of Milton, Thomas Browne and Jeremy Taylor. He succeeded, moreover, in reaching a poignant note of personal feeling, such as none of his predecessors had ever aimed at; the essays called “Dream Children” and “Blakesmoor” are examples of this, and they display a degree of harmony and perfection in the writing of the pure essay such as had never been attempted before, and has never since been reached. Leigh Hunt, clearing away all the didactic and pompous elements which had overgrown the essay, restored it to its old Spectator grace, and was the most easy nondescript writer of his generation in periodicals such as the Indicator (1819) and the Companion (1828). The sermons, letters and pamphlets of Sydney Smith were really essays of an extended order. In Hazlitt and Francis Jeffrey we see the form and method of the essay beginning to be applied to literary criticism. The writings of De Quincey are almost exclusively essays, although many of the most notable of them, under his vehement pen, have far outgrown the limits of the length laid down by the most indulgent formalist. His biographical and critical essays are interesting, but they are far from being trustworthy models in form or substance. In a sketch, however rapid, of the essay in the nineteenth century, prominence must be given to the name of Macaulay. His earliest essay, that on Milton, appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1825, very shortly after the revelation of Lamb’s genius in “Elia.” No two products cast in the same mould could, however, be more unlike in substance. In the hands of Macaulay the essay ceases to be a confession or an autobiography; it is strictly impersonal, it is literary, historical or controversial, vigorous, trenchant and full of party prejudice. The periodical publication of Macaulay’s Essays in the Edinburgh Review went on until 1844; when we cast our eyes over this mass of brilliant writing we observe with surprise that it is almost wholly contentious. Nothing can be more remarkable than the difference in this respect between Lamb and Macaulay, the former for ever demanding, even cajoling, the sympathy of the reader, the latter scanning the horizon for an enemy to controvert. In later times the essay in England has been cultivated in each of these ways, by a thousand journalists and authors. The “leaders” of a daily newspaper are examples of the popularization of the essay, and they point to the danger which now attacks it, that of producing a purely ephemeral or even momentary species of effect. The essay, in its best days, was intended to be as lasting as a poem or a historical monograph; it aimed at being one of the most durable and precious departments of literature. We still occasionally see the production of essays which have this more ambitious aim; within the last quarter of the nineteenth century the essays of R.L. Stevenson achieved it. His Familiar Studies are of the same class as those of Montaigne and Lamb, and he approached far more closely than any other contemporary to their high level of excellence. We have seen that the tone of the essay should be personal and confidential; in Stevenson’s case it was characteristically so. But the voices which please the public in a strain of pure self-study are few at all times, and with the cultivation of the analytic habit they tend to become less original and attractive. It is possible that the essay may die of exhaustion of interest, or may survive only in the modified form of accidental journalism.

The essay, although invented by a great French writer, was very late in making itself at home in France. The so-called Essais of Leibnitz, Nicole, Yves Marie André and so many others were really treatises. Voltaire’s famous Essai sur les mœurs des nations is an elaborate historical disquisition in nearly two hundred chapters. Later, the voluminous essays of Joseph de Maistre and of Lamennais were not essays at all in the literary sense. On the other hand, the admirable Causeries du lundi of Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) are literary essays in the fulness of the term, and have been the forerunners of a great army of brilliant essay-writing in France. Among those who have specially distinguished themselves as French essayists may be mentioned Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Anatole France, Jules Lemaître, Ferdinand Brunetière and Émile Faguet. All these are literary critics, and it is in the form of the analysis of manifestations of intellectual energy that the essay has been most successfully illustrated in France. All the countries of Europe, since the middle of the 19th century, have adopted this form of writing; such monographs or reviews, however, are not perfectly identical with the essay as it was conceived by Addison and Lamb. This last, it may be supposed, is a definitely English thing, and this view is confirmed by the fact that in several European languages the word “essayist” has been adopted without modification.

In the above remarks it has been taken for granted that the essay is always in prose. Pope, however, conceived an essay in heroic verse. Of this his Essay on Criticism (1711) and his Essay on Man (1732-1734) are not good examples, for they are really treatises. The so-called Moral Essays (1720-1735), on the contrary, might have been contributed, if in prose, either to the Spectator or the Guardian. The idea of pure essays, in verse, however, did not take any root in English literature.

(E. G.)

ESSEG, Essegg or Essek (Hung. Esszék; Croatian Osjek), a royal free town, municipality, and capital of the county of Virovitica (Veröcze), in Croatia-Slavonia, on the right bank of the Drave, 9 m. W. of its confluence with the Danube, and 185 m. S. of Buda-Pest by rail. Pop. (1900) 24,930; chiefly Magyars and Croats, with a few Germans and Jews. At Esseg the Drave is crossed by two bridges, and below these it is navigable by small steamers. The upper town, with the fortress, is under military authority; the new town and the lower town, which is the headquarters of commerce, are under civil authority. The only buildings of note are the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, Franciscan and Capuchin monasteries, synagogue, gymnasium, modern school, hospital, chamber of commerce, and law-courts. Esseg has a thriving trade in grain, fruit, live-stock, plum-brandy and timber. Tanning, silk-weaving and glass-blowing are also carried on.

Esseg owes its origin to its fortress, which existed as early as the time of the Romans under the name of Mursia; though the present structure dates only from 1720. At the beginning of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 the town was held by the Hungarians, but on the 4th of February 1849 it was taken by the Austrians under General Baron Trebersberg.

ESSEN, a manufacturing town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, 22 m. N.E. from Düsseldorf, on the main line of railway to Berlin, in an undulating and densely populated district. Pop. (1849) 8813; (1875) 54,790; (1905) 229,270. It lies at the centre of a network of railways giving it access to all the principal towns of the Westphalian iron and coal fields. Its general aspect is gloomy; it possesses few streets of any pretensions, though those in the old part, which are mostly narrow, present, with their grey slate roofs and green shutters, a picturesque appearance. Of its religious edifices (twelve Roman Catholic, one Old Catholic, six Protestant churches, and a synagogue) the minster, dating from the 10th century, with fine pictures, relics and wall frescoes, is alone especially remarkable. This building is very similar to the Pfalz-Kapelle (capella in palatio) at Aix-la-Chapelle. Among the town’s principal secular buildings are the new Gothic town-hall, the post office and the railway station. There are several high-grade (classical and modern) schools, technical, mining and commercial schools, a theatre, a permanent art exhibition, and hospitals. Essen also has a beautiful public park in the immediate vicinity. The town originally owed its prosperity to the large iron and coal fields underlying the basin in which it is situated. Chief among its industrial establishments are the famous iron and steel works of Krupp (q.v.), and the whole of Essen may be said to depend for its livelihood upon this firm, which annually expends vast sums in building and supporting churches, schools, clubs, hospitals and philanthropic institutions, and in other ways providing for the welfare of its employees. There are also manufactories of woollen goods and cigars, dyeworks and breweries.

Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and was formed into a town about the middle of the 10th century by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery, who held from 1275 the rank of a princess of the Empire, was assisted by a chapter of ten princesses and countesses; she governed the town until 1803, when it was secularized and incorporated with Prussia. In 1807 it came into the possession of the grand dukes of Berg, but was transferred to Prussia in 1814.

See Funcke, Geschichte des Fürstenthums und der Stadt Essen (Elberfeld, 1851); Kellen, Die Industriestadt Essen in Wort und Bild (Essen, 1902); and A. Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency (London, 1906).

ESSENES, a monastic order among the Jews prior to Christianity. Their first appearance in history is in the time of Jonathan the Maccabee (161-144 B.C.). How much older they may have been we have no means of determining, but our authorities agree in assigning to them a dateless antiquity. The name occurs in Greek, in the two forms Ἐσσηνοί and Ἐσσαῖοι. Ἐσσηνοί is used by Josephus fourteen times, Ἐσσαῖοι six, but the latter is the only form used by Philo (ii. 457, 471, 632). Ἐσσηνοί is also used by Synesius and Hippolytus, and its Latin equivalent by Pliny and Solinus; Ἐσσαῖοι by Hegesippus and Porphyry. In Epiphanius we find the forms Ὀσσαῖοι, Ὀσσηνοί, and Ἰεσσαῖοι. There is a place named Essa mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xiii. 15, § 3), from which the name may have been formed, just as the Christians were originally called Ναζαρηνοί or Ναζωραῖοι, from Nazara. This etymology, however, is not much in favour now. Lightfoot explains the name as meaning “the silent ones,” others as meaning “physicians.” Perhaps there is most authority in favour of deriving it from the Syriac חסיך, which in the emphatic state becomes חסיא, so that we have a Semitic correspondence to both the Greek forms Ἐσσηνοί and Ἐσσαῖοι. This etymology makes the word mean “pious.” It has also been urged in excuse for Philo’s absurd derivation from ὅσιος.

The original accounts we have of them are confined to three authors—Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus. Philo describes them in his treatise known as Quod omnis probus liber (§§ 12, 13; ii. 457-460), and also in his “Apology for the Jews,” a fragment of which has been preserved by Eusebius (Praep. Ev. viii. 11, 12). Pliny (N.H. v. 17) has a short but striking sketch of them, derived in all probability from Alexander Polyhistor, who is mentioned among the authorities for the fifth book of his Natural History. This historian, of whom Eusebius had a very high opinion (Praep. Ev. ix. 17, § 1), lived in the time of Sulla. Josephus treats of them at length in his Jewish War (ii. 8), and more briefly in two passages of his Antiquities (xiii. 5, § 9; xviii. 1, § 5). He has also interesting accounts of the prophetic powers possessed by three individual members of the sect—Judas (B.J. i. 3, § 5; Ant. xiii. 11, § 2), Menahem (Ant. xv. 10, § 5), and Simon (B.J. ii. 7, § 3; Ant. xvii. 13, § 3). Besides this he mentions an Essene Gate in Jerusalem (B.J. v. 4, § 2) and a person called John the Essene, one of the bravest and most capable leaders in the war against the Romans (B.J. ii. 20, § 4; iii. 2, § 1). Josephus himself made trial of the sect of Essenes in his youth; but from his own statement it appears that he must have been a very short time with them, and therefore could not have been initiated into the inner mysteries of the society (De vita sua, 2). After this the notices that we have of the Essenes from antiquity are mere reproductions, except in the case of Epiphanius (died A.D. 402), who, however, is so confused a writer as to be of little value. Solinus, who was known as “Pliny’s Ape,” echoed the words of his master about a century after that writer’s death, which took place in A.D. 79. Similarly Hippolytus, who lived in the reign of Commodus (A.D. 180-192), reproduced the account of Josephus, adding a few touches of his own. Porphyry (A.D. 233-306) afterwards did the same, but had the grace to mention Josephus in the context. Eusebius quoted the account as from Porphyry, though he must have known that he had derived it from Josephus (Praep. Ev. ix. 3, §§ 1, 13). But Porphyry’s name would impress pagan readers. There is also a mention of the Essenes by Hegesippus (Eus. H.E. iv. 22) and by Synesius in his life of Dio Chrysostom. It has been conjectured that the Clementine literature emanated from Essenes who had turned Christian. (See Ebionites.)

The Essenes were an exclusive society, distinguished from the rest of the Jewish nation in Palestine by an organization peculiar to themselves, and by a theory of life in which a severe asceticism and a rare benevolence to one another and to mankind in general were the most striking characteristics. They had fixed rules for initiation, a succession of strictly separate grades within the limits of the society, and regulations for the conduct of their daily life even in its minutest details. Their membership could be recruited only from the outside world, as marriage and all intercourse with women were absolutely renounced. They were the first society in the world to condemn slavery both in theory and practice; they enforced and practised the most complete community of goods. They chose their own priests and public office-bearers, and even their own judges. Though their prevailing tendency was practical, and the tenets of the society were kept a profound secret, it is perfectly clear from the concurrent testimony of Philo and Josephus that they cultivated a kind of speculation, which not only accounts for their spiritual asceticism, but indicates a great deviation from the normal development of Judaism, and a profound sympathy with Greek philosophy, and probably also with Oriental ideas. At the same time we do our Jewish authorities no injustice in imputing to them the patriotic tendency to idealize the society, and thus offer to their readers something in Jewish life that would bear comparison at least with similar manifestations of Gentile life.

There is some difficulty in determining how far the Essenes separated themselves locally from their fellow-countrymen. Josephus informs us that they had no single city of their own, but that many of them dwelt in every city. While in his treatise Quod omnis, &c., Philo speaks of their avoiding towns and preferring to live in villages, in his “Apology for the Jews” we find them living in many cities, villages, and in great and prosperous towns. In Pliny they are a perennial colony settled on the western shore of the Dead Sea. On the whole, as Philo and Josephus agree in estimating their number at 4000 (Philo, Q.O.P.L. § 12; Jos. Ant. xviii. 1, § 5), we are justified in suspecting some exaggeration as to the many cities, towns and villages where they were said to be found. As agriculture was their favourite occupation, and as their tendency was to withdraw from the haunts and ordinary interests of mankind, we may assume that with the growing confusion and corruption of Jewish society they felt themselves attracted from the mass of the population to the sparsely peopled districts, till they found a congenial settlement and free scope for their peculiar view of life by the shore of the Dead Sea. While their principles were consistent with the neighbourhood of men, they were better adapted to a state of seclusion.

The Essenes did not renounce marriage because they denied the validity of the institution or the necessity of it as providing for the continuance of the human race, but because they had a low opinion of the character of women (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, § 2; Philo, “Apol. for the Jews” in Eus. Praep. Ev. viii. 11, § 8). They adopted children when very young, and brought them up on their own principles. Pleasure generally they rejected as evil. They despised riches not less than pleasure; neither poverty nor wealth was observable among them; at initiation every one gave his property into the common stock; every member in receipt of wages handed them over to the funds of the society. In matters of dress the asceticism of the society was very pronounced. They regarded oil as a defilement, even washing it off if anointed with it against their will. They did not change their clothes or their shoes till they were torn in pieces or worn completely away. The colour of their garments was always white. Their daily routine was prescribed for them in the strictest manner. Before the rising of the sun they were to speak of nothing profane, but offered to it certain traditional forms of prayer as if beseeching it to rise. Thereafter they went about their daily tasks, working continuously at whatever trade they knew till the fifth hour, when they assembled, and, girding on a garment of linen, bathed in cold water. They next seated themselves quietly in the dining hall, where the baker set bread in order, and the cook brought each a single dish of one kind of food. Before meat and after it grace was said by a priest. After dinner they resumed work till sunset. In the evening they had supper, at which guests of the order joined them, if there happened to be any such present. Withal there was no noise or confusion to mar the tranquillity of their intercourse; no one usurped more than his share of the conversation; the stillness of the place oppressed a stranger with a feeling of mysterious awe. This composure of spirit was owing to their perfect temperance in eating and drinking. Not only in the daily routine of the society, but generally, the activity of the members was controlled by their presidents. In only two things could they take the initiative, helpfulness and mercy; the deserving poor and the destitute were to receive instant relief; but no member could give anything to his relatives without consulting the heads of the society. Their office-bearers were elected. They had also their special courts of justice, which were composed of not less than a hundred members, and their decisions, which were arrived at with extreme care, were irreversible. Oaths were strictly forbidden; their word was stronger than an oath. They were just and temperate in anger, the guardians of good faith, and the ministers of peace, obedient to their elders and to the majority. But the moral characteristics which they most earnestly cultivated and enjoined will best appear in their rules of initiation. There was a novitiate of three years, during which the intending member was tested as to his fitness for entering the society. If the result was satisfactory, he was admitted, but before partaking of the common meal he was required to swear awful oaths, that he would reverence the deity, do justice to men, hurt no man voluntarily or at the command of another, hate the unjust and assist the just, and that he would render fidelity to all men, but especially to the rulers, seeing that no one rules but of God. He also vowed, if he should bear rule himself, to make no violent use of his power, nor outshine those set under him by superior display, to make it his aim to cherish the truth and unmask liars, to be pure from theft and unjust gain, to conceal nothing from his fellow-members, nor to divulge any of their affairs to other men, even at the risk of death, to transmit their doctrines unchanged, and to keep secret the books of the society and the names of the angels.

Within the limits of the society there were four grades so distinct that if any one touched a member of an inferior grade he required to cleanse himself by bathing in water; members who had been found guilty of serious crimes were expelled from the society, and could not be received again till reduced to the very last extremity of want or sickness. As the result of the ascetic training of the Essenes, and of their temperate diet, it is said that they lived to a great age, and were superior to pain and fear. During the Roman war they cheerfully underwent the most grievous tortures rather than break any of the principles of their faith. In fact, they had in many respects reached the very highest moral elevation attained by the ancient world; they were just, humane, benevolent, and spiritually-minded; the sick and aged were the objects of a special affectionate regard; and they condemned slavery, not only as an injustice, but as an impious violation of the natural brotherhood of men (Philo ii. 457). There were some of the Essenes who permitted marriage, but strictly with a view to the preservation of the race; in other respects they agreed with the main body of the society.

It will be apparent that the predominant tendency of the society was practical. Philo tells us expressly that they rejected logic as unnecessary to the acquisition of virtue, and speculation on nature as too lofty for the human intellect. Yet they had views of their own as to God, Providence, the soul, and a future state, which, while they had a practical use, were yet essentially speculative. On the one hand, indeed, they held tenaciously by the traditional Judaism: blasphemy against their lawgiver was punished with death, the sacred books were preserved and read with great reverence, though not without an allegorical interpretation, and the Sabbath was most scrupulously observed. But in many important points their deviation from the strait path of Judaic development was complete. They rejected animal sacrifice as well as marriage; the oil with which priests and kings were anointed they accounted unclean; and the condemnation of oaths and the community of goods were unmistakable innovations for which they found no hint or warrant in the old Hebrew writings. Their most singular feature, perhaps, was their reverence for the sun. In their speculative hints respecting the soul and a future state, we find another important deviation from Judaism, and the explanation of their asceticism. They held that the body is mortal, and its substance transitory; that the soul is immortal, but, coming from the subtlest ether, is lured as by a sorcery of nature into the prison-house of the body. At death it is released from its bonds, as from long slavery, and joyously soars aloft. To the souls of the good there is reserved a life beyond the ocean, and a country oppressed by neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, but refreshed by a gentle west wind blowing continually from the sea (cf. Hom. Od. iv. 566-568), but to the wicked a region of wintry darkness and of unceasing torment. Josephus tells us too that the Essenes believed in fate; but in what sense, and what relation it bore to Divine Providence, does not appear.

The above evidence has left students in doubt as to whether Essenism is to be regarded as a pure product of the Jewish mind or as due in part to some foreign influence. On the one hand it might be maintained that the Essenes out-Pharisee’d the Pharisees. They had in common with that sect their veneration for Moses and the Law, their Sabbatarianism, their striving after ceremonial purity, and their tendency towards fatalism. But if the Pharisees abstained from good works on the Sabbath, the Essenes abstained even from natural necessities (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, § 9); if the Pharisees washed, the Essenes bathed before dinner; if the Pharisees ascribed some things to Fate, the Essenes ascribed all (Jos. Ant. xiii. 5, § 9). But on the other hand the Essenes avoided marriage, which the Pharisees held in honour; they offered no animal-sacrifices in the Temple; they refrained from the use of oil, which was customary among the Pharisees (Luke vii. 46); above all, they offered prayers to the sun, after the manner denounced in Ezekiel (viii. 16). These and other points of divergences are not explained by Ritschl’s interesting theory that Essenism was an organized attempt to carry out the idea of “a kingdom of priests and an holy nation” (Ex. xix. 6).

Granting then that some foreign influence was at work in Essenism, we have four theories offered to us—that this influence was Persian, Buddhist, Pythagorean, or lastly, as maintained by Lipsius, that of the surrounding Syrian heathenism. Each of these views has had able advocates, but it must not be supposed that they are mutually exclusive. If we consider how Philo, while remaining a devout Jew in religion, yet managed to assimilate the whole Stoic philosophy, we can well believe that the Essenes might have been influenced, as Zeller maintained that they were, by Neo-Pythagoreanism. But as Pythagoras himself came from Samos, and his doctrines have a decidedly Oriental tinge, it may very well be that both he and the Essenes drew from a common source; for there is no need to reject, as is so commonly done, the statements of our authorities as to the antiquity of the Essenes. This common source we may believe with Lightfoot to have been the Persian religion, which we know to have profoundly influenced that of Israel, independently of the Essenes.

The fact that the Pharisees and Sadducees so often figure in the pages of the New Testament, while the Essenes are never mentioned, might plausibly be interpreted to show that the New Testament emanated from the side of the Essenes. So far as concerns the Epistle of St James this interpretation would probably be correct. That work contains the doctrine common to the Essenes with Plato, and suggestive of Persian Dualism, that God is the author of good only. There are also certain obvious points of resemblance between the Essenes and the early Christians. Both held property in common; both had scattered communities which received guests one from the other; both avoided a light use of oaths; both taught passive obedience to political authority. The list might be enlarged, but it would not necessarily prove more than that the early Christians shared in the ideas of their age. Christianity was to some extent a popularization of Essenism, but there is little reason for believing that Jesus himself was an Essene. De Quincey’s contention that there were no Essenes but the early Christians is now a literary curiosity.

The original sources of our knowledge of the Essenes have been mentioned at the beginning of this paper; the best modern discussions of them are to be found in such works as Zeller’s Philosophie der Griechen, vol. iii.; Ewald, Geschichte d. V. Israël, iii. 419-428; Reuss, La Théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique, i. 122-131; Keim, Life of Jesus of Nazara, vol. i.; Lightfoot on the Colossians; Lucius, Der Essenismus in seinem Verhältniss zum Judenthum; Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte; Ed. Schürer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, div. ii. vol. ii. § 30. The copious bibliography in Conybeare’s edition of Philo’s De vita contemplativa bears upon the Essenes as well as upon the Therapeutes. For a specially Jewish view of the Essenes see Kohler’s article in the Jewish Encyclopaedia. They are there regarded as being “simply the rigorists among the Pharisees.” But we are also told that “the Pharisees characterized the Essene as ‘a fool who destroyed the world.’”

(T. K.; St G. S.)

ESSENTUKI, a watering-place of south Russia, in the government of Terek, 11 m. by rail W. from Pyatigorsk; altitude, 2096 ft. Its alkaline and sulphur-alkaline mineral waters, similar to those of Ems, Selters and Vichy, are much visited in summer. The climate shows great variations in temperature. Pop. (1897) 9974.

ESSEQUIBO, or Essequebo, one of the three settlements of British Guiana, taking its name from the river Essequibo. (See Guiana.)

ESSEX, EARLS OF. The first earl of Essex was probably Geoffrey de Mandeville (q.v.), who became earl about 1139, the earldom being subsequently held by his two sons, Geoffrey and William, until the death of the latter in 1189. In 1199 Geoffrey Fitzpeter or Fitzpiers (d. 1213), who was related to the Mandevilles through his wife Beatrice, became earl of Essex, and on the death of Geoffrey’s son William in 1227 the earldom reverted for the second time to the crown. Then the title to the earldom passed by marriage to the Bohuns, earls of Hereford, and before 1239 Humphrey de Bohun (d. 1275) had been recognized as earl of Essex. With the earldom of Hereford the earldom of Essex became extinct in 1373; afterwards it was held by Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, a son of Edward III. and the husband of Eleanor de Bohun; and from Gloucester it passed to the Bourchiers, Henry Bourchier (d. 1483), who secured the earldom in 1461, being one of Gloucester’s grandsons. The second and last Bourchier earl was Henry’s grandson Henry, who died early in 1540. A few weeks before his execution in 1540 Thomas Cromwell (q.v.) was created earl of Essex; then in 1543 William Parr, afterwards marquess of Northampton, obtained the earldom by right of his wife Anne, a daughter of the last Bourchier earl. Northampton lost the earldom when he was attainted in 1553; and afterwards it passed to the famous family of Devereux, Walter Devereux, who was created earl of Essex in 1572, being related to the Bourchiers. Robert, the 3rd and last Devereux earl, died in 1646. In 1661 Arthur Capel was created earl of Essex, and the earldom is still held by his descendants.

ESSEX, ARTHUR CAPEL, 1st1 Earl of (1632-1683), English statesman, son of Arthur, 1st Baron Capel of Hadham (c. 1641), executed in 1649, and of Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cashiobury in Hertfordshire, was baptized on the 28th of January 1632. In June 1648, then a sickly boy of sixteen, he was taken by Fairfax’s soldiers from Hadham to Colchester, which his father was defending, and carried every day round the works with the hope of inducing Lord Capel to surrender the place. At the restoration he was created Viscount Malden and earl of Essex (20th of April 1661), with special remainder to the male issue of his father, and was made lord-lieutenant of Hertfordshire and a few years later of Wiltshire.2

He early showed himself antagonistic to the court, to Roman Catholicism, and to the extension of the royal prerogative, and was coupled by Charles II. with Holles as “stiff and sullen men,” who would not yield against their convictions to his solicitations. In 1669 he was sent as ambassador to King Christian V. of Denmark, in which capacity he gained credit by refusing to strike his flag to the governor of Kronborg. In 1672 he was made a privy councillor and lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He remained in office till 1677, and his administration was greatly commended by Burnet and Ormonde,3 the former describing it “as a pattern to all that come after him.” He identified himself with Irish interests, and took immense pains to understand the constitution and the political necessities of the country, appointing men of real merit to office, and maintaining an exceptional independence from solicitation and influence. He held a just balance between the Roman Catholics, the English Church and the Presbyterians, protecting the former as far as public opinion in England would permit, and governing the native Irish with firmness and moderation. The purity and patriotism of his administration were in strong contrast to the hopeless corruption prevalent in that at home and naturally aroused bitter opposition, as an obstacle to the unscrupulous employment of Irish revenues for the satisfaction of the court and the king’s expenses. In particular he came into conflict with Lord Ranelagh, to whom had been assigned the Irish revenues on condition of his supplying the requirements of the crown, and whose accounts Essex refused to pass. He opposed strongly the lavish gifts of forfeited estates to court favourites and mistresses, prevented the grant of Phoenix Park to the duchess of Cleveland, and refused to encumber the administration by granting reversions. Finally the intrigues of his enemies at home, and Charles’s continual demands for money, which Ranelagh undertook to satisfy, brought about his recall in April 1677. He immediately joined the country party and the opposition to Danby’s government, and on the latter’s fall in 1679 was appointed a commissioner of the treasury, and the same year a member of Sir William Temple’s new-modelled council. He followed the lead of Halifax, who advocated not the exclusion of James, but the limitation of his sovereign powers, and looked to the prince of Orange rather than to Monmouth as the leader of Protestantism, incurring thereby the hostility of Shaftesbury, but at the same time gaining the confidence of Charles. He was appointed by Charles together with Halifax to hear the charges against Lauderdale. In July he wrote a wise and statesmanlike letter to the king, advising him to renounce his project of raising a new company of guards. Together with Halifax he urged Charles to summon the parliament, and after his refusal resigned the treasury in November, the real cause being, according to one account,4 a demand upon the treasury by the duchess of Cleveland for £25,000, according to another “the niceness of touching French money,” “that makes my Lord Essex’s squeasy stomach that it can no longer digest his employment.”5

Subsequently his political attitude underwent a change, the exact cause of which is not clear—probably a growing conviction of the dangers threatened by a Roman Catholic sovereign of the character of James. He now, in 1680, joined Shaftesbury’s party and supported the Exclusion Bill, and on its rejection by the Lords carried a motion for an association to execute the scheme of expedients promoted by Halifax. On the 25th of January 1681 at the head of fifteen peers he presented a petition to the king, couched in exaggerated language, requesting the abandonment of the session of parliament at Oxford. He was a jealous prosecutor of the Roman Catholics in the popish plot, and voted for Stafford’s attainder, on the other hand interceding for Archbishop Plunket, implicated in the pretended Irish plot. He, however, refused to follow Shaftesbury in his extreme courses, declined participation in the latter’s design to seize the Tower in 1682, and on Shaftesbury’s consequent departure from England became the leader of Monmouth’s faction, in which were now included Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, and Lord Howard of Escrick. Essex took no part in the wilder schemes of the party, but after the discovery of the Rye House Plot in June 1683, and the capture of the leaders, he was arrested at Cashiobury and imprisoned in the Tower. His spirits and fortitude appear immediately to have abandoned him, and on the 13th of July he was discovered in his chamber with his throat cut. His death was attributed, quite groundlessly, to Charles and James, and the evidence points clearly if not conclusively to suicide, his motive being possibly to prevent an attainder and preserve his estate for his family. He was, however, undoubtedly a victim of the Stuart administration, and the antagonism and tragic end of men like Essex, deserving men, naturally devoted to the throne, constitutes a severe indictment of the Stuart rule.

He was a statesman of strong and sincere patriotism, just and unselfish, conscientious and laborious in the fulfilment of public duties, blameless in his official and private life. Evelyn describes him as “a sober, wise, judicious and pondering person, not illiterate beyond the rule of most noblemen in this age, very well versed in English history and affairs, industrious, frugal, methodical and every way accomplished”; and declares he was much deplored, few believing he had ever harboured any seditious designs.6 He married Lady Elizabeth Percy, daughter of Algernon, 10th earl of Northumberland, by whom, besides a daughter, he had an only son Algernon (1670-1710), who succeeded him as 2nd earl of Essex.

Bibliography.—See the Lives in the Dict. of Nat. Biography and in Biographia Britannica (Kippis), with authorities there collected; Essex’s Irish correspondence is in the Stow Collection in the British Museum, Nos. 200-217, and selections have been published in Letters written by Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex (1770) and in the Essex Papers (Camden Society, 1890), to which can now be added the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic, which contain a large number of his letters and which strongly support the opinion of his contemporaries concerning his unselfish patriotism and industry; see also Somers Tracts (1813), x., and for other pamphlets relating to his death the catalogue of the British Museum.

1 i.e. in the Capel line.

2 Hist. MSS. Comm. ser.; Duke of Beaufort’s MSS. 45.

3 Life of Ormonde, by T. Carte, viii. 468 (1851), vol. iv. p. 529.

4 Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. app. 477b.

5 Ib. 6th Rep. app. 741b.

6 Diary and Corresp. (1850), ii. 141, 178.

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, 2nd1 Earl of (1566-1601), son of the 1st Devereux earl, was born at Netherwood, Herefordshire, on the 19th of November 1566. He entered the university of Cambridge and graduated in 1581. In 1585 he accompanied his stepfather, the earl of Leicester, on an expedition to Holland, and greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Zutphen. He now took his place at court, where so handsome a youth soon found favour with Queen Elizabeth, and in consequence was on bad terms with Raleigh. In 1587 he was appointed master of the horse, and in the following year was made general of the horse and installed knight of the Garter. On the death of Leicester he succeeded him as chief favourite of the queen, a position which injuriously affected his whole subsequent life, and ultimately resulted in his ruin. While Elizabeth was approaching the mature age of sixty, Essex was scarcely twenty-one. Though well aware of the advantages of his position, and somewhat vain of the queen’s favour, his constant attendance on her at court was irksome to him beyond all endurance; and when he could not make his escape to the scenes of foreign adventure after which he longed, he varied the monotony of his life at court by intrigues with the maids of honour. He fought a duel with Sir Charles Blount, a rival favourite of the queen, in which the earl was disarmed and slightly wounded in the thigh.

In 1589, without the queen’s consent, he joined the expedition of Drake and Sir John Norris against Spain, but in June he was compelled to obey a letter enjoining him at his “uttermost peril” to return immediately. In 1590 Essex married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but in dread of the queen’s anger he kept the marriage secret as long as possible. When it was necessary to avow it, her rage at first knew no bounds, but as the earl did “use it with good temper,” and “for her majesty’s better satisfaction was pleased that my lady should live retired in her mother’s house,” he soon came to be “in very good favour.” In 1591 he was appointed to the command of a force auxiliary to one formerly sent to assist Henry IV. of France against the Spaniards; but after a fruitless campaign he was finally recalled from the command in January 1592. For some years after this most of his time was spent at court, where he held a position of unexampled influence, both on account of the favour of the queen and from his own personal popularity. In 1596 he was, after a great many “changes of humour” on the queen’s part, appointed along with Lord Howard of Effingham, Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard, to the command of an expedition, which was successful in defeating the Spanish fleet, capturing and pillaging Cadiz, and destroying 53 merchant vessels. It would seem to have been shortly after this exploit that the beginnings of a change in the feelings of the queen towards him came into existence. On his return she chided him that he had not followed up his successes, and though she professed great pleasure at again seeing him in safety, and was ultimately satisfied that the abrupt termination of the expedition was contrary to his advice and remonstrances, she forbade him to publish anything in justification of his conduct. She doubtless was offended at his growing tendency to assert his independence, and jealous of his increasing popularity with the people; but it is also probable that her strange infatuation regarding her own charms, great as it was, scarcely prevented her from suspecting either that his professed attachment had all along been somewhat alloyed with considerations of personal interest, or that at least it was now beginning to cool. Francis Bacon, at that time his most intimate friend, endeavoured to prevent the threatened rupture by writing him a long letter of advice; and although perseverance in a long course of feigned action was for Essex impossible, he for some time attended pretty closely to the hints of his mentor, so that the queen “used him most graciously.” In 1597 he was appointed master of the ordnance, and in the following year he obtained command of an expedition against Spain, known as the Islands or Azores Voyage. He gained some trifling successes, but as the Plate fleet escaped him he failed of his main purpose; and when on his return the queen met him with the usual reproaches, he retired to his home at Wanstead. This was not what Elizabeth desired, and although she conferred on Lord Howard of Effingham the earldom of Nottingham for services at Cadiz, the main merit of which was justly claimed by Essex, she ultimately held out to the latter the olive branch of peace, and condescended to soothe his wounded honour by creating him earl marshal of England. That, nevertheless, the irritated feelings neither of Essex nor of the queen were completely healed was manifested shortly afterwards in a manner which set propriety completely at defiance. In a discussion on the appointment of a lord deputy to Ireland, Essex, on account of some taunting words of Elizabeth, turned his back upon her with a gesture indicative not only of anger but of contempt, and when she, unable to control her indignation, slapped him on the face, he left her presence swearing that such an insult he would not have endured even from Henry VIII.

In 1599, while Ulster was in rebellion under the earl of Tyrone, the office of lieutenant and governor-general of Ireland was conferred on Essex, and a large force put at his command. His campaign was an unsuccessful one, and by acting in various ways in opposition to the commands of the queen and the council, agreeing with Tyrone on a truce in September, and suddenly leaving the post of duty with the object of privately vindicating himself before the queen, he laid himself open to charges more serious than that of mere incompetency. For these misdemeanours he was brought in June 1600 before a specially constituted court, deprived of all his high offices, and ordered to live a prisoner in his own house during the queen’s pleasure. Chiefly through the intercession of Bacon his liberty was shortly afterwards restored to him, but he was ordered not to return to court. For some time he hoped for an improvement in his prospects, but when he was refused the renewal of his patent for sweet wines, hope was succeeded by despair, and half maddened by wounded vanity, he made an attempt (Feb. 7, 1601) to incite a revolution in his behalf, by parading the streets of London with 300 retainers, and shouting, “For the queen! a plot is laid for my life!” These proceedings awakened, however, scarcely any other feelings than mild perplexity and wonder; and finding that hope of assistance from the citizens was vain, he returned to Essex House, where after defending himself for a short time he surrendered. After a trial—in which Bacon, who prosecuted, delivered a speech against his quondam friend and benefactor, the bitterness of which was quite unnecessary to secure a conviction entailing at least very severe punishment—he was condemned to death, and notwithstanding many alterations in Elizabeth’s mood, the sentence was carried out on the 25th of February 1601.