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and General of Cavalry, in 1599 she appointed him Governor of Ireland and ordered him to quell the rebels in that country. However, some months later, during a dispute concerning the appointment of a deputy, so insolent was his attitude towards the Queen that she boxed his ears, whereupon he laid his hand on his sword and exclaimed that it was an insult he would not have tolerated from her father (Henry VIII), much less than from a king in petticoats!
    His difficulties in Ireland became insurmountable, much to the delight of his rivals at Court, and despite Elizabeth warning, ‘We do charge you, as you tender our pleasure, that you adventure not to come out of that Kingdom,’ he returned without her permission, appearing in her presence unannounced wearing muddy boots and an unbuttoned doublet. Elizabeth suspended him from most of his offices and, resentful at his downfall from her favour, he conspired against her, even referring to her as ‘an old woman, crooked in mind and body.’
    On 8 February 1601 he led a body of three hundred fully armed men in a vain attempt to seize the Tower and the Palace of Westminster, but failed abysmally. Taken prisoner, he was charged with having plotted to surprise the Queen at her palace and take her life, to have broken out into rebellion, to have shut up the Lords of the Council, and assaulted the Queen’s subjects on the streets.
    He confessed everything, even admitting that the Queen could never be safe as long as he lived. The court found him guilty of High Treason and sentenced him to death. Elizabeth, despite her feelings towards him, realised the danger he posed and reluctantly issued the final order for his execution.
    On 25 February 1601, the 34-year-old Earl, wearing ‘a gown of wrought velvet, a black sattin suit, a felt hat blacke, with a little ruff about his neck,’ was escorted by sixteen yeoman warders from his prison in the Develin Tower (now known, appropriately enough, as the Devereux Tower) on to Tower Green. Such was his popularity with the Londoners that the authorities decided to perform the execution within the walls rather than risk a riot by the protesting public if it was carried out, as custom demanded, on Tower Hill.
    The executioner was one Derrick, whose life, coincidentally, the Earl had saved when he had been sentenced to death for a rape in Calais, and whose name was later given to a type of crane which resembled a gibbet. Essex asked the executioner whether the waistcoat he was wearing would hinder him or not, and after praying he ‘laid himself flat’ and put his head in the fatal notch (it appears that the block was very low, requiring the victim to lie prone along the scaffold boards). He then spread his arms out as a signal for Derrick to strike, saying ‘Lord, into thine arms I commend my spirit’, but the executioner suddenly noticed that the target area, the back of the Earl’s neck, was concealed by the collar of his doublet, so told his victim that he must stand up again and remove the garment. ‘What I must do, I will do!’ exclaimed Essex, and getting up again, took off the doublet and resumed his position along the boards. Once more he spread his arms wide and, as recorded in the ancient annals, ‘at three strokes the executioner stroke off his head, and when his head was off and in his executioner’s hand, his eyes did open and shut as in the time of his prayer; his bodie never stirred, never any parte of him more than a stone, the first stroke howbeit deadly and depriving him of all sense and motion.’
    According to a well-established story, Elizabeth had impatiently awaited the return of a ring which she had once bestowed on him with the assurance that if he were ever in danger and sent it to her, she would interpret it as a plea for pardon which she would assuredly grant. In the Tower, Essex, it seems, intended to take advantage of this royal concession for he gave the ring to the Countess of Nottingham with instructions to