Authority at the end of the reign and Essex's rebellion (1601)
Authority Under Strain in the 1590s
By the 1590s Elizabeth was an old queen. She was 60 in 1593 and her ministers, courtiers and people knew she could not rule for much longer. The decade brought a run of crises: a long, expensive war with Spain after 1588; rebellion in Ireland led by the Earl of Tyrone; four bad harvests between 1594 and 1597 that pushed the price of grain above the reach of labourers; outbreaks of plague; and the deaths of Walsingham (1590) and Burghley (1598). Yet Elizabeth’s authority held, even as one of her own favourites — Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex — rose, fell and led a rebellion.
Why Authority Held
Elizabeth’s grip on power into the 1590s rested on five things. First, the patronage system — lands, monopolies, county offices — still flowed from her, so ambitious men competed for her favour. Second, the cult of Gloriana projected an unaging queen onto portraits and progresses, even as her health declined. Third, the long shadow of the 1588 Armada victory gave her credit she could draw on for years. Fourth, Robert Cecil quietly took on his father’s administrative weight after 1598. Fifth, the queen herself remained the source of final decisions; ministers competed for influence, but she chose between them.
Despite the war with Spain, Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland, four bad harvests (1594–1597) and the deaths of Walsingham (1590) and Burghley (1598), Elizabeth kept her authority through patronage, the Gloriana image, the legacy of 1588, and Robert Cecil’s steady administration.
The Rise of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was the stepson of Robert Dudley and Elizabeth’s closest court favourite from the late 1580s. He was charming, brave, well-educated and 32 years younger than the queen. He led English troops in France in 1591 and helped capture Cadiz from the Spanish in 1596. He cultivated a public image as a chivalrous war-leader at a time when the Cecil faction at court favoured negotiation. By the late 1590s he expected to inherit the senior offices that Burghley had held.
But Essex was rash. He quarrelled openly with the queen; on one famous occasion in 1598, during a row over who should command in Ireland, she boxed his ear and he half-drew his sword in front of the Council — an offence that another courtier would have died for. He treated the rivalry with Robert Cecil as a personal feud. He surrounded himself with discontented young nobles and military veterans — a pattern Walsingham’s old intelligence service watched closely.
Ireland and the Loss of Patronage
In 1599 Elizabeth sent Essex to Ireland with a large army to crush the rebellion of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone. The campaign was a disaster. Essex avoided battle, made a private truce with Tyrone, and then abandoned his command and sailed home without permission. He burst, mud-stained, into the queen’s bedchamber at Nonsuch Palace in September 1599 — an unforgivable breach of royal protocol. He was placed under house arrest and forbidden the court.
The decisive blow came in 1600. Elizabeth refused to renew Essex’s monopoly on sweet wines, the income source on which his lavish household and political following depended. Without that patronage, his creditors closed in and his political support began to drain away. As we saw in earlier lessons, patronage was the glue that held the Elizabethan elite to the Crown. When Elizabeth withdrew it from a great noble whose followers had been promised offices and rewards, those followers had nowhere to go — except into rebellion.
A monopoly on sweet wines meant that Essex could charge a fee on every cask of imported sweet wine sold in England. The income paid for his household, his agents, his soldiers and his political dependents. When Elizabeth let the licence lapse in October 1600, his finances collapsed within months. Several historians, including Penry Williams, see this single decision as the trigger for the rebellion: Essex was not yet ruined, but he believed he soon would be.
Essex’s Rebellion, February 1601
On 8 February 1601, Essex marched out of his London home, Essex House on the Strand, with about 200–300 followers, mostly armed. His plan was to seize the queen, force her to dismiss Robert Cecil and pardon him. He hoped Londoners would join him as he walked through the city. They did not. The Privy Council acted fast: Cecil had been warned by informants and had already declared Essex a traitor. Royal heralds rode through the streets repeating the proclamation. By that afternoon Essex’s followers were melting away. He surrendered at Essex House by evening.
A trial followed at Westminster on 19 February. Essex was found guilty of treason. He was beheaded at the Tower on 25 February 1601, the last execution of an Elizabethan favourite. Four other ringleaders were also executed — Blount, Danvers, Meyrick and Cuffe; the rest of the followers were fined or pardoned. Cecil, Essex’s rival, emerged unchallenged as the queen’s leading minister.
On 7 February 1601, the day before the rising, Essex’s supporters paid Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to stage Richard II — a play that depicts the deposition of an unpopular monarch. They hoped it would prepare London opinion. The performance went ahead but failed in its political purpose; the company itself was investigated but cleared, on the grounds that they had simply taken paying customers. Elizabeth later remarked, ‘I am Richard II, know ye not that?’.
Essex’s rebellion failed within hours because Robert Cecil had been warned in advance, declared him a traitor, and got royal heralds onto the streets faster than Essex could rally support. Patronage withdrawn from one ambitious man could not be replaced overnight by armed force.