Essex

“ Essex.
“Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house. The queen and council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What! does that enforce thee to wail yet louder?”
p. 215Spenser.
“Pardon me, bear with me, most noble heart! I have lost what no council, no queen, no Essex can restore.”
Essex.
“We will see that! There are other swords, and other arms to wield them, besides a Leicester’s and a Raleigh’s. Others can crush their enemies and serve their friends.” ”

“ Exit Raleigh.
Southampton's Essex' second self;
His daring heart, and bold, ungovern'd tongue,
Are both enlisted in the rash designs
Of this proud lord, nor knows a will but his:
A limb so fix'd, must with the body fall.
Enter Lady Nottingham.
Not. Thrice hail to rescued England's guiding genius!
His country's guardian, and his queen's defence!
Great Burleigh, thou whose patriot bosom beats
With Albion's glory, and Eliza's fame;
Who shield'st her person, and support'st her throne;
For thee, what fervent thanks, what offer'd vows,
Do prostrate millions pay! ”

“ The foe on field, the foe on deck to us is all the same;
With both the Flower of Essex has played a winning game;
We threw them on the village green, we cowed them in Algiers,
And ship to ship we shocked them in our first great naval years.
We rowed the Great Commander o'er the ice-bound Delaware,
When the Christmas snow was falling in the dark and wintry air;
And still the Flower of Essex, like the heroes gone before,
Where the tide of danger surges shall take the laboring oar. ”

“ I could not believe I was in our cold, northern Essex, which, in the dreary season when I pass its slate-colored, unpainted farmhouses, and huge, square, windy, 'squire-built "mansions," looks as brown and unvegetating as an old rug with its patterns all trodden out and the colored fringe worn from all its border. ”

“ All want Essex to go home, as the season is getting late: but the wilful and weak man will linger still, and while he is hovering to the south, Philip’s armament has sailed from the Groyne, on the undefended shores of England, and only God’s hand saves us from the effects of Essex’s folly. A third time the Armadas of Spain are overwhelmed by the avenging tempests, and Essex returns to disgrace, having proved himself at once intemperate and incapable. ”

“ The great home county of Essex is less explored by strangers than almost any shire in England. Its margin, seen from the Thames, is so truly uninviting, and the way to it through the eastern limb of London, by Aldgate, Whitechapel, Mile End, and Stratford, is so dull, so flat, so poverty-stricken, and so redolent of odours, that persons who have travelled their country tolerably well, have left this material portion of it unvisited. ”

“ Certainly Essex has no great hills, even as it has no great buildings. But the value of hills is relative. From many places in Essex only about sixty feet above the sea there are wide views, and you may gaze upon the Kentish coast thirty miles away on the other side of the Thames. The secret of the Essex coast is the illusion of immensity. The dome of sky is scarcely interrupted by the small frettings of land and wood along the edges. ”

“ Essex has no cathedral which gathers up the interest to one point. Yet its houses are an epitome of its history and character; they look as though they were part of the landscape, as though they had grown up with the trees. Some houses in Essex—farmhouses and inns—often welcome you with a clean white face, but the complexion of a whole village seen far off is nearly always red, and a thin spire generally tapers above the roofs. Churches and houses alike were built with the materials which were ready to hand. There is much timber in the building, because Essex has few quarries. ”

“ Essex is a contraction of East-seaxe, denoting the territory occupied by the East Saxons; Sussex, of Suth-seaxe, or South Saxons; and Middlesex, of Middle-seaxe, or the inhabitants of the district between Essex and Wessex, the land of the West Saxons, which, under the Heptarchy, extended to the westward as far as Devon. Surrey is a modification of the Anglo-Saxon Suth-rey, south of the river, i.e., the Thames. ”

“ Exit Raleigh.
Enter Southampton.
South. Where is the man, whom virtue calls her friend?—
I give you joy, my lord!—Your quenchless fury
At length prevails,—and now your malice triumphs.
You've hunted honour to the toil of faction,
And view his struggles with malicious joy.
Bur. What means my lord?
South. O fraud! shall valiant Essex
Be made a sacrifice to your ambition? ”

“ It is enough, my lord, I know it well,
And feel rekindling virtue warm my breast;
Honour and gratitude their force resume
Within my heart, and every wish is yours.
O Cecil, Cecil, what a foe hast thou!
A deadly foe, whilst hated Essex lives!
Bur. I know it well—but can assign no cause.
Not. Ambition's restless hand has wound his thoughts
Too high for England's welfare; nay, the queen
Scarce sits in safety on her throne, while he,
Th' audacious Essex, freely treads at large,
And breathes the common air. Ambition is
The only god he serves ”

“ On the whole, the impression of the country is a certain want of character. Often while I have been plodding through woods looking over a grassy valley I could have imagined myself in Essex, except that here there are no white roads and no ancient villages. The whole scene is so unlike the popular idea of tropical Africa that it is startling to meet a naked savage carrying a javelin, and almost shocking to meet a lady with only nine inches of dress. ”

“ Essex, the Lord General, lies at Windsor, all spring, with the finest Parliamentary Army we have yet had; but unluckily can undertake almost nothing, till he see. For his Majesty in Oxford is also quiescent mostly; engaged in a negotiation with his Parliament; in a Treaty,—of which Colonel Hampden and other knowing men, though my Lord of Essex cannot, already predict the issue. And the Country is all writhing in dim conflict, suffering manifold distress. ”

“ The story of the building of the Essex is that of an aroused and reliant people. The great timbers were cut in the wood lots of the towns near by and were hauled through the snowy streets of Salem on ox-sleds while the people cheered them as they passed. ”

“ The violent death of Selred, king of Essex, is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 746; but we have no more information of historical importance until the defeat of the Mercian king Beornwulf in 825, when Essex, together with Kent, Sussex and Surrey, passed into the hands of Ecgbert, king of Wessex. After 825 we hear of no more kings of Essex, but occasionally of earls. About the year 870 Essex passed into the hands of the Danes and was left to them by the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum. ”

“ Nor will you find many Hinkinsons in Market Saffron. But lots of this country here has five or six hundred-year-old families still flourishing. That's why Essex is so much more genuinely Old England than Surrey, say, or Kent. Round here you'll find Corners and Fairlies, and then you get Capels, and then away down towards Dunmow and Braintree Maynards and Byngs. And there are oaks and hornbeams in the park about Claverings that have echoed to the howling of wolves and the clank of men in armour. All the old farms here are moated—because of the wolves. ”

“ Essex. To death's concluding stroke, lead on, Lieutenant.—
My wife!—Now reason, fortitude, support me!
For now, indeed, comes on my sorest trial.
Enter Countess of Rutland.
Oh, thou last, dear reserve of fortune's malice!
For fate can add no more,—
Oh, com'st thou now to arrest my parting soul,
And force it back to life?
[Pg 52] Rut. Thou sole delight—
Thou only joy which life could ever give,
Or death deprive me of—my wedded lord! ”

“ Hitherto I have mainly spoken of Sussex, because it is in that county that place-names can be best studied; the Essex evidence is chiefly of value for the contrast it presents. The principal contrast, and one to which I invite particular attention, is this: confining ourselves to the names I am concerned with—the ings, hams, and tons—we find that in Essex several parishes have only a single place-name between them, while in Sussex, on the contrary, a single parish may contain several of these place-names, each of them, surely, at one time representing a distinct local unit. ”

“ Essex has always been mainly an agricultural county, and the ordinary agricultural pursuits were carried on at the time of the Domesday Survey, which also mentions salt-making, wine-making, bee-culture and cheese-making, while the oyster fisheries have been famous from the earliest historic times. The woollen industry dates back to Saxon times, and for many centuries ranked as the most important industry. ”

“ We do not merely leave the modern county of Essex and enter Cambridgeshire at this point, but change our soil as well, coming at once into a chalk country of bare and inhospitable downs, completely altering the nature of the road and keeping a forbidding solitude, without sign of the habitations of men, and only the occasional dull tinkle of a sheep-bell to hint even of farming interests. ”

“ A portion of them, conducted by a leader named Uffa, landed on the north-east coast of Britain and formed a settlement, which gradually became consolidated into a kingdom under the title of East Anglia.
Soon afterwards the right bank of the Thames was invaded by fresh bands, who, assisted by their countrymen in Kent and by the Angles, drove the unfortunate Britons from the soil, and founded the kingdom of Essex, a state exceedingly small, but important, as comprising in its limits the city of London. ”

“ As a matter of fact, there is probably more wheat grown in Essex to-day than in any other county of its size.
In one mile, take a turning to the right, then the first to the left, and then the next two turnings to the right again, bringing the explorer to the scattered village of Kelvedon Hatch, a thoroughly Essex village, with the weather-boarded cottages and projecting [81] red brick chimney-breasts you will find scarce anywhere else than in this county. Make straight through the long, flat village street, and then to the left, where a sign-post marks the way to Blackmore. ”

“ But of all the things they found the thing that counts most in English history is this: that some of the kingdoms at least did correspond to genuine human divisions, which not only existed then but which exist now. Northumbria is still a truer thing than Northumberland. Sussex is still Sussex; Essex is still Essex. And that third Saxon kingdom whose name is not even to be found upon the map, the kingdom of Wessex, is called the West Country and is to-day the most real of them all. ”

“ In May Essex and Waller simultaneously advanced upon Oxford, Essex blocking up the city on the north and Waller on the south. Charles slipped between their armies with about five thousand men, and, leaving Waller to pursue him, Essex marched to regain the west of England. ”

“ Essex often drew out to fight, but the king fortifies, takes the passes and bridges, plants cannon, and secures the country to keep off provisions, and continually straitens their quarters, but would not fight. ”

“ Essequibo, an important river in British Guiana, 620 m. long, rises in the Sierra Acaray, navigable for 50 m. to small craft, flows northward into the Atlantic.
Essex (785) , a county in the SE. of England, between Suffolk on the N. and Kent in the S., faces the German Ocean on the E.; is well watered with streams; has an undulating surface; is chiefly agricultural; brewing is an important industry, and the oyster fisheries of the Colne are noted; Chelmsford is the county town.
Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, born at Netherwood, Hereford ”

“ The Georgiana left us next morning, carrying a sorrowful-looking crew, as can well be imagined, for every man jack of them felt as if he might be accused of cowardice in leaving the Essex at a time when there was good reason to expect she would meet with a superior force. ”

“ Men of Kent, ye dwell fairly here, and your houses are framed of stout oak beams, and your own lands ye till; unless some accursed lawyer with his false lying sheepskin and forged custom of the Devil's Manor hath stolen it from you; but in Essex slaves they be and villeins, and worse they shall be, and the lords swear that ere a year be over ox and horse shall go free in Essex, and man and woman shall draw the team and the plough; and north away in the east countries dwell men in poor halls of wattled reeds and mud, and the north-east wind from off the fen whistles through them ”

“ Oh, 'tis the queen's apartment;
Each precious moment is by fate beset,
And time stands trembling whilst we thus confer.
Essex. Then, let us hence from this detested place;
My rescued soul disdains the house of greatness,
Where humble honesty can find no shelter.
From hence we'll fly, where love and greatness call;
Where happiness invites—that wish of all:
With sweet content enjoy each blissful hour,
Beyond the smiles of fraud, or frowns of power.
[Exeunt.
[Pg 28] ACT THE THIRD. SCENE I. An Apartment in the Palace.
Enter Burleigh and Lady Nottingham. ”

“ The city capitulated, paying 120,000 crowns for the lives of the people, the town and all its wealth being abandoned to the plunder of the troops.
Through the whole of the conquest Essex was the real hero. He not only led the way regardless of danger, but when the place was won, whilst others were engrossed only by the accumulation of booty, he was busy exerting himself to check the cruelties of the invaders—to save the lives and the honour of the inhabitants. He succeeded so well that never was a city taken with so little insult or injury to the people. ”