Bacon and Essex Author:Edwin Abbott Abbott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ESSEX IN FAVOUR. When Essex was nine years old (in the year 1576) his father died ; his mother married the Earl of Leicester; and he himself a... more »t ten years old became a member of Lord Burghley's household. His close connection with the Lord Treasurer does not seem to have resulted in the formation of any binding ties between the two. Perhaps Essex was a little wild and unsteady. We find him in 1582 apologizing to his guardian for extravagance : " I hope your Lordship will pardon my youth if I have in some sort passed the bounds of economy." Against this however, we ought in fairness to set the complaint of his tutor at Trinity College, when the poor boy was but ten years of age, that it was absolutely necessary to buy him some new clothes because of " his extreme necessity of apparel." 1 Perhaps therefore Burghley's notions of " economy " were as much too strict as the little Earl's were too loose. But the difference between Burghley and Essex went deeper down than mere differences as to the worth and uses of money. In their virtues and in their faults the Cecils not only differed from Essex, they were incompatible with him, and he with them. Let us hear Cecil's account of the matter. Writing to King James after the death of Essex Cecil says: " If I could have contracted such a friendship with Esse? as could have given nie security that his thoughts and mine should have heen no further distant than the disproportion of our fortunes, I should condemn my judgment to have willingly intruded myself into such an opposition. For who know not, that have lived in Israel, that such were the mutual affection 1 Lives of Jilt Earls of Essex, by Devereux, vol. i. p. 163. in our tender years, arid so many reciprocal benefits interchanged in our growing fortunes as—b...« less