ESSEX, WALTER DEVEREUX, 1sT' EARL OF (1541- 1576), the eldest son of Sir Richard Devereux, was born in 1541. His grandfather was the 2nd Baron Ferrers, who was created Viscount Hereford in 155o and by his mother was a nephew of Henry Bourchier, a former earl of Essex. Walter Devereux succeeded as 2nd Viscount Hereford in 1558, and in 1561 or 1562 married Lettice, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys. In 1569 he served as high marshal of the field, under the earl of Warwick and Lord Clinton, in the suppression of the northern insurrection. For his services he in 1572 received the Garter and was created earl of Essex, the title which formerly belonged to the Bourchier family. He offered on certain conditions to subdue and colonize, at his own expense, a portion of the Irish province of Ulster, at that time completely under the dominion of the rebel O'Neills, under Sir Brian MacPhelim and Tirlogh Luineach, with the Scots under their leader Sorley Boy MacDonnell. He set sail for Ireland in July 1573, but a storm dispersed his fleet, and his forces did not assemble till late in the autumn. His troops were diminished in winter quarters at Belfast to little more than 200 men. Intrigues of various sorts, and fighting of a guerrilla type followed, and Essex had difficulties both with the deputy Fitzwilliam and with the queen. His offensive movements in Ulster took the form of raids and brutal massacres among the 'i.e.. in the Devereux line.
O'Neills; in Oct. 1574 he treacherously captured MacPhelim at a conference in Belfast, and after slaughtering his attendants had him and his wife and brother executed at Dublin. Elizabeth, instigated apparently by Leicester, suddenly commanded him to "break off his enterprise"; but, as she left him a certain dis cretionary power, he took advantage of it to defeat Tirlogh Luineach, chastise Antrim, and massacre several hundreds of Sorley Boy's following, chiefly women and children, discovered hiding in the caves at Rathlin. He returned to England in the end of 1575. Elizabeth then made him earl marshal of Ireland, but he died of dysentery three weeks after his arrival in Dublin in the autumn of 1576. After his death Leicester married his widow. The massacres of the O'Neills and of the Scots of Rathlin leave a dark stain on the reputation of Essex.
See Sidney Lee's article in the Diet. Nat. Biog.; Lives of the Dev ereux Earls of Essex, by Hon. Walter B. Devereux (1853) ; Froude's History of England, vol. x.; J. S. Brewer, Athenaeum (187o), part i. pp. 261, 326.