| Chapter 2: | And for the Golden Crown Award, the Winner Is… |
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an act of Parliament—and he was also barred by an ancient law dating to King Edward III’s time which stated that no one could succeed who had been born outside “the allegiance of the realm of England.”6 In his favor, however, was one powerful factor: James was a king. Elizabeth and her men may not have counted this for so much in 1594, but, when the Queen was on her deathbed in 1603, James’ kingship had come to count for much in their minds, and their misgivings about him, which turned out to be unfounded, had subsided.
And then there was the wild card: Essex. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, may have been the most powerful man in England de jure during the early 1590s, but almost everybody believed, with good reason, that young Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, was Burghley’s unofficial equal—or perhaps even his superior. Why? Because the aged Queen was in love with him. He was her confidante in almost all matters. He was proud, arrogant, vain, brilliant, and romantic. Because of his (apparently unprecedented) charisma, he was so very popular with people of all classes that he could accurately be considered the first major male celebrity in England. (Elizabeth had been the first major celebrity.) He was also one of the richest men in the realm. His claim to the throne was distant, but everybody took him seriously because they knew he had become the Queen’s “favorite” by 1594 and they knew that ultimately, she could name as her successor anyone she wished. They also knew about his extreme ambition; he could not have hidden it if he had tried. He publicly supported James early on, and he maintained his public support of James until the time of his own famous failed attempt to gain the throne in 1601. Although he leaked the intelligence that he wanted only, eventually, to succeed Burghley upon James’ succession, he was suspected by many of those in positions of power of aiming for the crown from the early 1590s and of using James as a front and as a stalking horse.
In 1601, at Essex’s trial for treason, the man who did succeed Burghley, his brilliant son Sir Robert Cecil, was the first prosecutor. As such, on the trial’s opening day, Sir Robert charged that Essex had actually been aiming for the throne since the early 1590s.7 One of the things he knew (which is also known now from several sources which were then private)