His lust for power was stoked up by certain Machiavellian friends such as Gelli Meyrick and Henry Cuffe, but mainly by his ruthlessly ambitious sister, Penelope Rich. She pushed him to rebellion and was a prime cause of his downfall.
And then there was Arbella Stuart. Essex would have easily seen how advantageous a match might be with the young girl, a serious claimant to the throne of England. He used his charm well, supporting her at court and flirting with her when others avoided her because of her haughtiness. There was court tittle-tattle about their closeness, and he is also believed to have conducted a secret correspondence with the impressionable girl, though this does not survive.
Did he have plans to marry her? Surely he considered it. His marriage to Frances Walsingham was an inconvenient formality and easily disposed of if necessary. That was the way the Essex clan did things. His mother had married Leicester knowing that he was still married to Lady Douglass Sheffield. And many believed Leicester had murdered his first wife, Amy Robsart, to enable him to marry Elizabeth and share her throne.
And yes, Arbella did have a tutor called Morley who was sacked by Bess of Hardwick in 1592. Was he spying on Arbella? Historians have speculated that he was a Walsingham intelligencer (some have even suggested he might have been the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who had been a spy). After Walsingham’s death, who controlled this Morley? By 1592, Essex House was quickly becoming one of the main centers of espionage.
In the end, Essex was a weak, contemptible character. He attempted a coup, but he accused others of provoking him to it, turning on Penelope with venom. He had nothing to gain, for he was already under sentence of death, but he wrote a confession in which he laid the blame on her. “I must accuse one who is most nearest to me, my sister, who did continually urge me on with telling how all my friends and followers thought me a coward, and that I had lost all my valor. She must be looked to, for she hath a proud spirit.”
It is easy to see parallels in the story of Macbeth-the proud but flawed soldier urged on to treachery by women. Shakespeare would have known the Essex tale at the time of writing his great tragedy. Penelope as Lady Macbeth? Or the three of them-Penelope, Dorothy, and Lettice-as three witches stirring a cauldron of sedition?
In the event, Penelope (whose bedroom at Essex House was, indeed, draped all in black) was spared-probably because of her relationship with Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who was winning victories in Ireland and was needed by Elizabeth.
Finally, Elizabeth allowed the axe to fall on the neck of the young man she had once loved, just as her father had severed the heads of two young wives he once loved. The brittle young modernizer Sir Robert Cecil had won the day, though he never won the love of his Queen, nor of the people.