Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (11 January 1591 – 14 September 1646) was the first Captain-General of the Parliamentarian army during the English Civil War, serving from 1642 to 1644.
Biography[]
Robert Devereux was born on 11 January 1591, the son of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and a daughter of Francis Walsingham. His father was executed after leading a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1601, but King James I of England restored the family's titles in 1604, making Robert the 3rd Earl of Essex. From 1620 to 1624, Essex served in the Protestant armies in Germany and the Low Countries during the Thirty Years' War, and, in 1625, he took part in the failed English expedition to Cadiz. In 1638, he was made Knight of the Bath, and he served under King Charles I of England in the First Bishops' War a year later. He was denied a command during the 1640 Second Bishops' War, leading to Essex coming to oppose the King and joining the Parliamentarian cause; he had already distinguished himself as one of the Puritan nobles in the House of Lords. When the First English Civil War broke out in 1642, Essex became the first Captain-General of the Parliamentarian army, but his support for a compromise peace with the monarchy undermined his leadership. Essex fought King Charles to a draw at the Battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642 and at the Battle of Turnham Green on 13 November, and, on 26 April 1643, Essex's army captured Reading. On 20 September 1643, his army pushed the Cavaliers back towards Oxford following the First Battle of Newbury, but, in 1644, he made the mistake of campaigning against the heavily royalist region of Cornwall. He was outmaneuvered at the Battle of Lostwithiel and forced to surrender his army, escaping in a fishing boat to avoid humiliation. On 2 April, with the formation of the New Model Army, Essex resigned his commission, and he died of a stroke in 1646.
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