Essex

Essex, Robert Devereux, 2d earl of, 1567-1601, English courtier and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. Succeeding to the earldom on the death (1576) of his father, he came under the guardianship of Lord Burghley and soon won favor at court. He distinguished himself in action while serving (1585-86) as a cavalry officer in the Netherlands under his stepfather, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. When he returned to England he soon became a marked favorite of the queen, a position that involved him in a quarrelsome rivalry with Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1590 he angered the queen by secretly marrying the widow of Sir Philip Sidney. The following year he commanded a flamboyant but unsuccessful expedition to Normandy to help Henry of Navarre (Henry IV of France). He returned home and, advised by Francis Bacon, entered politics in an effort to seize power from the aging Burghley. But Essex was too obvious and impetuous in his demands on the queen; Elizabeth was wary, and gradually she conferred the power he sought on Burghley's son, Robert Cecil (later earl of Salisbury). Essex became a national hero when he shared command of the expedition that captured Cádiz in 1596, but he failed the next year in an expedition to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet off the Azores. In 1599, at his own demand, he was made lord lieutenant of Ireland and sent there with a large force to quell the rebellion of the earl of Tyrone. Failing completely to accomplish his mission, he made an unauthorized truce with Tyrone and returned to England. He was confined by the council, and it was eight months before he was tried for disobedience by a special council and deprived of his offices (1600). He was soon released but was banned from the court. Still popular, Essex planned a coup that would oust the enemy party and establish his own about the queen. To this end he sought support from the army in Ireland and opened negotiations with James VI in Scotland, but these efforts failed. Desperately, he made his attempt with a small body of personal followers on Feb. 8, 1601. The Londoners failed to respond, the queen's government was thoroughly prepared, and he was arrested. At the trial Bacon contributed heavily to his former patron's conviction. Elizabeth, after some hesitation, signed the death warrant, and Essex was executed.

Essex, Robert Devereux, 3d earl of, 1591-1646, English parliamentary general; son of the 2d earl. James I restored him (1604) to the estates of his father and arranged his marriage (1606) with Frances Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk. The marriage ended in a famous trial when the countess, who had fallen in love with Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, sued for and obtained (1613) an annulment. After 1620, Essex followed a military and naval career, and from 1626 he was associated with the parliamentary opposition to Charles I. He was second in command of the royal army in the first of the Bishops' Wars in Scotland (1639) and was made privy councilor (1641), but Charles could not keep his allegiance thereafter. Essex commanded the parliamentary forces at the battle of Edgehill (1642). In 1643 he took Reading, relieved Gloucester, and took part in the first battle of Newbury. The next year, however, he quarreled bitterly with Sir William Waller and, disobeying orders, pursued the royalists into the southwest. He was cut off in Cornwall and forced to escape with as many of his men as he could by sea. He opposed the formation of the New Model Army and reluctantly relinquished his command in 1645.

Essex, Walter Devereux, 1st earl of, 1541?-1576, English soldier. He helped in the suppression of the Northern Rebellion of 1569 and was created earl of Essex in 1572. In 1573 he volunteered to colonize a part of Ulster, then controlled by the O'Neill clan, and bring it under English rule. Famine, desertion of his troops, and the vacillation of Queen Elizabeth I negated his ruthless efforts to subdue the Irish. He was recalled (1575) and died soon afterward. His son, Robert, became the 2d earl of Essex.

Essex, one of the early kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. It was settled probably in the early 6th cent. by Saxons who traced their royal line back to a continental Saxon god instead of to Woden, as did the rulers of other early kingdoms. Essex eventually included the modern counties of Essex and Middlesex, most of Hertfordshire, and London. Under the influence of his uncle, Æthelbert of Kent, King Sæbert of Essex accepted (c.604) Christianity, but the kingdom lapsed into heathenism when his successors expelled (617) Mellitus, bishop of London. In c.653, however, at the request of King Sigbert, Oswy of Northumbria sent Cedd to convert the East Saxons and to build churches. The submission of Essex to the overlordship of Wulfhere of Mercia marked the beginning of a long domination by the larger state. In 825, Essex joined other eastern kingdoms in submitting to Egbert of Wessex and became an earldom. Heavily settled by the Danes, it became part of the Danelaw by the treaty of 886, but was retaken by Edward the Elder of Wessex in 917. Its most famous later earl was Byrhtnoth, who was killed in the battle of Maldon in 991.

Essex, county (1991 pop. 1,495,600), 1,520 sq mi (3,938 sq km) SE England, on the Thames River and the North Sea, one of the "Home Counties" of London. Chelmsford is the county seat. The land rises from the low, irregular coastline to undulating pastoral country. Streams and salt marshes are plentiful. The chief crops of Essex are wheat, barley, sugar beets, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables. There is market gardening for London and some dairy and sheep farming. Oyster fisheries are also important. Industries include petroleum refining, chemicals, machinery, textiles, cement, processed foods, electrical goods, and nuclear power generation. Essex was once part of the kingdom of the East Saxons; Roman and Saxon remains are at Colchester and Maldon. Popular resorts line the coast.

Essex, uninc. city (1990 pop. 40,872), Baltimore co., NE Md., a suburb of Baltimore. Mostly residential, there is some light industry production.

(born Sept. 16, 1541, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire, Wales—died Sept. 22, 1576, Dublin, Ire.) English soldier. Born to a h1d family, he helped suppress a rebellion in northern England in 1569 and was made earl of Essex in 1572. In 1573 he offered to subdue and colonize, at his own expense, a portion of Ulster that had not accepted English overlordship. There he treacherously captured and executed the Irish rebel leaders and massacred hundreds of the populace, contributing to Irish bitterness toward the English. Elizabeth I commanded him to break off the enterprise in 1575. He died of dysentery shortly after returning to Ireland from England.

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Informal group of Federalist Party political leaders in Massachusetts, mainly from Essex county. Its members supported Alexander Hamilton and friendship with Britain and opposed Thomas Jefferson, the Embargo Act, and the War of 1812. Its leaders, including Timothy Pickering, tried to form a separate confederation in New England and participated in the Hartford Convention. They declined in importance after 1814.

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Administrative (pop., 2001: 1,310,922), geographic, and historic county, eastern England. It extends along the North Sea coastline between the estuaries of the Rivers Thames and Stour. Chelmsford, centrally situated, has long been the county headquarters and is also the seat of a church diocese. The ancient county stretched west as far as Middlesex, but Greater London now incorporates its southwestern corner. It was a Roman centre until the 5th-century Saxon invasions; it became one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the Heptarchy and had its centre at London. It came under Danish control in the 9th century and was later reconquered by Wessex. Despite its proximity to London, much of Essex remains rural, and the county is highly farmed; it is also the site of petroleum installations on the River Thames and of a nuclear power plant. The University of Essex is at Colchester.

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Essex is a county in the East of England. The county town is Chelmsford, and the highest point of the county is Chrishall Common near the village of Langley, close to the Hertfordshire border, which reaches .

Divisions and environs

The area under the control of the county council, or shire county, is divided into a number of local government districts. They are Harlow, Epping Forest, Brentwood, Basildon, Castle Point, Rochford, Maldon, Chelmsford, Uttlesford, Braintree, Colchester, and Tendring. Thurrock and Southend-on-Sea are unitary authorities which form part of the county for various functions such as Lord Lieutenant but do not come under county council control. Essex Police also covers the two unitary authorities.

The ceremonial county, the area including the unitary authorities, has boundaries to the east with the coastline of the North Sea; to the south with the northern bank, or estuary, of the River Thames and Kent; to the south west with Greater London; to the west with Hertfordshire across the River Lee and the Stort; to the north west with Cambridgeshire; and to the north with Suffolk, mostly marked by the River Stour.

History

The name Essex derives from the East Seaxe or East Saxons. The Kingdom of Essex was traditionally founded by Aescwine in 527 AD, occupying territory to the north of the River Thames, incorporating much of what would later become Middlesex and Hertfordshire, though its territory was later restricted to lands east of the River Lee. It is through this origin as one of the 'Saxon' kingdoms that Essex is specifically not part of the region known as East Anglia (the latter comprising Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire), settled by tribes calling themselves 'Anglian'. Colchester in the north east of the county is Britain's oldest recorded town, dating back to before the Roman conquest, when it was known as Camulodunon, and was sufficiently well-developed to have its own mint.

Essex County Council was formed in 1889. However, the County Borough of West Ham, and from 1915 the County Borough of East Ham, formed part of the county but were not under county council control. Southend-on-Sea also formed a county borough from 1914 to 1974. The boundary with Greater London was established in 1965 when the former area of the East Ham and West Ham county boroughs and of the Barking, Chingford, Dagenham, Hornchurch, Ilford, Leyton, Romford, Walthamstow and Wanstead and Woodford districts were transferred to form the London boroughs of Barking, Havering, Newham, Redbridge, and Waltham Forest; an area similar to that known as Metropolitan Essex.

Essex became part of the East of England Government Office Region in 1994 and was statistically counted as part of that region from 1999, having previously been part of the South East England region. In 1998 the districts of Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock separated from the shire county of Essex becoming unitary districts.

Population and settlement

The pattern of settlement in the county is diverse. The London Green Belt has effectively prevented the further sprawl of London into the county, although it contains the new towns of Basildon and Harlow, originally developed to resettle Londoners following the destruction of London housing in World War II but since much expanded. Epping Forest also acts as a protected barrier to the further spread of London. Much of the Epping Forest district, consisting of the residential towns of Chigwell, Waltham Abbey, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill is more developed and being within the M25 motorway, as with Thurrock in the south of the county, has a closer proximity and perceived association with the Greater London Urban Area although still remain distinctly Essex.

Because of its proximity to London and the economic magnetism which that city exerts, many of Essex's settlements, particularly those on or within driving distance of railway stations, function as dormitory towns or villages where London workers raise their families. Essex is known for being the origin of the political term Essex man, and of the Essex girl joke.

Part of the south east of the county, already containing the major population centres of Southend and Thurrock, is within the Thames Gateway and designated for further development. To the north of the Green Belt, with the exception of major towns such as Colchester and Chelmsford, the county is rural, with many small towns, villages and hamlets largely built in the traditional materials of timber and brick, with clay tile or thatched roofs.

Transport

The main airport in Essex is London Stansted Airport, serving destinations in Europe and North America; Southend Airport, once one of Britain's busiest airports, is undergoing redevelopment, but still has limited passenger flights to destinations such as the Channel Islands. There are several smaller airfields, some of which owe their origins to air force bases built during World War I or World War II. These are popular for pleasure flights; examples include Clacton Airfield and Stapleford Aerodrome.

The Port of Tilbury is one of Britain's three major ports, while the port of Harwich links the county to the Hook of Holland and Esbjerg. A service to Cuxhaven closed in December 2005. Plans have been put forward to build the UK's largest container terminal at Shell Haven in Thurrock and although opposed by the local authority and environmental and wildlife organisations now seem increasingly likely to be developed.

Despite the road crossing to Dartford in Kent across the River Thames, a pedestrian ferry to Gravesend, Kent still operates from Tilbury during limited hours, and there are foot ferries operating across some of the county's rivers and estuaries during the summer months.

The M25 motorway and M11 motorway both cross the county, and the A12 and A13 trunk roads are important radial routes from London. There is an extensive public transport network.

The main rail routes include two lines from the City of London to Southend-on-Sea, operated by c2c from Fenchurch Street (including a route via Tilbury) and National Express East Anglia from Liverpool Street, the Great Eastern Main Line from Liverpool Street connecting Harwich and onwards into Suffolk and Norfolk, and the West Anglia Main Line from Liverpool Street linking to Stansted and onwards into Cambridgeshire. The Epping Forest district is served by the London Underground Central Line. The routes operated by National Express East Anglia (formerly known as 'one') and c2c, are both owned by National Express.

Economy

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Essex at current basic prices published (pp.240-253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of Pounds Sterling.

Year	Regional Gross Value Added	Agriculture	Industry	Services
1995	11,422	282	3,424	7,716
2000	14,998	205	4,335	10,458
2003	18,588	258	5,158	13,172

Industry and commerce

The Lakeside Shopping Centre at Thurrock was one of England's first out-of-town shopping centres, which remains popular despite congestion on the nearby M25 motorway and direct competition from Bluewater Shopping Centre.

Industry is largely limited to the south of the county, with the majority of the land elsewhere being given over to agriculture. Harlow is a centre for electronics, science and pharmaceutical companies, while Chelmsford is the home of Marconi (now called telent plc and owned by Ericsson of Sweden since 2005), and Brentwood home to the Ford Motor Company's European HQ. Loughton is home to the production facility for British and foreign banknotes. Chelmsford has been an important location for electronics companies since the industry was born, and is also the location for a number of insurance and financial services organisations, and is the home of the soft drinks producer Britvic. Other businesses in the county are dominated by light engineering and the service sector. Colchester is a garrison town, and the local economy is helped by the army's personnel living there.

County Council

The county council was formed in 1889, and sits at County Hall, in the centre of Chelmsford. Before 1938, it regularly met in London near Moorgate, which was easier to access than any place in the county. It currently has 75 elected councillors. Before 1965 the number of councillors reached over 100. County Hall, which dates largely from the mid-1930s, and is decorated with fine artworks of that period, mostly the gift of the family who owned the textile firm, Courtaulds, was recently (2007) made a listed building. Essex County Council is currently controlled by the Conservative Party. The chairman of the county council 2006-08 was Gerard McEwen of Norton Mandeville near Ongar, and since May 2008, Elizabeth ("Bonnie") Hart, of Hockley.

The political composition of the county council is as follows.

Year	Conservatives	Labour	Liberal Democrats	Residents' association	Independent
2008	52	13	8	1	1

Education

Education in Essex is substantially provided by three authorities being Essex County Council and the two unitary authorities, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock. In all there are some 90 state secondary schools provided by these authorities the majority of which are comprehensive although 1 in Uttlesford, 2 in Chelmsford, 1 in Colchester and 4 in Southend-on-Sea are clearly selective. There are also 4 Public Schools providing secondary education in Essex although two of these are in Metropolitan Essex.

County emblems

The County's coat of arms comprises three Saxon seax daggers (although looking rather more like Scimitars) arranged on a red background; the three-seaxe device is also used as the official logo of Essex County Council having been granted as such in 1932.

The traditional county flower of Essex is the Cowslip, locally known as the paigle or peggle, and frequently mentioned in the writings of Essex bucolic authors such as Samuel Bensusan and C. H. Warren. As part of a 2002 marketing campaign, the plant conservation charity Plantlife chose the Common Poppy as the county flower. .

Samuel Bensusan and others have suggested that if Essex had a county bird, it would be the Lapwing (known locally as the peewit) whose lonely cry characterises the Essex marshes known as saltings.

Most English counties have nicknames for people from that county, such as a Tyke from Yorkshire and a Yellowbelly from Lincolnshire; the traditional nickname for a person from Essex is an Essex Calf, so named because the county was famous for rearing beef cattle for sale in London meat markets; calves from the county were famed for their large size and known as 'Essex lions'

Towns and villages

''See the List of places in Essex

Places of interest

• Abberton Reservoir
• Arena Essex Raceway
• Ashingdon (The site of the Battle of Ashingdon in 1016)
• Audley End * Colchester Castle * Clacton-On-Sea
• Colne Valley Railway * East Anglian Railway Museum * Epping Forest
• Harlow New Town
• Hedingham Castle * Ingatestone Hall
• Kelvedon Hatch (Secret Nuclear Bunker)
• Maldon Historic market town site of the Battle of Maldon
• Mangapps Railway Museum (Burnham-on-Crouch)
• Marsh Farm Country Park
• Mistley towers
• St Peter-on-the-Wall * Thaxted
• University of Essex (Wivenhoe Park, Colchester)
• Waltham Abbey * Colchester Zoo
• North Weald Airfield
• Southend Pier
• Orsett Hall

Twinning

• Sopot, Poland
• Jiangsu, People's Republic of China
• Picardy, France
• Thuringia, Germany
• Henrico County, Virginia

See also

• 1884 Colchester earthquake
• Crossing the Lines
• Earl of Essex
• Essex County Cricket Club - 2006 pro40 champions
• Essex girl
• GHQ Line - World War II fortification
• List of railway stations in Essex
• Secondary schools in Essex
• Town of Essex in Connecticut, USA (voted "best small town in America")

Notes and references

External links

• Area 33 (Essex) Round Table
• Essex Guides and Directories
• Essex County Council
• BBC Essex
• Evening Echo (for south of county)
• Evening Gazette (for north of county)
• Essex Photos
• Essex Rail Users Federation