The Earl of Essex was the last great favorite of Elizabeth I and the leading cultural patron of the final years of her reign. Dazzled by the "romantic" relationship with the queen, modern writers have branded Essex a dandy, a military incompetent, and a political dabbler, and have blamed him for the bitter factionalism that plagued English politics in the 1590s. Using an unparalleled range of manuscript and printed sources, this book presents a very different image of Essex and of the outbreak of factionalism in Elizabethan politics.