Henry Percy 8th Earl of Northumberland 1532-1585

Brief Lives: Charles Danvers 1568 1601. ^[711]Sir Charles Danvers [aged 33] was beheaded on Tower-hill [Map] with Robert, earle of Essex [aged 35], February the 6th, 1600^[712]. I find in the register of the Tower chapell [Map] only the sepulture of Robert, earl of Essex, that yeare; wherfore I am induced to beleeve that his body was carryed to Dantesey^[CX] in Wilts to lye with his ancestors. Vide Stowe's Chronicle, where is a full account of his and the earle's deportment at their death on the scaffold.

With all their faylings, Wilts cannot shew two such^[713] brothers.

His familiar acquaintance were...^[714], earl of Oxon [aged 50]; Sir Francis [aged 40] and Sir Horace Vere [aged 36]; Sir Walter Ralegh [aged 47], etc.-the heroes of those times.

Quaere my lady viscountesse Purbec and also the lord Norris for an account of the behaviour and advice of Sir Charles Danvers in the businesse of the earl of Essex, which advice had the earle followed he had saved his life.

^[715]Of Sir Charles Danvers, from my lady viscountesse Purbec:-Sir Charles Danvers advised the earle of Essex, either to treat with the queen-hostages..., whom Sir Ferdinando Gorges [aged 36] did let goe; or to make his way through the gate at Essex house, and then to hast away to Highgate, and so to Northumberland (the earl of Northumberland maried his [his former sister-in-law] mother's [aged 51] [his former wife] sister), and from thence to the king of Scots, and there they might make their peace; if not, the queen was old and could not live long. But the earle followed not his advice, and so they both lost their heads on Tower-hill.

Note 711. MS. Aubr. 8, fol. 25v.

Note 712. i.e. 1600/1.

Note 713. Dupl. with 'shew the like two brothers,' scil. as Sir Charles Danvers and his brother Henry, earl of Danby.

Note 714. Edward Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford.

[CX] In MS. Aubr. 3, fol. 46, Aubrey writes, in reference to burials at Dantesey, 'quaere, if Sir Charles Danvers that was beheaded?-He was buryed in the Tower chapell.' Aubrey's description of the burial-place of the Danvers family (MS. Aubr. 3, fol. 46), with the inscriptions, is printed in J. E. Jackson's Aubrey's Wiltshire Collections, pp. 223-225; the pedigree of Danvers is there given at p. 216.

John Evelyn's Diary. 13th July 1683. As I was visiting Sir Thomas Yarborough [aged 45] and his Lady [Henrietta Blagge [aged 34]], in Covent Garden [Map], the astonishing news was brought to us of the Earl of Essex [aged 51] having cut his throat, having been but three days a prisoner in the Tower [Map], and this happened on the very day and instant that Lord Russell [aged 43] was on his trial, and had sentence of death. This accident exceedingly amazed me, my Lord Essex being so well known by me to be a person of such sober and religious deportment, so well at his ease, and so much obliged to the King [aged 53]. It is certain the King and Duke [aged 49] were at the Tower, and passed by his window about the same time this morning, when my Lord asking for a razor, shut himself into a closet, and perpetrated the horrid act. Yet it was wondered by some how it was possible he should do it in the manner he was found, for the wound was so deep and wide, that being cut through the gullet, windpipe, and both the jugulars, it reached to the very vertebræ of the neck, so that the head held to it by a very little skin as it were; the gapping too of the razor, and cutting his own fingers, was a little strange; but more, that having passed the jugulars he should have strength to proceed so far, that an executioner could hardly have done more with an ax. There were odd reflections upon it.

The fatal news coming to Hicks's Hall upon the article of my Lord Russell's trial, was said to have had no little influence on the Jury and all the Bench to his prejudice. Others said that he had himself on some occasions hinted that in case he should be in danger of having his life taken from him by any public misfortune, those who thirsted for his estate should miss of their aim; and that he should speak favorably of that Earl of Northumberland, and some others, who made away with themselves; but these are discourses so unlike his sober and prudent conversation that I have no inclination to credit them. What might instigate him to this devilish act, I am not able to conjecture. My Lord Clarendon, his brother-in-law, who was with him but the day before, assured me he was then very cheerful, and declared it to be the effect of his innocence and loyalty; and most believe that his Majesty had no severe intentions against him, though he was altogether inexorable as to Lord Russell and some of the rest. For my part, I believe the crafty and ambitious Earl of Shaftesbury had brought them into some dislike of the present carriage of matters at Court, not with any design of destroying the monarchy (which Shaftesbury had in confidence and for unanswerable reasons told me he would support to his last breath, as having seen and felt the misery of being under mechanic tyranny), but perhaps of setting up some other whom he might govern, and frame to his own platonic fancy, without much regard to the religion established under the hierarchy, for which he had no esteem; but when he perceived those whom he had engaged to rise, fail of his expectations, and the day past, reproaching his accomplices that a second day for an exploit of this nature was never successful, he gave them the slip, and got into Holland, where the fox died, three months before these unhappy Lords and others were discovered or suspected. Every one deplored Essex and Russell, especially the last, as being thought to have been drawn in on pretense only of endeavoring to rescue the King from his present councilors, and secure religion from Popery, and the nation from arbitrary government, now so much apprehended; while the rest of those who were fled, especially Ferguson and his gang, had doubtless some bloody design to get up a Commonwealth, and turn all things topsy-turvy. Of the same tragical principles is Sydney.