ESQUIRE, originally meant a shield-bearer, and was bestowed upon the two attendants of a knight, who were distinguished by silver spurs, and whose especial duty it was to look after their master’s armour; now used widely as a courtesy title.

ESQUIROS, HENRY ALPHONSE, poet and physician, born at Paris; his early writings, poems and romances, are socialistic in bias; member of the Legislative Assembly in 1848; retired to England after the coup d’etat; returned to France and rose to be a member of the Senate (1875); wrote three works descriptive of the social and religious life of England (1814-1876).

ESSEN (79), a town in the Rhine province of Prussia, 20 m.  NE. of Duesseldorf, the seat of the famous “Krupp” steel-works.

ESSENES, a religious communistic fraternity, never very numerous, that grew up on the soil of Judea about the time of the Maccabees, and had establishments in Judea when Christ was on earth, as well as afterwards in the time of Josephus; they led an ascetic life, practised the utmost ceremonial cleanness, were rigorous in their observance of the Jewish law, and differed from the Pharisees in that they gave to the Pharisaic spirit a monastic expression; they represented Judaism in its purest essence, and in the spirit of their teaching came nearer Christianity than any other sect of the time; “Essenism,” says Schuerer, “is first and mainly of Jewish formation, and in its non-Jewish features it had most affinity with the Pythagorean tendency of the Greeks.”

ESSEQUIBO, an important river in British Guiana, 620 m. long, rises in the Sierra Acaray, navigable for 50 m. to small craft, flows northward into the Atlantic.

ESSEX (785), a county in the SE. of England, between Suffolk on the N. and Kent in the S., faces the German Ocean on the E.; is well watered with streams; has an undulating surface; is chiefly agricultural; brewing is an important industry, and the oyster fisheries of the Colne are noted; Chelmsford is the county town.

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, born at Netherwood, Hereford; served in the Netherlands under Leicester, his stepfather; won the capricious fancy of Elizabeth; lost favour by marrying clandestinely the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but was restored, and led a life of varying fortune, filling various important offices, till his final quarrel with the Queen and execution (1567-1601).

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF, son of preceding; commander of the Parliamentary forces against Charles I.; the title died with him, but was conferred again upon the present family in 1661 (1591-1646).

ESSLING, a village near Vienna, where the French gained a bloody victory over the Austrians in 1809, and which gave the title of prince to Massena.

ESSLINGEN (22), an old historic and important manufacturing town in Wuertemberg, on the Neckar, 9 m.  SE. of Stuttgart; has a citadel and the Liebfrauen Church, which is a fine Gothic structure with a spire 246 ft.; is a noted hardware centre, and celebrated for its machinery; a good trade is done in textiles, fruit, and sparkling champagne.