The friend was the Earl of Essex.

The competitor was the ablest, and also the most truculent and unscrupulous of English lawyers, Edward Coke.
While Bacon, in the shade, had been laying the foundations of his philosophy of nature, and vainly suing for legal or political employment, another man had been steadily rising in the Queen's favour and carrying all before him at Court--Robert Devereux, Lord Essex; and with Essex Bacon had formed an acquaintance which had ripened into an intimate and affectionate friendship.

We commonly think of Essex as a vain and insolent favourite, who did ill the greatest work given him to do--the reduction of Ireland; who did it ill from some unexplained reason of spite and mischief; and who, when called to account for it, broke out into senseless and idle rebellion.

This was the end.

But he was not always thus.