Blount is the only one of Lettice’s three husbands for whom one of her letters survives. The undated note is short, and she entreats Blount to ‘do what in reason you may’ for a gentleman who was facing a case in the Star Chamber.16 Although the reason for writing concerned business, the letter does show signs of affection. ‘So hoping to see you shortly,’ she wrote, before signing herself ‘Your most faithful wife’.17
Lettice was instrumental in smoothing the ground between her new husband and her son, and in her letters to Essex she commonly referred to Blount as ‘your friend’, or to herself and her husband as ‘your friends’, and as time went on, relations between the two men became easier.18 Later, Essex even urged Robert Cecil, whom Blount had approached in order to procure a favour, ‘I pray you have for my sake the more affection to satisfy him.’19
Just months after her wedding, in December Lettice was writing to Essex on behalf of herself and Blount to enquire after his welfare:
Your poor friends here, my dear son, are in great longing to know how you fare, to which purpose we have addressed this bearer to bring us true word thereof. For although our ears are fed with many flying reports, yet we believe nothing but what we receive from the oracle of truth, wherefore relieve us, if it please you, with some of your occurrents.20
She signed herself ‘Your mother that more than affectionately loveth you’, a phrase that she employed frequently.21 She had always been a fiercely protective mother, and this is particularly apparent in her letters to Essex. Given his position at court he was the one she saw the least often. She regularly enquired after his health and badgered him for news, chiding him gently when she did not receive a response: ‘Your Lordship is grown, I will not say slothful, but somewhat sparing of your pen,’ she once wrote to him.22 Essex found her attentions somewhat overbearing, but there is no evidence that he complained of them – indeed, on one occasion she wrote that it was ‘her greatest happiness to have for the staff of her age so worthy and loving a son’.23
She rarely made any direct references to the Queen, but on one occasion she wrote that ‘It seems, the time approacheth wherein it will be seen what a jewel your prince and country hath of you. The Lord turn all to the best for England’s good and your honour.’24 On another she could not resist adding her hope that ‘your mistress makes of you as her best servant, and chiefest hand to defend her against that wicked generation [the Spanish]’.25 Both of these comments referred to the situation in which England now found itself, for at the time of writing, the ‘wicked generation’ to whom Lettice referred were the Spaniards. Following the defeat of the Armada, Philip had been busy rebuilding his navy in preparation for a fresh attack. In 1589, Essex had gone against the Queen’s orders when he joined an expedition to Portugal headed by Sir Francis Drake, which was an attempt to crush Spanish naval strength. The expedition was a failure, and planning for the Anglo–Spanish war continued. It was only a matter of time before Philip launched another attack.
Sadly, none of Lettice’s letters to her daughters or her youngest son Walter have survived, but they may have been written in a similar vein. Leicester had been a particularly attentive stepfather, and it would be difficult to match him, but Lettice was now eager for all of her children to accept Blount. Aside from Essex’s initial qualms, there is no evidence to suggest that her children disliked him. Blount actually appears to have shared a relatively good relationship with his new stepchildren. In 1597, he would write to Essex on behalf of his stepdaughter Dorothy, informing him that ‘I am entreated by your sister to let you know that she hopeth your care will be no less for her means of living ladylike than your endeavour has been earnest to bestow on her a ladyship.’26 Evidently Dorothy felt comfortable enough around Blount to ask him to convey messages.
Her marriage made her Lady Blount, but both she and those around her continued to refer to her as the Countess of Leicester. For the rest of her life she would sign herself ‘L Leicester’, in a permanent reminder both of her second husband and title that he had brought her. At the onset of her third marriage, Lettice and Blount initially spent some time at Benington, the home that had come into her possession following the death of her first husband. Before long, though, they left the south behind them, instead installing themselves more permanently at Drayton Bassett, a property that had been purchased by Leicester in 1578. He had stipulated in his will that Lettice was to enjoy full use of Drayton, but her right had initially been disputed, and it took the intervention of her son Essex to settle the matter. Set in the countryside of her native Staffordshire, Drayton Bassett was also just twenty-five miles from her former home of Chartley. Today, the pretty village shows no signs of the house that was once occupied by Lettice and her third husband, for this was sadly demolished in 1929.27 An inventory of Drayton taken in 1601 shows that although it was lavishly furnished, it was not to the same standard as Leicester House, Wanstead or Kenilworth. It was nevertheless a comfortable home with a three-storey banqueting house, ideal for entertaining guests. Lettice used it often, and her daughter Penelope was a regular visitor.28
Additionally, Drayton also contained a drawing room in which hung a canopy of damask, which was where Lettice sat.29 There were numerous bedchambers, including one reserved for the use of Lettice’s sister, Katherine, who moved into Drayton at some point in the 1590s following the death of her second husband. There was a hall, a parlour, rooms for the servants, and a kitchen complex.30 All of these facilities would have ensured that Lettice’s lifestyle was extremely comfortable. At fifty years old, she may have been attracted by the quietness of the countryside, and with Blount by her side she turned to focus on domestic matters. Blount, meanwhile, was able to use his association with Essex to his advantage. In 1593 he sat in Parliament on behalf of Staffordshire, and four years later he would do the same.31 The life of country gentry, however, was one to which they were both poorly suited.
BEFORE LONG, LETTICE discovered that marrying Blount did not help to ease her financial woes. He worsened matters when, in an attempt to improve their circumstances, he began selling off pieces from her extensive jewel collection: ‘The first year Sir Christopher Blount was married he sold many great jewels, and hath continued the same course almost every year since.’32 Several pieces were sold to her son, the Earl of Essex, including ‘a great chain of pearl, a fair table diamond and a pointed ruby, for the which Sir Christopher Blount received three thousand pounds [£376,000]’.33 Her daughter Dorothy also bought ‘two fair pendant pearls’, but the funds were not enough to solve the problem.34 Before long, Blount had even resorted to selling off some of Lettice’s properties that he had got ‘into his own hands’.35 Later, Lettice complained bitterly about his handling of her estates, but there is no evidence that she did so at this time. In November 1593, it was reported that Lady Leicester still owed the Queen the balance due to her from Leicester, and it had not been forthcoming.36 It was not just Blount who had resorted to selling her belongings to cover the costs, but Lettice, too. A contemporary report stated that ‘At my Lady’s last being at London was sold two fair collars, and other jewels of pearl and stone.’ Though the Queen loathed her she was not averse to buying her jewels, and it was noted that ‘Her Majesty had two fair pearls and a jewel of opals made fast to the seals of a letter.’37 The result, according to the report, was that ‘It is well known my Lady hath paid of my Lord of Leicester’s debt at the least fifty thousand pounds.’38
LETTICE’S WAS NOT the only wedding that took place in 1589. The same year her youngest son, nineteen-year-old Walter, was also married. Like his sisters, Walter had spent much of his childhood in the household of the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon at King’s Manor, York. From 1585 he had then been studying at Oxford, but the time had now come for his marital prospects to be settled. As his guardian, Huntingdon had the right to choose Walter’s bride, and he needed to look no further than his own household. Margaret Dakins was the only daughter of a good Yorkshire family, and, like Walter, she had b
een placed in the Huntingdons’ household in order to complete her education. The youngsters had therefore known one another for many years, and in 1588 Huntingdon had started negotiations for their marriage. Although it was a good match on both sides, it is, once again, unlikely that Lettice was consulted.
No details of the wedding are known, but it is certainly possible that Lettice attended. When it was over, the newlyweds set up home together, and were given an estate at Hackness in Yorkshire, the money for which was raised by Margaret’s father, Huntingdon, and Lettice’s eldest son, Essex.39 Like his elder brother, young Walter was spirited, and found his wife to be dull in comparison. Her company bored him, but Huntingdon was determined to ensure that the marriage was a success. He urged his lively ward ‘that your good wife, for so I may rightly term her, may receive that comfort of your coming to her, as in right, and by her desert is due unto her’.40 Walter seems to have taken no notice.
AS THE NEXT decade began, great changes started to take place within Lettice’s circle. On 21 February 1590, her brother-in-law, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, died at Bedford House on the Strand. Camden described how he had ‘departed this life, as full of virtue, as empty of issue’.41 Though Lettice had got along harmoniously with Ambrose during Leicester’s lifetime, and he had indeed supported her when it came to executing Leicester’s will, there is no evidence to suggest that the two had any other contact with one another. In the latter months of Ambrose’s life there is unlikely to have been any warmth of feeling between them, because they had for some time been embroiled in a property dispute. Several months after Ambrose’s death, the matter had still not been settled, and it was left to Ambrose’s widow, the feisty Anne Russell, to take up the reins. Both Anne and Lettice were strong women, and in her usual stubborn manner Lettice refused to back down. However, unlike Lettice, Anne had the support of the Queen and this was destined to be a battle that Lettice would not win. Given the circumstances it is hardly surprising that no mention of Lettice or her family was made in Ambrose’s will, although he made bequests to many others.42 Like Leicester, he too was laid to rest in the Beauchamp Chapel of St Mary’s, Warwick. His elaborate tomb can still be seen alongside that of his brother and his young nephew, and was presumably erected on the orders of his widow.
Ambrose’s death did, nonetheless, have important consequences for Lettice. Like his brother before him, Ambrose had died without any legitimate heirs. Sir Philip Sidney, the nephew that both he and Leicester had once considered to be their heir, was now dead. As such, many of Leicester’s former lands that had passed to Ambrose on his death now passed, in turn, to Leicester’s ‘base son’, Robin Sheffield. This included Kenilworth, much to Lettice’s great annoyance. She was determined not to allow Leicester’s bastard to take possession of what she believed should have passed to her, and in a desperate bid to assert herself, Blount forcibly took control of Kenilworth. The law, though, was not on her side, and to her chagrin she was forced to hand Kenilworth over to Robin Sheffield.43 This grated on her, for Robin was the only person who stood in the way of her son, Essex, inheriting Leicester’s former lands. For the time being there was little that she could do, but it would not be the last occasion on which Robin Sheffield’s name would return to haunt her.
ON A BRIGHTER note, that summer Lettice’s daughter Penelope gave birth to her final child by Lord Rich. Theirs had been a notoriously unhappy marriage, and over the years matters had deteriorated further. When their son Henry was baptized on 19 August, there was no point in keeping up the pretence any longer. Penelope had provided her husband with two male heirs, and by now it was well known that she had taken a lover.
Charles Blount was the son of James Blount and Catherine Leigh, both of whom stemmed from minor gentry families; despite their shared surname, Charles was only distantly related to Lettice’s husband Christopher.44 Charles was one of three children, and had been sent to Oxford where he received a magnificent education.45 He was later awarded an MA.46 Having graduated, Charles travelled to London where he had every intention of starting a career in law. He entered the Inner Temple, but he did not remain there for long. His brother was already at court, and before long Charles had joined him. He quickly became a favourite with the Queen, to the extent that the Earl of Essex considered him a potential rival. Although the Queen showed Charles her steady favour, Essex had nothing to fear, and continued to reign supreme. Charles had also been among those who had accompanied Leicester on his campaign to the Netherlands, and it was not the last time he would see military action. Upon his return to England, however, the handsome, dark-haired Charles had other matters on his mind, for he had attracted the notice of an admirer: Penelope.
It was probably at some time in 1590 that Charles and Penelope began a passionate affair. It quickly became serious, and by November the relationship was common knowledge at court. In a strange twist, Penelope’s husband Lord Rich was fully aware of his wife’s extramarital activities, and was curiously happy to tolerate them. The Queen also knew of and condoned this ménage à trois – a sure sign of her favour towards Penelope. The Richs had always had an unhappy marriage, and Penelope had amply fulfilled her duty to her husband by providing him with four surviving children.47 In private the couple ceased to have relations, but in public they maintained a show of unity, even though Penelope’s relationship with Charles Blount was well known. Consequently, when Penelope and Charles’s first child, a daughter named Penelope, was born in 1592, in an attempt to save face and avoid public humiliation, the child took Lord Rich’s name and was brought up alongside his children for many years.48 Penelope and Charles’s relationship would endure for the rest of their lives, and Charles remained completely devoted to her. Together they would have six children, five of whom survived infancy. Penelope’s birth was followed by that of Mountjoy, a son named in honour of the title that Charles had inherited in 1594 when his elder brother William died just a few months after their father. Charles, St John and Isabella completed the family.
Lettice knew of her eldest daughter’s affair from the very beginning, and appears not to have been concerned – after all, there were few in her family who had much time for the unpleasant Lord Rich, and the dashing Charles Blount must have seemed like a pleasing alternative. She also adored her grandchildren, and came to spend a great deal of time with them in the coming years. Penelope doted on her children; in an undated letter to her son Essex who had been unable to attend a family gathering, Lettice wrote to him of Penelope’s concern over the health of one of her daughters: ‘Your excuse is so reasonable, sweet Robin, as it must be taken, but if you had come this night you had found a knot of good company here together and the idle housewife your sister in one of her worst humours, solemnly disposed in doubt that her best beloved daughter should be a little sick.’49 This, it seems, was a trait that Penelope had inherited from her mother.
LIKE PENELOPE, LETTICE’S son Essex had also inherited many of his mother’s characteristics. Having learned nothing from her example, on an unknown date in early 1590 he made a risky decision: he married in secret without obtaining the Queen’s permission. His bride was Frances Walsingham, the daughter of the Queen’s spymaster, and the widow of Essex’s friend and Leicester’s nephew, Sir Philip Sidney. Frances’s father had died in April that year, and the marriage was conducted either shortly before or soon after his death – almost certainly with his knowledge and approval.50 Frances already had a five-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, by Sidney, and given that their first child was born in January 1591, she and Essex had probably been indulging in a sexual affair before their marriage. Frances was besotted with her second husband, referring to him as her ‘dear life’, and she hated to be parted from him.51
Given how close she was to her son, it is probable that Lettice was aware of his secret nuptials, although there is no evidence that she attended the wedding. Her feelings about the match are unknown, but she shared a reasonable relationship with her new daughter-in-law. Penelope was certainly
close to Frances, and the two women would come to spend a great deal of their time with one another. Lettice, though, was all too painfully aware of the consequences of clandestine marriages, and was fearful of the Queen’s reaction towards her son when she learned the truth. She had good reason to be. By October the secret was out and predictably, given her reaction on so many previous occasions, Elizabeth was seething with anger. She was enraged not only that ‘it was contracted without her consent’, but also because Frances was ‘considered by Her Majesty as below the dignity of his family’.52 Essex was in disgrace, but unlike Lettice, it was to be a temporary state. The Queen could not bear to be parted from her favourite for long, and though she refused to receive the new Countess of Essex at court, the Earl soon basked in her favour once more. That same year, the Queen granted him the lease of all of the sweet wines imported into England, and this provided him with a generous source of income. Meanwhile, like her mother-in-law before her, Frances was banished into private life. She was quite content with this arrangement, and spent much of her time living with her mother at Walsingham House, her parents’ London residence in Seething Lane.53 Yet again, the Queen’s inability to live without her male favourites was in evidence. As usual, she apportioned all blame to the female party.
Elizabeth's Rival Page 30
