Elizabeth's Rival

by Nicola Tallis

42. Three days of jousts were ordered at the Palace of Whitehall in order to celebrate the couple’s nuptials, in which Lettice’s brother Henry participated. Her youngest sister Katherine, meanwhile, carried the bride’s train.

  43. Elizabeth’s saddle is still on display at Warwick Castle; Laneham, as cited in Nichols, Progresses, I, p. 3.

  44. Elizabeth had first visited Leicester at Kenilworth in 1566. She also visited in 1568 and 1572.

  45. Kenilworth was the magnificent stronghold of John of Gaunt, who spent lavishly on it in the fourteenth century. Under him Kenilworth became an important residence, and when his son became Henry IV in 1399 the castle became royal property.

  46. E. Goldring, ‘Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester for Kenilworth Castle’, Burlington Magazine, 147:1231 (2005), p. 654.

  47. Kenilworth Castle is now a ruin, administered by English Heritage. In the nineteenth century it became the setting for Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Kenilworth, a romantic interpretation of the story of Leicester, Elizabeth and Amy Robsart. See W. Scott, Kenilworth, a Romance (Edinburgh, 1821).

  48. Henri would later succeed as Henri III following the death of his brother, Charles IX. He was also later elected as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

  49. Anjou was scarred by smallpox when he was eight. He never married.

  50. R. Langham, A Letter, ed. R.J.P. Kuin (Leiden, 1983), p. 40.

  51. E. Goldring, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, p. 261.

  52. HMC De L’Isle, p. 291.

  53. Ibid., pp. 278–98.

  54. Ibid., p. 287.

  55. Langham, ‘A Letter’, p. 43.

  56. According to Malpas, this was not the first occasion on which the Queen had stayed with Lettice. He relates that in September 1571 Elizabeth visited Lettice and her husband at Marks Hall in Latton, a property that Essex had inherited upon the death of Anne Bourchier. I have been unable to corroborate this claim. See Malpas, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’, p. 62.

  57. Brewer and Bullen (eds), Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, p. 21.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Harrison (ed.), The Letters of Queen Elizabeth, p. 125.

  60. John Norris’s grandfather had been executed for adultery with Anne Boleyn. John became one of the most famous English soldiers. Francis Drake was knighted in 1581, and gained notoriety during the Spanish Armada.

  61. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 116.

  62. Ibid., p. 120.

  63. Ibid., p. 121.

  Chapter 9: Great Enmity

  1. Camden, The Historie, p. 80.

  2. Brewer and Bullen (eds), Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, p. 476.

  3. Cited in Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 123.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid., p. 127.

  6. Lawson (ed.), Gift Exchanges, pp. 184–5.

  7. Cited in Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 125.

  8. Ibid., p. 126.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid., pp. 127–8.

  12. Ibid., p. 129.

  13. Ibid., p. 130.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. HMC De L’Isle, p. 36.

  17. CSPS, Elizabeth 1568–1579, II, p. 511.

  18. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 82.

  19. Dorothy was born Dorothy Bray, and was the daughter of Sir Edmund Bray and Jane Halliwell. She had served three of Henry VIII’s queens, and had conducted an affair with Katherine Parr’s brother. She had been married to Edmund Brydges, second Baron Chandos, by whom she had five children. Edmund died in 1573, and the following year Elizabeth I visited her at her marital home, Sudeley Castle. On an unknown date some time after the death of her first husband, Dorothy was married to William Knollys. She was approximately twenty years his senior.

  20. CSPS, Elizabeth 1568–1579, II, p. 511.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Camden, The Historie, p. 80.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 135.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid., p. 136.

  27. Ibid., p. 137.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Camden, The Historie, p. 80.

  30. Kent History and Library Centre, U1475 E93.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Cited in Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 138.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Devereux Papers, V, f. 20b.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Ibid.

  40. HMC Salisbury, II (421).

  41. W. Murdin (ed.), A Collection of State Papers relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from the Year 1571 to 1576 (London, 1759), p. 301.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. HMC Salisbury, II (421).

  45. HMC Salisbury, II (422).

  46. Ibid.

  47. Cited in Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 145.

  48. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 82; Camden, The Historie, p. 80.

  49. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 82.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Camden, The Historie, p. 80.

  52. A. Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, in the reigns of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, etc … Written and collected by Sir Henry Sidney, etc (London, 1746), p. 141.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Ibid., p. 140.

  55. Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, p. 140.

  56. Camden, The Historie, p. 80.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, p. 142.

  59. Cited in Goldring, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, p. 304.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 165.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Ibid., p. 166.

  64. Information about George Devereux is patchy, but he certainly came to spend some time with his nephew, by whom he was knighted in Cadiz. He was also later implicated in the Essex Rebellion.

  65. See E.J. Jones, ‘The death and burial of Walter Devereux, earl of Essex, 1576’, The Carmarthen Antiquary, I (1941), pp. 186–8.

  66. PROB 11/58/438.

  67. Lacey, Robert, Earl of Essex, p. 13.

  68. H.A. Lloyd, ‘The Essex Inheritance’, Welsh History Review/Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru, 7 (1974–5), p. 31; Devereux Papers, V, 3.

  69. PROB 11/58/438, f. 248.

  70. Ibid.

  71. Ibid.

  Chapter 10: Up and Down the Country

  1. Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, p. 147.

  2. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 166.

  3. Cecil House was located on the Strand, and had become Burghley’s London residence in 1560. It underwent great change over the centuries, and was eventually demolished in 1829. Burghley purchased Theobalds in 1563, and he immediately began a programme of rebuilding. James I was later so fond of the house that he persuaded Burghley’s son to exchange it with the Palace of Hatfield. Aside from a few small ruins, nothing now remains of Theobalds.

  4. The exact date of Robert Cecil’s birth is unknown, but the year may have been 1563.

  5. Lady Mildred Cecil was the eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, who invested heavily in the education of his children. The renowned scholar Roger Ascham later claimed that Mildred’s academic abilities were on a par with those of Lady Jane Grey.

  6. Lansdowne MS 24, f. 28.

  7. Lawson (ed.), Gift Exchanges, p. 207.

  8. Devereux Papers, V (9).

  9. Devereux Papers, V (24).

  10. Lansdowne MS 24, f. 26.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Malone Society, ‘Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber 1558–1642’, Collections, VI (Oxfo
rd 1962), p. 13.

  18. Ibid., p. 14.

  19. Interestingly, Leicester’s Men were the first group of players to be awarded a royal patent.

  20. Lansdowne MS 24, f. 28.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Devereux Papers, V (24).

  23. PROB 11/58/438.

  24. In total the Digbys had three sons and a daughter, but their dates of birth are unclear. At least one of the sons, John, was not born until 1580.

  25. Lansdowne MS 24, f. 28.

  26. Varlow, The Lady Penelope, p. 53.

  27. Camden, The Historie, p. 80; Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 76.

  28. See SP 12/148, f. 83.

  29. Warnicke, Wicked Women, p. 118.

  30. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 76.

  31. Some writers have asserted that this marriage took place a year after the execution of Frances’s first husband, but an Inquisition Post Mortem makes it clear that this was not the case. The couple were happily married until the time of Frances’s death in 1559.

  32. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 76.

  33. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 167.

  34. John Whitgift was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in August 1583, in place of Edmund Grindal. He also later became a member of Elizabeth’s Privy Council.

  35. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 168.

  36. Devereux Papers, V, f. 34b.

  37. In 1551, the two young sons of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, had contracted the sweating sickness while studying at Cambridge. They fled to Buckden, but tragically both died within an hour of one another.

  38. S. Varlow, The Lady Penelope: The Lost Tale of Love and Politics in the Court of Elizabeth I (London, 2007), p. 54.

  39. Leicester’s Commonwealth actually implicated that Leicester had caused Lady Lennox to be poisoned. See Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 86.

  40. Like Lettice’s family, Bridget had spent time on the Continent during the reign of Mary I. Her marriage to Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford, was her third, but she did not get along well with her stepchildren. She would later be chief mourner at the funeral of Mary, Queen of Scots.

  41. Lawson (ed.), Gift Exchanges, p. 227.

  42. HMC Rutland, I, p. 26.

  43. CSPS, Elizabeth 1558–1567, I, p. 175.

  44. King’s Manor is now part of the University of York.

  45. Devereux Papers, V (55).

  46. Sidney was abroad from 1572 to 1575, and spent much of his time in Italy.

  47. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 105.

  48. Bundesen, ‘ “No other faction but my own” ’, p. 117. Following their marriage, Elizabeth and her husband divided their time between the court, where Elizabeth continued in her service to the Queen, and Guernsey, where Thomas was Governor. Theirs would prove to be a happy marriage that produced three children, Thomas, Anne and Elizabeth. Anne married John St John of Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire. She died in 1638 having given birth to thirteen children, and her tomb effigy can still be seen in St Mary’s Church, Lydiard Tregoze.

  Chapter 11: A Marriage in Secret

  1. S.B. MacLean, ‘The Politics of Patronage: Dramatic Records in Robert Dudley’s Household Books’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 44:2 (1993), p. 180.

  2. Hertford was the son of the fallen Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, and his wife, Anne Stanhope.

  3. Following her death, Katherine’s husband was eventually restored to favour. It is her eldest son, Edward, that the present Dukes of Somerset are descended from.

  4. Mary Grey married the Queen’s Serjeant Porter, Thomas Keyes. He was a widower with children, and when the Queen discovered their marriage the couple never saw one another again. She and her husband were both imprisoned, and though Keyes was later released, his health was broken by the conditions of his imprisonment. He died on 3 September 1571. Mary was later rehabilitated, but died aged thirty-three on 20 April 1578.

  5. HMC Rutland, I, p. 26.

  6. Borman, Elizabeth’s Women, p. 217.

  7. Hatton was a seasoned courtier, and in 1572 he had been made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Captain of the Guard.

  8. The Kenilworth Game Book does reveal that Lettice hunted at Kenilworth at some time in 1578, when she killed a buck. Her daughter Penelope and Lady Derby were also present, but the date in 1578 is unrecorded.

  9. T. Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from the year 1581 till her Death, I (London, 1754), pp. 2–3.

  10. Camden, The Historie, p. 80; Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 76.

  11. Camden, The Historie, pp. 80–1.

  12. Goldring, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, pp. 265–6.

  13. Adams (ed.), Household Accounts, p. 178.

  14. Dudley Papers, III (61).

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid

  19. At the time of their marriage, Pembroke had been thirty-nine, and Mary fifteen. Their marriage was his third, his first wife having been Lady Katherine Grey, the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. That marriage was annulled, and Pembroke then married Lady Katherine Talbot. His marriage to Mary Sidney produced four children, two sons and two daughters. Their sons succeeded their father as the third and fourth Earls of Pembroke.

  20. Dudley Papers, III (61).

  21. Rickman, Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England, p. 55.

  22. Dudley Papers, III (61).

  23. Ibid., p. 81.

  Chapter 12: One Queen in England

  1. Lawson (ed.), Gift Exchanges, p. 201.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Camden, The Historie, p. 127.

  4. It was almost certainly Simier’s proximity to the Duc that allowed him to emerge unscathed from his crime.

  5. Sir Francis Walsingham had barely escaped with his life, while it is estimated that around 70,000 Huguenots were killed in the whole of France.

  6. CSPS, XI (681).

  7. CSPS, Elizabeth 1580–1586, III, p. 2.

  8. The bargeman survived the ordeal. The assassin, Thomas Appletree, was caught and sentenced to death. However, he was pardoned on the scaffold through the Queen’s good graces.

  9. It is certainly plausible that Leicester was responsible; rumours abounded that he had also attempted to poison Simier. There is no conclusive proof, though, that this was the case.

  10. Camden, The Historie, p. 129.

  11. A decade later, the couple’s fortune would become even more apparent when Sir Walter Ralegh dared to make a clandestine match with another of the Queen’s ladies, Bess Throckmorton. It was a marriage that, as with Katherine Grey and her husband before them, saw the newlyweds cast into the Tower. Bess and Ralegh were both eventually released. However, Ralegh would later find himself returned to the Tower, and was finally executed during the reign of James I.

  12. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 26.

  13. Ibid.

  14. This line appears in the epitaph composed by Gervase Clifton, who was married to Lettice’s granddaughter, Lady Penelope Rich. It can now be seen next to her tomb in St Mary’s Church, Warwick.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth, p. 26.

  17. Ibid., p. 128.

  18. Harleian MS 6992, f. 57.

  19. SP 12/148, ff. 75–85.

  Chapter 13: A She-Wolf

  1. Jenkins, Elizabeth and Leicester, pp. 244–5.

  2. Read, ‘A Letter’, pp. 15–26.

  3. Elizabeth visited in 1573, 1576, twice in 1577, 1578, 1579 and 1585. See S. Adams, Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002), p. 327.

  4. Sadly, Leicester House no longer survives, for the majority of it was demolished in the late seventeenth century. Later renamed Essex House, Devereux Court now marks the area where it once stood. Similarly, most of the St Clement Danes that Lettice would have been familiar with was destroyed during the Grea
t Fire of London. The current building is the work of Sir Christopher Wren, and dates from 1682.

  5. Jenkins, Elizabeth and Leicester, p. 204.

  6. Nichols, Progresses, II, p. 42.

  7. Dudley Papers, V, f. 16.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Goldring, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, p. 121.

  11. In his 1582 will, Leicester made bequests to both of these women.

  12. The Queen had granted the lordship and castle of Denbigh, North Wales, to Leicester in 1563. The castle is now in ruins, having been slighted during the Civil War by the Parliamentarian forces. In 1578, Leicester also began building a church in Denbigh, but it was abandoned in 1584 when the project ran out of money. The ruins of St David’s Church can still be seen in the town today.

  13. Jenkins, Elizabeth and Leicester, p. 252.

  14. Devereux Papers, V, f. 63b.

  15. See A. Feuillerat (ed.), Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (London, 1912–26).

  16. His mother was Elizabeth Baldry.

  17. Leez Priory is now a plush wedding location.

  18. Rich later became Lord Chancellor under Edward VI, and was a wholly unpleasant character. He also participated in the torture of Anne Askew, who was burned for heresy in 1546. He died in 1567.

  19. Lansdowne MS 31, f. 105.

  20. Lansdowne MS 885, f. 86.

  21. TNA PRO 31, 3/28/417.

  22. Dudley Papers, V, 44.

  23. Cited in Freedman, Poor Penelope, pp. 57–8.

  24. Ibid., p. 58.

  25. CSPS, Elizabeth 1580–1586, III, p. 451.

  26. CSPS, Elizabeth 1580–1586, III, p. 477.

  27. Ibid.

  28. CSPD, Elizabeth 1581–1590, 161, p. 114.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Bourchier Devereux, Lives and Letters, I, p. 156.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Perrot had served as Lord Deputy of Ireland, and it was in relation to this that he was arrested and condemned for treason. He was accused of having knowledge and involvement in the O’Rourke rebellion while in Ireland, and of making treasonous remarks about the Queen. Perrot defended himself, but the court that tried him was full of his enemies. Despite the intervention of the Earl of Essex, Perrot remained in the Tower with a death sentence looming over him. It was there that he died in September 1592. Before his death he had begged the Queen to be good to his son and especially to his daughter-in-law.

  33. The portrait dates to around 1600, and for some time was thought to represent Lettice. The presence of the parrot, however, clearly identifies the sitter as being Dorothy.