Lettice KNOLLYS
(C. Essex / C. Leicester)
Born: 8 Nov 1543, Wanstead, Warwick, England
Died: 25 Dec 1634, Drayton Basset, Staffordshire, England
Buried: Collegiate Church, Warwick, Warwichshire, England
Father: Francis KNOLLYS (Sir Knight)
Mother: Catherine CAREY (Chief Lady of Bedchamber)
Married 1: Walter DEVEREUX (1º E. Essex) ABT 1562/1564, Nethwood, Herefordshire, England
Children:
1. Penelope DEVEREUX (B. Rich)
2. Robert DEVEREUX (2º E. Essex)
3. Dorothy DEVEREUX (C. Northumberland)
Married 2: Robert DUDLEY (1° E. Leicester) 21 Sep 1577/8, Wanstead, Essex, secretly and bigamously
Children:
2. Robert DUDLEY (B. Denbigh) (b. 1579 - d. 1584)
Married 3: Christopher BLOUNT (Sir) 1589, Berkshire, England
Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex and of Leicester,
attributed to Gower |
As the daughter of Catherine Carey, Lettice Knollys was a cousin to Queen Elizabeth and resembled her a good deal. Her father, Sir Francis Knollys, was a Puritan, and the family was in exile during Mary Tudor’s reign. Lettice came to Court as a maid of honor at the start of Elizabeth’s reign and soon established herself as a girl of spirit, beauty, and ambition. She married, in 1561, Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, who was created Earl of Essex in 1572. By him she had Penelope, Dorothy, Robert, Walter, and Francis (d. yng).
The family seat was at Chartley in Staffordshire, but Lettice was often at Court, where a relationship developed with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-1588). With Essex in Ireland from 1572 until the winter of 1575/6, Lettice lived in Durham House on the Strand, quite near Leicester House. In the summer of 1575, when they were both on progress with the Queen, Edward Arden, sherrif of Warwickshire, refused to wear Leicester’s livery for the festivities at Kenilworth because he had “private access to the Countess of Essex.” According to one account of the incident, Arden called Leicester a whoremaster. The anonymous 1584 pamphlet known as Leicester’s Commonwealth claimed that Lady Essex was pregnant by Leicester immediately before her husband’s return from Ireland and that she had an abortion.
Another tale, this one reported by the Spaniard, de Guaras, in Dec of 1575, was that there was a “great enmity between the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex in consequence... of the fact that while Essex was in Ireland his wife had two children by Leicester.” According to de Guaras, this was openly talked of in London. When Essex returned to Ireland and died there shortly after of dysentary, the gossip-mongers insisted that Leicester had poisoned him. An autopsy proved otherwise but talk did not cease and rumor had the two lovers married soon after.
They may have gone through an earlier ceremony, but there was a secret wedding at Wanstead on Sep 21, 1578 which was witnessed by Lettice’s father, Sir Francis Knollys. She appeared to be with child at the time. Their son, Lord Denbigh, who died on Jul 19, 1584, was born in 1579. "The
Noble Impe" - the son of Leicester and Lettice named Robert who died as a
child. All of Lettice's other
children had been healthy, so it was a cruel twist of fate that their only
legitimately-born child was not. Lettice was at Court in Jul, 1579, with a new wardrobe that rivaled the Queen’s. When her marriage to Leicester became known, the Queen is said to have boxed her ears and banished her, saying that as but one sun lighted the sky so she would have but one Queen of England. |
The tomb of Robert Dudley, Baron of Denbigh |
Michael de Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissiere |
Away from Court, Lettice went out of her way to be mistaken for her
royal cousin, riding through the streets of London in a carriage with her ladies
in coaches behind her, and so forth. She planned to marry her daughter Dorothy
to the King of Scotland. When the Queen heard of it, according to another
Spaniard, Mendoza, she swore she would “sooner the Scots King lost his
crown” than be married to the daughter of a “she-wolf.” She also said that
if she could find no other way to check Lady Leicester’s ambition she would
proclaim her all over Christendom as the whore she was and prove Leicester a
cuckold. This was in 1583. The Frenchman Michael de
Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissiere, writing at about the same
time, reported that Leicester was greatly influenced by his wife and introduced
her only to those to whom he wished to show special favor. On
Dec 8, 1585, Leicester was sent to the Low Countries and on
Jan 25,
1586 made Governor-General of the Netherlands. Lettice was making plans to join
him there and set up a Court of her own when her royal cousin heard of it and
forbade her departure. |
At about the same time there was a rumor that
Leicester was jealous of his wife’s attentions to Sir Christopher Blount
(1565-1601), his Master of the Horse. The tale gained credence after Leicester
died suddenly on Sep 4, 1588 and Lettice married Blount in Jul of 1589. She
was fond of Blount, and she certainly knew that his love for her was a wonderful
balm to her ego (like Elizabeth, she loathed growing old) but Leicester was her
main connection to fame, as well as something for which Elizabeth would never
forgive her.
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