Lettice Knollys

File:LetticeKnollys.jpg

Lettice Knollys by Gower

Lettice Knollys (1540 - 25 December, 1634) was born in Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire.

Her father was Sir Francis Knollys, a gentleman pensioner of Henry VIII. Her mother was Lady Catherine Carey, the daughter of Mary Boleyn and, reputedly, Henry VIII. Mary Carey née Boleyn (she was married to William Carey, a gentleman of court) was the sister of Anne Boleyn, making Catherine the first cousin, and Lettice the first cousin once removed, of Elizabeth I of England.

Sir Francis was an early Puritan, forcing him and his family to flee to Switzerland during the reign of Mary I of England ("Bloody Mary", reign 1553 - 1558). Upon the accession of Elizabeth on November 17, 1558, the Knollys' returned to England. Francis was made Treasurer of the Household, Catherine and Lettice became Lady-in-Waiting and Maid-of-the-Court, respectively.

Arround 1560, Lettice married Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford. Walter was named Earl of Essex in 1572 in honor of his services to the Queen. They lived at the Devereux family seat of Staffordshire, where Lettice bore her first two children: daughters Penelope (born 1562) and Dorothy Devereux (born 1564). Lettice eventually grew weary of country life and returned to court. It was here she started her first affair with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth.

The Queen suspected the pair and returned Lettice to Staffordshire, where she gave birth to her first son, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the eventual successor to his father. Modern historians have conjectured that Robert Devereux (born 1566), may have been fathered by Robert Dudley rather than Walter Devereux. Her second son, Walter (born 1570), was probably fathered by Walter Devereux.

The elder Devereux joined with Elizabeth in the first "Ulster Project," the attempted plantation of dispossessed Englishmen in Ireland. Devereux died in Ireland of dysentery in 1576. This allowed Lettice to resume her affair with Leicester, and she soon wed him in a clandestine ceremony. The ceremony was rather reminiscent of his alleged non-binding union with Lady Douglas Sheffield, by whom Leicester fathered his illegitimate son Robert Dudley who was later styled Earl of Warwick.

Sir Francis Knollys insisted on his daughter and Leicester marrying again in a bona fide ceremony, which he might witness. When Elizabeth learned of this many months later (1579), the Queen termed Lettice "that She-Wolf" and banished her from court. This banishment came not long after Lettice's return to court following the birth of the only legitimate child of Lettice and Robert Dudley, Robert, Baron Denbigh, the "Noble Impe." The child was born in 1579, but was sickly and died at age four in 1583.

In 1586, Leicester was made Governor-General of the Netherlands and tried to make Lettice Queen consort of that country. When Elizabeth got wind of this, she forbade Lettice to leave England, and Leicester eventually resigned the position. Though Lettice was banished from court, she resided with her husband in London, where she was often mistaken for her cousin the Queen, as a result of the fineness of her carriage and the size of her retinue. It was said (by the French ambassador Mauvissiere) that Leicester's introduction of one to his wife was considered a mark of particular favor.

Leicester contracted a fever in the course of his command of the troops gathered at Tilbury in anticipation of a Spanish invasion [by the [Spanish Armada]] in 1588, dying shortly thereafter. Though rumors were rife that he had been poisoned by Lady Leicester, a post-mortem examination turned up no such evidence.

Eleven months later, and much to the Queen's disgust, Lettice married Sir Christopher Blount, 25 years her junior, a friend of her son Robert, and a gentleman of Leicester's household--and his master of horse.

Save for one brief meeting engineered by her son, Robert (the Queen's new favorite) in hope of reconciling his mother and the Queen, Lettice's banishment from court held.

Essex and Blount attempted to redeem the failure of the elder Essex in Ireland, but entered into an ignominious truce with the Irish rebels, causing Elizabeth to bring them home in disgrace. Essex then fomented his unsuccessful rebellion against the Queen, which led to the executions of himself and Blount.

Lettice lived on doing good deeds for the poor in the neighborhood of her home Drayton Bassett in the English Midlands. She lived to be ninety-five, dying on 25 December 1634. She is buried beside Robert Dudley in the Beauchamp Chapel of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary in Warwick, near the tomb of their son, the Baron Denbigh.

Lettice is an ancestor of many notables including Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales.

External links

• Berkshire History - Biography
• Family tree of some Devereux, Dudley, Sidney members