Lettice Knollys ( , sometimes latinized as Laetitia; 8 November 1543Adams 2008a – 25 December 1634) was an English noblewoman and mother to the courtiers Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and Penelope, Lady Rich. She was Countess of Essex during her first marriage to Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex and became Countess of Leicester after her second marriage to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. She was also the granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, a mistress of Henry VIII and sister to his second wife, Anne Boleyn. With her marriage to the favourite of Elizabeth I, her first cousin once removed, she incurred the Queen's unrelenting displeasure.Lacey 1971 p. 15Hammer 1999 p. 280
A great-niece of Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, and close to Elizabeth since childhood, Lettice Knollys was introduced early into court life. At 17 she married Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, who in 1572 became Earl of Essex. After her husband went to Ireland in 1573, she possibly became involved with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth's longtime favourite. There was plenty of scandalous talk, not least when Essex died in Ireland of dysentery in 1576. On 20 September 1578, Lettice Knollys was married to Leicester in private by his chaplain Humphrey Tyndall. When the Queen was told of the marriage, she banished the Countess permanently from court, effectively curtailing her social life. The couple's only child, Robert Dudley, Lord Denbigh, died at the age of three, to the great grief of his parents and ending all prospects for the continuance of the House of Dudley. Lettice Knollys' union with Leicester was nevertheless a happy one, as was her third marriage to the much younger Sir Christopher Blount, whom she unexpectedly married in 1589 only six months after the Earl's death. She continued to style herself Lady Leicester.
The Countess was left rich under Leicester's will; yet the discharge of his overwhelming debts diminished her wealth. Between 1604 and 1605, she successfully defended her widow's rights in court when her possessions and her good name were threatened by the Earl's illegitimate son, also named Robert Dudley, who claimed that he was his father's legitimate heir, thus implicitly declaring her marriage bigamous. Lettice was always close to her large family circle. Helpless at the political eclipse of her eldest son, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, she lost both him and her third husband when they were executed for treason by Elizabeth in 1601. From the 1590s she lived chiefly in the Staffordshire countryside, where, in reasonably good health until the end, she died at the impressive age of 91 on Christmas Day 1634.
Family and upbringing Lettice Knollys was born on 8 November 1543 at Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire. Her father, Sir Francis Knollys, was a Member of Parliament and acted as Master of the Horse to Prince Edward.Varlow 2007 pp. 23–24 Her mother, Catherine Carey, was a daughter of Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne Boleyn. Thus Catherine was Elizabeth I's first cousin, and Lettice Knollys her first cousin once removed.Varlow 2007 p. 22 Lettice was the third of her parents' 16 children.Varlow 2007 p. 24
Sir Francis and his wife were Protestants. In 1556 they went to Frankfurt in Germany to escape religious persecution under Queen Mary I, taking five of their children with them. It is unknown whether Lettice was among them, and she may have passed the next few years in the household of Princess Elizabeth, with whom the family had had a close relationship since the mid-1540s.Adams 2008a Her parents and the remainder of the family returned to England in January 1559, two months after Elizabeth I's succession. Francis Knollys was appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household; Lady Knollys became a senior Lady of the Bedchamber, and her daughter Lettice a Maid of the Privy Chamber.
First marriage and love affair
In late 1560 Lettice Knollys married Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford. The couple lived at the family seat of Chartley in Staffordshire. Here, the two eldest of their five children, the daughters Penelope and Dorothy, were born in 1563 and 1564, respectively.Hammer 1999 p. 22 Lettice Devereux returned to court on at least one occasion, in the summer of 1565, when the Spanish ambassador Diego Guzmán de Silva described her as "one of the best-looking ladies of the court" and as a favourite with the Queen.Jenkins 2002 p. 124 Pregnant with her first son, she flirted with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen's favourite. The Queen found out at once and succumbed to a fit of jealousy.Jenkins 2002 p. 125 The Viscountess retired to Herefordshire where, in November 1565, she gave birth to Robert, later 2nd Earl of Essex. Two more sons followed: Walter, who was born in 1569, and Francis, who died soon after birth at an unknown date.Varlow 2007 p. 28
Lettice's husband was raised to the earldom of Essex in 1572. In 1573 he successfully suggested to the Queen a project to plant Englishmen in Ulster. In the autumn he went to Ireland, not to return for two years. During this time Lettice Devereux possibly engaged in a love affair with the Earl of Leicester; her whereabouts in the following years are largely unknown, though. In 1573 Leicester sent her a present of venison at Chartley from his seat Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, and she made hunting visits to Kenilworth in 1574 and 1576. She was also present in July 1575 when Dudley entertained the Queen with a magnificent 19-day festival at the castle.Varlow 2007 p. 44 Elizabeth and the court (including the Earl of Leicester) then progressed to Chartley, where they were welcomed by the Countess of Essex.Jenkins 2002 pp. 211–212
When Walter Devereux returned to England in December 1575, the Spanish agent in London, Antonio de Guaras, reported:As the thing is publicly talked of in the streets, there can be no harm in my writing openly about the great enmity between the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex, in consequence, it is said, of the fact that while Essex was in Ireland his wife had two children by Leicester. ... Great discord is expected in consequence.Jenkins 2002 p. 212
These rumours were elaborated on years later in Leicester's Commonwealth, a Catholic underground libel against the Protestant Earl of Leicester that satirically detailed his alleged enormities.Wilson 1981 pp. 251–255 Here the Countess of Essex, after having a daughter by Leicester, kills a second child "cruelly and unnaturally" by abortion to prevent her homecoming husband from discovering her affair.Jenkins 2002 p. 293 There is no evidence that any such children ever existed.
The Earl of Essex returned to Ireland in July 1576. At Dublin, he died of dysentery on 22 September during an epidemic, bemoaning the "frailness of women" in his last words.Freedman 1983 pp. 22–23; 33–34 Rumours of poison, administered by Leicester, immediately sprang up and continued, notwithstanding an official investigation which concluded that Essex had died of natural causes.Freedman 1983 pp. 33–34Jenkins 2002 p. 217 His body was carried over to Carmarthen, where his widow attended the funeral.
The Countess' jointure, the lands left to her under her husband's will, was too little to live by and did not comprise Chartley, so that she and her children had to seek accommodation elsewhere.Freedman 1983 pp. 28–29 She partly lived in her father's house at Rotherfield Greys, but also with friends; Leicester's Commonwealth claimed that Leicester had her move "up and down the country from house to house by privy ways". She pleaded for an augmentation of her jointure with the authorities and, to reach a compromise with the late Earl's executors, threatened "by some froward advice" to claim her dower rights. These would have amounted to one third of the Devereux estate.Freedman 1983 p. 29 After seven months of wrangling, she reached a more satisfactory settlement, the Countess declaring to be "content to respect my children more than myself". She equally—though unsuccessfully—tried to move the Queen to forgive Essex' debts to the Crown, which very much burdened the inheritance of her son, the young Earl of Essex.Freedman 1983 pp. 29–30
Marriage to Leicester and banishment from court
Lettice Knollys married Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester on 21 September 1578 at around seven o'clock in the morning. Only six other people were present at the Earl's country house of Wanstead Hall in Essex; among these were the bride's father and brother, Francis and Richard Knollys; the bridegroom's brother, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick; and his two friends, the Earl of Pembroke and Lord North.Jenkins 2002 pp. 234–235 The officiating chaplain Humphrey Tyndall later remarked that the bride wore a "loose gown" (an informal morning dress), which has triggered modern speculation that she was pregnant and that the ceremony happened under pressure from her father. The marriage was, however, in planning between Leicester and his wedding guests for almost a year. While Lettice Devereux may well have been pregnant, there is no further indication as to this. The marriage date coincided with the end of the customary two-years-mourning for a widow.
Leicester—a widower since 1560—had for many years been in hope of marrying Elizabeth herself, "for whose sake he had hitherto forborne marriage", as he confessed to Lord North. He feared Elizabeth's reaction and insisted that his marriage be kept a secret. It did not remain one for long, the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, reporting it two months later. When the Queen was told of the marriage the next year, she banished Lettice Dudley permanently from court; she never forgave her cousin, nor could she ever accept the marriage.Hammer 1999 pp. 33–34, 46Wilson 1981 pp. 230–231 Even Lady Leicester's movements through London were resented by the Queen,Hammer 1999 p. 46 let alone summer visits to Kenilworth by husband and wife.
Lettice Dudley continued to style herself Countess of Essex for several years into her new marriage. She lived very discreetly, often with her relatives at the Knollys family home in Oxfordshire. In February 1580 she was expecting the birth of a child there. For the birth of Leicester's heir, Robert, Lord Denbigh, in June 1581, she moved to Leicester House on the Strand. A further advanced pregnancy was reported in September 1582 by the French ambassador, yet the outcome is again unknown. The next year Lettice Dudley became officially resident at Leicester House, and Elizabeth was once again furious with the Earl "about his marriage, for he opened the same more plainly than ever before". A few weeks later Michel de Castelnau was a guest at Leicester's palatial mansion: "He especially invited me to dine with him and his wife, who has much influence over him and who he introduces only to those to whom he wishes to show a particular mark of attention."Jenkins 2002 p. 280
Robert Dudley had been close to the Knollys family since the early 1550s; several of Lettice's brothers had been in his service, and his marriage only enhanced his relations with her siblings. To his four stepchildren he was a concerned and generous stepfather.Adams 1995 pp. 49, 182, 181 The Dudleys' domestic life is partly documented in the Earl's accounts. Lettice Dudley financed her personal expenses and servants out of her revenue as Dowager Countess of Essex,Adams 1995 p. 28 and remained largely excluded from society life.
The three-year-old Lord Denbigh died suddenly on 19 July 1584 at Wanstead. His death shattered the hopes of a dynasty for the House of Dudley.Hammer 1999 p. 35 Leicester stayed away from his court duties for a few weeks "to comfort my sorrowful wife for the loss of my little son, whom God has lately taken from us."Jenkins 2002 p. 287 He thanked Lord Burghley for—unsuccessfully—pleading with the Queen "on behalf of my poor wife. For truly my Lord, in all reason she is hardly dealt with."Wilson 1981 p. 247