Lettice Knollys

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 was the sister of Anne Boleyn, making Catherine and Lettice cousins 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 Knollyses 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 Deveraux (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 begun acknowledging that Robert Devereux was more likely fathered by Robert Dudley rather than William Deveraux. The Earl of Leicester did in fact father a younger Walter Devereux, the next son of Lettice.

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 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. When Elizabeth learned of this many months later, the Queen termed Lettice "that She Wolf" and banished her from court. This banishment damaged Lettice and Leicester's marriage, as did the death of their only legitimate child, Robert, Baron Denbigh. The child was born in 1579 with multiple birth defects and died at age four in 1583. The marriage was given a second chance when Leicester accepted the governorship of the Netherlands and tried to make Lettice Queen regnant of that country. When Elizabeth got wind of this, she forced Leicester to resign. Which apparently only made it easier for Lettice to fall in love with Christopher Blount, a friend of her son Robert Deveraux and eighteen years her junior.

Essex, Blount, and Leicester all took part in the battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588. But Leicester died immediately afterward. This allowed Lettice and Blount to marry, much to the disgust of Elizabeth. Except for one brief meeting, 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 him 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.

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

External links

• Family tree of some Devereux, Dudley, Sidney members