Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! : Lettice Knollys
It's pronounced lah-TEEESE
Note on pronunciation: The name Lettice is not meant to be pronounced like the name of the vegetable Lettuce. It should be pronounced “lah-teeese”, sounding like the name of that eyelash treatment. Also, the surname Knollys is meant to be pronounced the same as Beyoncé’s surname of Knowles, with a silent “k” at the beginning and without pronouncing the “y” at the end. So, in your head, you can pronounce her name Latisse Nowls.
Lettice Knolly’s unusual name was a tribute to her grandmother, Letitia, the Latin word for “happy.” In a time where every other woman was named Mary and Anne, Lettice stands out by her first name. The only other people with this given name were some of her descendants, who were named in tribute to her. And as a historian and a fan of names, I’m already on her side because all of the Janes and Katherines get to be a bit much.
So who was she? Lettice was born in 1543, the granddaughter of Mary Boleyn. This made her the grand-niece of Anne Boleyn and the first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth I. More controversially, there have always been rumours that Lettice’s mother, Catherine Carey, was secretly an illegitimate child of King Henry VIII. If that is also the case, then Lettice was related to Queen Elizabeth I on both the Boleyn and Tudor sides. However many ways the two women were related, there was an uncontested resemblance between the two. Born ten years after Elizabeth, Lettice had the same red hair, pale skin, and striking features as her cousin. And given Elizabeth’s vanity, having a slightly younger clone of herself came to be more than a little annoyance. But Lettice was not just a beautiful woman with a cool name; she lived a long and wildly interesting life entirely on her terms.
Lettice Begin
Lettice was the third of sixteen children born to Catherine Carey (Mary Boleyn’s daughter; maybe Henry VIII’s illegitimate daughter) and an average courtier named Sir Francis Knollys. I will now mention how interesting it is that Henry was so obsessed with having legitimate children. Meanwhile, his possible illegitimate children were having tons of kids all over the place. It's just interesting, is all. If Henry had married Mary rather than Anne Boleyn, there might have been fewer succession crises. Anyway, the Knollys family was Protestant, which was great as long as Henry was King but less appealing when Queen Mary I took over and set about burning non-Catholics. For a time, the Knollyses lived in Germany with some of their children, returning two months after Elizabeth took over, and Protestantism was more welcome again. We don’t know if Lettice was among the Knollys children to spend time in Germany; if not, she almost certainly would have been sent to live in the household of her slightly older cousin, Princess Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth became Queen, she honoured her Knollys relatives with positions in her household. Lettice and her mother were given roles as high-ranking ladies in waiting, Catherine as a senior lady of the Bedchamber and Lettice as a Maid of the Privy Chamber. At age 17, Lettice married a 32-year-old man named Walter Devereux. This was almost definitely one of those marriages arranged between families without consideration for her feelings about the matter. Lettice returned to court only a few times during her years with Walter; she was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, maybe for the whole “she looks just like me and is potentially related to me in two ways” thing. Lettice was also written about as a legendary beauty, with the Spanish ambassador describing her in 1565 as “one of the best-looking ladies of the court.”
During this same visit, when Lettice would have been pregnant with her first child, she is said to have flirted with Robert Dudley. Remember him? He was Queen Elizabeth’s childhood friend and longtime favourite, sort of her obsessive crush, the man she could never marry because everyone thought he had thrown his wife down a flight of stairs. He was also the worst. Robert dearly loved Elizabeth, so maybe part of this attraction was him flirting with a woman who looked like his true love but a bit younger, prettier, and more attainable. When Elizabeth heard that her lookalike cousin had flirted with Robert, she launched into a rageful fit of jealousy. Lettice returned with Walter to their home in the countryside and didn’t revisit court for a while. She and Walter had five children altogether, including Lady Penelope and Lady Dorothy, both of whom I’ll probably write about later because they were also pretty great.
In 1572, Walter was sent by the Queen to Ireland for some political reasons, where he stayed for two years. It is possible that Lettice took up with Robert Dudley, this time for real — not just flirting, but a full-on affair. Walter stayed in Kenilworth Castle in Ireland, where Lettice occasionally visited him. In 1575, Robert Dudley held a 19-day festival in honour of the Queen at Kenilworth Castle, so she and he would have been in the same place at the same time, at least then. It was also apparent that Walter and Robert did not enjoy one another’s company; rumour was that the two children Lettice had during this Ireland sojourn may have been fathered by Robert, not her husband. We’ll never know either way, but she did call one of the babies born during this time “Robert,” so: potentially significant.
Bobby Duds Strikes Again
And then, wouldn’t you know, Walter died of dysentery in 1576. Now, there was a big epidemic of dysentery going around there anyway. Still, people found it convenient that people standing in the way of Robert Dudley’s love life kept falling down flights of stairs and dying of dysentery with such useful timing for Bobby D himself. Perhaps coincidentally, a woman named Alice Draycott — who had shared the same cup as Walter at the same gala — died of similar causes shortly afterwards. Once again, Robert Dudley was put under investigation for potential murder, and he was again found not guilty. But this did nothing for the fact that everybody thought he was a serial killer. But know who didn’t care? Elizabeth and her niece, Lettice. So, it was the convention at the time that widows shouldn’t remarry until their husbands had been dead for two years. And two years to the day of Walter’s death via “dysentery,” guess who got married? Lettice and, yes, Robert Dudley.
We know why he did it: he was the worst, and Lettice looked like his one true love, Elizabeth, but younger and more available. Also, financial reasons. But what was in it for her? Lettice was 33 years old and gorgeous, the widow of a reasonably prominent guy who had left her some money. Wait, scratch that. Walter hadn’t left her as much money as she needed for her and her two children to live comfortably, and he didn’t leave them a house. So Lettice and her children couch-surfed around, staying for a while in her father’s house, sometimes with friends, just wandering around aimlessly. This was a shitty situation that happened a lot to widowed women because, at the time, women could only own property if they inherited it from their spouse or father. And as Lettice had so many siblings, her family couldn’t leave her anything, and Walter — maybe out of spite and jealousy?? — hadn’t left her much, either.
But Lettice wasn’t the sort of woman to meekly accept a shitty situation. She went to court to plead with Walter’s executors to get more of his estate, arguing that it was in her children’s best interests, not for her. And after seven months of negotiations, she was granted more funds. This was great, but Walter had died with substantial debts to the crown, negating any inheritance their son would get. So, Lettice went to her cousin and former good friend, Queen Elizabeth, to request that Walter’s debts be forgiven. Elizabeth was unmoved and refused the request.
So, we have Lettice — 34 years old, gorgeous and wildly fabulous, widowed mother of four, younger lookalike of the Queen, needing a house and some more money. And we have Robert Dudley, 46 years old, lifelong unrequited lover of Queen Elizabeth, dirtbag, possibly multiple murderer, person who had flirted with Lettice a few years back and who perhaps fathered at least some of Lettice’s children. Yes, friends, these two seem to have married… for love. And also, money, and so Lettice would have someplace to live. But honestly, it looks like the scarce motivation for marriage among wealthy people in the Renaissance: actual love. Because if they weren’t actually in love, marrying each other would have been an incredibly terrible decision. And it was a horrible decision, and what other reason is there for terrible decisions than love?
Anybody as rich as them, especially anyone related to Elizabeth or who she was in love with, needed the Queen’s permission to marry. Lettice and Robert had already witnessed how much Elizabeth freaked out at rumours that they’d been flirting behind her back, so they couldn’t ask her permission. They had to get married… in secret.
Super Secret Sexy Marriage
So, Lettice Knollys married Robert Dudley precisely two years after Walter died in a secret ceremony on September 21, 1578. This wasn’t a last-minute surprise; even just getting their guests in town and making preparations would have probably taken about a year, during which time everybody kept it secret, and Elizabeth had no idea. There were only six guests at the wedding, all family members. Even after the marriage, everybody kept it a secret because Elizabeth would lose it when she found out, and maybe they thought they could hide the news from her forever. Unfortunately, this was Elizabethan England, and there were spies and courtiers everywhere spilling secrets, so about two months later, the Queen found out her favourite niece had married her favourite guy and, as predicted, lost her shit.
Elizabeth banished Lettice from court permanently and refused to accept the marriage had happened. But what of Robert? Just like nowadays, Elizabeth blamed the woman but found the man blameless. Of course, she was mad and felt betrayed by what Robert had done. She initially banished him from court, too, but she couldn’t stay mad and eventually allowed him back — but only him, not his wife, Lettice. So Robert got to hang out at court constantly, being Elizabeth’s favourite and pretending he wasn’t married, while Lettice was stranded back home.
So, Lettice rolled with the hand she’d been dealt by life. She mainly lived with her Knollys relatives in the countryside until, figuring Elizabeth must have calmed down by now, moving into Robert’s family home in 1583. But in fact, Elizabeth was not any calmer about this because she’d been doing an excellent job of pretending Robert and Lettice hadn’t gotten married, and now she was reminded about the whole thing. But there wasn’t anything she could do; she’d banished Lettice from court, not from England, and there was no way to stop her cousin from living with her husband. Lettice and Robert had one child together, a boy named Robert, who died at age three from old-timey health reasons. As a clue to Robert’s priorities, he managed to take some time away from being Elizabeth’s lap boy and be with Lettice during this grief. So, while Elizabeth couldn’t let go of him, he was loyal and devoted to Lettice.
The Queen put Robert in charge of several military campaigns, which he was not qualified to lead. Did she do this to separate him from Lettice? Maybe. In a series of events I don’t entirely understand, Robert wound up the Governor-General of The Netherlands. A rumour spread that Lettice was planning to head over there with an entourage and set up a kangaroo court where Lettice would act as a quasi-queen type of person. This was not true, but Elizabeth thought it was, and she would take any excuse to rage about Lettice. What was going on was that Robert was planning to hand over authority to Lettice to look after his affairs in England while he was away. He only kept up this Netherlands job for about two years and was in England again when he suddenly died — likely from malaria. He and Lettice had been in the middle of a trip between estates at the time, and she was with him when he passed.
Blount Talk
Remember the thing about widows usually waiting two years to get married again? And also, remember how when women were widowed, they were sometimes left with no money or place to live? So basically, Lettice married again six months after Robert’s death. The reasons for this were pretty apparent: Robert Dudley had died and left her with a bunch of debt, and her new husband — Christopher Blount — was able to help her pay off these debts. At this point, Lettice was 46 years old and just wanted to settle down in one house, be debt-free, and relax. Christopher was about ten years younger than her and had been a soldier alongside and a friend of Robert Dudley.
Because she’d ignored the whole “wait two years” thing, some people thought this was a very scandalous thing for Lettice to do, but she was like, get over it, I’m Lettice Knollys, I’m 46 years old, and I do what I want.
At this point, Lettice had been banished from court for so long that she didn’t even care anymore. There was no point in returning to London, so she left the house she’d shared with Robert Dudley and moved to a new home in the countryside. In 1597, almost 20 years after her marriage to Robert Dudley had caused her banishment, word reached her that Elizabeth was maybe open to a reconciliation. So Lettice returned to London for the first time in years, where she was finally granted a short meeting with her cousin, the Queen. All that happened there was that she kissed Elizabeth, and Elizabeth kissed her, but she was still banished, and Elizabeth still didn’t forgive her. I imagine this meeting had a lot of meaningful eye contact and maybe some foreboding wine drinking and, given the reputation of both women, some truly excellent outfits.
The reason that Lettice got this meeting with Elizabeth was likely due to the intervention of her son, Robert Devereux. Remember him? Walter Devereux’s son, the one who Lettice went to court to ensure he would inherit some money? He had grown up to become Queen Elizabeth’s new favourite in this post-Robert-Dudley world. I’m so sorry that everybody in this story is called Robert all the time; that’s what we get for finally having a woman with a name as cool and unusual as Lettice. I’ll call this guy Devereux, just to be precise. So, Devereux was — just like his step-father Robert Dudley — the worst. For example, Elizabeth sent him off to lead military campaigns, and he wandered off when he got bored because he was terrible. Just as a hint, if you lose track of all the Roberts in this story, anybody named Robert in this story is terrible.
So, when Devereux wandered off of command in Ireland randomly, he was jailed for being absent without leave/a terrible person. Lettice did her best to plead with Elizabeth to forgive him, including sending her a gift of a new gown, which you’d think would work given Elizabeth’s love of fashion. But! Elizabeth neither accepted nor refused the gown; apparently, Lettice’s intercession made Elizabeth even more mad about the whole thing. And then a whole thing happened where Devereux conspired with Christopher Blount and some others to do a thing called Essex’s Rebellion, which wound up with both of them being put on trial and then executed for treason. I told you: Robert Devereux was the worst.
But he was also Lettice’s beloved son. During the whole scenario — the revolt, the trial, the execution — Lettice remained in London to support him. She lost both her son as well as her husband, Christopher, a man who she referred to as her best friend.
But wait, there’s more!
I know. How can there possibly be more? How many more wildly exciting things can happen to this woman’s life? Well, buckle up. So, before Robert Dudley married Lettice, he’d had an illegitimate son with a woman named Douglas Sheffield, because apparently “Douglas” was a woman’s name back then, who knew? This illegitimate child was named Robert Dudley, which makes this story all the more confusing. We’ll call him Robert Dudley Jr.
Now, Jr.’s mother, Douglas, claimed later in life that she had been married to Robert Dudley when Jr. was born, making him not illegitimate at all. But the thing is, Douglas had also been married to someone else at the same time, so what was she talking about? But Jr. took this to heart, and since Henry VIII had long ago shown that you could call any marriage illegitimate if you try hard enough, he took Lettice to court because he thought that he, Jr., should have inherited Robert Dudley’s estate, not Lettice. Because if Robert Dudley had been married to Douglas, then that meant his marriage to Lettice wasn’t valid, which meant that Lettice shouldn’t have inherited anything from him; but, again, Douglas was already married to someone else when she said she married Robert Dudley, and also all that Lettice inherited from Robert Dudley was a shit ton of debt so: what are you even doing, Jr.? Anyway, Lettice finally won this case.
BUT NOT SO FAST, LETTICE: she had to go back to court again because now it looked like perhaps Christoper Blount had messed her around when he claimed to be paying off Robert Dudley’s debts, and so now Lettice owed more money to the crown, and just like Robert Dudley and his debts took up far too much of this poor woman’s life, for goodness sake. But finally, Lettice won this case against Jr.
So, amid this latest debt-related litigation, Queen Elizabeth I passed away. Her successor, James I, was like, “What’s all this mess? Lettice seems like a cool lady. Why did Elizabeth hate her so much? Tell you what, I’ll cancel all the debts she and her family owe to the English crown.”
And then, finally, Lettice got to have some peace and quiet. She was by all accounts a loving mother to her children, being particularly close to her daughters Penelope and Dorothy, both of whom she outlived. Among her eighteen grandchildren, she was closest with Devereux’s son, also named Robert (because, of course), who lived much of his life with her at her country estate. She remained in excellent health until about age 90 and was said to walk a mile daily. She passed away on Christmas Day, 1634, aged 91, following a quick illness.
Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex (via Walter Devereux) and Countess of Leicester (via Robert Dudley), was buried as per her request next to Robert Dudley Sr., in the Beauchamp Chapel of Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick; opposite their shared tomb is the burial place of their son, Baby Robert Dudley, who had died at age three.
Sources
I love this series.