Lady Lettice PENISTON [6624] 1544
- Born: 1481, England 1544
- Marriage (1): Sir Robert KNOLLYS [6623] about 1514 1565
- Died: 1558, England at age 77 1544
- Buried: Rothwell, Northamptonshire, England 1544
FamilySearch ID: LBNZ-YZ1.
General Notes:
English nobility. Lettice, was titled Countess of Leicester and Countess of Essex. Royal
appointment as Lady-in-Waiting and romantic rival of Queen Elizabeth I, was one of the most notorious women in Tudor England.
Born Lady Lettice Knollys at Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire, into a staunchly Protestant family, she was Queen Elizabeth's maternal cousin and her junior by six years. Cultivating their striking resemblance to the point of impersonation, she dressed and traveled in as regal a style as Queen Elizabeth I, who boxed her ears for her audacity. Unlike the famously virginal queen, however, Lettice married three times.
Her first marriage to Walter Devereux, first Earl of Essex and a rising star at court, ended in his untimely death. While her husband was away on campaign and fatally ill,
she dallied with his friend Robert Dudley, first Earl of Leicester and the queen's favorite.
Her 2nd marriage to Sir Robert Dudley. He and Lettice were secretly (and by some accounts, bigamously) wed c.1577, and the marriage so enraged Elizabeth she banished the couple from court. Although Dudley later regained the queen's favor, she never forgave her cousin, bitterly denouncing her as a "she-wolf". The Dudleys' marriage was largely successful none-the-less. After the death of their only child, a five-year-old son also entombed here, Lettice's ambitions focused on her children from Devereux.
Scheming to marry a daughter to the King of Scotland, she also advised her son Robert
Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, on how to gain and take advantage of the queen's
favor. With her second husband's health rapidly failing in 1588, Lettice's intimacy with his young protege, Sir Christopher Blount, stirred gossip.
Her 3rd Marriage to Sir Christopher Blount. She married him a year after Dudley's death, when she was 49 and her new spouse 25 years her junior, a May-December match which
was mirrored in the queen's attachment to Lettice's dashing son. As Elizabeth's new favorite, he tried to reconcile her to his mother, but to no avail. He eventually led an armed rebellion against Elizabeth's advisors, and both he and Blount, who took part in the uprising, were executed for treason in 1601. Despite Lettice's close ties to both men and the animosity between herself and the queen, she was never accused of conspiracy.
She outlived Elizabeth by over 30 years, dying at Drayton Basset, Staffordshire, on Christmas Day 1634 at the age of 95. Entombed in the Beauchamp Chapel next to her second husband, Dudley, her sarcaphagus is surmounted by a fine portrait effigy and bears the inscription "She did supply the wars with thunder and the court with stars".
Her descendants include British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, Prince Charles, and his first wife, Princess Diana.
Biography Find A Grave thanks to Nikita Barlow.
Lettice Knollys Dudley, "Find A Grave Index," with images
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12605544/lettice-dudley
Lettice married Sir Robert KNOLLYS [6623] [MRIN: 5424], son of Robert KNOLLYS [6642] and Elizabeth TROUTBECK [6643], about 1514.1565 (Sir Robert KNOLLYS [6623] was born in 1481 in North Mymms, Hertfordshire, England,1544 died in 1521 in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England 1544 and was buried in St Helen Bishopsgate, London, England, United Kingdom 1544.)
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