Leicester, nonetheless, most certainly was conducting a romantic affair at this time, but it was not with Lettice. Though he may have found the Countess of Essex attractive, she was off limits – for the time being at least. The object of Leicester’s affection was another, and one whom Lettice would have good cause to resent in the future.
CHAPTER 8
His Paramour, or his Wife
ON 4 AUGUST 1574, the Earl of Leicester became the proud father of a son.1 He was elated at the birth of his first child, though he was on progress with the Queen when the news was brought to him. However, there was just one problem: the child was illegitimate, for the Earl was not married to his mother; or was he?
Following the death of his first wife, Amy Robsart, in 1560, Leicester had not remarried. His aspirations of marrying the Queen had thus far come to nothing, but whatever his personal feelings towards Elizabeth, he was still a man with desires. They were desires that he had been largely forced to suppress due to his standing and feelings towards the Queen, but as time passed this became more difficult. He later wrote that ‘I will not justify myself for being a sinner and flesh and blood as others be’, and so it was that at some time in the early 1570s he began an affair with Lady Douglas Sheffield, one of the Queen’s ladies.2 In May 1573, Gilbert Talbot had written to his father from court, ‘There are two sisters in ye court that are very far in love with him [Leicester], as they have been long; my Lady Sheffield and Frances Howard. They, of like striving who shall win him better, are at great war together, and the Queen thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him.’3 Gilbert’s news was not fresh, for by now the affair had been going on for some time. Even so, he had certainly accurately related the strength of Douglas’s feelings towards Leicester, as well as the Queen’s evident disapproval. Though the affair was conducted relatively discreetly, the Queen had become aware of it. She probably did not view Douglas as a threat to her own relationship with Leicester, hence why she seems to have been unusually tolerant – though disapproving – of the situation.
Douglas Sheffield was of an age with Lettice, and was the eldest daughter of William Howard, first Baron Howard of Effingham, and his second wife, Margaret Gammage.4 Like Lettice, she was also related to the Queen, for her father had been a son of the second Duke of Norfolk, Elizabeth’s maternal great-grandfather.5 Douglas and her family had been well favoured by the Queen in the same way as the Knollyses had, and her father was the Lord Chamberlain of Elizabeth’s household. As such, he was a colleague of Lettice’s father, who had once been the Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain. Douglas herself would have been well known to Lettice, for by the time of the Queen’s coronation in 1559, she and her younger sister Mary were also maids of honour. She would therefore have come into regular contact with Lettice, but it is unlikely that they became close friends, for, like Lettice, Douglas was not in the Queen’s service for long. In 1560, potentially the same year that Lettice had married Walter Devereux, Douglas was also wedded.6 Her husband was John Sheffield, second Baron Sheffield, who hailed from a family of Lincolnshire origin.7 Following the wedding, in the same manner as many ladies, Douglas chose the occasion to retire from court and devote herself to domestic matters. She and her husband produced two children, Edmund and Elizabeth, but the marriage was sadly cut short. On 10 December 1568, Douglas’s husband died, leaving his young son to succeed to his title as third Baron Sheffield. It was this that prompted Lady Sheffield to return to court and resume her place in the Queen’s household, this time as a gentlewoman of the privy chamber. She was well regarded by her mistress, and she had not been back at court long before she caught the Earl of Leicester’s eye. Years of frustration over the Queen’s refusal to marry him were taking their toll, and Leicester was a notorious flirt. He and Douglas soon became involved in an affair that would later take a very serious turn.
The circumstances of how the relationship was conducted are unknown, save that it went on for several years and attracted court gossip. What is certain is that Douglas’s feelings towards her lover were stronger than those he harboured for her – and she wanted more from him than he was prepared to give. More than anything, it shows ‘the attraction that his personality exercised over women’.8
Douglas and Leicester’s relationship provided the hostile anonymous authors of Leicester’s Commonwealth with plenty of fuel with which to slander the Earl, and they took full advantage. The affair features heavily in the tract, and is the source of many false myths on the subject. According to the Commonwealth, the couple’s relationship began during the lifetime of Douglas’s husband. It asserted that long after the death of Leicester’s wife Amy, ‘he fell in love with the Lady Sheffield’, but she being married, the Earl arranged for her husband to ‘die quickly with an extreme rheum in his head (as it was given out), but as others say of an artificial catarrh that stopped his breath’.9 This was a ridiculous claim with no basis in truth, and it was not the only time the Commonwealth would level such an accusation. Neither would it be the only time that Leicester would be accused of arranging for the murder of a love rival.
The Commonwealth continued to assert that Leicester’s ‘lust compelling him to another place, he would needs make a postcontract with the Lady Sheffield, and so he did, begetting two children upon her, the one a boy called Robin Sheffield now living, some time brought up at Newington, and the other a daughter, born (as is known) at Dudley Castle’.10 There is no evidence of a daughter. The son, named Robin Sheffield, was born on 7 August 1574, but Douglas herself would later insist that he was her only child by Leicester, and no further mention is made of this rumour. Leicester duly acknowledged and accepted young Robin as his son, and was eager to make provision for him. The baby remained with his mother for no more than two years, when his father made other plans for the boy, and he was sent to live with a relative of Leicester’s, John Dudley, in Stoke Newington. Leicester cared for his son, and as he grew Leicester also made plans for young Robin’s education: on 17 May 1588, at the age of fourteen, he would enter Christ Church, Oxford.11
The question of whether or not Leicester and Douglas were married is a crucial one, and continues to perplex to this day. In time, it would also come to have potentially damaging consequences for Lettice. Even Camden, who was hostile to the Earl, wrote that ‘whether his paramour, or his wife I cannot say’.12 However, he could not resist stressing that Leicester was ‘given awhile to women and in his latter days doting above measure on wiving’.13 Leicester himself vehemently denied that any such marriage had ever taken place, a claim that he would continue to uphold until his death. Similarly, when rumours later began to surface, Douglas also denied them. When news of Leicester’s later marriage became public in around 1579, she still made no word of protest. Even when the Queen questioned her on the matter, she responded ‘with great vows, grief and passion that she had trusted the said Earl too much to have anything to show to constrain him to marry her’.14 Should she have wished to voice her objections she could certainly have done so, for she was single at this time, and it was not until 28 November 1579 that Douglas remarried. Additionally, Douglas’s brother, Charles Howard, later wrote to Leicester asking to ‘let me be humbly commended unto my honourable good Lady [Lettice], God send you both long to live and love together’ – something he is unlikely to have done if he had believed that the Earl had wed and wronged his sister.15 It was not until 1604, long after Leicester’s death, that Douglas changed her story. As will become clear in due course, by then she had a very clear motive for doing so.
The best evidence on the matter comes in the form of a letter, written by none other than Leicester himself. The recipient, though, has been debated: it was either Lettice, or, as is more probable, Douglas. The lady in question was a widow, but frustratingly the date of when it was written is unknown: this detail would have probably settled the matter once and for all.16 What is clear is that Leicester was on intimate terms with the lady, telling her that ‘I have, as you well know, long both l
oved and liked you.’17 At the time of writing, he had resolved not to marry her in case it affected his position with the Queen: ‘If I should marry, I am sure never to have favour of them [the Queen] that I had rather yet never have wife than lose them.’18 This in itself lends credence to the recipient of the letter being Douglas, for later Leicester was prepared to risk this and more for the honour of becoming Lettice’s husband. By the time his relationship with Lettice had evolved, he had abandoned all hopes of marrying the Queen.
The letter tells the story of the couple’s relationship, and it is clear that the lady in question was pushing Leicester for marriage. She had made her feelings for him plain, and her dissatisfaction at the state of their relationship was evident.19 However, in his letter Leicester took the opportunity to remind the lady that ‘This good will of mine, whatsoever you have thought, hath not changed from that it was at the beginning towards you.’20 Douglas later testified that she and Leicester had been betrothed in 1571 at a house in Canon Row, Westminster, and that when she had discovered herself pregnant with his child in 1573, he had agreed to marry her.21 The ceremony had, she claimed, taken place that May, but Leicester had insisted that it must remain secret. As a symbol of their union, Douglas recalled that the Earl had given her a diamond ring, and written her numerous letters in which he had addressed her as his wife.22 Crucially, she was unable to produce either of these elements to support her case. Douglas also claimed that there had been ten witnesses at her wedding, most of whom were her servants. One of these did provide a testimony in support of her claims, but naturally cannot be viewed as a reliable source. Even more suspiciously, she could not remember the name of the minister who had performed the ceremony.23
In Leicester’s letter the Earl makes clear that he had certainly once cared for Douglas, but his feelings were not strong enough to propel him into matrimony. He reminded her that she had agreed to be his mistress, knowing that he was unable to offer her more:
And I trust, after your widowhood began, upon the first occasion of my coming to you, I did plainly and truly open unto you in what sort my good will should and might always remain to you, and showing you such reasons as then I had for the performance of mine intent, as well as ever since. It seemed that you had fully resolved with yourself to dispose yourself accordingly, without any further expectation or hope of other dealing.24
This did not prevent many of Leicester’s contemporaries from believing the opposite to be true. Rumours continued to circulate for many years after Leicester’s death; in the early seventeenth century, Thomas Rogers, a poet from Bryanstone, composed a poem based on Leicester’s Commonwealth, called Leicester’s Ghost, in which he claimed that,
When death by happ my first wife’s neck had cracked
And that my suit unto the Queen ill sped,
It chanced that I made a postcontract,
And did in sort the Lady Sheffield wed,
Of whom I had two goodly children bred.25
More than four hundred years later, it is difficult to ascertain the truth of the matter. Leicester certainly acknowledged Douglas’s son as his own, and made no secret of his existence, but even after the death of his legitimate son in 1584, which left him without a legitimate male heir, he continued to refer to Robin Sheffield as ‘my base son’.26 Neither did Leicester raise any qualms following Douglas’s marriage to Edward Stafford in 1579. He may perhaps have made her a promise of marriage, but it seems improbable that this led to anything more. Camden may have been correct in asserting that when Leicester had tired of her, probably upon learning of her pregnancy, he put Douglas away ‘with money and great promises’.27 When, later, in 1583, Douglas’s husband was appointed ambassador to France, taking his wife with him, Leicester probably hoped that that would be an end to the matter.28 Unfortunately, it was not to be. Ultimately the summary of historian Anne Somerset is quite accurate: ‘It would take Lettice Knollys, a woman of infinitely stronger character than the lightweight Lady Douglas, to make Leicester prepared to risk jeopardizing his position with the Queen by remarrying.’29
BY THE AUTUMN of 1574, more than a year had passed since Lettice had last seen her husband. Walter’s time and energy were very much absorbed by affairs in Ireland, and there was little opportunity for him to think of much else. Frustratingly, after a year-long campaign he was forced to accept that his enterprise had achieved none of the glory that he had anticipated. His forces were by now greatly depleted, and though the Queen had sent some reinforcements, many had deserted. Those that did remain were largely suffering from disease and famine – on one occasion Walter had written to the Council that in twenty days his men ‘had neither bread, drink, fish, nor flesh, but were forced to beg, and lay their arms, pieces, and garments in gage for to buy them food’.30 Conditions were appalling, and there was no end in sight.
In an attempt to bring the rebels to heel, Walter had led an expedition to Lough Foyle in Munster. He then offered Turlough Luineach O’Neill safe conduct into his camp in order to discuss terms, but the Irishman ‘refused it utterly’. Walter responded by sending him word that ‘if he did break with me I would invade his country’.31 The following evening, O’Neill, accompanied by 200 horsemen and 600 Scots, came close to Walter’s camp, but ‘being discovered by the scout that gave the alarm, bestowed three or four shot, but, upon the sound of the drum, they took their flight, leaving sixty of their bows behind them, and many of their arrows, and many skulls, which, in the morning, the soldiers found and brought away’.32 Walter was determined to confront the enemy, and pressed on, marching his men to Omagh, ‘putting out of my horsemen to spoil and burn, without having any sight of the enemy’.
But conditions for Walter and his men were still hard, prompting Walter to inform the Council that ‘I never had a beef, or any thing else for my household, but at such extreme penny worths as hath not been heard of in this country.’33 Hearing of the appalling state of the Queen’s army, the contemporary poet Edmund Spenser later wrote of the land that
Was brought to such wretchedness, that the most stony heart would have rued the same; out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth on their hands, for their legs would not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carcasses, they spared not to scrape out of their graves.34
It was all very bleak, and Walter was getting nowhere. Despite his efforts, he had still not brought O’Neill or Sir Brian MacPhelim to heel, and he was determined to do something about it.
Hearing that MacPhelim was contemplating raising another revolt, Walter decided to play dirty. Having journeyed from Dublin to Belfast, in November, he invited MacPhelim there to discuss politics with him. MacPhelim was unaware that Walter had discovered his intent, and was therefore not at all suspicious when he travelled to Belfast, taking his wife with him. Upon their arrival, the unsuspecting guests sat down to a feast, hosted by Walter. Suddenly, Walter’s men burst into the room, and set about mercilessly killing MacPhelim’s supporters. MacPhelim himself, his wife and his brother were all seized and taken to Dublin Castle, where on Walter’s orders they were executed. Such underhand behaviour and brutal dealings reveal another side to Walter’s character – one that Lettice herself may have witnessed on occasion. These traits in his personality contrast a good deal with the other image of him as an honourable man who had earned the respect and admiration of many of his contemporaries. Even by contemporary standards, Walter’s treatment of MacPhelim and his family was shocking – Lettice could not have failed to have been sickened by the execution of MacPhelim’s wife, an order given by her own husband and the father of her children. Walter viewed the situation differently, and seems to have felt that in executing MacPhelim he had made important progress in his mission. Despite the problems he had been faced with, he seems to have enjoyed wreaking havoc across the Irish land, and he was not above continuously threatening his enemies. If he thought that that would be an end to the
matter, though, he was to be badly mistaken.
By March 1575, Walter had progressed no further, and by now the Queen had come to the decision to call the expedition off. Walter was fearful that she would order his recall, and it was with this in mind that he wrote her a long letter, begging that ‘being now altogether private, I do desire your Majesty’s good licence so to live in a corner of Ulster, which I hire for my money; where though I may seem to pass my time somewhat obscurely, a life, my case considered, fittest for me’.35 Despite the expedition having proved to be a failure, as well as a huge drain on his resources, his enthusiasm for Ireland had not wavered. Had the Queen concurred with his request that he remain in Ulster as a private individual, then Walter would presumably have sent for his wife and children to join him. He may have been content to live thus, but it is highly unlikely that Lettice would have shared his feelings. His reasons for wishing to remain in Ireland are likely to have been motivated by several factors. Although the Queen and those at home could see that he was getting nowhere, Walter himself was still eager to achieve success – after all, there was his sense of pride to consider, and the thought of returning home after a failed campaign was a humiliating one. He had also become fond of the country in which he had spent the past year, and liked the control that he had been given. If Ulster could be colonized, he perhaps perceived more power and a better future for himself there. Walter held no position in England at Elizabeth’s court, and with men such as Leicester and Burghley at the forefront of affairs, it was unlikely that he would ever gain any influence with the Queen. Ireland, then, provided him with the best possible opportunity for prestige and control – it was a chance that Walter was determined to grasp with both hands.
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