by Tracy Borman
The ambassador described Lettice as one of the best-looking women of the court, and contemporary portraits of her prove that he was not exaggerating. Like her great-aunt Anne Boleyn, she had seductive dark eyes and a bewitching charm that beguiled many of the male courtiers. Her auburn hair, smooth, pale skin, and pouting lips marked her as one of the most attractive ladies of her age, and like the Queen she had great physical vigor. Although de Silva described her as being a close favorite of Elizabeth, his comment was wide of the mark. Lettice had neither the personal attributes nor the desire to become an intimate of her royal mistress. Having inherited a good deal of the Boleyn arrogance, she viewed Elizabeth more as a cousin than queen and refused to show her the deference that was required of her ladies. Like Elizabeth, Lettice was vain, demanding, and possessive, and the two women would probably have clashed even if it had not been for the scandal that erupted over Lady Knollys’s affair with the Earl of Leicester. For her part, although she had been fond of Lettice on account of her being the daughter of two of her most faithful servants, Elizabeth soon came to resent her. Jealous of her youth and beauty and affronted by her arrogance, she found her an irksome presence at court. Little wonder that when she heard of Lettice’s flirtation with Sir Robert Dudley in 1565, she flew into a rage and upbraided her favorite for disloyalty. He duly abandoned the flirtation, but not for long.
As in the case of his relationship with Douglas Sheffield, exactly when Dudley began an affair with Lettice Knollys is not certain. Although both parties would later insist that it was after she was widowed, rumor said otherwise. Her marriage to the Earl of Essex had brought forth many children, but on a personal level the couple had been ill matched, and Lettice was thought to be relieved when her husband went to serve in Ireland in 1573, remaining there for more than two years. It was probably during this time that the long-standing flirtation between Lettice and Leicester deepened into a full-blown affair. Leicester sent her a gift of deer from Kenilworth Castle in 1573, and invited her and her sister Anne to hunt there the following year. By 1575, Lettice had become such a regular fixture at Kenilworth that she was invited to the entertainments held there in the Queen’s honor in the summer of 1575. It is possible that while Leicester tried to court Elizabeth, he was also secretly bedding his new mistress.
By the time of Essex’s return in November 1575, the affair was “publicly talked of in the streets.”20 The rumors reached such proportions that it was claimed Lettice had already borne her lover two children, including her son, Robert, who would later become the second Earl of Essex and the Queen’s great favorite.21 Before long, Essex himself had heard the whispers, and his antagonism toward Leicester, whom he had never liked, intensified into “great enmity.” He chose not to confront the matter, however, and returned to Ireland in high dudgeon the following year. When he died shortly afterward, it was rumored—yet again—that Leicester had poisoned him, although the cause of death was more likely to have been dysentery.
Essex had died embittered against his wife and lamenting “the frailty of women.”22 He ordered that his children be transferred to the guardianship of the Earl of Huntingdon, a relation of his, rather than be corrupted by their mother. He took further revenge upon his wife by leaving her almost destitute, for she was obliged to take over the management of his estates, which were heavily in debt. An attempt to secure some maintenance from her royal mistress failed miserably: Elizabeth was loath to come to the assistance of a woman who had shown her neither loyalty nor respect.
The Earl of Essex’s death made little difference to Leicester. Although he was greatly enamored of his beautiful widow, he had no intention of marrying her and seemed content to let the affair take its course. Besides, he was probably already espoused to Douglas Sheffield and found the prospect of bigamy distasteful—even though he put such delicacy aside when seeking the Queen’s hand in marriage. But if he thought Lettice would be content to continue as a mere mistress, he was gravely mistaken. As one recent historian has observed, she was “a woman of infinitely stronger character than the lightweight Lady Douglas.”23 Ambitious and still strikingly attractive, Lettice had no intention of wasting her assets by continuing to play the part of a sordid secret, when she could have any man she wanted. Moreover, she needed to find a way out of the financial predicament in which her late husband had left her. Although it would have been an arguably easier—and safer—strategy to fix her attentions on one of her many other admirers at court, she was still strongly attracted to Leicester, and the fact that he was the Queen’s favorite no doubt added extra spice to their liaison. She therefore began a concerted campaign to marry him.
Lettice’s strategy was altogether more effective than that of her rival, Douglas. Rather than using tearful pleas and tantrums to bring her lover to heel, she resorted to the time-honored trick of falling pregnant. Knowing that Leicester was desperate for a legitimate heir and tired of the woman whom he may or may not have married some five years before, she made sure that she represented an irresistible alternative. Upon learning of her condition, Leicester seems to have capitulated without a struggle, and according to some accounts, he married her in a secret ceremony at Kenilworth some time in the spring of 1578.24 But Lettice was still not satisfied. As yet, she was in no better a position than Douglas, whom Leicester may also have married in secret. Her new husband could now choose between his two wives or deny them both, as his pleasure dictated. She therefore demanded that he break all ties with Douglas, which he duly did at Greenwich a short while later.
Although she was now Leicester’s sole wife—in his eyes, if not in those of the law—Lettice was determined to make sure that she would not be spurned in the same way as Douglas and therefore forced Leicester to agree to a formal wedding ceremony, complete with witnesses. As Holles later observed, Lettice had “served him [Leicester] in his owne kinde every way.” Realizing that in his new wife he had met his match, Leicester acceded to her wish and arranged for another ceremony to take place in September at his house in Wanstead, Essex. Both he and Lettice had accompanied the Queen on her progress to the east of England that summer, and Wanstead had been assigned as one of the last stopping-off places before the court returned to London. Three days before Elizabeth and her entourage were due to arrive there, Leicester secured a temporary leave of absence, ostensibly to prepare his home for the royal visit.
Accompanied by his friend, Lord North, he rode ahead to Wanstead on September 20. He immediately sought out his chaplain there, Humphrey Tyndall, and confided “that he had a good seazon forborne marriadge in respect of her Majesties displeasure and that he was then for sondry respectes and especially for the better quieting of his own conscience determined to marry the right honourable Countesse of Essex.”25 The arrangements were duly put in place, and the witnesses assembled. They included the bride’s father, Sir Francis Knollys, who, being “acquainted with Leicester’s straying loves,” was determined to insure that the wedding would be legal and binding.26 The ceremony took place early the following morning in a small gallery of the house and was attended by a handful of witnesses, including Lettice’s brother, who stood by the door to keep lookout. The bride was said to have worn “a loose gown,” which was a coded reference to her pregnant state.27 Just two days later, the Queen arrived and a magnificent banquet was staged in her honor. In the festivities that followed, during which her favorite was as attentive as ever, nobody would have guessed that he had just committed what his royal mistress would view as the ultimate betrayal.
For a time, it seemed that Leicester would be able to hush up this marriage in the same way as he had the one before. Although he had given in to Lettice’s demands for a second, formal ceremony, he had done so on condition that it must remain a secret, because “it might not be publiquely knowne without great damage of his estate.” His new wife continued to attend the court, and at the Christmas celebrations that year, she presented the Queen with “a greate cheyne of Amber slightly garnishead with golde and sm
all perle.”28 If she had been pregnant at the time of her marriage, then she either miscarried the baby or it was delivered stillborn, for there is no further reference to it.
But it was almost inevitable that the secret would soon come out. The Earl of Sussex had heard of it as early as November 1578 and took great pleasure in informing the French ambassador, eager to discredit his principal rival at court. Remarkably, according to some accounts, it took as long as a year for the Queen herself to find out. The most commonly cited source is her biographer, William Camden, who claimed that it was the Duke of Anjou’s agent, Jean de Simier, who revealed the truth to her.29 The result was explosive. When Elizabeth learned that her despised cousin, Lettice, had stolen her own great favorite, it was too much to bear. Incandescent with rage, she cried that she would send Leicester to “rot in the Tower.”30 When Lettice appeared at court, she lashed out at her, boxing her ears and screaming that “as but one sun lightened the earth, she would have but one Queen in England.”31 She then banished this “flouting wench” from her presence, vowing never to set eyes on her again. At the same time, she resumed her courtship with the Duke of Anjou with far greater enthusiasm than she had before, which may have been Simier’s strategy from the beginning.
Any chance that the Queen might soon forgive her favorite and his new wife was destroyed when she discovered that not only had he married Lettice in secret but he might already have been espoused to Douglas Sheffield. Determined to wreak her revenge, she at once ordered an inquiry to determine whether Leicester was a bigamist. The Earl of Sussex was dispatched to interrogate Douglas. Although she had been presented with an ideal opportunity for revenge, Douglas was clearly terrified of the consequences if she admitted how shamefully she had betrayed her former royal mistress. She therefore tearfully insisted that she had “trusted the said Earl too much to have anything to shew to constrain him to marry her.”32 The Queen was irritated by Douglas’s refusal to implicate Leicester as a bigamist and made it clear that her former attendant was no longer welcome at court.33
Her royal mistress did perform a great service, though, by placing Douglas’s son by Leicester under her protection, assuring her “that shee would take great care of him.” This may have been more out of spite toward Lettice Knollys than favor toward Douglas, for the boy had been named by Leicester as his heir. The young Robert Dudley would grow up to be a credit to his father. He had inherited Leicester’s intelligence and athleticism, and became both an able scholar and a distinguished soldier and explorer. Ironically, had Leicester recognized the validity of his marriage to Douglas, he would have been provided with the legitimate heir he had so longed for.34
In the meantime, the woman for whom Leicester had rejected Douglas remained in disgrace with the Queen, who henceforth referred to her as “that she-wolf.” She had forgiven Leicester on the understanding that he would pretend that his marriage to Lettice had never happened and could not even bear to hear her name mentioned. However, she could not resist a sideswipe at her rival in a letter she wrote to Leicester a short while later, claiming: “Whosoever professeth to love you best taketh not more comfort of your welldoing or discomfort of your evildoing than ourself.”35
For her part, Lettice was apparently content to live away from court. In June 1581, she gave birth to a son, Denbigh, much to the delight of her husband. The couple doted on the boy, whom Leicester nicknamed “the noble Imp,” and he seemed to complete the domestic harmony they now enjoyed. By 1583, Leicester judged that the Queen had so forgotten the affair that he was now finally able to live with his wife on a permanent basis, rather than contenting himself with occasional visits. It was a serious miscalculation. Shortly after moving into Leicester House, he learned that Elizabeth was furious with him “abowt his maryage, for he opened up the same more playnly then ever before.”36 Soon afterward, he compounded matters by attempting to arrange a marriage between Lettice’s daughter, Dorothy Devereux, and James VI of Scotland. Elizabeth railed that she would not have James marrying “the daughter of such a she-wolf,” and threatened to destroy Leicester’s reputation for good. Undeterred, he and his wife subsequently schemed to marry their son, Denbigh, to Arbella Stuart, herself a potential claimant to the throne.
Arbella’s ambitious grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, was instrumental in this. From the moment of Arbella’s birth, she had resolved to make an advantageous match for her. In 1577 she had invited the Earl of Leicester to visit her on his way to take the waters at Buxton. The Queen had been fully aware of his plans and condoned them, unaware of Bess’s real intentions.37 Eager to promote the suit of her little granddaughter, Bess had made sure that she presented Arbella to the earl. In praising her virtues, she had planted the idea in his mind that the girl could be betrothed to his own “base son,” Robert. Leicester had been quick to appreciate the benefits of such a match. Like the countess, he saw it as a means to secure the throne for his dynasty when he had given up hope of marrying the Queen. By the time he left Chatsworth, a secret agreement had been made to further the match, and Leicester had agreed to persuade his royal mistress that Arbella would thereby have a stronger claim to the throne than Mary, Queen of Scots. Back in London, Elizabeth had no notion that any of this had passed and wrote a gracious letter to Bess thanking her for the hospitality she had shown to her favorite.38
Bess and Leicester subsequently abandoned their plans, which was probably due to the earl’s marriage to Lettice Knollys the following year. Lettice had not taken kindly to the idea of her new husband’s son by Douglas Sheffield being propelled to such greatness by an alliance with a lady of royal blood. She therefore persuaded Leicester to wait until they had sons of their own to offer the countess. When she gave birth to Denbigh in 1581, she and the earl immediately revived the scheme. Bess was only too happy to oblige: Leicester’s new son was even better than the first because his legitimacy was beyond question. She therefore began to arrange the finer details, including exchanging portraits of the children, young as they were, in order to put them in mind of such a match. By December 1582, the plan had been discovered. Bernardino de Mendoza informed Philip II: “I understand that Leicester is on the look out to marry his son to a grand-daughter of the countess of Shrewsbury, who is in the same house as the queen of Scots with her grandmother. The most learned lawyers consider that, failing the queen of Scots and her son, this young lady is the nearest heir to the throne.”39 When she heard of this, Elizabeth flew into a rage, provoked beyond measure by the thought that the relentlessly ambitious countess had flouted her professions of loyalty once more by plotting with the Queen’s own favorite.
Bess’s plans were brought to an end by the untimely death of the “noble Imp” at Wanstead in July 1584. Leicester was at the court in Nonsuch when news reached him that his beloved son had fallen dangerously ill, and he rushed straight to Wanstead, without taking leave of the Queen. When the little boy died shortly afterward, his parents were grief stricken. Denbigh had been Leicester’s precious heir, the boy upon whom all his hopes for the future of his dynasty rested. The inscription on his tomb described him as a child “of great parentage but far greater hope and towardness.” Given that Lettice was now in her midforties, and Leicester himself was suffering from increasingly poor health, there was little hope of another child.
Leicester stayed at Wanstead for several weeks “to comfort my sorrowfull wyfe.” He received letters of condolence from various members of the court, including his adversaries. There is no record of any such comfort from the Queen. Her bitterness against Lettice was still too strong for her to venture such hypocritical sentiments. Even though she had banned her from court, Elizabeth continued to be plagued by her cousin, who had no difficulty in making her presence felt from a distance. The slightest scrap of news about her would be enough to send the Queen into a fury, such as in the summer of 1585, when she heard that Leicester had taken his wife to Kenilworth for a holiday—the very place where he had proposed to his royal mistress a decade before. It wo
uld seem that Lettice had tired of living in the shadows, for she began to build up such a magnificent entourage that it rivalled Elizabeth’s own. “She now demeaned herself like a princess,” an anonymous courtier observed, and “vied in dress with the Queen.” The countess continued to parade her magnificence, which incensed her former royal mistress when she heard of it. “Yet still she is as proud as ever, rides through Cheapside drawn by 4 milk-white steeds, with 4 footmen in black velvet jackets, and silver bears on their backs and breasts, 2 knights and 30 gentlemen before her, and coaches of gentlewomen, pages, and servants behind, so that it might be supposed to be the Queen, or some foreign Prince or other,” exclaimed the same courtier in astonishment.40
Elizabeth’s fury upon hearing such reports was as nothing compared to her reaction to another rumor about Lettice that circulated at court the following year. In 1585 Leicester had been sent to the Netherlands to take command of Elizabeth’s forces there. The Queen had no doubt been privately satisfied at the thought that it would take him away from her despised rival, but the following February, she learned that Lettice was preparing to join him, “with suche a train of ladies and gentylwomen, and such ryche coches, lytters, and syde-saddles, as hir majestie had none suche, and that ther should be suche a courte of ladies, as shuld farre passe hir majesties court heare.” In fact, the rumor proved to be “most falce,” but it had done its work. “This informacyon … dyd not a lytle sturre hir majestie to extreme collour and dyslike,” reported Leicester’s agent at court, who described how the Queen had then declared “with great othes [oaths], that she would have no more courtes under hir obeisance but hir owen, and wold revoke you from thence with all spede.” The Earl of Warwick also wrote to warn his brother that “her malice is great and unquenchable,” and William Davison added that the rumors “did not a litle encrease the heat of her majesties offence against you.” Only after a great effort did Elizabeth’s ministers persuade her that the rumors were false, and at length it was reported that they “dyd greatlye pacifie hir.”41 But the “she-wolf” would never be forgiven.