Noble Blood - Lettice Knollys and her Pride

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

When Queen Elizabth I's favorite, Robert Dudley, got married without her permission, nothing would protect the new couple from the Queen's wrath. But Lettice met the prospect of her exile from court with her head held high. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Noble Blood merch — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Queen Elizabeth I first had spent the summer traveling across the country, visiting manners in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. Now, at the end of September, she was making one more stop, Wandsdead Hall, the home of Elizabeth's favorite, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Lester. Now, if you know one thing about Queen Elizabeth I, it was probably that she was the Queen of England. But if you know a second thing about Queen Elizabeth, it's her reputation as a virgin queen. Much to the chagrin of many of her advisors and nobles of the kingdom, Elizabeth never married and never gave birth to an heir that would carry on the Tudor dynasty. Given the context, I think her reasoning is pretty easy to understand. Her father, King Henry VIII, didn't make the concept of marriage very appealing for a woman.

His first wife was cast aside. His second, Elizabeth's mother, was beheaded. A third, died of her. A third, died of her. in childbirth, his fourth, cast aside again, his fifth beheaded, and the sixth managed to be okay, mostly because Henry died before he could do anything terrible to her. Elizabeth knew that marriage would fundamentally undermine her power, automatically making her subservience to her husband in the eyes of the court and the world. And a marriage would diminish the power she wielded by suggesting that she might be willing to marry someone for diplomatic reasons and or might be willing to make someone her heir. And that's all to say nothing of the physical danger she would have been in

had she carried and delivered a child. But just because Elizabeth never got married didn't mean she didn't enjoy male attention and romantic, if not physical, companionship. She did, particularly from Robert Dudley. who almost from the moment of Elizabeth's ascension as queen, was considered a royal favorite. Dudley would spend years trying to get Elizabeth to marry him. If you're a longtime listener of the show,

you might remember an earlier episode we did on the mysterious death of a woman named Amy Robsart who fell down a staircase and broke her neck. That was Dudley's first wife, and so while in theory he was single again and eligible to marry the queen, his wife's death was so mysterious and scandalous that it cast the type of PR Paul that would have made a match between Dudley and Elizabeth, a non-starter.

But still, he was highly esteemed in court, spending plenty of time with and flirting with Elizabeth. When the queen arrived that September day to, Dudley's home, she wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary. A feast, of course, and time with her favorite, who, though she wouldn't marry him, she was still jealously protective of. The feast that night had another esteemed guest, Elizabeth's cousin, Lettice Knowles. It wasn't out of the ordinary for another courtly lady to be around, so I imagine at the time Elizabeth didn't give it too much thought. She didn't know.

know that Dudley and Latisse had a secret that would upend both of their lives. Just two days earlier, without the queen's permission, Dudley and Latice had been secretly married. And so they sat down with her to dinner, knowing that the moment Elizabeth found out, nothing would contain her wrath. I'm Danish sports, and this is Noble Blood. It always struck me as a little hollow and anachronistic to call Elizabeth the first a feminist. Absolutely, she was a powerful woman in an incredibly patriarchal society who brilliantly played her hand and held down to her power in a way that most others would not have been able to. And so I absolutely understand the compulsion to point to her as a feminist symbol. But there's a distinction between a symbol and an individual, just as there's a distinction between a woman who gets to be powerful and a woman advocating for the structural advancement of women.

As an individual, Elizabeth was really only the former. Even when it came to family, it's hard to call her a girl's girl. She famously imprisoned and beheaded her cousin, Mary Queen of Scott. and imprisoned another cousin, Lady Catherine Gray in the Tower of London, for daring to get married without her permission. In Elizabeth's defense, both of those women had claims to the throne of England. Elizabeth's wrath in those cases wasn't vindictive, maybe a little, but it was mostly political. That is not the case with Lettice Knowles.

Latice was no political threat to Elizabeth at all. all, but still in the end, Elizabeth would grant her no mercy. Letise Nols was also Elizabeth's cousin. Obviously, we know Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Latisse was the granddaughter of Mary Bolin, aka the other Bolin girl. Letis's grandfather was Mary Bolin's husband, William Carey, but because Mary had had a physical relationship with King Henry the 8th, some more gossipy histories suggest the possibility that Letis was also descended from Henry, which would make Lettice and Elizabeth even more closely related,

although I'm not quite sure what the name for that sort of cousin would be. It might be about now when you're wondering if it's just you or Lettice's name sounds suspiciously close to Lettis. Was there a Rapunzel situation happening with her parents, you might ask? The answer is, no, it's far more ordinary. Latisse was simply a shortened form for the Latin word for happiness, Letitia. Latice was born on November 6, 1543. It's a rare treat to know the actual day, and we know it because her father kept a Latin diary wrapped in calf binding,

and in it he recorded Lettice's birth and the birth of his 13 other children. Sometime, likely in Latice's late teenage years, around 1561 or 62, she married the nobleman Walter Devereaux, who would eventually become the Earl of Essex. But even early on, the rumors about Latee and Robert Dudley were circulating around court. A Spanish ambassador observed in 1565 that Robert Dudley was flirting with Lettice at court to make Elizabeth jealous. If you were trying to make the queen jealous, Latisse would be a good choice to do that with. Not only was she regarded as one of the best-looking women at court, but she also had red hair and didn't look dissimilar from Elizabeth I. Aside from, you know, being a decade younger.

But we also shouldn't give the ambassador's gossip too much weight, given that at the time that he was writing, Lettice was massively pregnant with her husband's child. Still, even that probably didn't stop Dudley from flirting. The gossip about a possible affair between Dudley and Lettice only really began in earnest almost a decade later, when Latice's husband was over in Ireland, after he put together a proposal for a plantation in Ulster.

He, Devereaux, wouldn't return for a few years, and the rumors swirled in that time he was away, rumors that Lettice had two children with her lover, Robert Dudley. There is no actual historical evidence that these children ever existed, and now feels like a good time to mention that a lot of anti-Duddly sentiment comes from a pre-executive. comes from a pro-Catholic book called Lester's Commonwealth that was written in the 1580s, which makes all sorts of wild accusations against Dudley, a man who happened to support

Elizabeth I's Protestant agenda. So, it's possible that Lettice found comfort in the arms of Robert Dudley, Earl of Lester, while her husband, Devereaux, was away, but it's equally likely, in my opinion, that she was just bopping around various castles in England, and later pro-Catholic sources were looking to come up with whatever dirt against Dudley they could. Devereaux returned to England and then went back to Ireland, and on September 22, 1576, he died of dysentery during an epidemic in Dublin. Of course, you can imagine what Lester's Commonwealth had to say about that,

In case you can't imagine, it's that Littice and Robert Dudley murdered her husband, possibly because he was already planning on taking furious revenge on Dudley for fathering a child with his wife. And of course, this murder would be no big deal for Robert Dudley, who, if you'll recall Amy Robesart and her tragic fall down the stairs, had obviously already killed his own first spouse. It's the type of story that's good if you're a Catholic who wants to present a key Protestant figure as the embodiment of evil, but there was an official investigation concluding that Devereaux died of natural causes.

One piece of evidence, though, that Devereaux and Lettis might have been estranged by this point is that he barely referred to his wife in his will. In fact, Latice would be forced to spend time writing letters to try to get her meager jointure increased, even threatening to sue out a writ of dower if it wasn't increased, which thankfully it was. Letis observed the customary two-year mourning period until September 21st, 1578, almost two years to the day exactly when her husband died, when the 34-year-old widow married Robert Dudley at a private country house in Wonstead before a notary.

One witness noted that she wore a loose gown, which some take as a hint that there might have been a growing reason that the wedding needed to take place sooner rather than later. That theory gets a little more credence by the fact that there was a larger second wedding later at another estate. At this point, for Dudley, it has been a little bit of a dudley, had been more than 10 years since his first wife, Amy, died. Though he had tried his best to get Elizabeth to marry him in the time since, even he must have realized that it was just never going

to happen. It certainly seems like he and Latisse were genuinely in love, but if Dudley were still holding a candle for the queen, there's something to be said for his choice of marrying her cousin who bore her a famous resemblance. Obviously, both Latice and Dudley knew that Elizabeth would not be happy about the marriage. There was a reason they didn't ask her for her royal consent. Elizabeth wasn't going to marry Dudley, but she definitely wouldn't want Latice to marry him. For Latice's part, she kept a very low profile in the early days of their marriage. She's very demure, very mindful, continuing to use the title,

Countess of Essex, from her first husband, and still living with her father. That winter for New Year's, Elizabeth Dudley and Lettice were still on good terms. Lettice was received at court and gave the queen a chain of amber with gold and pearl. Dudley gifted Elizabeth tons of jewels, including buttons with his family crest and lover's knots. But the couple would only be able to keep their secret for so long. Robert Dudley's many enemies began spreading the word of the secret wedding, and even Mary Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned but not yet executed at this point, knew about the scandalous marriage.

It was only a matter of time before the couple would face Elizabeth's wrath. Elizabeth at this time was doing her classic mood, of considering that she might marry someone for diplomatic reasons. And in the summer of 1579, the maybe-would-be groom was the Duke of Anjou. The French ambassador was facing an uphill battle trying to arrange the match. It was extremely unpopular, and the queen's favorite, Dudley, opposed it. The ambassador, in a peak of stubbornness, told the queen that Dudley, had, quote, no right to prevent this marriage or even try, given that he had married your

kinswoman secretly. That's all there was to it. Elizabeth was furious. Her first instinct was to want to send Robert Dudley and Lettice Knowles to the Tower of London. Thankfully, her courtiers talked her out of that, but Elizabeth's anger wasn't going anywhere. According to one story, Elizabeth smacked Lites on the ear and shouted at her, as but one sun lighted the earth, there would be but one queen in England. And even more infuriating, Latisse wouldn't back down or apologize.

She had made a love match and she was proud of her husband. However she might have felt about losing her friendship with her cousin, outwardly Lates would never show remorse. Her love for Dudley was worth whatever. it had cost, and she would keep her head held high. The Spanish ambassador wrote of Latisse, Yet still she is as proud as ever, rides through Cheapside drawn by four milk-white steeds, with four footmen in black velvet jackets, and silver bears, the symbol of the Dudley family, on their backs and breasts, two knights and 30 gentlemen before her, and coaches of gentle women,

pages and servant behind it, so that it might be supposed to be the queen or some foreign prince or ambassador. In other words, Lettisa's behavior was delightfully brazen, and if there was ever a chance that Elizabeth might have forgiven her, Lettisa's complete lack of remorse made that chance disappear. It seemed she no longer cared whether she incurred the queen's displeasure. Dudley, on the other hand, very much did care. He didn't really regret his marriage to Latisse. It seemed like they were in love. He wanted marriage and an heir.

And as he wrote in a letter to a colleague, quote, I have lost both youth and liberty and all my fortune reposed in Elizabeth. Elizabeth had taken and taken and she was never going to marry him. What was Dudley supposed to do? Still, Lettice left London for the countryside, and though Dudley was originally banished from court too, Elizabeth pretty quickly forgave him and enjoyed him back at court where she could pretend he wasn't married.

Although there were new spikes in Elizabeth's fury when Dudley and Lettice began actually living together a few years later. Elizabeth's anger at Latice never abated. When Dudley tried to get one of Lettice's daughters from her first marriage wed to James I, Elizabeth shot the suggestion down and said she would never allow James to marry, quote, The Daughter of such a she-wolf. But soon, Elizabeth's displeasure would be eclipsed by an even greater challenge in the lives of Lettice and Dudley. In 1884, their three-year-old son died, To say it was a tragic loss would be an understatement. At this point, Latisse was 44 years old,

and so the death of their son marked the end of Dudley's hopes for continuing his family line. Even still, Elizabeth was said to be upset when Dudley went to comfort his wife in their grief, and Elizabeth was made even more upset by the fact that Latice accompanied her husband on vacation the following year, And there were rumors that Latees was going to accompany Dudley to the Netherlands where he was Governor General with, quote, such a train of ladies as her majesty had none. I mean, who did she think she was? Robert Dudley died in 1588, just a few years later, possibly of malaria. He provided for Latisse generously, 3,000 pounds a year and 6,000 pounds of additional furniture and valuable home goods, which should have made her a very wealthy widow, except Dudley also left her the burden of massive debts,

and he had an illegitimate child from before their marriage that was trying to weasel his way into claiming legitimacy and the inheritance. In order to settle Dudley's estates, Lettice sold off Lesterhouse, actually sold it to her son from her first marriage, Robert Devereaux. Incidentally, it was around this time that Littice's son, Robert, who was now the Earl of Essex, was becoming a court favorite with Elizabeth. I'm going to call him Essex,

because that's usually how he's referred to, and there are a lot of Roberts in this story. he, Essex, actually took Dudley's position as master of the horse, and after Dudley's death, he got control of Dudley's royal monopoly on sweet wines, which provided him a nice income. It seemed that Elizabeth did not hold a grudge against Lettice's son, even while Lettice herself was never forgiven for the crime of marrying Elizabeth's favorite. This could be the end of Lettice's story, with her husband, the queen's favorite, dead, but her still banished from court and never to be forgiven. But Latisse has such a strange and tragic third act that if you'll indulge me, the story just must continue.

Fairly quickly after Dudley's death, Latice married for a third time, this time to a man 12 years younger, a soldier named Sir Christopher Blunt. Throughout all of this, Elizabeth's grudge against Lettice continued. As I mentioned, Lettice's oldest son from her first marriage had actually established himself quite well in court, and he tried to get his mother and Elizabeth back on good terms. He arranged a meeting, and though Elizabeth largely ignored Lettice, she did allow her to kiss her hand, which wasn't nothing. Although it wasn't all uphill progress. In 1599, Latice's son, Essex would be briefly imprisoned in house arrest after a disastrous stint in London, and Latice tried to advocate for her son's release by sending Elizabeth a gown.

that cost 100 pounds. Elizabeth rejected the gown, and this time would not even permit Lathis to kiss her hand. If you're wondering why Essex was imprisoned, the short version is Essex was Lord Lieutenant in Ireland and without the Crown's permission made a humiliatingly bad truce with the leader of the Irish chieftains

and came back home in a move that was pretty universally characterized as desertion. The house arrest was eventually lifted, but Essex didn't get back the sweet wine monopoly that he held previously. All of this set off a chain of events in which Essex was left bitter and angry at Elizabeth I and her government, and in a desperate fit of self-aggrandizement, he made a truly terrible decision. Essex and a group of followers, including Lettice's new husband, Christopher Blunt, decided that they were going to march through the city and force an audience with the queen and demand that she change her government. Essex thought he could rally the people behind

him. In short, he could not. And fairly quickly, the group were treated back to Essex House where they surrendered. Two weeks later, Essex was convicted of treason. Both he and Sir Christopher Blunt, Lettice's son and her husband would be beheaded at the Tower of London. Ironically, it had been Essex who had appointed the very executioner who would take his head. The executioner had been convicted of rape, but Essex had kept him from the death penalty on the condition he become an executioner. Unfortunately, it did not seem like he was very good at the job, given that it took three strokes to remove Essex's head.

Lettice was left in a terrible and precarious position. Not only were her son and husband just convicted of treason and executed, but that husband had also left her pretty much broke before that by spending all of her money. Thankfully, Latice would have one major stroke of luck, a new regime. Elizabeth I died, and the new king, James VI, did not hold. the same grudges as his kinswoman did. Helpfully, too, one of Lettese's daughters, from her first marriage, was in favor with James's wife, Anne of Denmark. James wiped out the remains of Dudley's debts and restored the Essex lands to Lettice. And though she would still have to fight against Dudley's

illegitimate son, she was able to do so successfully, and eventually there was a formal ruling in her favor. Letise Knowles lived 15 more years, dying at the age of 91 on Christmas Day, the, quote, last survivor of the great Elizabethans. She requested that she be buried with her second husband, Robert Dudley, the queen's favorite, and hers. That's the story of Lettice Knowles, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about some more of the instance. sane rumors that swirled around her love life. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wadam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come. Look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you. Which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah. It would not be.

Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Plenty of scandalous rumors surrounded Littice Knowles and Robert Dudley, and plenty of them, especially with regards to Dudley, were politically motivated. whether by his Catholic enemies or by people who were jealous of his power over Elizabeth in court. Obviously, we've already talked about the suspicious death of Dudley's first wife, Amy Robsart, and then the death of Lettice's first husband, which caused its own slew of rumors that Latice and Dudley had conspired to murder him so that they could be together.

But there were even accusations Lettice killed her second husband, too. During the restoration, there would be a horror story written about how Dudley planned on killing Lettice because she was having an affair, but she managed to kill him first. But the story of Dudley and Lettice working together to kill Latice's first husband, Devereaux, is the most famous of the would-be scandals involving Lettice. The rumors were so well known at the time and in the decades following that some have speculated, that William Shakespeare was actually inspired by them, that he heard a story about a man, killing a woman's husband and then marrying her, and then the adult son from that first marriage,

making his way at court while dealing with that, and decided to write a play called Hamlet. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio, and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Menke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Shr, sports, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Julia Melani, and Armand Kasam. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and Rima I.mahili, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall

and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.