In popular history Douglas get barely a mention. She might as well be invisible. Douglas’ son Robert, the illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, would claim that his mother was secretly married to his father in May 1603 – Elizabeth I being safely dead. The case was heard in 1605 in the Court of the Star Chamber. Unfortunately all the witnesses were dead and she couldn’t remember the name of the cleric who married them. Douglas made a deposition to the effect that they had been married until Leicester tired of her and turned his attentions to Lettice Knollys. But who was Douglas?
Her father was William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, making her a cousin of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. He brother She attended court during the first year of Elizabeth’s reign and then married John Sheffield. He died in December 1568. Inevitably accusations of poison were made. In any event Douglas returned to court as a gentlewoman of the privy chamber – Elizabeth liked to have her mother’s family around her.
By May 1573 she was in deep competition with her own sister Frances for the attention of Robert Dudley. Gilbert Talbot wrote about the pursuit and the falling out between the two sisters:
“There are two sisters now in the court that are very far in love with him, as they have long been; my Lady Sheffield and Frances Howard. They (of like striving who shall love him better) are at great wars together and the queen thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him”
By then Leicester knew that he was unlikely to succeed in his attempt to win Elizabeth’s hand. During their relationship Leicester wrote a long letter explaining how much he cared for Douglas but that if he married her that he would be ruined. He actually urges her to marry one of her other suitors to ensure her respectability. In August 1574 Douglas gave birth to her son Robert. Leicester referred to him as his “base son” but cared for the boy taking him into his own care.
Leicester married Lettice in 1578. The following year on 29th November 1579 Douglas married Sir Edward Stafford of Grafton in Staffordshire- an unusual act for a woman who later claimed to be already married. According to one source she became a bigamist in order to put a stop to Leicester’s threats to have her poisoned! Stafford became ambassador to the French court and the pair lived in Paris from 1583 where Douglas became a friend of Catherine de Medici. Douglas was sent home in 1588 due to the deteriorating political situation. Stafford was not a fan of the Earl of Leicester.
Sir Edward Stafford died in 1605 having told the Star Court that he married Douglas having ascertained beforehand that she was not married to Leicester on the explicit orders of Elizabeth I. Douglas died in 1608. She bore Stafford two sons but they died young.
By the 10 Nov 1558 it was clear that Elizabeth would be queen and when a week later her sister Mary died, Elizabeth became the first English monarch to bear that name. The following day the Great Seal was surrendered into her hands and she made Robert Dudley her master of horse which meant that he was the only man in the kingdom legally allowed to lay hands on her for the purposes of helping her on and off her horse. Now, an unmarried queen was an asset in diplomatic terms but fears for the nation and the queen’s health were compounded by the fact that Elizabeth had known “Sweet Robin” Dudley since she was a child and rather like a child allowed out of school for the summer Elizabeth rather enjoyed the freedom that being queen now gave her. It wasn’t long before there was speculation about Elizabeth and her Master of Horse. It wasn’t much longer until there were rumours that Elizabeth was pregnant or had even had a child by Dudley. Nicholas Throckmorton the English Ambassador in Paris wrote home expressing the view that these rumours needed to be scotched.
The 5th earl carried the Coronation sword at Richard III’s coronation but grew up in Henry VII’s court as part of the group of young men who were schooled alongside Princes Arthur and Henry. In the first instance it helped remind the 4th earl where his loyalties lay and in the second place it kept the Percy power base under control. He was at Arthur’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon and was part of the train that took Princess Margaret to Scotland to be married to James IV. He had a reputation for being magnificently dressed and travelling in the manner befitting an earl. As such it would be easy to assume that he had royal favour but it is clear that becoming warden of the border marches was something of an issue once he attained his majority. Nor for that matter did he acquire any important national roles. The stumbling block would appear to be the “ravishment” of Elizabeth Hastings – which sounds unpleasant. In reality Elizabeth was the daughter of Sir John Hastings of Yorkshire. She was a ward of the Crown and Percy had arranged her marriage. The language of ravishment and abduction is the language of property being removed from Henry VII’s grasping fingers rather than an account depicting the earl’s predatory nature. Initially he was fined £10,000 but this was later reduced by half. Part of the problem for Percy was that the Tudors had learned important lessons about over mighty subjects. Consequentially Henry VII took a dim view of anyone standing on his prerogatives and he didn’t trust the Percy clan in any event because of their landholding and wealth – not to mention prior form. It was Henry VIII who cancelled the debt once he became king. The question is was Percy unsuited for power or did Henry VII use the case of Elizabeth Hastings to financially kneecap a man known for his lavish lifestyle?
The 7th earl was Thomas’s oldest son, also called Tomas – a pleasant change from all those Henrys. To all intents and purposes his father’s death as a traitor should have debarred him from the earldom but when he came of age in 1549 he was restored to some of his lands and his loyalty to Mary Tudor in 1557 saw him restored to the earldom. The Percys had never stopped being Catholic. Unfortunately it all went to his head – quite literally- as he took part in the Northern Rising of 1569. I have posted about the 7th earl before. If you would like to read more 
Today’s post is about the family of one of the most notorious women in English History. Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset pleaded guilty in 1616 to murdering Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613 whilst he was a prisoner in The Tower.
So who was Frances Howard? She was born on the 31 May 1590. She was the grand daughter of the 4th Duke of Norfolk by his second wife, Margaret Audley – it was how that grand mansion Audley End came into the hands of the Howard family. The fourth duke, Thomas Howard, was the man who aspired to marry Mary Queen of Scots in 1569 then managed to get himself caught up in the Ridolfi Plot of 1571. He was executed in 1572. As a traitor his lands and title were forfeit to the State but by that time the Tudors had become rather adept at removing wealth with one hand and returning it with the other in order to ensure that there weren’t too many grievances to be aired by rebellious subjects. The fact that the Howards were Elizabeth’s cousins should also be added to the scales.
As it happens Audley End was not part of Elizabeth’s haul of booty when the 4th duke got the chop. The estates there and around Saffron Waldon were part of Margaret Audley’s dowry so when she died they had passed straight into the hands of her eldest son Thomas Howard (born 1561), who was Frances Howard’s father.
Anne was born in about 1560 to 1653 – she was a girl remember- to a Yorkshire family. When she was somewhere between eighteen and twenty, she became one of Elizabeth I’s ladies-in-waiting. Her links with the Kynvet family through her mother were probably what landed her a plum job at court. Her sister would also serve the queen and cause almost as much scandal as Anne.
Now, I know this isn’t necessarily going to be popular but Sir Francis Drake is one of my heroes. He has been since I was a child and I’m not about to change tack now. The problem with the global circumnavigator (the Golden Hind is smaller than some modern bath tubs) is that he was also a privateer – or put another way a pirate licensed by the queen for a spot of pirating which is apparently quite different from being a lawless thug who deserves to be strung up.
David Cecil, William’s grandfather had turned up at Bosworth on the victorious side. he went on to become one of Henry VII’s newly formed yeomen of the guard. His son meanwhile settled down to the business of being a Lincolnshire gentleman with court connections.
Mary’s arrival was not good news so far as her cousin Elizabeth was concerned. Mary spelled trouble. For a start she was Catholic and Mary’s father-in-law, Henri II, had quartered the French arms with those of England on hearing the news that Mary Tudor had died. His logic was very simple. Elizabeth was illegitimate and therefore the next claimant to the English throne was the grand daughter of Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII of England. Mary did not help matters by refusing to recognise the Treaty of Edinburgh which identified Elizabeth as the rightful queen of England. The treaty, negotiated by Cecil, should have been ratified in July 1560 and it accounted for Mary’s long sea voyage to Scotland rather than a land journey through England. The arrival of Mary in England undoubtedly signposted rebellion and plotting to come – not to mention some light cousinly jealousy.
On the West March a plan was now unfurling which would have seen the Bishop of Carlisle murdered and the castle in rebel hands. Lord Scrope, Warden of the West March, who had set out from Carlisle to confront the rebels heard news of the plot and scurried back to the castle correctly judging that Elizabeth’s famous temper would not have been placated by excuses regarding the loss of a key border fortress. Meanwhile the queen’s cousin, some would say brother, Henry Carey Lord Hunsdon, was sent north to deal with the crisis. He had been made the Captain of Berwick the previous year.
When we think of Elizabethan miniatures we tend to think of the wonderfully Hilliard portraits with their stunning azure backgrounds. However before Hilliard there was a professional female artist who created some equally evocative images. The image at the start of this post shows a young Elizabeth Tudor and is the work of Levina Teerlinc.
This image of Mary Dudley, Lady Sidney is painted in water-colour in vellum but rather than being mounted on ivory or precious metal the image is stiffened by playing cards.
Sir William Brooke (1565-1597) was the son of William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham Warden of the Kent Cinque Ports (1527 to 1597) pictured at the start of this post. He was of a similar vintage to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and Elizabeth’s replacement for Dudley in the royal favourite stakes after his death in 1588. Like other Elizabethan gentlemen he did a stint in the continental religious wars being knighted by Essex in 1591 at Dieppe. He was, in short, one of the new breed of men in Elizabeth’s court.
It is perhaps not surprising that Lucas found himself at the wrong end of an arrest warrant, William Brooke’s father the 10th Lord Cobham (who had died on March 6 1597) was a man with clout. Brooke’s sister Elizabeth was the wife of Sir Robert Cecil – the most important man in the kingdom. She had also died at the beginning of 1597 but there were still family and political ties that were wielded by the new Lord Cobham – Henry Brooke – pictured left. He had been invested as Warden of the Cinque Ports on the same month that his father died.