September 24, 2024 • 27 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised Queen Elizabeth
the First had spent the summer traveling across the country,
visiting manors in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. Now at the
(00:21):
end of September she was making one more stop, Wanstead Hall,
the home of Elizabeth's favorite Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Now,
if you know one thing about Queen Elizabeth the First,
it was probably that she was the Queen of England.
But if you know a second thing about Queen Elizabeth,
(00:41):
it's her reputation as a virgin queen. Much to the
chagrin of many of her advisers 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,
(01:03):
King Henry the Eighth, 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 in childbirth,
his fourth cast aside again. His fifth beheaded, and the
sixth managed to be okay, mostly because Henry died before
(01:24):
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
(01:46):
someone for diplomatic reasons and or might be willing to
make someone her air. 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
(02:11):
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
are a longtime listener of the show, you might remember
an earlier episode we did on the mysterious death of
(02:32):
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
(02:53):
that would have made a match between Dudley and Elizabeth
a non starter. But still well, 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,
(03:14):
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 Letise Knowles.
It wasn't out of the ordinary for another courtly lady
to be around, so I imagine at the time Elizabeth
(03:36):
didn't give it too much thought. She didn't 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 Latisse had been secretly married, and so they
sat down with her to dinner, knowing that the moment
(04:00):
Elizabeth found out nothing would contain her wrath. I'm Danish
forts 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
(04:23):
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
(04:43):
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, and when it came to family,
it's hard to call her a girl's girl. She famously
(05:06):
imprisoned and beheaded her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, and
imprisoned another cousin, Lady Katherine 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,
(05:30):
but it was mostly political. That is not the case
with Latis Knowles. Latis was no political threat to Elizabeth
at all, but still in the end Elizabeth would grant
her no mercy. Latis Knowles was also Elizabeth's cousin. Obviously
we know Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry the eighth
(05:53):
and Anne Boleyn. Latis was the granddaughter of Mary Bolin
aka the other Bolin girl. Latis's grandfather was Mary Boln's husband,
William Carey, But because Mary had had a physical relationship
with King Henry the eighth, some more gossipy histories suggest
(06:14):
the possibility that Latis was also descended from Henry, which
would make Latis 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 Latis's name sounds
(06:34):
suspiciously close to Lettuce. Was there a Rapunzel situation happening
with her parents, you might ask. The answer is no,
it's far more ordinary. Latis was simply a shortened form
for the Latin word for happiness. Letitia Latis was born
on November sixth, fifteen forty three. It's a rare treat
(06:58):
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 Latisa's birth and the birth
of his thirteen other children. Sometime likely in Latisa's late
teenage years, around fifteen sixty one or sixty two, she
(07:20):
married the nobleman Walter Devereaux, who would eventually become the
Earl of Essex. But even early on, the rumors about
Latis and Robert Dudley were circulating around court. A Spanish
ambassador observed in fifteen sixty five that Robert Dudley was
(07:40):
flirting with Latis at court to make Elizabeth jealous. If
you were trying to make the Queen jealous, Latis 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
(08:03):
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 Latis 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 Latis only really
(08:27):
began in earnest, almost a decade later, when Latisa'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 Latis had two children with
(08:48):
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 Dudley's
sentiment comes from a pro Catholic book called Lester's Commonwealth
that was written in the fifteen eighties, which makes all
(09:10):
sorts of wild accusations against Dudley, a man who happened
to support Elizabeth the I's Protestant agenda. So it's possible
that Lettis found comfort in the arms of Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester while her husband Devereaux was away, but
it's equally likely, in my opinion that she was just
(09:32):
bopping around various castles in England, and later pro Catholic
sources were looking to come up with whatever dirts against
Dudley they could. Devereaux returned to England and then went
back to Ireland, and on September twenty second, fifteen seventy six,
he died of dysentery during an epidemic in Dublin. Of course,
(09:56):
you can imagine what Lester's Commonwealth had to say about that.
In case you can't imagine, it's that Letis 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
(10:17):
no big deal for Robert Dudley, who, if you'll recall
Amy Robsart 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.
(10:38):
But there was an official investigation concluding that Devereaux died
of natural causes. One piece of evidence, though, that Devereaux
and Latise might have been estranged by this point, is
that he barely referred to his wife in his will.
In fact, Latisse would be forced to spend time writing
(10:58):
letters to try 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. Latis observed the
customary two year morning period until September twenty first, fifteen
seventy eight, almost two years to the day exactly when
(11:22):
her husband died. When the thirty four year old widow
married Robert Dudley at a private country house in Wanstead
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
(11:44):
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 had been more than ten year years
since his first wife, Amy died, though he had tried
(12:04):
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
Latis 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
(12:26):
her a famous resemblance. Obviously, both Latis 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 Latis to marry him. For Latitsa's part, she kept
(12:49):
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 Latis were still on good terms. Latis was received
(13:11):
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 crust and lover's nods, but
the couple would only be able to keep their secret
for so long, Robert Dudley's many enemies began spreading the
(13:34):
word of the secret wedding, and even Mary, Queen of Scott,
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 move of considering
(13:56):
that she might marry someone for diplomatic reasons, and in
the summer of fifteen seventy nine, 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.
(14:20):
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
(14:42):
Latisan 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 Latis on the ear
and shouted at her, as but one son lighted the earth,
there would be but one one queen in England. And
even more infuriating, Latis wouldn't back down or apologize. She
(15:08):
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, Latisse 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 Latis, Yet still she is as proud
(15:32):
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 thirty gentlemen before her, and coaches of
gentle women, pages and servants behind it, so that it
(15:54):
might be supposed to be the queen or some foreign
prince or ambassador. In other words, Latisa's behavior was delightfully brazen,
and if there was ever a chance that Elizabeth might
have forgiven her Letisa's complete lack of remorse made that
chance disappear. It seemed she no longer cared whether she
(16:18):
incurred the Queen's displeasure. Dudley, on the other hand, very
much did care. He didn't really regret his marriage to Latise.
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,
(16:39):
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? Latis left London
for the countryside, and though Dudley was originally vanished from
court to Elizabeth pretty quickly forgave him and enjoyed him
(17:01):
back at court where she could pretend he wasn't married.
Although there were new spikes in Elizabeth's fury when Dudley
and Latis began actually living together a few years later,
Elizabeth's anger at Letisse never abated. When Dudley tried to
(17:22):
get one of Latis's daughters from her first marriage wed
to James the first 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
(17:43):
lives of Latis and Dudley. In fifteen eighty four, their
three year old son died. To say it was a
tragic loss would be an understatement. At this point, Latis
was forty four years old, and so the death of
their son marked the end of dudley hopes for continuing
his family line. Even still, Elizabeth was said to be
(18:06):
upset when Dudley went to comfort his wife in their grief,
and Elizabeth was made even more upset by the fact
that Latis accompanied her husband on vacation the following year,
and there were rumors that Latis was going to accompany
Dudley to the Netherlands, where he was Governor General, with
(18:26):
quote such a train of ladies as her majesty had none.
I mean, who did she think she was? Robert Dudley
died in fifteen eighty eight. Just a few years later,
possibly of malaria. He provided for Latis generously three thousand
pounds a year and six thousand pounds of additional furniture
(18:49):
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
(19:10):
Dudley's estates, Latis sold off Lesterhouse actually sold it to
her son from her first marriage, Robert Devereaux. Incidentally, it
was around this time that Latis'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
(19:34):
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
(19:55):
did not hold a grudge against Latis's son, even while
he's herself was never forgiven for the crime of marrying
Elizabeth's favorite. This could be the end of Latis's story
with her husband. The Queen's favorite dead, but her still
banished from court and never to be forgiven. But Letis
(20:19):
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, Latise married for a third time, this
time to a man twelve years younger, a soldier named
Sir Christopher Blunt. Throughout all of this, Elizabeth's grudge against
(20:43):
Latise continued. As I mentioned, Latis'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 Latise, she did allow her to kiss her hand,
(21:06):
which wasn't nothing, although it wasn't all uphill progress. In
fifteen ninety nine, Latisa's son, Essex, would be briefly imprisoned
in house arrest after a disastrous stint in London, and
Latis tried to advocate for her son's release by sending
(21:26):
Elizabeth a gown that cost one hundred pounds. Elizabeth rejected
the gown and this time would not even permit Latis
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
(21:49):
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
(22:10):
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 Lettis's new husband, Christopher Blunt, decided that
they were going to march through the city and force
(22:32):
an audience with the Queen and demand that she changed
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
(22:53):
Sir Christopher Blunt, Latis's son and her husband would be
beheaded at the Tower of Life, 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
(23:17):
seem like he was very good at the job, given
that it took thirty strokes to remove Essex's head. Latisse
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
(23:40):
before that by spending all of her money. Thankfully, Latisse
would have one major stroke of luck a new regime.
Elizabeth the First died and the new king, James the sixth,
did not hold the same grudges as his kinswoman did
helpfully to one of Latis's daughters from her first marriage,
(24:03):
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 Latise, 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
(24:24):
in her favor. Latise Knowles lived fifteen more years, dying
at the age of ninety one 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 Latis Knowles.
(24:54):
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
about some more of the insane rumors that swirled around
her love life. Plenty of scandalous rumors surrounded Ltisnoles and
(25:17):
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 Latis's first husband,
(25:39):
which caused a downe slew of rumors that Latis and
Dudley had conspired to murder him so that they could
be together. But there were even accusations Latis killed her
second husband too. During the restoration, there would be a
horror story written about how Dudley planned on killing Latise
because she was having an affair, but she managed to
(26:02):
kill him first. But the story of Dudley and Latis
working together to kill Latice's first husband, Devereaux, is the
most famous of the would be scandals involving Latise. The
rumors were so well known at the time and in
the decades following that some have speculated that William Shakespeare
(26:24):
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
(26:57):
production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts, with additional
writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender,
Julia Melani, and Armand Cassam. The show is edited and
produced by Noehmy Griffin and rima il Kaali, with supervising
(27:22):
producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams,
and Matt Frederick. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised Queen Elizabeth
the First had spent the summer traveling across the country,
visiting manors in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. Now at the
(00:21):
end of September she was making one more stop, Wanstead Hall,
the home of Elizabeth's favorite Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Now,
if you know one thing about Queen Elizabeth the First,
it was probably that she was the Queen of England.
But if you know a second thing about Queen Elizabeth,
(00:41):
it's her reputation as a virgin queen. Much to the
chagrin of many of her advisers 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,
(01:03):
King Henry the Eighth, 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 in childbirth,
his fourth cast aside again. His fifth beheaded, and the
sixth managed to be okay, mostly because Henry died before
(01:24):
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
(01:46):
someone for diplomatic reasons and or might be willing to
make someone her air. 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
(02:11):
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
are a longtime listener of the show, you might remember
an earlier episode we did on the mysterious death of
(02:32):
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
(02:53):
that would have made a match between Dudley and Elizabeth
a non starter. But still well, 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,
(03:14):
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 Letise Knowles.
It wasn't out of the ordinary for another courtly lady
to be around, so I imagine at the time Elizabeth
(03:36):
didn't give it too much thought. She didn't 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 Latisse had been secretly married, and so they
sat down with her to dinner, knowing that the moment
(04:00):
Elizabeth found out nothing would contain her wrath. I'm Danish
forts 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
(04:23):
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
(04:43):
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, and when it came to family,
it's hard to call her a girl's girl. She famously
(05:06):
imprisoned and beheaded her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, and
imprisoned another cousin, Lady Katherine 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,
(05:30):
but it was mostly political. That is not the case
with Latis Knowles. Latis was no political threat to Elizabeth
at all, but still in the end Elizabeth would grant
her no mercy. Latis Knowles was also Elizabeth's cousin. Obviously
we know Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry the eighth
(05:53):
and Anne Boleyn. Latis was the granddaughter of Mary Bolin
aka the other Bolin girl. Latis's grandfather was Mary Boln's husband,
William Carey, But because Mary had had a physical relationship
with King Henry the eighth, some more gossipy histories suggest
(06:14):
the possibility that Latis was also descended from Henry, which
would make Latis 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 Latis's name sounds
(06:34):
suspiciously close to Lettuce. Was there a Rapunzel situation happening
with her parents, you might ask. The answer is no,
it's far more ordinary. Latis was simply a shortened form
for the Latin word for happiness. Letitia Latis was born
on November sixth, fifteen forty three. It's a rare treat
(06:58):
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 Latisa's birth and the birth
of his thirteen other children. Sometime likely in Latisa's late
teenage years, around fifteen sixty one or sixty two, she
(07:20):
married the nobleman Walter Devereaux, who would eventually become the
Earl of Essex. But even early on, the rumors about
Latis and Robert Dudley were circulating around court. A Spanish
ambassador observed in fifteen sixty five that Robert Dudley was
(07:40):
flirting with Latis at court to make Elizabeth jealous. If
you were trying to make the Queen jealous, Latis 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
(08:03):
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 Latis 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 Latis only really
(08:27):
began in earnest, almost a decade later, when Latisa'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 Latis had two children with
(08:48):
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 Dudley's
sentiment comes from a pro Catholic book called Lester's Commonwealth
that was written in the fifteen eighties, which makes all
(09:10):
sorts of wild accusations against Dudley, a man who happened
to support Elizabeth the I's Protestant agenda. So it's possible
that Lettis found comfort in the arms of Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester while her husband Devereaux was away, but
it's equally likely, in my opinion that she was just
(09:32):
bopping around various castles in England, and later pro Catholic
sources were looking to come up with whatever dirts against
Dudley they could. Devereaux returned to England and then went
back to Ireland, and on September twenty second, fifteen seventy six,
he died of dysentery during an epidemic in Dublin. Of course,
(09:56):
you can imagine what Lester's Commonwealth had to say about that.
In case you can't imagine, it's that Letis 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
(10:17):
no big deal for Robert Dudley, who, if you'll recall
Amy Robsart 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.
(10:38):
But there was an official investigation concluding that Devereaux died
of natural causes. One piece of evidence, though, that Devereaux
and Latise might have been estranged by this point, is
that he barely referred to his wife in his will.
In fact, Latisse would be forced to spend time writing
(10:58):
letters to try 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. Latis observed the
customary two year morning period until September twenty first, fifteen
seventy eight, almost two years to the day exactly when
(11:22):
her husband died. When the thirty four year old widow
married Robert Dudley at a private country house in Wanstead
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
(11:44):
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 had been more than ten year years
since his first wife, Amy died, though he had tried
(12:04):
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
Latis 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
(12:26):
her a famous resemblance. Obviously, both Latis 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 Latis to marry him. For Latitsa's part, she kept
(12:49):
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 Latis were still on good terms. Latis was received
(13:11):
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 crust and lover's nods, but
the couple would only be able to keep their secret
for so long, Robert Dudley's many enemies began spreading the
(13:34):
word of the secret wedding, and even Mary, Queen of Scott,
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 move of considering
(13:56):
that she might marry someone for diplomatic reasons, and in
the summer of fifteen seventy nine, 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.
(14:20):
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
(14:42):
Latisan 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 Latis on the ear
and shouted at her, as but one son lighted the earth,
there would be but one one queen in England. And
even more infuriating, Latis wouldn't back down or apologize. She
(15:08):
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, Latisse 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 Latis, Yet still she is as proud
(15:32):
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 thirty gentlemen before her, and coaches of
gentle women, pages and servants behind it, so that it
(15:54):
might be supposed to be the queen or some foreign
prince or ambassador. In other words, Latisa's behavior was delightfully brazen,
and if there was ever a chance that Elizabeth might
have forgiven her Letisa's complete lack of remorse made that
chance disappear. It seemed she no longer cared whether she
(16:18):
incurred the Queen's displeasure. Dudley, on the other hand, very
much did care. He didn't really regret his marriage to Latise.
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,
(16:39):
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? Latis left London
for the countryside, and though Dudley was originally vanished from
court to Elizabeth pretty quickly forgave him and enjoyed him
(17:01):
back at court where she could pretend he wasn't married.
Although there were new spikes in Elizabeth's fury when Dudley
and Latis began actually living together a few years later,
Elizabeth's anger at Letisse never abated. When Dudley tried to
(17:22):
get one of Latis's daughters from her first marriage wed
to James the first 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
(17:43):
lives of Latis and Dudley. In fifteen eighty four, their
three year old son died. To say it was a
tragic loss would be an understatement. At this point, Latis
was forty four years old, and so the death of
their son marked the end of dudley hopes for continuing
his family line. Even still, Elizabeth was said to be
(18:06):
upset when Dudley went to comfort his wife in their grief,
and Elizabeth was made even more upset by the fact
that Latis accompanied her husband on vacation the following year,
and there were rumors that Latis was going to accompany
Dudley to the Netherlands, where he was Governor General, with
(18:26):
quote such a train of ladies as her majesty had none.
I mean, who did she think she was? Robert Dudley
died in fifteen eighty eight. Just a few years later,
possibly of malaria. He provided for Latis generously three thousand
pounds a year and six thousand pounds of additional furniture
(18:49):
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
(19:10):
Dudley's estates, Latis sold off Lesterhouse actually sold it to
her son from her first marriage, Robert Devereaux. Incidentally, it
was around this time that Latis'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
(19:34):
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
(19:55):
did not hold a grudge against Latis's son, even while
he's herself was never forgiven for the crime of marrying
Elizabeth's favorite. This could be the end of Latis's story
with her husband. The Queen's favorite dead, but her still
banished from court and never to be forgiven. But Letis
(20:19):
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, Latise married for a third time, this
time to a man twelve years younger, a soldier named
Sir Christopher Blunt. Throughout all of this, Elizabeth's grudge against
(20:43):
Latise continued. As I mentioned, Latis'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 Latise, she did allow her to kiss her hand,
(21:06):
which wasn't nothing, although it wasn't all uphill progress. In
fifteen ninety nine, Latisa's son, Essex, would be briefly imprisoned
in house arrest after a disastrous stint in London, and
Latis tried to advocate for her son's release by sending
(21:26):
Elizabeth a gown that cost one hundred pounds. Elizabeth rejected
the gown and this time would not even permit Latis
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
(21:49):
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
(22:10):
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 Lettis's new husband, Christopher Blunt, decided that
they were going to march through the city and force
(22:32):
an audience with the Queen and demand that she changed
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
(22:53):
Sir Christopher Blunt, Latis's son and her husband would be
beheaded at the Tower of Life, 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
(23:17):
seem like he was very good at the job, given
that it took thirty strokes to remove Essex's head. Latisse
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
(23:40):
before that by spending all of her money. Thankfully, Latisse
would have one major stroke of luck a new regime.
Elizabeth the First died and the new king, James the sixth,
did not hold the same grudges as his kinswoman did
helpfully to one of Latis's daughters from her first marriage,
(24:03):
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 Latise, 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
(24:24):
in her favor. Latise Knowles lived fifteen more years, dying
at the age of ninety one 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 Latis Knowles.
(24:54):
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
about some more of the insane rumors that swirled around
her love life. Plenty of scandalous rumors surrounded Ltisnoles and
(25:17):
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 Latis's first husband,
(25:39):
which caused a downe slew of rumors that Latis and
Dudley had conspired to murder him so that they could
be together. But there were even accusations Latis killed her
second husband too. During the restoration, there would be a
horror story written about how Dudley planned on killing Latise
because she was having an affair, but she managed to
(26:02):
kill him first. But the story of Dudley and Latis
working together to kill Latice's first husband, Devereaux, is the
most famous of the would be scandals involving Latise. The
rumors were so well known at the time and in
the decades following that some have speculated that William Shakespeare
(26:24):
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
(26:57):
production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts, with additional
writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender,
Julia Melani, and Armand Cassam. The show is edited and
produced by Noehmy Griffin and rima il Kaali, with supervising
(27:22):
producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams,
and Matt Frederick. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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