About Me
Tradition has it that Phillip Sidney was in the royal party when Queen Elizabeth I visited Chartley, the home of the Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, and that Phillip first met me there, and I was leter to inspire some of his finest verse. My father hoped to arrange a match between Phillip and me but nothing came of it and on my father's death I was placed in the care of Catherine Dudley, Countess Huntingdon, until I came to court in 1581. I was engaged to Phillip at 14 for a period of about 4 years, but due to ill health, but on 10 Mar 1580/1 my guardian, the Earl of Huntingdon, applied through Lord Burghley for the Queen's consent to my union with another suitor. The Countess succeeded in making for me the best possible marriage match; the young and eligible Lord Rich who had just succeed to his title and considerable property. The marriage proved a disaster. By contrast, Phillip Sidney's marriage in 1583 to Frances, the daughter of Lord Walsingham, turned out to be a supremely happy and blessed choice.Sir Phillip Sidney wrote his sonnet sequence, "Astrophel and Stella", around 1582 and circulated it in manuscript. It was published in 1591, five years after his death, and became an immediate and much-imitated best seller."Stella" was me, Lady Rich. Sidney died in 1586, immediately becoming a cult figure of astonishing dimensions: the perfect English, Christian, Renaissance knight, virtually the Protestant Saint George. Sidney's sonnets to me are extremely chaste; he woos me, and, taking me by surprise on one occasion, manages to steal a kiss, but I am true to my husband. Sidney's incredible cult lasted through the seventeenth century. It flagged a bit in the eighteenth, but revived mightily in the Victorian age.From the time Sidney died through the late seventeenth century, biographical books and articles kept appearing, none of which mentioned me, Lady Rich. These included an inspiring account of Sidney's last days, written by George Gifford, a clergyman who attended at his bedside. Gifford wrote that Sidney was insufficiently sure of salvation, but then God delivered him: "There came to my remembrance a vanity wherein I had taken delight, whereof I had not rid myself. But I rid myself of it, and presently my joy and comfort returned within a few hours". In 1964, Jean Robertson found a manuscript version of Gifford's memoir, and discovered that between these two sentences was a third which had been deleted from the published versions: "It was my lady Rich".In 1638 Anne Bradstreet of Massachusetts, a distant cousin of Sidney's, wrote a poem in his praise which was published in London in 1650. The poem mentions their kinship, describes me and mildly condemns me, but insists that my love for Sidney was not adulterous. Bradstreet died in 1677, and her poems were republished in Boston in 1678; the reference to kinship to Sidney had been removed as had been the attack on me. The revised version cites Spenser's claim that Stella was Sidney's wife.My reputation went the other way. Beautiful and highly educated, I was shoved into an arranged marriage with the dull and detestable Lord Rich in 1581 when I was only 18. While bearing my husband five children in nine years, I managed to be active in society and politics, and in time became a patron of poets. In 1590 I took as my lover the dashing Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, by whom I had six more children. My husband acquiesced in my adultery, being in awe of my brother, the Earl of Essex. After the latter's execution in 1601, Lord Rich cast me out. Meanwhile, Mountjoy had replaced Essex as commander in Ireland and was methodically destroying the rebellion that had cost Essex his reputation. When King James came to the throne in 1603, Mountjoy returned from Ireland as a hero, and I moved in with him as his wife. Mountjoy and I had both supported the cause of James, and he made them favored courtiers, promoting both, and seemingly indifferent to their blatant adultery. Mountjoy became Earl of Devonshire; I, daughter of a junior Earl and wife of a junior baron, was given precedence of all barons' wives and almost all earls' daughters.The Jesuit Father John Gerard attempted to convert me during his years in the Catholic underground in England, but was foiled by Devonshire. After his return to the Continent in 1606, Gerard wrote a Latin account of his missionary work, intended for confidential use within the Jesuit order. It was published in 1870. He described his dealings with me and the scandal of my affair with Devonshire, but named neither of them. I am called a "sister to the Earl of Essex"; Devonshire is identified as the conqueror of Ireland. Lord Devonshire and I were openly named and our scandal was discussed by a contemporary historian, Robert Johnston, but his Latin account was published in the Netherlands in 1655. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a lengthy essay on political and religious affairs in 1627 which was published in 1659. Abbot has a paragraph on the scandal, but calls the participants "the Earl of D" and "the Lady R". Peter Heylyn published a biography of Archbishop William Laud in 1668; Laud had been Devonshire's chaplain in 1605 and conducted our illegal marriage. Heylyn does name names, but the whole point of his account is that my 1581 marriage was improper, hence I and Devonshire could rightfully wed.After the execution of my brother, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex in 1601, my husband, by my own statement, abandoned me. Thereforth, I lived in open adultery with Lord Mountjoy, but suffered no loss of esteem at court in consequence.King James I granted me on 17 Aug 1603 'the place and rank of the ancientest Earl of Essex, called Bourchier, whose heir her father was'. By this grant I took precedence of all the baronesses of the kingdom, and of the daughters of all earls, except Arundel, Oxford, Northumberland, and Shrewsbury.In 1605 Lord Rich sued for divorce, and I confessed to committing adultery with a stranger. Lord Rich wanted a new wife, and I and Devonshire wanted to marry and legitimize our children. Divorce was granted, but remarriage was forbidden, and legitimizing the children was out of the question. King James was infuriated by the divorce proceedings, banished me from his court, and reprimanded Devonshire. We made an illegal marriage and continued to live as husband and wife until Devonshire died in Apr 1606. I died in Jul 1607 and was buried in a London church without any marking on my grave. The register simply recorded the burial of "A Lady Devereux".Devonshire's will provided quite generously for all five of his children. Sylvia Freedman's book also shows that my two sets of children did not overlap, as had previously been believed. I broke off marital relations with Rich before taking up with Blount. The false belief that I mingled her husband and lover, and was not even faithful to the letter, caused me to seem more wicked than ever. To many Victorians and some post-Victorians, my scarlet sins absolutely proved that the saintly Sidney could have had nothing to do with me.James had no objection to adultery among his nobles. But he did expect them to maintain appearances, and was enraged when one of them publicly admitted her offense. After my divorce I was regarded as a notorious woman. But that made it all the more important to prevent her name from contaminating the cult of Sir Phillip Sidney.My oldest legitimate son had become the Earl of Warwick, Lord High Admiral of England and a leading figure among the Parliamentary forces opposing King Charles. My other legitimate son was the Earl of Holland, a powerful politician who kept changing sides, until Parliament settled things by beheading him in 1649. My oldest illegitimate son was the Earl of Newport, a general fighting for the King. Other families might also have taken umbrage at full disclosure of the story of Astrophel and Stella. Sidney, a moderate Puritan, was a hero to both sides. and his widow's children had a stake in his reputation, if only to deny that he wronged their mother by loving me during his marriage negotiations. Frances Walsingham's older son was the Earl of Essex (he was also my nephew), a leading Parliamentary general, while her younger son was the Marquess of Clanricard, one of the King's strongest supporters in Ireland. Frances Walsingham's daughter by her Irish husband was the Marchioness of Winchester, a heroine of the Royalist cause in England. Another man who might have taken offense was the Countess of Pembroke's son, Sidney's nephew and godson, the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, a political supporter of the Parliament. Lastly there was Sidney's brother's son, the Earl of Leicester, the then head of the House of Sidney. He was disaffected from the King but wouldn't oppose him, so he stayed neutral, while his son and heir, Viscount Lisle, was active in support of Parliament.
