The couple's child, Robert, Lord Denbigh, died at the age of three, to the great grief of his parents and ending all prospects for the continuance of the House of Dudley.

Lettice Knollys' union with Leicester was nevertheless a happy one, as was her third marriage to the much younger Sir Christopher Blount, whom she unexpectedly married in 1589 only six months after the Earl's death.

In 1604–1605 she successfully defended her widow's rights in court when her possessions and her good name were threatened by the Earl's illegitimate son, Robert Dudley, who claimed that he was his father's legitimate heir, thus implicitly declaring her marriage bigamous.

From the 1590s she lived chiefly in the Staffordshire countryside, where, in reasonably good health until the end, she died at age 91 on Christmas Day 1634.

During this time Lettice Devereux possibly engaged in a love affair with the Earl of Leicester; her whereabouts in the following years are largely unknown, though.

When Walter Devereux returned to England in December 1575, the Spanish agent in London, Antonio de Guaras, reported:As the thing is publicly talked of in the streets, there can be no harm in my writing openly about the great enmity between the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex, in consequence, it is said, of the fact that while Essex was in Ireland his wife had two children by Leicester.

[14] Here the Countess of Essex, after having a daughter by Leicester, kills a second child "cruelly and unnaturally" by abortion to prevent her homecoming husband from discovering her affair.

[16] Rumours of poison, administered by Leicester, immediately sprang up and continued, notwithstanding an official investigation which concluded that Essex had died of natural causes.

[1] She pleaded for an augmentation of her jointure with the authorities and, to reach a compromise with the late Earl's executors, threatened "by some froward advice" to claim her dower rights.

[22] The officiating chaplain Humphrey Tyndall later remarked that the bride wore a "loose gown" (an informal morning dress),[23] which has triggered modern speculation that she was pregnant and that the ceremony happened under pressure from her father.

[1] The next year Lettice Dudley became officially resident at Leicester House, and Elizabeth was once again furious with the Earl "about his marriage, for he opened the same more plainly than ever before".

[1] A few weeks later Michel de Castelnau was a guest at Leicester's palatial mansion: "He especially invited me to dine with him and his wife, who has much influence over him and whom he introduces only to those to whom he wishes to show a particular mark of attention.

"[27] Robert Dudley had been close to the Knollys family since the early 1550s; several of Lettice's brothers had been in his service, and his marriage only enhanced his relations with her siblings.

[1] Lettice Dudley financed her personal expenses and servants out of her revenue as Dowager Countess of Essex,[29] and remained largely excluded from society life.

[32] At this same time the Earl was giving his wife authority to handle certain land issues during his absence, implying they had no plans to meet in Holland.

[1] William Davison, whom Leicester had sent to explain his doings to the Queen, described a visit to the Countess during the crisis: "I found her greatly troubled with tempestuous news she received from court, but somewhat comforted when she understood how I had proceeded with Her Majesty.

However, her jointure was to suffer greatly from paying off Leicester's debts, which at some £50,000 were so overwhelming that she was advised to decline the responsibility of dealing with her husband's financial legacy.

[1][37] In the face of tittle-tattle that had reached even France,[37] Lady Leicester—she continued to be styled thus[40]—explained her choice with being a defenceless widow; like her marriage to Leicester, the union proved to be a "genuinely happy" one.

[1][37] Some 60 years later, it was claimed in a satirical poem that she had poisoned the Earl of Leicester on his deathbed, thereby forestalling her own murder at his hands, because he had found out about her supposed lover, Sir Christopher Blount.

[46] Her efforts to get sight of her son made matters worse: "Mislike is taken that his mother and friends have been in a house that looks into York Garden where he uses to walk, and have saluted each other out of a window.

"[46] Both his military incompetence and his de facto abandonment of his post were condoned on that occasion, but rather than count his blessings and hold his peace, he became malcontent, chaffed at his failures, and fell into rebellion.

[1][37] The death of Elizabeth I in 1603 meant some form of rehabilitation for the Countess; the new monarch, James I, not only restored her grandson, the third Earl of Essex, to his father's title and estate, but quickly cancelled the rest of her debts to the Crown, almost £4,000.

Some of the countess' jointure manors lay in the castle's vicinity, while at the same time they had been assigned to the younger Dudley's inheritance by the overseers of Leicester's will.

After Warwick's death in February 1590, lengthy legal proceedings ensued over whether particular parts of Lady Leicester's jointure belonged to the Kenilworth estate or not.

[1] The other side was unable to cite clear evidence and the King's chief minister, Robert Cecil, thought it unwise to rake up the existing property settlement, so the outcome was in favour of Lady Leicester.

[1][52] Widely mourned as a symbol of a by-gone age, she wished to be buried "at Warwick by my dear lord and husband the Earl of Leicester with whom I desire to be entombed".

Her request was respected and she came to rest in the Beauchamp Chapel of Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, opposite the tomb of her son, young Lord Denbigh.

traced British comedian Josh Widdicombe's ancestry in direct line to Knollys, via his grandmother, a member of the Barings family.