The Marriage of Penelope Devereux and Charles Blount - 26 December 1605
- thedudleywomen
- Dec 26, 2025
- 8 min read
On 26 December 1605, an intimate ceremony took place at Wanstead Hall, Essex, the home of Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire: the exchanging of marriage vows between the Earl and his long-time lover and recently legally-separated, Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich.
As soon as she turned 18 years old, Penelope Devereux, the eldest child of Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester, and her first husband Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, left the Yorkshire household of Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, where along with her younger sister Dorothy and brother Walter, they had been continuing their education. Despite her mother's banishment from the Royal Court by an indigant Elizabeth I, following her marriage to the queen's long-term 'favourite' Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, her anger did not extend to members of the Countess's family. Penelope, one of the queen's many godchildren, was welcomed to court on 30 January 1581. In less than six weeks, she had attracted the interest of Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich, who had recently inherited the barony after his father's death. Over the following months, negoitations took place between Rich, eager to seek a wife and create his own dynasty, and Penelope's guardians: Huntingdon and Leicester. Despite longstanding wishes for Penelope to marry Leicester's nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, including an apparent affection between the pair, it was acknowledged that the proposed match with Rich would place Lettice's eldest daughter in a more financially-secure position. Finally, 'around Allhallowtide', likely on 1 November 1581 at court, Penelope and Lord Rich married, with the newly-married Penelope adopting her new title of 'Lady Rich' (Varlow, 2009; Tallis, 2017; Folgerpedia, 2025). As Tallis (2017, p.194) acknowledges this marriage appears to have been an act of duty, rather than a celebration of love; when writing to James I in 1606, Blount described Penelope as "a lady of great birth and virtue, being in the power of her friends, was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after".
Penelope and Rich had four surviving children during the first decade of their marriage: Lettice, Essex,, Robert and Henry. Penelope had completed her marital duties, in providing her husband with two sons - an heir and an important second son, as Lord Rich himself had been. Lady Rich had remained unhappy and discontent during her marriage to Rich, who has been described as being "a man of violent and coarse temper". (Lee, 1892, p.282). There also remained an ongoing mutual, but not consummated, affection between herself as Sidney, she being his muse in the posthumously- published sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591) (Varlow, 2009).
In late 1590, Penelope appears to have entered into an extra-marital affair with soldier and courtier Sir Charles Blount, a previous acquaintance of the family, having served in the Netherlands with her now-deceased stepfather Leicester, and her brother Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Over the following decade, the couple were able to conduct their affair inconspicuously; they did not mention each other in correspondence and continued to live apart, spending time at the homes of friends and family, including her brother's home Essex House, on The Strand, Westminster in which she had allocated rooms. Penelope went on to have another five (living) children from this relationship, of whom Blount acknowledged the paternity. The couple's first four children - Penelope, Isabella, Mountjoy and 'Scipio'/St John - were all baptised as the children of "the honourable Lord Rich", and were raised alongside their elder Rich half-siblings, with Varlow (2009) recognising that the siblings remained close as they grew older.
Lord Rich appears to have tolerated Penelope's affair for many years, including accepting her illegitimate children to the Rich home of Leighs Priory, Essex, before their move to Wanstead Hall, Essex - the former home of the Earl of Leicester, sold to Blount in 1598 by Penelope’s brother Essex. The married couple continued to maintain appearances to casual observers, continuing to attend court, with Penelope becoming increasingly more desirable, her brother Essex being in favour with the queen, prior to his downfall, starting in 1599, ending in his execution in 1601. Following his arrest for treason for his leading role in ‘Essex’s Rebellion’, Essex had attempted to disproportion blame and accountability to those closest to him, including Penelope and Blount. Whilst no charges were brought against Penelope, who had long remained in the good graces of the queen, having overlooked her infidelity, these accusations had long-term consequences: Penelope withdrew from Elizabeth’s court, spending her time between Wanstead and her recently-widowed mother’s home of Drayton Bassett, Staffordshire.Whilst separated from Rich at this time, and giving birth to Blount’s fifth child, there is no evidence that he made any move towards a legal separation at this time (Varlow, 2009; Tallis, 2017).
On James I’s accession to the English throne in March 1603, Penelope’s fortunes once again rose; she quickly became a favourite of the new queen, Anna of Denmark, rejoining the royal court and being appointed as one of the ladies of the Bedchamber, with Rich again joining his wife at court, However, his tolerance towards his wife significantly changed in November 1605, when news of the Gunpowder Plot came to light. Penelope’s brother-in-law, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, the husband of her younger sister Dorothy, had been arrested on suspicion of misprision, that is having prior knowledge of the plot, having dined with one of the plotters, his kinsman Thomas Percy, the day before the planned attack. Whilst the privy council, which included Blount, were preoccupied with the interrogation of those suspected to have been involved, Rich, having run of patience after years of betrayal, insubordination and infidelity, as well as two close connections to treasonous plots, finally sued Penelope on the grounds of adultery. Initially accused of infidelity with an unnamed man, Penelope subsequently confessed and provided proof of her own adultery, although did not name Blount (Varlow, 2009).
After a week-long hearing in the City of London's Ecclesiastical Courts, on 14 November 1605, after 22 years of marriage, Penelope and Robert Rich were issued a divorce a mensa et thoro - separation from board and hearth. The declaration confirmed the couple's legal separation, and ensured that the legitimacy of their children, with Penelope granted an annual allowance from Rich. However, the court ordered that despite their separation, the pair were not able to remarry during the other's lifetime, as the marriage had not been fully dissolved, and were therefore expected to live out their lives in a state of celibacy. Only six weeks later, on 26 December 1605, in defiance of the terms set out by the court, Penelope and Blount held this intimate wedding ceremony at Wanstead Hall, Essex. Coincidentally, this was the same house where her mother had secretly married Leicester 27 years earlier, in September 1578 (Rawson, 1911; Varlow, 2009).
The clergyman who conducted the ceremony was Blount's private chaplain, William Laud, whom Rawson (1911, p.279) described as "needing no little persuasion" to complete the task. Laud, who had been in the employ of Blount since 1603, was very much aware facilitating the marriage of the couple went against the conditions of Penelope's legal separation and Canon Law; (Lee, 1896, p.185) comments that this was "an action for which he was afterwards bitterly penitent", although Laud provided evidence in support of Penelope after Blount's death in 1606, denying that there had been any evidence of ulterior motives in the couple's union (Varlow, 2009). Laud's ecclesiastical career continued to rise after his patron's death, rising to the appointment of Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. However, his downfall came, initially in 1640 with his impeachment and arrest on trumped-up charges of treason, caught between the increasingly-feuding king Charles I and Parliament, recalled after an-eleven year absence. After over four years of imprisonment in the Tower of London, 71-year-old Laud was beheaded on Tower Hill, on 10 January 1645, as the English Civil war entered its fourth year (Lee, 1896).
When news of the couple's vows became known to James I in the New Year, 1606, it was Penelope who bore the brunt of his anger over his trusted councillor Blount. James viewed powerful women with fear and suspicion throughout his reigns, in both Scotland and England, and he now saw Penelope as one of these 'dominant' and 'manipulative' women that men should be wary of. James reportedly commented to Blount "you have won a fair woman with a black soul" (Tallis, 2017, p.322). Penelope was humiliated, and subsequently punished by being removed from her coveted role as Lady of the Bedchamber, and was effectively banished from the Royal Court. Just as with the circumstances of her ceremony at Wanstead, Penelope was now following in her mother Lettice's footsteps, in facing the wrath of an unforgiving and, at times, ruthless monarch (Varlow, 2009; Tallis, 2017).
Varlow (2009) hypothesises the reason for Penelope's and Blount's hurried union, done in the knowledge it had taken place in defiance of Canon Law. In February 1604, after returning from his tenure as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Blount set up a complex trust for Penelope and their children, so that they would be legally able to inherit his goods and property after his death. However, Blount's health appeared to be failing: years of smoking and winters in Ireland had weakened his constitution; a marriage may ensure any further children born to the couple would be deemed legitimate, in comparison to their elder siblings. After news of their marriage broke, Blount wrote to the king when at Wanstead, pleading their case from 'every possible legal, religious and moral' standpoint. Their pleas were unsuccessful, as James continued to view their marriage as illegal, under the Bigamy Act 1604, and refused to acknowledge their union. Penelope was informed that she was forbidden from using the title 'Countess of Devonshire', although continued to defiantly doing so, signing correspondence 'P. Devonshire', and refusing to answer to her former title of 'Lady Rich'.
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