of Huntingdon, who was Leicester's sister and Sidney's aunt. In March 1581 Huntingdon as her guardian secured the queen's assent through Lord Burghley, Master of the Court of Wards, for her marriage with Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich (later 1st Earl of Warwick). Penelope is said to have protested in vain against the alliance with Rich. Penelope's children by Robert Rich were: Lettice Rich (d. 1619), named after her maternal grandmother Lettice Knollys and known as Lucy. Married firstly Sir George Carey and secondly Sir Arthur Lake Essex Rich, married Sir Thomas Cheek and had three sons and five daughters Robert Rich (1587–1658), later 2nd Earl of Warwick Henry Rich (1590–1649), later 1st Earl of Holland Poets' muse Penelope Rich was considered one of the beauties of Elizabeth's court. She was golden-haired with dark eyes, a gifted singer and dancer, fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish. Penelope is traditionally thought to have inspired Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella (sometimes spelt Astrophil and Stella). Likely composed in the 1580s, it is the first of the famous English sonnet sequences, and contains 108 sonnets and 11 songs. Many of the poems were circulated in manuscript form before the first edition was printed by Thomas Newman in 1591, five years after Sidney's death. They were set by the French lutenist Charles Tessier and published in London in 1597. Whether Sidney fell passionately in love with Penelope in the years between her arrival at court in 1581 and his own marriage in 1583, or whether the "Stella" sonnets were courtly amusements reflecting fashionable poetic conceits may never be known. In her essay "Sidney, Stella, and Lady Rich", Katherine Duncan-Jones writes: Sidney died of wounds received at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586. In 1590, Penelope's brother Essex married Sidney's widow Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, and Lady Rich was much cultivated by poets and musicians during her brother's ascendancy at court in the 1590s. Poet Richard Barnfield dedicated The Affectionate Shepherd, his first work, which was published anonymously in November 1594, to Penelope Rich. Bartholomew Yong dedicated his translation of Jorge de Montemayor's Diana (1598) to her; and sonnets are addressed to her by John Davies of Hereford. In 1586 she was a godmother to the daughter of Nicholas Hilliard, the queen's miniaturist. Hilliard is known to have painted two miniatures of Lady Rich, in 1589 and 1590 for her brother,