June—to the grief of his wife, as the young Earl of Essex remarked in a letter. Leicester eventually resigned his post in December 1587. The Countess was with him when he died unexpectedly, possibly of malaria, on 4 September 1588 at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire; they had been on their way to Kenilworth and Buxton. The Earl's funeral at Warwick in October 1588 was attended by his widow as well as numerous members of her family circle. Blount and Essex Lettice Dudley was left a wealthy widow. Leicester's will appointed her as executrix and her income from both her husbands' jointures amounted to £3,000 annually, to which came plate and movables worth £6,000. 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. In March or April 1589, hardly six months after Leicester's death, Lettice married Sir Christopher Blount, a relatively poor Catholic soldier 12 years her junior, who had been the Earl of Leicester's Gentleman of the Horse and a trusted friend of his. The marriage was a great surprise, and the Earl of Essex complained that it was an "unhappy choice". In the face of tittle-tattle that had reached even France, Lady Leicester—she continued to be styled thus—explained her choice with being a defenceless widow; like her marriage to Leicester, the union proved to be a "genuinely happy" one. 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. Lettice's second son, Walter Devereux, died 1591 in France while on military duty, and in subsequent years she was anxious for her elder son's safety. She addressed him "Sweet Robin", longing for his letters and helpless about his moodiness and depression. In 1593, she sold Leicester House to him, after which it became known as Essex House. She moved to Drayton Bassett near Chartley in Staffordshire, which would be her main residence for the rest of her life. Still banished from court, she saw no point in returning to London without being reconciled to Elizabeth. In December 1597, having heard from friends that "Her Majesty is very well prepared to hearken to terms of