Catherine Carey, was a daughter of Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne Boleyn. Thus Catherine was Elizabeth I's first cousin, and Lettice Knollys her first cousin once removed. Lettice was the third of her parents' 16 children. Sir Francis and his wife were Protestants. In 1556 they went to Frankfurt in Germany to escape religious persecution under Queen Mary I, taking five of their children with them. It is unknown whether Lettice was among them, and she may have passed the next few years in the household of Princess Elizabeth, with whom the family had a close relationship since the mid-1540s. Her parents and the remainder of the family returned to England in January 1559, two months after Elizabeth I's succession. Francis Knollys was appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household; Lady Knollys became a senior Lady of the Bedchamber, and her daughter Lettice a Maid of the Privy Chamber. First marriage and love affair In late 1560 Lettice Knollys married Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford. The couple lived at the family seat of Chartley in Staffordshire. Here the two eldest of their five children, the daughters Penelope and Dorothy, were born in 1563 and 1564, respectively. Lettice Devereux returned to court on at least one occasion, in the summer of 1565, when the Spanish ambassador Diego Guzmán de Silva described her as "one of the best-looking ladies of the court" and as a favourite with the Queen. Pregnant with her first son, she flirted with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen's favourite. The Queen found out at once and succumbed to a fit of jealousy. The Viscountess went back to Staffordshire where, in November 1565, she gave birth to Robert, later 2nd Earl of Essex. Two more sons followed: Walter, who was born in 1569, and Francis, who died soon after birth at an unknown date. Walter Devereux was raised to the earldom of Essex in 1572. In 1573 he successfully suggested to the Queen a project to plant Englishmen in Ulster. In the autumn he went to Ireland, not to return for two years. 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. In 1573 Leicester sent her a present of venison at Chartley from his seat Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, and she made hunting visits to Kenilworth in 1574 and 1576. She was