¹ In 1743, a Dr John Kearney of Kildare married Henrietta Brydges, the niece of Cassandra Willoughby's husband, James Brydges, 1st duke of Chandos. This volume, and Volume II of Cassandra's Account, seem to have passed to the Kearney family sometime in the 2nd half of the 18th century and to a Miss Kearney, daughter of John Kearney, Esq. of King Street, Oxmantown, who married the Hon. Randle Plunket in 1778. See their marriage notice in the Dec. 1778 issue of the Gentleman's and London Magazine, published in Dublin. Cassandra, Duchess of Chandos, The Continuation of the History of the Willoughby Family, being Vol. II of the Manuscript, ed. A.C. Wood (Eton, 1958), xi–xii. About 1885 or 1886 Lord Middleton acquired this first volume.

² Kett's Rebellion, which began in early July 1549, was defeated by 27 Aug. 1549, after the rebels had established several camps across Norfolk and Suffolk. It was part of a wider series of revolts across southern England by people making demands relating to enclosures by lords and others who took common lands and the lands of tenants to graze sheep and cattle and to establish deer parks. Additional demands were to free all bondmen and to lower rents and address other financial injustices. The debasement of the coinage and rising prices in the 1540s contributed to the unrest. The rebels included wealthy manorial tenants as well as the poor and landless. See Whittle, Jane, ‘Lords and tenants in Kett's Rebellion 1549’, Past & Present, 207 (2010), 3–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Land, Stephen K., Kett's Rebellion: The Norfolk Rising of 1549 (Ipswich, 1977)Google Scholar; and Wood, Andy, The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The death date for Henry Willoughby is therefore 1549 and not 1548, as Cassandra reports. According to a note in the Middleton archives, Henry died on 27 Aug. 3 Edward VI. Stevenson, W.H. (ed.), Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (London, 1911), 396Google Scholar (hereafter HMC Middleton).

³ She may have been born c.1543 and would have been about 6 years old.

⁴ George Medley, Esq., was the only surviving child from the 1505 marriage of Margaret Wotton (d.1541) to her first husband, William Medley, Esq. She had 8 known children with her second husband, Thomas Grey, 2nd marquis of Dorset, one of whom, Anne, was the mother of Thomas, Margaret, and Francis Willoughby, and another of whom was Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk and 3rd marquis of Dorset, father of Lady Jane Grey, both of whom were beheaded in the Tower in 1554. Therefore, George Medley was the half-brother of Anne Grey and uncle to Thomas, Margaret, and Francis. See below fo. 40, pp. 70–71. There is a letter to Francis Willoughby from George Medley's widow (fo. 55, p. 87) stating that her husband took charge of Francis for 13 years (viz. 1549–1562). For George Medley’s will and codicil in 1562, see Manuscripts and Special Collections in the University of Nottingham Library, Middletons of Wollaton Hall (hereafter Mi) 1/7/183/12. See also TNA, PROB 11/46/75.

⁵ Gabriel Barwyke, gentleman, first appears in Willoughby household accounts in 1521–1522. Mi, A 5. From 1549 to 1562 he was one of the executors of the will of Henry Willoughby. HMC Middleton, 149, 317, 351, 370, 388, 396, 416. He acquired land in Bulcote, Gunthorpe, and elsewhere in Nottinghamshire and married Elizabeth, daughter of John Marmion of Cotgrave (Mi, 6/176/190). His last appearance in the Willoughby documents is a 1569 letter he wrote reproving Francis Willoughby for marrying ‘without the consent of Mr Medley, Mr Haule and me’. (Mi, C 14). Hanna, Ralph and Turville-Petre, Thorlac (eds), The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts (York, 2010), 15Google Scholar.

⁶ John Hall, gentleman, was the bailiff at Middleton Manor in Warwickshire. HMC Middleton, 396. For extended excerpts from the Willoughby household accounts relating to the 13 years when Hall, Barwyke, and Medley were the executors in charge of Henry Willoughby's estates, see HMC Middleton, 396–420. See also Mi, A 31–32. The first mention of Hall (Haull) is as servant to Edward Willoughby c.1528, see Mary A. Welch (ed.), ‘Willoughby letters of the first half of the sixteenth century’, Thoroton Society Record Series (TSRS), XXIV (Nottingham, 1967), 30.

⁷ Bradgate House was the probable birthplace and the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey and had been owned by the Grey family since the mid 15th century. It is located just north-west of Leicester and was one of the earliest brick-built country houses in England, completed c.1520.

⁸ Mrs is the standard abbreviation for Mistress, a form of address indicating courtesy or rank but not marital status. See Erickson, Amy, ‘Mistresses and marriage, or a short history of Mrs.’, History Workshop Journal 78 (2014), 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mr is the abbreviation for Master. Although Cassandra will sometimes spell out Master when referring to the young Francis Willoughby, she normally uses Mr.

⁹ A Mistress Whytney is mentioned in George Medley's account book for 1550, when she is given cloth to make hose for Margaret and sleeves for Francis. Mi, A 32, fo. 3v, p. 6; HMC Middleton, 402.

¹⁰ See below in the edited text (hereafter ‘Text’), Text n. 32, for information on Mrs Lenton.

¹¹ On the verso side of folio 39 is the following note: ‘In Trussells Book of Accounts for the 4^th of Edward the 6^th amongst the wages paid to the servants there is set down paid to four shepherds (one at Worsopp, one at Wollaton, one at Basford and one at Arnolde) these four shepherds were paid ten shillings a year for each of their wages.’

¹² Tilty is in the north-north-west corner of Essex and was originally a Cistercian monastery. On 6 Oct. 1535, the abbot and convent granted the marchioness of Dorset a lease for sixty years ‘of the grange, demesne lands, and manor of Tilty, including the house standing against the west end of the church of the monastery of old time called the founder's house, otherwise the Gestes Hall’. ‘Such grants made shortly before the dissolution were naturally suspected; but on an inquiry being made afterwards it was found by the jury that the lease was such as used to be granted and in no way fraudulent, and it was consequently allowed by a decree of the Court of Augmentations on 20 Oct. 1538 and confirmed on 4 November.’ William Page and J. Horace Round (eds), A History of the County of Essex: II, VCH (London, 1907), 134–136. British History Online: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol2/pp134-136 (accessed 4 Aug. 2015). The monastery signed a deed of surrender in Feb. 1536. On the death of the marchioness in 1541, the lease went to her son, George Medley. The reversion of the lease of the monastery itself, the mansion called ‘le Founders Lodging and the Gest Hall’, Tilty Grange and the manor of Tilty, the rectory and chapel of Tilty, and some lands, was next granted to Sir Thomas Audley on 24 Apr. 1542 who must then have leased these properties to George Medley. On the Audleys, see Text n. 26.

¹³ HMC Middleton, 399.

¹⁴ See above, Text n. 4.

¹⁵ HMC Middleton, 402; Mi, A 32, fo. 4, p. 7. Medley provides the name of Thomas Willoughby's servant as Dyxon. The dates are actually 30 Oct. to 18 Nov.

¹⁶ HMC Middleton, 402; Mi, A, f. 4, p. 7, although the dates given are from 30 Oct. to 18 Nov.

¹⁷ Margaret Wotton. See Text n. 4 above. Margaret Wotton, George Medley's mother, lived in the former guest house of the abbey at Tilty until her death in 1541; she cannot have been the housekeeper (i.e. mistress of the house) in 1550.

¹⁸ 1550. This volume of George Medley's books of accounts is no longer extant, nor is it described in HMC Middleton.

¹⁹ John Grey of Pirgo, Essex, second son of Thomas Grey, 2nd marquis of Dorset and Margaret Wotton, and brother of Henry Grey, 3rd marquis of Dorset and duke of Suffolk. He married Mary Browne of Cowdray, from a prominent Catholic family in Sussex. The Crown's lenient treatment of John Grey in the wake of his brothers Henry's and Thomas's executions after Wyatt's Rebellion may have been due to his wife's influence at the court of Mary Tudor. Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006), 93–94. On Wyatt's Rebellion, see below, Text n. 39.

²⁰ Henry Medley, son of George Medley, was born in 1533; Thomas Willoughby, heir to Henry Willoughby, was born c.1541.

²¹ Mary Tudor, the sister of Edward VI and later Queen Mary (r. 1553–1558).

²² Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk and 3rd marquis of Dorset, and his wife Lady Frances Brandon (daughter of Charles Brandon and Henry VIII's sister Mary) had three daughters: Lady Jane Grey (c.1536–1554), Lady Catherine Grey (1540–1568), and Lady Mary Grey (1545–1578). See de Lisle, Leanda, The Sisters Who Would be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey (New York, 2008)Google Scholar.

²³ Also known as the Earl of Oxford's Men, the Players performed at Tilty Abbey, ‘the home of George Medley’, between 1549 and 1552. Lancashire, Ian, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558 (Cambridge, 1984), 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 456; Chambers, E.K., The Elizabethan Stage, II (Oxford, 1923), 99–102Google Scholar.

²⁴ The Lord Treasurer in Jan. 1551 was William Paulet (c.1483/85–1572); he was made treasurer in 1550, taking the position after Somerset (Henry Seymour's) fall from grace. In Oct. 1551, Paulet was made marquis of Winchester; he remained Lord Treasurer until his death.

²⁵ Unidentified.

²⁶ Elizabeth Grey, daughter of Thomas Grey and Margaret Wotton, married Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley (Saffron Walden, Essex) in 1538. Lady Audley was therefore the half-sister of George Medley, sister of Anne, Henry, Thomas, and John Grey, and the aunt of the Willoughby children and Jane, Catherine, and Mary Grey. Walden Abbey, formerly a Benedictine monastery, was granted to Thomas Audley by Henry VIII in 1538. It is currently open to the public and known as Audley End.

²⁷ George Willoughby (d.1595), alias Fox, was the bastard son of Sir Edward Willoughby and therefore the illegitimate half-brother of Henry Willoughby and uncle to Thomas, Margaret, and Francis. He married Maud Cotton Repington c.1550–1553. Henry Willoughby left him an inn called the Castle in Holborne. Regarding this inn, see Calendar of Patent Rolls (hereafter CPR) 1560–1563, Elizabeth I, ii, 605. Francis Willoughby counterleased Tamworth and Wiginton in Staffordshire to George Willoughby and his two sons Henry and Thomas in 1568 [Mi, 7/183/25]. Inventory dated 1594–1595 INV/86/103, Lincolnshire Archives 057. See also Thoroton, Robert, The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (London, 1677), 223Google Scholar. George Willoughby, Esq., is mentioned as recusant in the Recusant Rolls for 1593–1595. Bowler, H. (ed.), Recusant Roll No. 2 (1593–1594), Catholic Record Society, 57 (1965), 104–105Google Scholar; Recusant Rolls Nos 3 and 4 (1594–1595), Catholic Record Society, 61 (1970), 56–57, 189.

²⁸ Although Lady Jane Grey was imprisoned in the wake of the failed attempt to make her queen, it was the several subsequent rebellions, called Wyatt's Rebellion, in Jan. 1554 that resulted in her execution and the executions of her husband Guildford Dudley, her father Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk, and her uncle Lord Thomas Grey. See Lisle, The Sisters who would be Queen, a study of the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey and an examination of the fictions and legends surrounding her; and Ives, Eric, Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (London, 2011)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Guildford Dudley (c.1535–12 Feb. 1554), husband of Lady Jane Grey, was the fourth surviving son of John Dudley, 1st duke of Northumberland (1504–1553) and Lady Jane Guildford (d.1555). Married to Jane Grey on 21 May 1553, he and Jane moved into royal apartments in the Tower on 10 June 1553. When Mary Tudor asserted her authority on 19 June 1553, she ordered their arrest. Guildford was tried and sentenced for treason in Nov. 1553 but was not executed until 12 Feb. 1554, following Wyatt's Rebellion. His contemporaries treated his legacy gently, considering him more a victim of his father's and father-in-law's machinations than a true accomplice. G.J. Richardson, entry for ‘Dudley, Lord Guildford’, ODNB.

³⁰ Mi, A 32.

³¹ HMC Middleton, 403; Mi, A 32, f. 4, p. 7.

³² Elizabeth Lenton (d. c.1562), possibly the daughter of John Lenton, married John Danet (Dannet/Dannatt/Dannett) in about 1553. Between 1554 and 1562 they were involved in a series of court cases against Richard Mytton in an attempt to claim a grant made to Elizabeth by Queen Mary of the possessions of Lord Thomas Grey at the time of his capture by Mytton in Wyatt's Rebellion. Mytton claimed the right to keep them for himself, since Grey had been captured (in Feb. 1554) in Oswestry in the liberty of the earl of Arundel, whose officer Mytton was. No outcome of the case is recorded. Elizabeth Lenton Danet was probably the sister-in-law of Mary Danet, wife of George Medley, although, since she is still called Mrs Lenton in Feb. 1554 (fos 50–51, p. 82 below), and perhaps also in 1556 (fo. 54, p. 86 below), she may be the mother of Elizabeth Lenton.

³³ Mi, A 32, fo. 4, p. 7; HMC Middleton, 403.

³⁴ The total listed for this year is 147^li 18^s 1^d and includes 10^li for the board of Thomas Willughby who stayed at Tylty while the great sweat was in Cambridge and other places. Mi, A 32, fo. 5, p. 9.

³⁵ Mi, A 32, fos 8–8v, pp. 15–16.

³⁶ Mi, A 32, fos 9, 13, pp. 17, 24.

³⁷ Mi, A 32, fo. 12v, p. 23.

³⁸ Although named after Sir Thomas Wyatt, several notable landholders, including Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk, were also involved in this rebellion against Queen Mary in 1554. They hoped to stop Queen Mary's marriage and perhaps unseat her as queen. A nuanced look at the intentions behind the furor indicates that both religion and the politics of nascent nationalism were at the root. Wyatt raised a substantial force but was ultimately stopped at London Bridge by Sir John Brydges, soon to be Baron Chandos. Mary raised the citizens of London against Wyatt, who was arrested, tortured, and executed along with approximately ninety other rebels. Mary believed her half-sister Elizabeth to be implicated in the plot but found no evidence. See Loades, D.M., Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; Bryson, Alan, ‘Order and disorder: John Proctor's history of Wyatt's Rebellion (1554)’, in Pincombe, Mike and Shrank, Cathy (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature: 1485–1603 (Oxford, 2009), 323–336Google Scholar; and Fletcher, Anthony and MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Tudor Rebellions, 6th edn (London, 2016)Google Scholar, ch. 7.

³⁹ The name is derived from the enclosed precinct where the abbey of the Minoresses of St Mary of the Order of St Clare and the homes of their lay tenants stood. Located at the eastern edge of London, just beyond Aldgate and close by the Tower of London, it was taken by the Crown in 1538 and demised by Edward VI to the Grey family. Henry Grey alienated the property to his younger brothers Thomas and John Grey and his half-brother George Medley. As a result of Wyatt's rebellion, the house was searched, George Medley was imprisoned briefly, and Thomas and John forfeited their shares by attainder. George Medley's brother-in-law, Thomas Danet, as well as his nephew Leonard on his wife's side, were indicted in the wake of the rebellion and committed to the Tower. Both were subsequently released, and Thomas Danet fled to the continent. If Margaret and Francis were staying at the Minories from Dec. 1553 until July 1554, while the whole family was under suspicion, they were also in London at a time when large numbers of those involved with Wyatt's rebellion, including, of course, their uncles, Henry and Thomas Grey, were being executed. For more on the Minories, see A.P. House, ‘The City of London and the problem of the liberties, c.1540–c.1640’, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2006; Tomlinson, Edward Murray, History of the Minories (London, 1907)Google Scholar, ch. 7; and Owen, H.G., ‘A nursery of Elizabethan nonconformity, 1567–1572’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 17 (1966), 65–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ This is difficult to follow in George Medeley's account book, as the dates for expenses from 6 July to Dec. (1 Mary) (fo. 13) are followed by weekly expenses from Margaret Willughby. Mi, A 32, fo. 13, pp. 24, et seq. Similarly, for the period 6 July forward (2 Mary), expenses are listed weekly (Mi, A 32, fos 22v–25v, pp. 42–48). During much of the fall, Margaret was not boarding at Tylty, as Cassandra notes.

⁴¹ Frances Grey, née Brandon (1517–1559) – see Text n. 22 above – married Henry Grey in the spring of 1533. In the wake of Wyatt's Rebellion, Henry Grey was executed 23 Feb. 1554. Frances then married Adrian Stokes (variously identified as her master of horse, her steward, or a gentleman) on 9 Mar. 1555, although this date is contested. Margaret Willoughby was with Frances, her aunt, during the difficult year of 1554. As the ensuing letters attest, Margaret accompanied Frances to court to attend Queen Mary; there were great expectations of Margaret's preferment at court. Frances Brandon Grey Stokes was also the godmother of Francis Willoughby.

⁴² See below, fo. 48, p. 79.

⁴³ St Anthony's was an endowed grammar and song school in London founded in the 1440s and attached to the hospital of the same name. See Orme, Nicholas, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973), 308Google Scholar. It was one of the leading schools in London.

⁴⁴ Mi, A 32, fo. 25, p. 47; HMC Middleton, 409. Medeley records a cost of 5s 4d for a fortnight of Francis Willughby's board going to school with Master Lyse at St Anthony's School in London, the cost being 2s 8d per week.

⁴⁵ Mi, A 32, fos 21–25v, pp. 39–48.

⁴⁶ Mi, A 32, fo 26, p. 49. During most of 1556 Margaret left court and attended Lady Elizabeth at Hatfield. Mi A 32, fos 28–31, pp. 53–59; HMC Middleton, 409–412. Margaret, arriving at Hatfield in late Dec. 1555, was with Elizabeth during the period of the abortive Dudley conspiracy. The first half of the year 1556 coincides with the time when Henry Dudley was trying to organize a French-supported invasion of soldiers, English exiles, and malcontents with the aim of placing Elizabeth on the throne. Elizabeth was then 22 years of age. Margaret Willoughby, whose date of birth is unsure but who was probably born c.1543 would then have been 12 or 13 when she went to Hatfield to be with Elizabeth. Correspondence suggests that Queen Mary's sending Margaret Willoughby (and also Elizabeth Fitzgerald) into Elizabeth's service in 1556 might have been an attempt to spy on the princess at this conspiratorial time. Joan Greenbaum Goldsmith, ‘All the queen's women: The changing place and perception of aristocratic women in Elizabethan England, 1558–1620’, PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 1987, 46–47, 225 n. 54. Margaret Willoughby was cousin to Henry Dudley, chief architect of the conspiracy; their mothers were granddaughter and daughter (respectively) of Sir Thomas Grey, 1st marquis of Dorset. It is probably also at this time that John Harington wrote a poem in which he praised Margaret Willoughby as ‘worthye willobe’ and noted her ‘pearcing eye’. Margaret was at the Minories in London by 13 Nov. 1556, having been returned from Elizabeth's household because of the death, from smallpox, of one of her gentlewomen (Mi, A 32, fo. 31, p. 59; HMC Middleton, 412; see also fo. 47, p. 79 below).

⁴⁷ Mary Wotton Guildford (c.1500–1558), second wife of Sir Henry Guildford (d.1532), comptroller of the royal household of Henry VIII.

⁴⁸ Mi, A 32, fo. 26, p. 49; HMC Middleton, 409.

⁴⁹ By early May 1556 members of Elizabeth's household were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Dudley conspiracy. Elizabeth herself spent nearly all of 1556 at Hatfield, with the exception of some weeks later in the year. See Text n. 56 below.

⁵⁰ Mi, A 32, fo. 28, p. 53.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Philip as well as Dick, Hudson, and Kinton were all servants to either George Medley or the Willoughby children.

⁵³ Mi, A 32, fos 28–28v, pp. 53–54.

⁵⁴ Mi, A 32, fo. 30v, p. 58. Cassandra's calculations are accurate, although the final date is 6 Aug. rather than 4 Aug., and the year is 1555.

⁵⁵ Mi, A 32, fo. 30v: see p. 58. Again, her copying of the sum is accurate.

⁵⁶ Elizabeth had been summoned to court at the end of November until 3 Dec. 1556 but must have been in London earlier in November. Cassandra's notes say that Margaret was at the Minories 24–30 Oct., then attending Elizabeth in London, but returning to the Minories the week before 20 Nov. Mi, A 32, fos 30v–31, pp. 58–59. ‘For one Weekes borde for my cosyn Margarett at the Minorisse ended the xx November is being retorned from my ladye Elizabethes grace because of the deathe of one of her gentellwoemen which dyed of the smallpockes.’ Mi, A 32, fo. 31, p. 59; HMC Middleton, 412.

⁵⁷ Skirts or outer petticoats, OED.

⁵⁸ Margaret Willoughby became a gentlewoman of the privy chamber, a position that she held until at least 1583. Margaret was present at Lady Mary Grey's secret marriage on 16 July 1565 to Queen Elizabeth I's serjeant porter, Thomas Keyes. Lisle, The Sisters Who Would be Queen, 232–233.

⁵⁹ William, Lord Paget (d.1563), was keeper of the seal and a close adviser to Queen Mary. Lord Paget held the wardship of Thomas Willoughby who then married Lord Paget's daughter, Dorothy.

⁶⁰ Mi, A 31, f. 14v; See below, Text n. 73.

⁶¹ Mi, A 31, f. 24. The marriage between Margaret Willoughby and Matthew Arundell took place 20 Dec. 1559. Therefore, this account book may be for 1559, especially since Queen Elizabeth came to the throne only in Nov. 1558. Matthew Arundell's dates are c.1533–1598. He would have been about 26, while Margaret was probably about 16. Matthew Arundell had previously been engaged to Katherine Cornwallis, daughter of Sir Thomas Wriothesley, 1st earl of Southampton. Katherine was to be an uncompromising recusant under Elizabeth. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England, 514. For an assurance of Margaret's jointure 12 Feb. 1559/60, where she is referred to as his wife, see CPR 1558–1560, Elizabeth I, i, 280.

⁶² HMC Middleton, 474–485. Stevenson describes two inventories of the goods of Henry Willoughby, one in 1549 and the other in 1550. ‘Both inventories specify much plate’ (p. 474). Mi, I 36 (1549); Mi, I 37 (1550).

⁶³ Mi, A 31, fo. 4. Since Anne Grey, Henry Willoughby's wife, was half-sister to George Medley, Henry Willoughby was his brother-in-law.

⁶⁴ Mi, A 31, fos 2–9v; HMC Middleton, 397–398. Sir Hugh Willoughby ‘the Navigator’ (1495–1554) set off north of Russia in 1553 to find a passage to Cathay. Hakluyt, Richard, The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, 3, Pt 2 (Edinburgh, 1886), 39–40Google Scholar. He and his crew of seventy died while wintering in the mouth of the river ‘Arzina’ in Lapland. Russian sailors found the ship and the crew's bodies in the summer of 1554. Although long presumed to have died from cold or some vitamin deficiency such as scurvy, the most up-to-date theory is that the crew perished from carbon monoxide poisoning resulting from over-zealous cold-proofing and burning sea coal. Sir Hugh's will, since lost, was discovered on the ship. Gordon, Eleanora C., ‘The fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his companions: A new conjecture’, The Geographical Journal, 152 (July 1986), 243–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hugh's wife Joan later married Thomas Shelton. CPR 1560–1563, Elizabeth I, ii, 6.

⁶⁵ In the 1550s, there was a much-litigated manor house at Smallwood, located in Cheshire near Stoke-on-Trent. See Medley's account books regarding charges relating to matters both before and following the death of Sir Hugh Willoughby. Mi, A 31, fos 9–9v, 14v. For more on Smallwood Manor, see Text n. 439 below.

⁶⁶ Sir Fulke Greville (1536–1606) was married to Lady Anne Neville (d.1583), daughter of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmoreland. Through his mother Elizabeth Willoughby de Broke, he was 4th Baron Willoughby de Broke. In 1578 Francis and Elizabeth Willoughby received licence to alienate the manors of and lands in Wollaton, Sutton Passeys, and Cossall (Notts.) and also Sellinge manor and lands (Kent) to Fulk Grevyll and his heirs and assigns. CPR 1575–1578, Elizabeth I, vii, 468. His son, Fulke Greville (1554–1628), 1st Baron Brooke and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke, was a councillor and courtier under Elizabeth I and James I. He was a published poet, political writer, and biographer and close friend of Philip Sidney. It is probably the son who appears later in this MS (fos 89–90, pp. 122–123) as a close associate of Sir Francis Willoughby.

⁶⁷ For some of the difficulties and expenses related to the negotiations with Lord Paget over Thomas Willoughby's wardship, see Mi, A 31, fos 10, 14–14v. ‘Item payde to my Lorde of Suffolke in parte payment of a m^li for the redemption of the wardship & marriage of my sayd cosyn [Thomas Willoughby – described above as his nephew] which Sir Foulke Grevyll woolde ells have bought of my sayd lord [Lord Suffolk] – cxxv^li.’ Mi, A 31, fo. 10.

⁶⁸ Mi, A 31, fo. 11; HMC Middleton, 398.

⁶⁹ Given that Medley's brother-in-law and nephew on his wife's side supported the Grey brothers in Wyatt's rebellion and were imprisoned, it is not surprising that Medley was under suspicion and the Minories possibly to be seized.

⁷⁰ Most likely c.1557. His wife was Dorothy Paget.

⁷¹ Mi, A 31, fo. 14v. In the same year 1555 he wrote that the Lord Paget had expulsed Thomas Willoughby out of his house and discharged him of his service until he was helped to some ‘fermes balywyke’ [rents from Willoughby holdings in the Honour of Peverell]. Subsequently Medley lists legal expenses relating to a bill of complaint of Thomas Willoughby.

⁷² Mi, A 31, fo. 14v. Peverell refers to lands granted to William Peverell by William I. The Willoughbys held lands in the Honour of Peverell. ‘The Conqueror, as a special mark of his royal favour, bestowed on Peverell 162 manors, nine of which were situated in the county of Nottingham […] Attached to the great honour or barony of Peverel in the counties of Nottingham and Derby, was a jurisdiction or court-leet known as Peverel Court.’ Peverell might have been the Conqueror's illegitimate son. Peverell's grandson fled England, and Henry II seized the lands, bestowing most of them on his youngest son John. When John became king, they merged once again with the crown. For more on Peverell, see John Thomas Godfrey, The Court and the Honour of Peverel: In the Counties of Nottingham and Derby (Nottingham, 1882), 5–10; and W. Farrer, Honors and Knights’ Fees, Vols I and II privately published, Vol. III (Manchester University Press, 1923–1925). For Strelley, see Thoresby, John (ed.), Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire, 3 vols (Nottingham, 1790), II, 218–222Google Scholar.

⁷³ For example, Medley wrote that Lord Paget owed a payment of £100 to Margaret Willoughby in 1555. Mi, A 31, fo. 14v; HMC Middleton, 522. Further on he noted that on 27 Mar. he had paid Margaret Willoughby £10 owed her from the legacy that Sir John Willoughby gave her. Mi, A 31, fo. 16v.

⁷⁴ Mi, A 31, fo. 23v. Thomas Willoughby became the heir at age 8 in 1549 and died 16 Aug. 1559. HMC Middleton, 399. See Mi, 6/171/10 for an indenture describing the custody, wardship, and marriage of Francis Willoughby given to Sir Francis Knollys dated 1 July 1560. It includes an attached list of all the lands and manors inherited by Francis Willoughby on his brother's death. The indenture states that at the time of his brother's death, Francis was 12 years, 30 weeks, and 2 days old. This would put his birth date at or about 17 Jan. 1546/47. See Introduction n. 118. See also Salzman, L.F. (ed.), A History of the County of Warwick: IV, VCH (London, 1947), 157 nn. 46–48Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Mi, A 31, fo. 25. For a partial inventory of the goods of Thomas Willoughby, see Mi, 7/183/7 1559.

⁷⁶ Mi, A 31, fo. 26v. The total is written iicxx^li ix^s iii^d. Many of these expenses are for the costs of horses, boat hire, and food when travelling between London, Wollaton, Middleton, and Tilty. There are also ongoing significant costs for advice of counsel in a number of legal matters.

⁷⁷ HMC Middleton, 398. W.H. Stevenson has copied down the following extract from George Medley's account book Mi, A 31, fo. 10v: ‘This terme I hadde to doe with Gromewell and with Mr. George Wylloughbye, who demaunded all the evidences of the Castell in Holbourne, which is intayled by the last wyll of my brother Willoughbye.’ See also Mi, 7/181/7 for proceedings relating to ‘le Castell’ granted by the King to John Beaumounte and by him to Henry Willoughby, Esq., dated 1544/45. The tenement was located in St Andrew's parish, Holborn. Mi, 7/181/8 is a note of writings delivered by ‘Francis Wyllughby’ to ‘George Wyllughby’ relating to ‘le Castell’ in 1568.

⁷⁸ In the extracts from the accounts of George Medley from 1549 to 1562 (Mi, A 31, fo. 23v), W.H. Stevenson copied down under the year 1559 a payment to his servant Philip for ‘for his chargez ryding to Horsseley to the corte with Henry Medley, signifying to my Lord John that my nepveu Thomas Wylloughbye was departed’. HMC Middleton, 399. Cassandra has mistaken 1558 for 1559. See the inventory of goods of ‘Thomas Willughbie’ dated 17 Aug. 1559 [Mi, 7/183/7], as well as his Inquisition Post Mortem 1 May 1560 [Mi, 7/183/10–11] and the 9 Sept. 1559 grant of administration to George Willoughbie [Mi, 7/183/8]. See Mi, A 31, fo. 25 for a complaint against George Willoughby in 1560. See also Mi, 6/171/10 for the date of death of Thomas Willoughby as 16 Aug. 1 Elizabeth.

⁷⁹ HMC Middleton, 409–411; Mi, A 32, fos 22, 25, 28v, pp. 41, 47, 54. Most likely Saffron Walden School in Essex, where there was a school as early as 1317 and a grammar school by 1423. In 1525 the grammar school was endowed, becoming a free school. Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages, 314. It appears that Francis first went to Saffron Walden in 1554. He was then at St Anthony's in London for the first half of 1555. He was back at Saffron Walden in June 1555 and into 1556.

⁸⁰ See Moran, J.H., The Growth of English Schooling 1350–1540 (Princeton, 1985)Google Scholar, for an analysis of reading and grammar education in the first half of the 16th century. Learning to sing was often taught separately from reading and grammar. It was also common to employ a separate writing master, as was the case with Francis.

⁸¹ There is another account book of ‘The book of charges at Mr. Medleye and Mr. Berwickes being at Wollaton’, dated Mar. 1560 [Mi, 7/183/9].

⁸² Lord Paget, who held the wardship of Thomas Willoughby and whose daughter Thomas married, was made lord privy seal in Jan. 1556.

⁸³ In 1542 John Trussell is listed as a servant under Sir John Willoughby. HMC Middleton, 388. In 1542/3 he is listed as ‘gent. and “serviens Domino”’, accounting for various payments, again in 1544/5 accounting for costs and receipts from the coal-pits, and again in 1549/50, in the wake of Henry Willoughby's death accounting for household expenses. HMC Middleton, 315–316, 396. Trussell was the bailiff at Wollaton by 1546/7 and still bailiff in 1562, as is clear from Medley's letters to Trussell mentioned here. In 1550 he was one of several who appraised the goods of Henry Willoughby, father of Francis. HMC Middleton, 474. Trussell came from a Warwickshire gentry family and was the second son of William Trussell and Cicely Curzon of Billesley Trussell near Stratford-upon-Avon, an estate that was confiscated in the 1580s owing to highway robberies of his great-nephew, Thomas Trussell. Trussell was probably born between 1513 (the possible birth date of his older brother Avery) and 1517, the death date of his father. He married Bridget Marmion, daughter of Henry Marmion. Their son William married Catherine Itell [Ithell?], and a daughter Joane may have married John Squire. All of these names, Ithell, Squire, Trussell, and Marmion (and perhaps even Joane) figure among the servants of the Willoughbys at Wollaton. A Henry Trussell, servant to Elizabeth Willoughby and often mentioned during the time of separation of Francis and Elizabeth, may have been another son of John Trussell. A grandson of John Trussell was John Trussell (1575–1648), poet and historian. On the Trussells, see Robert Frederick William Smith, ‘John Trussell: A life (1575–1648)’, PhD thesis, University of Southampton, 2013, appendix A.

⁸⁴ Young hares less than a year old, OED.

⁸⁵ In 1507, the property at Mapperley was known as Le Park Halle (today Park Hall in Derbyshire). By 1599, the estate was in the will of Benjamin Smithe. James v. Smithe, Chancery (hereafter C), TNA, C 2/Eliz/I1/20.

⁸⁶ George Medley died in 1562/3; his will was proved 3 Feb. 1563. TNA, PROB 11/46/75. See also Mi, 1/7/183/12. This must be Henry Medley, the son of George and Mary, although the very next reference, to an account from Mr Medley, clearly refers to George Medley.

⁸⁷ This letter, dated Jan. 1565/6, was written one or two years after the marriage of Francis Willoughby to Elizabeth Lyttleton. This letter tells us that Elizabeth was pregnant (possibly with a son) and seems to suggest that she miscarried. There is an irony in the wish for jolly many sons, since Elizabeth was to have at least twelve pregnancies, but the only surviving children were six girls.

⁸⁸ See J.M.J. Tonks, ‘The Lyttletons of Frankley’, MLitt thesis, University of Oxford, 1978. The Lyttletons were an old-established Worcestershire family with lands in the county in the 13th century. They inherited Frankley in 1405 and further established themselves with the career of Sir Thomas Littleton/Lyttleton (1422–1481), who became judge of the common pleas and was famed as author of a Treatise on Tenure. Subsequently the family held extensive properties in Shropshire, and two of Thomas Littleton's descendants at Frankley married heiresses. John Lyttleton (1519–1590), the father of Elizabeth, began with substantial properties and throughout his life consolidated his holdings, managing them closely. He was also invested in coal mining and house building, much like his soon-to-be son-in-law. John Lyttleton had been a person of some substance in the court of Queen Mary. Under Elizabeth he reconciled himself to the Elizabethan religious settlement but remained a Catholic sympathizer; as a leader of the north Worcestershire gentry, he joined the county bench, served as high sheriff and MP, and his supporters dominated local and county offices. Tonks, ‘Lyttletons’, ch. 2.

⁸⁹ Robert Dudley, 1st earl of Leicester (1532–1588), Elizabeth's favourite. Dudley had been rehabilitated in 1557 and named earl of Leicester in 1564. The scandal caused by the death of his wife Amy Robsart in 1560 excluded any possibility of his marrying Elizabeth. Elizabeth banned from court Lettice Knollys, his second wife, who was Elizabeth's cousin and former favourite.

⁹⁰ For the 20 Nov. 1564 marriage settlement documents, see Mi, 7/183/19–20. This was a very generous marriage settlement for the time. Tonks calls it ‘a massive sum for an upper gentry family’ and not surprising that ‘Lyttelton was slow in making payment’. Tonks, ‘Lyttletons’, 44–45. The settlement amount is even more surprising considering that John Lyttleton had to provide for three sons and four daughters.

⁹¹ This must be Henry Medley, son of George Medley and Mary Danet. In 1569, however, Gabriel Berwyke wrote to Francis Willoughby reproving him for marrying ‘without the consent of Mr Medley, Mr Haule and me’ (Mi, C 14). This seems to contradict the evidence here that Medley, at least, was very much involved in the marriage negotiations.

⁹² Matthew Arundell of Wardour Castle in Wiltshire (c.1533–1598/9), also known as Matthew Arundell-Howard, married Francis Willughby's sister Margaret in 1559. Matthew's father Thomas, favourite of Anne Boleyn, purchased Wardour Castle in 1547 during the monastic dissolutions. Although Arundell was executed for treason in 1551/2, the Crown returned Thomas's lands to his widow Margaret Howard (d.1571), lifting the attainder from the father's treason. The Arundells had been staunchly Roman Catholic. While Matthew's brother was a recusant. Matthew conformed to the Church of England. Matthew's mother was a first cousin of Anne Boleyn, and thus Matthew was second cousin to Queen Elizabeth. For his will, see TNA, PROB 11/93/86, dated 6 Feb. 1598/99.

⁹³ The fact that Lord John Grey was involved with this negotiation may help to date the marriage. From Aug. 1563 John Grey had taken custody of his niece, Catherine Grey, but that relationship was compromised in Apr. 1564 when a book by John Hales arguing for the validity of Catherine's claim to succession to the throne was published. Lord Grey, as a result, was taken temporarily into custody, and he died in 19 Nov. 1564. It is likely that the marriage between Francis and Elizabeth, then, took place early in 1564, prior to the eruption of further political troubles for the Grey family.

⁹⁴ Sir Dugdale, William, The Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1656), 37–39Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ A real estate term meaning a future interest given to someone after the expiration of a prior estate, such as a life estate.

⁹⁶ ‘The sport of chasing hares or other game with greyhounds, by sight,’ OED.

⁹⁷ Cassandra closely follows Dugdale for this portion of the account. It may be, however, that Smith had received £420 from John Lyttleton to allow the reversion to the Lyttletons rather than to any heir he might have. According to Dugdale, Richard Smyth had already experienced substantial tragedy when his aged father Walter married the woman originally intended for Richard; she subsequently, in 1553, had Walter Smyth strangled, as Cassandra notes. The estate of Shirford, gained by the Lyttletons through their negotiations with Richard Smyth, escheated to the Crown when Gilbert Lyttleton's son John participated in Essex's rebellion and died in prison. The son and heir of George and Margaret was Stephen Lyttleton, who, being one of the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, lost his life and his estate. Richard Smyth spent the rest of his life pursuing various lawsuits, trying to regain his lost inheritance. This tainted marriage settlement must have been well known at the time, as was the murder of Walter Smyth. For the text of the contested settlement document, confirming Dugdale's (and Cassandra's) account of its contents, see Mi, 7/183/15, dated 15 Mar. 1564, and Mi, 6/176/156, dated 4 Aug. 1566. From other documents, it appears that part of Smyth's estate went from the Lyttletons to Francis Willoughby. See Mi, 7/183/21. On the payment for the reversion, see Tonks, ‘Lyttletons’, 46 n. 1.

⁹⁸ For information on the wardship of Francis Willoughby, which had belonged to Sir Francis Knollys in 1560 but was bought out by the executors of the will of Francis's father in 1564, see Introduction, p. 32. Other than this slight allusion, Cassandra's Account does not address these transactions.

⁹⁹ We have no information regarding Elizabeth Lyttleton's education, but it is likely that she learned from a tutor at home and would have been trained to play musical instruments, to read and write both English and French, and learned sufficient Latin to read, at a minimum, devotional books and scripture.

¹⁰⁰ ‘A Joynture is a competent Livelihood of Freehold Lands or Tenements, etc. for the Wife to take Effect presently in possession or Profit after the natural Death of the Husband, for the Life of the Wife at least, if she herself is not the Cause of the Determination or Forfeiture of it […] This Definition of a Joynture is made with Respect to the Statute of 27 H. 8 [the Statute of Uses].’ Wood, Thomas, An Institute of the Laws of England, 4th edn (London, 1724), 125Google Scholar. See also Baker, John, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, 1483–1558, VI (Oxford, 2003), 677Google Scholar, 689. The Lyttletons made generous concessions to the Willoughbys in only requiring a third of the Willoughby estates to be settled on the heirs male of the couple and a ‘very reasonable’ jointure for Elizabeth. Tonks ‘Lyttletons’, 44.

¹⁰¹ See above, fo. 55v, p. 88.

¹⁰² Referring to Elizabeth Lyttleton, who, by the time of this letter, had married Francis Willughby.

¹⁰³ Neck and shoulder garment for women, often ruffled.

¹⁰⁴ Francis Willoughby was not knighted until 27 July 1575, at his house in Middleton. William Catesby was knighted at the same time. Kinney, Arthur F. and Lawson, Jane A. (eds), Titled Elizabethans: A Directory of Elizabethan State and Church Officers and Knights, with Peers of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1558–1603, expanded edn (New York, 2014), 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid. 194. On 20–21 Aug. 1566 John Lyttleton, along with the others named by Cassandra, were knighted by the earl of Leicester at Kenilworth.

¹⁰⁶ Elizabeth visited Kenilworth 19 to 22 Aug. 1566 and went on from there to Warwick Castle and to the house of Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote by 24 Aug. Cole, Mary Hill, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (Amherst, MA, 1999)Google Scholar, app. 2, p. 182. E. Goldring, F. Eales, E. Clarke and J.E. Archer (eds), Nichols's, John The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources, I (Oxford, 2014), 465–466Google Scholar. Other than Cassandra's reference here, there is little surviving description of the 1566 visit to Kenilworth.

¹⁰⁷ Presumably he is referring to Francis Willoughby, although Francis was his brother-in-law.

¹⁰⁸ Ray, John, A Complete Collection of English Proverbs (1768; rev. edn, London, 1813)Google Scholar, 101: ‘It is an ill dog that is not worth the whistling’; ‘It is an ill dog that deserves not a crust.’

¹⁰⁹ Woodland was an estate in Dorset that had belonged to Sir Edward Willoughby (d.1541). Woodland eventually passed to Francis Willoughby and his heirs, coming to Dorothy Willoughby, Francis's second daughter, and her husband Henry Hastings, but not without a great deal of trouble, as Cassandra's Account below describes (see fos 166–169, pp. 208–212 below).

¹¹⁰ William Herbert, 1st earl of Pembroke (1506/7–1570). His landed estates in Wiltshire and Wales made him one of the most powerful men in England. He was named high steward of the royal household in 1568. P. Sil Narasingha, ‘Herbert, William, first earl of Pembroke’, ODNB.

¹¹¹ Elizabeth visited Oxford from 31 Aug. to 6 Sept. in 1566. Cole, The Portable Queen, app. 2, p. 182; Nichols's Progresses and Public Processions, 1, 466–672, for the many orations, disputations, plays, and poems presented to Elizabeth while there. The tragedy was a Latin tragedy called ‘Progne’ [‘Procne’], written by Gregorio Correr c.1427; the other play on Palaman and Arcite turned into a tragedy when part of the stage collapsed and several people were killed.

¹¹² Sometime between 1567 and 1569 Elizabeth and Francis moved out of Frankley and into the Willoughby households. On 6 June 1568 Robert Penruddoke of Hale signed an indenture turning over documents relating to the lands, accounts, rentals, drafts of wills, surveys, bills of complaint, leases, lists of feofees, depositions, etc. releasing the Dorset estates to Sir Francis Willoughby, now aged 20 and coming into his inheritance. Mi, 5/167/154. Penruddoke was the chief steward for the Dorset estates. See also Mi, 7/183/22–25, dated 1566–1568.

¹¹³ Shaftesbury Abbey in Dorset was dissolved in 1539 by Thomas Cromwell and purchased by Sir Thomas Arundell, Sir Matthew's father, in 1540. William Herbert, 1st earl of Pembroke, bought the Abbey from the Crown after it was seized in 1552 owing to Thomas Arundell's attainder. Matthew and his mother lost everything and had to flee the country for awhile. It took Matthew at least two decades to recover his properties (he never did get Shaftesbury Abbey back). ‘Shaftesbury’, in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, 4: North (London, 1972), 55–76; British History Online, ‘Shaftesbury’, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/dorset/vol4/pp55-76 (accessed 31 Mar. 2018).

¹¹⁴ The most likely reference is to the murder of Lord Darnley (Henry Stuart, duke of Albany, husband of Mary Stuart, and potential successor to the English throne) which took place the night of 10 Feb. 1566/7, which would date this letter to 1567. Darnley and his mother, Margaret Douglas, had been at the English court from 1563 until early 1565, in which case Margaret would have known them.

¹¹⁵ Elizabeth and Francis had a three-year commitment for room and board at the Lyttletons. In 1567 they were reaching the end of this agreement and should have been moving over to Middelton and/or Wollaton.

¹¹⁶ Bath is a general term for spa. It could also reference the spa in the town of Bath, although the Willoughbys seem to have frequented the spa at Buxton.

¹¹⁷ Edward Fiennes de Clinton (between 1512 and 1516–Jan. 1585), 1st earl of Lincoln, lord high admiral 1550–1553 and 1559–1585. Clinton was a privy counsellor under Edward VI and helped subdue Wyatt's Rebellion in 1554. He was sent with Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick, to subdue the 1569 Northern Rebellion, in which the Catholic earls Northumberland and Westmorland attempted to depose Elizabeth in favour of Mary, Queen of Scots. Clinton became earl of Lincoln in 1572. Anne Duffin, ‘Clinton, Edward Fiennes, first earl of Lincoln (1512–1585)’, ODNB.

¹¹⁸ The River Trent, probably for shipping coal. This widening does not appear to have taken place.

¹¹⁹ This may refer to the visit that Queen Elizabeth made to Kenilworth from 13–16 Aug. 1572. Nichols's Progresses and Public Processions, II, 38. The following letters, however, from Margaret Arundell are earlier – from 1569–1570. Elizabeth never did make a journey to York. See Cole, The Portable Queen, app. 2.

¹²⁰ Wilton House in Wiltshire, near Salisbury, formerly Wilton Abbey. Henry VIII presented the estate to Sir William Herbert, afterwards the 1st earl of Pembroke, in the 1540s.

¹²¹ Ambrose Dudley, 3rd earl of Warwick (c.1528–1590), elder brother to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, was sent with Clinton to subdue the 1569 Northern Rebellion. This dates Margaret's letter to late 1569/early 1570. The references to Jane Topcliffe in the same and subsequent letters also suggest a date of 1569/1570.

¹²² Jane Willoughby Topcliffe (c.1525–c.1571) was the daughter of Edward Willoughby of Wollaton (1467–1541) and Anne Filliol. She married Richard Topcliffe (1531–1604) of Somersby, Lincs., who later became notorious for the use of torture in interrogating recusants and Catholic priests. They had four sons and two daughters. Jane separated from her husband at some point before her death, which would be before he made a career out of interrogating those who did not conform to the Church of England. The History of Parliament places Topcliffe in a house in Westminster in 1571 and states that at some point (no dates given), his personal life was ‘clouded’ by his ‘alleged failure to pay his wife adequate maintenance’. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/topcliffe-richard-1531-1604 (accessed 20 June 2018). On Topcliffe, see Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London and Boston, and Totowa, NJ, 1978), 87, 118, 138, 201; and Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England, passim. Carole Levin calls Topcliffe, ‘A man of dubious integrity and strange reputation’ and lists, in a footnote, a variety of views by modern historians on Topcliffe. She mentions his interrogation of Thomas Portmort, priest, who claimed that Topcliffe bragged of his intimate personal and physical relationship with the Queen. Levin, , The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 141–142Google Scholar, 205 n. 45. For more on Topcliffe, see Guy, John, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (New York, 2016), 170–176Google Scholar.

¹²³ Aspley Hall in the city of Nottingham. Originally belonging to the monks of Lenton Priory, it came into the hands of the Willoughbys after the dissolution of the monasteries.

¹²⁴ On George Willoughby, an illegitimate son of Edward Willoughby and therefore a half-brother of Jane Willoughby Topcliffe, see above, Text n. 27.

¹²⁵ The wife of George Willoughby was Maud Cotton, widow of Francis Repington. The Repington mentioned here may be her son and therefore a stepson of George Willoughby. There is a letter from Richard Repington in the Middleton file Mi, Da 80/1–37. Repington was a lawyer and steward of the Borough of Sutton Coldfield, Warks., where the Willoughbys owned land and worked coal mines.

¹²⁶ The jointure was that part of the estate that would go to Elizabeth Willoughby if Francis were to predecease her. See Text n. 100 above.

¹²⁷ Henry Hastings, 3rd earl of Huntingdon (c.1535–1595). See Cross, Claire, The Puritan Earl: The Life of Henry Hastings, Third Earl of Huntingdon (London, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²⁸ Willughby possession of land in Cossall seems to have been the source of litigation for a number of years, being part of Peverell's Fee. See Thoresby, Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire, II, 215–217. Francis lost Cossall Manor in 1569: ‘The mannor of Cossal alias Cossal Marsh, late belonging to the monastery of Newstede, and in the occupation of Francis Willughby, 21 July, 10 Eliz. was granted to Percivall Bowes, and John Moysier, gentlemen’.

¹²⁹ Bridewell, given to the City of London by Edward VI in 1553, was a prison for the disorderly, an orphanage, and a training facility for apprentices. Debtors made up the majority of long-term inmates. See Morris, Norval and Rothman, David J., The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (Oxford, 1998), 73Google Scholar, 75. See Hinckle, William G., A History of Bridewell Prison, 1553–1700 (London, 2006)Google Scholar. Bridewell became an eponym; work houses and debtors’ prisons became known as bridewells. For the eponymous nature of Bridewell for houses of correction outside London, see Griffiths, Paul and Devereaux, Simon (eds), Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English (London, 2004)Google Scholar; and Innes, Joanna, ‘Prisons for the poor: English bridewells, 1555–1800’, in Snyder, F. and Hay, D. (eds), Labour, Law and Crime: An Historical Perspective (London, 1987), 42–122Google Scholar. In the 16th century, 170 houses of correction, known as bridewells, opened throughout England in response to rising vagrancy.

¹³⁰ Kingsbury, Warks. In the draft in the Stowe Brydges Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA (hereafter STB), STB Box 2 (1), fos 20v–21. Cassandra places the date of this letter at about the second half of 1575.

¹³¹ Margaret was very likely talking of going up to London where she was one of the gentlewomen of the bedchamber and of the privy chamber.

¹³² The lord keeper was the custodian of the Great Seal and after his status was fixed by the Lord Keeper Act of 1562, he also functioned as lord chancellor. For Bacon, who was lord keeper from 1558–1579, see Tittler, Robert, Nicholas Bacon: The Making of a Tudor Statesman (Athens, OH, 1976)Google Scholar.

¹³³ A Commission of the Peace was a commission from the crown to appoint, under the Great Seal, justices of the peace to keep the peace within each county. According to evidence from the several Libri pacis in the National Archives, Francis Willoughby served as a justice of the peace for Warwickshire from 1573 to 1584. Enis, Cathryn, ‘The Dudleys, Sir Christopher Hatton and the justices of Elizabethan Warwickshire’, Midland History, 39 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, app. 2, which may date this letter to 1573. Francis Willoughby may have been appointed as part of the growing influence and patronage of Christopher Hatton within Warwickshire. On the importance of commissions, see Jones, Norman, Governing by Virtue: Lord Burghley and the Management of Elizabethan England (Oxford, 2015), 19–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁴ Catesby or Catesbie is a Warwickshire name. This Catesbie is probably one of the younger sons (either George or John) of Sir Richard Catesby of Ashby St Ledgers, Warks. (d.1553) and his wife Dorothy Spencer. His aunt would have been Isabel Spencer who married Sir Nicholas Strelley of Nottinghamshire in 1546. For Sir Richard Catesby, see his will, TNA, PROB 11/36/261. It is probably Richard Catesby who is listed over several years from 1521 to 1526 in the Willoughby account books as receiving monies for his schooling at Sutton Coldfield. It is likely that he spent part of his youth in the Willoughby household. (HMC Middleton, 363, 369, 383, 385), and his son followed suit. The Catesbys were a mostly Catholic family with declining resources and influence within the county by the 1570s. See Enis, ‘The Dudleys, Sir Christopher Hatton and the justices of Elizabethan Warwickshire’, 1–35. William Catesby (the oldest son of Richard Catesby) was at Middleton in 1575 when both he and Francis Willoughby were knighted. William Catesby was instrumental in petitioning Queen Elizabeth, unsuccessfully, to withhold her assent from anti-Catholic legislation in 1585; he was also involved in a plan with Francis Walsingham to found a colony for Catholics in America. Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Queen Elizabeth I, 66, 136. William Catesby's son by Anne, née Throckmorton, Robert Catesby, was involved in the 1601 Essex Rebellion and was a co-conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. ‘The Gunpowder Plot’, ONDB.

¹³⁵ Henry Marmion is listed as one of Henry Willoughby's most highly paid servants, 1522–1525. From 1535 to 1543 he is listed as the bailiff for Wollaton, Cossall, and Sutton Passeys (HMC Middleton, 313–315, 338, 361, 370). In 1547 he was receiving an annuity of £5 from John Willoughby from the income of Wollaton and Sutton Passeys (HMC Middleton, 316–317). Henry Marmyon, gentleman, was one of the executors to the will of Henry Willoughby, father of Francis. This particular Marmion, William, may have been his son. See below, fo. 83, p. 115 (1572), and fo. 101, p. 133, and Text n. 214 where Trussell in 1580 refers to his uncle Marmion, whom Cassandra understands to be one of Francis Willoughby's servants. Since John Trussell, a servant to the Willoughbys since the 1540s married Bridget Marmion, it is likely that this Trussell is the son of John Trussell and is referring to a brother of Bridget Marmion who might well be William Marmion (see fo. 83, p. 115 below in the list of servants). For a history of the Marmions from the perspective of the 17th-century Willoughbys, see Mi, LM 13, pp. 47–51, 73–74; HMC Middleton, 271, 506; Mi, LM 26, fos 4–8. The Marmions received, from William I, the castle of Tamworth. The last Marmion lord of Tamworth was Philip de Marmion, who died in 1291/2, leaving an estate divided among female heirs. On the many estates granted or sold to Philip and, subsequently, his partitioned estate, see HMC Middleton, 71–75, 77–83. In 1283 he was proposing to found a Premonstratensian house at Tamworth.

The particular Marmion mentioned above (William), who was to cause so much trouble within the Willoughby household, was a servant at Wollaton from 1572 to 1578. HMC Middleton, 152–155, 542, 560. Mi, LM 26, fos 69, 83, 119. This was probably the same Marmion who was a servant of the countess of Shrewsbury (Elizabeth Talbot, known as Bess of Hardwick, c.1521/2 or 1527–1608) and wrote to Francis Willoughby c.1580 from the household of the earl and countess saying that he was leaving that household to return to Wollaton and that he was implicated in the ‘cyvill warres’ between the countess and her husband. ‘That howse is a hell […] I tould your worship at your being last at Haddon of a broyle or kynd of tragedy betwixt my Lord and Lady of late, wherin, as alwayes in maner hertofore, my Lord hathe made me playe a parte, so I thinke the tragedy would not hould if I be lefte out.’ He writes that Lord Shrewsbury blames Marmion and his wife, Elizabeth [the countess of Shrewsbury], as the sole cause of Queen Elizabeth's reducing the allowance paid for the ‘Lady of Skottlandes dyat […] but he would remove me and shutt her Ladyship up without suffring any sarvauntes about her than of his owne placing.’ He states that he will consult with his father [perhaps Henry Marmion], but he hopes to return to Sir Francis's household. ‘And thoughe I speake it, methinks Wollaton Howse should not be without a Marmyon.’ HMC Middleton, 152–155. See also Bess of Hardwick's Letters: The Complete Correspondence c.1550–1608, letter 078 (26 June 1580); online at https://www.bessofhardwick.org/home.jsp (accessed 31 Mar. 2018).

¹³⁶ There has been relatively little research done on the role of servants in Tudor England. See a general overview by Sim, Alison, Masters and Servants in Tudor England (Stroud, 2006)Google Scholar. It is interesting that there were a number of marriages among the servants, in these cases between the Trussell, Marmion, Ithell, and Squire families. See above, Text n. 83.

¹³⁷ Sir Anthony Strelley (1528–c.1596) was the son of Nicholas Strelley and Isabel Spencer. Anthony Strelley was a frequent visitor at the Willoughbys. The Strelleys had previously intermarried with the Stanhope, Markham, and Willoughby families, and Sir Anthony's nephew Nicolas married Bridget Willoughby, the daughter of Percival and Bridget (1605). The Strelley holdings, which included coal mines and lands in Nottinghamshire, were in decline by the 16th century. From 1608 to 1610 Sir Percivall Willoughby was in court against the Strelleys for owing monies due from coal deposits, perhaps in regard to the marriage settlement between his daughter Bridget and Nicholas Strelley. For the will of Anthony Strelley, see a copy at Borthwick Institute, York, Prob. Reg. 26, fo. 287. Strelley's comment here, sympathizing with Elizabeth's troubles, indicates that Sir Francis's treatment of her was not a secret, so much so that she was gossiped about by men leaning in windows.

¹³⁸ According to Mack, Peter, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2002), 236CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a verlet [or varlet] is someone who is proud and impudent.

¹³⁹ Ithell is a Welsh surname. A Mary Ithell, born in Wales (c.1518–1612), was baptized in Gloucestershire and married Richard Wardwell (1512–c.1541) of Warwickshire. Mary died in Warwickshire.

¹⁴⁰ This suggests that Margaret Willoughby Arundell had received a fairly high level of learning.

¹⁴¹ Lady Stanhop is Anne Rawson (1513–1587/8), wife of Sir Michael Stanhope of Shelford and Elvaston (c.1502–1552), mother of Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford. Haddam's wife is Lady Stanhope's daughter, Juliana, who married John Hotham of Scarborough, Yorks. c.1560. By early 1569 John Hotham had barred his house to her, and she returned to live with her mother. Scandalous accusations flew between the estranged couple, including the accusation that John Hotham was having an affair ‘with a naughty pack’ [immoral woman], while accusations against Julian, not detailed in any of the extant correspondence and court cases, appear to have shamed her; her husband slandered her and was, according to Anne Stanhope, ‘reporting sundry untruths of her in all places where he comes’. John Hotham seems never to have provided maintenance for his wife after their separation, and she died in Nottingham in 1577. See Cobbing, Beryl and Priestland, Pamela, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford: Local Life in Elizabethan Times (Radcliffe-on-Trent, 2003)Google Scholar, ch. 4, and esp. p. 65. BL, Lansdowne MS 12/1, fos 2–3v is a 1569 letter from Anne Stanhope appealing to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to intercede with John Hotham or, at a minimum, help provide for her daughter who has been ‘left penyles to defend her cause’. See also BL, Lansdowne MS 12/76, fo. 170r, an appeal in 1570 to Cecil to bring the business between Hotham and her daughter to some good end. Throughout the 1570s the Willoughbys and Stanhopes visited one another often and exchanged gifts frequently. Mi, A57 fos 21v–86v, cited in Cobbing and Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope, 74.

¹⁴² The sense of this passage seems to be: Lady Arundell had learnt that Squire had been with the countess of Warwick to acquaint her (the countess of Warwick) that Ithel had told Lady Arundell stories of her Sister (Sir Francis's wife), and to persuade the countess not to believe any thing which Lady Arundell should say of her Sister the Lady Willughby (Sir Francis's wife). The countess of Warwick may have been Anne Seymour (1538–1588), daughter of Edward Seymour, 1st duke of Somerset (executed in 1552), who married John Dudley, 2nd earl of Warwick, in 1550. Dudley died in 1554 after being imprisoned, and Anne remarried. Another countess of Warwick was Anne Dudley (née Russell), countess of Warwick (1548/9–9 Feb. 1604), lady-in-waiting and close friend of Queen Elizabeth. She married Ambrose Dudley, 3rd earl of Warwick, the eldest brother of Robert Dudley, 1st earl of Leicester in 1565. Given the reference to her ‘sister Willoughby’ the reference is probably to Anne Seymour Dudley, although, since the two countesses were sisters-in-law themselves, it could also be Anne Russell Dudley.

¹⁴³ Richard Catesby (d.1553/4) had six sons with his two wives Dorothy Spencer and Elizabeth Astell. Possibilities might be: the daughter of William Powell who married George Catesby; Elizabeth who married Richard; Elizabeth Porter who married Edmund; Elizabeth Whorwood who married Edward; or Anne Throckmorton who married William.

¹⁴⁴ Thomas Willoughby (c.1538–1596) held lands in Bore Place, Kent. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn 30 Apr. 1558, was executor to the will of his mother, Briget Willoughby, 18 Aug. 1558, and served as sheriff of Kent 1573–1574 and 1590. Sir Percival was the eldest son of Thomas and his first wife, Katherine Hart, daughter of Sir Percival Hart of Lullingstone Court in Kent. Thomas and Katherine were married in 1557 and had 10 children. After Katherine's death Thomas married Mary Weston, by whom he had three daughters. Thomas Willoughby was first cousin to Sir Francis Willughby, making Percival and his wife Bridget second cousins (they shared great-grandparents: see Table 1). See ‘Pedigree of Willoughby’, in Frederick Arthur Crisp (ed.), Visitation of England and Wales, 9: Notes (London, 1911), 1, https://archive.org/details/visitationofengl30howa. In The Continuation of the History (pp. 23–24), Cassandra concludes, based on reading many of his letters, that Thomas Willoughby was ‘a very kind Father and a very just man […] a very prudent, and a very good man’. Mi, LM 27, fo.19. Thomas was buried at Chiddingstone, Kent on 2 June 1596. For his will, see Mi, 6/178/52 and 53; for his inventory see Mi, I 27 and 28.

¹⁴⁵ Unidentified.

¹⁴⁶ Although Cassandra generally follows a chronological progression in the Account and The Continuation of the History, in this section she reaches back to 1572 for some of her materials.

¹⁴⁷ Based on the assumption that Francis would have hired a physician of some note, there were two members of the Royal Society of Physicians named Smith who practised medicine in London in 1574, both named Richard. One was a notorious Catholic and opposer of the Reformation. The other, Richard Smith, MD (d. c.1599), is the most probable candidate. Dr Smith was born in Gloucestershire (c.1540s) and earned his MD from St John's College, Cambridge in 1567. Munk, William (ed.), The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London (London, 1878), 68Google Scholar. There are numerous references to Dr Smith attending not only Elizabeth Willoughby but also other members of the household in Mi, A 57, a surviving account book for Nov. 1572 to Feb. 1575.

¹⁴⁸ Buxton, a spa town in the High Peak Hundred, Derbyshire. Hembry, Phyllis May, The English Spa 1560–1815: A Social History (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Langham, Mike and Wells, Colin, The Baths at Buxton Spa (Leek, 2005)Google Scholar. I would like to thank Amanda Herbert, at the Folger Library, for these references. One of the earliest mentions of a visit to St Anne's Chapel (and presumably the waters) at Buxton is in HMC Middleton, 367, for Sept. 1524. Under the patronage of the earl of Shrewsbury in the 1570s, Buxton had a four-storey building with ‘galleries, exercise equipment, airing rooms, “most decent” privies and lodging for all classes, including a dormitory for the poor’. See Jones, Norman, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s (Oxford, 1993), 206–207Google Scholar, and 281 n. 58, for references to treatises printed in 1562 and 1572 describing the baths. The spa charged differential fees based on one's class, with gentlemen paying 3s 4d, plus 4d for administering the bath. It was frequently visited by Mary, Queen of Scots, in the 1570s and 1580s. Walsham, Alexandra, The Reformation of the Landscape (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 7 discusses Buxton spa in the context of the Reformation.

¹⁴⁹ ‘[A] crazy notion or wild idea; also, a craze or mania’, OED. It is also defined as a mental derangement. This reads more like foolishness, however.

¹⁵⁰ Prestwood manor farm in Staffordshire was purchased by John Lyttleton in 1554. See Text n. 187 below.

¹⁵¹ Most likely Eleanor Sheffield, daughter of Edmund Sheffield, 1st Baron Sheffield, who married Denzel Holles (1538–1590). Her father was killed in Aug. 1549 during Kett's Rebellion, as was Francis's father. Less likely would be the second wife of William Hollis (father of Denzil), Ida Grosvenor of Cheshire, whom he married in 1570.

¹⁵² Sir Francis Knollys (1512–1596), councillor to Queen Elizabeth until his death and a member of Parliament from 1559 until 1593. At one point he held the wardship of Sir Francis Willoughby (see Introduction, p. 32). For more on Knollys, see Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘Sir Francis Knollys and his progeny: Court and country in the Thames Valley’, in Jones, Norman J. and Woolf, Daniel (eds), Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (New York, 2007), 131–155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵³ ‘A quantity […] of meat […] sufficient to make a dish’, OED, under ‘mess’.

¹⁵⁴ See STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 18–18v. In Cassandra's notes, this letter was dated 26 July 1575. Neither is correct, however. In that week of 1575, Tuesday fell on 22 July. Elizabeth visited Kenilworth from 9 to 27 July 1575. Cole, The Portable Queen, 188.

¹⁵⁵ Cooke, W.G., ‘Queen Elizabeth never slept here: Cassandra, Duchess of Chandos as an authority for royal progresses’, REED [Records of Early English Drama] Newsletter, 14:1 (1989), 18–20Google Scholar. Cooke counsels caution when using Cassandra to trace the movements of Elizabeth I. Cole lists a visit from Queen Elizabeth to Middleton but not Wollaton on 28–29 July 1575. Kinney and Lawson list Francis Willoughby as having being made knight at Middleton on 27 July 1575. Cole, The Portable Queen, 188; Kinney and Lawson (eds), Titled Elizabethans, 199. It would appear that Elizabeth never did travel to Wollaton.

¹⁵⁶ Mi, A 57 is a large account book of 92 folio pages that begins 8 Nov. 1572 and continues to Feb. 1574/5. See also HMC Middleton, 421–451, although Stevenson only copies down a small portion of the information.

¹⁵⁷ Marshall, Pamela, Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Nottingham, 1999)Google Scholar spends two pages on the 1572 household order for the old hall at Wollaton (pp. 22–24). ‘For another detailed set of rules and orders drawn up in 1595 by the second Viscount Montague setting out in wearisome detail how his domestic servants were supposed to cater to his every need, see Scott, S.D., ‘“A booke of orders and rules” of Anthony Viscount Montague in 1595’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 7 (1854), 173–212Google Scholar, cited in Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England, 15.

¹⁵⁸ Unidentified, unless this Foxe is related to George Willoughby Fox. See Text n. 27 above.

¹⁵⁹ ‘Mease’, was (in the late 16th century) a measure of herrings, OED. The word ‘meals’ makes more sense in this context, however.

¹⁶⁰ From the 14th century on, a panter was ‘the officer in a household who supplied the bread and had charge of the pantry (an office later merged with that of butler); the controller of the bread or food supplies in general in a large establishment, esp. a royal court’, OED.

¹⁶¹ ‘To steal, esp. things of small value; to pilfer. Occasionally in weaker sense: to take away surreptitiously,’ OED. The exact form ‘Filchen’ does not appear in the OED, but the ‘en’ ending was a participle form in middle English. Cassandra's use of ‘filchen’ suggests she copied the letters verbatim.

¹⁶² In the 16th century, porter could have meant either (or both) of two duties, ‘a gatekeeper’ [n.1] or ‘A person employed to carry luggage, goods, etc.’ [n.2], OED.

¹⁶³ ‘A device for turning a spit for roasting meat over an open fire … roasting-jack’, OED.

¹⁶⁴ ‘The process of becoming furred or incrusted’, OED.

¹⁶⁵ A buttery is a wine/cask room. Fr. Late Latin buttis or barrel. A butler served wine and tended to the buttery. See Girouard, Mark, Life in an English Country House (New Haven, CT, 1978)Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁶ A buttery-hatch is ‘the half-door over which the buttery provisions are served’, OED.

¹⁶⁷ According to the OED, ‘hanck’ is 16th-century English for ‘hank,’ which means to coil or loop, ‘To fasten by a loop or noose; to entangle; to catch by any loop-like part.’ In this context, the word might refer to coiled sausage.

¹⁶⁸ ‘Broken’ in the context refers to remnants of food or drink, so left-over beer, OED.

¹⁶⁹ There is a surviving Account Book (Mi, A 57) that provides detailed accounts of expenses paid for by Thomas Shawe between Nov. 1572 and Feb. 1575. The relationship between the accounts described here and Mi, A 57 is not clear.

¹⁷⁰ It is not clear who this would be, although it might be Elizabeth Willoughby, as Cassandra suggests. Mi, A 57 includes allowances for Elizabeth, and additional monies as needed.

¹⁷¹ Perhaps Elizabeth Meringe. See fos 90–91, pp. 123–124 below.

¹⁷² This may be the same person as Mary, Francis's fool, mentioned below on fo. 85, p. 118.

¹⁷³ For Henry Willoughby, see Text n. 177 below.

¹⁷⁴ See above, Text n. 135 and below, Text n. 266.

¹⁷⁵ ‘A servant who has the charge of a rabbit-warren’, OED.

¹⁷⁶ Musicians.

¹⁷⁷ There are two Henry Willoughbys of the Eresby line of Willoughbys: 1) Henry Willoughby (1540–1606, born to Dorothy Willoughby), younger brother of Thomas Willoughby of Bore Place, Kent who was the father of Percival, and 2) a younger brother of Percival Willoughby, but Cassandra is probably wrong in her surmise, as Henry Willoughby, the uncle of Percival, married Frances Kerle in Aug. 1578 (Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 21 n. 5) and cannot be the same Henry Willoughby in the Wollaton household for whom several marriages were being considered between 1579 and 1581 (see below, p. 204). Henry Willoughby, Percival's younger brother could not have been this Henry Willoughby as he was probably not born until c.1570 (ibid. 23). The Henry Willoughby serving in Francis Willoughby's house in 1572 may have been the son of Hugh Willoughby of Risley, the navigator, and his wife Joanna (or Jane) Strelley. In Mi, A 57, fos 32v, 66, 81 Harry Willoughby is listed as part of the household in 1573 and 1574, and see HMC Middleton, 433, where he is described as Sir Francis's ‘man for books’. See above (fos 83–84, pp. 115–116), where he is listed as one of the more important members of the household. There is a 1579 letter written by Sir John Byron, uncle to Henry Willoughby and husband of Alice Strelley, asking Francis Willoughby to provide an annuity of £20 per year to support his nephew Henry Willoughby in his suit to marry the daughter of Sir John Byron's uncle, a widow with four children. Mi, 5/168/73. By 1581 Henry Willoughby had been commended to the service of Henry Hastings, earl of Huntingdon, and the earl was writing Francis to ask for a marriage of Henry with Francis's second daughter, Dorothy (see below, fos 162–163, pp. 204–205). In 1595 there is an exchange of letters between Bridget Willoughby, Clement Fisher, and Clement's wife Mary in which Mary Fisher claims that at the time that Sir Francis was arranging a marriage for Bridget with her cousin Percival Willoughby (1579–1580), Henry Willoughby, still within the Wollaton household, had practised to steal her away and marry her and that he had written a letter to her to this effect. See below, fo. 148, pp. 188–189. At the time of this exchange of letters in 1595, this Henry Willoughby (the son of Hugh Willoughby) was dead. There is another Henry Willoughby, son of George Willoughby, who came of age sometime before June 1565. CPR 1563–1566 Elizabeth I, iii, 212. See fo. 163, p. 205 below. Even Francis Willoughby, the naturalist, was confused. For Clement and Mary Fisher, see Text n. 191.

¹⁷⁸ In The Continuation of the History, Cassandra notes, ‘There is an account of Sir Percivall Willoughby's Entertaining King James the first at Middleton Hall, & that he was there Knighted by the King An.D. 1603 by which it appears that I have given him the title of Knighthood many years before it was due to him, & that I should have only writ him Mr. Willoughby, & not called his Wife Lady, till yt year 1603.’ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 37; Mi, LM 27, fo. 33. In fact, Percival Willoughby was knighted at Worksop, not Middleton, in 1603.

¹⁷⁹ Cassandra gives an account of the Willoughbys of Eresby, going back to the early 14th century, in The Continuation of the History, 3–23; Mi, LM 27, fos 3–19.

¹⁸⁰ ‘Fine’ used in a phrase meant (Obs.) ‘In the end, at last.’ To ‘pass the fines’ [fin] was to end the dispute, OED.

¹⁸¹ See fo. 83, p. 115 above, where a Mary is listed among the servants. See Southworth, John, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud, 1998)Google Scholar. Most fools and jesters were men rather than women.

¹⁸² Sir Thomas Cokayne of Ashburne, Derbys. (1520–1592) held many offices in that county, most notably from 1555 to his death as justice of the peace and in 1585 and 1592 as member of a special commission to investigate Jesuits and seminarians. C.J. Black, ‘Sir Thomas Cokayne’, The History of Parliament Online: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/cokayne-sir-thomas-1520-92.

¹⁸³ The Lyttletons of Frankley spelled their name with a ‘y’ rather than an ‘i’, and Cassandra normally does so also.

¹⁸⁴ Another assessment of Sir Francis Willoughby from a member of the family came from the pen of Montague Wood, husband of the youngest daughter Frances. He wrote, in 1626, that, ‘Yett in that time of government he kepte as greate hospitalitye as any man in his shire. He bought as much lande as he sould, he spent as much in buildinge, yet in givinge to many confidence he was deceaved of more land than he soulde and more then would have payd his debts and his buildings.’ Mi, 2/76/3–16, quoted in Alice T. Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England, Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago, 1989), 37 and in Richard S. Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton 1500–1643 with special reference to early mining in Nottinghamshire, 1500–1643’, PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1964, 69.

¹⁸⁵ Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford (1540–1596) was the heir of Michael Stanhope (beheaded 1552). See Cobbing and Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford. If the accusations of Thomas Stanhope's wife, Margaret Port, are to be believed, he used her cruelly; she calls him a tyrant and accuses him of ‘blasphemy, misdemeanor, whore hunting, drunkiness, mischief and all naughtiness’. Married in 1557, they separated from 1581 to 1585. Ibid., ch. 10, esp. p. 145. Based on reading some of Sir Thomas Stanhope's letters to Francis Willoughby, Cassandra also offers an unflattering description of Stanhope as a ‘very haughty captious Gentleman’ (fo.103, p. 134 below). See MacCaffrey, Wallace, ‘Talbot and Stanhope: An Episode in Elizabethan Politics’, The Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 33 (1960), 73–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸⁶ Margaret Lyttleton was the second daughter of Sir John Lyttleton. In 1561 she married Samuel Marrow, heir of Thomas Marrow of Berkswell, Stephens, Warks. W.B. (ed.), A History of the County of Warwick: VII, VCH (London, 1964), 59Google Scholar; see TNA, C142/132/38, Inquisition post mortem of Thomas Marrow.

¹⁸⁷ The Lyttleton manor farm of Prestwood had been purchased 12 Feb. 1554 from Sir Edward Hastings, master of the queen's horse; it had originally been part of the duke of Northumberland's (or Dudley) estates but was not included in the restoration of those estates to the 4th Lord Dudley. CPR 1553–1554, 1 Philip & Mary, vii, 194, licence to Hastings to alienate Prestwood to John Lyttleton of Frankley, with remainder to Gilbert Lyttleton, his son and heir. The Dudleys, however, felt that they still had a claim to the property, and when the 4th Lord Dudley died in 1586 and John Lyttleton died in 1590, Lord Dudley's son claimed that Sir John Lyttleton had received from him £200 as earnest for an eventual sale of the property to him for £2,600. Lord Dudley seized the property in 1590 with a force of 120 men and a lengthy lawsuit ensued that was decided, ultimately, in favour of the Lyttletons. TNA, STAC 5/L27/10, 5/L6/3; Tonks, ‘Lyttletons’, 54–59.

¹⁸⁸ Henry Draycot was, several times, placed in charge of the Willoughby household in 1578. See below, fos 89, 92, 119, 164: see pp. 125–126, 150, 189, 205. This may have been the same Mr Draycot who was fostered and supported with books and clothing in the Willoughby household in the 1520s (HMC Middleton, 358, 365, 383, 385, 396), or that Draycot may have been his father. In 1547 a ‘Mastre Draycott’ received an annuity of £3 10s for half a year. HMC Middleton, 317.

¹⁸⁹ This Fulke Greville is either Sir Fulke Greville (1536–1606) or his son, Fulke Greville (1554–1628), 1st Baron Brooke (Lord Brooke).

¹⁹⁰ Edward Boughton (c.1545–1589) of Causton was high sheriff of Warwickshire in 1579. According to the parish registers at Newbold-on-Avon, Edward Boughton, Esq. of ‘Cawson’ was buried on 13 Sept. 1589 (Dunchurch). A grandson, Edward Boughton, was baptized 31 Mar. 1572 (Newbold). A marriage between him and Elizabeth Catesbye was recorded at Newbold on 27 or 28 Oct. 1593. Bridgeman, George Fanshaw (ed.), Memorials of a Warwickshire Family (London, 1906), 49–50Google Scholar, 56–57.

¹⁹¹ Clement Fisher (c.1539–1619), of Great Packington, Warks. In the mid 1570s he worked for the earl of Leicester. He was a justice of the peace in Warwickshire from 1579–1590. Enis, ‘The Dudleys, Sir Christopher Hatton and the Justices of Elizabethan Warwickshire’, 18, 28. In 1585 he acted as treasurer for the earl of Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands; he received his knighthood from King James I. See Text n. 177 above and fos 146–149, pp. 186–187 below for the difficult relationship that developed between Bridget Willoughby and Clement and Mary Fisher. Clement Fisher had many financial dealings with Sir Francis Willoughby, at one time (in 1595) lending him a thousand pounds (fo. 149, p. 189). Later, Percival Willoughby owed him £330. Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 33; Mi, LM 27, fo. 30. Mary Fisher, according to Cassandra, was the daughter of George Willoughby (see below, fo. 141, p. 181), but she appears to be the step-granddaughter of George Willoughby and the daughter of Richard Repington.

¹⁹² STB 2 (1), book 1, fos 24–25.

¹⁹³ For a discussion of a married woman's allegiance to the Crown under Common Law, see Todd, Barbara J., ‘Written in her heart: Married women's separate allegiance in English law’, in Stretton, Tim and Kesselring, Krista J. (eds), Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law World (London, 2013), 163–191Google Scholar, noting that, throughout the early modern period, ‘the principle of a wife's personal separate allegiance, though challenged, remained intact’ (p. 182).

¹⁹⁴ She is named Elizabeth on the next folio. There were Meringes in Nottinghamshire going back to the 14th century. See the 1546/7 will of William Meringe of Saundby, Esq., Testamenta Eboracensia, 6, Surtees Society, CVI (Durham, 1902), 248–250, in which he names brothers, cousins, nephews and nieces; the Meringes intermarried with the Markhams; an earlier Elizabeth Meringe married John Strelley. William Meringe's widow and executrice was Elizabeth Meringe.

¹⁹⁵ Cludd is later described (fos 147–147v, pp. 186–188) as a cousin of Clement Fisher. On fos 92, 119, pp. 15, 150, he is referred to as J. Cludd.

¹⁹⁶ A John Penn is mentioned in the list of servants from 1572 (fo. 83, p. 116, above).

¹⁹⁷ Coleorton, Leics. Francis Willoughby was working coal pits at Coleorton in the 1570s that were owned by Nicholas Beaumont. Smith, ‘The Willoughbys’, 179–184, 196. Francis also tried to buy the Beaumont manor, and his loss of that opportunity gave rise to a suit at chancery in 1576, TNA, C. Eliz. W 14/19. He did, however, take on the debts of Nicholas Beaumont from the revenues of the coal pits to his financial detriment.

¹⁹⁸ Huntingdon Beaumont (c.1560–1624) was an innovator in coal mining, later a partner of Sir Percival Willoughby in the construction of perhaps Britain's first railed wagonway, known as the Wollaton Wagonway. Smith, R.S., ‘Huntingdon: Beaumont Adventurer in Coal Mines’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 1 (1957), 115–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹⁹ In this context, could mean ‘come to an end or harm’, OED.

²⁰⁰ There is a Johan Beardmore mentioned as taking care of the children in Jan. 1573. She is referred to again in the accounts in Oct. 1573. Mi, A 57, fos 16, 31. Another Johan listed in the household during these years is a Johan Poker.

²⁰¹ The additions to this letter come from Cassandra's earlier notes: STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 22v.

²⁰² William Sewell the younger (1542–1624) of Warwickshire was mayor of Coventry in 1578. Sewell and his wife Ann (née Wagstaff) kept a public house named ‘The Thistle’ in Coventry. A brass plate in the name of Sewell providing this information is located in the ruins of the Cathedral Church of St Michael.

²⁰³ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 26.

²⁰⁴ Acquaintances or friends. See also Laura Gowing, review of Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003), in Reviews in History, Institute of Historical Research (Nov. 2003), http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/365 (accessed 11 Sept. 2017). According to Gowing, ‘A contemporary term for companions in childbirth, “gossips” also swiftly became a derogatory term for women talking: the slippage begs important questions about the meaning of female friendship and conversation in contemporary culture.’ It is probable that Elizabeth was pregnant at the time.

²⁰⁵ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 26.

²⁰⁶ Elizabeth was staying with her sister Margaret and brother-in-law Samuel Marrow. The manor of Berkswell, Warks., ‘was among the manors granted in 1553 to John Dudley, earl of Warwick and duke of Northumberland, but on his attainder reverted to the Crown. In Apr. 1557 the manor was granted to Thomas Marrow and Alice his wife, with remainder to their son Samuel and his heirs’. Salzman, County of Warwick: IV, VCH, 27–34. Samuel married Elizabeth's sister Margaret in 1561 (see Text n. 186 above).

²⁰⁷ This refers to a lawsuit regarding the estate of Drayton Bassett mortgaged to the London tailor Richard Paramour in 1575 who dispossessed Thomas Robinson (a known recusant) in June 1578. Robinson's grandfather had been granted a 77-year lease on the land by Thomas Pope in 1538. Robinson maintained that foreclosure of a £1,200 debt for an estate worth £8,000 was usury. Paramour, frightened off Drayton Bassett in July 1578 by a ‘large body of country gentry’, perhaps including Francis Willoughby, appealed to Lord Leicester, who sent Henry Ferrers and George Digby to regain possession (fee simple was held by the crown). A struggle followed, leaving one man dead. The Privy Council became involved, and the case appeared before a rump Star Chamber in 1580. ‘Paramour v. Robinson, Carie, and others’, TNA, STAC 5/P65/6. Adams, Simon, Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002), 340–341Google Scholar, 372 n. 242, 387. For citations to Star Chamber records, see Peck, D.C., ‘The Earl of Leicester and the riot at Drayton Park, 1578’, Notes and Queries 27 (Apr. 1980), 131–135CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Peck mentions that both Francis and Elizabeth were interrogated by the government but not charged.

²⁰⁸ Since Elizabeth was interrogated separately regarding Paramour, and Cassandra chose to incorporate the communication with Star Chamber here, this reference is probably about Paramour and not the Willoughbys’ separation.

²⁰⁹ Thomas Duport (c.1513–1592) was an attorney employed by Henry Grey, marquis of Dorset. He was the executor, for example, of Mary Grey's will. Bindoff, S.T., A History of Parliament, The House of Commons, 1509–1558, XI (London, 1982), 69Google Scholar.

²¹⁰ Robert Aldridge (d.1616) was appointed rector of Wollaton by Francis Willoughby on 15 Sept. 1576. In 1578 he was also appointed vicar of St Mary's, Nottingham by Queen Elizabeth. Apparently Wollaton went without a rector for some years in the 1590s. Aldridge was back performing marriages at Wollaton in 1613 after having been found derelict by the churchwardens in his attention to St Mary's. Fellows, George, ‘Wollaton Church’, TTS, 6 (Nottingham, 1903), supplement, pp. 41–42Google Scholar. Godfrey, John T. (ed.), Notes on the Parish Registers of St. Mary's Nottingham, 1566 to 1812 (Nottingham, 1901), 15Google Scholar; Phillimore, W.P.W. and Blagg, T.M. (eds), Nottinghamshire Parish Registers: Marriages, 8 (London, 1905), 60Google Scholar. It was Aldridge who appointed John Darnell, puritan and, apparently, fraudulent exorcist, as curate of St Mary's in the 1590s. See Gibson, Marion, Possession, Puritanism and Print: Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy (New York, 2015), 84–92Google Scholar.

²¹¹ Cancell is an abbreviation for Cancellarius. Sir Thomas Bromley (1530–1587), was appointed lord chancellor (Cancellarius) of England on 26 Apr. 1579 after the death of Nicholas Bacon. A possible date for this letter might be 1580; in that year his daughter Muriel married John Lyttleton, the nephew of Elizabeth Willoughby and the grandson and heir of John Lyttleton. Thus, he can be considered one of Elizabeth Willoughby's friends.

²¹² See Nick Holder, ‘The medieval friaries of London: A topographic and archaeological history, before and after the dissolution’, PhD thesis, University of London, 2011. The Carmelite monastery in Fleet Street, known as White Friars, was dissolved on 10 Nov. 1538. Houses were built on the property and many were rented as full houses or tenements.

²¹³ Chanon Row (Cannon or Canon Row) was a ‘thoroughfare in Westminster which led from the New Palace to the Privy Garden’. It was named after the residence of the deans and canons of St Stephen's Chapel. Chanon Row was notable for attracting gentry, ‘divers Noblemen and Gentlemen’, following the dissolution. Chalfant, Fran C., Ben Jonson's London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary (Atlanta, GA, 2008), 53Google Scholar. Today Canon Row is located off Bridge Street across from Parliament. This might be the house of the comptroller of the household. In the 1580s this would have been Sir James Croft. ‘Controlers’ could also refer to comptrollers of the ports, of Windsor Castle, or of her Majesty's Navy, OED.

²¹⁴ See fos 55, 105, 136, pp. 86 and n. 83, 136 and 176, where a Henry Trussell is mentioned. Henry's mother was Bridget Marmion Trussell, and his uncle, her brother, would have been a son of Henry Marmion who is mentioned as one of the executors of the will of Henry Willoughby, Francis's father and described as ‘a trusty servant’. HMC Middleton, 49; see Text nn. 83 and 134 above.

²¹⁵ Most likely her cause would have been heard in the court of requests under the jurisdiction of the lord privy seal. Sir Francis Walsingham (c.1532–1590) was the lord privy seal from 1576 until his death. The court of requests originated under Henry VII and conserved the idea of a monarch, upon petition, as ‘a dispenser of patriarchal justice’. B. Quaritch, Introduction to Select Cases in the Court of Requests 1497–1569 (London, 1898), x–xii. The court could entertain petitions for justice between spouses ‘in clear defiance of the common law prohibition against litigation between spouses’. Stretton, Tim (ed.), Marital Litigation in the Court of Requests 1542–1642 (Cambridge, 2008), 1Google Scholar. The court of requests documents are catalogued by bundles in the National Archives. There are over 300 bundles with numerous cases in each bundle. They are currently not searchable except through volumes of a handwritten catalogue that lists the cases neither alphabetically nor by date.

²¹⁶ This particular dispute in unclear. By the 1590s the Talbots and Stanhopes would scarcely have been speaking to one another, given a series of disputes over contested properties and Stanhope's building of locks and a weir on the River Trent; the Talbots could not have acted as honest brokers by the 1590s. By 1590 the disputes between the Talbots and Stanhopes were already ‘old and increasingly bitter’. Tighe, W.J., ‘A Nottinghamshire gentleman in court and country: The career of Thomas Markham of Ollerton (1530–1607)’, TTS, 90 (1986), 37Google Scholar. The dispute mentioned here may have involved marriage proposals between the Stanhopes and the Willoughbys that did not come to fruition. Cobbing and Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford, chs 16, 17. In a letter of 1591 from Thomas Stanhope to his brother Michael, Thomas recalled a time ‘when he “fell out” with Sir Francis Willoughby’ with regard to a plan to marry his son with one of the Willoughby daughters, a plan foiled by Thomas Markham (who was allied with the Talbots). Ibid. 222. The suggested date of these letters from Margaret Arundell (early 1580s) may refer to negotiations with regard to Margaret (b. 1571) or with regard to Dorothy (b. late 1560s?), both of whom married in 1587. In a letter of 24 July 1584 Sir Francis wrote to Thomas Willoughby that he had ‘byn in some talke for the mariage of my daughters, and like enough to conclude for the one, if lyking shall grow betwixt the parties, withowt the which I wyll never presse them’. HMC Middleton, 157; Mi, C 17.

²¹⁷ Michael Stanhope and Anne Rawson had two sons named Edward. It seems likely that this refers to the first Edward, their second son (c.1543–1603). A lawyer who functioned as a surveyor of crown lands in Nottinghamshire, he married the daughter of Thomas Colshill of Chigwell, Essex, and was MP for Nottinghamshire, 1571–1572; from 1587 he was a member of the Council of the North and, in 1601 an MP for Yorkshire and knighted in 1601. Edward the younger (c.1547–1608) was a doctor of laws, master in chancery, and chancellor to the bishop of London. Cobbing and Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford, passim.

²¹⁸ Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley, perhaps at Castle Dudley, Sutton's seat and main home. Dudley Castle was sequestered in 1593 for unpaid debts.

²¹⁹ There are several candidates in the ODNB for this Robinson. One is John Robinson (d.1598), president of St John's Oxford until 1572 and archdeacon of Bedford; another is John Robinson, fellow of St John's Cambridge and rector of Little Gransden, Cambridgeshire, and of Somersham, Huntingdonshire. A third is John Robinson, rector of East Treswell, Notts., in 1556, who may be the same John Robinson who died in 1598. Another candidate is Thomas Robinson (fl. 1570–1609), a well-known lutenist and composer who would have been just starting his career in the 1570s. In 1603 Thomas published the first instructional book in English for the lute titled The Schoole of Musick. Given the reference to the discussion of ‘great matters’, it is likely that one of the John Robinsons is the person indicated here.

²²⁰ Elizabeth Willoughby would be above forty years old after 1586. ‘Above’ may also mean ‘about’; in the early 1580s she was in her late thirties. This letter would have been written some years after the death of their young son but before their reconciliation in 1588/9, perhaps in about 1585. Francis had earlier, on 24 July 1584, written to Thomas Willoughby mentioning reports ‘of gyving over my howse, etc., and for receiving my wife being now reconsiled, for this last part ther is no such determinacion that I am pryve of as yett’. HMC Middleton, 157; Mi, C 17.

²²¹ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 19–20. See fos 114–118 below for Percival Willoughby's trip to Europe.

²²² Francis, duke of Alençon, later duke of Anjou (Hercule François 1555–1584), the youngest son of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medici. Hercule changed his name to Francis to honour his brother Francis II, husband of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Francis was courting Queen Elizabeth, but the Queen ended the putative engagement after he attempted to take Antwerp by force in 1583 and lost badly. Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years, pp. 33–34.

²²³ Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon (c. 1524–1596), rumoured to be Henry VIII's bastard son by Mary Carey, née Boleyn, Anne's sister. Hunsdon became the Lord Chamberlain of Elizabeth's household and patron of William Shakespeare's theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men,

²²⁴ Cassandra uses the hash mark to add material that she originally left out. See the hash symbol at fo.105v, below, where she includes the additional information.

²²⁵ The manor of Pyrford belonged to Westminster Abbey until the Dissolution. In 1558 Queen Mary granted it to the new priory of Sheen, refounded in 1556–1557. Elizabeth granted the manor to Edward Clinton, earl of Lincoln and lord high admiral of England in 1574. Malden, H.E. (ed.), County History of Surrey, 3, VCH (London, 1911), 431–436Google Scholar.

²²⁶ The duke of Anjou crossed the Channel to England in late October 1581 and departed England in early February 1582. Cassandra corrects her dating information on the verso of fo.105. Elizabeth may have accompanied Francis all the way to Dover. Cole, The Portable Queen, p. 193.

²²⁷ Sir Baker, Richard, Chronicle of the Kings of England (London, 1670), 381Google Scholar.

²²⁸ A John Penn is listed among Francis Willoughby's servants in 1572. He is further mentioned many times in the Account Book Mi, A 57 between 1572 and 1575.

²²⁹ This reference to Margaret's son may have been to Thomas, the oldest (c.1560–1639) or William, the youngest (d. c.1591); it is most likely Thomas. Thomas was briefly imprisoned in 1580 for being a Roman Catholic and a suspected spy. Andrew J. Hopper, ‘Arundell, Thomas, first Baron Arundell of Wardour (c.1560–1639)’, ODNB. From these letters it appears that William was involved in mercantile and monetary matters.

²³⁰ Thomas Arundell married Mary Wriothesley, daughter of Henry, 2nd earl of Southampton, in 1585. His father-in-law Henry was in open religious conflict with the Queen. Cockayne, George, The Complete Peerage, ed. White, Geoffrey H., XII, Part I: (London, 1953)Google Scholar. Arundell's brother-in-law, Henry, 3rd earl of Southampton was the subject of some of Shakespeare's sonnets. See Akrigg, G.P.V., Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton (London, 1968)Google Scholar, but see also ODNB entry for the 3rd earl of Southampton.

²³¹ Perhaps referring to the growing threats of a Spanish invasion after 1585.

²³² Perhaps James Jeffreys or Jeffrey, gentleman of Wellow, Hants, whose will is probated 11 Feb. 1601. TNA, PROB 11/97/104.

²³³ A gold coin minted in England between 1465 and 1642. Its value varied; after 1550 it was worth 10 shillings.

²³⁴ Possibly Bloxworth, Dorset, for which there are many court rolls, deeds and grants in the Willoughby archives. See Mi, 5/164–67, 170, 174, 179.

²³⁵ R.S. Smith notes that this amount refers only to the profits from the coal mines at Bedworth, which were mortgaged to pay down the debts of Nicholas Beaumont. Smith, ‘Willoughbys’, 185.

²³⁶ Cassandra has written Brickkill but certainly means Great Brickhill, Bucks. The journey would have been from Packington, Leics., to Daventry (rather than Daintry, as Cassandra has written it) to Great Brickhill, along the same route as the M1 motorway today.

²³⁷ Both men kept London lodgings, presumably for business. Thomas Willoughby's London town house, was a short walking distance from Francis Willoughby's Grange. Thomas Willoughby's estate, however, was Bore Place. Bore Place in Chidingstone, Kent, entered the Willoughby family through Percivall's great-grandmother Bridget née Read (1485–1558), who inherited it from her mother Margaret Alphew (or Alphegh). Bridget married Thomas Willoughby (1486–1555), who then moved with her to Bore Place. Thomas and Bridget's second son Christopher inherited the barony of Eresby. Percivall's grandfather Robert (1511–c.1555) inherited Bore Place from his mother. He married Dorothy Willoughby (1512–1550s?), daughter of Sir Edward Willoughby of Wollaton and niece of the Navigator; this marriage ended in divorce on 13 Feb. 1553/54 owing to acknowledged adultery on the part of Dorothy Willoughby with James Rogers, Esq. Mi, 1/7/1 and Mi, 6/179/46; HMC Middleton, 150. Thomas, Percivall's father inherited Bore Place from Robert, although his grandfather, Thomas Willoughby, had disinherited any issue of Robert and Dorothy for ‘many consideracions and causes […] whiche I am right sorry for’. TNA, Prob. 11/30/589, fo. 307v. Edward Eldridge Salisbury and Salisbury, Evelyn McCurdy, Family Histories and Genealogies, I, Pt. 2 (New Haven, CT, 1892), 590–591Google Scholar.

²³⁸ Holborn (Holbourn) in the mid 16th century was a small village adjacent to London, bounded on the east by Chancery Lane and Gray's Inn Lane, on the west by fields, and on the south by Lincoln's Inn Fields. See ‘Plan of London (circa 1560 to 1570)’, in Agas Map of London 1561 (n.p., 1633), British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-map-agas/1561/map (accessed 23 Aug. 2016).

²³⁹ In 2016, Lincoln's Inn Fields was the largest square in London. In the late 16th century, it consisted of three fields: Cups Field, Purse Field, and Fickett's Field. It is unclear exactly where the Willoughby grange was located. See Williams, Elijah, Early Holborn and the Legal Quarter of London, 1 (London, 1927), 1083–1084Google Scholar. A grange was a country house of a gentleman not enclosed within a city wall or where farming was practised, OED.

²⁴⁰ Variation of panter. ‘An officer in a large household who was in charge of the bread or pantry’, OED.

²⁴¹ Sir Christopher Hatton (1540–1591), a favourite of the Queen, was made lord chancellor of England in 1587. See Vines, Alice Gilmore, Neither Fire Nor Steel: Sir Christopher Hatton (Chicago, 1978)Google Scholar. Hatton appears to have been a moderating force in terms of religion in Warwickshire, balancing the growing influence of the Dudleys and reforming Protestants within the county over against a still significant number of Catholics and Catholic sympathizers. See Enis, ‘The Dudleys, Sir Christopher Hatton and the Justices of Elizabethan Warwickshire’. Francis Willoughby may have been part of the Hatton network. See a letter from Christopher Hatton to Francis Willoughby, dated 7 Feb. 1582/3, thanking him for his courteous dealing with regard to the sale of Willoughby lands in Langton Wallis to Hatton. Mi, 5/167/184. In this letter Hatton expresses his gratitude and readiness to requite the favour.

²⁴² Ralph Heyman, son of Peter Heyman, a gentleman of the bedchamber of Edward VI, purchased Heringe and Sellinge from Francis in 1585. Hasted, Edward, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 8 (Canterbury, 1799), 313–314Google Scholar http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol8/pp303-314 (accessed 10 May 2016). Langton Herring Manor or Langeton Herynge is a fortified manor house in the county of Dorset.

²⁴³ This income is important for assessing Francis Willoughby's ability to finance the rebuilding of Wollaton Hall.

²⁴⁴ In addition to the letters copied here which come from early in the marriage, Cassandra includes descriptions of other letters from later in their marriage in The Continuation of the History, 27–28, 39, 41, 45–47; Mi, LM 27, fos 23–24, 34, 36, 41–43. There are two original letters from Percival to Bridget dated 1610 in the Middleton collection: Mi, 6/170/136/4–5. For other correspondence, see Mi, 6/170/138/1–8. Cassandra concludes ‘By many letters and old Papers this Lady seems to have had a very good understanding, and to have been very carefull of her Family, and to have acted with great discretion in those unhappy ^∧differences^∧ between her Father and Mother, and Sir Percivall and her Father, She appears to have been a Lady fit for business, and very well able to graple with those difficulties which their perplexed affairs often brought her under’. Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 27; Mi, LM 27, fo. 23.

²⁴⁵ Percival is probably referring to the recent death of his mother, which must have occurred about this time, as his father was to remarry and father three more children prior to his death in 1596.

²⁴⁶ In Cassandra's notes, she states, ‘otherwise their marriage had been in London. These letters bear no date but I believe they married the end of the year 1580. By letters I find soon after they were married they went to live with Mr. Thomas Willoughby at Boreplace in Kent’. STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 22. For their marriage settlement, see a 1581 draft of terms of agreement (Mi, 5/168/74) and copies of the marriage settlement in 1583 (Mi, 5/168/75–76).

²⁴⁷ He was 20 or 21.

²⁴⁸ He travelled to France and Switzerland. HMC Middleton, 553, 557–558.

²⁴⁹ Edward Clinton (1512–1584/5), 9th Baron Clinton, 1st earl of Lincoln, lord high admiral under Edward VI. Lady Arundell did not accompany Queen Elizabeth on this visit, since Elizabeth was hosted by the earl of Lincoln in July 1580 and not again until Sept. 1582. Cole, The Portable Queen, 217.

²⁵⁰ In Cassandra's notes, this line reads from ‘believe’: ‘Sr. Percivall Willoughby had been designed to travell by both his Fathers after he was married and that it was not from any resh [rash?] resolution of his own, after his marrying upon some discontent between him and his Lady, (as his own letters which follow) make one believe that put him upon travelling.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 23v.

²⁵¹ Cassandra finished this thought following ‘liked’: ‘but ’tis only to be guessed at, for none of the letters shew the cause of that uneasieness which Sir Percival Willoughbys letters make appear there was between them, his letters shew that he passionatley loved her, and that discontent from her carriage to him had made his resolve to travell. But before he went, he writ to his Lady a sad complaint of his hard fortune, he accuses his own little desert, and goes on thus’. STB 2 (1), book 1, fos 23v–24.

²⁵² See Curry, Patrick, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Princeton, NJ, 1989)Google Scholar.

²⁵³ Following this sentence in Cassandra's notes, she wrote: ‘There is no letters or paper which shew how Sir Francis or Mr. Thomas Willoughby, approved of Sir Percivalls travelling, nor is there any letter writ by Sir Percival Willoughbys Lady while he travelled to be found.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 28.

²⁵⁴ The hash mark indicates additional information that Cassandra discovered after this Account was completed; it corrects her misunderstanding regarding Percival's knighthood on fo. 119.

²⁵⁵ On the place and date of Sir Percival Willoughby's knighthood, see Text n. 178 above.

²⁵⁶ For a history of the Marmions that includes the tale of Conrados and William Marmion, see Goodrick, Alfred Thomas [Scrope], ‘The Original Marmion’, Blackwood's Magazine 193 (Mar. 1913), 390–399Google Scholar. There is a Francis Conrado of Bristol and his wife Elizabeth, widow of John Cleyton of Bristol, draper mentioned in the Chancery Records, TNA, C 781591, in 1591 and in Collins, Francis (ed.), Feet of Fines of the Tudor Period, Pt. 3, 1583–1594, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, VII (London, 1889), 196Google Scholar, for 1593.

²⁵⁷ ‘Marmion and Cludd were two of Sir Francis's favouret Servants, men of ill principles and wicked designes, as is before mentioned in the account of Sir Francis; now th[e]se two Men were both highly provoked at Sir Percivalls asking their Chambers, for his French man, and from his first coming to Wollaton I believe they studyed how to be revenged of Sir Percivall, Conrados trusting to his Masters kindness for him, did I believe carry himself very insolently in the family, so that there soon began to be great uneasieness amongst Sir Francis's Servants.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 28–29.

²⁵⁸ The language in Cassandra's notes differs: ‘After some time Sir Percivall (seeing the disputes dayly increased) resolved to part w[i]th his French Man, in hopes by that, to make himself and the family more easie.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 29.

²⁵⁹ ‘This Francis Conrados had great expectations from his masters kindness for him; and when Sir Percivall had turned him away, without doing any thing for him, this villain was so base, as to resolve he would be revenged of his Master’. STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 30.

²⁶⁰ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 30. Cassandra's notes say ‘guilty of many abominable very ill actions’. ‘Abominable’ is crossed out.

²⁶¹ Casting or bringing reproach or discredit on a person, OED.

²⁶² STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 30.

²⁶³ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 31.

²⁶⁴ ‘For appears by + + a letter ## from Mr. Thomas Willoughby ≠≠ March the 24th 1585 to Sir Percivall, to tell him he thought his behavior and desert very ill, and his wisdom very small, if he had, had such discourse with his man Francis Conrados, as his enemies make it appear.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 31. Cassandra used the symbols to re-order different parts of the text.

²⁶⁵ Thomas Markham of Ollerton, Notts., and Kerby Bellars, Leics. (c.1523–1607) was the eldest son of Sir John Markham of Cotham by his third wife Anne, daughter of John Strelley and widow of Richard Stanhope. Thomas Markham's wife was Mary, daughter and heiress of Ryce Griffin. Markham was high steward of Mansfield, standard bearer to the Queen's band of gentlemen pensioners, ranger of Sherwood Forest and, in 1578, high sheriff of Nottinghamshire. Two of his sons, Griffin (about more later) and Robert Markham, were famous recusants. Markham, David Frederick, A History of the Markham Family (London, 1954)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

²⁶⁶ George Talbot, 6th earl of Shrewsbury (1528–1590). In 1568 Elizabeth I gave Talbot the responsibility for guarding Mary, Queen of Scots. He was made earl marshall in 1572. See Text n. 216 above for more on the Talbots and their differences with the Stanhopes; see also Text n. 135 on William Marmion, the servant mentioned at length here, who had been a servant in the Talbot (Shrewsbury) household and had, apparently, been part of the reason for the difficult relations between Lord and Lady Shrewsbury.

²⁶⁷ According to Cassandra's hash mark, all of fo. 122v should be inserted here in the middle of fo. 123.

²⁶⁸ John Adams (b.1560) was the brother-in-law of Percival Willoughby, married to his sister Frediswith, ‘Phridelwide’ or Frideswide (b. c.1575). Letters to Percival from Adams, whom Cassandra calls ‘the Councelor’, show, according to Cassandra, ‘that he was a very kind friend to Sir Percivall’, Cassandra also mentions that there were several kind letters from Phridelwide to Bridget, her sister-in-law. ‘In one of her letters she writ that – There is no woman in the world that she more esteems, but her Husband does not care she should goe journeys from him […] so she has no hopes of seeing her, but must sit mopeing at home by her fire side turning Apples – and may goe to Church to pray for her friends.’ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 26; Mi, LM 27, fos 21–22. See also Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 43; Mi, LM 27, fo. 38.

²⁶⁹ Presumably drawing a sword upon Markham.

²⁷⁰ This cousin is mentioned later in relation to Robert Spencer, Margaret Willoughby, and the Markhams. On fo. 181v, p. 232 there is a letter from him to Francis Willoughby. He may possibly be Robert Greville (born c.1540), a younger son of Fulke Greville (d.1559) and Elizabeth Willoughby de Broke, 3rd Baroness Willoughby de Broke.

²⁷¹ One of these letters is copied in full by Cassandra below (fos. 179v–180, pp. 229–230) and includes the date: in her notes, she wrote ‘but there is a letter from Sir Francis to his cousin Markham dated 1 Nov. 1586, in which Sir Francis gives several reasons why he is against matching his daughter to his Cousin Markham's Son, whereof one was the dislike which he had to Sir Percivall Willoughby upon a light French report (the author infamous and of no credit) which would he says cause a division amongst his children. This shews that Sir Francis was then convinced of the falseness of Francis Conrados letter and villainous reports of his Master’. STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 35–36.

²⁷² STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 36.

²⁷³ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 36.

²⁷⁴ ‘Drolling’ means to act facetiously, in jest, or as a buffoon, OED, derivative of ‘droll’. Apparently Conrados, who was unpopular in Francis Willughby's house, attempted to smooth tensions with Francis's other servants, who then put him up to fabricating a letter accusing Percivall Willoughby of some malfeasance and blackmailing him with it. Francis trusted his servants overwell, and the letter caused a rift between Sir Francis and Percivall. Even Thomas Willoughby, Percivall's father, expressed doubt in his son's character. Francis and Percivall were eventually reconciled. See fo. 125, p. 155. A John Pickerell of Shipbourne, Kent registered the baptisms of four children. Crisp, Frederick Arthur, Registers of Shipbourne, County Kent (London?, 1921)Google Scholar.

²⁷⁵ A buckler is a small round shield (origin Old French, c.1300); both Marlowe (1593) and Shakespeare (1595) used the term buckler to mean ‘to act like a buckler; to shield, defend, protect’ or ‘to ward or catch (blows)’, OED.

²⁷⁶ Hogsden is most likely Hoxton in London's East End in Shoreditch, just north of the City of London.

²⁷⁷ Bridget's last name, now that she was married, changed from Willughby to Willoughby in Cassandra's Account.

²⁷⁸ This letter, along with the three other Lansdowne letters included here are to be found among the papers of Lord Burghley in the British Library. Three of these letters (nos 30, 32 and 33) are not included in Cassandra's Account, and she may never have seen them. See Friedman, Alice, ‘Portrait of a marriage: The Willoughby letters of 1585–1586’, Signs 11 (1986), 549–555CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷⁹ A word is crossed out here.

²⁸⁰ This letter was copied by Cassandra into this Account, in part, from BL, Lansdowne MS 46 no. 31, fos 61r–62v. For the original from the British Library, see the appendix to the Introduction and Figures 4 and 5 on pp. 59–63.

²⁸¹ The irony of this rumour is that, among Cassandra Willoughby's papers, written by Cassandra and now archived at STB 2 (2) with a date of 1584/5, is the following uncatalogued copy of a baptismal certificate: ‘William Deverell alias Willoughby Son of Katharine Deverell, & as she hath confess'd him, ye Son of Sr Francis Willoughby Knt of Nottinghamshire Baptized ye 4th day of March 1584.This is a true Copy taken out of ye Register of Laughton in le morthing [Laughton-en-le-Morthen] in ye County of York, & Attested by Robt Barnard Vicar.’ See also O'Day, Rosemary, Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies (Harlow, 2007), 143–144Google Scholar, for a reference to this. This may be William Willoughby whose birth is listed in Boyd's Marriage Indexes for 1584. See Percival Boyd, https://www.findmypast.co.uk/articles/world-records/full-list-of-united-kingdom-records/life-events-bmds/boyds-marriage-index-1538-1840. See the Yorkshire bishop's transcriptions of burials for a William Willoughby who died in 1634 and was buried at New Malton. There is a further irony in that one of the examples Francis wrote down with regard to the responsibilities of a justice of the peace was to seek out adulterers. He provides an example of the ancient (legendary) law-giver Zaleucus, who took out his son's eye for adultery. Mi, O 16/9.

²⁸² It is perhaps relevant that, in a 1585 inventory of the old hall at Wollaton, one of the rooms is allocated to Lady Arundell. Mi, I 5; Hodson, J.H., ‘The first Wollaton Hall’, TTS, 72 (1968), 62Google Scholar.

²⁸³ Sometime between 1585 and 1586, Gabriel Marmion, one of Sir Francis's servants distrusted by Lady Willoughby, wrote a letter to Sir Francis in which he reports that Lady Willoughby was displeased with him, charging him with speaking evil of her. Marmion acknowledged that, responding to ‘speech of yr hard deling with her’, he said that she had always been a most willful gentlewoman, and that if she loved Sir Francis, as she would make the world believe, she would come to live with him with greater haste and gain back some part of the credit she had lost by her absence. Marmion did not think, however, that she was going to change. Mi, 6/170/124/5.

²⁸⁴ Mi, A 69/1–2, fos 1–13v for these accounts, beginning 4 Mar. 1586/7; there are a few minor discrepancies between the account book and Cassandra's transcription.

²⁸⁵ Belvoir Castle was the seat of the earls of Rutland, the Manners family.

²⁸⁶ This seems to suggest that the New Hall at Wollaton was largely completed by 1586, although most accounts (including Cassandra's on fo. 129, p. 164), give 1588 as the date of completion. For the building accounts between 1582 and Nov. 1588, see Friedman House and Household, 103, 187 (app. B) and 205 n. 39. Francis did, however, begin to entertain at his New Hall before 1588. Account books for 1587–1588 show that two or three large gatherings of local gentry took place at the New Hall, including a lavish dinner for 120 people on 11 Nov. 1587. Work was still being done on the interior of the New Hall, however, in the early 1590s. Friedman, House and Household, app. B and p. 205 n. 39, citing Mi, A 70.

²⁸⁷ John Manners, 4th earl of Rutland (c.1551/9–1588). John inherited the earldom from his brother Edward (b.1549) a few months before dining at Wollaton. Edward died on 14 Apr. 1587. Sibyl M. Jack, ‘Manners, Edward, third earl of Rutland (1549–1587)’, ODNB.

²⁸⁸ Mi, A 69/1–2, fos 10v–12v, dating from 15 July to 29 July 1587.

²⁸⁹ This is the last letter from Margaret Arundell in this Account. Given what she says of her decaying health, she may have died soon after this letter, which Cassandra tentatively dates in 1587. Various online genealogies give her death date as 1591, but given the circumstances, it is likely that she died prior to Elizabeth Willoughby's return to her husband in 1588.

²⁹⁰ For a detailed description of the Old Hall, see Hodson, ‘The first Wollaton Hall’, 59–67, although he mistakenly thinks that Queen Elizabeth stayed at the Old Hall in 1575. Most of his information comes from two inventories, one taken c.1550 and the other in 1585. HMC Middleton, 474–485 and Mi, I 1/2 and Mi, I 5. See also accounts for 1565 and later, Mi, A 47, 53, 56, 57 for repairs and renovations to the Old Hall.

²⁹¹ Sir Gervase Clifton (1587/8–1666) was born the year his father died of consumption. His seat was at Clifton-on-Trent, Notts., south of the River Trent. Ferris, John P., ‘Clifton, Sir Gervase, 1st Bt’, Thrush, Andrew and Ferris, John P. (eds), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629 (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar.

²⁹² This plan is not now included in the MS.

²⁹³ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 28.

²⁹⁴ Robert Smythson (c.1533/7–1614), architect and surveyor, moved to Wollaton in 1580 to design and build Sir Francis Willoughby's house. He spent much of the rest of his life there and was buried in St Leonard's Church in Wollaton. Girouard, Mark, Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Friedman, House and Household, ch. 4.

²⁹⁵ For an analysis of Cassandra's description of Wollaton New Hall, see Friedman, House and Household, 164–65, where she writes that the cost of building was more likely 1/10 of the £80,000 Cassandra reported. A note of debts owed by Sir Francis and due between Aug. 1587 and Feb. 1589/90 alone adds up to £11,956. Presumably many of these were loans for the building, making the total figure of £80,000 in loans and income seem not impossible. Mi, 6/170/32.

²⁹⁶ HMC Middleton includes extracts from this household account book. The specific reference to this 11 Nov. dinner is on p. 456. Mi, A 69/1–2, fo. 19.

²⁹⁷ John Manners, 4th earl of Rutland, died the February following this dinner. His wife was Elizabeth Charlton, daughter of Francis Charlton of Apley. He was earl for only one year and was also lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire and custos rotulorum of Nottinghamshire from 1587 to 1588.

²⁹⁸ Sir Thomas Manners (1537–1591), John Manners’ uncle and fourth son of Thomas Manners, 1st earl of Rutland, by his second wife Eleanor, née Paston. Thomas was known as ‘Lusty’ Manners to his family, Sir Thomas was a soldier who accumulated military fame; between campaigns, he was the constable of Nottingham Castle but then was outlawed for debt and died in disgrace. ‘Manners, Sir Thomas (1537–91)’, in P.W. Hasler (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603 (1981): http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/manners-sir-thomas-1537-91 (accessed 14 Sept. 2016).

²⁹⁹ Theodosia née Newton, daughter of Thomas Newton. Married in 1571.

³⁰⁰ Probably Sir Gervase Clifton (1516–1588). See above, Text n. 291 for his son Gervase. His second wife, Winifred, (m. Sept. 1565) was a recusant. C.J. Black, History of Parliament, http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1509-1558/member/clifton-gervase-1516-88 (accessed 31 Mar. 2018).

³⁰¹ Sir Anthony Strelley (1528–1591) married Joan, daughter of George Baynham. For the Strelley family, see Kerry, Charles, ‘Notes to the pedigree of the Strelleys of Hazlebach’ in Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 14 (London, 1892), 95–97Google Scholar. Strelley was notoriously litigious. His will is dated 1591 (Borthwick Institute, York, Prob. Reg. 26, fo. 287).

³⁰² Stevenson has ‘mylke for custerdes, 12d’, HMC Middleton, 456; Mi, A 69/1–2, fo. 19.

³⁰³ 16d in the MS.

³⁰⁴ A common straight-billed marsh bird, OED.

³⁰⁵ To poach. The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (London, 1595): www.staff.uni-giessen.de/gloning/ghhk (accessed 31 Mar. 2018).

³⁰⁶ ℥ is the alchemical symbol for ounce, so this would be two ounces of cinnamon.

³⁰⁷ Entry for ‘musk’, OED: ‘They lefte a very sweete sauour behynde them sweeter then muske.’ HMC Middleton, 456; Mi, A 69/1–2, fo. 19.

³⁰⁸ Thurland Hall was built about the year 1458 by Thomas Thurland, nine times mayor of Nottingham. It was sold to Thomas Markham in the late 1540s. The hall passed by purchase to Sir John Hollis. See ‘Nottinghamshire History’, http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/articles/briscoe1905/thurlandhall1.htm (accessed 31 Mar. 2018), taken from J. Potter Briscoe, Bypaths of Nottinghamshire History (1905). The website features a drawing of the hall prior to 1840. See Orange, James, History and Antiquities of Nottingham, II (Nottingham, 1840), 734–736Google Scholar and Walker, J. Holland, ‘An itinerary of Nottingham’, TTS 39 (1935), 1–4Google Scholar. Thomas Markham may have rented Thurland Hall to Francis Willoughby. He seems to have sold it to John Holles in the 1590s. John Holles was made earl of Clare in 1616, after which the Hall was, for a time, called Clare Hall.

³⁰⁹ Henry Hastings (c.1561–1650) was the second son of George Hastings (see below, Text n. 310) According to the ODNB (T.Y. Cocks, ‘Hastings, Henry (bap. 1562, d.1652’) Henry was an eccentric sportsman with a hospitable table provided from his farms and fishponds. The pulpit of a disused neighbouring chapel formed his larder. Anthony Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, who was a near neighbour, described him in a plaque with gold letters that was fixed under an original portrait of Henry. Among other information, he described Henry Hastings as ‘well-natured, but soon angry, calling his servants bastards, and cuckoldry knaves’. ‘He was low, very strong, and very active … his clothes always green, and never worth, when new, more than £5 […] He had all manner of sport hounds that ran buck, fox, hare, otter and badger, and hawkes long and short winged […] His house and hall were crammed with litters of cats, hounds and spaniels, hawks and fox skins, with dice, cards, tobacco pipes and every manner of hunting equipment.’ See Bell, Henry Nugent, The Huntingdon Peerage, 2nd edn (London, 1821), 91–98Google Scholar. Shortly after the death of Dorothy Willoughby in 1638, he settled part of his estate on one Jane or Anne Langton of Woodlands who seems to have been his mistress and whom he may have afterwards married.

³¹⁰ George Hastings (1540–1604) succeeded his brother Henry as the 4th earl of Huntingdon in 1595 and was in turn succeeded by his grandson by his first son Francis, Henry Hastings (1586–1643) in 1604. Doyle, James William Edmund, The Official Baronage of England (London, 1886)Google Scholar.

³¹¹ Henry Hastings (c.1536–1595), 3rd earl of Huntingdon was a fervent Protestant and a potential successor to Elizabeth I, descending, as he did, from George, duke of Clarence, brother to Richard III. Henry supported Edward's selection of Lady Jane Grey as his heir, for which he spent time in the Tower under Mary. He was a dominant force in Leicestershire and in 1572 Elizabeth appointed him lord president of the Council of the North. In part because of the demands of this position, and also because of the care he took for his siblings, nieces and nephews, his support of Protestant scholars, ministers and preachers, the costs of law suits, and the demands placed on his estate by his father's will, the 3rd earl was plagued by debts and died leaving a reduced estate burdened by as much as £20,000 in debts. On at least three occasions (1570, 1571, and 1572) he borrowed £800, then £1,500, and then £3,000 from Francis Willoughby. Cross, The Puritan Earl: The Life of Henry Hastings. For the monies owed Francis Willoughby, see the appendix, pp. 329–330.

³¹² For other letters from the earl of Huntingdon, his brother George Hastings, and his nephew Henry Hastings to Francis Willoughby regarding the prolonged negotiations leading to this wedding, see Mi, 6/170/124/1–7. For various papers relating to the marriage settlement, see Mi, 6/170/125–130. These documents are all dated 1585.

³¹³ HMC Middleton, 455–456. Cassandra's excerpts from this household account book for 1587, copied down by Stevenson, are again quite accurate.

³¹⁴ HMC Middleton, 456.

³¹⁵ Francis had a house at the Chantry at Wollaton, which was purchased by Henry Medley from ‘Rawfe Pynder, grocer of London’, in 1562 for £34 15s: Mi, A 42, fo. 12 and HMC Middleton, 417.

³¹⁶ HMC Middleton, 456–457.

³¹⁷ Robert Spencer (1570–1627) of Northamptonshire was the son of Sir John Spencer and Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Catlin. He was created 1st Baron Spencer of Wormleighton in 1603. Margaret, his wife and third daughter of Francis Willoughby, bore him seven children and died 17 Aug. 1597 at the age of 26 following the birth of their last child. This child, Margaret, was born 14 Aug. 1597. Robert Spencer never remarried. He fought for twelve years to gain a large part of Francis Willoughby's estate but in the end only recovered ⅙ of the manor of Lambley, which he then sold for £900. At the accession of King James I, he was reputed to be the most moneyed man in England. He was buried at Brington beside Margaret, writing in his will that he wanted to be buried ‘by the monument which I have made for Margaret my beloved wife’. See below, fo. 184v, p. 237. See HMC Middleton, 455, 456, 457, 458, 566, 568, 571, 608; CSP Dom. 1595–1597, p. 557, no. 81 for his struggle to gain some of the Willoughby estate from Percival and from Dorothy Willoughby as well as from Arabella Stuart. Spencer carried on various diplomatic missions for James I.

³¹⁸ Württemberg (or Wirtemberg) in the 16th century was a duchy near Stuttgart in Swabia, Germany. Ludwig III was the duke of Wirtemberg in 1587.

³¹⁹ Uncatalogued paper in Cassandra's hand titled on fo. 1, ‘Amongst Sr Fr. W:^s Ladys Letters’. STB 2 (2), fo. 3 of this document.

³²⁰ In July 1585, in another letter from Francis to Thomas Willoughby, Francis reports that a Mr Huitt, draper in Candelwick Street, had offered him £5,500 for his land in Kent. Francis would not sell for one penny under £6,000. In the letter, he thinks Huitt will come to his price, although he also notes that a Mr Wilford in Rie is interested. In this letter Francis describes his efforts to sell Langton Welles for £3,000 and warns that if these sales do not go through he may have to go abroad to negotiate them. He asks to borrow £300 with interest at the same time he plans to send £500 to Thomas Willoughby to settle a debt with a goldsmith and with Thomas Willoughby. He says, ‘I have byn in some talke for the marriage of my daughters, and like enough to conclude for the one [probably Dorothy Willoughby].’ His charges have grown so large that he may have to discharge some of his unnecessary servants. Mi, C 17; HMC Middleton, 157.

³²¹ Probably Sir Henry Goodere (1534–1595), who built Polesworth Hall, Warks., on the site of a nunnery. See Text n. 385.

³²² William Willoughby of Normanton and Nuneaton, who, however, wrote his will only a few months later on 3 Oct. 1587 and died that year.

³²³ Robert Payne of High Wycombe, Bucks., had proposed growing woad at Wollaton in 1585. There is a 1586 petition from Robert Payne to Lord Burghley to continue sowing woad on certain conditions, notwithstanding the Queen's 1585 proclamation restricting the cultivation of woad. BL, Lansdowne MS 49/38. In 1586 the Privy Council granted permission to Payne to continue his operation. See a six-page MS by Payne published in R.S. Smith, ‘A Woad Growing Project at Wollaton in the 1580s’, TTS 65 (1961), appendix II; BL, Lansdowne MS 49/33, fo. 33; Lansdowne MS 121/21; Smith, ‘Willoughbys’, ch. 16. For a 1585 letter from Robert Payne to Sir Francis, see Mi, 5/165/96 and Mi, 5/165/95. For a description of the fraught relationship between Payne and Sir Francis, see Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby,’ 140–149. See Mi, 5/165/117-118, 123-126, 128, including a handwritten testimony by Draycott, one of Francis's servants, against Payne. See also Mi, 5/167/189. In 1591, Sir Francis appeared before the Privy Council regarding a private dispute with Payne over monies owed. Payne was released from his Majesty's Bench until the dispute could be heard. Acts of the Privy Council of England, New Series, Vol. 22 (1591–1592), 170–171, 240–241. If Paine failed to show up, ‘their Lordships doe promise to graunt to Sir Frauncis Willughbie their warrant for the apprehencion of the said Paine, where soever he maie be remaininge within any parte of her Majesty's dominions’. Payne responded with accusations that Sir Francis had plotted to assist the Spanish invasion in 1588. In Feb. 1591/2 a settlement was reached, although Payne returned to prison and died there as a result of an action for debt by Sir Francis. For many Middleton documents regarding woad cultivation and Robert Payne, see Mi, 5/165/95–128.

³²⁴ Sir Ambrose Willoughby (whose seat was at Malton, Gloucs.), was the second son of Charles Willoughby, 2nd Baron Willoughby of Parnham. He was one of the Queen's esquires of the body. Based on John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and repeated many times since, Ambrose Willoughby was one of those who provided a ship at his own expense and joined the English fleet in 1588 at the time of the Spanish Armada.

³²⁵ Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England, 396 ff.

³²⁶ Lawrence Stone's contested The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1967) argues that there was a crisis of indebtedness in the aristocracy after 1585 and for the last 20 years of Elizabeth's reign. See esp. pp. 247–48. See Mayhew, N.J., ‘Population, money supply and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700’, Economic History Review, ns 48 (1995), 252–253Google Scholar, where he concludes that: ‘though V [velocity] peaks for the 1561 estimates (a calculation perhaps still affected by the debasement), it seems to have fallen markedly through Elizabeth's reign before stabilizing in the second half of the 17th century at a velocity level below that of 1300. If some allowance is also made for the increasingly widespread use of negotiable paper contributing to M [money], the impression of falling V becomes still more marked.’ Apparently, the money supply continued to rise, but the rate of circulation of money decreased. Also, an increased population resulted in a decline in real national income and per capita income, which plummeted. All of these calculations are affected by the rise in other forms of money (e.g. paper credit) and growing proportion of silver coin to gold. The evidence for growing poverty and unemployment in the 1590s is unmistakeable.’

³²⁷ A similar but much lengthier version, described in the introduction, is told by John Adams in a letter to his brother-in-law Percivall Willoughby in Aug. 1588. Mi, C 18; HMC Middleton, 158–159. After a term as sheriff of London in 1587–1588 John Catcher (d.1638) became a City alderman and in 1590 attracted the high subsidy assessment of £56. He surrendered his aldermanic position in 1596. Thomas Skinner (d.1596) was sheriff in 1588 conjointly with John Catcher and succeeded Catcher in the Aldermanry of Cripplegate when Catcher was discharged due to financial difficulties. In Dec. 1588 Alderman Skinner was detained in custody for disobedience to an order of the Queen-in-Council. Whether this was related to the incident described here and elsewhere is unclear, as it may also have been in relation to London's inability to contribute toward expenses required of the Crown. Skinner was made Lord Mayor of London in 1596 upon recommendation of Queen Elizabeth but died shortly thereafter. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/catcher-sir-john-1568-1638; Baddeley, John James, The Aldermen of Cripplegate Ward from A.D. 1276 to A.D. 1900, together with some account of the office of Alderman, Alderman's Deputy, and Common Councilman of the City of London (London, 1900)Google Scholar.

³²⁸ Reaney, P.H. and Wilson, R.M., A Dictionary of English Surnames (London, 1991), 2259Google Scholar, Newnam.

³²⁹ Sir John Lyttleton died in Feb. 1590. ‘His dissolute heir, Gilbert Lyttleton, gave him a pauper's funeral, “neyther mourning gowne, clothe nor cloke was given for him”’. (Tonks, ‘Lyttletons’, 59–60, citing L38/12, deposition of John Lynold). No tomb was erected over his grave, and the provisions of his will were not respected. For his will, see TNA, PROB 11/75/268. Cassandra has placed this letter here, in 1588, because of the mention of Alderman Catcher and the events of 1588, but it must properly be dated after Feb. 1590.

³³⁰ Her return to Wollaton may have been precipitated by increasingly poor health. On 11 Aug. 1588 John Adams reported to Percivall Willoughby that ‘My Lady Willughby was dead and in a mortale sound [swoon] by the space of j. hower full, and could not be revived. There weare none in here chamber but here mayde, and a jentelman's man wiche lay over here, hereing the mayde to cry out, came downe and helped to rubb and recover the good lady, and soe in the end thereof recovered here.’ Mi, C 18; HMC Middleton, 159.

³³¹ Robert Willoughby?

³³² ‘It was about this time [Dec. 1588] that Sir Francis Willughby and his Lady were reconciled.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 39.

³³³ Francis Willoughby (1588–1665). ‘The eldest child of Percivall and Bridget, Francis was brought up initially at Middleton, Warks., but from 1599 principally at Wollaton Hall. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1607, and entered Lincoln's Inn in 1609. He returned to live at Middleton with his family from 1615. He succeeded his father in 1643, but never lived at Wollaton Hall, which had been badly damaged by fire in 1642.’ Francis was Cassandra's grandfather. University of Nottingham: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/family/middleton/biographies/biographyoffranciswilloughby(1588-1665).aspx (accessed 18 Sept. 2016).

³³⁴ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 39.

³³⁵ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 40.

³³⁶ See OED: ‘An arbitrarily selected mark at an unknown distance from the archer, esp. as used to provide practice in range-finding and long-distance shooting.’ ‘Silence keeper’ remains a mystery.

³³⁷ Home of Thomas Markham. See Text n. 308.

³³⁸ Edwin Sandys (1516–10 July 1588) was archbishop of York from 1577 to 1588; John Piers (1522/3–1594) succeeded him.

³³⁹ HMC Middleton, 457. Cassandra includes more detail in the following excerpts than Stevenson.

³⁴⁰ HMC Middleton, 257. Henry Sacheverell, Esq. of Nottingham, c.1548–1620, Ratcliff-upon-Soar (Notts.) and Morley (Derbys.). His father John fled England in 1559; his lands were taken in hand by the Queen but were recovered by Henry in 1575/6 for a leased rent of £200. CPR 1575–1578, 18 Elizabeth, 100. His wife was Jane Bradburne (1559–1621), from whom he separated after at least four children who survived him. In 1593 he was in the Fleet for not repaying her dowry. Subsequently he took up a mistress, Elizabeth Keyes, by whom he had three sons, two reputed (Ferdinand Valence and Francis Sacheverell) and one acknowledged named Valence.

³⁴¹ Probably Robert Palmer of Wingham, Kent (c.1541–1626), son of Sir Henry Palmer of Angmering, Sussex. Robert Palmer was high sheriff of Kent in 1595 and was knighted in 1603. He served in Parliament for Arundel in 1586 and 1601 and was a gentleman of the privy chamber to James I. History of Parliament: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/palmer-thomas-ii-1541-1625 (accessed 19 Sept. 2016).

³⁴² Unidentified.

³⁴³ HMC Middleton, 457–459; the text, from J. Bartowes on is written along the margin in tiny script.

³⁴⁴ Wolvey Grange, Warks., where Nuneaton House was located.

³⁴⁵ ‘In other letters she tells him she is ill-used by his servants, which she will make appear at her return; she writes that it is they which hinder his selling or letting his western lands, [Woodland, Dorset] and that they are set on by Lord Huntington’. STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 31. See below, 166–169, pp. 208–212, especially.

³⁴⁶ In Apr. 1589 Elizabeth and Francis had been to the spa at Buxton. On 26 Apr. 1589 Sir Francis Willoughby wrote to Elizabeth Hardwick Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury, to ask her to lend her horse litter and furniture to Elizabeth Willoughby to come home. Elizabeth, he says, ‘hath beene longe sicke’ and ‘having receaved noe healpe is growne to suche weakenesse’ that she cannot manage to travel home by horseback or by coach. Folger Shakespeare Library, X.d.428 (126).

³⁴⁷ There is a word missing here. Perhaps ‘pain’ based on her earlier notes.

³⁴⁸ ‘and beseeches him to have a Care of her health for he must bear the Charges tho she does the Pain, but what is his Will she will Willingly obey.’ Uncatalogued paper in Cassandra's hand titled on fo. 1, ‘Amongst Sr Fr. W:^s Ladys Letters’. STB 2 (2), fo. 2v of this document.

³⁴⁹ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 41.

³⁵⁰ White fortified wine from mainland Spain or the Canary Islands. Most sack was probably sweet and matured in wooden barrels for a limited time. It was very popular with the Elizabethans. Typical sack may have resembled cheaper versions of medium Oloroso sherry.

³⁵¹ Uncatalogued paper in Cassandra's hand titled on fo. 1, ‘Amongst Sr Fr. W:^s Ladys Letters’. STB 2 (2), fo. 2 of this document.

³⁵² Possibly the son of William Payne (d.1615) who bought half of Medbourne Manor House, Leics., in 1551. Thomas (d. aft. 1591) bought the other half in 1563. Hill, Nick, ‘The Manor House, Medbourne: The development of Leicestershire's earliest manor house’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 75 (2001), 39Google Scholar; Lee, J.M. and McKinley, R.A. (eds), A History of the County of Leicester: V, VCH (London, 1964), 229–248Google Scholar. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol5/pp229-248 (accessed 13 Sept. 2016).

³⁵³ The date of Lady Willoughby's death has been variously reported. Friedman follows Cassandra in writing 1594, while Hayden writes 1595. Concern with Lady Willoughby's bequests and inventory in June and Aug. 1595 (fos 191–191v, pp. 245–246) suggest that she died in 1595, at which time she was 49 years of age. There is a reference in the Feet of Fines to a dispute, dated Easter [26 Mar.] 1595, between Ralph Whalley, Esq., plaintiff, and Francis, Elizabeth, and Percival Willoughby, defendants, cited in S.H. Skillington, ‘Medieval Cossington’, III, ch. 5, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 19 (1936–1937), 275–292, esp. 289. See also TNA, Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 3, 1597 (London, 1832), 299. In May, 1595 Frances Willoughby, the youngest daughter, left her mother and father because of the cruelty of her mother. Mi, 2/75/2/8/1. R.S. Smith states that Elizabeth Willoughby died on 4 June 1595. Smith, ‘Willoughbys’, 56. See Mi, F 12/98 for a 19th-century annotation that she was buried 4 June 1595. Francis Willoughby remarried in Aug. 1595.

³⁵⁴ George Willoughby, the illegitimate uncle of Sir Francis Willoughby, who figures prominently earlier in this letter collection. See Text n. 27 above. His step-granddaughter was Mary Repington, wife of Clement Fisher and daughter of Richard Repington. For Clement Fisher and Mary Repington also, see Text n. 191 above.

³⁵⁵ Cassandra's earlier notes say, ‘soon after her death Fisher and the rest of Sr Francis's designing servants ^by letters wch remain appear to [hav?]^ renewed the quarrell between him and Sr Percivall, as is before mentioned in the account of Sr Fra: Willughby where is put down what particulars I could find relating to that quarrell.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 41.

³⁵⁶ Robert Sackville, 2nd earl of Dorset (1561–1609).

³⁵⁷ Unidentified, although he may be related to George Willoughby aka Fox, illegitimate half brother of Henry Willoughby, father of Francis, who is mentioned throughout.

³⁵⁸ There is more discussion of pearl necklaces (a great pearl and of little pearls laced with rubies) in the correspondence of Abigail Willoughby, fo. 191v, p. 246 below.

³⁵⁹ Wife of William Russell, steward of Sir Francis. In July 1595 it was Russell whom Sir Francis sent to London to seek a new wife. See fo. 144, p. 246 below.

³⁶⁰ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 4–5.

³⁶¹ Insertions are from STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 9v.

³⁶² Possibly relating to the Green family who were long-term tenants in the region of Halesowen, especially on the Manor Abbey Farm purchased by Sir John Lyttelton, ‘Halesowen Abbey’, Romsley and Hunnington History Society, http://www.rhhs.org.uk/local-history/halesowen-abbey.html?start=9 (accessed 5 Oct. 2016).

³⁶³ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 6–7.

³⁶⁴ Isley Cranewell appears with Sir Percival in chancery court c.1599 regarding leases on mines in Derbyshire during the life of Sir Francis Willughby. TNA, C 2/Eliz/Z1/12.

³⁶⁵ For Dorothy Colby, see the introduction, p. 49. According to the ODNB entry by R.S. Smith on Francis Willoughby, the steward chose Dorothy, ‘an astute widow’, and Willoughby married her immediately. They remained in London, and he lavished jewels and plate on her, but a mere fifteen months later, after a short illness, Willoughby died. His death was so sudden and his burial so rapid in St Giles Cripplegate, that his family suspected he'd been poisoned. Dorothy was left pregnant. Had Dorothy given birth to a son, this son would have inherited the Willoughby estate. The child, however, was a daughter, Frances, born on 3 May 1597 and dying in infancy. Years of litigation with the Willoughby heirs followed. In Oct. 1597, Dorothy married for the third time, taking as her husband Philip, 3rd Baron Wharton (23 June 1555–26 Mar. 1625). He settled £1,000 a year on her, £310 of which she immediately gave to the lord chancellor, Bacon, to decide in her favour in a suit respecting the Willoughby estate. This third marriage proved unhappy. In 1602, she was writing letters complaining of Lord Wharton's ill–treatment.

³⁶⁶ Lewes may be the father or grandfather of Thomas Lewes (b. c.1619) a very wealthy vintner and alderman of London. whose progeny eventually owned Stanford Hall, Notts.

³⁶⁷ Stepfather of Dorothy Colby Tamworth Willughby by his second wife Elizabeth née Gilbert who was the widow of Thomas Colby. According to the entry for Michael Molyns (d.14 May 1615) in the History of Parliament, Moleyns, who was left in charge of Willoughby's estates, may have been the second husband of Dorothy's mother. Sir Michael Molyns was the 3rd son of William Molyns of Sandall or Sandhills, Hants, and Mackney by his 3rd wife, Ann née Culpepper. Molyns served in Parliament, representing Wallingford in 1589; he was also a warden of the Fleet prison. Molyns undertook the management of Dorothy's claims. Alan Harding, ‘Molyns, Michael (d.1615)’, History of Parliament Online, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/molyns-michael-1615#footnote5_1m20pp6 (accessed 31 Mar. 2018).

³⁶⁸ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 8.

³⁶⁹ Thomas Dilke of Maxstock married Clement Fisher's daughter Anne.

³⁷⁰ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 42–43 and 41v.

³⁷¹ There is an analysis of this letter within the context of vituperative letter writing in O'Callaghan, Michelle, ‘“An Uncivill Scurrilous Letter”, “Womanish Brabb[l]es” and the Letter of Affront’, in Daybell, and Gordon, (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia, PA, 2016), 174–177Google Scholar.

³⁷² STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 45.

³⁷³ With regard to Henry Willoughby, see Text n. 177 above.

³⁷⁴ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 9–10.

³⁷⁵ Cassandra indicates, with the hash mark, that fo. 149v should be inserted here.

³⁷⁶ STB (2) 1, book 2, fo. 42.

³⁷⁷ The date of his letter would be Jan. 1595/6.

³⁷⁸ William Agard, Esq. In 1585, William Agard acted as receiver of the Queen's possessions belonging to her honour of Tutbury. The Agard family held the manor of Bromley Regis, Staffs.

³⁷⁹ Which Henry Willughby is this? Is this the younger brother of Percivall? Or Percivall's uncle Henry Willoughby (1540–1606)? The fact that Cassandra spells his name ‘Willughby’ would suggest that he is not related to the Willoughbys of Eresby. See Text n. 177 above for a description of many Henry Willughbys/Willoughbys.

³⁸⁰ John Conway or Conuay (1535–1603), from Arrow, near Alcester, Warks., married Elene Greville (1545–1580), the daughter of Fulke Greville and Elizabeth Willoughby Greville.

³⁸¹ See Text n. 207 for an account of a 1578 case with Paramour. For Chancery, see Wylloughby v. Paramoure TNA, C21/W19/8. See also a 1602 covenant between Percival Willoughby and Richard Paramour, Mi, 6/178/26.

³⁸² Perhaps a daughter from her mother's marriage with Michael Moleyn.

³⁸³ Possibly Percivall's brother Robert Willoughby (b.1565) or Robert Willoughby, son of Fulke Greville (see Text n. 270 above). There are no known Robert Willughbys (as Cassandra spells the last name of the Willoughbys of Wollaton) near that generation.

³⁸⁴ Unclear.

³⁸⁵ This is probably Sir Henry Goodere (1534–1595). According to Sir Meyrick, Samuel Rush (ed.), The Heraldic Visitations of Wales and Part of the Marches Between the Years 1586 and 1613, Under the Authority of Clarencieux and Norry 1. (London, 1846), 149Google Scholar n. 5, n. 317, ‘The Godiers or Goodorea, were a Herefordshire family.’ The family name has a wide array of spellings/pronunciations: Goodere, Goodyer, Goodrich, Goodrich, Goodrea, and Goodricke. One of the major players against Paramour was a Henry Goodere, otherwise loyal to Leicester. Adams, Leicester and the Court, 340–341.

³⁸⁶ Most likely John Savage (1554–1615) of Clifton, Cheshire.

³⁸⁷ 1595/6 This sequence of letters is dated Feb. 1595.

³⁸⁸ See below [fo. 191v, p. 246] for letters between Sir Francis and Abigail Willoughby regarding jewellery left by Elizabeth Willoughby.

³⁸⁹ Lady Dorothy Willoughby gave birth to her daughter Frances in May 1597, six to seven months after Francis died. If she was pregnant in Feb. 1596/7, she must have lost this child.

³⁹⁰ Attached to fo. 153v is the following partial text: ‘purpose to give my information of an # # unfortunate Family which has been formerly of Great Authority tho now in a Low Ebb of Life. – But I stand at too great a distance from your Grace, to presume to Enter upon the # # particulars of it in this, the whole being tedious, and only thus far, I beg Leave to inform your Grace that one Christopher Willoughby [1453–1488/89, 10^th Baron de Eresby] was the first that setled at Knoyle (the present seat of our family in Wiltshire) who was a Branch of the Nottingham family, in the reign of Henry the 6^th. This my Father was often used to tell me, who had the honour of being particularly intimate with my late Lord Weymouth [Thomas Thynne, bap. 1640–1714, buried in Wiltshire near Knoyle] & of leaving behind him a character which was an honour to his Country. If it be your Grace's goodness & pleasure That I should pay my Duty of Attendance at Cannons, your Grace will please to order your servant to acquaint me of it, which will ever be most greatfully acknowledged as the greatest Honour conferred upon me.

May it please your Grace

I am Mad^m [Madame] Your Graces most Dutifull and Obedient

Lewis

Willoughby

Southampton Buildings in Chancery Lane 12 July 1726’

[The author of this text was most likely a descendant of Sir Christopher Willoughby (1508–1570), second son of the 10th Baron de Eresby, who is recorded as Willoughby of West Knoyle. Cannons (Middlesex) was the home of James Brydges, duke of Chandos, and Cassandra Willoughby Bridges. This letter was presumably addressed to Cassandra.]

³⁹¹ See information on Dorothy Colby Tamworth Willoughby above, Introduction, p. 49; fos 144–146, pp. 184–186 and Text n. 367.

³⁹² Sir Francis did not sell Lamly. It stayed in the hands of his wife Dorothy after Sir Francis's death. On the eventual descent of Lamly after Dorothy Willoughby's death in 1621 to Sir Francis's six daughters, its division into sixths, and its disposition, see below, fo 194v, p. 253.

³⁹³ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 47. ‘[…] of this made Sr Francis send a troop to take possession of the house when Sr Percivall was from home and h[a]d left his Lady big with=Child’.

³⁹⁴ Grafting; adding feathers to repair a hawk's wing, OED. Percival is accusing Dorothy of trying to replace Sir Francis's family and friends with her circle in an attempt to take all of his property.

³⁹⁵ Another copy of this letter, with slightly different wording, is in Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 24; Mi, LM 27, fo. 19, STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 49.

³⁹⁶ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 50. STB 2 (2), Uncatalogued paper in Cassandra's writing dated Novem^r 1596, fo. 1, under subtitle ‘In another letter to his Lady’, fo. 1 of this document.

³⁹⁷ In this case, mother-in-law means stepmother.

³⁹⁸ All of the above letters are also described in Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 20; Mi, LM 27, fo. 20. The ‘mother-in-law’ mentioned is Percival's stepmother, Mary Weston, by whom his father had three daughters. Thomas Valence is probably Thomas Valence of Lincoln's Inn who leased the top floor chambers and a gallery in Willoughby House, Lincoln's Inn's Fields, from Thomas Willoughby in 1595. Ibid. 25 n. 2; HMC Middleton, 322.

³⁹⁹ This sentence is inserted at the hash mark.

⁴⁰⁰ STB 2 (1), book 2, fos 50–51. Cassandra describes a letter from Edward (Ned) Willoughby to be found in STB 2 (1), book 1, but it is on fo. 26v, not fo. 26.

⁴⁰¹ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 12.

⁴⁰² An estate of three lives allowed the lessee to hold the estate for the length of three lives which might be understood to encompass the lives of the lessee and the next two generations or it could mean the lessee, his surviving wife, and a son or some combination thereof.

⁴⁰³ Not located.

⁴⁰⁴ In Cassandra's earlier notes: ‘would hate all those that loved Sir Percivall, his only care was to enrich his new Lady’. STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 47.

⁴⁰⁵ R.S. Smith cites a Jan. 1598 letter from Rhys of Cossall, who oversaw the Codnor ironworks for the Willoughbys, to Bridget Willoughby, suggesting that Francis may have had, too late, some misgivings about his treatment of Bridget and Percival. See Smith, R.S., Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton Hall (Nottingham, 1988), 36Google Scholar, for the relevant text of the letter which includes the following: ‘Your father did use many times to deliver to me many speeches touching you […] and told me that if Percival and I do not agree before that I died […] he is like to be hardly handled, which I would prevent, and I know not well how to do it.’.

⁴⁰⁶ It is unclear if he is the Henry Willughby who was the son of Hugh Willughby. See Text n. 177 above.

⁴⁰⁷ Cassandra noted a ‘Letter from Percivall Willoughby to Bridget November 1596 describing Sir Francis's last illness’. STB 2 (2), Uncatalogued paper in Cassandra's writing dated Novem^r 1596.

⁴⁰⁸ Percival had heard from an informant within Sir Francis's household that ‘Sir Francis is past all recovery, and therefore in all your pretences leave no time. It should seem something was feared here to be done, for that one cottage this morning was filled full of writing boxes, jewels and the like and so sent to the Fleet [Michael Mollyns was a warden of Fleet prison]. Here is some weeping but not much, yet I think passports [permission to remove goods?] be plenty. This intelligence I had from the wife of the house who watched with him all night and had a great desire you should know this much.’ Smith, Sir Francis Willoughby, 34. The source is not provided. Smith also provides information, again with no citation, from a deposition by William Atkinson, who said that Sir Francis had been invited to dinner at the Fleet. Lady Willoughby then entreated Atkinson to go see the Lord Mayor and the sights there, ‘although Atkinson had not asked to go’. The next day Sir Francis began ‘to purge and scour violently, and this lasted three whole days. A few days before his death, a broth was brought to him, whereupon he was alleged to have said ‘away with poison’. Ibid. 33–34. William Atkinson, an apostate priest and a spy for Robert Cecil, had offered to poison the earl of Tyrone in 1595. CSP Dom. 1595–1597, p. 14, no. 49.

⁴⁰⁹ Francis Willoughby died intestate. There exist four different draft wills by Francis Willoughby. See Mi, 1/13/4a, Mi, 1/13/11, Mi, 1/13/5 and Mi, 7/180/5. For his Inquisition post mortem, see Mi, 1/2/2/1. Bridget Willoughby attested ‘That the said Lady Willoughby conceived so little grief for the said Sir Francis his death and took so small care for his funeral that she caused him to be buried the same day that he died as she believeth, and did never acquaint this respondent's husband or any other the said Sir Francis his dearest friends with her intent or purpose touching his funeral’. Smith, Sir Francis Willoughby, 34. Francis was buried at St Giles Cripplegate 16 Nov. 1596. In a 1597 appeal that Sir Percival sent to Lord Burghley, he wrote, ‘For she, which was so unkynde a wyfe to so over loving a husbande, as having absolutely contryved and gotten to herself and her heires the greatest parte of his landes, coulde not afford his dead corps the leaste part of those rightes and obsequies which weare due to suche a man.’ Mi, F 10/32; HMC Middleton, 620. See the parish register for St Giles Cripplegate, London Metropolitan Archives P69/GIS/A/002/MSO6419/001, under 16 Nov. 1596: ‘Sir Francys Wylloughby knight’. Those buried at St Giles in the same month include children of or family members from a dycemaker, shoemaker, yeoman, labourers, clothier, baker, vintner, glover, householders, and one other knight, Sir John Buck. The individuals buried at St Giles seem to come, for the most part, from the trades, crafts, and labouring classes

⁴¹⁰ 2 June 1597 letter from Percival Willoughby to William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Mi, C 25; HMC Middleton, 618–619: ‘for that Sir Mychaell Molyns, (as by sufficient proofe I made it knowen to the judges of the common pleas) had practised with a gentlewoman in Nottinghamshier to exchaunge a sonne of hers (if neede weare) for a daughter of the said Lady Wyllughbyes; which practise of his, howe daungerous it mighte have proved to me (as my case stood), I leave it to your honorable censure and consideracion’.

⁴¹¹ Percival began a Common Law suit in the wake of Sir Francis's death, suing for recovery of Wollaton, Cossall, Trowell, Kingsbury and Middleton. Dorothy Willoughby countered with a suit in chancery, obtaining an injunction against Percival, ‘the Prequator [sic] of the Common Pleas to staye the entering of a recovery which was knowledged to barre an Infant in Venter sa Mere’. Cambridge University Library, Gg2.31. fo. 411, cited in Maria Cioni, Women and Law in Elizabethan England with Particular Reference to the Court of Chancery (New York, 1985), 65. In the course of these law suits, Bridget Willoughby wrote to Percival ‘that the Lady Wharton had sent to serve her with a proces as she was going into Church, which they would have had the Priest to have read in the Church, but he refused it’. Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 28; Mi, LM 27, fo. 24.

⁴¹² Mi, F 10/32; HMC Middleton, 620–621. (See the Introduction, pp. 15–16.). There are several other letters from Sir Percivall to Lord Burghley in 1597. See Mi, 2/75/3/9 and Mi, C 25, dated 2 June 1597; HMC Middleton, 618–620. Lord Burghley wrote, in response, ‘I shalbe content to heare any mocion in the Court of Wardes to morrow, towching this request. And upon profe of Sir Michaell Molyns practice I will change my opinion.’

⁴¹³ See Mi, 2/75/3/1–28 for the Cause papers in Percival Willoughby vs. Molins and Wharton. See also Mi, 2/75/3/9 (undated) and Mi, C 25, dated 2 June 1597.

⁴¹⁴ ‘[B]ecause from that time I could find no appearance of any profit to our Family from that Estate, and by tradition I [illeg.] the Money taken for Leases ^#^ (which Sir Francis Willoughby gave his Lady)^#^ upon that Estate which came to Sr P:W.’ STB 2 (1), book 2, fo. 13v.

⁴¹⁵ In Cassandra's earlier notes she writes: ‘Jan the 2d 1602 Henry Willughby writes to advise Sr Percivall to sell land & clear all he owed, he tells him Sr F Willughbys first debt was but 500 Markes, wch he continued upon usery till it grew to be very near 20000^li.

To this Sr Percivall answers, he that hath ever been blown by contrary winds may sooner wish than attain an end of his travails. He says tho he has used all means and attendance, yet God knows when he shall see an end. In the meantime he offers any Land to free himself, nor would he be unwilling to undergoe any course in some sort to ease his mind and heavie burthened estate, which he doubts will cost too dear before it be secured.’ STB 2 (2), Uncatalogued paper in Cassandra's writing dated Novem^r 1596, fo. 1v of that document. See below, fo. 184, pp. 235–236.

⁴¹⁶ In 1597 Edward and Winifred Willoughby, in addition to Abigail and Frances Willoughby took Percival Willoughby to chancery court with regard to these manors [and these payments?]. TNA, C 3/294/13.

⁴¹⁷ For an additional description of his encumbered estate, see the 2 June 1597 letter to Lord Burghley in which Percivall refers to his overwhelming financial burdens, including annuities, promised portions for the younger Willoughby daughters and at least £8,000 in debits, with an annual income of only £400. Mi, C 25; HMC Middleton, 618–620. For more on the ongoing financial difficulties that Percival Willoughby experienced, see Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 29–30, 37–39; Mi, LM 27, fos 26, 33–35. In 1597 the money received from the whole estate from Sir Francis as well as the money raised in the sale of coal was £585. His expenses for the Christmas season alone were £103. In 1604 Sir Percival was forced to pawn and sell plate. In 1605 he leased Bore Place Park, and by 1606 he was confined in the Fleet prison for debt for nearly the entire year. Cassandra wrote, ‘There are some very melancholy letters writ by Sir Percivall to his Lady while he was confined to the Fleet, in which letters he complains most grieviously of his misfortunes, and how heavily his troubles opress him.’ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 39; Mi, LM 27, fo. 34. Later in volume 2, Cassandra summarizes Percival Willoughby's problems: ‘He was himself cumbered with a great deal of business occasion'd by the very great debt which Sir Francis Willoughby left the Estate charged with, and the troublesome law sutes which he was engaged in by Sir Francises Widow […] By the account books which remain in the Family one may believe that Sir Percivall and his Lady were both very good managers, and that the losses which they sustaind were more owing to their being oppressed, with too much business then to their want of care.’ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 65–66; Mi, LM 27, fo. 69. In addition, Percival Willoughby had responsibility for the debts of his own father, demands from his wife's sisters and also from his many brothers and sisters and the children of Thomas Willoughby's second wife. For chancery suits initiated by Frances Wood and her husband and by Abigail Willoughby Pargiter in 1598 against Percival, see TNA, C2/Eliz/W23/57, C2/Eliz/W3/59 (1598), C78/129/16 (1598), and C21/jas1/415/22. In Jan. 1596/7 both Henry Hastings and Dorothy Willoughby Hastings withdrew from suit against Percival Willoughby. Mi, 6/170/134v.

⁴¹⁸ Cassandra expanded on Percival Willoughby's ‘perplexed affairs’ in The Continuation of the History, 25–39; Mi, LM 27, fos 19–35. Many of the details relating to the problems attending Francis Willoughby's second marriage and the contested inheritance that ensued are not included in Cassandra's Account. The gist of Sir Percival's complaint can be followed in his bill in Star Chamber. Mi, 2/75/3/10. Additional materials relating to this suit are in Mi, 2/75/3/4–9. Bridget and Percival eventually came into possession of the major part of Sir Francis Willoughby's estates but not without years of litigation. Their troubles included time spent by Percival in debtors’ prison in London in 1605.

⁴¹⁹ It is difficult to identify the Henry Willoughby being referred to here. Cassandra's spelling of his name would seem to suggest that he was of the Willoughbys of Eresby. If this is the same Henry Willughby who was trying to marry Bridget at one time (fo. 147), he could be the son of Hugh Willoughby, as surmised by Francis Willoughby, the naturalist and father of Cassandra.

⁴²⁰ On this Henry Willoughby, see Text n. 177 above.

⁴²¹ The writing up of and the terms of the negotiations are discussed in several surviving letters from Henry Huntingdon to Sir Francis between June 1585 and Jan. 1585/6. On 21 Sept. 1585 Henry Huntingdon committed certain rents and hereditaments to Henry Hastings and Dorothy Willoughby and their heirs to the clear yearly value of £200, the manor of Puddletown [Dorset] or some other lands to the clear yearly value of £400, as well as a commitment not to make any leases of the jointure land that was to be available to Dorothy if she survive Henry, and fourthly £2,000 to be paid over the course of five years. In both this note and a subsequent letter of 7 Jan. 1585/6, Henry Huntingdon requested a meeting with Sir Francis particularly urgently as he reminds Sir Francis that he (Francis) had promised Henry Hastings that the marriage would take place before Shrovetide 1585/6. Mi, 6/170/124/1–3. The extended negotiations that took place can be traced in the letters and numerous drafts of agreements relating to the marriage settlement beginning, apparently, in May 1585. See Mi, 6/170/124–136.

⁴²² For information on the sale of the manor of Ware, Herts., to Thomas Fanshaw (1533–1601), Remembrancer of the Exchequer, in 1580 for £410, see TNA, C 2 Eliz./F4/49. In 1574 Thomas Fanshaw had leased Ware Park for 50 years for £191 12s 2¼d to the Exchequer for the first 30 years until [Christopher Hatton's] debt was paid, after which 100 marks p.a. were to be paid to Katherine, the dowager countess and to Huntingdon. The same year [1574] the dowager countess of Huntingdon released her dower in Ware Park in exchange for an annuity. Hastings Manuscripts, Herts. Deeds, cited in Cross, The Puritan Earl, 319, 334, 337.

⁴²³ This assessment is very similar to the assessment of the state of the earl of Huntingdon's estate described by Cross, The Puritan Earl, ch. 3. There is an undated letter to Sir Francis Willoughby from Gabriell Marmion, written about this time, that relays a discussion that took place recently in Fleet Street in London concerning the marriage. The reported opinion of Mr Markham was that the earl of Huntingdon meant to hold Francis to the bargain already agreed upon. The conversation concluded that the match should move forward, despite those who were opposed to it, and it was now too late to back out, as the two young people were so ‘assured’ that she would be taken away and any rescue would be difficult Mi, 6/170/124/5.

⁴²⁴ Thomas Stanhope married Margaret Port. Henry Hasting's mother was Dorothy Port. Both were daughters and co-heirs of Sir John Port of Derbyshire, as Cassandra notes in the next paragraph. For the difficult marriage of Thomas Stanhope and Margaret Port, see Text n. 185 above.

⁴²⁵ There is a letter from George Hastings to Sir Francis, dated 3 Mar. 1585/6 concerning the protracted negotiations between Sir Francis and Henry, earl of Huntingdon in which George testifies to the good faith of his brother, confirms his own friendship with Francis, notwithstanding, however, that he will not forbid his son to have recourse to Dorothy Willoughby. He refers to the ‘lewd parsones’ attempting to ‘delewd’ Francis to be wary of his friends, of whom George counts himself. Mi, 6/170/124/4. This undoubtedly alludes to the anonymous author (and others) citing reasons listed above against the marriage of Henry Hastings and Dorothy Willoughby as well as the conversation reported by Gabriel Marmion (Text n. 423 above).

⁴²⁶ This letter may follow upon that of Hastings's father on 3 Mar. 1585/6, thereby tentatively dated Apr. 1586. There is a further letter from Henry Hastings to Sir Francis dated 10 Apr., written from Loughborough prior to his trip to London and therefore, most likely, just prior to this letter: ‘The greafe which I sustained at my last beyng at Woleston [sic], beyng dreven to depart from her companny, whom I love the dearest in the worlde did so troble me att that time, that I forgot many things that I pourposed to speake unto you, and seyng that I maye not retorne [return] without your displeasure, I ame determined to defere them untill my commyng ^from London^ hoping that you will not deale so hardly with me, as to forbide ^me^ your howse, protestyng before ^God^, that never since my commynge thether, I have don any thyng ether by worde, or deade that mighte, ether dishonnor you, or discredit my selfe, if it weare knowne to the hole worlde, wherfore good Sir Francis, and I trust father, I doe most humbly desire you to continnewe that care which you semed once to have of me, but until suche time, as you maye evidently perceave me nothing worthy of it: I tought it good to lett you understand that upon Wensdaye next God willyng I meane to goe towards London, and if it woulde please you but to take so muche paines as to write to my Lorde your minde, I shall thinke then indeade that you doe not utterly reiecte me, but att that my Lord performynge what he hathe promised, you are ready to doe the like. Thus praying to the almighty, to preserve and blesse you I end: from Loughborrowe the 10 of April. Yours to commande for ever Henry Hastings.’ Mi, 6/170/124/7. This letter is printed by kind permission of Lord Middleton.

⁴²⁷ Mi, 6/170/124/6.

⁴²⁸ The wedding should have taken place between Apr. 1586 (the date of these letters from Henry Hastings) and June 1587 (see fo. 130, pp. 167 and 205 n. 421 above) but not before Shrovetide 1586 as Francis had promised. The date for the wedding was 9 July 1587.

⁴²⁹ There are additional papers in the Middleton collection relating to the negotiations between Francis Willoughby and his son-in-law Henry Hastings over settling the estate of Woodland on them. As is clear from what Lord Huntingdon says, after the marriage Henry and Dorothy lived at York with the earl of Huntingdon until after the birth of their first child. See Cross, The Puritan Earl, 54. Although the following correspondence takes place in 1588, there is further correspondence and agreements in the Middleton Collection that show this was not resolved until 1589. There is a letter from Henry Hastings on 7 June 1589 that asks for Sir Francis's help, describing the loving care which Sir Francis would seem to have toward him but also the problematic state that he and Dorothy will find themselves in without his help. (Mi, 6/170/124/8.) Francis Willoughby was clearly reluctant to turn over the promised Woodland to them, however. The 1589 agreements between Francis Willoughby and Henry Hastings include £20 annual income from parcels of the demaines of Woodland as well as a payment of £2,000 upon the death of Francis Willoughby without a male heir, Mi, 6/170/132–136. Mi, 6/170/137 is a letter from Dorothy Willoughby Hastings to her sister Bridget, most probably written after the death of Sir Francis, asking for evidences for Woodland and Knolton, which suggests that they were still insecure in their holdings. Bridget seems to have re-used the letter to write down a shopping list as well as tasks that needed doing, including feeding the capons and ducks. See Figures 6 and 7 below, pp. 216–217.

⁴³⁰ Leasing, e.g. leasing land to a mining company.

⁴³¹ Perhaps Winbrook or Wynbrook. Unknown.

⁴³² Most likely Caine's Farm which was also in Dorset and would fit the requirement of western land that Sir Francis might be willing to sell.

⁴³³ In an undated draft memo (most likely dated 1587 or 1588), it was agreed, with Henry Hastings, that Sir Francis shall have freedom to sell Cane manor, after which he would pay Henry £100 and his heirs would pay Henry £1,500 more in the years after the death of Sir Francis in the case of a lack of male heirs of his body, lawfully begotten. It was also agreed that Henry Hastings should have from certain parcels of the demaines of Woodland £20 a year or else £200 in money at his election. Mi, 6/170/132. This memorandum also gives Sir Francis the option to lease Cane for three lives or any number of years.

⁴³⁴ Wadley House or Manor, Littleworth, Berks.; owned by Oriel College, Oxford but, at this time, leased to the Unton family.

⁴³⁵ There is a letter in the Middleton collection, dated 7 June 1589, in which Henry Hastings writes that Sir Francis can see ‘howe your dauters case and mine standethe therefore if you helpe not, it will not be so well w[i]th us, as otherwise it woulde […] If it please god yt you may see us settled, I hope it will be to your comfort’. Mi, 6/170/124/8.

⁴³⁶ Hinton, Hants.

⁴³⁷ Presumably between Wollaton and Middleton.

⁴³⁸ In fee farme is a sub-feudal land estate. In this case, Hastings would hold Woodland and be entitled to its rents but would pay a rent to Sir Francis. Title (fee simple) would be retained by Sir Francis and his heirs. As fee farme was a kind of fee tail or restricted ownership, the possessor had no right to alienate the title to the land.

⁴³⁹ William Brereton (1550–1631), 1st Baron Brereton, built Brereton Hall in Cheshire. For a case in chancery that William Brereton brought against Percival Willoughby over the manor of Smallwood, see TNA, C2/jasl/B1526. Francis Willoughby had had a suit in chancery in 1576 against William Brereton over a breach of contract regarding Brereton's failure at that time to complete the purchase of Smallwood Manor. TNA, C2/Eliz./W14/19.

⁴⁴⁰ See fos 193v–195, pp. 249–254 below with regard to Frances and her troubles.

⁴⁴¹ See fos 185–190, pp. 237–244 below with regard to Winifrid and her marriage with Edward Willoughby.

⁴⁴² Unidentified.

⁴⁴³ Possibly Katherin Peckham, née Trussell. Katherin was the daughter of John Trussell of Billesley (c.1515–1582), son of Avery Trussell of Billesley and nephew of the John Trussell who was the bailiff at Wollaton (see above, Text n. 83) and Mary, daughter of Grimston. She married Reynold Peckham of Kent, n.d., William Camden, The Visitation of the County of Warwick in the Year 1619: Taken by William Camden, Clarencieux King of Arms, ed. John Fetherston (London, 1877), 93 and 447 (index). More likely the sister of Hugh Willoughby who married George Peckham. See Text n. 449.

⁴⁴⁴ This is an interesting comment that suggests that some women of the upper middle class may not have been taught to write. See James Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2002). There is a suggestion here that illiteracy made it easier to abuse a wife.

⁴⁴⁵ Sir John Ryves of Damay Court, Dorset, was Dorothy Willoughy Hastings's son-in-law and the husband of her daughter Dorothy; they married in 1617. John Ryves died Jan. 1624/5 without heirs of his body. See Fry, E.A. and Fry, G.S. (eds), Abstracts of Dorset Inquisitions Post Mortem at the Time of Charles I (London, 1894), 8–11Google Scholar. Dorothy Hastings Ryves next married Thomas Tregonwell.

⁴⁴⁶ The woods at Lambley were mentioned in the Domesday Book. He threatened to cut down a forest at least 500 year sold and rent out the land in parcels.

⁴⁴⁷ Unidentified. See Kilbourne, Payne Kenyon, The History and Antiquities of the Name and Family of Kilbourn (in its Varied Orthography) (New Haven, CT, 1846)Google Scholar for various Kilbornes.

⁴⁴⁸ By 1626 Dorothy Hastings Ryves had remarried, although her mother still refers to her as her daughter Rives.

⁴⁴⁹ George Peckham, listed as a recusant in 1630, married the sister of Hugh Willoughby, whose first husband was Francis Strelley. Sir John Mitchell petitioned for a writ against Sir George Peckham for refusing to fulfil an award made by arbitrators appointed by the court of chancery as to payment for the manors of Shipley and the sale of Bilborough and Strelley.

⁴⁵⁰ Perhaps Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset.

⁴⁵¹ Dorothy Willoughby Hastings died 4 Dec. 1638.

⁴⁵² See Figures 6 and 7, pp. 216–217. The letter from Dorothy Hastings to her sister Bridget includes the reference to Jesus.

⁴⁵³ Sir Griffin Markham (c.1565–c.1644) was the oldest son of Thomas Markham (1530–1607) and Mary Griffin (1540–c.1633) of Ollerton, Notts. He was influenced by his mother's Catholicism and became a committed Catholic. Markham accompanied the earl of Essex at the siege of Rouen in 1591, where he was made a knight, and then followed Essex to Ireland in 1599. He married Anne Roos, daughter of Peter Roos, Esq., of Laxton, in 1592. When James VI came to England, Markham was soon involved in the Bye Plot [Watson's Conspiracy] to raise Arabella Stuart to the throne. Or he planned to kidnap James and force him to assign the reversions of several estates belonging to his father. He confessed and was condemned to death, receiving an expected reprieve only on the scaffold. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Europe, with only occasional forays into England, probably acting as a spy for Robert Cecil and joining the English regiment in the Low Countries. His wife, Anne, corresponded with Cecil, offering to deliver the Jesuit, John Gerard, to him, if her husband was restored and pardoned. ‘The quatercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh's trial, Part IV: The Main and Bye Plots’, Queensland Supreme Court Library Historical Lecture Series (2003): http://www.lexscripta.com/pdf/raleigh.pdf.

See the ODNB article by Mark Nicholls. See also Markham, A History of the Markham Family, 99–104. There are several post-1615 letters from Griffin Markham in the BL, Lansdowne and Harleian Collections. See also CSP Dom., 1644, pp. 35–36, 45–46, 54–55, and 86.

⁴⁵⁴ There is a copy of a marriage settlement between Sir Francis and Thomas Markham from 1585–1586. Mi, 5/168/80. See Mi, 5/168/81 for the revocation of the marriage settlement.

⁴⁵⁵ Griffin and his brother Robert Markham were both admitted to Gonville & Caius College at ages 14 and 15 as commoners. Both became Roman Catholics. Venn, John, The Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College 1349–1897, I (Cambridge, 1897), 21Google Scholar. ‘Admitted at Gray's Inn, Ap[ril] 27, 1586’.

⁴⁵⁶ Swerve, stray.

⁴⁵⁷ ‘ready prest’=willingly disposed

⁴⁵⁸ Both Kirby Bellars and Bestwood Park were estates held by Thomas Markham. Kirby Bellars had been a priory dissolved in 1536, and Bestwood Park was a friary in Sherwood Forest, surrendered in 1539.

⁴⁵⁹ Hind: a young deer

⁴⁶⁰ See fos 119–123, pp. 149–155 and Text n. 256 for Conrados.

⁴⁶¹ Perhaps the parish of Eccles in Shropham, Norfolk where names of the Grey family and of William Willoughby occur. Blomefield, Francis, ‘Hundred of Shropham: Old-Bukenham’, in An Essay Towards A Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: I (London, 1805), 369–394Google Scholar. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol1/pp369-394 (accessed 17 June 2018).

⁴⁶² According to the OED, a buckler was a small, round shield intended to catch a blow. According to Howell, James, Esq., A French and English Dictionary Composed by Mr Randle Cotgrave and another in French and English (London, 1673)Google Scholar, a double-gelding was a horse meant to carry two. A pillion is a term for a second pad to carry a passenger on a horse. Markham seems to have attempted to orchestrate an elopement.

⁴⁶³ Percival's grandfather, Robert Willoughby, died c.1555. Mi, 6/179/46; HMC Middleton, 150. See also TNA, PROB Reg. 11/40/402, fos 289-291, the 1558 will of his mother Bridget Willoughby, in which there is no mention of her son Robert. See Mi, 6/179/41 for a draft of her will. See also Text n. 270 for a Robert Willoughby, son of Fulke Greville.

⁴⁶⁴ Unidentified.

⁴⁶⁵ Mother of Robert Spencer? Tybballs may be Burghley’s residence, Theobalds.

⁴⁶⁶ See above Text n. 317. Robert Spencer, 1st Baron Spencer of Wormleighton married Margaret, daughter of Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton, Notts., in 1587. See Mi, 6/178/87 for the particulars of a final agreement between Robert Spencer and Margaret Willoughby, dated 1587. Margaret died on 17 Aug. 1597, See the Inquisition post mortem for Francis Willoughby, dated 14 Sept. 1597, which says that she died prior to the inquisition. Mi, 1/2/2/1; C 142/248/23. Spencer remained for life a widower, a fact to which Ben Jonson alludes in the lines:

Who, since Thamyra did die

Hath not brook'd a lady's eye,

Nor allow'd about his place

Any of the female race.

A.F. Pollard in DNB, LIII, 367–368. See also Richard Cust, ‘Spencer, Robert, first baron Spencer (1570–1627), ODNB.

⁴⁶⁷ It is unlikely that Lady Arundell was still alive in 1595. See Text n. 289 above. John Spencer was probably referring to Dorothy Tamworth Willoughby, as he would now have considered Francis Willoughby his brother.

⁴⁶⁸ The other two sons, and the third daughter of Robert and Margaret were: Richard, who married Mary Sandys, Edward, who married Margaret Goldsmith, and Margaret, who died in 1613 at age 16 but left behind a valuable account book with records from 1610–1613. For Margaret and her account book, see Snook, Edith, Women, Beauty and Power in Early Modern England: A Feminist Literary History (London, 2011), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 86-87, 76-84, 195-196 nn.8 and 9. Diana, Princess of Wales, formerly Lady Diana Spencer, was a direct descendant, 12 generations removed, of William and Penelope Spencer.

⁴⁶⁹ There is a slightly condensed version of this in Cassandra's earlier notes: ‘There are a great many letters which shew, that this Lady must have been an extream severe Mother to all her Children, but especially to her fourth Daughter Winifrid, who I believe used to justifie her Sister Brigitt and Sr Percivall as much as she could, all the time Sr Francis and his Lady was so very angry w[i]th them, and this I believe might provoke Lady ^Willoughby^ to use her the worse in the time of this quarrel between Sr Francis and Sr Percivall (which you will find a relation of, in the account of Sr Percivall). Edward Willoughby, Brother to Sr Percivall used to come ^as I find reason from the letters to^ believe often to Wollaton as a mediator between Sr Francis and his Brother; ^there seems to have been a great^ friendship ^between^ Winifrid had for ^and^ her Sister Brigitt, soon ^and that I believe at first^ made her have wth a more common esteem for her Brother Edward[. T]o him she used to lay open her griefs ^as appeares by his letters^ ^to PW^ and ease her mind by telling him how much she suffered from her Mothers cruelty severity to her, and those un=happy divisions in the family. [T]hese troubles used to oppress poor Winifrid so heavily, that she often expresses herself ^in her letters to Brig Will^ weary of Life; she seems ^by her way of writing^ to have been a woman of a tender sweet disposition and more then common piety, but being thus oppressed w[i]th grief, and ^often seeing^ Edward Willoughby ^who I believe might^ expressing his concern for her, in very [illeg.] ^a tender manner^, she soon added that of loving him to the rest of her troubles (ɸ) After this love intriegue had been kept private some time, Ned Willoughby ^as appears by their letters^ gets his Father Tho Willoughby of Boreplace, to make Sir Francis acquainted with it, Sr Percivall ^by his letters^ seems to have been very kind to his Brother in this affair and willing to have his father settle a good estate, for a younger Brother, upon him. And besides Mr [repeats and besides Mr] Thomas Willoughby offer'd to ask no fortune from Sir F:W to his daughter AB: being willing his Son should marry her without any money paid down to him and leave it to Sr F:W: to give his Daughter what he pleased.’ STB 2 (1), book 1, fos 33–34v.

⁴⁷⁰ Dated 1589 in Cassandra's earlier notes. STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 35. 1588 appears to be correct.

⁴⁷¹ Sir Francis served as the high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1579, 1588, and 1593.

⁴⁷² Richard was the oldest son of George Pudsey and his first wife, Maud Cotton, living in Langley, Warks. HMC Middleton, 454: ‘Mr George Pudsie and his sonne came on Monday at nighte; Mr. George Pudsie and his sonne went away on Thursday morning.’ 1 July 1588.

⁴⁷³ Cassandra's earlier notes state that Winifrid was the one who freed herself: ‘From such severe usage at last Winifrid finds a way to free herself, by privately marrying Mr Edward Willoughby.’ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 36.

⁴⁷⁴ Dorothy Willoughby, Sir Francis's second wife, if this date is 1595/6. Otherwise, this is addressed to Francis and Elizabeth in Jan. 1594/5.

⁴⁷⁵ Mary Weston. See S.T. Bindoff, ‘Willoughby, Thomas’, History of Parliament Online: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/willoughby-thomas-1596; http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/willoughby1.htm.

⁴⁷⁶ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 37.

⁴⁷⁷ The terms goal and gaol (jail) seem to have been used interchangeably in the late 16th century. Although the date of Edward Willoughby's incarceration is unclear from Cassandra's account, it must have been after 1590 and seems to have lasted until 1605. Warwick Gaol was located in Warwick Castle, which was owned by the Crown until 1604 when Fulke Greville was granted the Castle by James I.

⁴⁷⁸ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 37. The hash symbol indicates that fo. 36v should be inserted. Most of that folio, however, repeats information already copied into the Account.

⁴⁷⁹ See Burrell family papers in the Lincolnshire archives, ANC–9ANC.

⁴⁸⁰ Possibly bailiffs, or hurling men, ball players, OED.

⁴⁸¹ Probably Theophilus Poynter ‘chirurgeon’, son of John Poynter of Oxford (not a dean). Licensed as a surgeon Oct. 11, 1666. Foster, Joseph, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford 1500–1714 (Oxford, 1891)Google Scholar: L–R, p. 1197.

⁴⁸² Diaper was a patterned linen or cotton fabric; damask was a twilled linen fabric used mainly for table linen, OED.

⁴⁸³ Biliment or a biliment is an ornamental article worn by women, most likely a hood or head-dress, OED.

⁴⁸⁴ There are two folios 193. The first one, inserted into the text, clearly belongs after the second one. The editor has made that change.

⁴⁸⁵ It appears that two of the male descendants married daughters of Free, the governor of the company in Hamborough [Hamburg, Germany].

⁴⁸⁶ Robert Freind (1666/7–1751). The Freind sons can be traced in the ODNB.

⁴⁸⁷ STB 2 (1), book 1, fo. 38. On 7 June 1595 Frances Willoughby and John Drake, gentleman, answered to the High Commissioner for Ecclesiastical Causes with regard to her leaving Wollaton. They have objected that she left her mother and father without just cause and against her duty to God and to her parents. They object that she has fallen into the company of Mr John Drake with whom she has contracted marriage and that he has used her body and ‘passed such familiarities as man and wife doe’. Mi, 2/75/2/8/3–4. In her answer Frances cites the severity, without cause, with which her mother treated her. She first fled to Arundel House, where she met John Drake, son of Sir Bernard Drake, a sea captain involved in early ventures off the coast of the New World. She stayed with Drake a few days and then travelled with him to Esher, in Surrey, the home of Richard Drake [his uncle]. She admitted that it was against her parents’ good will and against the duty of an obedient daughter, but cites how cruelly misused she was. Drake admitted that he met up with her with some hope of a contract between them. Mi, 2/75/2/8/1-4.

⁴⁸⁸ Frances had not married at the time of the 1597 suit at chancery filed by her, Abigail, Winifred, and Edward Willoughby against Percival Willoughby. See above, Text n. 416. She had married Montague Wood, however, prior to Nov. 1598 when Montague Wood and his wife Frances joined a lawsuit at chancery together with Abigail Willughby against Percival and Bridget Willoughby, TNA, C78/129/16. There is an interesting book of poems by Robert Parry, gentleman, published in London in 1597. They are passionate poems upon his fortunes, ‘offered for an incense at the shrine of the Ladies who guided these distempered thoughts’, one of whom is ‘Fransis Willoughby’. See Brown, Carleton, Poems by Sir John Salusbury and Robert Chester (Bryn Mawr, 1913), xl–xliiiGoogle Scholar. For the wardship of Frances Willoughby after her father's death, see Mi, F 10/32.

⁴⁸⁹ With regard to Montague Wood, see Introduction, pp. 18–19, 57.

⁴⁹⁰ The two original letters that follow, however, show another side of the story, told by Montague Wood. They are printed with the kind permission of Lord Middelton.

⁴⁹¹ Mi, C 29. There is a brief abstract in HMC Middleton, 170.

⁴⁹² In the Lambley parish registers the following children are listed: John, son of Mountague Wood, generosus, bapt. 23 Sept. 1599; Elizabeth, dau. of Montague Wood, gener[osus], bapt. 10 July 1612; Edward, son of Mountague Wood, gener[osus], bapt. 10 October 1615; John, son of Mountague Wood gener[osus], buried […] September 1599. Montague Wood was buried 6 Oct. 1635. Blagg, T.M. (ed.), ‘Extracts from the parish registers of Lambley and Woodborough, Notts.’, A Miscellany of Notts. Records, TSRS, XI (Nottingham, 1945), 139Google Scholar.

⁴⁹³ For the most part, Cassandra follows Dugdale's account. See Dugdale, Sir William, The Baronage of England (London, 1675–1676), 82–83Google Scholar.

⁴⁹⁴ Not included in this edition.