Elizabeth ‘Bess’ Raleigh (née Throckmorton) (1565-1647)

Lady Bess Raleigh by William Segar, 1595.

Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth I and wife of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Elizabeth ‘Bess’ Throckmorton was born in 1565, the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a cousin of Catherine Parr who served as ambassador to France and Scotland, and Anne Carew, daughter of Sir Nicholas Carew of Beddington, Surrey.

Bess’s brother Arthur Throckmorton paid to install her as a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth I, where she was introduced on 3 March 1579, although it was not until 8 November 1585 that she was accepted as a Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, joining a group of ladies who personally attended the Queen.

In 1587, Bess began a relationship with one of the Queen’s favourites, Devon-born Sir Walter Raleigh (or Ralegh) (1554-1618). Bess and Walter were secretly married in 1591 and on 29 March 1592 Bess gave birth at her brother’s house at Mile End to a son Damerei Raleigh, at whose christening on 10 April 1592 Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was appointed one of his godparents. Bess returned to Court on 27 April, while her baby was sent to a wet nurse at Enfield, but sadly he died the following year during an outbreak of plague.

In August 1592, having discovered that Sir Walter and Bess had married without her permission, the Queen sent them both to the Brick Tower in the Tower of London. Sir Walter was able to buy his conditional release in September 1592 after one of his ships captured a Spanish ship with a rich cargo, but Bess remained in the Tower until 22 December 1592. Although Sir Walter was received back at Court in 1597, Bess was permanently banished.

In January 1592, Sir Walter acquired the manor of Sherborne in Dorset, which he would hold for twelve years until September 1603, firstly as a tenant and later in his own right. Sir Walter’s first visit to Sherborne had been greeted by the ringing of the church bells, for which the churchwarden paid the bell ringers 2s. It was to Sherborne that Sir Walter brought Bess after her release from the Tower and it was evidently a place where she felt safe and happy, as Sir Walter wrote to Sir Robert Cecil – ‘My wife says that every day this place amends and London to her grows worse and worse’.

In 1593, Bess gave birth to their second son Walter (‘Wat’), who was baptised on 1 November 1593 at the nearby church in Lillington. Their first son Damerei having died during a plague, Bess and Sir Walter must have been very concerned when in September 1594 the plague arrived in Sherborne. Sir Walter wrote to Sir Robert Cecil on 20 September 1594 that ‘the plauge is in the town very hote. My Bess is on[e] way sent, hir sonne another way, and I am in great troble ther withe.’

At first Sir Walter tried to modernise Sherborne ‘old’ Castle, but he eventually gave up and in 1594 Bess, Sir Walter and baby Wat moved across the valley into a newly-built house in the deer park. The Raleigh’s called their new home Sherborne Lodge, but today it is known as Sherborne ‘new’ Castle. Between the old and the new castles they planted a formal garden and diverted the stream into a pool.

The remains of Sherborne Old Castle in 1733, an engraving by Samuel & Nathaniel Buck.

Queen Elizabeth I died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin King James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England. The King was suspicious of Sir Walter because of his former support for the Stuart’s claim to the throne and in 1603 he convicted Sir Walter of high treason and his estates were forfeited to the Crown. Expecting to be executed, in July 1603 Sir Walter wrote a farewell letter to Bess from the Tower of London, in which he declared his love for her and their son Wat and told her she should remarry after his death:

‘Receyve from thy unfortunate husband theis his last lynes, theis the last words that ever thow shalt receive from him. That I can live to thinke never to see the[e] and my child more I cannot… Unfortunate woman, unfortunate child, comfort your selves, trust God and be contented with your poore estate. I would have bettered it if I had enjoyed a few [more] yeares. Thowe art a yong woman and forbeare not to marry again. It is nowe nothing to me: thowe art noe more mine nor I thine. To witnes that thowe didest love me once take care that thowe marry not to please sence but to avoide povertie and to preserve thy child… And the Lord knowes my sorrowe to part from the[e] and my poore child, but part I must, by enimyes and injuries, parte with shame and triumph of my detractors. And therefore be contented with this worke of God and forget me in all thinges but thine owne honor adn the live of mine. I blesse my poor child. And let him knowe his father was noe traytor.. And whosoever thowe chuse againe from me, lett him be but they politique husband, but let my sonne be thy beloved for he is part of me and I live in him, and the difference is but in the nomber and not in the kinde. And the Lord for ever keepe the[e] and them and geve the[e] comfort in both worlds’

In the letter Sir Walter also asked Bess to look after his illegitimate child, the daughter of Alice Goold.

Sir Walter Raleigh & his son Wat, 1602. (National Portrait Gallery, NPG 3914)

The King, however, saw mercy and Sir Walter’s sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. He was provided with two rooms in the Tower of London on the upper floor of the Garden Tower (now known as the Bloody Tower), where Bess, their son Wat and three servants were allowed to join him. During this time, Bess conceived another baby and in February 1605 their son Carew was born at a house on Tower Hill and baptised in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London..

On 19 March 1616, the King released Sir Walter from the Tower on condition that he would undertake another expedition to Guiana in South America to search for the mythical city of El Dorado, or the ‘City of Gold’. On 14 November 1617, Sir Walter wrote to Bess (‘Deare heart’) from Cayenne in Guiana telling her that their 24-year-old son Wat, who had accompanied him on the expedition, was in good health, but in his next letter, written on 22 March 1618 from St Christophers, he relayed the distressing news that Wat had been killed during a fight with the Spanish at St. Thomé.

On 21 June 1618, Sir Walter returned to England empty-handed, without his son and without any gold. Bess met his ship at Plymouth where they spent a fortnight together before Sir Walter was rearrested for treason. On the journey back to London, Sir Walter spent a night at Clifton Maybank from where he travelled to Poyntington manor, passing through Sherborne for the last time.

Bess again joined Sir Walter in the Tower of London, until 5 October 1618 when there was an order for her release. Despite Bess’s best efforts to secure clemency for her husband and the return of his sequestered estates, Sir Walter was sentenced to execution. Although the King did not return Sir Walter’s Sherborne estates, which he gave to Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, he did give Bess £8000 for the life-interest in the estates and a pension of £400 a year during her life and that of Carew. After Sir Walter was sentenced to death at Westminster Hall, Bess was allowed to say goodbye to him at the Abbey Gatehouse and, on the morning of 29 October 1618, he was executed on a scaffold in the Old Palace Yard.

Bess requested permission to bury Sir Walter at the Carew family church at Beddington, but instead he was buried at St Margaret’s church, Westminster. However, for the remainder of her life Bess kept Sir Walter’s embalmed head with her in a red bag. Bess died in 1647 at Carew’s home West Horsley Place in Surrey and was buried alongside Sir Walter at St Margaret’s church, Westminster, where in 1660 Carew also buried his father’s head.

On the walls of Sherborne Old Castle grow a flower called Dianthus Caryophyllus, also known as ‘Lady Betty’s Pinks’, these pretty flowers are said to have been first planted there by Bess.

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