On October 11, 1542, Thomas Wyatt died, ending one of the Tudor era's most interesting love stories.

We know very little about the woman who loved him, Elizabeth Darrell, which is a shame because she lived a fascinating life and must have been a very strong woman to follow her heart and defy convention as she did. Her father’s motto was If I Can, I Will Do it. Perhaps Elizabeth took that motto to heart.

We know nothing of Elizabeth’s upbringing except that her father was a knight who served as chamberlain for Queen Katharine of Aragon, and Elizabeth was probably educated with an eye toward sending her to court when she came of age.

Like most fathers of the era, Sir Edward Darrell probably had high hopes for his daughter’s marriage and a position at court would further those ambitions. His expense records show he kept his daughter finely dressed, paying £13 for her clothing one year alone. He died in 1530, leaving 300 marks toward a dowry for Elizabeth, expecting she would make a noble match one day.

Elizabeth got a position serving Margaret Grey, Marchioness of Dorset. (She was Lady Jane Grey’s paternal grandmother.) It couldn’t have been a pleasant job. Margaret seems to have been a bit... difficult. She had a long-standing dispute with her son, and as a result, she pinched his income down to a trickle, leaving him unable to pay his bills.

It got so bad, Margaret was brought before the king’s council on charges of being an “unnatural mother,” and so Margaret had to capitulate. She moved out of Bradgate, the family home, but her son was so incensed at her prior treatment of him that he wouldn’t let her take her belongings. Margaret was reduced to pleading with Cromwell by letter to get her son to release her things.

Elizabeth’s situation improved when she was appointed as a maid of honor for Katharine of Aragon, but this was around the time when King Henry was seeking to annul their marriage so he could wed Anne Boleyn.

Elizabeth came to care deeply for the kind, pious Katharine, and loyally chose to go with her when Katharine was banished from court.

Around 1537, Elizabeth made a bold decision that would irrevocably alter her future. She threw off the moral and social conventions of her age and became the mistress of Thomas Wyatt.

Thomas Wyatt is a name most Tudor buffs will recognize. He was a poet of renown, and he may have once been in love with the young Anne Boleyn, though she rejected his advances because he was married. Wyatt watched the tumultuous events of Anne’s reign and chronicled his heartbreak and horror in his work.

Wyatt was born in 1503, and according to biographer Susan Brigden, may have been a page in a noble household as a boy. He attended St. John’s College and may have studied law. Following his father’s example, he went to serve at court in 1516, and later became a diplomat.

He married Elizabeth Brooke in 1520, and had one son, also named Thomas Wyatt, usually styled “the younger” to avoid confusion. The marriage was not a happy one and the couple separated around 1526, with Wyatt alleging Brooke had committed adultery, though he didn’t name a specific man as her lover. Despite their separation, Wyatt continued to pay for Brooke’s support.

While at court, Wyatt was part of a circle of poets that contained Henry Howard, Margaret Douglas, Mary Shelton, and Mary Howard. The Devonshire Manuscript was passed among them and contains hand-written transcriptions of popular works of poetry. Nearly 130 of the poems in the manuscript were written by Wyatt, so his verse must have been very popular at court. Scholars who study his work believe Wyatt was influenced by Italian poetry, and Continental styles of verse. He elevated the English sonnet to an art form.

Wyatt wasn’t only writing poetry while he was at court. In 1534, he was arrested and put into Fleet prison for getting into a fight with London law enforcement in which one man died and another was gravely injured. He was released from the prison within a month or so, back in the king’s good graces.

Forty miles away, another small drama was unfolding at the household of Katharine of Aragon. Katharine refused to renounce the title of queen, and she refused to have in her service any ladies who addressed her as “princess dowager” instead of her rightful title of Queen. Ominously, a list was drawn up of the ladies who refused to swear the Oath of Succession. One of the names on this list was Elizabeth Darrell.

It's unclear, but perhaps Wyatt was one of the men who was sent to Katharine's household to collect names and talk to the ladies, and that's how he and Elizabeth Darrell reconnected. They may have known one another for years. In 1520, the court had gone on progress and had been hosted overnight by Darrell's father.

In those days, married men were almost expected to have mistresses. But these women were usually of lower rank in the social order, and their existence was kept quiet. Unchaste women were social pariahs, shamed and rejected at every turn. But Elizabeth Darrell didn’t hide the fact she was Thomas’s lover. She and Thomas were oddly open about their arrangement.

She stayed with Katharine until her death in 1536, and Katharine left her the sum of £200 in her will as a dowry for when Elizabeth married. Henry ended up deciding to ignore Katharine’s will, and so Elizabeth didn’t get the money. She began to look for another job as a maid of honor.

Anne Boleyn also died in 1536, only months after Katharine of Aragon, but her death came at the stroke of a sword. Wyatt was mysteriously arrested at the same time, and he witnessed her execution from his cell in the Bell Tower. He was released soon after her execution. Henry VIII became engaged immediately to his next queen, Jane Seymour. Elizabeth’s relationship with Wyatt may have been the reason why she was rejected as a maid of honor for Queen Jane.

She was, instead, appointed to the household of Gertrude Blount, marchioness of Exeter who was partially responsible for putting Queen Jane on the throne by coaching her in the king’s likes and dislikes.

There is no indication that Wyatt ever tried to divorce Brooke to marry Darrell, but it does seem he decided to sever financial ties with her in 1537. There is no record of what happened to change Wyatt’s mind about maintaining her. Brooke went to live with her brother, Lord Cobham, who tried to use his court influence and connections to force Wyatt to resume Brooke’s support. Wyatt flatly refused. It seems that’s how matters remained for the next few years.

In 1538, Gertrude was arrested on suspicion of treason. Frankly, Gertrude was as guilty as sin — Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, had written that Gertrude visited him in disguise, begging him to urge the Emperor to invade England and put Princess Mary on the throne in her father’s stead. Elizabeth was interrogated on the matter and gave evidence against Gertrude’s husband, who ultimately went to the scaffold.

Elizabeth moved in to Thomas’s home of Allington Castle in Kent, and in due time, bore him children. She was still living with him in 1541 when Thomas was brought up on charges of having “imagined” the death of the king. His property was seized when he was arrested, but Elizabeth was pregnant, and so she was allowed to retain one of his houses.

King Henry’s fifth queen, Katheryn Howard, pleaded with the king for mercy for Thomas, and surprisingly, it was granted. However, Thomas was ordered to evict Elizabeth and take back Brooke as his wife. It seems Thomas ignored that command but was never punished for it, because the court was soon distracted by the arrest and execution of the young Queen Katheryn.

In 1542, Thomas was sent on a short mission to escort an ambassador to London. On the journey, he fell ill and stopped at a friend’s house in Dorset. One account describes it as a fever he acquired from working up a sweat while riding in the unseasonably warm weather. Perhaps he was trying to hurry home to Elizabeth. He never made it. He died there and was buried in a nearby abbey in his friend’s family tomb.

Thomas had made a will the prior year when he was arrested and feared he’d be executed, and this was the will that was now used to settle his estate. He left property to Elizabeth, directing that it be inherited by one of their sons in the event of her death.

Elizabeth must have been devastated. She and Thomas had just five years of happiness together. Thomas had taken care of her financially in his will, but she was an unwed mother with young bastard children, without the protection of a father or close male relative, and without widow’s rights. It was a precarious position for a woman in that age.

Thomas’s adult son by Brooke took Elizabeth under his protection and ensured his father’s will was followed, adding another estate to Elizabeth’s holdings for good measure. Some allege Thomas Wyatt the Younger also took Elizabeth as his lover, and that Edward Wyatt was his son by Elizabeth. There’s no solid evidence they had such a relationship, and Edward appears to have born during Thomas’s lifetime, though questions still remain as to his parentage.

Elizabeth seems to have lived a quiet life after that, raising her children and managing her properties. But in 1554, everything fell apart again. Thomas the Younger led a failed rebellion against Queen Mary, and he and his younger brother Edward went to the scaffold. Edward, it’s said, may have been tortured to gain evidence against his elder brother. He was only thirteen or fourteen years old at this time. If he was Elizabeth’s son, the pain must have been unimaginable.

This sudden upheaval and loss of her home and income may have been why Elizabeth chose to marry after all this time. She wed Robert Strowde (or Strode), and Queen Mary paid her the £200 legacy that Katharine of Aragon had left her as a marriage portion.

Elizabeth died just two years later. Her grave is lost, but I like to imagine she was transported to Dorset and laid beside the man who was her husband in all but name.

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References:

Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England: Volume 25, edited by Martin Andrew Sharp Hume

Graven With Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: By Nicola Shulman