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Penelope Blount, Countess of Devonshire

Penelope Devereux
Lady Rich
Countess of Devonshire
Nicholas Hilliard called Penelope Lady Rich.jpg
Portrait miniature thought to be Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich, c.1590 by Nicholas Hilliard
Spouse(s) Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich
Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire
Issue
Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick
Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland
Sir Charles Rich
Lettice Rich
Penelope Rich
Essex Rich
Isabel Rich
Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport
Elizabeth Blount
John Blount
Ruth Blount
Noble family Devereux
Father Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex
Mother Lettice Knollys
Born January 1563
Chartley Castle, Staffordshire, England
Died 7 July 1607 (aged 44)
London, England

Penelope Rich, Lady Rich, later styled Penelope Blount, Countess of Devonshire (née Devereux; January 1563 – 7 July 1607) was an English noblewoman. She was the sister of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and is traditionally thought to be the inspiration for "Stella" of Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella sonnet sequence (published posthumously in 1591). She married Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich (later 1st Earl of Warwick) and had a public liaison with Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy, (later first Earl of Devonshire), whom she married in an unlicensed ceremony following her divorce from Rich. She died in 1607.

Born Penelope Devereux at Chartley Castle in Staffordshire, she was the elder daughter of Walter Devereux, 2nd Viscount Hereford, later 1st Earl of Essex and Lettice Knollys, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and Catherine Carey, and sister of William Knollys, later 1st Earl of Banbury. Catherine Carey was the daughter of Lady Mary Boleyn by either her husband Sir William Carey, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, or her lover King Henry VIII.

Her father was created Earl of Essex in 1572. Penelope was a child of fourteen when Sir Philip Sidney accompanied her distant cousin Queen Elizabeth on a visit to Lady Essex in 1575, on her way from Kenilworth, and must have been frequently thrown into the society of Sidney, in consequence of the many ties between the two families. Essex died at Dublin in September 1576. He had sent a message to Philip Sidney from his death-bed expressing his desire that he should marry his daughter, and later his secretary wrote to the young man's father, Sir Henry Sidney, in words which seem to point to the existence of a very definite understanding.


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