Penelope Devereux

Penelope Devereux
Lady Rich Countess of Devonshire
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.