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Susan Bertie, countess of Kent


Susan Bertie (born 1554) was the daughter of Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, née Willoughby, by her second husband, Richard Bertie. Susan was the noblewoman memorialized by Lanyer at the beginning of the Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) as the "daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk." At sixteen years of age, she married Reginald Grey of Wrest, who was later restored as the fifth Earl of Kent. Widowed at age nineteen, Susan, now Dowager Countess of Kent, remarried to Sir John Wingfield in 1581 at age twenty-seven.

Susan was the first child of her mother's second marriage. Born one year after Susan was a brother, Peregrine Bertie, who later succeeded his mother Catherine Willoughby, 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby as the 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby.

The dowager duchess and her second husband, devout Protestants, went into exile on the Continent with Susan and her brother for the remainder of the Catholic Queen Mary's reign, only returning in 1559 to the countess's elaborate manor house of Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Susan being five years of age. In 1570, at the age of sixteen, Susan married Reginald Grey of Wrest, and, of course, left Grimsthorpe. Known at time of his marriage as "Master Grey", Susan's husband was restored as Earl of Kent by 28 March 1572, and Susan became Countess of Kent. A year later, on 15 March 1573, the earl died.


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