Primary source material leading towards a biography

[nwhyte]

This is an account of the death of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, of dysentery while serving as Earl Marshal of Ireland in 1576, written a few days after the event and sent to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was Elizabeth I's Secretary of State. One of my projects at the moment is to research the life of the person who wrote it.

Comments

[nwhyte]

You are his posterity! Are you grateful to William Cecil still?

I certainly ought to be! And I am, now that I know I should be!

Perhaps his wife was a Lenox on her mother's side?

Trying to track down Sherlocks and Lennoxes of the 1550s... it seems a bit implausible, Sherlock being a good Waterford name (where I know Nicholas White also came from) and the Lennoxes being Scots. But we shouldn't rule it out.

Did the son grow up to be a close companion of Essex, do you know?

He was a close companion, but didn't grow up; he stayed with Essex throughout their education, but died in 1586 aged about 20.(Thanks for asking; prompted me to google up The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics by Paul E. J. Hammer, which now goes onto the reading list...)

[redfiona99]

Papersky's suggestion makes sense. It could also be that the Lennoxs were in favour at court at the time and it would have helped curry favour.

[brightglance]

I see the Wikipedia page, to which you are a contributor, thinks that "White and his second wife had two sons. Thomas, the elder, was educated at Cambridge University and died in November 1586, while the younger son, Andrew, succeeded to White's estates after completing his education at Cambridge."

[nwhyte]

Hmm, more research definitely needed!!!!!