Let’s dive into Anne Vavasour and Sir Henry Lee’s forbidden love. Somebody needs to make an epic film out of these two. It’s a love story that has all of the elements, so we’re gonna dig right into it.
In 1580, a young woman named Anne Vavasour made her way to the glittering court of Queen Elizabeth. Armed with little more than her wit and the backing of her influential family, the Knyvets. Anne was from a family of modest gentry in Yorkshire.
She was swiftly appointed a Maid of Honour, a position of considerable prestige. Of course, that placed her directly in the intimate circle surrounding the queen. This role not only showed her personal charm, but also the strategic familial ties of her uncle, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a well-respected gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and her aunt, Catherine Knyvet, a Maid of Honour herself.
So, the Knyvet family’s long-standing loyalty to Elizabeth I and her family dating all the way back to Henry VIII, had poised Anne Vavasour for a promising rise at court. However, Anne’s promising career took a dramatic turn when she caught the eye of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
De Vere was a man of considerable talent and contradictions and was known both for his literary genius and his volatile temper. He was a favorite in artistic circles for his patronage and personal contributions to the Renaissance cultural bloom. He was also notorious for his public disputes and high-strung emotions.
Some people actually think he might have been the real Shakespeare, so he got caught up in the whole authorship question. So that is Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The connection between Anne and Oxford ignited swiftly. It was like fireworks. Their courtship was laden with the passion of forbidden love.
By early 1581, so just a little over a year after Anne arrives at court, there is a pregnancy, a fact that Anne managed to conceal until literally the moment that she had her child. The scandal erupted one fateful night when Anne, amidst the secrecy of the women’s chamber, gave birth to a son, Edward Vere.
You can only imagine how quickly the news of this indiscretion spread, like wildfire, leading to her immediate imprisonment in the Tower of London. A very grim consequence that highlighted the perilous tightrope walked by women at court.
Edward de Vere, identified as the father, found his reputation tarnished and his position at court compromised. Despite his high rank, he could not escape the wrath of the Queen. He was soon apprehended and confined, albeit in far more comfortable quarters than Anne’s cell.
So there’s poor Anne. She just had a baby. Recovering from childbirth, everything that goes along with that, and there she is in the Tower of London, in a not-very-nice cell. The repercussions of the affair were immediate and far-reaching. The scandal not only served as fodder for court gossip, but also sparked a bitter feud between the Earl of Oxford and Anne’s family. The Knyvets were incensed by the dishonor brought upon their name, and they were relentless.
Skirmishes and duels became a common spectacle in the streets of London as both families’ retainers clashed in violent confrontations that occasionally led to fatalities. The enmity was deep-seated, fueled by a sense of betrayal and the stringent honor codes of the time.
Even as Oxford was eventually released from his luxurious captivity and slowly began to mend his fractured relationships, Anne remained in the Tower. Her confinement was lengthy, marked by the harsh realities of her fall from grace, a stark reminder of the queen’s strict governance and unforgiving nature of the Elizabethan Court.
So the dust is beginning to settle. Anne Vavasour found herself an unexpected protector in Sir Henry Lee, one of the most esteemed courtiers of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. So Henry Lee came from a lineage that was very close to the Tudor dynasty and had a close relationship with the royal family.
His mother, Margaret Wyatt, was a confidant of Anne Boleyn, adding a layer of intimacy to this connection to the crown. So Sir Henry’s early career flourished under the patronage of Henry VIII and he remained a favored figure throughout all the Tudor reigns. He managed to survive Mary and Edward.
And then by the time he encountered Anne Vavasour, he had established himself as a quintessential Elizabethan knight and the queen’s champion at the joust. Their relationship began as whispers in the corridors of power, evolving into a deep and enduring partnership, despite the unconventional backdrop and huge age difference of their union.
Together, Anne and Sir Henry crafted a domestic life that defied the norms of their time. At his grand estate, Ditchley, they lived openly as partners despite not being married. This was a bold arrangement given the era’s strict social codes. The pinnacle of their campaign to regain royal favor came in 1592 when Queen Elizabeth visited Ditchley.
This visit was marked by an elaborate pageant, meticulously orchestrated by Sir Henry, to celebrate and subtly flatter the Virgin Queen. The pageant was a blend of theatricality and allegory, and showcased themes of loyalty, love, and repentance, aligning closely with the queen’s image as both a monarch and a woman.
Central to this event was the commissioning of the famous Ditchley Portrait of Elizabeth I, painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. In this iconic image, the queen stands resolute upon a map of England. Her feet were strategically placed over Ditchley, symbolizing her dominion, and perhaps subtly asking her forgiveness of Sir Henry and Anne for their past indiscretion.
The portrait was a master stroke of political art, enhancing Sir Henry’s status at court while carefully navigating the intricacies of royal favor. That’s actually how I heard about Sir Henry and Anne Vavasour, was I did a portraits and propaganda video on the Ditchley portrait so I kind of read about how that was sort of this apology to the queen and this showing that they had forgiveness, everything.
So following Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Anne and Sir Henry navigated the transition to the Stuart monarchy with grace under James I. Sir Henry was celebrated not only for his loyalty to the new king, but also as a mentor to the royal family, hosting them frequently at Ditchley for hunting and other courtly pursuits.
However, after Sir Henry’s death in 1611, Anne faced numerous legal challenges, notably about Sir Henry’s will. Accusations of bigamy and disputes over the inheritance reflected the ongoing turbulence of her life. Despite these trials, Anne managed to preserve her status and safeguard their children’s futures, demonstrating her resilience and her tenacity.
So they never actually got married. They lived together as partners after Sir Henry became a widower, and they lived like that for 20 years, which would have been very unconventional for the time period, of course.
So Anne Vavasour and Sir Henry Lee, their love story left an indelible mark on Elizabethan and early Stuart court culture. And we don’t really know why they never decided to actually get married. There were probably some reasons, including Anne’s scandalous past, which would have been awkward for Sir Henry to officially marry and give that kind of official recognition to for his social class to be okay with that. So that would have been part of it.
Also, Sir Henry had considerable wealth and properties. Marrying Anne, particularly given her history and potential claims of her children, especially Edward de Vere’s child, could have complicated the inheritance or the distribution of his estate. Also, they might have been worried about royal disfavor.
Of course, Elizabeth was super sensitive to anybody getting married for love and without her permission. So they might have thought it was better to just live in the scandal of not being married and that that would have been preferable to the scandal of getting married and being on Elizabeth’s bad side. This way, they were able to still work their way back into Elizabeth’s good graces. And Elizabeth was like, well, you’re living in this kind of scandalous, totally untraditional way, but, you’re not hurting anybody, so it’s all good.
If they would have gotten married, it might have been completely different. Also, they might have just chosen not to. Anne had endured significant public scandal and constraints early in her life. She might have valued a relationship that gave her more personal freedom than traditional marriage might have.
Also, Sir Henry was now a widower and had been through all of this stuff in public life. He might have found that Anne was a lovely companion who understood his world without the need for the bonds of marriage. So who knows? Maybe it worked for both.
Either way, it was a love story. They were very much in love and it all pretty much worked out for Anne. Sir Henry died in 1611. There were all these kinds of fights about the will. But she did live until about 1650. It was a life of pretty much obscurity, but she made it till 1650. So she did figure out ways to survive and to thrive for another almost 40 years after Sir Henry had died.
So that is a little bit about Anne Vavasour and Sir Henry Lee. Let me know what you think about them in the comments. Have you heard about them before? What do you think of their arrangements? I would love to know.
Related link:
Top Tudor Romance Scandals
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.