Elizabeth St. Loe

ELIZABETH ST. LOE (d.1559+)

http://www.tudorwomen.com/?page_id=707

Elizabeth St. Loe was the daughter of Sir John St. Loe of Sutton Court, Chew Magna, Somerset (c.1479-December 1558) and the sister of William St. Loe of Tormarton, Goucestershire (d.1565). Sources disagree on her mother’s identity. Sir John St. Loe married a woman named Margaret who was still living in 1559. The History of Parliament (which gives Sir John’s life dates as 1500/1-1559) says she was Margaret Kingston, daughter of Sir William Kingston, whose ward St. Loe had been. Other sources give her surname as Poyntz or FitzNicholas (the latter from Charles Herbert Mayo in Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, citing the Chew Magna Register). Elizabeth St. Loe was placed in household of Elizabeth Stafford, duchess of Norfolk during the reign of Mary Tudor. The duchess, who died on November 30, 1558, left her a new French hood and a silver cup with a cover in her will (proved January 19, 1558/9). Charlotte Merton, in The Women who served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, identifies Elizabeth St. Loe as one of the first six maids of honor of the new reign at one point in her unpublished PhD dissertation and as a maid of the Privy Chamber in another. In Appendix 1, the dates listed for Elizabeth St. Loe run from January 1558/9 to 1569. According to Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick Empire Builder, a biography of Sir William St. Loe’s second wife, in 1550, Elizabeth was to have married James, 6th Lord Mountjoy (c.1533-October 28, 1582/3) by an arrangement made with his late father. Her father and his, Charles, 5th baron, who had died in 1544, had negotiated a dowry of 500 marks for Elizabeth and Mountjoy was to have £20 when the marriage took place, but on May 17, 1558, he married someone else. According to the terms, the £200 was to go to Elizabeth, along with the 500 marks. From at least January 1559, Elizabeth was at court, receiving a fee as a gentlewoman of the privy chamber of £33. 6s. 8d. In late September, her new sister-in-law, Bess of Hardwick, sent her two chains of gold worth £21. Soon after, Bess was appointed a lady of the privy chamber. A third Elizabeth St. Loe, appears in the records in early 1560. She was a cousin who conspired against Sir William and Bess and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. According to Marion Colthorpe (http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/The_Elizabethan_Court_Day_by_Day), it was the subject of this entry, not Bess of Hardwick, in whom Lady Catherine Grey confided in 1561 and who, as a consequence, was held first in an alderman’s house in London and then in the Tower. She was imprisoned there from August 20, 1561 until March 25, 1562. In June she received a payment of £30.