GRISEL or GRISELDA PAGET

(1542-July 21, 1600)

Grisel or Griselda Paget was the seventh daughter of William Paget, 1st baron Paget of Beaudesert (1505-June 9, 1563) and Anne Preston (c.1510-February 1587). She was christened on December 3, 1542 in St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermansbury, London. In about 1565 she married, as his second wife, Thomas Rivett or Revet of Chippenham, Cambrideshire (1519-October 1582), a wealthy London mercer. They had one child, Anne (1568-November 27, 1615). By his first marriage, to Alice Cotton (1537-1564), Rivett already had three daughters, Mirabel (1561-July 15, 1593), Isabel (1563-d.yng), and Alice (1564-1582+). On August 30, 1578, Queen Elizabeth visited the Rivetts at Chippenham, but Thomas was not knighted until 1580. As Grisel's husband lay dying, plans were being made for her daughter to marry one of Lord Burghley's grandsons. The account in Charlotte Merton's The Women who served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth indicates that young Anne's primary appeal was her expected income—£1000 a year. She was also a good age to marry, almost fourteen in that October of 1582. One of Sir Francis Knollys' younger sons was also interested in marrying Anne. Grisel seemed to support Knollys, at the queen's request, but Anne herself rejected the match. The queen then sent Thomas Wilkes to investigate. Wilkes, who thought Grisel had influenced her daughter to refuse, suggested that Anne come to court. Grisel refused to let her daughter go and, rather surprisingly, was allowed to keep Anne at home. Merton suggests Grisel's many influential relatives at court swayed the queen and goes on to say that young Knollys shifted his affections to Anne's half sister Alice. Alice wouldn’t marry him either. On November 11, 1583 in St. Dunstan, Stepney, Grisel remarried, taking as her second husband Sir William Waldegrave of Smallbridge Hall, Bures St. Mary, Suffolk (1533-August 17, 1613). She was his second wife. Meanwhile, Lord North was the guardian of the two unmarried Rivett daughters, half sisters Alice and Anne. In 1586, Anne married Henry, 5th baron Windsor. Grisel died at Smallbridge. Portrait: effigy with Anne Cotton, Rivett's first wife, on Rivett monument in St. Margaret's Church, Chippenham.