Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex Frances Walsingham, Dowager Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde (1567 – 17 February 1633) was an English noblewoman. The daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, she became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age 16. Her second husband was The 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, with whom she had five children. Shortly after his execution in 1601, she married her lover, The 4th Earl of Clanricarde, and went to live in Ireland. She was the only surviving child of Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State for Queen
Walsingham Priory shrine dismantled, and the priory destroyed, its site was sold by order of Henry VIII to one Thomas Sidney for 90 pounds, and a private mansion was subsequently erected on the spot. The Elizabethan ballad, "A Lament for Walsingham," expresses something of what the faithful felt at the loss of their glorious shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. On the other hand, the ballad literature suggests that some pilgrims sought non-religious encounters: Ophelia in "Hamlet" quotes from lyrics about Walsingham in which a woman asks about her pilgrim lover. Walsingham Priory Walsingham Priory was a monastery of Augustinian Canons regular