Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex survived infancy with her second husband, these were named Frances, Robert and Dorothy. Robert became the third Earl of Essex. In 1603, she married her third husband Richard De Burgh (or Burke), Earl of St Albans and Clanricarde. They had one son, Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, and a daughter, Honora, who became the second wife of John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester. 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
Francis Walsingham He returned to England without an agreement. Personally, Walsingham opposed the marriage, perhaps to the point of encouraging public opposition. Alençon was a Catholic and as his elder brother, Henry III, was childless, he was heir to the French throne. Elizabeth was past the age of childbearing and had no clear successor. If she died while married to the French heir, her realms could fall under French control. By comparing the match of Elizabeth and Alençon with the match of the Protestant Henry of Navarre and the Catholic Margaret of Valois, which occurred in the week before the St. Bartholomew's