The Earl returned to England in December 1586, but was sent again to the Netherlands in the following June—to the grief of his wife, as the young Earl of Essex remarked in a letter. Leicester eventually resigned his post in December 1587. The Countess was with him when he died unexpectedly, possibly of malaria, on 4 September 1588 at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire; they had been on their way to Kenilworth and Buxton. The Earl's funeral at Warwick in October 1588 was attended by his widow as well as numerous members of her family circle.