"Elizabeth "Bess" Throckmorton, Lady Raleigh"
by SEGAR, Sir William, Oil on panel, 108 x 76 cm
Elizabeth (1565-c. 1647), daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, one of Queen Elizabeth’s maids of honour, was married secretly in 1592 to Sir Walter Raleigh, on account of which they both suffered a short imprisonment in the Tower. When her husband was imprisoned in the Tower in 1603, she went to live with him, and in the next year their younger son Carlos was born; the eldest son Walter was killed in the expedition made by his father to South America in 1617.