Cromwell Lee | |
---|---|
Spouse(s) | Mary Harcourt |
Issue
Robert Lee (illegitimate)
John Lee (illegitimate) |
|
Father | Sir Anthony Lee |
Mother | Margaret Wyatt |
Died | 1601 Oxford |
Cromwell Lee (died 1601) was the son of Sir Anthony, and a younger brother of Elizabeth I's champion, Sir Henry Lee. He was the compiler of an Italian-English dictionary.
Cromwell Lee was the youngest son of Sir Anthony Lee and Margaret Wyatt, sister of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt. He had three brothers and five sisters. He also had two illegitimate half-brothers who were born before his father's second marriage to their mother, Anne Hassall. For details concerning his siblings, see the article on his father, Sir Anthony Lee.
His father is thought to have been in the service of Thomas Cromwell by 1532, and had an active career at court and in local government in Buckinghamshire. His eldest brother, Sir Henry Lee, was a prominent courtier and Elizabeth I's champion. In about 1572 Cromwell Lee matriculated at St John's College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree. He travelled in Italy for some years.
He appears to have been close to his eldest brother, Sir Henry Lee, and to his illegitimate half-brother, Sir Richard Lee. Through his first marriage to Mary Blundell, Sir Richard Lee held leases of two manors in Hook Norton which became the subject of subsequent litigation with John Croker, Mary Blundell's son by her first marriage. Pleadings from 1587 reveal that Sir Richard Lee had sublet these leases to his half-brother, Cromwell, who resided on the Hook Norton property with his family. The controversy over the leases is briefly mentioned in Leicester's Commonwealth (1584), where the author refers to the Earl of Leicester's oppressive 'dealing with Master Richard Lee for his manor of Hook Norton (if I fail not in the name)'.