Blanche Parry - at The Royal Court

At The Royal Court

Blanche Parry arrived at the Royal Court with her aunt, Lady Troy who was the Lady Mistress to Edward VI and Elizabeth I as children. Blanche Parry herself wrote in her epitaph in Bacton Church that she was the Queen's servant, "whose cradle saw I rocked", from Elizabeth's birth in 1533; Parry was then 25 or 26 years old. Thereafter she hardly left Elizabeth and almost certainly attended her in the Tower of London before she came to the throne. After Elizabeth's accession in 1558, and Kat Ashley's death in 1565, Blanche was appointed the Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, and she was one of those who could control access to the Queen. She was in charge of the Queen's jewels from before Elizabeth's accession, the Queen's personal papers, clothes, furs and books, receiving the presents given to the Queen especially as New Year gifts. She received considerable sums of money on behalf of the Queen. She passed information to the Queen (including from John Vaughan, Blanche Parry's nephew, during the Northern Rebellion of 1569-1570, and Sir Nicholas White, Master of the Rolls in Ireland) and presentations of parliamentary bills. She also wrote letters on the Queen's behalf. In addition, she supervised the Queen's linen "and other things belonging to her majesty"; this included "our musk cat", probably a ferret.

Blanche Parry's position at the centre of the Royal Court was fully recognised at the time. Her cousin and friend was Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley. The Queen treated Blanche Parry as a baroness. Amongst the material rewards she received from Elizabeth were two wardships and she acquired lands in Herefordshire, Yorkshire and Wales. A meticulous lady, Blanche Parry commissioned the first known map of Llangorse Lake in 1584 to aid the deliberations in the court case in which she became involved. Lord Burghley supervised Blanche Parry's two Wills, and his notes in his own handwriting survive for her first Will of 1578.