ABSTRACT
In the chivalric culture in which Sir Henry Lee was raised, links of kinship and friendship in private life and loyalty and service to the monarch were regarded as equally important. He became estranged from his wife, Anne Paget, and distanced himself from his Paget relations, whose Catholic activities became increasingly damaging in the last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign. A study of this aspect of Sir Harry Lee's private life provides an opportunity to not only see a more rounded view of the man in his own context, but also to glimpse domestic interests, concerns typical of many Elizabethan courtier gentlemen. Lee was neither a vain man nor one for self-glorification, but like most prosperous landowning gentry. James Hall suggests that the prominent display of the wounded left thumb, imprisoned in a ring and supported by the red cord, adheres to the Petrarchean symbolism of the left side being wounded for love.
