Chamber and afterwards Knight of the Body. His son Sir Anthony married Margaret, sister of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet. Their son Henry was born in 1531, and Aubrey reports the scandal that he was 'supposed brother to Elizabeth'. He was page of honour to the King, and by 1550 Clerk of the Armoury. He was knighted in 1553. By Sept. 1575 he was Master of the Game at Woodstock (Dasent, ix. 23), and by 1577 Lieutenant of the manor and park (Marshall, Woodstock, 160), holding 'le highe lodge' and other royal houses in the locality. Probably he was concerned with the foundation of Queen's Day (cf. ch. i) in 1570, which certainly originated near Oxford, and when the annual tilting on this day at Whitehall was instituted, Lee acted as Knight of the Crown until his retirement in 1590. He used as his favourite device a crowned pillar. He took some part in the military enterprises of the reign, and in 1578 became Master of the Armoury. In 1597 he was thought of as Vice-Chamberlain, and on 23 April was installed as K.G. He was a great sheep-farmer and encloser of land, and a great builder or enlarger of houses, including Ditchley Hall, four or five miles from Woodstock, in the parish of Spelsbury, where he died on 12 Feb. 1611. By his wife, Anne, daughter of William Lord Paget, who died in 1590, he had two sons and a daughter, who all predeceased him. His will of 6 Oct. 1609 provides for the erection of a tomb in Quarrendon Chapel near his own for 'M^{rs}. Ann Vavasor alias Finch'. There are no tombs now, but the inscriptions on Lee's tomb and on a tablet in the chancel, also not preserved, are recorded. The former says: 'In courtly justs his Soveraignes knight he was', and the latter adds: 'He shone in all those fayer partes that became his profession and vowes, honoring his highly gracious Mistris with reysing those later Olympiads of her Courte, justs and tournaments . . . wherein still himself lead and triumphed.' The writer is William Scott, who also, with Richard Lee, witnessed the will. Anne Vavasour does not in fact appear to have been buried at Quarrendon. Aubrey describes her as 'his dearest deare', and says that her effigy was placed at the foot of his on the tomb, and that the bishop threatened to have it removed. Anne's tomb was in fact defaced as early as 1611. Anne was daughter of Sir Henry and sister of Sir Thomas Vavasour of Copmanthorpe, Yorks. She was a new maid of honour who 'flourished like the lily and the rose' in 1590 (Lodge, ii. 423). Another Anne Vavasour came to Court as 'newly of the beddchamber' after being Lady Bedford's 'woman', about July 1601 (Gawdy, 112, conjecturally dated; cf. vol. iv, p. 67). Anne Clifford tells us that 'my cousin Anne Vavisour' was going with her mother Lady Cumberland and Lady Warwick and herself to meet Queen Anne in 1603, and married Sir Richard Warburton the same year (Wiffen, ii. 69, 72). The Queen is said to have visited Sir Henry and his mistress at a lodge near Woodstock called 'Little Rest', now 'Lee's Rest', in 1608. After Lee's death his successor brought an action against Anne and her brother for illegal detention of his effects (5 N. Q.
