Her face looks calm. The lace rough is perfect, every fold as sharp as paper. The black silk

catches the light like oil. This is the portrait of a tutor lady who seems to have everything,

well, breeding and composure. Yet her name hardly appears in the story of the man she married, England's greatest sailor.

She was Elizabeth Siddonham, and she lived her life in the shadow of Sir Francis Drake.

Elizabeth was born into one of Somerset's quieter but well-connected gentry families.

Her father, Sir George Sidnum, of Coom Siddenham, served as

Sheriff of Somerset and kept a comfortable estate tucked into wooden valleys near Stogumber. It was the

kind of house surrounded by deer parks and orchards, not a castle, but solid and respectable. Her mother, Elizabeth Hales, came from an

old Kentish line, giving young Elizabeth both lineage and land. She was actually their only child,

and that made her very valuable. Whoever she married would inherit Coom-Sidnim and everything that came

with it. Local legend says her fate nearly went another way.

So she actually was engaged to Sir Francis Drake,

but then he went away on a long voyage.

And she became engaged to a member of the Wyndham family

because her parents were worried that Drake was going to die

while he was on this voyage.

But on the morning of the wedding, there was a loud thunder clap that split the sky, and a fiery

stone, a meteorite crashed near the church. Superstitious guests took it as a sign that

heaven itself objected. The match was broken off, and that same day,

Francis Drake returned back into port. So she married Francis Drake. His name was already famous.

This is February 1585, and he already has been around the world. He's raided Spanish treasure ships.

He's returned rich enough to buy Buckland Abbey and call himself a gentleman. This marriage joined

...