Bridget Chaworth

Bridget Chaworth (c. 1542 – 18 April 1621), later Bridget Carr, was a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber to Elizabeth I and Queen Anne. Family Bridget Chaworth, born about 1542, was the daughter of Sir John Chaworth (c. 1498 – 3 September 1558) of Wiverton Hall, Nottinghamshire, and Mary Paston (c. 1520 – 30 September 1583), the daughter of Sir William Paston (d.1554) of Oxnead, by Bridget, daughter of Sir Henry Heydon. She was the granddaughter of George Chaworth (d.1521), who inherited the manors of Wiverton and Edwalton, the latter manor having been held by the Chaworth family since early in the thirteenth century. Career She entered the service of Elizabeth I as a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber about 1578, and continued to serve the Queen for the remaining twenty-five years of her reign. About 1590 she married Sir William Carr, but remained in the Queen's service. In 1591 the Queen gave her a 'scarf of ash colour cypress with 2 edges of gold & silver', which Lady Bridget later bestowed on George Tenecre. She attended the Queen in her final illness; in a letter written on 15 March 1603, a week before the Queen's death, George Chaworth wrote to Lady Arbella Stuart that: I went to my cousin Carr. She was with the Queen, for she is sick, though courtiers say contrary.