Parry, Blanche

Although Blanche Parry (c. 1508–1590) did not produce any printed or manuscript literary texts, she was the author of the epitaph featured on one of her two tomb monuments, reminding scholars that women produced texts through a wide range of media. Parry was a prominent courtier who served Queen Elizabeth I from the queen’s childhood until Parry’s death at eighty-two. Other than the few scattered references found in government documents and the rare, surviving letters written by her and about her, most of the known biographical information on Parry comes from her two funerary epitaphs. As this entry argues, these tomb monuments serve as evidence that Elizabethan court women dispensed political patronage and participated in the larger political culture that maintained the queen’s authority and networks of loyalty. Even more importantly, Parry’s tomb monument built at St. Faith’s, Bacton, Herefordshire, is an example of political rhetoric, a traditionally masculine genre.