Sir Nathaniel Rich's wife?

Yesterday evening, I was reading Vernon A.Ives's edition of  The Rich Papers: Letters from Bermuda 1615-1646 (Canada, 1984) when I came across this passage at the start of a letter from Nathaniel Butler, then Governor in the colony of Bermuda, to Sir Nathaniel Rich. The transcription reads: "The fierce assault of sickness made upon the fayre Temple of the body of your excellent Lady  hath (I hope) long ere this [received?] a full and perfect repulse. Otherwise (which God forbidd) the losse were too extentive to be included within the bounds of the most enlarged Famelye,. I shall ever rest  her Beadsman, Admirour and humble servant." [ibid., page 221. 30 November, 1620] I have not yet checked this against PRO 30/15/285 but, if correct, it seems, prima facie, to suggest that Sir Nathaniel Rich's wife had been seriously ill and that Butler hoped in far off Bermuda that she had recovered. It is possible that Butler might have been thinking of another female member of the Rich family, perhaps, the wife of the 2nd Earl of Warwick, but his reference to the "body of your excellent Lady" in correspondence to Sir Nathaniel Rich inclines me to think that he was referring to the latter's wife. If this inference is correct, biographies of Sir Nathaniel indicating that he was unmarried will have to be revised.  

                                                                                                                                                 30th May, 2021

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