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Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester
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Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (24 June 1532 – 4 September 1588) was the long-standing favourite of Elizabeth I of England. He was appointed Master of the Horse on her accession in November 1558, and a Privy Councillor in October 1562. In later years he was also Lord Steward of the Royal Household. For many years he hoped with good reason that the Queen would some day marry him. He was also widely believed to be her lover. For the first thirty years of Elizabeth´s reign, Leicester was one of the most influential statesmen alongside William Cecil and Francis Walsingham.
From 1585-1587 he led the English campaign in support of the Dutch Revolt, becoming Governor-General of the United Provinces.
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Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (24 June 1532 – 4 September 1588) was the long-standing favourite of Elizabeth I of England. He was appointed Master of the Horse on her accession in November 1558, and a Privy Councillor in October 1562. In later years he was also Lord Steward of the Royal Household. For many years he hoped with good reason that the Queen would some day marry him. He was also widely believed to be her lover. For the first thirty years of Elizabeth´s reign, Leicester was one of the most influential statesmen alongside William Cecil and Francis Walsingham.
From 1585-1587 he led the English campaign in support of the Dutch Revolt, becoming Governor-General of the United Provinces. He was not very successful. During the Spanish Armada, Leicester was in overall command of the English land forces.
Ever since his wife had fallen down a flight of stairs and died in 1560, there were popular rumors that he had done away with her. The publication of a hateful libel known as Leycester´s Commonwealth in 1584, laid the foundation of his being represented as an extraordinary evil character in later centuries.
Youth
Well educated by schoolmasters such as Roger Ascham and John Dee, Robert Dudley was born a younger son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who attempted to put Lady Jane Grey on the Throne of England (Lady Jane having been married to Robert's youngest brother, Guilford Dudley). Lord Robert Dudley, as he was known since his father had become a duke, was imprisoned (July 1553-January 1555) in the Tower of London and condemned to death, along with his father and brothers Guilford, John, Ambrose and Henry Dudley (only his father and brother Guilford were eventually executed). In the Tower, his stay coincided with the imprisonment of his childhood friend, Lady Elizabeth Tudor, who had been sent there on the orders of her half-sister, Queen Mary I. By this time he had already married Amy Robsart (4 June 1550): very probably it was a love-match.
After their release from the Tower, Dudley and his brothers Ambrose and Henry fought for King Philip II of Spain (then also king consort of England) at the Battle of St. Quentin (1557), for which they were restored in blood and could repossess their lands. Henry Dudley, though, was killed in the battle.
Relationship with Elizabeth
From early on in Elizabeth´s reign, her obviously very intimate relationship with her Master of the Horse became common talk, as well at court as among the people. On 8 September 1560, Dudley's wife suddenly died , being at home alone. It had been said that she had been suffering from a "malady in one of her breasts", however she was ultimately killed "by a fall from a pair of stairs". An inquest took place: The verdict was "misfortune", i.e. accident.
It was widely believed that Dudley had arranged her murder in order to free himself to marry the Queen, who seemed to be determined that way, as she was very much in love with him. However, the immense scandal of Amy´s death jeopardised any such plans, playing into the hands of those nobles and politicians, who desperately tried to prevent Elizabeth from marrying him.
Historians today think murder to be extremely unlikely, some favour suicide, others reject it. It has also been suggested that Amy had breast cancer. Metastatic breast cancer can make the bones brittle, possibly causing a collapse at the top of the stairs, and a subsequent fall, as occurred in this case.
In 1563, Elizabeth suggested Dudley as a consort to the widowed Mary Queen of Scots, whom she hoped to neutralise by a marriage to an Englishman. She declared this was to be in compensation for not marrying him herself, "whom, if it might lie in our power, we would make owner or heir of our own kingdom." However, Dudley was utterly against being married off to Scotland. Mary was not enthusiastic either, so the proposal came to naught. Meanwhile, in September 1564, Elizabeth had bestowed on him the earldom of Leicester to make him more acceptable to Mary.
Dudley remained a likely consort for Elizabeth for many years to come: His presence around her was so much perceived as a threat to other marriage projects, that he was repeatedly offered German and French princesses as a consolation if he "gave up" Elizabeth, so that she might more readily marry a Habsburg or Valois prince. He always declined; "...and after all, she will either not marry or else marry Robert, to whom she has always been so much attached...the Queen is in love with Robert" (Philip II in October 1565).
Romantic life
So were other ladies: In 1573, it was observed, that not only the widowed Lady Douglas Sheffield but also her unmarried sister, Frances Howard, were "very far in love with him" and also that the Queen "thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him". Nevertheless, Lady Sheffield gave birth to a son in 1574, also named Robert Dudley. Leicester's only surviving brother, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, was childless, and unless either brother fathered some legitimate offspring, their family line would perish. "You must think it is some marvellous cause, and toucheth my present state very near, that forceth me thus to be cause almost of the ruin of my own house," he observed in a letter to Lady Sheffield, explaining that he was uniquely situated, and unable to take a wife without causing "mine utter overthrow".
Leicester, although he was very fond of his son, never acknowledged him as legitimate. In 1603, the younger Robert and his mother alleged that his father had married her thirty years earlier, though all of the ten putative witnesses ("besides others") to this secret ceremony were long dead since. Neither could it be remembered, who the "minister" was, nor the exact date of the ceremony. It did not help her case, that Lady Sheffield had remarried while the Earl of Leicester had been very much alive.
In July 1575, Leicester made a final, veiled bid for the Queen´s hand at the Princely Pleasures at his seat Kenilworth Castle, a festival of nineteen days with fairy-tale-style performances and happenings of a unique scale and quality. The eleven-year-old William Shakespeare from nearby Stratford may well have been one of the watching crowd, and A Midsummer Night's Dream was obviously inspired by these festivities.
Around this time Dudley became (once again) very interested in the beautiful Lettice Knollys, wife of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex and maternal first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth: Lettice was the daughter of Catherine Carey, daughter of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn.
While Lord Essex was in Ireland, they became lovers, which caused a scandal when he came back. Leicester intrigued to send him back to Ireland, where he died soon, causing yet more sinister talk. Leicester married Lettice two years later on 21 September 1578 in private, and turned out to be a loving husband and stepfather.
The marriage hurt the Queen extraordinarily. After the initial fury and crisis, she never could reconcile herself to the fact, alternating between humiliating Leicester in public, and being as fond of him as ever. Against the new Lady Leicester, she nurtured an implacable and undying hatred, telling everybody that she was a "she-wolf" among other things.
The couple paid dearly over the years for having married, Lady Leicester being practically banished from social life, the Earl suffering under a mixture of the most personal jealousy and political disadvantages: "there is great offence taken [by the Queen] in the carrying down of his lady [to London]"; "she [the Queen] doth take every occasion by my marriage to withdraw any good from me".
Politics
Robert Dudley was probably the greatest and most hardworking "courtier-politician" of the Elizabethan Era, engaged in all sorts of high politics, as well as in the day-to-day administration of the Privy Council, business ventures and overseas expansion. He was also an outstanding patron of the arts, learning, literature, and the theatre. Leicester´s Men were the forerunners of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company of William Shakespeare. The Earl helped his own company to build the first permanent English theatre building, called: The Theatre.
As Chancellor of Oxford University, he was "highly interventionist" and reformist, and gave the university its first printing press.
Although he had been one of the greatest patrons of the Puritans in England from 1559 onwards, in the earlier years of Elizabeth´s reign, Leicester managed to protect both radical Protestants and Catholics from the state, and had excellent contacts into both religious directions on the international scene. By the later 1560´s he was fully identified with Protestantism.
Accordingly, during the 1570´s the Earl had built an excellent relationship with Prince William of Orange and had generally become popular in the Netherlands, so in the aftermath of the Prince´s murder and the ensuing political chaos, Leicester was placed in command of the English campaign to help the rebels after the fall of Antwerp (December 1585). With him went his nephew Sir Philip Sidney and his stepson, the young Earl of Essex. In The Hague, he was urged to accept the title Governor-General by the States General of the United Provinces, thus becoming their "absolute ruler" in matters civil and military in accordance with the resolutions of a Council of State, yet remaining himself a loyal subject of Elizabeth, making her (however indirectly) Sovereign over the Netherlands. This infuriated the Queen beyond all bounds, notwithstanding some such position for Leicester had been implied in the Treaty of Nonsuch from the start. Elizabeth sent Sir Thomas Heneage to deliver and read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the States General, Leicester having to stand nearby. She nevertheless expected him to retain as much power as before. At length, the crisis was resolved, in that it was postulated, that the Governor-Generalship had been bestowed "not by any Sovereign, but by the States General or the people". The Queen also prevented the sending of promised funds and troops for many months, thus stifling the momentum of the military campaign and aggrieving the terrible penury of the "poor soldiers". English peace talks with Spain behind his back undermined Leicester´s position among the leading Dutch statesmen completely. Elizabeth´s behaviour left Leicester in an impossible situation: "My credit hath been cracked ever since her Majesty sent Sir Thomas Heneage hither". In December 1587 (at the end of his second term there), he gave up his post and left the Netherlands for good. Meanwhile, in England his political influence had somewhat diminished. He was severely in debt because of his personal financing of the war.
Death
In July 1588, the Earl of Leicester was appointed "Lieutenant and Captain-General of the Queen´s Armies and Companies" as the Spanish Armada came nearer, in which function he organized Queen Elizabeth´s famous review of her troops at Tilbury, walking next her horse bare-headed. After the Armada, he was seen riding in splendour through London, and he dined every day alone with the Queen, something unheard of before. He was on his way to Buxton in Derbyshire to take the bath, when he died at Cornbury Park near Oxford on 4 September 1588, only a week after saying farewell to the Queen. Elizabeth was devastated at the loss of her old friend and "honorary consort" and locked herself in her apartment for a few days, until Lord Burghley had the door broken. She kept the letter that he had sent her only six days before his death, and wrote on it "His Last Letter." She put it in her treasure box at her bedside, and it was still there when she died 15 years later.
Leicester is buried in the Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Warwick. When Lettice Knollys died in 1634, she was buried alongside her husband in St. Mary's. Their only child, Robert Dudley, styled as Lord Denbigh and known affectionately as the "noble imp" (born in June 1581, died 19 July 1584), is buried in the same chapel as his parents.
The Earl of Leicester´s principal residences were Leicester House on the Strand (London), Wanstead in Essex, and Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.
Leycester´s Commonwealth
The reputation of Leicester has suffered immensely under the influence of a libel commonly called Leycester´s Commonwealth, written by Catholic exiles in Paris. It was printed anonymously under another title in 1584 and smuggled into England. It was also translated into French and Latin and circulated in Europe. In this witty account, Leicester is portrayed as a lecherous monster, terrorising the utterly naive Queen, while the whole country groans under his one-man-tyranny. His private life is no less monstrous. Leicester appears as an expert poisoner of innumerable high-profile personalities at home and abroad, wife and cuckolded husbands included.
Until well into the twentieth century this work (it became a sort of scurrilous classic and was reprinted numerous times through the centuries) had a considerable, often indirect, influence on writers and historians, who held generally a much more negative view of Leicester than of other figures of the Elizabethan court.
Portraits on Screen
Further Reading
- Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester by Alan Kendall (1980) ISBN 0304304425
- The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black History of the Dudleys and the Tudor Throne by Derek Wilson (2004) ISBN 0-7867-1469-7
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