Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester

• 1. The Fall Of The Dudley Family

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  On the 6th of July 1553, King Edward VI died and Robert Dudley led a force of three hundred men into Norfolk. He sought to stop Mary I from taking the English crown after his father, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had failed to secure Lady Jane Grey's succession. Within ten days, the townsmen of King's Lynn seized Robert Dudley and sent him to Framlingham Castle before Mary I arrived. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and condemned to death along with his father and four brothers. His father went to the scaffold while Robert survived only because his mother and brother-in-law Henry Sidney befriended Spanish nobles around Philip of Spain. In December 1554, Ambrose and Robert Dudley took part in a tournament held to celebrate Anglo-Spanish friendship. Yet they were welcome at court only as long as King Philip remained there. They faced suspicion for associating with people who conspired against Mary's regime.

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• 2. Amy Robsart And The Staircase

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  Dudley visited his wife Amy Robsart for four days at Easter 1559 when she spent a month around London in the early summer of that same year. They never saw each other again until she was found dead at her residence Cumnor Place near Oxford on the 8th of September 1560. A messenger named Bowes told Dudley that his wife had died by falling down a pair of stairs. The coroner's jury found it an accident after Lady Dudley sustained two head injuries and broke her neck while staying alone in a certain chamber. Popular rumours that he arranged for his wife's death continued throughout his life despite the official verdict. Some tales claimed her headdress stood undisturbed upon her head even though she lay at the bottom of the stairs. This detail first appeared as a satirical remark in the libel Leicester's Commonwealth of 1584 and has ever since been repeated as fact. Modern surgeons suggest she may have suffered from breast cancer which caused her neck to break under limited strain like a short fall or just coming down the stairs.

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• 3. Marriage Hopes And Political Intrigue

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  In October 1562, Queen Elizabeth fell ill with smallpox and asked the Privy Council to make Robert Dudley Protector of the Realm. She offered him a title together with twenty thousand pounds a year before recovering her health. In 1563, Elizabeth suggested Dudley as a consort to the widowed Mary Queen of Scots to achieve firm amity between England and Scotland. Mary enquired if Elizabeth was serious and wanted above all to know her chances of inheriting the English crown. By January 1565, Thomas Randolph told the Scottish queen that she would accept the proposal yet Dudley refused to comply. He had made it clear to the Scots at the beginning that he was not a candidate for Mary's hand. Between 1565 and 1578, four German and French princesses were mooted as brides for Leicester as a consolation for giving up Elizabeth. These matches he sabotaged and continued to sabotage throughout his life. In 1566 Dudley formed the opinion that Elizabeth would never marry though he remained hopeful she might change her mind.

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• 4. Patronage Of Arts And Exploration

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  Robert Dudley became an enthusiastic investor in the Muscovy Company and the Merchant Adventurers while also handling English relations with Morocco underpinned by patriotic zeal. He took much interest in the careers of John Hawkins and Francis Drake from early on and was a principal backer of Drake's circumnavigation of the world. Later Leicester acquired his own ship called the Galleon Leicester which he employed in expeditions under Edward Fenton but also under Drake. Around one hundred books were dedicated to Robert Dudley during Elizabeth's reign including Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses in 1564 or 1567. From at least 1559 he had his own company of players and in 1574 obtained their first royal patent allowing them to tour unmolested by local authorities. The Earl kept a separate company of musicians who played before the King of Denmark in 1586 alongside William Kempe known as the Lord Leicester's jesting player. Edmund Spenser found employment at Leicester House on the Strand where he wrote his first works of poetry before recalling this time years later in Prothalamion.

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• 5. Governorship In The Netherlands

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  On Thursday, the 9th of December 1585, the Earl of Leicester set sail for the Low Countries from Harwich and landed after a swift crossing of less than twenty-four hours. He anchored at Flushing before arriving in The Hague where on the 1st of January 1586 he was urged to accept the title governor-general by the States General. He accepted his elevation on the 25th of January having not yet received any communications from England due to constant adverse winds. Elizabeth demanded her Lieutenant-General refrain at all costs from decisive action with Parma which was the opposite of what Leicester wished. After some initial successes the unexpected surrender of the strategically important town of Grave became a serious blow to English morale. Dudley executed Baron Hemart despite all pleadings though even the Prince of Orange would not have dared such an outrage. His forces faced the most formidable army in Europe while unity among their ranks risked collapse due to quarrels with Sir John Norris. Many Dutch statesmen soon became disenchanted with the Earl's fostering of religion while rich provinces engaged in lucrative trade with Spain. On Elizabeth's orders Leicester enforced a ban on this trade thus alienating wealthy Dutch merchants who supported either side's war effort.

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• 6. Religious Stance And Puritan Support

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  From 1561 Robert Dudley advocated and supported the Huguenot cause while the French ambassador described him as totally of the Calvinist religion in 1568. After the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 this trait became more pronounced and he continued as chief patron of English Puritans. In his household he employed Catholics like Sir Christopher Blount who held a position of trust and whom he was personally fond. The Earl went to great lengths to support non-conforming preachers while warning them against too radical positions which might endanger reforms achieved hitherto. He tried to smooth things out by initiating several disputations between radical elements of the Church and the episcopal side so they might make reconciliation. His influence in ecclesiastical matters remained considerable until it declined in the 1580s under Archbishop John Whitgift. He would not condone overthrowing the existing church model because of trifles yet found it soundly and godly set forth in the universal Church of England.

• 7. Legacy And Modern Reassessment

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  The book known as Leicester's Commonwealth was written by Catholic exiles in Paris and printed anonymously in 1584 shortly after the death of Leicester's son. It smuggled into England became a best-seller with underground booksellers before being translated into French the next year. Its underlying political agenda promoted succession of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne while attacking the Earl as an atheistic hypocritical coward terrorizing the Queen. Similar conspiracies were often mentioned in coded letters from Mary Queen of Scots to the French ambassador during the late 1570s and early 1580s. In the early 17th century William Camden saw some secret constellation at work between Elizabeth and her favourite establishing the legend of the perfect courtier with sinister influence. Victorian historian James Anthony Froude saw Robert Dudley as Elizabeth's soft plaything combining worst qualities of both sexes without courage or talent. Since the 1950s academic assessment has undergone considerable changes with Eleanor Rosenberg establishing his importance in literary patronage in 1955. Simon Adams concludes that Leicester was as central a figure to the first reign of Elizabeth as Burghley despite earlier dismissals of him as a selfish unscrupulous courtier.