(b.1573 ~ d.1649) ~The only surviving son, acknowledged, of Lord Sir Robert Dudley, Patron of Theatre, and the child of his second wife ; Douglas (nee) Howard, a cousin of the Duke’s of Norfolk, and therefore to the Queen Elizabeth herself. Born in1545, (d.1608). When they married in 1573, Douglas was then the widow of John Sheffield. Robert’s father, the most famous Earl of Leicester denied the marriage in his lifetime, to protect his own short term political interests, his life, property and long standing position as the Queen’s ‘favourite.’ Moreover sixteen years after his fathers death Robert brought the matter to the attention of the Star Chamber. He sought to establish his rightful decent as the Earl of Leicester and to follow as Heir to his uncle Ambrose Dudley’s estate of Warwick Castle, Ambrose having no recorded issue.

 Under Oath, Douglas (Dudley) swore that ‘Leycester’ had solemnly contracted to marry her in Cannon Row, Westminster in 1571 and that the marriage was at Esher in Surrey in May 1573. She further stated that this was in the presence of Sir Edward Horsey, who gave her away, but who had died by the time of the 1604 appeal. In support of her sons rights, she explained that ‘Leycester’ regarded the marriage as valid, citing witnesses and letters including one in which he “did thank God for the birth of their son, who might be the comfort and staff of their old age,” signing it ‘Your loving husband’. The Star Chamber failed to pronounce against the validity of the marriage, but rejected the evidence, arresting several of the living witnesses to the marriage, and fined them for perjury or subordination. The papers in the case were impounded in the interests of ‘Public policy’ to prevent the issue from being raised again! This fact alone regardless of the ‘conjectural’ nature of the evidence is enough to give the impression that some weight ought now be attached to its content. A further point to consider is that it is as far as I know, not questioned that Leycester’s son was nevertheless the son of an Howard, albeit by an unproved marriage, and as such his entitlement by his name as Dudley was technically surely of secondary importance in regard to his own matriarchal links with the higher aristocracy.

 Robert’s father did during his lifetime make some efforts to rectify the muddle that he had made for his sons future, but only after the death in infancy of the son that he had gained with his last marriage to Lettice Knollys, and after Douglas had married Sir Edward Stafford, then Ambassador to the French court of Henry III. Robert was entered into Christ Church Collage at Oxford with the status of an Earl’s son, a bitter deception by all accounts. On his fathers death in 1588 Robert was fourteen and inherited not insubstantial property. It was at the age of nineteen that young Robert first married, to a sister of Sir Thomas Cavendish.

 Cavendish had himself circumnavigated the world not long after Drake, and from his father in law Robert gained a couple of ships with which he intended to harass the Spaniard in the southern seas. Although he did not win any Government approval for his plans, ships being valuable and his youth at the age of twenty depriving him of any experience, he managed to slip away to the West Indies and enthusiastically set about his intentions, raiding Spanish shipping off Trinidad and then adventuring up the hitherto unexplored ‘Orinoco’ river where he put his name to an island he discovered, calling it proudly ‘Dudleiana’. It was only after this bold venture that he returned to join his cousin Essex on the ‘immortal’ expedition to Cadiz where he gained a Knighthood. From these exploits it is clear to see that he did not have much time to spend with his first wife, whom it is seems had meanwhile died.

 Lady Alice (nee Leigh) Dudley, (daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh and Katherine, daughter of Sir John Spencer), whom he had thereafter married, in 1596 and by whom he had four known daughters, and who was left behind some years later after his failed appeal to the Star Chamber, was created Duchess in 1645, the patent which recognises her husbands legitimacy confers the precedence of a Duke’s daughters on her surviving children and heirs.

 The title was confirmed by Charles IInd in 1660, legitimising its English status, having originally been granted to her by Ferdinand II. The Lady Alice died in 1668/9, at the age of 90, her Peerage thereafter seems to have fallen ‘extinct’. Of the Duchess of Dudley’s children it is recorded Alicia was born at Kenilworth in 1597, but died young in 1621. Frances married Sir Gilbert Knifeton of Bradley, Derbyshire, she lived until 1644, but also died without issue and was likewise buried at St. Giles. Another was Katherine who married Sir Richard Leverson of Trentham. She lived until 1673. The other recorded daughter of the duchess being Lady Anne Dudley who married the Lawyer Robert Holborne. I have not confirmed the date of his marriage to Lady Anne but suggest it to have been between 1633-36.

 Further reference is made in Vol.2 of Dugdale’s ‘Book of Peerages’ to the extraordinary order of the Star Chamber that the depositions of Douglas, the Mother of Sir Robert, was the lawful wife of the Earl of Leicester as also those “divers persons of quality and credit who were present at the marriage” were ‘sealed up’ and no copies of the licence allowed to be taken. The King goes on to say that his “dear father not knowing the truth of the lawful birth of the said Sir Robert granted away the titles of the Earldom’s of Leicester and Warwick to ‘others’ which we now hold not fit to call in question” however this was followed up with the statement expressing “a very deep sense of the great injuries done to the said Sir Robert Dudley and the Lady Alice Dudley~ a matter that is long overdue some considerable recompense.

 Sir Robert Dudley, it would seem, following the example set by his father claimed both his marriages, firstly to Margaret Cavendish and the second being with the Lady Alice Leigh were illegal as he had been ‘pre-contracted’ to another, being Frances Vavasour, who he claimed was alive during the former marriages but dead by the time of the third, (1608/9). Given these apparent ‘blasphemies’, which echoed his fathers own approach and his failed claim to be legitimate, which contemporary research appears to validate,7 but, not altogether unsurprisingly failing in his time to prove this, with the Star Chamber pronouncing against him in 1605 he departed England with his cousin Elisabeth Southwell, whom he had disguised as a page.

 Within the preceding year the vast but ‘largely ruinated’ seat of his grand father, the Duke of Northumberland, being the fortress of Warwick Castle was acquired by the courtier Sir Faulke Greville (1554~1628), but his greatest misfortune was perhaps that he had (again) been opposed by the Sidney family, who had been enabled to claim his inheritance and who had much to lose had he been able to prove the simple truth.

 Dudley was condemned for attempting to validate his legitimacy, his evidence being impounded, he was not recognised as the legitimate Earl of Leicester, with the Sidney's enjoying the favours of the King, James I, Robert Dudley retired to Italy where he ‘married’ his Mistress Elizabeth Southwell by a Papal dispensation and settled in Florence having long since declared himself a Roman Catholic. The Emperor of Germany created him ‘Duca di Northumbria’ in 1620. Robert Dudley II’nds third marriage, to Elizabeth Southwell, the daughter of Sir Robert Southwell and Lady Elizabeth Howard produced as many as at least 11 potential heirs but the European title fell into abeyance on the death of Ferdinando Dudley in 1757.

 The Howard’s, Sidney’s and the Grey’s might well have at last breathed a sigh of relief at his impatient departure. Although it is clear from his reaction to the presumptions of the Star Chamber he was no statesman, he continued his contact with the English Court in sending ‘voluminous’ letters to King James I ‘on the art of controlling refractory Parliaments’, and corresponded with Henry, the Prince of Wales on the subjects of Navigation and Shipbuilding. The young Prince being known to have a great interest in Naval maters. To quote Milton Waldmen’s ‘Elizabeth and Leicester’, on Leycester’s son, regarding ‘his fame as a Shipbuilder, as well as Mathematician and Engineer : He drained the marshes between Pisa and the sea, a really remarkable feat which laid the foundations for Leghorn’s future prosperity ~ (which) at length won him the recognition abroad he had been refused at home: he was made Duke of Northumberland and Earl of Warwick in the Holy Roman Empire as well as a Papal Count’

 Such was the fear of the Court and Crown inspired by Leycester’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, Lord Sir John Dudley and his family that the titles they had attained were withheld from them even after the death of the brother of Thomas Sidney, Jocelyn, 7th Earl of Leicester, who died in 1743 leaving no male heir. Where after the titles should, one might suppose have returned to the Heirs of the Ladies Dudley. Thus Penshurst Place, was quietly handed down to the sister of the then late Robert Sidney, son of Thomas. Elizabeth was wed to William Perry, who set about modernising the old Estate. It was later passed onto their daughter also Elizabeth who married Percy~Bysshe Shelley, a nephew of the poet, whose son was himself to adopt the name of Sidney and created baronet in 1818.

 The consequence of Leycester’s third marriage being that the son of the second marriage, Robert Dudley, was excluded from his natural birthrights, the title, being a weighty chain of numerous executions, all on contrived grounds of treason falling to Robert Dudley’s aunt, Mary Dudley, daughter to the Lord Sir John Dudley, known as the ‘Kingmaker’. Lady Mary Dudley had married to Sir Henry Sidney, KG (b1529~d1586), son of Sir William Sidney and Anne Pagenham, Mary Dudley then becoming the mother of the famous Soldier-poet, Sir Philip Sidney whose father had taught him to “Be humble and obedient to your master, for unless you frame yourself to obey others, yea, and feel in yourself what obedience is, you shall never be able to teach others how to obey you” and who had died heroically in 1584/5 in Holland, fighting the Protestant corner and for the freedom of the Low Countries. Thereupon Sir Philips younger brother Sir Robert Sidney KG was created Baron Sidney in 1603, Viscount Lisle in 1605 and Earl of Leicester in 1618. Sir Philip Sidney was extolled as the model of English chivalry, wounded and thirsty at the battle of Zutphen, he was to offer his own water bottle to one of his dying men. Sidney appears to have died in Arnham, his funeral was held in London in the year preceding the Armada.

 Sir Robert Dudley’s Title is now held by Sir Philip Sidney of the Sidney’s of Penshurst in Kent, although it appears from contemporary investigations that the title of the Earl of Leicester may have been passed from the family of Dudley to their cousins Sidney, hurriedly and improperly, considering the now recognised legitimacy of Leycester’s ‘base born’ son Robert.8 King James perhaps being over eager to gain a supportive Court was generous to say the least with his creation of peerages elevating those of high office such as the Sidney’s, who were, it has been said proud of their Dudley bloodline.

 At the Elizabethan Court even the poets amongst them, Raleigh, Philip Sidney and Edmund Spencer, author of ‘The Fairy Queen’ dedicated to Elizabeth, openly sought places of position and power for themselves, impressing their contemporaries as much by their athletic or martial prowess as by their intellect. Sir Philip Sidney, the author of ‘Arcadia’ and ‘Astrophel and Stella’ commented : ‘certain it is that, in our plainest homeliness, yet never was the Albion nation without poetry’. Yet as Puritans the likes of Sidney and Spencer were on account of their faith not entirely in the favour of the Queen, for her known dislike of the same. The Queen is known to have rebuked Sir Philip Sidney for his effrontery, as a mere Knight, in challenging the Earl of Oxford to a duel, as she was also likewise displeased with Essex for cheapening knighthood by conferring it on so many of his Officers, who were too poor to count as gentlemen!

 It must be said of Spencer to his credit after receiving scant recognition for his efforts, received chiefly from ‘Leycester’, who had advanced his funding, was to become one of the few Elizabethan thinkers to decide that ‘Court life was not worth the candle and humble men should stay at home’. He later migrated as an English settler to Ireland, this was at a time when both music and writing were part of everyday life, with English culture flourishing, yet these talents so extolled by Sidney and the others were not particular skills undertaken by peculiar people otherwise recognised as ‘Artists’. For it is well to remember that during Elizabeth’s supremacy Tudor England was a musical nation and produced many original composers such as William Byrd, John Dowlande and Anthonye Holborne, although it was the love of language expressed by many of the Courtiers that was also rooted in these times and culture. It was in words that the Elizabethan’s expressed their new found confidence in the exhilarating wholeness and possibilities of life.