It was in 1533 that Henry VIIIth had secretly married Ann Boleyn, a daughter was born of her that seventh day of September and was named Elizabeth. Ann had formerly been a Maid of Honour to Queen Catherine of Aragon, whose own daughter, by Henry was the Princess Mary. It took an Act of Parliament to give King Henry the basis of his confidence in pronouncing this deed to the Holy Roman Empire, through its diplomat and Charles Vth’s Representative ; Eustace Chapuys. These events were to set the precedent for many future Tudor intrigues involving the Royal Family and some of its most influential Courtiers. It is under these very clouds we find detail of events surrounding the marriages, proposed or actual of such leading figures as Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, and the Lady Jane Grey, her sister Catherine, the son’s of Northumberland, to name but those of some consideration within this particular investigation, let alone the many other’s who, for various reasons proceeded with some style of secret arrangement or another.

A Son of the Earl of Warwick, ‘Robart’ Dudley was about 17 years of age on the occasion of his wedding to Amy Robsart in 1550, which was attended by the Crown Prince Edward, son of the late King Henry VIIIth and by whose invitation the ceremony was performed at his Palace at Sheen. Robert’s elder brother John had been married to Anne Seymour, Somerset’s daughter, in great ceremony also attended by the ‘Child King’ Edward, on the previous day. The decade during which Robert’s marriage was to last demanded long periods of separation between the couple, but for the first three years they were to enjoy some semblance of a normal life as a Country Squire and his wife. Robert had significant duties even then, amongst them his joint Stewardship of Manor Rising and responsibility for its castle, an office bestowed by the ‘King’. Although he was not totally negligent of his duties as her husband, his long period’s at Court, often prompted by his father, kept him away from his wife. His time being occupied by his duties as Lord Justice and Lord Lieutenant of the County regularly brought him into contact with the established nobility.

No more so was this conflict inevitable in the end, than in the wake of events as they unfolded following the death of the young Prince Edward. With the collapse of Northumberland’s authority, Robert was incarcerated along with numerous members of his family*, and associates some of whom were to be less fortunate^ ; with whom he remained in the Tower, until he was eventually pardoned and set free toward the close of 1554. His release along with his surviving brothers was chiefly secured upon the tireless pleadings of their mother Jane Dudley, but John, the eldest having been much reduced in health died only three days later on the 18th October at his brother in law, Henry Sidney’s castle of Penshurst in Kent. Jane Dudley, the mother of Ambrose and Robert died shortly after her son’s release but not before their eventual pardoning, and was laid to rest in her parish Church of Chelsea.

This was just after the time in the Lady Elizabeth Tudor’s life that she too was restored to liberty, from her period of imprisonment in the Tower, and it has been said, that this shared circumstance may have brought them even closer together than they had been before, in their childhood. Earlier, that June (1554) Dr John Dee and three of Elizabeth’s servants had been arrested for having conspired to cast the horoscopes of the King, Queen and the Lady Elizabeth, it being treason to forecast the Sovereign’s death. Dee however was an exceptional man, his notoriety as a Wizard must only have been enhanced by the fact that before he and the others accused could be interrogated, ‘the person’s who had informed on them’ were inflicted, ‘the one with present death, the other with blindness’, and the charges were quickly dropped, in all likelihood for fear of sorcery.

When war broke out Robert volunteered his services under the Earl of Pembroke, an old associate of his fathers, as Master of the Ordinance in France, and took part in the battle of San Quentin, alongside his brothers Henry and Ambrose, but with the loss of Henry on the battlefield. As a reward for his conspicuous gallantry in the action, which was in an alliance with Spain against the French, the Spanish King Philip sent him to Greenwich with special dispatches for Mary ~ soon after, on March 7th, 1558 Parliament lifted the Dudley Attainder.

Spending the remainder of Mary Tudor’s Reign in quiet reflection at his good fortune at his Norfolk Estate, Sir Robert retained his life long contact with Elizabeth Tudor, even selling “a good piece of land to aid her” As Camden also pointed out in his history of the Queen’s life a reason for their lifelong friendship might be found in the “nativity and the hidden consent of the stars at the hour of his (Dudley’s) birth, and therefore a straight conjunction of their minds?” In consideration of the implied significance of this belief, a similar event shortly into Elizabeth’s reign was ferreted out where by ‘five or six clergymen, . . in whose possession were found calculations of the nativity of the Queen and Lord Robert.’

Throughout his life Dudley remained open to new ideas, with a keen interest in developments in the fields of Geography, Cartography, Astronomy and Navigation, he was fluent in French and Italian and had been tutored by none other than that most renowned of all alchemists Dr. John Dee of Mortlake. Dee had been retained in Northumberland’s household as a teacher of the sciences for the Duke’s children and Leicester had kept up his acquaintance with the master, and like Elizabeth was a regular visitor at Mortlake. 11

Sir Robert’s first appointment on Elizabeth’s succession was in the highly prestigious role as ‘Master of the Horse’ ; in the Reign of Edward he had been ‘The King’s Master of the Buckhounds’. As the Queen’s Horsemaster about 275 horses came into his keeping, so that he would be responsible for the general breeding, grooming and training of such for the Royal Household, its Officials and Messengers. Elizabeth had always an implicit trust in Dudley’s equestrian skills, his new position however was a very great honour being one of the most senior Royal Offices. On Ceremonial occasions he would ride immediately behind the Queen.

In 1559, the same year in which it had been rumoured that if Amy Dudley “were perchance to die, the Queen might take him for a husband” Elizabeth gave Leycester ‘a couple of Monasteries in Yorkshire, and a house at Kew, four or five profitable Licences to export cloth free of Duty (and) this in addition to his Offices as ‘Master of the Horse’ (which he later surrendered to his step son, Essex). He also thus became Lieutenant of Windsor, and in 1563 aquired the Lordship and Castle of Kenilworth, in addition to Manors in Bedfordshire and some sixteen other Estates, which included the largely ruinated but vast estate of Denbigh, which had been pretty much destroyed by Jaspar Tudor during the Wars of the Roses. This obvious favouritism had already aroused much envy amongst other Courtiers, which flared dangerously in 1562 when he was awarded an annuity of £1000/~ from the London Customs, but simple jealousy soon turned to sheer dread when Elizabeth begun to visit Sir Robert on a regular basis in his chambers night and day.

In 1560 an Anne Dowe of Brentford, could contain herself no longer, and was duly sent to prison for malicious gossip, asserting that the Queen had borne a child by Dudley, she was but the first of many thus fated, but the gossip continued, rife as it was at the Court itself. Even the otherwise impeccable, level headed and discreet Cecil, Elizabeth’s Secretary found himself listening to it. Indeed he was so ruffled at one point, by it all, during an encounter with the Spanish Ambassador that September, he made no attempt to hide his mounting despair. In his declared frustration he is quoted as saying “it was a bad sailor who did not enter a port if he could when he saw a storm coming on, and he clearly foresaw the ruin of the realm through Lord Robert’s intimacy with the Queen, who surrendered all affairs to him and meant to marry him” Leaving no doubt as to rumour it seems, Cecil concluded “that Robert was thinking of killing his wife, who was publicly announced to be ill, although she was quite well”

It is known that Cecil much resented Dudley, but he is not known to have been either a conspirator or deceiver, records, rather the opposite indicating he was a conciencious Statesman of great skill, the leading political figure of his day. The said Spanish Ambassador was known to have been of the opinion that ‘nobody worse than Cecil (could) be at the head of affairs’ regardless this conversation actually occurred the very day before poor Amy was found at the foot of the staircase at Cumnor Hall, the Oxfordshire Manor where she had been staying! One might even be inclined to look to the Spanish Ambassador for an explanation of so quirky an event.

Dispite the inferences of Cecil, it was known that Amy Dudley had been in a highly disturbed state of mind only weeks beforehand, perhaps as a result of her presupposed knowledge of Court gossip at the time. Their were many rumours of Robert Dudley’s imminent marriage to the Queen Elizabeth, no doubt, whatever their foundation the very gossip of Court and Country alike, these events appear deeply rooted in conspiracy, such a conspiracy, as might keep Dudley off the Throne!

The Lord Robert was conspicuously absent from the Court during the following investigations, but insisted of his agent at Cumnor Hall to see to it that no stone remained unturned, lest it be assumed he had something to hide. Fortuitously for Dudley a verdict of misadventure was duly returned by the Court, Dispite which the suspicions remained.

Just perhaps as it is now thought, Amy Dudley had been suffering from a ‘malady in one of her breasts’~ It is clear that at the time this would have been unrecognisable as a case of breast Cancer and if this were so it may well have caused her to have developed brittle bones. As a consequence of cancerous deposits carried in her blood from the cells of the original cancer, the slightest exertion, such as attempting to walk unaided down stairs, might indeed result in a spontaneous fracture of the spine. Yet the mystery remains, in her times the primitive European medical diagnostics would certainly have been unable to consider this possibility, and the case of death by result of a terminal illness was not even considered. Dudley’s friends put it down to ‘an act of God’, being a good deal more accurate than the resultant gossip that spread throughout Europe.

As Dudley’s intimacy with the Queen flourished so his popularity, had waned. The ability to make enimies, so renowned in his father and grandfather has been reported to have been nothing, compared to the consummate skill with which Lord Robert was gifted! His famed civility has been held to proceed from sheer guile, rather than from a truly good nature, yet, albeit a devious opportunist like Northumberland, his loyalty to Elizabeth was indeed quite genuine, a quality that separated him from many of his contemporaries at Court.

For Elizabeth, the turn of events at Cumnor Hall clearly compounded the nigh on impossible task she already faced in openly declaring her intentions toward Lord Robert. She had always known that a marriage to one of her own Courtiers would give rise to jealousy and resentment amongst the others. With Dudley as her husband, as it should have been, his uniquely unpopular position in the Country would have, especially in the light of the suspicions over the demise of Amy Dudley, been that those unwilling to accept him as the King would have ample opportunity to disguise their own selfish ambitions in outraged decency. Yet as the years rolled on it became clear, despite her efforts to appease the anxieties of her Parliament over the issue of the succession, she would suffer no one else in his place, thus Court ambition shot itself and the Nation’s future stability, into the bargain, in the proverbial foot!

Elizabeth's attitude toward those who conspired against her was later expressed as : “I think that, at the worst, God has not yet decided that England shall cease to stand where she does, or at least that God has not given the power to overthrow her to those men who would like to undertake it”. With the death of the French King Francis II also in 1560 the Franco~Scottish Queen Mary found herself a widow aged 18. The French Throne was assumed by the late King’s mother Catherine de Medici, these ‘bittersweet events’ in Europe confounded English Court politics and led to the return of Mary to Scotland, with all its attendant problems for Elizabeth. Whilst in France, Medici was struggling to avert civil war, with the Protestant Huguenots restricted to a limited freedom of worship they were ready to resort to arms to defer total Catholic rule. After lengthy prevarication Elizabeth eventually conceded to pressure from her Court to send some six thousand English troops to assist the struggling Huguenots. Lord Robert’s brother Ambrose, the Earl of Warwick was chosen to lead the expedition.

Ambrose Dudley’s determination that he would retain the town of ‘Newhaven’ against the aggression of the forces of the Duke of Guise, the instigator of the Catholic tyranny, and Uncle of Mary, the Queen of Scot’s, was hampered from the outset by misadventures ranging from the simple lack of troops, and finance, to a plague that afflicted his armies.

When Warwick’s fresh troops were eventually deployed they were prevented from landing in France through sheer bad weather, adverse winds preventing them from entering the Port. Even then, once ashore they too fell to the plague covering France, that was then claiming about sixty of his men each day! Elizabeth finally conceded defeat, not so much as on account of the Catholic aggressor but for the facts of general circumstances and allowed Warwick leave to withdraw. The consequence being that the troops imported the plague into London, where a further 21,000 victims fell ill and died. Needless to say this affair was a total disaster for Elizabeth and fashioned her future reluctance to engage in ill~affordable foreign conflicts.

The turbulent politics of the 1560’s included a plot hatched by Elizabeth as her immediate solution to the raging problem of ‘the succession’ in 1563 in which Robert Dudley was put forward by his childhood friend, the Queen Elizabeth as the Consort for her troublesome cousin Mary Queen of Scot’s as means of some appeasement. She mused that it was unfortunate that his elder brother, the Earl of Warwick was not as attractive, for otherwise Mary could have married Ambrose whilst she herself became Lord Robert’s wife. These negotiations, held with Maitland had taken a bizarre turn in the mind of the confounded Scottish Ambassador, who was finding it difficult to keep up with what he considered to be Elizabeth’s wit.

None of this went down too well with Marie’s Council, Elizabeth’s recommendations being seen as some what of an effrontery to Mary. Elizabeth nevertheless had been quite sincere in her intentions by making Dudley “a partaker of all (Marie’s) fortunes”, she sought to resolve the matter of a union between the English and Scottish Thrones, and in so doing also make fitting recompense to the man “whom, if it might lie in our power we would make owner or heir of our own Kingdom”. Being assured of Dudley’s ultimate loyalty to herself it was unfortunate that this ingenious plan fell to pieces before it could succeed. In any event it served Elizabeth well by means otherwise of a tactical delay to the problems caused by Marie’s return. It was only later, when the proposed marriage seemed less remote a possibility that it transpired Elizabeth lacked the will to carry her policy through. Dudley somehow managed to disengage himself from this plan and persuade Elizabeth to allow Mary Stuart to meet with Lord Henry Darnley, also her cousin and by 1565 Henry and Mary were married, Darnley was declared King of Scotland.

In August 1566 Elizabeth received news of the birth of their son. Thus Dudley cannot be said to have inherited much of his fathers political genius, preferring the indulgence of his own personal disposition over the rewards of such a dangerous political alliance. The proposed Dudley~Stuart match would have been a perfect solution had Lord Robert the stomach for it and one well balanced at that, yet as it turned out Dudley, like his father was to have only a peripheral role in the succession.

Henry VIIIth’s infamous violation of the historic right of Monarchical succession and legitimate decent, in excluding his eldest sister Margaret Tudor from his will is perhaps the reason that from Elizabeth’s position Mary Stuart was her only possible heir. This did little to please her Parliament whose Puritan majority had been pushing her to name her successor and who considered Mary to be a ‘wicked and filthy woman’, ‘eager for the Crown of England’ which should have been hers anyhow and a ‘murderer of her husband’ and ‘detestable traitor whose villainy hath stained the earth and infected the air’.

Perhaps the only saving grace for Protestant England being that in 1567, but six years after Amy Dudley’s fall Lord Darnley was mysteriously strangled outside his house just moments before it was blown to the ground. Evidence began to mount that Mary herself had done away with him in order to be in a position to marry Earl James Boswell that same year. Protestants and Catholics alike were shocked, and soon the streets of Edinburgh rang with demands to ‘burn the whore’. In June she was forced to abdicate in favour of her young son James whose Reign was to pathe the way to the English Civil War, that finally, resolved the whole protracted Tudor problem with
the execution of Charles I, Mary's grandson.

Thus, other than that Sir Robert Dudley was created Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh, the honours of which were designed happily and specifically to befit him for marriage to the Queen Mary of Scotland nothing came of Elizabeth’s initial proposal, but one of many attempts to settle the issues of succession of the Tudor Throne rather by marriage and estate than by bloodshed and war and so it was finally after years of troubled deliberation in 1587 Elizabeth had signed the death warrant of the imprisoned Queen of Scotland and put her out of her misery.

Marie’s inevitable death by execution would be ‘one of the fairest riddance’s that ever the church of God had’. It was in February of 1587 at Fotheringhay with Elizabeth’s consent but quietly and quickly without her immediate knowledge, and orchestrated by her Council that the deed was carried out, before Elizabeth had time to change her mind!

It was no doubt King Henry’s distaste for Catholic ambition that caused him to tamper with the strict legitimacy of his succession in setting aside the rightful claims of the Stuart line, yet against all odds it was to be Elizabeth herself who finally broke with her father’s Will and rectified what she had always regarded as an injustice to her paternal aunt. Thus it became James VI of Scotland and not one of the Protestant Suffolk claimants who succeeded her to the Tudor Throne. Uncanny as these events appear, especially given that the Lady Jane was unacceptable as a Queen how much less plausible then, and more distasteful to all England could it have been to allow the Crown to fall into foreign hands! Mary Stuart/Darnley, James’s mother also being ‘a Spaniard at heart’, ‘and loves another realm better than this.’ Had public sentiment been behind Sir John Dudley in 1553, how different history might have been.

During the 1570’s with both the Earl of Warwick (Ambrose Dudley) and his brother (Robert) being members of Elizabeth’s Privy Council, it’s Protestant commitment was that much clearer, ‘Leycester’ having abandoned his wilder ambitions (of Kinghood) co~operated with Burliegh. There followed a period of order and good government, such as had not been seen in England in over fifty years. This despite the fact that the noble Sidney’s had reiterated the premature and self righteous gossip of Queen Mary, who was herself to be drawn into a web of deceit over the death of her husband Lord Darnley, proclaiming that Dudley had arranged for his first wife, the daughter of Sir John Robsart and Elizabeth the daughter of John Scott, being Amy Robsart, to fall down a flight of stairs, to her death, this was in September of 1560.

It was hardly to be expected, by anyone other than Elizabeth at least that Leycester’s devotion to the Queen should have caused him to lead an entirely celibate life during the nineteen years that had elapsed since the death of his first wife. In 1573 it was observed that not only the widowed Lady Douglas Sheffield*, but also her sister, Frances Howard who was unmarried were “very far in love with him” and also that the Queen “thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him” for encouraging their attentions.

Nevertheless before long a son was born by Lady Sheffield, who was also to be named Robert Dudley in 1573/4. The true decent of the rights of this line of the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester were diverted away from theire rightful heir, this son, by the deeds of his own father, the Lord Robert himself, The child’s mother’s response is well summed up by Alison Weir in her Book on the reign of Elizabeth :~

“Leicester, whose passion for Douglas had long since died, arranged to meet her in the gardens of Greenwich Palace, where, in the presence of two witnesses, he told her he was releasing her from all obligations to him. He offered her an annuity of £700 if she would deny all knowledge of their marriage and surrender to him custody of young Robert Dudley. In the only account of their meeting, written by Douglas a quarter of a Century later, she states that she burst into tears at this point and turned down his offer, at which he lost his temper and shouted at her that their marriage had never been Lawful.”

 ~ clearly, by his very reference to the fact of it “the marriage had been freely entered into and performed before witnesses, by a priest, and neither party were contracted elsewhere at the time. It had been consummated and both partners were of sound mind. Douglas asked for a short time to think, and then capitulated, fearing that otherwise Leycester would seek revenge on her for thwarting him. His parting advise to her was that she should find herself a husband, and before the year was up he had arranged for her to marry a rising courtier of noble blood, Sir Edward Stafford, whose wife, Rosetta Robsart, a relative of Amy, had recently died.” 12

The Earl of Sussex was deputised to interrogate the Lady Sheffield, shortly after she had remarried, but when she was questioned as to weather ‘Leycester’ had entered into a binding contract with her she mearly said tearfully that :

“She had trusted the said Earl too much to have anything to shew to constrain him to marry her”.

One of the problems she no doubt faced would have been that promiscuity was always severely dealt with at the Court. When Maid’s of Honour such as Anne Vavasour became pregnant out of wedlock, both they and the prospective fathers were imprisoned for short periods, with the girls never being readmitted to the Court. Other than Elizabeth’s threats to incarcerate him the most clear reason for Leycester’s deception may well have been as a means of protecting his wife, the Lady Douglas Sheffield and their son from his debts (and intrigues) with the Queen.
A letter survives Leycester that is considered intended for an ‘unknown Lady.’ Frances Howard may have been the intended recipient although it is generally considered to have been meant for her sister, Douglas Sheffield. The secret message now revealed explains~ “I have, as you well know long both liked and loved you,” he goes on however to remind the recipient that at the outset of their affair he had given her an explicit warning that he would never be able to put their relationship on a more official footing. ‘She must not delude herself now that there was any better hope that he would make her his Countess, even though he actually would like to have married.’ His only surviving brother Ambrose was childless and unless he fathered some legitimate offspring, his family line would perish “You must think it is some marvellous course, and toucheth my present state very near, that forceth me thus to be cause almost of the ruin of my own house” he observes, explaining that the truth is that he is uniquely situated, and cannot take a wife without causing “mine utter overthrow”. “If I should marry” he continued “I am sure never to have favour of them that I had, rather yet never have wife than loose them.” This being an obvious reference to his favour at the Royal Court.

It is an assumption by historians that may be content to keep to the presumptions of history and therefore here questioned as an oversight in need of further verification. Elizabeth herself had felt betrayed by the later discovery of the marriage to her 1st cousin, Lady Lettice Knollys and reminded him of the rumours that he had been pre~contracted to Sheffield and that if these proved to be true he could be sent to rot in the Tower*. It is, in any event, no surprise then that he should deny the matter.

In the Nineteenth Century the question of the Sidney’s legal claim over the Dudley Estates was raised when Sir John Shelly~Sidney laid claim to the titles of De L’isle and Dudley, to which he clearly would have had no claim, had the first Robert Dudley been honest and forthright about his sons origins. Alison Weir reveals that the House of Lords duly investigated the matter, concluding that Sir John Shelley had not in fact succeeded in establishing his right to the Barony, on the grounds that the marriage of Robert Dudley’s parents had indeed been legitimate and authentic. Leycester had preferred to pretend otherwise, and although he appears to have been fond of his son, never until his death acknowledged his legitimacy.

In the days of Leycester’s third marriage, the father of Lettice Knollys, Sir Francis, in fact the whole family, were not keen to see their daughter as casually abandoned as was the young Robert Dudley's mother Douglas Sheffield, as Dudley had sought for this third marriage also to be performed in secret. Robert Dudley’s new mother in law was born Lady Katherine, the daughter of Mary Boleyn, by her first husband Sir William Carey, and therefore a cousin of the Queen Elizabeth. The Lady Katherine being married to Sir Francis Knollys. With Lord Robert Dudley’s third marriage, he became the stepfather of Robert Devereaux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, Lettice’s son by her first marriage to the first Earl who had died in Ireland on her Majestie’s Service when Devereaux was but nine years of age.

Essex was aged 16 at his mothers wedding and went to Holland with Leicester the following year where he ‘did well in the fighting’ at Zutphen. It was here and upon his death that Sir Philip Sidney, his new cousin bequeathed ‘his best Sword’ to ‘his beloved and much honoured Lord’. Essex stayed abroad, returning to England aged 19 in December 1586 and was much admired by his Queen and her subjects, particularly the people of London of whom it is said took him to their hearts.

The year following Mary ‘Queen of Scot’s’ execution, being 1588 saw England faced with the threat of the Spanish Armada. Leycester was the Commander in Chief of the Home Forces. He had endured a strenuous summer involved in organising England’s land defences against the real possibility of invasion by the greater force of the well trained and equipped Spanish Army in Holland. Fortunately for Elizabeth her superior Navy assisted by favourable winds won the day, details of which are so readily available as to not be included herein. Reference to these events is made only in so much as they concern the death of Lord Sir Robert Dudley. For it was to follow that with the invasion thwarted by Drake’s good fortune and scarcely over, with Leycester’s land Forces Headquarters at Tilbury dissolved the Earl was to return to London to be present at the military review that followed in Whitehall.

This was to be Leycester's last public appearance, at which he presided with the Queen, watching events from a window above the crowds. The following day he bade his Queen farewell and left for the country, intending to take the waters at Buxton, he may well have already contracted the fever that was to be his end. “Paunchy and red faced, his white hair receding fast, little trace remained of the dark, slightly sinister good looks which had once earned him the dubious and resentful classification of ‘the gypsy’” 13

Thus was this most famous of Royal Courtiers to die, during the first week of September of 1588, of ‘a continual fever’ which he had most likely acquired at Tilbury where he had proudly paraded the English Troops before Elizabeth on that equally famous occasion.

As with his noble father, the Lord Robert Dudley had become so feared and disliked by the general population and equally resented by the lesser Gentry and Courtiers alike, in his case primarily for the unique closeness to the Queen that he had enjoyed, that shortly before his death, he had been the target of a libellous tract entitled ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’; this being published anonymously at Antwerp in 1584, and which ‘raked up the old scandal of his first wife's death, but (also) accused its victim . . .of pretty well every iniquity known to man’.

Dudley was thus portrayed as an evil ‘gangster’ who had turned the Court into ‘a nest of vice and extortion’ and it was implied he would have anyone killed who attempted to stand in his way. This Jesuit inspired venom was clearly an exaggeration based on common gossip and only stopped narrowly from attacking the Queen herself. As a ‘masterpiece of character assassination;’ it was widely enjoyed and subscribed to by those who wished for nothing more than to see their own fallible prejudices endorsed in print, so much so that : ‘all men, so far as they dirst, rejoiced no less outwardly at his death than for the victory lately obtained against the Spaniard’.~(in the words of a chronicler of the day named John Stow.) Although an associate and friend of Lord Robert Dudley described the tract as “the most malicious thing that was ever penned sithence the beginning of the world”. ‘Leycester’s commonwealth was banned immediately it came to the attention of the Queen Elizabeth. 14