Episode 95 of the Renaissance English History Podcast is a joint Tudor Times episode on Robert Dudley.
(The Renaissance English History Podcast is one of the longest continuously running indie history podcasts, producing shows like this on on Robert Dudley since 2009. You can help to keep it independent by doing one of these activities. First – and free – you can leave a rating on iTunes – it really makes a huge difference in helping others to discover the show. Second, you can become a Patron for $1/episode on Patreon. Finally, for all your Tudor gift giving needs – including for yourself! – you can shop at my online store, the Tudor Fair, for Tshirts, leggings, jewelry, stationary, and lots of other cool stuff.)
Show Resources
Tudor Times feature on Robert Dudley
http://tudortimes.co.uk/people/robert-dudley-life-story
Book Recommendation
Chris Skidmore’s Death and the Virgin (Amazon affiliate link)
Sarah Gristwood’s Elizabeth and Leicester (Amazon affiliate link)
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Episode Transcript:
Heather:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a member of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible, because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and our connection to our own humanity.
This is Episode 95. It’s another joint episode with Tudor Times on Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. And of course, he’s the possible soulmate to Queen Elizabeth I. Before we get into that, a bit of admin. So I still have some copies of the Tudor Planner left that’s the gorgeous monthly and weekly diary filled with Tudor history, listening lists wrapped up in a gorgeous cover. People are calling it exquisite, which makes me so proud. Depending on when you listen to this, you likely won’t get it in time for Christmas. But it could make a lovely Twelfth Night present, or even simply get it as the gift that you would have liked for Santa to have brought to you. And I’m now discounting them by $10 since they won’t arrive in time for Christmas. If you enter the code “giftforme” all one word at checkout, you’ll save $10. And by mid-January, they’re all going to be gone until next year, so make sure you get yours soon.
Next I want to thank the lovely patrons of this show who helped to keep it independent. Thank you to Cathy, Cynthia, Juergen, Olivia, Al, Ashley, Kendra, Anne Boleyn, I love that. Thank you, Jessica, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth, another Cynthia and Judith, also Celayne and if I butchered that, I’m so sorry. You’ll have to email me and tell me the right way. And Thank you Laura, Candace, Kaylee, Ian, Barbara Shar Kiva, Amy, Alison, Joanne, Kathy, Christine, Anneta, Andrea, Catherine, Candace, Rebecca from Tudors Dynasty, and Shandor. You’re all awesome. As I’m reading your names right now, if you could see me, I’m actually reaching out my arms giving you all a big hug because I’m so grateful to you. So thank you so much. I really am literally I’m reaching out my arms giving you a hug. Thank you.
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So now let me introduce you to Melita. Melita Thomas is the co-founder and editor of Tudor Times, a website devoted to Tudor and Stuart history from the period of 1485 to 1625. You can find it at tudortimes.co.uk. She’s also the author of a recent book called The King’s Pearl about Mary I, so you should check that out. Melita has always been fascinated by history ever since she saw the 1970 series Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson. She also contributes articles to BBC History Extra and Britain Magazine.
What can you tell us? There’s so many different myths and stories we hear about him. What can you tell us about his life? He kind of grew up with Elizabeth is that–
Melita:
Yeah, that seems to be the case. He was probably one of the young boys around Elizabeth’s half-brother Edward. Well, Prince Edward as he was then, it was a custom for royalty to have other friends and family around them. So they didn’t actually grow up by themselves. And because Edward and Elizabeth spent a fair amount of time housed in the same royal nursery palaces, she would have met Robert as part of the household. I think there’s a record where one of them refers to having known the other since they were eight years old. And then later, during her sister’s reign, they clearly kept in touch.
Robert was in prison for a while at the same time as Elizabeth. They were both in the Tower of London, her following Wyatt’s Rebellion and him following the failed coup of 1553. There’s no evidence that they met then, but it seems to have formed a bit of a sort of bond of experience between them. And then during the period that she was hoping, no doubt to become her sister’s heir, they seem to have been in touch although there are no details. Other than that, he sold a piece of land for her benefit at some point that she was grateful for later. Almost the first act when she became queen was to appoint him as her Master of the Horse, which suggests, quite a close friendship and certainly an appreciation of his skills in the duties of Master of the Horse which he undertook extremely well.
Heather:
And so tell me about his life aside from Elizabeth, because he got married and presumably he did other things.
Melita:
Yeah, although he did spend a huge amount of time with Elizabeth, he was definitely her closest friend for all of her life. I mean, they had quarrels and fallings out, particularly over his second marriage but you can see in their letters to each other, there was a real bond of affection between them. And he did spend a great deal of time at the court with her.
So his first marriage took place before Elizabeth became queen, in the reign of Edward VI when he married a young woman named Amy Robsart. And she was the daughter of a well-to-do Norfolk gentleman, but she wasn’t of any particularly high rank. And they were about the same age. And it’s likely that it was a love match, because if you look at the spouses that his father chose for Robert’s siblings, they will have a much higher rank. So, Amy was a bit of an outlier. But she was comfortably off. There’s no real information about their early relationship. She visited him in the tower, he was allowed to have visitors when he was in the tower in Mary’s reign. But they never had any children. Now, whether that was her or him, isn’t clear, because he did have a couple of children. Although considering that he was married at least twice and possibly a third time, two children seem quite low. So perhaps he was–
Heather:
The issue was on his side just a bit.
Melita:
Perhaps it was on his side, yes.
Heather:
Once Elizabeth became queen, and he was Master of the Horse, well, what did he do kind of professionally, leading up to becoming Master of the Horse? Obviously, when he was in the tower, he was in the tower, but before then, what did he do?
Melita:
Well, I mean, people didn’t do anything in our sense. I mean, he had his father, while his wife had money. And his father had settled an estate on him in Norfolk about the time he got married. So, like all gentlemen, he lived off his rents. He, again, like most gentlemen, he practiced his military skills, he led a troop of soldiers, under King Philip, during the French wars in 1557. He was present at the Battle of St. Quentin, which was a big Anglo-Spanish victory, and apparently acquainted himself very well there. Philip was so impressed with him that he actually sent him home with the news to Queen Mary. So, he was rehabilitating himself in Mary’s reign by being a supporter of King Philip.
Heather:
There’s the obvious question about his relationship with Elizabeth. And I’m sure there was more to him than that, so I want to talk more about him besides that, but you can’t talk about him without talking about that, so–
Melita:
He didn’t immediately become her Privy Councillor. So he was taken out of being Master of the Horse, which was actually quite a big job because of course, everything depended on horse transport. And the Master of the Horse was responsible for progresses and processions for finding the queen’s horses. She was a great hunter, like all her family. Looking after, ensuring that she had enough horses, that there were enough horses for her ladies-in-waiting, that baggage was transferred from place to place. So, it was quite a wide-ranging role. He had to buy horses. And that’s not something that you can really delegate, you’re either a good judge of horses or you’re not. You can’t really get anybody else to do it and quite so well as an experienced person can do it themselves.
Once he became a Privy Councillor in 1565, he was actually one of the most active Councillors. He attended more meetings than anybody other than Cecil. He took his duties very seriously as a Councillor, and he was busy amassing land as well. So, he would have spent plenty of time on managing his stay.
And then, in the 1580’s, he became Lieutenant Governor of the Netherlands. He was representing Elizabeth leading the English troops who were supporting the Protestant United Provinces, in their bid to at least obtain religious freedom from Philip of Spain. There are different views on what they should be doing. Robert, like many of the more Puritan members of Elizabeth’s ministry wanted to support the Netherlands in throwing off Spain altogether. Whereas Elizabeth wanted Philip to give tolerance of the Protestant religion. She wasn’t really that interested in overthrowing fellow monarchs because of the very poor example that that would set. He wasn’t terribly effective as Lieutenant Governor. He couldn’t get on with the Dutch terribly well, and he took a higher position from them than Elizabeth had wanted him to take and there was a huge rally over that. So he was pretty active chap in government and politics.
Heather:
So then where there always rumors about the two of them and their relationship? Or at what point did that start?
Melita:
Almost well within a few months of her becoming queen. Although he was still married at that time, his wife, they’re only in their late 20’s. From within a few weeks of her accession he was seemed to be beside her all of the time. And there were rumors that they were having an affair, which would have been bad enough if he’d been single, but the fact that he was a married man made it even worse. She swore that they never slept together. And I would have thought, given her determination to remain Queen, that is probably true. But of course, one can’t be absolutely certain. I mean, it would have been such a hostage to fortune if she had slept with him. I mean, Elizabeth wasn’t the most trusting person in the world. How could she ever have trusted him? It just doesn’t seem very likely. But they danced together, they sang together, they hunted together, he spent time in her private apartments with her. And according to her, they were always chaperoned, but possibly not that closely. And it soon became rumored that they were lovers and that his wife was looking very carefully at what she ate. So, it wasn’t long before people thought that Lady Dudley was going to come to a nasty, nasty end. There was a story that she was ill with a “malady in the breast”, but then another report said she was not ill and that the stories were just being put about so that if she died, people wouldn’t be surprised. And then in September of 1560, she was found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs with her neck broken.
Heather:
And do you have any thoughts on this mystery? I don’t think we’re gonna solve it here. But what are your thoughts on–
Melita:
No. A very interesting book on the topic, The Death and the Virgin by Chris Skidmore was written off four or five years ago now, I think, because the actual original inquest papers were found in the National Archives in 2008 which shed a bit more light on it. I would have thought it’s unlikely that Robert murdered her on the basis that, how likely was it that Elizabeth would marry a man who had murdered his wife? I mean, again, the likelihood of her being overthrown, would be very high. Although perhaps you can say we’re reading that with hindsight thinking about what happened to Mary, Queen of Scots with the death of Darnley maybe, that had happened. So maybe it wasn’t seen, that it would have had quite the effect that had on Mary’s life. I mean, he could have done it. All the evidence suggests that he wanted an open and unbiased inquest. He wrote to the local magistrates and the… saying, please, do everything you can to find out the truth. He didn’t feign any kind of unnecessary grief. So he wasn’t sort of pretending to be the sorrowing widower. Nobody thought he was particularly upset about it.
Heather:
He went away from court for a while too, didn’t he?
Melita:
Yes, Elizabeth sent him away until the inquest was over. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him until his name had been officially cleared. There is a theory that Cecil was behind it, on the basis that a man with a wife dead and on surprising circumstances, was a less likely match than a man who might have found some way of having his marriage annulled, especially with no children. I mean, I can imagine if anybody was going to lay out a complex plot like that, Cecil’s your man. He certainly thought ahead, but there isn’t any particular evidence about it. The surprising thing is that she could have died falling down a fairly short staircase. So sorry, I was gonna say it doesn’t seem he was generally accused of it until the 1580’s.
Heather:
Okay, so what happened? Take me through the timeline then. So that was 1560, and then what happened after that?
Melita:
Well, what happened, definitely the relationship with Elizabeth became a little bit less blatant. By 1564, she was even suggesting that he should marry the Queen of Scots, an idea that Robert certainly didn’t like at all, because although he wanted to marry a queen, he certainly didn’t want to marry the Queen of Scots and go off to Scotland. He wanted to marry Elizabeth. Then after that, he still hoped that she would marry him. And it seems that every time that another suitor (because of course, she had so many, both foreign and at home) came too close, he would muddy the waters, or she would almost use him as a way of wriggling out of a marriage with anybody else. She’d flaunt her relationship with him, perhaps to discourage foreign princes who might think twice about a wife who had perhaps, not the best reputation, if she was spending so much time with a with another man. But he definitely spent quite a lot of time upsetting other marriage proposals possibly on her orders. I mean, we don’t know. So as soon as one match was put forward, so for example, the Archduke of Austria, Charles, he would then suggest, oh the King of Sweden was a much better match. Or if the King of Sweden looked like he was in front, then he would suggest one of the other Archduke just to keep everything up in the air rather than Elizabeth making a decision.
Around about 1568, he embarked on an affair, but possibly not till a little later, with one of the queen’s relatives actually – Douglas Howard, who was Lady Sheffield. And there are some stories that he had an affair with her while she was still married. The only letter that appears to be between the two suggests it wasn’t till after she was widowed. I mean, there are so many rumors and scandals about it, was very difficult to tell what happened when and how much has been suggested afterwards. Possibly married Douglas Sheffield in secret. She said during Elizabeth’s lifetime that they hadn’t married but then after Elizabeth’s death, she said that they had. He certainly acknowledged their son, but he always said that they weren’t married.
Heather:
Then he had the great pageant where he tried to woo, I mean, would you say that he was trying to win her over?
Melita:
Yeah, I think it was probably the last-ditch attempt. It was in 1575. She was 42 and he was either 42 or 43, his birth date isn’t certain. It was the greatest pageant of her reign. He spent apparently some 60,000 pounds on it, which is something we can’t even imagine what it would be in modern money. She was with him for 18 days at Kenilworth castle. And the whole thing was just an extraordinary series of events from the moment she arrived, when she was met by a sibyl prophesizing long life and good health. And then there was a …from the Lady of the Lake and there’s quite a lot of Arthurian symbolism. There were wild men from the forest, who appeared to be overcome by the beauty of this stranger, didn’t know she was a queen, but recognized her as so particularly beautiful. And then there were some local pageants that local people got involved with, Robin Hood and Maid Marian and the country wedding. There was singing, there were cornets and there were oboes and there were picnics and hunting and fireworks and every kind of display that you can imagine. But if she was tempted, she didn’t give in. I think it’s a bit sad in a way. It seems almost like a last-ditch attempt because I think he probably thought by then it was never going to happen. It was almost like a, I don’t know, a sort of a final love gift, really. I do think he was genuinely attached to her as well. I don’t think it was all, I mean, I’m sure there was ambition in it, but I don’t think it was all about ambition.
Heather:
And the same for her with him, do you think?
Melita:
Yes, yes. And she’s she was very open about her affection for him, although she would sometimes describe their affection as more of siblings than anything else. So I think it was a sort of a kind of a mixture of romantic and I suppose over the 30 years of her reign that he was alive during. You can’t carry on the white heat of romantic love, especially if nothing ever comes of it. So they were almost like a pair of old married couple by the end. She called him her eyes. She liked to gave nicknames. Yeah and distraught with his death.
Heather:
Right. So take me through then, he realized they weren’t going to get married. And so then he got married again.
Melita:
He did, yes. Another of Elizabeth’s cousins. The pictures of Lettice Knollys, who was the Countess of Essex, she does look like Elizabeth which suggests that it was definitely a physical type that he was attracted to. And he and Lettice seem to have actually been very happily married. She had four children by her first marriage, of whom he became very fond, particularly her son, Robert, Earl of Essex, whom he promoted almost as though he were his own son. The daughter, Penelope she became the ward of Robert’s sister and brother-in-law and the other children were also very close to him. So they seem to have been quite close family.
Elizabeth was beside herself with anger. She never forgave Lettice who she called “the she-wolf”. It took her a while to forgive Robert. It was probably two or three years before he was really back in her good books, but then she just dealt with it by ignoring Lettice’s existence and keeping Robert at court as much as she could. But he seemed to have been very fond of Lettice. I mean, I’m not sure she was necessarily second best. They were happily married. And she outlived him by 45 years, I think, but she chose to be buried beside him. Yes, Elizabeth was not happy about it.
Heather:
I can imagine.
Melita:
Yeah, I suppose she felt betrayed. He was the person who she was closest to and now he’d gone and got himself a wife.
Heather:
Yeah. Well, what did she expect he was gonna do?
Melita:
Well, yes. And I think he did think she was unreasonable. But I think they all thought she was unreasonable. But she wanted to send them to the Tower, but Cecil had to point out that really, he hadn’t actually committed any crime by marrying.
Heather:
Yeah. So then he was, towards the end of his life, was involved with the Spanish Armada. And that was when he died right after that as well, right?
Melita:
Yeah, so well, throughout the 1570’s, he was actually what like all Elizabethans, a very religious man. He was definitely on the more Puritan end of the scale amongst Elizabeth’s ministers. So he would align with Walsingham, Francis Knollys, his father-in-law, and Cecil, who were more Protestant than some, the Earl of Arundel, for example, who was Catholic. So he was always very much in favor of England and Elizabeth supporting Protestants abroad. And that’s the policy that he supported throughout the 1570’s and the early 1580’s.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, Elizabeth was very, very reluctant to provoke Philip of Spain. Apart from anything else, she didn’t want to provoke him to the point of war. And also, she wanted to keep the balance between France and Spain, which was sort of the long-term Tudor policy. But yeah, so Robert was very much in favor of helping the Protestants in the Netherlands. And eventually, Elizabeth was worn down, and she did commit money and men to it. As I say, he was chosen to lead the English troops in the Netherlands, but not with any great success. But the result of it, of course, was that Spain was provoked, and that together with the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots brought about the Spanish Armada. I mean, obviously, there’s all sorts of complications, but that’s the sort of basic idea. And Robert, he was chosen, despite not having been terribly successful in the Netherlands. He was appointed as Lieutenant-General of the land forces and he set up the camp at Tilbury and invited Elizabeth to come along and review the troops rather touchingly. People were worried about her safety and he was certain that she was so loved that she would be quite safe in the camp, which turned out to be the case. And he was beside her when she made her famous speech about having the heart and stomach of a king. Yes, and then afterwards, they dined together in his tent, and he was feeling quite poorly. And it was within a few days that it became apparent that the Armada had just been defeated by a combination of the weather and the Navy. And so Robert asked permission to retire from court to go to the Buxton. He liked to go to Buxton for the spa waters there. He’d been there two or three times, and she gave him permission. So he and Lettice went off at the end of August 1588, but he didn’t make it. He died, I think, on the fourth of September 1588. So it really took the shine off the defeat of the Armada for Elizabeth. She locked herself in a room for several days. And the story is that Sir Walter Raleigh actually had the door broken down, but I don’t know whether anybody would have had to break the Queen’s door down. But yeah, she kept his last letter that he’d written her on route to Buxton for the rest of her life, and it was found in a little box next to her bed when she died.
Heather:
So why did you choose him as the person of the month?
Melita:
Well, because he is interesting and I think his reputation has always been very black. Particularly there was an absolutely dreadful, slanderous, libelous pamphlet published in 1584 called well it had a very, very long name, but it’s usually known as Leicester’s Commonwealth. In it, he’s accused of absolutely everything. He didn’t just murder Amy, he murdered Douglas, he murdered Lettice’s husband, he murdered Douglas’ husband, he polished off a French Cardinal, he tried to murder St. Nicholas Throckmorton. I mean, this list of crimes is extraordinary. He molested all of Elizabeth’s ladies and so there are just this whole really horrible things were written about him and the mud stuck. I mean, Elizabeth didn’t believe any of it and she took the step of having the work banned. And she didn’t normally make specific statements about things, because quite a bit of scurrilous propaganda about, but she was very angry about this particular work. And she, as part of the proclamation suppressing it, she pointed out that it was actually a veiled attack on her and that there’s no way that she would be so lacking in judgment as to have a scoundrel of that sort as her minister, but it certainly stuck. And that’s, I think, a lot of the slanders in Leicester’s Commonwealth have shaded his historical reputation. So I suppose we wanted to find out a bit more about him. Yeah, and he’s interesting. I think he, I don’t know, it always seems a little bit sad. Somehow I used to get the impression that he just never quite fit. He didn’t quite marry the queen. He lost. He and Lettice had a little boy who died as a child, so he couldn’t achieve his ambition of starting a new dynasty. He wasn’t quite successful in the Netherlands. So he just never quite made it somehow.
Heather:
And so where can people go to learn more about him?
Melita:
Well, I can’t find a good solid biography of him. There’s The Death and the Virgin that I mentioned that talks mainly about Amy Robsart. But Chris Skidmore, who’s very good, goes into a whole lot of other stuff. There’s quite a lot about him in the books about Elizabeth of course, because it is unfair to think of him as just her lover. He was an important part of our government. So Somerset’s Elizabeth I that’s a that’s a good source. His account books for a couple of years are available, which are interesting. There’s a book by a chap called Derek Wilson called the Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black Legend of the Dudley’s, which talks about him and his father and his illegitimate son or possibly not illegitimate son, his son by Douglas Sheffield. It’s not sort of massively in-depth, but it’s an interesting introduction. So no, I think the world is due a biography of Robert Dudley.
Heather:
Well, is there anything else we should know about him?
Melita:
What else, he was actually also a great patron of literature. And I think when we were talking earlier, we’re thinking about was, did Shakespeare… And of course, as you rightly pointed out, it was not far from his home. And there were an awful lot of the local populace did go to see the queen and so he may have done. But yeah, Lord Leicester had his players. And he also patronized quite a lot of literature and the literary works and translations and so forth. Yeah, so he was an intelligent man. Well read. He had a lot of interest in mathematics and scientific discoveries. He was also like Elizabeth, he patronized John Dee, the sort of alchemis/mathematician. Because Elizabeth wouldn’t have been interested in a stupid man, he was an intelligent, well-educated, cultured man. Ambitious, possibly. He would have been an interesting man to have dinner with. Oh, yes, unless he was going to poison you because apparently he poisoned Margaret Lennox as well. It’s all very hard to believe.
Heather:
He was really busy.
Melita:
Yes, yes. In Leicester’s Commonwealth, it talks about this secret potion, that he patronized Italian scholars. And of course, as soon as anybody said Italian it was kind of synonymous to poisoner in those days.
Heather:
Thank you again to Melita Thomas for taking the time to tell us about Robert Dudley. For more information on him go to Tudortimesco.uk. or you can also see the resources available on the Englandcast site at Englandcast.com. And remember, if you like this show, the biggest way that you can help it to succeed is to leave a review on iTunes, it’s the best thing you can do. You can also tell a friend about the show, I would love to see this community grow and become even more vibrant. The Facebook group are so active and it’d be so awesome to see even more people come into our beautiful little community here. So the next time you’re talking to your Tudor friends, tell them to listen to the show, right? Because they like shows, they like Tudors. Here’s a show about the Tudors. So I’m actually gonna be taking a little break over Christmas. But don’t worry, you’re still going to hear my voice, it just won’t be recorded right at the same time. Because what I’m going to do is actually pull the audio from some of the mini courses that I did this past year. Some of you might know I put together a little online mini courses for this community from time to time. Last year I did a couple, one was on Kickass Tudor women. So I’m actually going to pull some of the audio from that and put that out on the feed so you can enjoy that even if you didn’t get a chance to do the course live when we were doing it. So you’ll still get to hear from me but you won’t hear from me live again until January and at that point, I’m going to start doing a little bit of a look at the Tudor England relationship with the Ottoman Turks and especially …the Battle of Lepanto. So that’s what we’re gonna do. Every January we kind of do foreign policy, last year was France, the year before it was Spain and the Armada. So this year, we’re going to be looking a little bit further east to the Ottoman Turks and the relationship and what was going on with Europe with that relationship, and England specifically, of course.
So I wish you all so much joy and peace and love how ever you celebrate this time of year. If you’re out with the druids doing Solstice stuff, if you’re doing Hanukkah, if you’re doing Christmas, if you’re doing any variation of anything, I hope it’s so much fun. I hope it’s so cozy. I hope it’s so warm. And I hope you have so much love surrounding you and wrapping you all up. And I am so grateful to you for listening to me this past year, for listening to me, those of you who have been with us for a long time. We’re going on nine years here, guys. I started this podcast in 2009. And some of you have been with me since the very beginning. And I’m so grateful to you. And I’m so grateful to those of you who just found me for listening. And really I just love you all so much. I just am so happy that I get to talk about Tudor England like this. And you let me, It’s so amazing. So thank you. Have a wonderful, wonderful holiday season. Thank you for letting me be part of your year this year. Thank you to those of you who bought the Tudor planner for letting me be part of your planning next year and your …next year. And thank you for your continued listenership and support and friendship. You guys are awesome. All right, talk to you in January. Bye, bye!
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.