Even More Blog Housekeeping

Just a note that in the summer of 2022, I was honoured to be part of Claire Ridgway’s Elizabeth I online event. We had an in debth talk via Zoom about Amy Robsart. Meanwhile the event is closed, but it was a wonderful experience.

Blog Housekeeping

I had the pleasure to be asked some questions about Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley by Jessica Pearce Rotondi, author of What We Inherit: A Secret War And A Family’s Search For Answers. Here is her article on The History Channel’s website.

An Ox for the Earl of Leicester

The 12th century abbey of Tewkesbury. Photo by Saffron Blaze CC BY-SA 3.0

In 1574, Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire made an extra effort to become an incorporated town, with charter and all. They sent a present to their High Steward, the Earl of Leicester, then at his castle of Kenilworth. The present was “an ox of unusual size”, namely “seventeen hands high, and in length from- head to tail twenty-six hands three inches, and cost £14”, and for it “the whole Town was also levied and gathered”. The previous year, 1573, they had already sent the Earl of Leicester “a cup of silver and gilt”. Being High Steward had its rewards, and such was the cost of becoming incorporated.

Source:
John Nichols (ed.) (1823): The Progresses & Public Processions, etc., of Queen Elizabeth. Vol. I, p. 355

Ruins of Kenilworth Castle, Robert Dudley’s principal seat in the Midlands. Photo by David Williams CC BY-SA 2.0

“I will put in the names” – Elections, 1584

Parliamentary elections in Elizabethan England were great occasions for what was then called “patronage”. In this higher form of corruption most people believed that if they wanted a post or otherwise further their career, they needed to be on good terms with a patron, someone with lots of influence in society; someone like Cecil or Leicester, or preferably both.

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, c.1588, holding the Lord Steward’s wand of office

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was one of the biggest players, and a few instances of his influence on who would sit in parliament have survived in form of his letters. For example, on 12 October 1584 he wrote to the Burgesses of Andover. The town of Andover in Hampshire was entitled to send two MPs to the Lower House, and Leicester as Steward of Andover was very willing to help with the cost:

Whereas it hath pleased her Majestie to appoint a Parliament to be presentlie called: being Steward of your Towne, I make bould heartile to pray you that you would give me the nomination of one of your Burgesses for the same; and yf, mynding to avoyd the chardges of allowance for the other Burgesse, you meane to name anie that is not of your Towne, yf you will bestow the nomination of the other Burgesse also upon me I will thank you for it, and will both appoynt a sufficient man, and see you discharged of all charges in that behaulfe. And so praying your spedie answere herein, I thus bid you right hartilie farewell.

From the Courte, the 12th of October, 1584.
Your loving frende, R. Leycester.

Yf you will send me your election with a blank, I will put in the names.

(Endorsed)To my very loving friends the Bayliefes, Aldermen, and the rest of the Town of Andover.

Needless to say, the men thus “nominated” or “appointed”, and then duly elected, were to thank their patron by fulfilling his (or sometimes her) wishes.

Source:
John Nichols (ed.) (1823): The Progresses & Public Processions, etc., of Queen Elizabeth. Vol. II, p. 422

Elizabeth I in Parliament, c.1580s

The Earl of Leicester’s Visit to the Town of Leicester

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, c.1588, after William Segar

In June 1584, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, visited the town of Leicester. This sort of visits by great lords were almost little state visits. Leicester wanted to visit his youngest sister, Katherine, Countess of Huntingdon, who resided at Leicester. The Mayor and His Brethren met his lordship – yet, as is noted, they were not clad in scarlett, so presumably they wore only the second best outfit for the earl’s reception. He gave to the poor and to the prisoners of Leicester, as well as to two militia companies, and stayed only one night:

Nota, that the Earle of Leicester came to the Towne of Leicester on Thursday the 18th daie of June, anno supradicto, and then laye at the Erle of Huntingdon’s housse; at which tyme his Sister the Countys of Huntingdon dyd receyve him there.

At this his comynge to Leicester from the bathes oute of Derbyshier, he came into Leicester by the Abbye, upp the Abbye gate, the North gate, and Hie Streete, to the Hie Crosse, where ageynst the schoole-howsse, the Mayor, his bretherene, and the eight and fortye, met his Honor, but not in skarlett. The preysent gyven to hym was, a hoggesheade of clarett wyne, which cost £4. 10s.; and two verie fatt oxen, which cost xx marks.

Also his Honor gave twentie nobles, to be distributed amongest the poore. The number of the poor then was 118 persons; and it came to three-halfpence apiece, and 18d. over, in every ward; and was distributed by Mr. Mayor, Mr. Sparks, and Mr. Johnson preachers, and other of the Aldermen.

Also, out of the same, to the New Hospital, 3s.; the Old Hospital, 5s.; and to the prisoners of the County and Bridewell, 3s.

Also his Honor did geve unto the twoe Companyes, viz. the Twenty-four and Eight and Fortye, to be delyv[er]ed by his seid Sister the Countis of Huntingdon, vi bucks.

Also his Honor staied but one night in Leicester; and was goun of the Fridaye morninge, by fyve of theclocke.

Source:
John Nichols (ed.) (1823). The Progresses & Public Processions, etc., of Queen Elizabeth. Vol. II, p. 421

Living on The Strand

The Elizabethan aristocracy, when in London, resided on the Strand. If you could afford to live in one of the former bishop’s palaces between the street called The Strand and the bank of the Thames (and rebuild them) you had definitely arrived at the top.

Now (in fact, in 2021) Manolo Guerci has issued a lavishly produced study of those eleven great houses of the Strand between 1550 and 1650: London’s ‘Golden Mile’: The Great Houses of The Strand, 1550-1650 (Yale University Press).

The palaces, none of which survived into the 20th century, and only one (Northumberland House) into the 19th, are from East to West: Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, The Savoy, Burghley House, Bedford House, Worcester House, Salisbury House, Durham House, York House, Northumberland House.

Of these, Essex House is the most interesting to the Dudley aficionado. This particular mansion began life as Exeter Inn, a property of the bishops of Exeter. In 1539 it passed to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and then after Norfolk’s downfall in late 1546, to William Paget. It soon became Paget Place, and it bore that name when Robert Dudley acquired it in 1569. Robert bought the palace for £2.500. The Spanish ambassador, Guerau de Spes, who had lived there since the death of Henry Paget in 1568, had to move out.

Robert Dudley apparently helped him with this, so keen was he to move into Paget Place. The ambassador informed King Philip II on 22 June 1569 that

They are going to give me the bishop of Winchester’s house in exchange for the one I now occupy. I am to pay for it, but the Bishop raised some difficulties, although the earl of Leicester wrote to him about it.

It was soon known as Leicester House. The Earl of Leicester (Robert Dudley) had previously lived in other Strand buildings of note. He had passed part of his youth at Durham Place (or House), which his father the Duke of Northumberland had almost wrested from the Lady Elizabeth, a site that saw three marriages on 25 May 1553, the most fateful being that of Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey.

In compensation for Durham Place, Elizabeth received Somerset House, one of the largest and most magnificent palaces on the Strand, with the biggest gardens. Robert was as lucky to become the keeper of Somerset House during Elizabeth’s tenure. Somerset House was then a building site, so Elizabeth may not have resided there often, but Robert (with his wife, Amy) probably did. This arrangement lasted until July 1553, when Robert Dudley, his father, uncle, and brothers were imprisoned in the Tower of London for putting Jane Grey on the throne.

When in London in the years after his release from the Tower in 1554, Robert Dudley lived most probably at Christchurch, a building inherited by his younger brother Henry’s wife, Margaret née Audley (later the second wife of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk). Robert may also have stayed with his uncle, Andrew Dudley, in Holborn Street, Westminster.

With Elizabeth’s accession came more palatial times. The new queen immediately gave her old friend “the old manor” at Kew. Robert resided there (and even on one occasion hosted the queen) until he sold it in about 1563.

Durham Place (or House) returned to Elizabeth’s possession after her accession, and another Spanish ambassador, Bishop Alvaro de la Quadra, lived there between 1559 and his death from the plague in 1563. Later, Robert Dudley also returned to use this Strand palace between 1565 and 1568, until he found a more permanent home at Leicester House.

Leicester House was situated between Arundel House and Temple Church. Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel, who saw himself as a suitor to the queen, had not always been on good terms with Robert Dudley, though their relationship improved dramatically in later years. Arundel died in 1580, and the new owners of Arundel House were the disgraced heirs of the 4th Duke of Norfolk. Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel, suspected of Catholic plotting, had to move into the Tower in 1585, while his uncle Henry Howard (later Earl of Northampton and builder of his own Strand mansion) resided at Arundel House. He maintained a conspirational household there, which would have raised the Earl of Leicester’s hair had he known more about what was going on “next door” to Leicester House.

Further down the Strand was Burghley House, the residence of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s chief minister, who maintained a kind of boarding school for young noblemen there. Among the attendants was none other than Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, by that time Leicester’s stepson, as Leicester had recently married Lettice Knollys, Essex’ mother. At Leicester House all the Essex children had rooms, and their portraits hung there as well. Leicester sometimes would visit the young Essex at Burghley House. According to Leicester’s will, Essex was eventually to inherit Leicester House, which is why it became Essex House, eventually.

In May 1575 Leicester wanted to “make a lytle banquett-house in my garden”, directly at the Thames, so that his guests could enjoy “the river’s open viewing” (in the words of Edmund Spenser who was there). Banqueting houses could be pavilion-like buildings, however Leicester’s was to be of stone and was crenellated, like a castle’s miniature gate-house. He asked Burghley to help him out “with some stone”, and Burgley was happy to oblige.

Part of Wenceslaus Hollar’s 1660s bird’s-eye view of London, with Arundel House and Essex House at the bottom right

Sources:
Manolo Guerci (2021): London’s ‘Golden Mile’: The Great Houses of The Strand, 1550-1650. Yale University Press.
Martin Hume (ed.) (1894): Calendar of State Papers Spain, Vol. II.
John Bossy (1991): Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. Yale University Press.

My Interview on the Dudley Family

I am very happy to tell you that Jessica Faulkner of TikTok, Youtube, and Twitter (X) interviewed me about the Dudley family, and especially Robert Dudley, on her blog Unholytudor. Please go here …

Lettice in the Theatre

On 4 September 1588 Lettice, Countess of Leicester (née Lettice Knollys), became a widow for the second time. She was never to regain Queen Elizabeth’s favour, but was still left a wealthy lady. Robert Dudley had appointed her executrix of his will, and her income from both her husbands’ jointures amounted to £3,000 annually, to which came plate and movables worth £6,000. However, her jointure was to suffer greatly from paying off Leicester’s debts, which at some £50,000 were overwhelming.

Lettice Knollys by George Gower or his school, c.1590s

Perhaps partly to deal with her husband’s legacy of debts, in March or April 1589 Lettice married Sir Christopher Blount. Blount had been the Earl of Leicester’s Gentleman of the Horse and a trusted friend of his; he was 12 years her junior and a Catholic. He was relatively poor, though.

In 1593 Lettice Knollys sold Leicester House to her eldest son, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and it now became known as Essex House. She moved to Drayton Bassett near Chartley in Staffordshire, her main residence for the rest of her life. Although it was not entirely to her liking, she thought that “a country life is fittest for disgraced persons”.

In December 1597 Lettice heard that “Her Majesty is very well prepared to hearken to terms of pacification”, and was prepared to do a journey to London if her son Essex thought it worthwhile. She travelled in January 1598.

Penelope Lady Rich by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1589

She stayed at Essex House from January till March. On Wednesday, 15 February, 1598, Rowland Whyte wrote to Sir Robert Sidney:

“Sir Gille Meyricke made at Essex House yesternicht a very great Supper. There were at yt, my Ladies Lester, Northumberland, Bedford, Essex, Rich; and my Lords of Essex, Rutland, Monjoy, and others. They had 2 Plaies, which kept them up till 1 a Clocke after Midnight.”

Lady Leicester was of course Lettice herself; Lady Northumberland was Dorothy, her younger daughter, who had married Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland (the “Wizard Earl”, 1564-1632); Lady Essex was Lettice’s daughter-in-law, Frances Devereux née Walsingham; Lady Bedford was the 17-year-old Lucy Russell (née Harington), Countess of Bedford, a future performer in court masques and poet, and a good friend of Lettice’s daughters Penelope and Dorothy. Lady Rich was none other than Penelope Rich, née Devereux, Lettice’s eldest child.

The male audience of the theatre evening included the Earl of Essex himself, his friend Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, and Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, Penelope’s lover. The evening was organized by Sir Gelly Meyrick, Essex’ steward.

Lettice Knollys in a portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1595

Rowland Whyte does not inform us which troupe of players performed on 15 February 1598 at Essex House.

Lettice in fact as a female patron of players was a pioneer. She had her own troupe; after the death of her husband the 1st Earl of Essex in 1576, his company of actors continued to perform as “the Countess of Essex’s Men” until in 1579 the secret marriage of Lettice to Leicester came to the queen’s attention.

Sources:
Simon Adams (2008): “Dudley, Lettice, countess of Essex and countess of Leicester (1543–1634)”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online edition.

Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins (2013) (eds.): Essex: The Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier. Manchester University Press.

Arthur Collins (1746): Letters and Memorials of State, Written and Collected by Sir Henry Sidney. Vol. II.

Sylvia Freedman (1983): Poor Penelope: Penelope Rich. An Elizabethan Woman. The Kensal Press.

Lettice and Elizabeth

On 3 March 1600 Rowland White wrote from the court that “[y]esterday the Countess of Leicester sent the Queen a most curious gown.” He reported that “Her Majesty liked it well.” Alas, she “did not accept or refuse it[,] only answered that things standing as they did it was not fit for her to desire what she did.”

Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester, by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1595

This was to say that Elizabeth was not prepared to accept anything from Lettice, Countess of Leicester, the woman who had hurt her so deeply many years before. Lettice Devereux, Countess of Essex, née Knollys, had secretly wed Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, on 21 September 1578, and the queen had found out by by June 1579. From this point in time Lettice, the queen’s first cousin once removed (on her mother’s side), had lived in disgrace.

Twenty-one years on, there had not changed a lot; except that Robert Dudley had died in 1588, and Lettice was now the Dowager Countess of Leicester (although she had remarried in 1589). For the sake of her son’s, the great Earl of Essex’, career, Lettice would have tried to reconcile Elizabeth, but it turned out to be an impossible path.

She was even prepared to do “a winter journey” if Essex thought “it be to any purpose”. Lettice had moved out of Leicester House in 1593, the great residence on the Strand, and was living for the rest of her life at Drayton Bassett near Chartley in Staffordshire. She sometimes, especially in the winter season, travelled to London, staying again at what was now Essex House (Leicester House, which she had sold to her son despite Leicester having left it to his stepson Essex in his will).

Queen Elizabeth I by Nicholas Hilliard, 1590s

The only problem was to meet the queen, as Rowland White reported to Sir Robert Sidney on 1 March 1598:

I acquainted you with the care to bring Lady Leicester to the Queen’s presence; it was often granted, but the Queen found occasion not to come. Upon Shrove Monday, the Queen was persuaded to go to Mr Controller’s at the Tilt End, there was my Lady Leicester with a fair jewel of £300. A great dinner was prepared by my Lady Chandos, the Queen’s coach ready and all the world expecting Her Majesty’s own coming; when upon a sudden she resolved not to go and send so word. My Lord of Essex that had kept his chamber the day before, in his night gown went up to the Queen the privy way; but all would not prevail and as yet my Lady Leicester hath not seen the Queen.

However, it was all resolved very quickly, or so it seemed, for on the following day “My Lady Leicester was at Court” and kissed the queen’s hand, “and the Queen kissed her.” Very soon, Elizabeth changed her mind again, though. Elizabeth did not want to see Lettice another time.

It appears that really the only reason why Lettice cared to get again into Elizabeth’s graces was her son Essex. There is evidence that she personally did not care a lot for Elizabeth (who had been, after all, her great rival for the love of Robert Dudley). An inventory of 1596 shows that as Leicester’s widow Lettice retained a large number of the earl’s very impressive picture collection, and even added new ones, like the portrait of Robert Cecil – the coming power behind the throne.

It is intriguing to know that by the mid-1590s Lettice had removed all the queen’s portraits from her rooms.

Sources:
Sylvia Freedman (1983): Poor Penelope: Penelope Rich. An Elizabethan Woman. The Kensal Press.

Linda Levy Peck (2005): Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge University Press.

Robert Dudley in Opera

It will come as no surprise that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, appears in Romantic opera. He is usually the tenor. At least this is the case in the three Italian operas, one by Rossini and two by Donizetti, that I have found.

CD of Maria Stuarda by Donizetti with Janet Baker as Mary Queen of Scots in a 1970s version by The English National Opera

The best known of the three nowadays must be Maria Stuarda by Gaetano Donizetti (1835). Very loosely adapted from Friedrich Schiller’s play, Robert Dudley is here the principal male character, a sympathetic hero very much in love with two queens (who are each even more in love with him). Both queens, Mary and Elizabeth, frequently sing, shout, and sigh: “Roberto!”

The other Donizetti opera is Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth (1829). This opera was performed just eight years after the release of Walter Scott’s bestselling historical novel, Kenilworth, being based on two French plays, Victor Hugo’s Amy Robsart and Eugène Scribe’s Leicester (1828 and 1823, respectively). Walter Scott’s Kenilworth in 1821 had unleashed a flood of adaptations (and paintings) centered around Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley’s unfortunate first wife. It could be said that the novel very much created the popular story of the innocent, unhappy, and abandoned wife.

The plot of Scott’s novel, as well as the opera, merge two of Robert Dudley’s wives/girl friends into one person: Amelia, Countess of Leicester. Amelia is loosely based on the real life ladies Amy Robsart and Douglas Sheffield. The plot culminates in Elizabeth’s visit to the festival of Kenilworth Castle, where the real Earl of Leicester threw a 19-day-party in 1575.

Record cover of Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra by Gioachino Rossini

About 20 years before Gaetano Donizetti’s operas, Gioachino Rossini also applied himself to bringing Elizabeth I onto the stage. His opera, Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, was first performed in 1815, based on a 1814 play, Il paggio di Leicester (Leicester’s page). This play by Carlo Federici was in turn based on an English historical novel, The Recess (1785), by Sophia Lee.

In this opera the Duke of Norfolk features prominently. He wants to engineer Leicester’s downfall and tells the queen that Leicester is secretly married (with Matilde, a Scotswoman, and a secret daughter of Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s great rival). Elizabeth throws both Matilde and Leicester into prison and demands that Matilde agrees to dissolve the marriage, so that she, the queen, can marry Leicester herself. Leicester vehemently rejects this possibility, preferring death over such a dishonourable solution.

Leicester is in prison, waiting for his execution as a traitor, when Elizabeth secretly visits him to help him escape. Norfolk also appears in order to liberate his supposed friend, with the help of the people. However, Leicester declines, once again deciding in favour of honour and death. On hearing this, Norfolk tries to kill Elizabeth, but is soon taken to another part of the prison. In the end, Elizabeth forgives everyone and resolves to banish love from her heart and devote herself to state business henceforward.

The plot of Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra brings to mind certain scenes from Shekar Kapur’s 1998 film, Elizabeth.