LEICESTER, ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF (c. 1531 1588), English statesman, was the son of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland (q.v.), and brother of Guildford Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey. After his brother's execution he shared in the disgrace of his family. He was sent to the Tower, and was sentenced to death; but the queen not only pardoned and restored him to liberty, but appointed him master of the ordnance. On the accession of Elizabeth he was also made master of the horse. He was then, perhaps, about seven-and-twenty, and rose rapidly in the queen's favour. At an early age he had been mar ried to Amy, daughter of Sir John Robsart. Amy visited her hus band in the Tower during his imprisonment ; but afterwards when, under the new queen, he was much at court, she lived a good deal apart from him. He visited her, however, at times, in different parts of the country, and his expenses show that he treated her liberally. In Sept. 156o she was staying at Cumnor Hall in Berk shire, the house of one Anthony Forster, when she died from a fall downstairs, under circumstances which aroused suspicions of foul play. Her death had been surmised some time before as a thing that would remove an obstacle to Dudley's marriage with the queen, with whom he stood high in favour. The story of Amy Robsart is famous through Sir Walter Scott's treatment of it in Kenilworth. Her husband continued to rise in the queen's favour. She made him a knight of the Garter, and bestowed on him the castle of Kenilworth, the lordship of Denbigh and other lands in Warwickshire and in Wales. In Sept. 1564 she created him baron of Denbigh, and immediately afterwards earl of Leicester. In the preceding month, when she visited Cambridge, she at his request addressed the university in Latin. The honours shown him excited jealousy, especially as he was known to entertain still more ambitious hopes, which the queen apparently did not discourage. The earl of Sussex, in opposition to him, strongly favoured a match with the archduke Charles of Austria. Meanwhile Eliza beth, in 1564, recommended Leicester as a husband for Mary Queen of Scots. It may be doubted how far the proposal was serious. A few years later he formed an ambiguous connection with the baroness dowager of Sheffield, claimed by the lady to have been a valid marriage, though it was concealed from the queen. But she married again during Leicester's life, when he, too, had found a new partner. Long afterwards, her son, Sir Robert Dudley, sought to establish his legitimacy; but his suit was stopped, and the documents connected with it sealed up by an order of the Star Chamber.
In 1575 Queen Elizabeth visited the earl at Kenilworth, where she was entertained for some days with great magnificence. Next year Walter, earl of Essex, died in Ireland, and Leicester's subse quent marriage with his widow again gave rise to very serious im putations. Report said that he had had two children by her during her husband's absence in Ireland, and, as the feud between the two earls was notorious, Leicester's enemies easily suggested that he had poisoned his rival. The marriage tended to Leicester's dis credit and was kept secret at first; but it was revealed to the queen in 1579 by Simier, an emissary of the duke of Alencon, to whose projected match with Elizabeth the earl seemed to be the principal obstacle. The queen had some thought, it is said, of
committing Leicester to the Tower, but was dissuaded from doing so by his rival the earl of Sussex. Leicester had not, indeed, f a voured the Alencon marriage, but otherwise he had sought to promote a league with France against Spain. He and Burleigh had listened to proposals from France for the conquest and division of Flanders, and they were in the secret about the capture of Brill. When Alencon actually arrived, indeed, in August 1579, Dudley being in disgrace, showed himself for a time anti-French; but he soon returned to his former policy. He encouraged Drake's pirati cal expeditions against the Spaniards and had a share in the booty brought home. In Feb. 1582 he, with a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, escorted the duke of Alencon on his return to Ant werp to be invested with the government of the Low Countries. In 1584 he inaugurated an association for the protection of Queen Elizabeth against conspirators. About this time there issued from the press the famous pamphlet, supposed to have been the work of Parsons the Jesuit, entitled Leicester's Commonwealth (some times known as Father Parsons' Green Coat), which was sup pressed by letters from the privy council, in which it was declared that the charges against the earl were to the queen's certain knowl edge untrue ; nevertheless they were believed in by some who had no sympathy with the Jesuits long after Leicester's death.
In 1585 Leicester was appointed commander of an expedition to the Low Countries in aid of the revolted provinces, and sailed with a fleet of 5o ships to Flushing. In January 1586 he was in vested with the government of the provinces, but received a strong reprimand from the queen for acting without her authorization. Leicester was allowed to retain his dignity; but affairs did not prosper under his management. The most brilliant achievement of the war was the action at Zutphen, in which his nephew Sir Philip Sidney was slain. Disagreements increasing between him and the States, he was recalled by the queen; and in 1588 he was appointed lieutenant-general of the army mustered at Tilbury to resist Spanish invasion. After the crisis was past he was returning home to Kenilworth, when he was attacked by sudden illness and died at his house at Cornbury in Oxfordshire, on Sept. 4.
Such are the main facts of Leicester's life. Of his character it is more difficult to speak with confidence. Being in person tall and remarkably handsome, he improved these advantages by a very ingratiating manner. A man of ability and ambition, he was vain, and presumed at times upon his influence with the queen to a de gree that brought upon him a sharp rebuff. Yet Elizabeth stood by him. He was a man of princely tastes, especially in architecture. At court he became latterly the leader of the Puritan party, and his letters were pervaded by expressions of religious feeling which it is hard to believe were insincere. Of the darker suspicions against him it is enough to say that much was certainly reported beyond the truth; but there remain some facts sufficiently disagreeable, and others, perhaps, sufficiently mysterious, to make a just esti mate of the man a rather perplexing problem.