Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester - Love Affairs and Remarriage

Love Affairs and Remarriage

Confronted by a Puritan friend with rumours about his "ungodly life", Dudley defended himself in 1576:

I stand on the top of the hill, where ... the smallest slip seemeth a fall ... I may fall many ways and have more witnesses thereof than many others who perhaps be no saints neither ... for my faults ... they lie before Him who I have no doubt but will cancel them as I have been and shall be most heartily sorry for them.

With Lady Douglas Sheffield, a young widow of the Howard family, he had a serious relationship from about 1569. He explained to her that he could not marry, not even in order to beget a Dudley heir, without his "utter overthrow":

You must think it is some marvellous cause ... that forceth me thus to be cause almost of the ruin of mine own house ... my brother you see long married and not like to have children, it resteth so now in myself; and yet such occasions is there ... as if I should marry I am sure never to have favour".

Although in this letter Leicester said he still loved her as he did at the beginning, he offered her his help to find another husband for reasons of respectability if she so wished. The affair continued and in 1574 Lady Douglas gave birth to a son, also called Robert Dudley.

Lettice Knollys was the wife of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex and first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth on her mother's side. Leicester had flirted with her in the summer of 1565, causing an outbreak of jealousy in the Queen. After Lord Essex went to Ireland in 1573, they possibly became lovers. There was much talk, and on Essex' homecoming in December 1575, "great enmity between the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex" was expected. In July 1576 Essex returned to Ireland, where he died of dysentery in September. Rumours of poison, administered by the Earl of Leicester's means, were soon abroad. An official investigation conducted by Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland and Leicester's brother-in-law, did not find any indications of foul play but "a disease appropriate to this country ... whereof ... died many". The rumours continued.

The prospect of marriage to the Countess of Essex on the horizon, Leicester finally drew a line under his relationship with Lady Douglas Sheffield. Contrary to what she later claimed, they came to an amicable agreement over their son's custody. Young Robert grew up in Dudley's and his friends' houses, but had "leave to see" his mother until she left England in 1583. Leicester was very fond of his son and gave him an excellent education. In his will he left him the bulk of his estate (after his brother Ambrose's death), including Kenilworth Castle. Douglas Sheffield remarried in 1579. After the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the younger Robert Dudley tried unsuccessfully to prove that his parents had married 30 years earlier in a secret ceremony. In that case he would have been able to claim the earldoms of Leicester and Warwick. His mother supported him, but maintained that she had been strongly against raising the issue and was possibly pressured by her son. Leicester himself had throughout considered the boy as illegitimate.

On 21 September 1578 Leicester secretly married Lady Essex at his country house at Wanstead, with only a handful of relatives and friends present. He did not dare to tell the Queen of his marriage; nine months later Leicester's enemies at court acquainted her with the situation, causing a furious outburst. She already had been aware of his marriage plans a year earlier, though. Leicester's hope of an heir was fulfilled in 1581 when another Robert Dudley, styled Lord Denbigh, was born. The child died aged three in 1584, leaving behind disconsolate parents. Leicester found comfort in God since, as he wrote, "princes ... seldom do pity according to the rules of charity." The Earl turned out to be a devoted husband: In 1583 the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, wrote of "the Earl of Leicester and his lady to whom he is much attached", and "who has much influence over him". Leicester was a concerned parent to his four stepchildren, and in every respect worked for the advancement of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, whom he regarded as his political heir.

The marriage of her favourite hurt the Queen deeply. She never accepted it, humiliating Leicester in public: "my open and great disgraces delivered from her Majesty's mouth". Then again, she would be as fond of him as ever. In 1583 she informed ambassadors that Lettice Dudley was "a she-wolf" and her husband a "traitor" and "a cuckold". Lady Leicester's social life was much curtailed. Even her movements could pose a political problem, as Francis Walsingham explained: "I see not her Majesty disposed to use the services of my Lord of Leicester. There is great offence taken at the conveying down of his lady." The Earl stood by his wife, asking his colleagues to intercede for her; there was no hope: "She doth take every occasion by my marriage to withdraw any good from me", Leicester wrote still after seven years of marriage.