Claiming Legitimacy
In May 1603 Dudley was apparently told by a shadowy adventurer called Thomas Drury that his parents had been secretly married. He began trying to establish his claim to the titles of Earl of Leicester and Earl of Warwick, as well as to inherit his deceased uncle Ambrose Dudley's estate of Warwick Castle. The case came before the Star Chamber in 1604–1605 and aroused great public interest. 90 witnesses for Dudley and 57 for the widowed Countess of Leicester, Lettice Knollys, appeared. Dudley won, and possibly pressured, his mother to support his cause. She declared in writing (she did not attend the trial personally) that Leicester had solemnly contracted to marry her in Cannon Row, Westminster, in 1571, and that they were married at Esher, Surrey, "in wintertime" in 1573. Yet all of the ten putative witnesses ("besides others") to the ceremony were long dead since. Neither could she remember who the "minister" was, nor the exact date of the marriage. The Star Chamber rejected the evidence and fined several of the witnesses. It was concluded that Sir Robert Dudley had been duped by Thomas Drury, who in his turn had sought "his own private gains". King James I ratified the judgement and it was handed down on 10 May 1605. In 1621 an official investigation in Tuscany, Dudley's new country, concluded that Dudley's "friends maintain that his father married Lady Sheffield, but they are unable to account for her marriage during his lifetime, an act so injurious to the alleged legitimacy of her son."
Read more about this topic: Robert Dudley (explorer)
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