Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Leicester

“ On Leicester’s death it was found that he had bequeathed the castle for life to his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and after him to his son by Lady Douglas Sheffield, whom he termed Sir Robert Dudley.
The only portion now habitable of what was anciently one of the finest baronial fortress homes in the kingdom is Leicester’s magnificent gate–house, which many authorities are agreed equals in its size and beauty of architecture many a manor–house itself. ”

“ She asserted that they were, at Esher in Surrey, but her marriage with Sir Edward Stafford of Grafton, after her desertion by Leicester, would seem to be a tacit confession that her claim had no foundation. Her son Robert was born in May 1573, was recognized by Leicester, and sent to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1587. He inherited all Leicester’s property under the earl’s will at his death in 1588, and in the following year the property of Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick. In 1594 he made a voyage to the West Indies, and in 1596 he took part in the expedition to Cadiz and was knighted. ”

“ Such are the main facts of Leicester’s life. Of his character it is more difficult to speak with confidence, but some features of it are indisputable. Being in person tall and remarkably handsome, he improved these advantages by a very ingratiating manner. A man of no small ability and still more ambition, he was nevertheless vain, and presumed at times upon his influence with the queen to a degree that brought upon him a sharp rebuff. Yet Elizabeth stood by him. ”

“ The plot in brief is as follows:—Robert Dudley, [Pg 75] Earl of Leicester, son of the Duke of Northumberland, who had been executed for endeavouring to place Lady Jane Grey upon the throne, having secretly married Amy Robsart, desires to be free, and confides his wishes to his retainers, Richard Varney and Anthony Forster. The Countess, who was living in retirement at Cumnor Place, hearing of the festivities given by her husband at Kenilworth, goes secretly there, and has a most affecting interview with Queen Elizabeth, in the course of which the Queen bitterly reproaches Leicester. ”

“ Simon Curlevache was born about the year 1175, for he must have been a prominent member of the Guild Merchant, and probably over 25 years of age, when he witnessed the very important charter in which Robert, Earl of Leicester, who died in 1204, granted to the Burgesses of the town the right to pasture beasts in the Cowhay meadow beyond the South Gate. ”

“ Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce the great fire which burns up wisdom, prudence and habit.
The Earl of Leicester, so long counted astute, clearheaded, and well- governed, had been suddenly foisted out of balance, shaken from his imperious composure, tortured out of an assumed and persistent urbanity, by the presence in Greenwich Palace of a Huguenot exile of no seeming importance, save what the Medici grimly gave him by desiring his head. ”

“ She was the eldest of the eight daughters of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, of that name, by Dorothy, daughter of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Lord and Lady Leicester bore a high character for ‘integrity and refinement of breeding at the Court of Charles the First, while in private life they shone a bright example of domestic harmony.’ Lady Leicester was a provident as well as a tender mother, and she entertained early projects in the matter of an advantageous marriage for her daughter, while Dorothy was still very young. ”

“ This marriage, at all events, tended to Leicester’s discredit and was kept secret at first; but it was revealed to the queen in 1579 by Simier, an emissary of the duke of Alençon, to whose projected match with Elizabeth the earl seemed to be the principal obstacle. The queen showed great displeasure at the news, and 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. He had not, indeed, favoured the Alençon marriage, but otherwise he had sought to promote a league with France against Spain. ”

“ ROBERT DEVERAUX, EARL OF ESSEX,
A GREAT FAVOURITE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH;
With a Lamentable Ballad on his Death. Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, was in every respect qualified for a soldier, but the most unfit man in the world for a courtier. He was very young when his father died ”

“ Some time after, there was a certain clerk in this town of Leicester, by name Simon Maudit, who, for some time after the death of the aforesaid Robert, Earl of Leicester, who made the charter of quitclaim, had the reeveship of Leicester in farm, and collected and exacted the said pence called gavelpence by force and at his own will, distraining all who refused to pay, bidding them show him a warranty of quitclaim, for he knew very well that the quitclaim was burnt, so they are paid to this very day. ”

“ THE second son of Robert Rich, first Earl of Warwick, by Lady Penelope Devereux, daughter of Walter, Earl of Essex. He went to France and Holland in his youth, and returning to England appeared at Court, where he attracted the notice and favour of George, Duke of Buckingham, who was then all-powerful with King James the First. It appears to have been through Buckingham’s intervention that he married the rich heiress of Sir John Cope of Kensington, of which place Rich shortly bore the title of Baron. He also held offices at Court about the King’s person, and that of Henry Prince of Wales ”

“ William Leverich, who in the year 1354 was living in the Swinesmarket, represented the Borough in Parliament in 1339. Richard Leverich, whose goods were valued in 1336 at the sum of sixty shillings, no inconsiderable amount, was twice Mayor, and for some years Coroner, and he was also a Parliamentary Burgess. His second Mayoralty was distinguished by the visit to Leicester of the King and Queen of England, who came to attend the funeral of Earl Henry of Lancaster. ”

“ Motley, in his History of the United Netherlands, on the faith of a paper in the Record Office, avers Leicester’s innocence; but the tenor of a life counts for more than one justifying document in measuring a man’s moral make-up.
In the year 1575, when the revels of Kenilworth occurred, the Earl of Leicester was a widower and Amy Robsart had been ten years mouldering in her grave: but in the year 1576 the young Countess of [318] Essex suddenly became a widow, and was married privately, very shortly afterward, to the Earl of Leicester. ”

“ On this scene, coming more and more into prominence as the King became older, and as the Prince of Wales, or rather Bute and his clique, waxed bolder, appears the mysterious and elusive influence of Leicester House. It is difficult to trace or measure this combination, except in the naked fact of an old King and a young heir, nor is it easy to trace the connection of Pitt with this party. Every movement in Leicester House was jealously watched by the politicians, much as a late Sultan is said to have tracked the movements of the least menial of his dethroned and secluded predecessor. ”

“ The present ruins are fragments of a house built afterwards. The foundations that can still be traced show that it was a grand old building. The gardens and park now raise vegetables for the Leicester market.
Leicester Castle still exists only in a portion of the great hall, but it has been enlarged and modernized, and is now used for the county offices. The castle was built after the Norman Conquest to keep the townspeople in check. It was afterwards a stronghold of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and it then became part of the Duchy of Lancaster. ”

“ Leicester had originally courted him, caressed him, especially recommended him to the Queen's favour, given him money—as he said, "two hundred pounds sterling thick at a time"—and openly pronounced him to be "in ability above all men." "No man hath ever sought a man," he said, "as I have sought P. B."
The period of their friendship was, however, very brief. Before many weeks had passed there was no vituperative epithet that Leicester was not in the daily habit of bestowing upon Paul. The Earl's vocabulary of abuse was not a limited one, but he exhausted it on the head of the Advocate. ”

“ The popularity which Leicester at this time enjoyed was unexampled; and here we see again the not unfrequent spectacle of a man, strong in the affections of the people, becoming much more a king than he who wears the crown. The earl exercised his authority upon all those barons who still adhered to the royal cause, and compelled them to quit their strongholds, to give up their possessions, and submit to a trial by their peers. In the judgments passed upon these men we see the rapid advance which had lately taken place in civilisation. ”

“ He had been nervously fingering the hammer of his own piece, and while speaking he crossed the room and took a position near that side of the house from whence came the sound of firearms.
Anne remained by the hearth, watching him closely, her tightly clenched hands being all that told of the agitation within.
"Are the little ones much affrighted?" he asked.
"No," she said, still in her calm, sweet fashion; "they do not seem to be—that is, not much. Humphrey begged that he might have a gun, and Robert sat quiet, looking at me with eyes so like your own as he asked, 'Art fearful, mother? ”

“ Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to [Pg 173] do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage, and generally reviews his importance to society. ”

“ It was provided, in 1273, that no one living on the fee of the Bishop might be a Jurat of Leicester. It would appear that the great causeway in Humberstonegate was erected in 1344, when the Earl of Derby, the eldest son of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, sent his serjeant, Walter of Bintrey, to Leicester "for the lord's business for the repair of ways in Humberstonegate and Belgravegate." ”

“ Alfred Rimmer, "Ancient Stone Crosses of England" (London, 1875) , 44, 45. Dictionary of National Biography s.v. "Henry, 3rd Earl of Leicester" (by the Rev. W. Hunt) . Soar Lane, (extra portam borialem) .⁠ N.I. 532. ”

“ In 1570 and 1571, with much show of disinterestedness, Leicester strongly supported the proposal that Elizabeth should marry the Duke of Anjou. Private affairs doubtless encouraged this policy. In 1571 he contracted himself to Douglas Sheffield, widow of John, second baron Sheffield, and daughter of William, first lord Howard of Effingham. In May 1573 he secretly married the lady at Esher. Two days later a son, Robert [see Dudley, Sir Robert, 1573-1649] , was born, of whose legitimacy there can be little doubt. Apparently fearing the queen's wrath, Leicester never acknowledged this marriage. ”

“ The prisoners taken to the Castle dungeon were the Earl's men who were not Leicester men. The Earl had power to seize and hang and confiscate the goods of all thieves caught within his territory. Thus, in 1298, Gilbert Makeleys, of Houghton, "taken on the Earl's liberty in the town of Houghton," was put into the Castle prison. After the new county gaol had been built in 1309, such persons continued to be incarcerated in the Castle gaol. Thus, in the year 1323, a man taken at Stretton-in-the-Street, in Warwickshire, with a stolen bullock, was taken "to the prison of the Castle of Leicester." ”

“ The Duke did not answer. I turned my eyes to some drawings on the table; I expressed my admiration of them. "They are mine," said the Regent. "Ah! I should have been much more accomplished as a private gentleman than I fear I ever shall be as a public man of toil and business. Business—bah! But Necessity is the only real sovereign in the world, the only despot for whom there is no law. What! are you going already, Count Devereux?"
"Monseigneur's anteroom is crowded with less fortunate persons than myself, whose sins of envy and covetousness I am now answerable for." ”

“ The violence, ingratitude, tyranny, rapacity, and treachery of the Earl of Leicester, give a very bad idea of his moral character, and make us regard his death as the most fortunate event which, in this conjuncture, could have happened to the English nation; yet must we allow the man to have possessed great abilities, and the appearance of great virtues, who, though a stranger, could at a time when strangers were the most odious, and the most universally decried, have acquired so extensive an interest in the kingdom, and have so nearly paved his way to the throne itself. ”

“ Thirty years later we find this same Robert of the Dovecote selling stones illegally taken from the town wall to a Canon of Leicester Abbey, who confessed that he bought the stone "foreknowing that it was from the town wall." There seems to be no record of the Guild meeting in their new hall until March, 1276, but the building had been restored a year or two before. In 1274, Alexander le Debonair, who was Mayor of Leicester from 1270 to 1275, "rendered an account of the Guild-hall of £6 9s. 3d. in the presence of the Community." ”

“ Feb. 19. =Paul’s= (Titus and Gisippus) . Mask of children.
Feb. 26–March 3. Visit to Wanstead? (Earl of Leicester) . [226]
April. Italian play before Privy Council at Durham Place. [227]
Apr. 29 < > May 6. Greenwich. [228]
May 9–10. Visit to Leicester House (Earl of Leicester) . [229]
May 14–c. 25. Visits to Stoke Newington (John Dudley) , Theobalds (Lord Burghley, May 14 or 15, for 3 days) , Northiaw (Earl of Warwick) , Gorhambury (Sir Nicholas Bacon, May 18–22) , Fold? at Barnet (Mr. Waller) , Highgate (Thomas? Lichfield) . ”