Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

BORN A. D. 1532.-died A. D. 1588.

THIS nobleman was the son of John Dudley, created duke of Northumberland by Henry VIII. He was born about 1532. When his father was executed for high treason, in attempting to set aside Mary, for the lady Jane Grey, who had married his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, Robert, with the rest of the family, suffered from the displeasure of the dominant party, and, being included in an act of attainder, was condemned to suffer death. That penalty, however, was not inflicted; and, in the year 1558, an act passed to reverse the attainder, and Robert, with his brother Ambrose, was restored to his titles and possessions. He was, after this, frequently employed by Mary in diplomatic business.

Under the succeeding reign of Elizabeth, however, he rapidly advanced in preferment. That queen bestowed on him special marks of favour, first appointing him master of the horse; and, soon after, causing him—to the surprise of the public-to be installed knight of the garter. Scandalous reports were whispered and believed at home: in foreign courts it was openly said that they lived together in adulterous intercourse. Dudley had married the daughter and heiress of Sir John Robesart, but that lady was not permitted to appear at court: her lord allotted for her residence a lonely mansion called Cumnor, in Berkshire, where she suddenly died by an accidental fall, but under such suspicious circumstances, as to impress the public with the belief that she had been murdered. It was believed, indeed, that the queen had solemnly pledged her word to Dudley that she would become his wife, and a lady of the bed-chamber was named as witness to the contract. From opposition to this measure arising from the queen's ministers, and the scandalous reports spread abroad on the continent, it appears the marriage was postponed; but several years elapsed before the design was entirely abandoned. Meanwhile, Dudley was the supreme favourite at court he was called only 'My lord' without any addition; all affairs were imparted through him; ambassadors gave account to him of their negotiations; every one plied his suit through him, for no other medium would be attended with success. Dudley, thus possessed of sole influence with the queen, was naturally an object of jealousy and hatred. To remove him from court, Cecil, it is said, recommended to the queen to propose him as the husband of her cousin, the queen of Scots. To this proposal she acceded, without however expecting that it would be accepted, or even wishing for it. To raise her favourite to a rank equal to his pretensions, she created him Earl of Leicester. The ceremony was performed at Westminster, in 1564, with great solemnity; the queen herself assisting, and Dudley sitting on his knees before her with great gravity, while she bestowed on him some familiar token of her favour. The Scottish queen, however, having rejected the earl of Leicester and decided in favour of Lord Darnley, there was some strong expectation raised that Elizabeth would take Leicester for herself, as she had told Sir James Melvil, that "she esteemed him as her brother and best friend; whom she herself would have married,

had she ever minded to have taken a husband." But by the persuasion of a party inimical to Leicester, Elizabeth was brought to think seriously of a foreign husband, and occasionally to dispute the ascendency which Leicester assumed over her. She gave him hints of her displeasure in enigmatic notes: while he thought proper to absent himself from court, but whether in a fit of jealousy or by royal mandate does not appear. These occasional quarrels, however, only served, upon reconciliation, to confirm his influence. Publicly he affected to advocate the project of a foreign alliance, but privately he threw every obstacle in its way; and if he did not ultimately obtain the queen for himself, he succeeded at least, in extinguishing the hopes of every other suitor, whether native or foreigner. The archduke Charles of Austria, having renewed his suit to the queen, and being favoured by the earl of Sussex and his party, the queen was brought into her usual state of indecision, and meanwhile the irritation of the two noblemen against each other was such, that they went constantly armed, and were attended by armed men. The negotiation was protracted upwards of two years. Sometimes Sussex, sometimes Leicester prevailed. Sussex, however, having been despatched to Maximilian, the father of the arch-duke, as ambassador from Elizabeth, in his absence Leicester ruled without control, and the hopes of the arch-duke were entirely quashed by the peremptory requirement that in the event of his union with the queen, he must wholly relinquish the Catholic form of worship. Leicester continued thus established in the royal favour, and was principal in all the great affairs of state. In 1572, he was privately married to the lady Douglas, whom he never acknowledged as his wife, nor the son which she bare him as legitimate. On the death of the earl of Essex, in Ireland -not without suspicion of having been poisoned through the intervention of Leicester--the latter proposed to Lady Douglas, his wife, articles of separation: upon her refusal he is said to have had recourse to the same diabolical means of administering poison to her also, that there might be no obstacle to his union with the widow of Essex. They were privately married in 1576, unknown to the queen. Simier, the representative of the duke of Anjou, who had renewed his suit to the queen, persuaded Elizabeth that it was beneath her dignity to take for her husband Leicester, a man who owed whatever he possessed to her bounty; and added the important information, that her favourite had recently married, without her knowledge, the widow of the late earl of Essex. Leicester let fall some hints of vengeance; but the irritated queen ordered him to be confined at Greenwich, and would have sent him to the Tower, but for the interposition of the earl of Sussex ;at the same time severely prohibiting any kind of insult to the French

envoy.

Leicester at first united with Sussex, Burleigh, and Hunsdon, in urging the marriage of the queen, but afterwards opposed it on the ground of the duke's religion, and the improbability of an heir to the throne-the queen being in her forty-ninth year. The duke, however, pressed his suit, and Leicester, with others, was commanded to subscribe a written paper, regulating the rites to be observed, and the form of contract to be pronounced, by both parties at the celebration of the marriage. But though Leicester, with Walsingham and Hatton, at the royal command, had affixed his signature to the paper, he had

with them previously arranged a new plan of opposition. After every thing had been settled respecting the marriage, Elizabeth was so assailed by the tears and entreaties of her female attendants, who had received their lesson from Leicester and the others, that she finally broke off the match; and the duke, returning from her presence to his apartment, pensive and irritated, threw away the ring which his supposed bride had placed on his finger in token of her intentions, exclaiming, that the women of England were as changeable and capricious as the waves which encircled their island. The duke was, however. admitted afterward to the most familiar intimacy, and, on his departure, the queen ordered the earl of Leicester, with six lords and a numerous train of gentlemen, to accompany him as far as the city of Brussels. Leicester thus resumed his ascendancy over the queen, and continued at the head of affairs, and was particularly active in promoting the overture of the Belgian provinces to Elizabeth, to become their sovereign, and protect them in the profession of the reformed religion against the king of Spain. The queen yielded so far as to enter into a treaty of alliance with the Belgians, but the disgrace of aiding rebels who pretended to depose their lawful sovereign, haunted her minds. and she strictly forbade Leicester, the commander of her forces, to engage in any enterprise, or to accept of any honour, which could be construed into an admission that Philip had lost the sovereignty of the provinces. But the views of the favourite were very different from those of his mistress. His ambition aspired to the place which had been possessed and forfeited by the duke of Anjou; and on his arrival in Holland, in December, 1585, he asked, and, after some demur, obtained from the gratitude of the states the title of Excellency,' the office of captaingeneral of the united provinces, and the whole control of the army, the finances, and the courts of judicature. He was attended by a splendid retinue of English noblemen and gentlemen, and wanted nothing but the name to constitute him a king.

When the news of these proceedings reached the queen, she manifested her displeasure in no measured terms. She charged Leicester with presumption and vanity, with contempt of the royal authority, with having sacrificed the honour of his sovereign to his own ambition; but when she was told that he had sent for his countess and was preparing to hold a court which in splendour should eclipse her own, she burst into a paroxysm of rage, swearing with great oaths, that she "would have no more courts under her obeysance than one, and that she would let the upstart know how easily the hand which had raised him could also beat him to the ground." Leicester, however, smiled at these threats and spent his time in progresses from one city to another every where he gave and received the most sumptuous entertainments, and, on all occasions, displayed the magnificence of a sovereign prince. After the violence of the queen's paroxysm was over, she was persuaded by Lord Burleigh, to send her captain-general supplies for a campaign against the Spaniards. But Leicester proved no match for Farnese, the prince of Parma: the campaign proved unsuccessful; the states quarrelled with the earl, and he hastily returned to England at the command of the queen to assist her in the important affair of the queen of Scots. On his return, the earl instantly regained his influence with the queen, and, instead of punishment, met with

reward, being installed lord-steward of the household, and chief justice in Eyre south of the Trent.

During the absence of Leicester from Belgium, a party had been formed against him, and the States proceeded to the appointment of another head, in the person of Maurice, son of the late prince of Orange. Leicester, however, speedily found means to annul this proceeding by the influence which he had gained in the Netherlands over the reformed clergy. He had frequented their worship,-prayed, fasted, and received the sacrament with them,—and, on every occasion, had avowed a determination to extirpate popery, and to establish the gospel. Elizabeth felt the affront offered to her favourite as offered to herself, and the Lord Buckhurst was despatched to signify her displeasure. By his exertions matters were accommodated, and the fury of the people was appeased by a promise that Leicester should immediately return.

The queen, however, not wishing to protract the war with Spain, would have preferred that Leicester should remain at home, and that the contest should gradually subside. The earl, on the contrary, with his friends in the council, urged the continuation of the war. The conduct of Admiral Drake towards the Spaniards having provoked still greater hostilities, the States pressed the queen most urgently for the fulfilment of her promise, and at length Leicester took his departure for Holland, with a large sum of money, and a reinforcement of 5000 men. A misunderstanding, however, soon arose between the earl and the States, who accused the queen, his mistress, with avarice, in wishing to sell them to the king of Spain for a stipulated sum sufficient to defray the past expenses of the war. This charge, though unfounded and improbable, was circulated through the country, and the earl, from having been the idol, became, in a few days, the execration of the people. Mutual recriminations ensued, and the quarrel went such a length that Leicester lost ground with the queen. She believed that he had neglected her instructions, and sought chiefly his own aggrandizement; and when Farnese complained that the queen had no real desire for peace, she laid the blame, first on the negligence, and then on the ambition of Leicester. He was, therefore, recalled; and, on his arrival, aware of his danger, threw himself at her feet, and conjured her to have pity on her former favourite. "She had sent him to the Netherlands with honour,-would she receive him back in disgrace? She had raised him from the dust,—would she now bury him alive?" The appeal moved the heart of the queen, and Leicester was prepared for the summons on the following morning to appear before the council. There, instead of kneeling at the foot of the table, he took his accustomed seat; and, when the secretary began to read the charges which had been prepared, he arose, inveighed against the baseness and perfidy of his calumniators, and appealed from the prejudices of his equals to the equity of his sovereign. The members gazed on each other; the secretary passed to the ordinary business of the day, and the Lord Buckhurst, the accuser, was ordered to consider himself a prisoner in his own house.

Thus restored to his place in the affections of the queen and the councils of the nation, when the Spanish armada threatened England, the earl was appointed to the command of an army for the protection of the capital. These forces lay at Tilbury on the Thames, and the

queen talked of appearing at their head, and animating them in battle by her presence. To this proposal Leicester objected. "As for your person," he wrote to her, "being the most dainty and sacred thing we have in this world to care for, I cannot, most dear queen, consent that you should expose it to danger; for upon your well-doing consists all the safety of your whole kingdom; and, therefore, preserve that above all. Yet will I not, that in some sort so princely and rare a magnanimity should not appear to your people and to the world as it is." He then recommends her merely to visit the camp and fort for a few days. With this advice she complied; and Leicester now appeared in her view without a rival. To reward his transcendant merit, a new and unprecedented office was created, which would have conferred on him an authority almost equal to that of his sovereign. He was appointed lord-lieutenant of England and Ireland. The warrant was prepared for the royal signature, when the unexpected death of the favourite put an end to all such distinctions. On the queen's departure from Tilbury, Leicester had disbanded the army, and set out for his castle at Kenilworth; but at Cornbury-park in Oxfordshire, his progress was arrested by a violent disease, which, whether it arose from natural causes, or the anguish of disappointed ambition, (Burleigh and Hatton having remonstrated with the queen on the subject of the earl's promotion,) or from poison administered by his wife and her supposed paramour, speedily terminated his life, September 4th, 1588. queen shed many tears for the loss of her favourite, but at the same time took care of her exchequer, by ordering the public sale of his goods for the payment of certain sums which he owed to the revenue.

The

Leicester possessed in his youth those personal attractions which, in the court of Elizabeth, were essential to prosperity. By the spirit of his conversation, the warmth of his flattery, and the expense of his entertainments, he maintained his ascendancy over the queen for the long period of thirty years. As a statesman or commander, he displayed but little ability. His rapacity and ambition were unbounded. His sanction of the reformed religion and the style of his correspondence, would lead us to think he was a man of superior piety, but the course of his life seems entirely to contradict such a character. In the year 1584, the history of his life was published in a tract, which was known by the name of Leicester's Commonwealth.' This book contained so much to the prejudice of the earl, that his nephew, Sir Philip Sydney, undertook to answer it; but he does not appear to have disproved its most important statements. The work was attributed to Persons, the Jesuit.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

BORN A. D. 1539.-died A. D. 1583.

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, a uterine brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, and, like him, one of the many enterprising men who adorned the age of Elizabeth, was born in 1539, of an ancient Devonshire family. His mother, when she became a widow, married Mr Raleigh; of this marriage, Sir Walter was the offspring. Humphrey, though a second