Duca de Northumbria
Robert Dudley (b.1573 ~ d.1649) was the only surviving son, acknowledged, of Lord Sir Robert Dudley, Patron of Theatre, and the child of his second wife; Douglas (ne) Howard, (daughter of Thomas, first Baron Howard of Effingham).
Douglas was born in 1545, (d.1608) she married Dudley in 1573, as the widow of John Sheffield. Robert’s father, the most famous Earl of Leicester denied the marriage in his lifetime.
Sixteen years after his fathers death Robert brought the matter to the attention of the Star Chamber. He sought to establish his rightful decent as the Earl of Leicester and to follow as Heir to his uncle Ambrose Dudley’s estate of Warwick Castle, Ambrose having no recorded issue.
Under Oath, Douglas (Dudley) swore that ‘Leycester’ had solemnly contracted to marry her in Cannon Row, Westminster in 1571 and that the marriage was at Esher in Surrey in May 1573. The Star Chamber failed to pronounce against the validity of the marriage, rejecting the evidence, arresting several of the living witnesses to the marriage, and fined them for perjury or subordination. The papers in the case were impounded in the interests of ‘Public policy’ to prevent the issue from being raised again! This fact alone regardless of the ‘conjectural’ nature of the evidence is enough to give the impression that some weight ought now be attached to its content.
Robert had been entered into Christ Church Collage at Oxford in 1587 with the status of an Earl’s son. On his fathers death in 1588 Robert was fourteen and inherited not insubstantial property under the earls will at his death in 1588, and in the following year the property of Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick. It was at the age of nineteen in 1592 that young Robert first married, to a sister of Sir Thomas Cavendish.
Cavendish had himself circumnavigated the world not long after Drake, and from his father in law Robert gained a couple of ships with which he intended to harass the Spaniard in the southern seas. Although he did not win any Government approval for his plans, ships being valuable and his youth at the age of twenty depriving him of any experience, he managed to slip away to the West Indies and enthusiastically set about his intentions, raiding Spanish shipping off Trinidad and then adventuring up the hitherto unexplored ‘Orinoco’ river where he put his name to an island he discovered, calling it proudly ‘Dudleiana’.
In 1594-5 he commanded an expedition to the West Indies and the Guiana coast of South America. It was only after this bold venture that he returned to join his cousin Essex on the ‘immortal’ expedition to Cadiz (1596) when he served as commander on a vessel in the attack at Cadiz for which he was knighted. Dudley fell from favour at the English court for his philandering and ill-considered support in the Essex rebellion.
In 1605 Dudley under the presseure of religious persecution departed English shores to settle in Tuscany, Italy with his cousin Elisabeth Southwell, whom he had disguised as a page. He ‘married’ his Mistress by a Papal dispensation and settled in Florence having declared himself a Roman Catholic. When ordered to return home to provide for his deserted wife and family, he refused, was outlawed, and his property was confiscated.
From 1606 until his death in 1649 he lived in Florence and was an influential member of the Court under the patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany a member of the Medici family.
The Emperor of Germany created him ‘Duca di Northumbria’ in 1620. Robert Dudley II’nds third marriage, to Elizabeth Southwell, the daughter of Sir Robert Southwell and Lady Elizabeth Howard produced as many as at least 11 potential heirs but the European title fell into abeyance on the death of Ferdinando Dudley in 1757.
Hcontinued his contact with the English Court by sending ‘voluminous’ letters to King James I ‘on the art of controlling refractory Parliaments’, and corresponded with Henry, the Prince of Wales on the subjects of Navigation and Shipbuilding.
Dudley was a skilled mathematician and architect, master of navigation, a designer of warships, practiced in medicine, instrument making, and cartography as one might expect with a father educated by Dr John Dee.
Brilliant and ambitious, he became a skilled navigator, engineer, and chart maker, to the extent of making a voyage of discovery undertaken in the spirit of Sir Francis Drake, however like his father before him he acquired a reputation as a bigamist and privateer. Whilst in the service of the grand-duke he is said to have done some fighting against the Barbary pirates.
Lady Alice (ne Leigh) Dudley, (daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh and Katherine, daughter of Sir John Spencer), whom he had married in 1596 and by whom he had four known daughters, and who was left behind some years later after his failed appeal to the Star Chamber, was created Duchess in 1645, the patent which recognises her husbands legitimacy confers the precedence of a Duke’s daughters on her surviving children and heirs. The title was confirmed by Charles II'nd in 1660, legitimizing its English status, having originally been granted to her by Ferdinand II.
The Lady Alice died in 1668/9, at the age of 90, her Peerage thereafter seems to have fallen ‘extinct’. Of the Duchess of Dudley’s children it is recorded Alicia was born at Kenilworth in 1597, but died young in 1621. Frances married Sir Gilbert Knifeton of Bradley, Derbyshire, she lived until 1644, but also died without issue and was likewise buried at St. Giles.
Another was Katherine who married Sir Richard Leverson of Trentham. She lived until 1673.
The other recorded daughter of the duchess being Lady Anne Dudley who married the Lawyer Sir Robert Holborne.
I have not confirmed the date of his marriage to Lady Anne but suggest it to have been between 1633-36.
Dell'Arcano del Mare (Secrets of the Sea)
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His major accomplishment and his masterwork Dell'Arcano del Mare (Secrets of the Sea), was an atlas including sea and a comprehensive treatise on navigation and shipwightry also becoming renowned as the first atlas of sea charts of the world.