Robert set about the renovation work with a will, spending £60,000 – despite his careful eye on the cost of each item of expenditure. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was not concerned with achieving symmetry, but wanted the castellated harmony of a design set within its own landscape; on one side, a lake stocked with fish and on the other, a park containing ‘shaded bowers, arbours, seats and walks’,16 brimming with red deer. It was designed to captivate the Queen and to impress her court and foreign visitors with legendary entertainments. It was this approach that led to the eighteenth-century development of the English country garden by such names as ‘Capability’ Brown. Laneham eulogised over:
the rare beauty of building … all of the hard quarry stone, every room so spacious, so well belighted and so high-roofed within … by day time on every side so glittering of glass, a’ night by continual brightness of candle, fire and torchlight, transparent through the lightsome windows.17
With Robert being a patron of the arts, Kenilworth, with its hall of 45ft by 90ft, became the setting for his magnificent picture and literary collection.
Against the darkness of wood panelling the furniture displayed a fairy-like beauty, for some of it was upholstered in coloured lamé; there were chairs covered in ‘purple-silver’, in ‘peach-silver’ and in ‘crimson-silver’. The great beds, their curtains of satin or velvet, crimson, green or blue, were embroidered all over with twinkling gold or silver, their posts were carved with the Earl’s armorial bearings, their counterpanes of satin to match the curtains bore in the centre the bear and ragged staff, worked in gold or silver thread.18
In 1565, Elizabeth paid a brief visit during its construction. Leicester had written to Anthony Forster, his Steward of the Household, to make provision for everything ‘against my chiefest day’. He needed to procure tapestries for the dining chamber complaining: ‘I cannot have such hangings as I have looked for [from Flanders]’, but heard there were some ‘very good’ available in London. ‘In any case, deal with Mr Spinola … he is able to get such stuff better cheap than any man, and I am sure will do his best for me.’19
It was not just Kenilworth. He also wanted to make Denbigh the focal point for his estates in North Wales. He was unimpressed when Denbigh’s burgesses elected their own candidate to Parliament in April 1572, rather than his nominee as a Lord of the Manor should expect. He demanded that the election be cancelled so that they could demonstrate the regard in which he was held, but to his fury they persisted with their own man. Nevertheless, he made important repairs to its castle and provided land to build a shire hall. On 1 September 1578, he appealed to the church for funds to build a cathedral. It was not large, but its unostentatious design reflected, for the first time, the simple non-ritualistic liturgy of Puritan dogma. Funds were raised only slowly, and it remained incomplete at his death. Although further money was provided later, it was never finished. He also established magnificent houses in London. As will be seen, after his reconciliation with Elizabeth in 1565, he was granted the lease of Durham Place, previously occupied by de Quadra. It had been used for the reception following the marriage of his brother, Guildford, to Jane Grey. His lease expired in 1568, and he lighted on Paget Place, also in the Strand opposite St Clement Danes. It was in the occupation of the Spanish Ambassador, de Espés, who was considerably inconvenienced when required to move. He was offered the much less imposing Winchester House on the south side of the river in Southwark, the property of the Bishop of Winchester. Neither the Bishop, who ‘raised some difficulties’, nor de Espés cared for this new arrangement, which had been foisted onto them. The lease had to be settled by an order from the Council. Robert not only instructed the Bishop to give up possession, but arranged the rental charge, which both parties accepted.
Paget Place was one of a line of mansions in the Strand. It stood behind a gatehouse opening into the forecourt of a house surrounding four sides of an inner court. Its south front faced onto an oblong formal garden leading down to the river stairs. This southern block housed a great hall, terminating at its eastern end in a battlemented tower. Robert occupied the great chamber and withdrawing chamber above. He renamed the premises Leicester House and occupied it until his death, making it ‘the centre of his social and political existence’.20 It was the very height of luxury. He provided accommodation for other members of his family, including Ambrose, who did not have a London residence of his own. In 1575, he added a little banqueting house in the garden by the river, with the state room on its second floor. Cecil provided the stone for its walls.21
In 1577, Robert purchased Naked Haw Hall six miles out of London in Essex, with the neighbouring manor of Stonehall as a country retreat for Lettice Knollys.22 This unfortunately named property, built by Richard, 1st Lord Rich, during the 1550s in what had been one of Henry VIII’s hunting parks, contained a hall, a great chamber, a chapel, twenty bedrooms and stabling for fifty-eight horses.23 Robert arranged for it to be significantly expanded and it was renamed Wanstead Hall [the White House]. Like all Robert’s residences, it was palatially decorated and the walls were covered with portraits, which included Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Mary Tudor, and an assortment of European heads of state including two of Anjou. He nominated rooms for his principal guests including a Queen’s chamber for when she visited, with its bed hung with cloth of tinsel. Robert’s own chamber contained a bed with ‘gilded posts, curtains of yellow damask and a quilt of straw-coloured taffeta’.24 He had wardrobes of rich clothing and hats. In addition to other chambers, there was a long gallery, a withdrawing chamber, and a hot house for taking baths. The purchase and cost of extending Wanstead placed an enormous burden on Robert’s overstretched finances and by 1580 he was obliged to take out a mortgage on the property to raise £4,000.
In 1585, Elizabeth appointed Robert as Chief Justice Itinerant of all the forests ‘this side of the Trent’, with the role of ranger of 500 acres of virgin woodland surrounding a stone-built lodge with mullioned windows at Cornbury in Oxfordshire. This looked out onto ‘parkland scattered with trees that gradually thickened into deep woods’.25 When she also granted him the manor of Langley, he acquired the surroundings woodlands and the forest of Wychwood.
Robert loved beautiful possessions and display, indulging himself with more than he could afford.26 All his houses were filled with magnificent and costly items, often adorned with the Dudley crest of a bear and ragged staff. He was especially fond of Turkey carpets, sometimes hung at windows or as a covering for tables; he was an early user of oriental carpets as floor coverings. His possessions included venetian glass, silver-gilt tableware and an array of portraits of members of his family and of Elizabeth. A tapestry made for the banqueting house at Leicester House still survives in the Victoria and Albert museum.27 It housed sculptures of both Robert and the Queen until the late 1580s, but they seem to have disappeared, perhaps a result of Lettice’s influence.
Robert also patronised artists including the miniaturist, Nicholas Hilliard. When Elizabeth granted a lease of premises to Hilliard in 1582, the letters patent remained uncompleted in the offices of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay. Robert wrote to Mildmay to expedite the documentation and within three months, Hilliard had moved in. He executed a miniature of Lettice Knollys shortly after her marriage to Robert in watercolour on vellum. This is set in an emerald and diamond frame. One of Hilliard’s two daughters was named Lettice in her honour.28 He also painted a miniature of Penelope Devereux and made a small full-length portrait of Robert in 1588.
More significant was Robert’s patronage of famous poets, writers and playwrights, who ‘habitually assembled’29 with great thinkers at his houses. The most famous of these was Philip Sidney. In February 1577, Philip’s elder sister, Ambrosia (named after Ambrose), had died, and Elizabeth wrote a most sympathetic letter to Sir Henry and Mary Sidney offering, if it would suit them, to take their younger daughter Mary, who was then 14, into a position at court. This offer was gratefully accepted. She share
d all her brother’s charm and good looks and, within a year, had become betrothed to Henry Herbert, who had succeeded his father as Earl of Pembroke in 1570. He was then aged 42 and was widowed but was a glittering prospect for the 15-year-old. The Sidneys were delighted and ascribed the connection to Robert’s influence. Their daughter now lived in great style between Pembroke’s London residence at Baynard’s Castle in the City, and his country seat at Wilton in Wiltshire. Mary provided Pembroke with two very able sons and made Wilton, where Robert visited her, into ‘a paradise for her relations’.30 In 1580, Sir Henry was so captivated that Elizabeth had to remind him to return to Ireland. Philip found refuge at this beautiful house, surrounded by its serene woods, soaking up the society of his most dearly loved sister, writing The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia as a romance to amuse her. He explained:
You desired me to do it, and your desire to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done, only for you, only to you … Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence.31
It is perhaps his most brilliant work, full of reference to contemporary fashion.
In 1577, Timothy Kendall dedicated a collection of verses, Flowers of Epigrams, to Robert, saying: ‘Your courteous nature doth minister encouragement to presume.’32 Two years later, Robert’s protégé, the poet Edmund Spenser, was employed at Leicester House as his secretary and messenger. While there, Spenser wrote his first major work, The Shepherd’s Calendar. He seems to have been on good enough terms with his employers to allude to the passionate nature of their romance. He also played a minor part in an inner circle that included Elizabeth’s former tutor, Dee, and Philip Sidney, who read, wrote and discussed poetry. Robert often used their output as a means of disseminating his political and religious thinking. It was they who carried the standard for reformed religion into Europe and encouraged Elizabethan imperialism ‘through the development of the navy and mercantile enterprise into lands beyond the seas’.33 Such appeals to nationalism were causes and policies which Robert was promoting in the Council.
Spenser was first introduced to Elizabeth in July 1578 on a visit among Cambridge University members to Audley End. It was unfortunate that he presented political ideas to the Queen with which she did not always agree. His Mother Hubbard’s Tale was an allegorical fable in opposition to her marriage to the Duke of Anjou. She was very unamused to find Anjou’s representative, Jean de Simier, Baron de St Marc, of whom she was extremely fond, being ‘lampooned as a gibbering ape and Cecil represented as a half-crazed chicken thief’.34 Robert had to dismiss Spenser but gained for him a position as secretary to the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton. It was during Spenser’s period in Ireland that he worked on The Faerie Queen begun at Leicester House. This is an intricate allegorical work, in which Elizabeth is represented as Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, and Robert as King Arthur. Spenser’s career in Ireland proved a prosperous one, but it was not the one he had wanted, and it may well have limited his poetic output.
Robert’s many interests resulted in him establishing vast libraries of books at Leicester House and Wanstead. At Leicester House, these were bound in crimson velvet and stamped with Leicester’s crest in gold. By the time of his death, there were several hundred volumes, some in Latin and Italian. These included a book of Common Prayer and a Bible covered with yellow leather.35 At Wanstead, the books were beautifully bound in blue, ‘with the bear and ragged staff deeply stamped in gold in the centre of their covers’.36
With his natural flare for pageantry, Robert became the theatrical impresario of the age. As the leading patron of pre-Shakespearian drama, in 1559 he formed his own troupe of players, later known as the Earl of Leicester’s Men, who opened the eyes of the English public to the stage. Perhaps to curb their sharp wit, the permitted number of players in a household was restricted, and they could not go on tour unless attached as servants to a nobleman. Robert’s actors sought to be employed on their existing wages as ‘household servants and daily waiters’37 and to be acknowledged by him in that capacity. He seems to have footed bills for their props and transportation.
Theatrical performances were not just the province of professional actors. There was a strong tradition at the universities and at the Inns of Court. When the Inner Temple wanted help to establish their ownership of Lyon’s Inn, Robert gained the Queen’s help to provide it for them. This resulted in his arms being hung in their hall and rules being laid down that no member was to act in any suit against him. He was also made master of their revels at Christmas, often attended by the Queen. Themes and characters were drawn from mythology or history to provide comment on the prevailing issues of the day.38 One such was a gruesome and tedious allegorical play, Ferrex and Porrex, by Elizabeth’s cousin Sir Thomas Sackville, which propounded the analogy that her failure to provide an heir would lead to civil war.39 In March 1565, Robert brought some Gray’s Inn players to a tourney at Whitehall organised for the Queen. Their play involved a dialogue between Juno and Diana, with Juno advocating marriage, and Diana chastity. Jupiter’s verdict was in favour of matrimony. The Queen turned to de Silva and said: ‘This is all against me!’40 He considered it a very English custom to make oblique criticism to the monarch’s face; this would not be attempted in Spain! On Twelfth Night 1567, the gentlemen of the Inner Temple performed The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda. Act IV had been written by a tall good-looking 26-year-old lawyer, Christopher Hatton. Two years earlier, he had been noticed by the Queen for his graceful dancing. He was already a Gentleman Pensioner, a position for which ‘his personal devotion to the Queen made him eminently suitable’.41
It was Robert who predated Shakespeare in linking ribald comedy with the elegant classical tradition of the universities and the Inns of Court:
[The Earl of Leicester’s Men] gave the stage a measure of respectability. They extended the range of drama: buffoonery and bombast were contributed by the wandering players, subtlety and grace by the lawyers. They created a wider audience for serious plays. And this they were able to do because their patron had a passion for the drama in all its aspects.42
At last, in 1574, Robert received a royal patent for his players ‘to perform throughout the realm, without hindrance from local authorities, any play which had been approved by Elizabeth’s Master of the Revels’.43 By performing in different parts of the country, they were kept fully employed, despite a degree of Puritan objection to theatricals, which ‘might attract prostitutes and confidence tricksters’. In 1585, his actors accompanied him to the Netherlands. Their broader exposure made them less dependent on noble patronage and greatly widened their general appeal. Choir boys from St Paul’s and the Chapel Royal frequently appeared in court masques, pageants and plays.44 He thought nothing of the expense of hiring a choir to entertain the Duke of Anjou for dinner at Leicester House.
Robert’s theatricals were a prelude, a decade later, to the building of London’s first permanent theatre by James Burbage, who initially had been one of The Earl of Leicester’s Men. ‘The Theatre’ had to be built outside the city walls at Shoreditch to appease the sensibilities of London’s Puritan burghers. When the Queen’s company of players was formed in 1583, Robert released some of his best performers to join her group, but it was The Earl of Leicester’s Men, who remained more prestigious. He had attracted the best available talent and after his death in 1588 they continued to perform, but eventually, ‘its leading members joined the Lord Chamberlain’s company, for which Shakespeare wrote most of his masterpieces’.45 These included Will Kempe, the great clown of his generation, for whom Shakespeare wrote many parts. Although Shakespeare’s first production on the London stage took place in 1591, three years after Robert’s death, it was Robert’s activities in the immediately preceding period that fostered the ‘great explosion of literary and dramatic talent’.46
Writers also acknowledged their debt to Robert. One was the chronicler John Stow who, in 1562, had obtai
ned a copy of The Tree of Commonwealth, written in the Tower by Robert’s grandfather, Edmund Dudley. He provided Robert with a copy at ‘his request and earnest persuasion’. Robert then financed Stow’s writing of the Chronicles of England, which researched the ‘famous antiquities’ of its past. Stow confirmed Robert’s ‘great love … to the old records of deeds done by famous and noble worthies’.47 Robert urged him to ‘trace the ancient lineage of the house of Tudor and extol the Protestant imperial ideal’.48 Another, historian, Richard Grafton included accounts of Robert’s ancestors in his Abridgement of the Chronicles of England, also dedicated to Robert. Shakespeare based many of his plays on Ralph Holinshed’s The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. Holinshed’s dedication to Robert refers to ‘the incomparable valour’ of his father Northumberland in the service of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Arthur Golding had dedicated the first volume of his 1564 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Robert. This was followed in 1587 by a second volume, in which the dedication again emphasised Robert’s interest in translations as a means of enhancing the English language. In 1566, Thomas Nuce dedicated his Latin play Octavia to him, ‘for his favourable and gracious humanity to scholars’.49
Robert’s patronage covered a wide range of other interests. He supported treatises on ‘chess, military strategy, the rearing of horses, politics and philosophy, translators of works in Latin, Greek, French and Italian, and musicians’.50 With his interest in navigation, he supported William Cunningham’s The Cosmographical Glass, Containing the Pleasant Principles of Cosmography, Geography, Hydrography and Navigation, written in 1559 and dedicated to him. In 1570, John Montgomery addressed a treatise On the Maintenance of the Navy to him. This included advice on ship design and navigational aids. Robert also supported the pioneering of new surgical techniques based on scientific study to overcome quacks and charlatans and those wedded to astrology and ancient books.51
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