by Derek Wilson
In April 1567 the Spanish ambassador de Silva reported ‘Lord Robert is a strong heretic’ and asserted that he had brought Pembroke round to his point of view,3 something reiterated by the French ambassador a few months later when he declared that Leicester was ‘totally of the Calvinist religion’.4 From the mid-1560s he became the leading patron of the extremists. When zealots eager to bring the English church into line with the biblicist theocracies they had experienced on the continent sought appointments in their homeland they found in Dudley a ready patron. His service to the Puritan movement increased in direct proportion to his wealth and power. Many clergy received their livings at his hands and were regarded as his chaplains. As his landed wealth grew so did the number of benefices in his gift and his influence over tenants and neighbours responsible for other parochial incumbencies. The religious influence of such great landowners as Dudley, Warwick, Bedford and Huntingdon cannot be exaggerated. Thanks to their patronage large swathes of the country became ‘hotbeds’ of radical reform. Nor were parish clergy the only recipients of Dudley’s encouragement and bounty. There were many men who felt themselves called to an itinerant preaching ministry, like the friars of an earlier generation. Such propagandists were paid by individual benefactors or town corporations to give instruction in private houses, public buildings and churches. Such ‘lectureships’, as they were called (Dudley instituted at least one, at Warwick, and the Earl of Huntingdon established another at Leicester), were entirely outside episcopal control. Inevitably certain charismatic individuals attracted enthusiastic personal followings and the bishops became increasingly alarmed by the influence they were wielding and by the breakdown of traditional authority.
These Puritans were essentially Anglicans who objected to some aspects of official liturgical practice, such as the use of vestments and the 1559 Prayer Book (a slightly modified version of Cranmer’s second Prayer Book of 1552), and who refused to conform in such matters. In the 1570s and 1580s there emerged a smaller group, called the Presbyterians, who carried their protest still further. They wanted to do away with episcopal government and introduce a system which gave greater autonomy to the local congregations. Church leaders were not slow in protesting about the activities of such radical activists, often exaggerating their ‘anarchic’ tendencies, and in Elizabeth they found a sympathetic supporter. She was temperamentally opposed to the severe simplicity of worship advocated by the Calvinists. The metrical psalms with which Puritans replaced the elaborate liturgical settings of the old church she dismissed contemptuously as ‘Geneva jigs’. And she was worried about variations in religious observance which threatened good order. Basically her attitude differed little from her father’s: English men and women should believe what their sovereign told them to believe. Addressing Convocation a few years later, she demanded that the bishops impose unity and that they should not be overawed by powerful local magnates.
Again, you suffer many ministers to preach what they list, and to minister the sacraments according to their own fancies – some one way, some another – to the breach of unity . . . I have heard of there be six preachers in one diocese the which do preach six sundry ways. I wish such men to be brought to conformity and unity, that they minister the sacraments according to the order of this realm and preach all one truth.5
The extent of Dudley’s personal involvement in the careers of religious extremists and the trouble he went to for them was sometimes quite remarkable. In 1570, Percival Wiburn was invited by local gentry to establish a Presbyterian model of church government in Northampton. Wiburn was a minister who had already been deprived of his London benefice for refusing to wear the surplice and who had recently returned from Geneva and Zurich. The experiment was soon successful and Northampton was the setting for the most complete example of Genevan polity that England ever saw. Clergy and magistrates jointly ruled a society of enforced morality where the citizens were compelled to attend worship, hear sermons and receive regular instruction in the scriptures. Ministers met regularly for prayer, study and mutual criticism and breaches of discipline were firmly punished. The diocesan bishop Edmund Scambler, could not allow Wiburn’s church within a church to continue. However, as soon as he took action Dudley rose to the defence of the godly assembly in an earnest, protracted correspondence with the bishop. Wiburn was eventually cited before the Council and his preaching licence was revoked.
Dudley became increasingly worried by the activities of the Presbyterians who were endangering the progress of further reformations, splitting the radical wing of the church and making it difficult for him and his friends to fight for the cause at government level. Matters came to a head at Southam, Warwickshire, in 1576. One of the most important aspects of the Puritan movement was the ‘exercises’ or ‘prophesyings’: meetings of local ministers for mutual exhortation and Bible study, sometimes accompanied by public sermons. They were anathema to the queen and when complaints reached her about the behaviour of the Presbyterian ministers and gentlemen in Warwickshire, Elizabeth referred the matter to Dudley – Warwickshire was, after all, ‘his’ county. Dudley passed on Elizabeth’s protests to Archbishop Grindal and the Southam exercise was closed down. Dudley now found himself obliged to offer a defence to Puritan activists who accused him of deserting the cause.
. . . for the exercises which I have known and heard of in many places, there was never thing used in the Church that I have thought and do think more profitable both for people and ministers, or that I have more spoken for or more laboured in defence of, even from the beginning, especially where they are used with quietness to the conversation and unity of the doctrine established already and to the increase of the learned ministry . . . I fear the over busy dealing of some hath done so much hurt in striving to make better . . . that which is . . . good enough already that we shall neither have it in Southam nor any other where else.6
His fears were soon realized. Within weeks Elizabeth summoned Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, to court and ordered him to see that all the Puritan exercises were suppressed. The primate’s sympathies lay very much with his Southam brethren and he could not in conscience obey the queen. It was Dudley who suggested a compromise solution – that the exercises be allowed to continue without lay participation – but the archbishop would not yield ground. Nor would the queen. Elizabeth insisted that her orders be carried out and demanded the deprivation of the archbishop. In the spring of 1577 Cecil sent out orders in the queen’s name to all bishops authorizing the suppression of the exercises. But over Grindal she did not get her way. The old man’s friends laboured hard on his behalf and Elizabeth was persuaded to allow the archbishop to carry out his spiritual functions but no others. She was absolutely obdurate and until his death in 1583, blind but still firm of purpose, Grindal was not restored to royal favour.
Dudley was a vital component of the forces which produced the ‘big bang’ of the Elizabethan Renaissance and the new, vibrant nationalism. This had many causes but it could never have expressed itself in so many exuberant ways without patrons, men who encouraged, inspired and, crucially, funded the wielders of pen and sword. In the 1570s and 1580s Dudley was the mighty Maecenas that made it all possible.
Dudley had a network of hundreds of scholars, mariners, literati, linguists, intelligence agents, artists, lawyers, personal ambassadors and younger sons of the nobility anxious to serve the favourite on their travels abroad or to receive more permanent employment. There were painters such as Zuccaro and Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder; writers of treatises on chess, military strategy, the rearing of horses, politics and philosophy; translators of original works in Latin, Greek, French and Italian; and musicians. Dudley was a supporter of progressive techniques in the field of medicine and an encourager of scientific studies. Thomas Gale, one of the first surgeons to undertake a close study of gunshot wounds, made his knowledge available to Ambrose Dudley’s camp doctors at Le Havre. His first major treatise, Certain Works of Chirurgery, was dedicated to Robert in 15
63. William Clowes was another physician who went on campaign with Ambrose and who later accompanied Robert Dudley to the Netherlands. In A Proved Practice for all Young Chirurgians he acknowledges the help the Dudleys have given to the dissemination of practical medical knowledge. John Jones revived interest in the natural properties of healing springs. As a result of his advocacy Buxton became fashionable as a place for taking the waters. Dudley and other members of his circle frequently resorted there.
Dudley carried on his father’s interest and involvement in all matters maritime. William Cunningham, dedicating to him The Cosmographical Glass, Containing the Pleasant Principles of Cosmography, Geography, Hydrography and Navigation (1559) affirmed that Lord Robert had given science ‘within your breast a resting place’ and that he had encouraged the author ‘both in words and most liberal rewards’. In 1570 John Montgomery addressed to Dudley his treatise, On the Maintenance of the Navy. Herbert and Dudley headed the list of subscribers who chartered a royal vessel, the Jesus of Lubeck, at a charge of £500, and this became Hawkins’ flagship when he sailed from Plymouth, for the West Indies, theoretically closed to all except Spanish ships, on 18 October 1564. In 1566 Dudley received his share of the profit – £301.16s.6d. – which probably represented a return of at least 300 per cent on his capital.
Robert and Ambrose Dudley were the principal backers of Frobisher’s first search for the North West Passage in 1576, though their stake (£50 each) was modest. The following year saw Robert more enthusiastically pledged to Francis Drake’s expedition, which went on to circumnavigate the globe. His connection with the greatest mariner of the age probably began in 1566 when Drake and John Lovell led one of Hawkins’ ventures to the New World. By the end of the 1570s the Spanish ambassador was reporting ‘Leicester and his party are those who are behind Drake,’ and also complaining that the favourite was an enthusiastic patron of privateers. Dudley followed Drake’s career closely, and entertained him in his London house. He possessed at least two maps of the circumnavigation voyage and an inventory of his goods also included ‘a fine Turkey bow’ given to him by ‘the Turk that came with Sir F. Drake.’
In 1581 Robert bought a fine forty-gun armed merchantman which had been built by Matthew Baker, the leading shipwright of the day, and renamed it the Galleon Leicester. He planned to send it on a journey to the Spice Islands to take up the concessions gained by Drake from the Sultan of Ternate. Drake contributed £663.13s.4d and the Bark Francis. Other backers included the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company but, with £2,200 at stake, Dudley was by far the largest shareholder. Unfortunately, the expedition, led by Edward Fenton, collapsed within weeks of its departure because of disputes among the captains. The Galleon Leicester sailed later on a number of privateering trips, at least once (1585) under Drake’s command.
Dudley frequently shared in expeditions under the auspices of the Muscovy Company and the Merchant Adventurers. He was the driving force behind the foundation of the Barbary Company in 1585 after years of fruitless negotiation with the rulers of Morocco, aimed at obtaining saltpetre. However, it failed to show a profit.
When the Spanish ambassador referred to ‘Leicester and his party’ he had in mind a formidable caucus of men with a very well-defined philosophy, one that was anathema to the Catholic world. The Dudleys, the Sidneys, Henry Herbert (Earl of Pembroke from 1570) and Francis Walsingham (Secretary of State from 1573) devised policies and maintained a vigorous correspondence with foreign Calvinists. The guru of this circle was Dr John Dee.7 The Faustian mathematician, astrologer, alchemist, cabalist and all-round seeker after knowledge, engendered fascination and/or fear, or both, in all who knew him. On the one side he had been closely examined for heresy under the Marian regime and, on the other, the Protestant writer, John Foxe, expunged all reference to Dee from later editions of his martyrology. In 1583 a London mob would ransack his house at Mortlake to destroy his library of arcane books, his alembics and crucibles, his divining glass and all the paraphernalia he employed for communing with spirits. For Dudley and his circle of advanced thinkers Dee was their key to understanding the nation’s past and their beacon shining towards a glorious future.
It was Dudley and Pembroke who brought Dee to court as soon as Elizabeth was acclaimed and she was captivated by this multi-talented scholar. In his General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation (1577) he represented the queen as having an inescapable destiny, arising from her supposed descent from King Arthur and the great heroes of imperial Rome. This destiny was a politico-religious crusade. Elizabeth would carry the standard of reformed religion into Europe and, through the development of the navy and mercantile enterprise, into lands beyond the seas.
Dudley’s contribution to the development of the imperialist programme included encouraging chroniclers, poets and dramatists to give it expression. In 1563, the printer and publisher Richard Grafton, who had enjoyed John Dudley’s patronage, dedicated to his son the Abridgement of the Chronicles of England. Raphael Holinshed likewise dedicated to him his History of Scotland, part of his massive Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland which brought him instant and then, through the historical plays of Shakespeare, lasting fame. John Stow dedicated to Dudley his Summary of the Chronicles of England (1565) and the longer Chronicles of England, from Brute unto this Present Year of Christ (1580). In later years the author looked back to the early 1560s and affirmed that it had been Lord Robert who set him on the trail of ‘famous antiquities’. These chronicles were not ‘history’ as we understand it. They were panegyrics, pageants of characters, some mythical, some real, linking the House of Tudor to chivalric heroes of legend, and particularly to Arthur, a native king who, significantly, had stopped paying tribute to Rome, to classical emperors and to a biblical genealogy reaching back to the sons of Noah.
Edmund Spenser joined Dudley’s entourage in 1579. At Leicester House he wrote his first major work, The Shepherd’s Calendar, and dedicated it to Sir Philip Sidney. Its extolling of love, its flattering praise of the queen, its Puritan sentiments and its overall charm made it an elegant vehicle for the principles and ideals of his patron’s circle. It was while he was living under Dudley’s roof that Spenser began his great work, the long verse allegory, The Faerie Queene. One of its themes was the praise of his great patron and the policies for which he stood. Under the guises of King Arthur and Gloriana the poet told again the love affair of Robert and Elizabeth. According to Spenser no other suitor was, or ever could be, worthy of so great a lady.
And you, my Lord, the patron of my life,
Of that great Queen may well gain worthy grace,
For only worthy you through prowess priefe [proved],
If living man might worthy be to be her liefe [darling].
In the (now lost) Stemmata Dudleiana he praised his patron’s ancestry. In Colin Clout Come Home Again he upbraided ungrateful colleagues who disparaged Dudley’s memory. In 1590 he wrote an elegy on his patron in The Ruins of Time and, as late as 1596, he was still lamenting his death in The Prothalamion.
Robert Dudley was a crucial figure in the development of pre-Shakespearean drama. Before Elizabeth’s reign was more than a few months old he formed his own company of players, later known as the Earl of Leicester’s Men. He was not alone among noblemen and courtiers in keeping a troupe of actors but his prominence meant that he could always attract the best performers. In 1574 he obtained from the queen a royal patent, the first ever issued to a company of players. It authorized them to perform throughout the realm, without hindrance from local authorities, any play which had been approved by Elizabeth’s Master of the Revels. The importance of this development for the history of the English theatre can scarcely be exaggerated. As well as giving a company of actors permission to ply their craft anywhere they could obtain an audience, it bestowed a new dignity on their profession. It was, furthermore, a step away from reliance on noble patronage towards complete independence. Within a decade it was
followed by two more significant events, the forming of the queen’s own company and the building of the first permanent English theatre.
When Leicester’s Men claimed the immunity given by the royal patent and organized performances in London, they found that the Lord Mayor and aldermen refused to recognize royal jurisdiction within the City. Acrimonious exchanges ensued between the Puritan burghers on the one hand, and Dudley and his actors on the other. At length, Burbage, the leader of the company, thought of a scheme to thwart the enemy. With Dudley’s approval, if not with his backing, he obtained a twenty-one-year lease on some land outside the city in the parish of Shoreditch, scarcely half a mile beyond Bishopsgate. There he built the Theatre and thither, by the middle of 1577, the citizens were flocking to see Dudley’s actors and to enjoy the novelty of their very own playhouse. It was a great financial success and, within months, a second theatre (perhaps also built by Burbage), the Curtain, appeared nearby. It may be wishful thinking to link Shakespeare with Robert Dudley and his players. The playwright’s appearance in London preceded Dudley’s death by only a few months. The connection, however, is not entirely fanciful. Stratford-upon-Avon is a mere fifteen miles from Kenilworth and a stage-struck lad would scarcely have missed any opportunity to gaze upon the finest actors of the day or to watch the public performances their patron permitted them to put on in local inns and barns. By 1586 or 1587 Shakespeare was working at the Theatre or the Curtain and within a few years he was a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, the successor to the Earl of Leicester’s Men.