"The Noble Bastard" , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Angela McLeod

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94 pages

English

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This book tells the story of a little-known but outstanding man whose achievements far eclipsed those of his famous father, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Leicester. Unlike similar works, it is a biographical novel, not a biography. Robert Dudley's legitimacy remains in doubt to this day though it was recognised by Charles I, Charles II, The Austrian Emperor and the Pope. Here his life has been extensively researched and the man speaks for himself through historical fact. His achievements, for his era and position, were varied and unique and he died, the Duke of Northumberland, in what is now the Villa Castello near Florence.Perhaps because he left his own country when Star Chamber closed his legitimacy case, he has not been given his proper place in English history. He didnot go alone; his beautiful cousin Elizabeth Southwell, disguised as his page, went with him and their twelve children were born in Tuscany. Apart from hisachievements, Robert Dudley's private life, a positive minefield, needs little invention. His powerful personality shouts through his actions. Anyone who enjoysElizabethan and Jacobean history will appreciate the story of this gifted buccaneer of a man who built four ships and sailed them to Trinidad, fought as anAdmiral at Cadiz and took possession of Kenilworth Castle by the age of twenty-two. Later, while serving the Medici rulers of Tuscany as Great Chamberlainand rebuilding their navy, he wrote and left to posterity, a definitive, six-volume work on all naval and sea-faring matters, "Dell' Arcano Del Mare" copies ofwhich remain.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	12 juillet 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838599683
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright © 2019 Angela McLeod

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Cover illustration: Portrait of Sir Robert Dudley by Nicholas Hilliard, by courtesy of Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1838599 683

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Christopher Hanson Smith,
the kindest of critics and best of friends.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has developed, through stages, from an idea into print, but it could not have been done without the generous help of many people. I am very grateful to all of them.
Heartfelt thanks go to Desmond Maxwell, who has done both proof-reading and editing, not only for the hours of work he has spent on it, but for the research and the many discoveries he has made on the book’s behalf, both written and pictorial; also, for his thoroughness and the excellent English he has brought to the reading of the text.
Many thanks, also, go to Pamela Baker, for her assistance with the construction, at all stages, of the book and her watchful eye on the content; not least, for her encouragement, support and considerable talent in dealing with recalcitrant computers.
I am also most grateful to Sarah Campbell for her detailed help during the final stages when everything began to look confused.
As always, I could not have managed without Paul, of Matrix in Oban, for preventing mechanical failure and thereby avoiding panic.
Last, and far from least, I thank my husband, David, for his Job-like patience in putting up with interruptions and calls for help on a daily basis, and my far flung children whose keen enthusiasm has never lagged.
Angela McLeod
Contents
Introduction
The Marriage of the Earl of Leicester and Lady Douglas Sheffield
Chapter One
Childhood to Tilbury – 1579-1588
Chapter Two
The Armada – 1588
Chapter Three
Prelude to Trinidad – 1591-1593
Chapter Four
The Deep Blue Yonder – 1594-1595
Chapter Five
Prelude To Cadiz – 1595-1596
Chapter Six
The Battle and the Burning – 1596
Chapter Seven
Kenilworth – 1596
Chapter Eight
Winds of Change 1599 – 1602
Chapter Nine
Knight or Earl – 1602-1605
Chapter Ten
The Birds Fly South – 1605 – 1609
Chapter Eleven
Under Tuscan Skies – 1608-1612
Chapter Twelve
The Medici Years – 1613-1620
Chapter Thirteen
“Great Chamberlain” - 1620-1629
Chapter Fourteen
Gathering Storms – 1630-1631
Chapter Fifteen
Feuds and Fatalities -1631-1638
Chapter Sixteen
Magnum Opus – 1638-1649
Epilogue
Bibliography
Personae
Introduction
While writing “ The Brilliant Stage: The Story of Frances Walsingham ” I became aware of the presence, on that stage, of a personality who could not be ignored. That of Sir Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester’s only surviving, but supposedly bastard son. He refused to retire into the background but recurred; an arresting personality whose achievements proved every bit as great, if not greater, than those of his famous father. His life and activities appeared so irresistible that I deliberately put him aside “for later”.
He died in what is now the Villa Castello, near Florence, having drunk deeper of the cup of life than most and having married three wives, one bigamously, and produced around twenty children.
In 1594, at the age of twenty, he led an expedition to the New World and he accompanied the Earl of Essex on the Cadiz raid in 1596. They appear to have been very much birds of a feather; the father of one was the step-father of the other and they must have been constantly in each other’s company, although Robert was the younger by seven years.
He left to posterity six beautiful volumes containing detailed charts and maps of the entire oceanic world, “Dell’Arcano Del Mare”, “The Secrets of the Sea”, written and produced in Italian. He drained the marshes around Leghorn, built a thriving port there and undertook other building projects in Tuscany on behalf of the Medici Grand Dukes. Having converted to the Roman Church, he served three successive Grand Duchesses of Tuscany as Great Chamberlain. His uncle’s and also his grandfather’s titles were restored to him by the Emperor, Ferdinand II, endorsed by the Pope and he died in that Tuscan villa the Duke of Northumberland and the Earl of Warwick, the stain of bastardy finally eradicated, though not in his native country until 1644. The earldom of Leicester passed to the Sidney family of Penshurst.
He was a naval and military Commander, an explorer and navigator, an expert cartographer, a civil and military engineer, a shipbuilder and architect and a successful chemist. There appears to be little he could not and did not do.
What drove this gifted man? Was it the need to heal the slight of bastardy, such a condemnation in his time, through exhaustive achievement, or was it a determination to equal his renowned father? Perhaps it was neither but that he was born with a character which demanded that he lead rather than follow; ambition was second nature to the Dudleys. When thwarted by the circumstances of his birth, he turned to unexplored fields for goals recognised by his world as great. He remained, however, convinced that he was Leicester’s legitimate son and his whole life was a quest for proof and recognition.
His known portraits show a tall, very well built man who obviously took pride in his appearance without undue extravagance. There is a slightly guarded look in the round eyes inherited from his mother. They in no way resemble Leicester’s. His brain, however, he clearly owed to the Dudleys together with their formidable drive and arrogance.
He was brought up from the age of five as Leicester’s son, acknowledged and loved, but not as his legitimate heir. At what point did he discover this, suffer, and chart his own course?
His beautiful mother, Lady Douglas Sheffield, born a Howard and a sister of the Queen’s Lord High Admiral, Howard of Effingham, claimed that Leicester had, indeed, married her “in wintertime” in 1573. She contradicted this story somewhat when persuaded to marry Sir Edward Stafford as Leicester’s interest shifted to Lettice, Countess of Essex. Had she really married Leicester, she would have tacitly admitted bigamy.
Lady Douglas appears to have been somewhat hen-witted and indecisive, a striking contrast to her rival, Lettice Knollys, who knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. Lady Douglas was outgunned and Leicester married Lettice, apparently unworried by any supposed former marriage. Bigamy was an ecclesiastical crime to the Elizabethans, but not a legal one. There was a son of this marriage, Robert, Lord Denbigh, who died as a child, thereby throwing the question of the Leicester inheritance wide open.
The whole of Robert Dudley’s life as it began to unfold for me was a search for excellence which involved huge leaps of faith from one diverse project to another. He seems quite undaunted by the scale of these or the possible consequences of failure.
The one devastating exception, the rejection and suppression of his legitimacy case brought before the Lords of Star Chamber in 1605, had the effect of changing the course of his life. It was the most bitter of blows and it resulted in his departure from England, to which he never returned, and his eventual adoption of Italy, in particular Tuscany, as his permanent home.
He turned his back on his family, his native land, and the considerable property he had inherited on Leicester’s death, which included Kenilworth Castle. He virtually began life again at the age of thirty-one; for his time, almost middle age. But he did not go alone. His beautiful cousin, Elizabeth Southwell, accompanied him, disguised as his page. They were subsequently married in Lyons, despite his current wife and five children in England. The couple wisely and promptly converted to Catholicism and obtained Papal dispensation for their union on the grounds that the Protestant marriage was performed by heretics and therefore invalid. This seems flimsy to say the least and one cannot doubt Robert’s powers of persuasion. There was also the small matter of consanguinity. He and Elizabeth were first cousins, once removed, but this also seems to have been successfully swept under the Papal carpet.
Robert Dudley’s faith in himself must have been enormous, a gift so infectious that it inspired those around him with confidence.
A sense of humour he certainly had. His first ships were named “The Bear”, “The Bear’s Whelp”, “The Earwig” and “The Frisking”; the first two a parody of the Dudley arms, the “Bear and Ragged Staff”. He had little trouble, young as he was, in obtaining the Queen’s permission for him to command these small ships and sail across the Atlantic to explore the Orinoco River and its delta. This included claiming Trinidad for the English crown and a certain amount of pirac