Welcome to Royal Romance Week Day Four here at White Rose of Avalon my Darlings. Today’s post is about the relationship between Elizabeth I and her great favorite Robert Dudley! So we have made our way from the Royal Romances of France to the Royal Romances of England. I wanted to feature the three French couples before featuring the four English couples since I thought that Royal Romance Week would flow better this way! Incidentally, I also chose to begin with the couples who were never married and end with the couples who were married, with this being the last post about Royal Romances featuring lovers who were not married. Without further ado, let’s dive into the tale of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley!
Robert Dudley was from a family that was much maligned and misunderstood at the time of Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne. Several members of the Dudley family were executed after the chaos that ensued due to their roles in putting Lady Jane Grey on the throne as the ‘Nine Days Queen’. Robert’s brother had been Guilford Dudley, Jane Grey’s husband, and Robert’s father had been plotting in hopes of getting his son crowned King. After Jane Grey refused to convert from Protestant to Catholic and was executed, so were members of the Dudley family. Although Robert led a troop of 300 men against Mary Tudor during the plot, he was not executed, but he did spend some time in the Tower of London during the reign of Mary I.
Elizabeth had known Robert Dudley from her childhood and had always had a soft spot for her childhood friend. When she was Queen she quickly elevated him to places of honor within the Court. She made him her Master of the Horse, which gave him a lot of time spent in close quarters with the Queen when she would go on her rides, which she went on frequently, and her travels about the country. He eventually acquired many more titles, most high of which was the 1st Earl of Leicester! It was very well known in the Elizabethan Court that Robert Dudley was in love with Elizabeth I.
It was also very well known that Robert had designs on marrying Elizabeth. Some historians even theorize that if Elizabeth was to marry anyone, her choice would have been her beloved Robin, which was her nickname for Dudley. One thing that surely stood in the way of the couple marrying was the fact that Robert Dudley was from a family of traitors and it would be far below Elizabeth as a Queen to marry someone whose family had betrayed the crown less than a decade prior! There was also the fact that Dudley was currently married to a woman named Amy Robsart Dudley.
Of course, Elizabeth had to be perceived to consider marrying foreign Princes to cement a treaty with foreign powers, as was expected of most Monarchs. However, it was well known that Elizabeth I feared marrying a Prince or King of another land, as it would put her place on her own throne in question. Now, even through all of her perceived marriage negations, Elizabeth I still continued to pay a lot of attention to Robert Dudley. Many people at the Court firmly believed that she meant to one day marry Dudley. Even more, Courtiers believed that the two had been lovers for a long time, possibly even before her ascension to the throne. However, there came a point when Robert Dudley began to disbelieve the possibility of ever marrying the woman he loved. The fact remained that he had a wife, but he would not be the first nobleman to put aside an old wife in order to marry a higher-ranking woman!
Rather ironically, the thing that ended up putting to bed any thought that Dudley and the Queen could ever marry was the tragic death of his wife Amy Dudley! Amy Robsart Dudley died under very mysterious circumstances that led many people of the Elizabethan Court to believe that Robert had ordered the death of his wife so that he would be free to marry Elizabeth I. Some people even thought the Queen herself could have had a hand in plotting the demise of her great favorite’s wife, but few would have been brave enough to voice this concern to the Queen. No one will ever know for sure what happened to Amy Dudley, other than the fact that she had been alone in the residence where she was staying and was found dead at the bottom of a staircase.
Some people have even used the idea of Amy Dudley committing suicide in order to spite her husband in fictional accounts of the events since Amy knew that her dying under suspicious circumstances would prevent him from ever being able to marry Elizabeth I. This possibility is used within the television show Reign and is an interesting alternate interpretation of history. Even after this time, Elizabeth still showed great love for Dudley.
However, Dudley began to fall from favor when he chose to marry for a second time. His new wife was Lettice Knollys, who was the granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, and therefore one of Elizabeth I’s cousins! The Queen was unhappy with this union and even is said to have humiliated Dudley, at this point Earl of Leicester, in public. So, after many years as Elizabeth’s favorite, her likely lover, and some even say a father of her illegitimate child, he was no longer in her grace!
I do want to finish this post by acknowledging that Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and Queen Elizabeth I were close friends for a very long time, and at one-time prospective spouses, yet this was never to be, but there is no true evidence of how close their relationship was. As I have already stated above, Dudley and Elizabeth I were firmly believed by her Court to have been lovers in the truest sense of the word. I also stated that there were rumors that Elizabeth I and Dudley actually had a child together at one point. This historical conspiracy theory goes that Elizabeth I hid the pregnancy with one of the many illnesses that she had during her reign and the child was spirited away into safekeeping so that no one would know she had a child out of wedlock! This is a very unlikely theory, but I could not write about their romance without bringing it up. Even with the fact that this theory is very unlikely, I do find it a very intriguing possibility that I have been fascinated with for a long time!
I hope you have enjoyed reading about Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley. What do you think happened to Amy Robsart Dudley? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post are paintings of Dudley and the Queen. I found the image on https://theloveforhistory.wordpress.com/people/elizabeth-i/elizabeth-i-and-robert-dudley/.
Tarot Note: I have a page offering tarot and oracle readings for those interested in these services! I am very happy to be offering these readings to my treasured readers at White Rose of Avalon! Link to page: https://whiteroseofavalon.life/tarot-and-oracle-readings/
Further Reading
- The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir
- The Queen’s Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court by Anna Whitelock