Ever heard of Lady Alice Dudley, Duchess of Dudley? She isn’t a hugely well-known figure of the late Elizabethan and early Stuart royal courts, but the impact she had on her time drastically changed the lives of her fellow Londoners.
Alice was the third daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh and his wife Katharine Spencer. In 1596 she married the illegitimate son of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester, (also named Robert Dudley). The couple had a flurry of pregnancies in these early years of marriage, as they navigated business between their bases at Kenilworth and London. In 1597, a year after the wedding, Alicia was born at Kenilworth but died in 1621. Frances, their second daughter, lived with her mother in Dudley House in London and married Sir Gilbert Knyveton of Bradley in Derbyshire. Anne, a third daughter, married the lawyer Sir Robert Holbourne, who served as Solicitor General to Charles I. She died in 1663. Katharine, their youngest daughter married Sir Richard Leveson, a Royalist supporter of Charles I. She died in 1673.
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The girls would not have a meaningful relationship with their father. Early in James I’s reign, in around 1606, Dudley left England to set up a new life in Florence, dissatisfied with England, its anti-Catholic stance and its king. Leaving Alice and their children behind, he married his cousin, Elizabeth Southwell, and settled with his new family in Italy. Elizabeth died in 1633 but not before birthing eight children during her marriage to Dudley. Alice, from thousands of miles away in London, seems to have provided some resistance to Dudley’s second marriage, intervening with the Pope. John Temple Leader wrote, at the end of the nineteenth century, that Dudley converted to the Catholic religion and viewed his marriage with the Protestant Alice void, meaning that he was free to take another wife. On 27 January 1607, Antonio Standen, a spy, wrote from Rome to record Alice’s status, noting that she was ‘no less beautiful’ than Elizabeth, and that the couple had been together ‘for several years, and they have three children’. Dudley applied to the Pope for his new marriage to be recognised, but Alice also wrote to him. ‘And what so moves the Pontiff’, wrote Standen, ‘is that he has learned that the true wife has written to her husband, that she is content to become a Catholic, and bring her three children here with her, and live with her, and truly it is a cause for much compassion’. It is likely however that Dudley did leave behind family assets or cash for his family in England. Alice spent vast sums – over £850 in seventeenth century money – on charitable work, while their unmarried daughter Alicia, gave a staggering £3,000 to her mother, following her early death at the age of 24, to use on her behalf ‘in works of piety’.
Alice’s actions in ensuring the pope understood the predicament Dudley had left her in may have been motivated by causing problems between her husband and his new wife, or equally she may have simply missed him and wanted to become a family again. Knowing he had taken a new wife and adopted Catholicism in Italy, it is likely that she knew he would not accept her offer of moving to live with him. Standen also mentions their three children, but John Temple Leader outlines the lives of their four daughters, and so this may have been a communication error of the time. In any case, Dudley did not invite Alice and his daughters to Italy. At Oxford in May 1644, with Dudley still overseas, Charles I granted Alice the title of Duchess, after a revision of a 1605 claim by her husband that he was the legitimate son of the Earl of Leicester and should inherit his titles and property by birth right. Despite bringing witnesses that swore they had seen the wedding of the earl and Dudley’s mother Lady Sheffield, James I ruled that he was illegitimate, after pressure mounted by the earl’s widow Lettice Knollys. Charles however, in the middle of Civil War and dissention in Parliament, took another look at the petition, and chose to grant Alice the title of Duchess of Dudley. His patent makes it clear that Dudley’s legitimacy was still in question but that he also wanted to reward members of her family who had shown themselves faithful Royalists in the recent conflicts over the Crown. Following Dudley’s initial absence, and then his death, Alice spent her widowhood in a house near St Giles Church in St Giles in the Fields in London and gave generously to her local community and parish church.
Some of the repairs and improvements she undertook included paying for a screen to be erected when damage had been made to the upper end of the chancel of St Giles’ church, leaving ‘old coffin-boards’ visible and ‘the bones of dead men thrown’. Between 1623 and 1631 permanent repairs and rebuilding were underway and Alice gave ‘many hundred pounds’ towards its completion. She also adorned the church with decorations including taffeta, silk and silver fringe. A rich green velvet cloth was given by her for the altar, along with service books which were all embossed in gold. Other gifts included other altar cloths, gold-embroidered cushions, a carpet for unfurling on the floor throughout the week and a ‘neat pair of organs, with a case richly gilded’. Sadly, many of these items were sold during the English Civil War in the 1640s. She also took on the cost of paving the upper end of the church in marble and provided parishioners with a ‘great bell in the steeple’. Alice also provided gifts to Stoneleigh, Manchester and churches in Warwickshire, among others, as well as at Litchfield Cathedral.
Alice seems to have been close to her daughters throughout her life, and they also dedicated themselves to community improvements. Her house was very near to the church she so enthusiastically supported, the duchess would have been a well-known figure at worship and within the area. Alice saw the reign of James I, the Gunpowder Plot and its aftermath and changing attitudes to religion. She was abandoned by her husband, but brought up her four daughters and changed the appearance and history of the church and her parish. She witnessed Civil War, an England that beheaded its king and a parliament that ruled in his place. During her time in London the monarchy was abolished altogether, and then, eleven years after Charles I’s execution, reinstated by his son, Charles II. She witnessed the Restoration, celebrated no doubt by her family and extended family who appear as royalists and royal servants close to power in the historical record. She would also have witnessed plague in 1665 and the devastating effects of the Fire of London in 1666. Alice too suffered the deaths of her daughters Alicia in 1621 and Anne in 1663. Some of Alice's neighbours would have been fellow royalists, including Richard Pendrel, who is also buried in St Giles in the Fields. He claimed to have helped the Prince Charles (future Charles II) escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651, and died in the parish in 1671.
Alice died in her London parish in 1669 at the age of 90, and although she was taken to be buried at the Church of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, where she was born, St Giles in the Fields remembered her with a memorial. They put up a sign calling her ‘a most pious heroine’ and marking the many gifts she gave to the church, which ensured the safety and longevity of the building and its parishioners. In her Will she gave money to the hospital near St Giles and provided for the welfare of local children. Her legacy continued through her daughters’ works, in particular her youngest daughter, Katharine, who was also known for her charitable works. Inspired by her mother, she maintained twelve poor widows, founded schools and hospitals and had the church of Balshall in Warwickshire rebuilt. She died in 1673.
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Sources:
Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Ireland John Temple Leader. G Barbera, Florence,.1895
A Survey of the City of London, Stow and Strype 1715, volume 2. Archive.org
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