Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester | Autograph letter signed, to Queen Elizabeth I, [1584]

Robert Dudley, Earl Of Leicester

Autograph letter signed, to Queen Elizabeth I,

writing of his travel in "desart countreys", explaining that it has been so long that he received news of the Queen that he has decided to write ("...Albeyt these rude & rustyke countreys doe yeld nothing worthe your Ma[jes]tys advertysment..."), having now arrived as a guest of the Earl of Derby at Hawarden Castle he has had letters including from Sir Philip Sidney, assuring him of the Queen's "healthye & good estate", and from Sir Francis Walsingham concerning a solution to an unspecified matter of state ("...a third way betwene those ii ways yow had thought upon, whereof I am most gladd..."), 1 page, folio, integral address leaf ("To the Q. most excellent mat."), "Harden Castle" [Hawarden Castle, Flintshire], 1 June, [1584], locking slits, neat repairs with loss of about 5 letters, remains of previous mount

AN EXCEPTIONAL RARITY: A LETTER TO QUEEN'S ELIZABETH FROM HER FAVOURITE, THE EARL OF LEICESTER. Leicester was "Sweet Robin", nicknamed "Eyes" by his Queen, and a dominant figure in the Elizabethan court. He was, without question, Elizabeth's favourite courtier; the possibility of marriage hovered over their relationship for nearly twenty years.

This letter does not have the flirtatious tone of earlier correspondence as it was written after Leicester's marriage to Lettice Knollys (a "she wolf", according to the Queen). Nonetheless, he is careful to depict the world away from the court and royal presence as an empty desert, and to suggest that his overriding concern during his absence is the Queen's continued health. He was in fact writing during a progress of the West Midlands and across the Welsh border, leaving his great house at Kenilworth on 26 May and reaching Buxton, which he visited regularly to take the waters, on 14 June. On 1 June he was the guest of Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby, at Hawarden Castle "nere Chester in the confines of wales".

Leicester's letter not only mentions his famous nephew Sir Philip Sidney, but also the Queen's new solution to an unspecified political problem. The reference is too fleeting to identify the issue at stake, but a likely subject for correspondence between Leicester and Walsingham (to which Leicester here refers) was the Protestant revolt against Spain in the Low Countries, which deeply concerned both men. This letter has previously been dated to c.1577, but the 1584 date can be reached with certainty by the identification of the address as Hawarden.  

PROVENANCE:

Probably from the estate of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (1591-1646), to William Jessop of Grays Inn, and thence to his daughter, who married William Hulton in 1694; thence by descent; sale, "Elizabeth and

Essex: the Hulton Papers", Sotheby's, London, 14 December 1992, lot 2