Note 37 — Chapter XII · MY LORD LEICESTER’S CURE

His three wives were: Amy or Anne, daughter and heir to Sir John Robsart; Douglas, daughter of William Lord Howard of Effingham and widow of John Lord Sheffield, by whom he had one son, Sir Robert Dudley; and Lettice Knollys, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and widow of Walter Earl of Essex. Amy Robsart died suddenly at Kenilworth, and he did not even attend her funeral; Lady Sheffield he repudiated because of his passion for Lettice Knollys, whose death took place under suspicious circumstances. He declared his son by Lady Sheffield to be illegitimate, and she, though married to him, was so frightened by his attempt to remove her by poison, in order that he might wed the widowed Countess of Essex, that, though legally bound to him, she became the wife of Sir Edward Stafford, of Grafton.