Note 158 — Chapter XII · JOHN DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK

Mr. H. Sydney Grazebrook, in his interesting outline on the subject of Northumberland’s origin, in the Herald and Genealogical Review, vol. v., 1870, thinks John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was really descended from the Dudleys of Sedgley and Tipton, a member of which ancient house married the widow of John Sutton, Lord of Dudley, in Henry VI’s time. On the other hand, Dugdale says his grandfather was a carpenter and “very base-born.”

Sir Philip Sydney in his curious tract in defence of Robert, Earl of Leicester, written in answer to “Leycester’s Commonwealth,”—a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth’s famous favourite,—entirely denies the aspersions cast upon the honour of a family with which he was closely allied, his father having married the Duke of Northumberland’s daughter, Mary. He contends that to his certain knowledge the Duke was a man of legitimate descent from the ancient house of Sutton of Dudley, and moreover connected with the greatest nobility in England. “How can a man descended from such great Houses as Nevill, Talbot, Beauchamp and Lisley, be deemed otherwise than honourable and noble?” He continues: “A railing writer has said of Octavius Augustus, his father was a silversmith; another Italian declares (oh! the falsehood) that Hugh Capet was descended of a butcher who was his father. Of divers English names of the best, foolish dreamers have said one was the descendant of a miller, another of a shoemaker, another of a furrier, and forsooth yet another of a fiddler!—foolish lies! and by any who have ever tasted of antiquities, known so to be, yet those however had luck to treat with honest railers—for they were not left fatherless clean; but we as if we were of Ducalion’s brood, were made out of stones—they have left us no ancestors from whence we came. Edmund Dudley was the father of this younger brother of the same Lord Dudley, and would have been Lord Dudley, if the Lord Dudley had died without heirs. His father was married to the daughter and heir of Bramshot in Sussex. This Dudley’s father is buried with his wife at Arundel Castle and left land to Edmund Dudley and so to the Duke my grandfather, in Sussex.” Philip Sydney ought certainly to have known the true descent of his family, especially since they were to acquire the title of Leicester from the Dudleys.