The Dudleys

Abstract

Chapter one describes how the local ascendancy of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and his older brother, Ambrose, earl of Warwick, used the law and many cultural strategies to establish their Warwickshire authority, a transformative event that was the single most important influence on the county during William Shakespeare’s early life. It examines the relationship between local history and the past identities of the earldoms of Warwick and Leicester in sustaining the Dudleys’ authority in the county, surveying a range of material culture and social behaviour designed to consolidate the earls’ claims, in which Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick shared equally with his brother, Robert, earl of Leicester. It shows Ambrose’s active landlordship in Stratford and his other Warwickshire lands by re-examining surveys and land disputes in which he was involved, suggesting how the Dudleys invoked old feudal structures to their own advantage while reshaping local power structures to marginalize the Throckmorton kinship network, triggering their emerging feud with the prominent Warwickshire Catholic gentleman, Edward Arden. The chapter discusses the riots at Drayton Bassett in summer 1578 as part of resistance to Dudley expansion in the county, expansion best seen as a political project in support of the emerging Protestant state, but which provoked widespread fear about their intentions. Through the involvement of local men, including Shakespeare’s later friend Thomas Combe (d. 1609) we outline how Drayton Bassett represented the intrusion of national politics into life in Stratford and Warwickshire.