this involved him in litigation. Of this affair Dudley writes: ‘They did unjustly enter Staple Actions in Bristow because I was of the king's party; unto the great prejudice of my inventions and proceedings, my patent being then almost extinct, for which and my stock am I forced to sue them in chancery.’
He relates that Cromwell granted several patents and an act for making iron with pit coal in the Forest of Dean, where furnaces were erected at great cost. Dudley was invited to visit Dean Forest, and to inspect the proposed methods, which he condemned. These works failed, as did also attempts made to conduct operations at Bristol. Dudley petitioned Charles II, on the day of his landing, for a renewal of his patent, but meeting with a refusal, he ceased from further prosecuting his inventions.
He does not in ‘Metallum Martis’ (1665) give any hint of his process, but the probability is that he used coke instead of raw coal. He was clearly the first person who ceased to use charcoal for smelting iron ore, and who employed with any degree of success pit coal for this purpose. It was not, however, until about 1738 that the process of smelting iron ore in the blast-furnace with coal was perfected by Abraham Darby [q. v.] at the Coalbrookdale Ironworks.
Dudley was colonel in the army of Charles I and general of the ordnance to Prince Maurice. It is recorded that he was captured in 1648, condemned, but not beheaded. He married (12 Oct. 1626) Elinor, daughter of Francis Heaton of Groveley Hall, but he left no issue. He died and was buried in St. Helen's Church, Worcester, 25 Oct. 1684.
[Dudley's Metallum Martis, or Iron made with Pit-Coale, Sea-Coale, &c., 1665; Rovenson's Treatise of Metallica, 1613; Sturtevant's Metallica, or the Treatise of Metallica, 1612; Percy's Metallurgy, Iron and Steel, 1864; Herald's Visitation of the County of Stafford, made in the year 1608; Nash's Worcestershire, vol. ii. app. 149; Norden's Surveyors' Dialogue (1607), p. 212; Mushet's Papers on Iron and Steel, 1840; Holinshed's Chronicle, 1577; Plot's History of Staffordshire (1686), p. 128; William Salt, Archæolog. Soc. Coll. ii. pt. ii. 36–8, v. pt. ii. 114–17.]
DUDLEY, EDMUND (1462?–1510), statesman and lawyer, born about 1462, was the son of John Dudley, esq., of Atherington, Sussex, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Thomas or John Bramshot of Sussex. John Dudley was sheriff of Sussex in 1485. By his will, dated 1 Oct. 1500, he directs that he should be buried at Arundel in his ‘marbill tombe,’ and desires prayers for the souls of many relatives, among them ‘William, late bishop of Dunelme,’ i.e. Durham, and ‘my brother Oliver Dudley.’ Sir Reginald Bray is also mentioned as an intimate friend. Both William and Oliver Dudley were sons of John Sutton, baron Dudley [q. v.], while Sir Reginald Bray was one of the baron's executors. Hence there can be little doubt that John Dudley was another of the baron's sons. Edmund's descendants claimed direct descent from the baronial family, but the claim has been much disputed. His numerous enemies asserted that Edmund Dudley's father was a carpenter of Dudley, Worcestershire, who migrated to Lewes. Sampson Erdeswicke, the sixteenth-century historian of Staffordshire, accepted this story, and William Wyrley, another Elizabethan genealogist, suggested that Edmund's grandfather was a carpenter. But the discovery of his father's will disproves these stories, and practically establishes his pretensions to descent from the great baronial family of Sutton, alias Dudley.
Dudley was sent in 1478 to Oxford and afterwards studied law at Gray's Inn, where the arms of the barons of Dudley were emblazoned on one of the windows of the hall. According to Polydore Vergil, his legal knowledge attracted the attention of Henry VII on his accession (1485), and he was made a privy councillor at the early age of three-and-twenty. This promotion seems barely credible, but it cannot have been long delayed. Seven years later Dudley helped to negotiate the peace of Boulogne (signed 6 Nov. 1492 and renewed in 1499). His first wife, Anne, sister of Andrews, lord Windsor, and widow of Roger Corbet of Morton, Shropshire, died before 1494, when he obtained the wardship and marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Grey, viscount Lisle, and sister and coheiress of her brother John.
Stow asserts that Dudley became under-sheriff of London in 1497. It has been doubted whether a distinguished barrister and a privy councillor would be likely to accept so small an office. But it seems clear that at this period Dudley was fully in the king's confidence and had formulated a financial policy to check the lawlessness of the barons, whom the protracted wars of the Roses had thoroughly demoralised. In carrying out the policy Dudley associated Sir Richard Empson [q. v.] with himself. The great landowners were to enter into recognisances to keep the peace, and all taxes and feudal dues were to be collected with the utmost rigour. Although, like astute lawyers, Dudley and Empson had recourse to much petty chicanery in giving effect to their scheme, their policy was adapted to the times and was dictated by something more than the king's love of money. The
