enemies and the catholic nobles agreed that Dudley should only marry the queen at the cost of a revolution, and De Quadra wrote home that if the marriage took place Philip II would find England an easy conquest. With curious duplicity Dudley also corresponded with the French Huguenots to induce them to support his ambitious marriage scheme. But his over-confidence did not please the queen. In July 1501 the king of Sweden offered Elizabeth his hand. Dudley ridiculed the offer, and the queen, irritated by his manner, said in the presence chamber that 'she would never marrv him nor none so mean as he,' and that his friends 'went about to dishonour her' (State Papers, Foreign, 22 July). Dudley straightway asked permission to go to sea and obtained it, but he remained at home and was soon reconciled to his mistress. When the succession question was debated in 1562, Dudley supported the pretensions of Lord Huntingdon, the husband of his sister Catherine. In the autumn of the same year the queen, on what she judged to be her death-bed, nominated her favourite protector of the realm. Next year the reports that Elizabeth had children by Dudley revived. One Robert Brooke of Devizes was sent to prison for publishing the slander, and seven years later a man named Marsham of Norwich was punished for the same offence. An English spy in Spain in 1588 reported that a youth aged twenty-six, calling himself Arthur Dudley, and claiming to be Elizabeth's son by Dudley, had lately arrived in Madrid. He was born, he said, in 1562 at Hampton Court. Philip II received him hospitably, and granted him a pension of six crowns a day, but he was clearly a pretender (Ellis, Orig. Letters 2nd ser. iii. 135-136 ; Lingard, Hist. 1874 edit. vi. 367-8).
Although Dudley did not abandon hope of the marriage, it is plain that during 1563 Elizabeth realised its impracticability. Cecil, Sussex, Hunsdon, and Dorset did all they could to discredit Dudley, and his presumptuous behaviour led to more frequent explosions of wrath on the queen's part. On one occasion Dudley threatened to dismiss one Bowyer, a gentleman of the black rod. The matter was brought to the queen's knowledge. She sent for Dudley and publicly addressed him: 'I have wished you well, but my favour is not so locked up for you that others shall not partake thereof. . . . I will have here but one mistress and no master' (Naunton, Fragmenta, ed. Arber, p. 17). About 1563 the question of Queen Mary Stuart's marriage was before the English council, and Elizabeth, with every appearance of generous self-denial, suggested that Dudley should become the Scottish queen's husband. She would have preferred, she said, a union between Queen Mary and Dudley's brother Ambrose, but was willing on grounds of policy to surrender her favourite. In June 1564 Dudley made friends with De Silva, the new Spanish ambassador, and once more declared himself to be devoted to Spain. De Silva wrote home that if Cecil could only be dismissed and replaced by Dudley, Spain and England would be permanent allies. On 28 Sept. 1564 Dudley was created Baron Denbigh, and on 29 Sept. Earl of Leicester. In October (according to Melville, the Scottish ambassador) Elizabeth declared herself resolved to press on the match between Dudley and Queen Mary, and it was stated that she had bestowed an earldom on him to fit him for his promotion. The union of Mary with Darnley in 1565 brought the scheme to nothing.
The old nobility at Elizabeth's court acquiesced with a very bad grace in Leicester's predominance. In March 1565 Norfolk, who had persistently opposed himself to Dudley's pretensions, quarrelled openly with him in the queen's presence. They were playing tennis together before Elizabeth. During a pause Leicester snatched the queen's handkerchief from her hand and wiped his face with it. Norfolk denounced this action as 'saucy,' and blows followed. In August 1565 the queen paid her first visit to Kenilworth, which she had granted Leicester (6 Sept. 1563). While the court was at Greenwich in June 1566 Sussex and Leicester had a fierce altercation in Elizabeth's presence, and the queen herself brought about a temporary reconciliation. Early in 1566 the Archduke Charles renewed his offer of marriage with Elizabeth, and the queen discussed it so seriously that Leicester acknowledged in a letter to Cecil that his fate was sealed. Cecil drew up more than one paper in which he contrasted Leicester and the archduke as the Queen's suitors, much to the latter's advantage. He declared Leicester to be insolvent, to be 'infamed by his wife's death,' and anxious to advance his personal friends. Little change in Leicester's personal relations with the queen was apparent while the negotiations with the archduke were pending, and he did what he could to ruin the scheme. In December 1567 he strongly opposed in the council Sussex's and Cecil's proposal to bring the archduke to England. In order to obstruct his rivals' policy he boldly turned his back on his old relations with the catholics and raised a cry of 'popery.' As early as 1564 Leicester had been making advances to the puritans, and Archbishop Parker and he had had some differences as to the toleration to be extended to their practices (Strype, Parker, i. 311). Subsequently he
