ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER.
(Vol. ix., pp. 105. 160.)
That this infamous man did die of poison, is, I believe, the general opinion. The late Dr. Cooke Taylor has the following passage upon the subject, in his Romantic Biography of the Age of Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 115.:
"Nearly all the cotemporary writers assert that Leicester fell a victim to poison; Naunton declares that he, by mistake, swallowed the potion he had prepared for another person; and, as there can be no doubt that the Earl was a poisoner of great eminence and success, the story is far from being improbable. The Privy Council must have believed that his death was not natural, for they minutely investigated a report that he had been poisoned by the son of Sir James Crofts, in revenge for the imprisonment of his father. Some suspicious circumstances were elicited during the examination; but the matter was suddenly dropped, probably because an inquiry into any one of the complicated intrigues of Elizabeth's court would have involved too many persons of honour and consequence."
Drummond of Hawthornden, in his Notes of Conversations with Ben Jonson, has the following curious note:
"The Earl of Leicester gave a bottle of liquor to his lady, which he willed her to use in any faintness; which she, after his returne from Court, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died."
This is a strong confirmation of the statement given by Sir Robert Naunton.
In one of the many valuable notes appended by Dr. Bliss to the Athenæ Oxonienses, is the following cotemporary narrative, copied from a MS. memoranda on a copy of Leicester's Ghost:
"The author (of the poem) hath omitted the end of the Earle, the which may thus and truely be supplied. The Countesse Lettice fell in love with Christopher Blunt, gent., of the Earle's horse; and they had many secret meetings, and much wanton familiarity; the which being discovered by the Earle, to prevent the pursuit thereof, when Generall of the Low Countreys, hee tooke Blunt with him, and theire purposed to have him made away: and for this plot there was a ruffian of Burgundy suborned, who, watching him in one night going to his lodging at the Hage, followed him and struck at his head with a halbert or battle-axe, intending to cleave his head. But the axe glaunced, and withall pared off a great piece of Blunt's skull, which was very dangerous and longe in healinge: but he recovered, and after married the Countesse; who took this soe ill, as that she, with Blunt, deliberated and resolved to dispatch the Earle. The Earle, not patient of this soe greate wrong of his wife, purposed to carry her to Kenilworth; and to leave here there untill her death by naturall or by violent means, but rather by the last. The Countesse also having a suspicion, or some secret intelligence of this treachery against her, provided artificial meanes to prevent the Earle; which was by a cordiall, the which she had no fit opportunity to offer him till he came to Cornebury Hall, in Oxfordshire; where the Earle, after his gluttonous manner, surfeiting with excessive eating and drinking, fell soe ill that he was forced to stay there. Then the deadly cordiall was propounded unto him by the Countesse; as Mr. William Haynes, sometimes the Earle's page, and then gentleman of his bed-chamber, told me, who protested hee saw her give that fatall cup to the Earle, which was his last draught, and an end of his plott against the Countesse, and of his journey, and of himselfe; and soe—Fraudis fraude sua prenditur artifex."—Athenæ Oxon., vol. ii. col. 74, 75. note.
Edward F. Rimbault.