A Godly Peer? Leicester and the Puritans

Pious nobleman or calculating humbug - what is the true characterisation of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester? Simon Adams sifts the motives for the patronage given to some of Elizabeth's sternest religious critics by her favourite courtier.

Simon Adams | Published in History Today Volume 40 Issue 1 January 1990

Unlike many of his peers, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester was not a great builder. His main architectural memorial is, to most people, Kenilworth Castle. But he has left two further monuments which in some respects explain why he remains one of the most hotly debated figures of Elizabeth I's reign. On the hillside between the town and castle of Denbigh lie the ruins of what is known as 'Leicester's Church'. The corner-stone was laid in 1578, but the building was never completed. According to legend, lovingly retold by later romantic antiquarians, the townsmen pulled down at night what the hated lord had erected by day. The real reason is that the project was simply too ambitious. Had it been finished, it would have been the largest church constructed in England and Wales between the Reformation and the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral. Leicester had been warned by his surveyors that there was 'no store of great timber' in the county. Three years before his death in 1588 he was forced to send to Ireland for the roof beams.