The family behind the Tudors

The name Tudor has reverberated down the centuries, but another family lurked in the background, helping the dynasty to greatness - and sometimes seeking to tear it down. Joanne Paul chronicles the meteoric rise and deadly fall of the Dudleys

- Joanne Paul

Queen Elizabeth, I was resplendent, the crimson red of her wig offset by flowing white and the flash of steel, as she spoke to the troops assembled at West Tilbury on 19 August 1588. Her words, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king", would echo though the ages.

This was precisely what the architect of that moment, Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had in mind when he had written to his queen less than two weeks before, asking her to visit the troops at Tilbury: “Thus shall you comfort, not only these thousands but many more that shall hear of it.” It was no accident that he stood beside her on that day as she publicly commended him: "My lieutenant general... whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy general.” The words were recorded for posterity, just as he had intended them to be.

That Robert Dudley, the brother, son, and grandson of traitors, should stand beside the queen at such a moment would have shocked many Four years earlier, he had been described in the pamphlet Leicester's Commonwealth as a man of so extreme ambition, pride, falsehood, and treachery, so born, so bred up, so nuzzled in treason from his infancy, descended of a tribe of traitors”. Nevertheless, every Tudor monarch had relied on the Dudley family for security, support, and popularity. Members of the house of Dudley had been sacrificed to build up the house of Tudor. The Dudleys had, in turn, climbed high on the favour of their Tudor monarchs, at times almost supplanting them. Theirs is a story of passion, ambition, bloodshed, and love, with the crown as the highest prize, and the executioner's block reward for a fall.

The pride penalty