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 A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE wealth s18 which had been accumulated for him to squander by execution on Tower Hill. He had married his ward, Elizabeth daughter of Lord de Lisle, and their son was John, said to have been born near Okeover in 1502. John Dudley was able, tactful, and resolute, and soon made his way to the front. In 1536 he was sheriff of Staffordshire, and about that time bought the Dudley estates from a member of the Sutton family. 217 Created Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, his ambition overleaped itself, and his design of bringing the crown into his own family is familiar to every one. 218 He was the ablest man of his time, but unscrupulous ; he supported the reformers for his own gain, but on the scaffold attributed the troubles of England to the quarrel with the Papacy. His fifth son was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whose story is too well known to need repetition ; he is chiefly connected with Staffordshire by the fact that about the time he married his third wife Lettice, countess of Essex, 219 whose husband he was suspected to have poisoned, he bought Drayton Basset, where he visited her ; her son Robert, the second Earl of Essex, living conveniently near at Chartley. In 1547 the county had to bear its share in the war against Scotland, and the Earl of Warwick was commissioned for the ' North partes,' includ- ing Staffordshire, to levy all and singular the king's subjects who were ' habill and mete for the warres,' whenever he should think fit, and to drill and arm them at his discretion. To carry out this commission effectually all justices of the peace, sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, stewards, and constables were to obey his orders. 220 In 1570 Pius V issued a bull excommunicating Queen Elizabeth and declaring her to be deposed from the throne, an act which placed the Roman Catholics in England in a most unenviable position, as Romanism thereby became identified with disloyalty. It also had its effect on the conduct of Parliament, which in 1571 enacted penal statutes against the Catholics and made assent to the Thirty-nine Articles obligatory. Yet John Giffard of Chillington, a ' prominent papist,' in the year when the Armada brought forth all the patriotism of the country, did as many Roman Catholics did, took the oath of allegiance to Elizabeth. 221 His fourth son, as we shall see, was one of Walsingham's tools for intercepting the correspondence of Mary Queen of Scots when at Chartley. The intrigues of the Jesuits against Elizabeth provoked her to deal still more strongly with the recusants. In 1583 the sheriff of the county was ordered by Burghley and Walsingham to make an inventory of the property of Lord Paget at Beaudesert who was ' affected to the Romish religion ; ' and for favouring Mary his lands were forfeited. Elizabeth evidently had 116 Henry VII after Bo^worth had rewarded many of his followers by grants of land in Staffordshire, but the greatest change was in the reign of Henry VIII, who dissolved thirty-six religious houses in the county, and gave them to different persons ; Harwood, ErJestvick, xi. The effects of the suppressior. of the monasteries are discussed in the Ecclesiastical and the Social and Economic Articles. 117 Dugdale, Baronage (ed. 1675), ii, 216. 118 Lord Guildford Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey, was fourth son of the Duke of Northumberland. " This lady, of vigorous character and wonderful vitality, lived until 1634, when .she died at the age of 94. She was the great-niece of Anne Boleyn. " Acts of the P.C. 1547, pp. 118-19. MI Cal. ofS.P. Dam. 158:1-90, p. 561. 248