It is one of the most expensive chat-up lines in history. When Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth I’s favourite and possibly her lover, wanted to impress the Queen, he did not write poetry or fight battles: he built her a lavish tower.
Dudley’s last, extravagant attempt to persuade the Queen to marry him, Leicester’s Building at Kenilworth Castle, cost the equivalent of tens of millions of pounds today.
In the end, it was all in vain. She stayed there only twice, spending less than four weeks in the luxurious apartments completed in 1575. Three years later, Dudley married Lettice Knollys in secret. Now the construction of new staircases and platforms mean that for the first time in 350 years visitors can stand in the Queen’s bedchamber and enjoy the same views that she had.
Much of the castle was destroyed in the English Civil War, and until now the public have had what one historian has called the “Baldrick’s-eye view”, staring up from ground level where the latrine pits were to the Queen’s bedroom two storeys above. Jeremy Ashbee, head curator of English Heritage, said: “For the first time in centuries, visitors can get right to the top of this remarkable building and get a sense of the luxury and views she enjoyed.”
The relationship between Dudley and Elizabeth has been described as “the central mystery” of her reign. “He was flamboyant and showy and made a great deal of his closeness to the Queen,” Dr Ashbee said. “At the same time, he was quite an ardent Protestant and protected people of Puritan views.”
Advertisement
Dudley was regarded as tainted because of the death of his first wife in strange circumstances, and while Dr Ashbee believes that marriage to Elizabeth was never on the cards, Dudley was “the abiding passion of her life”.
Elizabeth had visited Kenilworth twice when he started work on the four-storey building in 1570. She stayed for a week in 1572, but it cannot have been quite right, for several alterations were then made, including a new staircase.
By July 1575, the building was everything a queen could ask for. There were tapestries on the walls, magnificent windows, elaborate friezes and a stunning view of the Warwickshire countryside from her room.
The Queen’s bedchamber was also conveniently close to Dudley’s apartments, raising the question of whether he paid her any nocturnal visits. Even if their relationship had been physical at some point, Dr Ashbee believes it unlikely: Elizabeth was 41 and Dudley had fathered an illegitimate son.
Dudley wrote in a letter to Lord Burghley: “The house lykes her well, & her own lodginge specyally.” But after 1575, she never visited Kenilworth again, and Dr Ashbee believes that no one else stayed in the Queen’s apartments until Dudley’s death in 1588.
Advertisement
The building, he said, was “romantic in its impressive and flamboyant nature, but not romantic in a lovey- dovey sense, because it is not intimate”.
However, Elizabeth always kept a place in her heart for Dudley. After her death, a letter from him was found in a casket she kept near her bed. Inscribed on it were the words: “His last letter.”