EGBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER, SIXTH MASTER. 65 



year on a pilgrimage of love, with instructions to cut out the 

 Archduke, If he was successful in his suit, Elizabeth promised 

 him that she would, with the authority of Parliament, declare 

 Mary heir to the Crown of England, in case she died herself 

 without issue. Owing, however, to the influence of France, the 

 project was marred, and in the end Mary was married to Lord 

 Darnley, On September 9th, 1564, Lord Robert Dudley was 

 created Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester. The ceremony 

 was performed in St. James' Palace in the presence of the 

 Queen and all the high officers of State; and during the 

 solemnity Her Majesty put on the Earl's robe of State, girded 

 him with his sword of sway, and placed the coronet of dignity 

 on his head, with her own right Royal hands. He was the last 

 earl that was thus invested by the sovereign, the ceremony 

 of investiture being abolished in 1615, when it was declared to 

 be unnecessary ; and though the form of creation was thence- 

 forth disused, it continued to be recited as the manner of 

 creation until the reign of Queen Anne, shortly after which 

 period a clause was inserted in all patents of earldoms, dis- 

 pensing with the ceremony of investiture by express words. 

 During this year the Earl of Leicester attended the Queen in 

 her progress to Cambridge, where the Royal party were enter- 

 tained by the heads of the University with great splendour, 

 and during the Royal visit, the Earl (who had been elected 

 High Steward in 1563) received the degree of M.A. The 

 notoriety of these proceedings appears to have excited jealousy 

 among the dons of the sister University ; and towards the end 

 of this year (December 31, 1564) they appointed Leicester 

 Chancellor of their alina mater — a proceeding they repented of 

 at leisure, as his lordship ordered great reforms in the statutes 

 of the institution, and enforced a discipline repugnant to them, 

 but to which they were obliged to conform. 



From about this period the Earl of Leicester became one of 

 the greatest magnates in the land. On August .3, 1565, he 

 obtained licence to have a hundred persons in his retinue. He 

 lorded it like a feudal baron of the old regime, yet he found 

 it difficult to make both ends meet; and in order to defray 



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