| Nationality | Dudley [née Russell], Anne, countess of Warwick (1548/9–1604), courtier, was the eldest of the three daughters of Francis Russell, second earl of Bedford (1526/7–1585), magnate, and his first wife, Margaret (d. 1562), daughter of Sir John St John of Bletsoe, Bedfordshire, and his wife, Margaret. Thanks to the loss of most of the Russell family papers for the sixteenth century her childhood is effectively a blank. How well educated she was is equally unknown. She was said to have been 'no good secretary' in 1600 (Letters, ed. Collins, 2.192), and her sister Margaret was taught no language other than English.
Anne Russell's life was shaped by two events in her adolescence: her appointment as a maid of honour to Elizabeth I in 1559 and then her marriage at the age of sixteen to Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick (c. 1530–1590), magnate, fourth son of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, and his wife, Jane, in the queen's chapel at Whitehall Palace on 11 November 1565. It is possible that she entered Elizabeth's household before the accession. In 1564 Warwick's brother Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (1532/3–1588), referred to Bedford having 'as it were bequeathed' (Unpublished lettter, 284) his daughter to the queen, and Warwick in his will requested Elizabeth 'to continue her good favour towards my said wife, whom I leave to continue her most faithfull and devoted servant' (Letters, ed. Collins, 1.42). Anne Russell's marriage to Warwick was arranged between her father and Leicester in autumn 1564. Leicester carefully sought Elizabeth's permission and she gave the union her enthusiastic backing. The marriage was celebrated with great ceremony and was pregnant with political symbolism, for it not only sealed the alliance of two of the leading protestant dynasties, but was also vital for the Dudley succession. Warwick was nearly twenty years older than Anne and no children had survived from his two previous marriages, while Leicester was unmarried at the time. Yet this marriage proved childless too, and was accepted by Leicester as such early in the 1570s.
According to her admiring niece and goddaughter, Lady Anne Clifford (1590–1676), the countess was 'a mother in affection' to her youngest brother, William Russell, first Baron Russell of Thornhaugh (c. 1553–1613), and her sisters Elizabeth Bourchier, countess of Bath (1558–1605), and Margaret Clifford, countess of Cumberland (1560–1616), following the early death of their mother, and later to their children (Williamson, 37). Anne may have had a particular influence on her father, which gave her a leading role in the family crisis that broke out after his death on 28 July 1585. As a result of the deaths of Bedford's three elder sons the earldom was inherited by his grandson Edward Russell. The third earl of Bedford was a minor and, since his mother was dead as well, Leicester and Warwick claimed and initially received his wardship on behalf of the countess of Warwick. However, this settlement was challenged by Elizabeth Russell (1528–1609), linguist and courtier, the widow of Bedford's uncle, John Russell, Baron Russell. She was a notoriously combative woman, who accused the countess of Warwick of persuading the second earl of Bedford to revoke an earlier settlement for John Russell and his heirs in the will he made on 7 April 1584, thus disinheriting her two daughters. She appealed to her brother-in-law, William Cecil, Baron Burghley, and to the queen, who had second thoughts. This in turn provoked Warwick to complain on 31 August 1585 about the queen's treatment of 'my poor afflicted wyfe' (TNA: PRO, SP 12/181/238). The Dudleys were ultimately successful in obtaining the wardship, but Lady Russell was still charging the countess with 'cruelty' as late as 1601 (Salisbury MSS, 9.562).
The countess's marriage appears to have been a model of domestic harmony and partnership. When Sir Edward Stafford came to see the dying Warwick at Bedford House in February 1590 (he died on the 21st), he found her distraught, 'sitting by the fire so full of teares that she could not speak' (CKS, U 1475/L2/4, item 3, m. 80). She was no less close to Warwick's family. In his first will (1582) Leicester effusively left 'my noble & worthy sister the countys of Warwyk at whose hands I have ever found great love & kindnes [a gift worth 100 marks] praying hir to accept yt as from hym that in his lyffe tyme did both honor & esteme hir asmoch as any brother did his syster' (Longleat House, Dudley papers, box 3, article 56, m. 10). However, there was a less fortunate side to the Dudley connection. When he died Warwick left her North Hall, his house at Northaw, Hertfordshire, and his fee simple lands as an estate of inheritance, and she lived there for the rest of her life. But he also left her debts totalling over £7000. After her own death the heir to her Dudley lands, Sir Robert Sidney, inherited a residual debt of £2700. In 1574 Warwick added the lands he had gained from the 'Great Berkeley Law-Suit' to her jointure (Berkeley Castle, charter 5211), and as a result she faced legal battles with Henry Berkeley, seventh Baron Berkeley, in 1593 and 1597. In 1599 she lamented to Sir Robert Cecil that 'suits and troubles at law have emptied my purse' (Salisbury MSS, 9.21).
During the 1570s and 1580s the earl and countess of Warwick lived either at North Hall or at court, and her attendance on the queen was thus uninterrupted. The countess served as an extraordinary gentlewoman of the privy chamber until the end of the reign and, according to Anne Clifford, was 'more beloved and in greater favour with the queen than any other woman in the kingdom' (Gilson, 24–5). Since Anne Clifford was only thirteen when Elizabeth died, there is an element of legend here. Nevertheless in the 1590s the countess, her sister-in-law, Katherine Hastings, countess of Huntingdon (after she was widowed in 1595), and Charles Howard, first earl of Nottingham, the lord admiral, were widely understood to be the queen's closest intimates, and Anne was among those attending Elizabeth at her death on 24 March 1603. Interestingly, she feared Elizabeth's death might cause a 'commotion' and advised her sister and niece to take refuge in her London house. Although she was graciously received by King James on his arrival, Anne Clifford later remembered that Anne of Denmark 'shewed no favour to the elderly ladies'. In the autumn of 1603 the countess retired to North Hall 'something ill and melancholy' (Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, 21, 23–4, 27). On 11 October she made her will and in the following month gave all of Leicester's and Warwick's pictures at North Hall to the countess of Huntingdon (TNA: PRO, PROB 11/103, fols. 100r–103r). Her fee simple lands she left to her beloved brother William, who was also her executor. The remaining Dudley lands went to her nephew, Sidney. She died at North Hall on 9 February 1604 in the presence of her immediate relatives, having outlived Elizabeth by less than a year. At her own request she was interred with the Russells at Chenies, Buckinghamshire, not with Warwick. An alabaster effigy and altar-tomb of black marble were then erected for her.
Thanks to the countess's intimacy with Elizabeth her influence was believed to be extensive and much solicited, but owing to the destruction of her papers after her death it can be gauged only from the comments of others. The prevailing impression is of a very effective advocate and medium for submitting petitions and letters, as, for example, John Dee found. Anne Clifford described her as 'a great friend to virtue and helper to many petitioners' (Gilson, 24–5). Both before and after Warwick's death the countess's hand can be found in a wide range of lesser patronage. Best known is her help to various puritan divines, but she was also involved in university and ecclesiastical appointments, wardships, pensions, lawsuits, minor military postings, and land transactions. Whether she gained in any material way from her influence is a moot point. In 1594 Sir Thomas Shirley was quick to dismiss as slander gossip that she had received a share of his purchase of office. Some twenty books were dedicated to her, about half in her widowhood. Quite a few were by men her husband patronized, among them several puritan divines, but in the 1590s the authors were more literary and included Edmund Spenser. Yet there were also limits to her influence. The most extensive series of references to her help comes from the correspondence of Sidney's agent, Rowland Whyte, from 1595 to 1600. If, in Whyte's words, 'she doth labour as if it were for her owne brother for your sake' (Letters, ed. Collins, 2.74), Sidney used her primarily to lobby for home leave from his command at Flushing. When he wished to pursue offices, she advised him to employ 'a man of greatness and authority' (ibid., 2.122). When her brother William was lord deputy of Ireland from 1594 to 1596, Elizabeth commanded her 'not to meddle in Irish causes' (Salisbury MSS, 5.481). The countess was undoubtedly one of the pivotal women in Elizabeth's court, but her intimacy with the queen may, in the last resort, have depended on her not overstepping the mark. |