Lady Mary Dudley marries Henry Sidney

Lady Mary Dudley marries Henry Sidney

In a private ceremony, on 29th March 1551, Lady Mary Dudley married Henry Sidney.

Mary was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and his wife Jane Guildford.

Henry Sidney was 22, the eldest son of Sir William Sidney of Penshurst.

On 17th May 1551, a public wedding ceremony was held at the Dudley family home, Ely House in London.

Henry Sidney had been a constant companion to the young King Edward VI since 1538, and was one of his principal gentlemen of the privy chamber.

King Edward VI, would die in Henry’s arms.

The marriage appears to have been happy and successful.
Mary and Henry had seven children together, although only four survived childhood.

Mary was very well educated, and is known for her intellect.
She knew French, Latin and Italian, and she corresponded with and visited John Dee, the famous Elizabethan scholar, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and alchemist.

Mary began serving in Queen Elizabeth I’s privy chamber in 1559.

Although Mary was marginally implicated in her father’s attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the English throne, Mary Dudley was one of Queen Elizabeth’s favourites, during the early years of her reign.

Like her brother Lord Robert, the royal favourite, Mary was one of the Queen’s closest companions.

In 1565 Mary accompanied her husband Henry to Ireland, when he travelled there as Lord Deputy.
On the passage one of the ships sunk with all Mary’s jewels and fine clothes on board.

Henry Sidney played a large part in expanding the English administration in the country.

Henry Sidney was then sent to Scotland in July 1562.
He was instructed to defer a meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots to the next year.

That meeting would never happen.

Mary was with the queen when Elizabeth became ill with smallpox in 1562.

Mary nursed her royal mistress through her illness, but it came at a cost.
Elizabeth was lucky in surviving it, and getting off lightly with just light scarring.
Mary, however, caught the illness, and was badly scarred.

Her husband, Henry, recorded:
“When I went to Newhaven, I left her a full fair Lady, in mine eye at least the fairest, and when I returned I found her as foul a lady as the smallpox could make her, which she did take by continual attendance of her majesty’s most precious person”

After her illness, Mary continued her service to the queen at court.

In 1575 the couple accompanied the queen to Kenilworth castle, the home of Mary’s brother, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, where Mary excelled in the stag hunting.

In 1576, Mary quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain over accommodation at court.
She refused to exchange her accustomed rooms with a cold chamber that had previously been the place for servants”.

Mary left the court in July 1579, because of bad health.
She joined her husband at Ludlow in 1582.

The couple then lived chiefly at Ludlow Castle for the remainder of their lives, while Henry performed his duties as president of the Welsh Marches.

Henry died on 5th May 1586.
Three months after her husband, in whose elaborate funeral she had participated, Mary died on 9th August 1586.

The couple share a tomb at Penshurst Church.