accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid
promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were
still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life
Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths
who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as
precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly
accomplishments, for at eighteen we find him standing at the altar in
the King's Palace at Sheen, near Richmond, with his youthful Sovereign
as best man.

Whether it was really a love-match or not is open to doubt, perhaps;
for Robert Dudley seems to have had little voice in the choice of his
bride. For his elder brother, Guildford, the Duke chose a wife of
exalted rank, none other than the Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of Louis
XII.'s Queen and Henry VIII.'s sister. But for his boy, Robert, a plain
knight's daughter seems to have been good enough in his eyes; and she
was Amy, child of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, a lady whose fate was
to be as full of pathos and tragedy as that of his brother Guildford's
wife.

For a time, however, Fortune seemed to smile on this union of the Duke's
son and the Knight's daughter, who was as fair as she was to be
unfortunate, and who was not without a goodly dower of Norfolk lands, on
which her youthful husband settled for a few years of peaceful life. He
soon became a man of mark in the county of his adoption, taking the lead
in local affairs, administering his estates with skill, and finally
blossoming into a Member of Parliament to represent his neighbours at
Westminster. But the call of Court life was always in his ears; and many
a long spell he stole from his wife and his rural duties to spend among
the gaieties of Whitehall or the splendours of Henri II.'s French
_entourage_.

With the death of the boy-king, Edward VI., a change tragic and
unexpected came in the young knight's life. His ambitious father coveted
a crown for his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane Grey, whom he had induced
Edward, on his death-bed, to nominate as his successor; and
Northumberland, thus armed with Royal authority and spurred by his
insatiable ambition, sought by force of arms to give effect to his
scheme almost before the breath had left the late Sovereign's body. How
his daring project failed is well-known history--how the Princess Mary
on her way southward to her throne eluded Robert Dudley, who was sent to
intercept