The Young Earl of Warwick, Part I

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Facts and opinions about the life, times, and family of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester

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Robert Dudley was 12 when he lost his eldest brother, Henry, during the siege of Boulogne, in the late summer of 1544. The brother to succeed the 19-year-old Henry as the family heir was John, the third son of his parents, John Dudley and Jane Guildford. John the Younger was then 13 years old; when his father became Earl of Warwick in early 1547 he was styled Viscount Lisle, and later, when John Dudley senior became the Duke of Northumberland, John Dudley junior became the Earl of Warwick. John’s birth in, most probably, late autumn of 15301 had been followed by that of his brothers Ambrose and Robert, and, not far apart in age, the three were educated together, it seems. The Cambridge scholar Thomas Wilson explained to Robert Dudley in 1572 that

I am to deal thus with your honour before others, because I have known you, and that noble race your brethren, even from their young years. And with your honour, and that famous Earl of Warwick deceased, and your noble brother now Earl of Warwick living [i.e. Ambrose Dudley], I have had more familiar conference than with the rest.2

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http://allthingsrobertdudley.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/the-young-earl-of-warwick-part-i/