A collection of sixteen essays by Simon Adams on Elizabethan history, centring around Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Simon Adams is Reader in History at the University of Strathclyde

Introduction
1. Faction, clientage and party: English politics, 1550-1603
2. Eliza enthroned? The Court and its politics
3. Favourites and their factions at the Elizabethan Court
4. The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1550s in perspective
5. The Eltonian legacy: politics
6. The Court as an economic institution
7. Queen Elizabeth's eyes at Court: The Earl of Leicester
8. The Dudley clientele, 1553-63
9. A Puritan crusade? The composition of Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands, 1585-86
10. The Dudley clientele and the House of Commons, 1559-86
11. A godly peer? Leicester and the Puritans
12. The gentry of north Wales and Leicester's expedition to the Netherlands, 1585-86
13. The Composition of 1564 and Leicester's tenurial reformation in the lordship of Denbigh
14. Office-holders of the borough of Denbigh and the lordships of Denbighshire in the reign of Elizabeth I
15. 'Because I am of that countrye & mynde to plant myself there': Leicester and the West Midlands
16. Baronial contexts? Continutity and change in the noble affinity, 1400-1600
Index