To English people the villa is interesting as it was inhabited by Sir Robert Dudley, to whom it was lent by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Robert Dudley (born 1573) was the son of the Earl of Leicester by his second wife Douglas Howard, widow of Lord Sheffield; but the marriage, for various private and political reasons, was secretly solemnised and never acknowledged by Leicester, who a few years later married Lettice, widow of the Earl of Essex. Leicester calls Robert Dudley “my base son” in his will, yet he left him “the lordships of Denbighe and Chirke, etc., the castle of Kenilworth with all the Parkes, Chases and Lands after the death of my dear brother Ambrose the Earl of Warwick,” and other estates too numerous to mention here. The Earl of Leicester died in 1588, and his brother a year later, when Robert Dudley succeeded to Kenilworth. In 1591 he was affianced to Frances Vavasour, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who however forbade the celebration of the marriage on account of Dudley’s youth. Dudley was educated at Christ Church, Oxford; where, under the date 7th May 1588, he was entered as _Comitis Filius_. But his love of travel and adventure drove him to study navigation; he built some warships, engaged the best pilots he could find and started for the West Indies. After conquering the Island of Trinidad he discovered Guiana (of which he made a map published in his work, _L’Arcano del Mare_), and after taking several galleons from the enemy returned to England with much booty. Entering the navy, he, in the absence of his uncle the Earl of Nottingham, took command of the English fleet in 1596; the following year he led the van-guard in the battle of Cadiz; then he besieged Faro in Algarve in Portugal; and when Calais was taken by Mendoza, he commanded the English ships sent to the rescue.