Dudley was undoubtedly a remarkable man. He had been carefully educated, was a brave and scientific seaman and well versed in military and naval architecture; he excelled in all knightly exercises and was cited for his courtly and polished manners. A man of letters and a good mathematician, he also busied himself with medicine and invented a powder known as _Pulvis Comitis Warvicensis_, much praised by Mario Cornacchini, professor of medicine at Pisa, who declares that “clearing the Italian seas of barbarous and evil pirates was not a greater benefit to mankind than his fighting and exterminating the evil humours which molest humanity and cause disease.” Of Dudley’s twelve children the eldest, Maria, married the Prince of Piombino; Maria Maddalena became the wife of Malaspina Marchese d’Olivola, High Steward to Queen Christina of Sweden; and Teresa married the Duke della Cornia. Robert, the eldest son, died a few days before he attained his majority, and his mother was so affected by his loss that she followed him to the grave within a few weeks, to the intense grief of her husband. The second son, Charles, was an unmannerly scapegrace who gave his father infinite trouble. He married a Frenchwoman, Marie Madeleine, daughter of Charles Antoine Gouffier, Marquis de Braseux and Seigneur de Crevecœur. His daughter was the beautiful, witty and wild Christina Dudley married to the Marchese Paleotti of Bologna, whose adventurous and romantic life has been so well described by Signor Corrado Ricci,[48] and whose daughter Adelaide, after various adventures, turned Protestant, married the Duke of Shrewsbury, became a leader of fashion in London and Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Wales; her son Ferdinand, after giving endless annoyance to the Shrewsburys, ended his ill-spent life on the gallows. He was hung at Tyburn on March 28th, 1718, for the murder of his Italian servant, and curiously enough the Tuscan Minister present at his execution was Don Neri Corsini, whose family now own the villa where Sir Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Earl of Warwick, lived for so many years and died in Sept. 1649.