The tomb of "the noble Impe, Robert of Dudley," who died in 1584, with the lovely figure of a child seven or eight years old, may have been seen by Shakespeare when he returned to Stratford in his latter years, and also the splendid monument of the father of the "noble imp," Robert Dudley, the great Earl of Leicester, who died in 1588; but in the poet's youth this famous nobleman was living in the height of his renown and prosperity at the castle of Kenilworth five miles away, which we will visit later. WARWICK IN HISTORY. Only brief reference can be made here to the important part that Warwick, or its famous Earl, Richard Neville, the "King-maker," played in the English history on which Shakespeare founded several dramas,--the three Parts of _Henry VI._ and _Richard III._ He is the most conspicuous personage of those troublous times. He had already distinguished himself by deeds of bravery in the Scottish wars, before his marriage with Anne, daughter and heiress of Richard Beauchamp, made him the most powerful nobleman in the kingdom. By this alliance he acquired the vast estates of the Warwick family, and became Earl of Warwick, with the right to hand down the title to his descendants. The immense revenues from his patrimony were augmented by the income he derived from his various high offices in the state; but his wealth was scattered with a royal liberality. It is said that he daily fed thirty thousand people at his numerous mansions. The Lady Anne of _Richard III._, whom the hero of the play wooes in such novel fashion, was the youngest daughter of the King-maker, born at Warwick Castle in 1452. Richard says, in his soliloquy at the end of the first scene of the play:-- "I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter. What though I kill'd her husband and her father?" Her husband was Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., and was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury. The Earl of Warwick who figures in _2 Henry IV._ was the Richard Beauchamp already mentioned as the father of Anne who became the wife of the King-maker. He appears again in the play of _Henry V._, and also in the first scene of _Henry VI._, though he has nothing to say; and, as some believe, he (and not his son) is the Earl of Warwick in the rest of the play, in spite of certain historical difficulties which that theory involves. In _2 Henry IV._ (iii. 1. 66) Shakespeare makes the mistake of calling him "Nevil" instead of Beauchamp.