Margaret Dudley

daughter of Richard Cavendish the author, of Hornsey, a younger brother of William

In 1591 the 17-year-old Dudley married Margaret, a sister of Sir Thomas Cavendish, in whose last voyage he had probably invested. Dudley was excluded from court for this secret marriage, but only for a few days. Margaret was given two ships by her father Robert [SIC: inherited from her cousin Sir Thomas in 1592] named the Leicester and the Roebuck. She soon died childless.

From A Who’s Who of Tudor Women: C-Ch compiled by Kathy Lynn Emerson

MARGARET CAVENDISH (d.1595)

Margaret Cavendish, was not the daughter of William Cavendish (December 27, 1551-March 3, 1625/6), later 1st earl of Devonshire, and Anne Keighley (d.1598). Her father was Richard Cavendish (c.1530-1601). Margaret was at court, probably as a maid of honor, from 1589-91. In 1591, Sir Robert Dudley (August 7, 1574-September 6, 1649) was temporarily barred from court for kissing her in public. They married soon after. Up until that time, and possibly afterward, Dudley had been having an affair with another maid of honor, Frances Vavasour. Years later, he tried to claim that he’d married her, in the hope of invalidating both his first and second marriages so that he would be allowed to marry his mistress. (see ALICE LEIGH, ELIZABETH SOUTHWELL, and FRANCES VAVASOUR). Margaret died of the plague in the spring of 1595, while her husband was in the West Indies. She had no children.

From Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica Page 263

To countenance his [Robert Dudley's] marriage with Mrs Southwell he alledged that his marriage wth ye Lady Alice Leigh was by the canon Law illegal, because he had carnal knowledge of her during the life of his former wife who was sister to Mr Thomas Cavendish the famous Navigator.

From The Italian biography of sir Robert Dudley. To which are added, some ... By Vaughan Thomas, sir Robert Dudley (calling himself duke of Northumberland.)

• Nov. 1594. Sir Robert Dudley set out upon his Voyage to Trinidad; he was about 21 years old.
• 1595. He named an island in the Oronoko—Dudleyana.
• May, 1595. Sir Robert Dudley returned from his Voyage to Trinidad.
• Circa 1595. Sir Robert Dudley married one of the three daughters of Thomas Cavendish, Esq. the great Navigator, after his return from his Voyage.
• 1595 or 1596. She shortly after died.
• June 20, 1596. Sir Robert Dudley landed with the Army of the Earl of Essex at Cadiz. July 5, 1596

From The Voyage of Robert Dudley, Afterwards Styled Earl of Warwick and ..., Volume 3  By Wyatt ((Capt)), Robert Dudley (Sir)), Abram Kendall. Page ix

Frances Vavasour had been married for more than a year to the eldest of the famous three Sherley brothers, Thomas Sherley, who got into trouble with the Queen in consequence. Altogether the document, which is not an original, is suspicious; and it is perhaps a forgery, concocted by, or for, Dudley in Italy, when he was trying to induce the Pope to annul his marriage with Alice Leigh on the ground of pre-contract. There is less reason to question his marriage with a sister,1 or perhaps a cousin, of Thomas Cavendish, the circumnavigator, though little definite is known about it. The first hint of it is given in a letter of October 27th, 1591,2 in which we read: "Mr. Dudley is forbidden the Court for kissing Mrs. Candishe in the presence, being his wife as is said." Neither the lady's Christian name nor the date of the marriage is recorded. If she was sister to Thomas Cavendish, as Dugdale states, she was a daughter of William Cavendish, of Grimston Hall, Trimley St. Martin, Suffolk; and it is clear from the Cavendish pedigree and the extracts from the Trimley parish register in Davy's "Suffolk Collections"3 that she was either Anne, baptized October 30th, 1562, or Elizabeth, baptized July 28th, 1567, the younger even of whom was seven years older than Dudley. On the other hand, in a deposition made in 1604 one Thomas Denny4 mentions incidentally that he was Dudley's brother-in-law. According to Davy, this Thomas Denny, who was of Bawdsey or Mendlesham, married Beatrice, daughter of Richard Cavendish the author, of Hornsey, a younger brother of William. Dudley's wife 1 Dugdale, Baronage, ii, p. 225. See also a letter of Lotti, the Florentine Agent, in 1607 (Leader, p. 172). 2 Calendar of Hatfield MSS., pt. iv, 1892, p. 153. 3 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 19,122, f. 350, 19,087, f. 131. Thomas Cavendish, the year of whose birth is left uncertain in the Diet. Nat. Biogr., was baptised at Trimley, September 19th, 1560. 4 Dudley Papers at Longleat, Box vi, f. 46: "because I married the sister of Sir Rob. Dudley his first wife." therefore seems to have been, not a sister, but a first cousin of the circumnavigator. In this case, however, she brought him into a closer connection with Richard Hakluyt, whose first wife was Douglas Cavendish, another daughter of Richard.1 Whoever she really was, and whenever the marriage took place, she could not have long survived, for Dudley, as will be seen, married again in or before 1597. Although Thomas Cavendish's example was no doubt a potent factor in directing his mind to maritime adventure, any personal intercourse came to a speedy end when Cavendish started on his last fatal voyage on August 26th, 1591. He died at sea in May or June, 1592; and some intimate connection between them is evident from the fact that Dudley took out letters of administration for his estate, a Council warrant2 of March 18th, 1593, directing the delivery to him of the Leicester and Roebuck, two of the ships which returned from the voyage. The first name, indeed, rather suggests that he had a share in the venture, and it is possible therefore that he was merely acting as a creditor.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dudley_(explorer)_
• https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hakluyt/voyages/maps/principalnavi...