CHAPTER I.

THE OLD HOME.


The birthday of the baby, Anne Dudley, has no record; her
birthplace even is not absolutely certain, although there is
little doubt that it was at Northhampton in England, the home of
her father's family. She opened her eyes upon a time so filled
with crowding and conflicting interests that there need be no
wonder that the individual was more or less ignored, and personal
history lost in the general. To what branch of the Dudley family
she belonged is also uncertain. Moore, in his "Lives of the
Governors of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay," writes: "There
is a tradition among the descendants of Governor Dudley in the
eldest branch of the family, that he was descended from John
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who was beheaded 22 February,
1553." Such belief was held for a time, but was afterward
disallowed by Anne Bradstreet. In her "Elegy upon Sir Philip
Sidney," whose mother, the Lady Mary, was the eldest daughter of
that Duke of Northumberland, she wrote:

"Let, then, none disallow of these my straines,
Which have the self-same blood yet in my veines."

With the second edition of her poems, however, her faith had
changed. This may have been due to a growing indifference to
worldly distinctions, or, perhaps, to some knowledge of the
dispute as to the ancestry of Robert Dudley, son of the Duke, who
was described by one side as a nobleman, by another as a