carpenter, and by a third as "a noble timber merchant"; while a
wicked wit wrote that "he was the son of a duke, the brother of a
king, the grandson of an esquire, and the great-grandson of a
carpenter; that the carpenter was the only honest man in the
family and the only one who died in his bed." Whatever the cause
may have been she renounced all claim to relationship, and the
lines were made to read as they at present stand:

"Then let none disallow of these my straines
Whilst English blood yet runs within my veines."

In any case, her father, Thomas Dudley, was of gentle blood and
training, being the only son of Captain Roger Dudley, who was
killed in battle about the year 1577, when the child was hardly
nine years old. Of his mother there is little record, as also of
the sister from whom he was soon separated, though we know that
Mrs. Dudley died shortly after her husband. Her maiden name is
unknown; she was a relative of Sir Augustine Nicolls, of Paxton,
Kent, one of His Majesty's Justices of his Court of Common Pleas,
and keeper of the Great Seal to Prince Charles.

The special friend who took charge of Thomas Dudley through
childhood is said to have been "a Miss Purefoy," and if so, she
was the sister of Judge Nicolls, who married a Leicestershire
squire, named William Purefoy. Five hundred pounds was left in
trust for him, and delivered to him when he came of age; a sum
equivalent to almost as many thousand to-day. At the school to
which he was sent he gained a fair knowledge of Latin, but he was
soon taken from it to become a page in the family of William Lord
Compton, afterward the Earl of Northumberland.