The Voyage of Robert Dudley - Afterwards Styled Earl of Warwick and Leicester and Duke of Northumberland, to the West Indies, 1594-1595 #247671

If born in wedlock, the boy was Leicester's heir; but there is some doubt whether he was his first child by Lady Sheffield. In Leicester's Conunonwealt/z she is said to have given birth to a daughter at Dudley Castle4 in Staffordshire, and evidence Of this, though the sex is not stated, was given in the legitimacy suit in in which it was alleged that the infant died at, or very soon after, birth, while the mother was hurried back to Court to quiet suspicion. This happened, it is said, eighteen months before Robert Dudley's birth; so that, if the story is true.