John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick

John Dudley
Born	1527(?)
Died	21 October 1554 Penshurst Place, Kent
Title	Earl of Warwick
Nationality	English
Wars and battles	Campaign against Mary Tudor, 1553
Offices	Master of the Buckhounds Master of the Horse
Spouse(s)	Anne Seymour
Parents	John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland Jane Guildford

John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, KB (1527(?) – 21 October 1554) was an English nobleman and the heir of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, leading minister and regent under Edward VI of England from 1550–1553. As his father's career progressed, John Dudley respectively assumed his father's former titles, Viscount Lisle and Earl of Warwick. Interested in the arts and sciences, he was the dedicatee of several books by eminent scholars, both during his lifetime and posthumously. His marriage to the former Protector Somerset's eldest daughter, in the presence of the King and a magnificent setting, was a gesture of reconciliation between the young couple's fathers. However, their struggle for power flared up again and ended with the Duke of Somerset's execution. In July 1553, after King Edward's death, Dudley was one of the signatories of the letters patent that attempted to set Lady Jane Grey on the throne of England, and took arms against Mary Tudor, alongside his father. The short campaign did not see any military engagements and ended as the Duke of Northumberland and his son were taken prisoners at Cambridge. John Dudley the younger was condemned to death yet reprieved. He died shortly after his release from the Tower of London.

John Dudley was the third of thirteen children born to Sir John Dudley and Jane Guildford, daughter of Sir Edward Guildford. When John was born, his father was a young knight, son of the executed Edmund Dudley, councillor to Henry VII; in 1537 he became vice-admiral and later Lord Admiral. In 1542 he received his mother's title of Viscount Lisle. The elder John Dudley was a family man and happily married, as was noted by contemporaries and is evident from letters. The Dudleys moved in evangelical circles from the early 1530s, and their children were educated in Renaissance humanism and science by tutors and companions such as Roger Ascham,John Dee, and Thomas Wilson. Of the brothers, John in particular had scholarly and artistic leanings. He was the dedicatee of Walter Haddon's Cantabrigienses (1552) and Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetoricke (1553). As late as 1570, John Dee dedicated his Mathematicall Praeface to Euclid's Elements to the long-deceased young man's memory, praising his use of arithmetics and "hearty love to virtuous sciences". Dudley had his own small library with books in French, Italian and Latin as well as a Greek grammar, and "a tragedie in english of the unjust supremacie of the bushope of Rome".

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