knew very well that Dudley was married, while she had attended his wedding in 1550, so he could not very well hide the marriage from her. One very large falsification on the filmmaker’s part is Dudley’s involvement in the conspiracy to have Elizabeth killed. However, he did conspire with several outside forces in an effort to gain support for a marriage between him and Elizabeth. Dudley met with the Spanish ambassador, and told him to tell Philip II that he “was prepared to restore religion by way of Council in return for Philip II’s support of the marriage“(Doran). However, he had no intention of keeping these promises once the wedding had taken place. Although she may have wanted to, Elizabeth refused to marry Dudley because her main advisors objected to it, but she let him continue his intrigues with the Spaniards, and her encouragement probably gave him hope that she would eventually marry him. Dudley continued to pursue Elizabeth, although it never worked out for him. On one occasion, Elizabeth stated that “[she] would have here but one mistress and no master”(Jagger). Eventually, as it became apparent that Elizabeth was not going to marry, the House of Commons and House of Lords “preferred a Dudley match to her continuing a life of celibacy and to the threat of civil war on her death. This evidence of Parliamentary approval for a marriage to her favorite came too late, for by 1563 she had apparently little desire and certainly no intention of taking Dudley as a husband”(Doran). As for the conspiracy, Robert had been involved with a plan for Norfolk to marry Mary Stuart, but this had nothing to do with a plot to kill Elizabeth. He had only supported it in order to get Norfolk out of England, which may have worked on Elizabeth’s behalf, while Norfolk conspired against her in later years. When the plan started to turn in a negative way towards Elizabeth, Robert i...
