John was the son of Edmund Dudley, councillor to King Henry VII, and Elizabeth Grey suo jure Baroness Lisle of Kingston Lisle. He is first heard of as distinguishing himself, together with his future rival, Edward Seymour, in the second French War of King Henry VIII of England. Whatever else he was, no one can deny that, on the battlefield, Dudley was a brave soldier. As Viscount Lisle, he became, in 1542, Warden of the Marches and Lord High Admiral, and was present with Seymour, then Earl of Hertford, in the dreadful raid of 1544 in which Edinburgh was sacked. Shortly afterwards, he aided in the capture of Boulogne and drove, before him, the French fleet which had attacked the Isle of Wight, fighting a successful rearguard action with them off Shoreham. Dudley acquiesced, probably with dissimulation in the Protectorate of Hertford over young Edward VI, and was raised to the Earldom of Warwick when Hertford made himself Duke of Somerset, but he was obliged to resign his office of Admiral to Thomas Seymour. The Earl was present and displayed great valour at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547; but it is evident that he lost no opportunity of intriguing against the Protector, who made a great mistake in entrusting to him the suppression of the Peasant Rebellion in Norfolk in 1549. On his return from that task, which he executed with ability, but also with savage cruelty, Warwick began to show his hand and it was at his house in London that the conspirators against Somerset met. The Protector's openly avowed zeal for the 'poor commons,' whose livelihood was threatened by the growth of the enclosures, had frightened the upper classes and especially the new grantees of the monastic lands. Warwick successfully made himself the spokesman of these men and had, at his back, almost the whole of the Privy Council. Somerset had no real means of resistance. He was arrested in October and sent to the Tower of London. But Warwick was prudent enough not to make himself Protector and, declaring King Edward to be of age to sign documents of State, he contented himself with the Admiralty, Mastership of the Royal Household and Presidency of the Council. He did not venture, as yet, to send Somerset to the block, for the latter had many friends in Parliament, and so he contrived to patch up a temporary reconciliation with him; and, in the following April (1550), he readmitted his rival to the Privy Council. Somerset's government had not been remarkable for success, either at home or abroad, but Warwick's was infinitely worse. He enlisted foreign mercenaries to act as a bodyguard, he debased the coinage, he pushed on the Reformation in religion without the least regard to the temper of the nation, introduced and compelled Cranmer to receive foreign reformers from Germany and Switzerland and shamefully plundered what property still remained to the Church. He gave up the contest with Scotland and France, and tried, by every means, to curry favour with the King of the latter country, ignoring the fact that this, combined with his cruel treatment of the Princess Mary, would almost certainly lead to a war with the Holy Roman Emperor and the ruin of the English wool trade. In October 1551, he made himself Duke of Northumberland and seized, for his new dukedom, most of the lands of the See of Durham; and, at the same date, he felt strong enough to strike at Somerset, who was now accused of a conspiracy, dating from the previous April, to murder the Lords of the Council. Evidence, afterwards proved to be false, was extracted by torture against the ex-Protector, who was tried, found guilty of felony and executed in January 1552. For eighteen more months, the government staggered on, adding every week, by its tyranny and incapacity, to the load of hatred that it bore. Young King Edward professed to look upon Northumberland as his father, but we have no means of knowing what the intelligent, if cold-blooded, boy really felt. From January 1553, the Monarch's feeble health gave certain signs of an early death. In May, Northumberland, who must have known what he had to expect on the accession of Princess Mary, married one of his own sons to Jane Grey, great-granddaughter of Henry VII, and, in the next month, persuaded Edward to make a devise of the succession in favour of this lady. The Council, intimidated by Northumberland's foreign mercenaries, gave way and signed acquiescence to this astonishing programme. King Edward died on 6th July. Jane was proclaimed Queen and Northumberland set out to capture the person of the rightful monarch, Mary. Directly he was gone, the leading Councillors seized the first opportunity of repudiating their act and proclaimed Mary as Queen. Deserted by his troops, Northumberland followed suit, was at once arrested, sent to the Tower and beheaded on 22nd August.>