Douglas Sheffield, Baroness Sheffield (original) (raw)

Douglas Sheffield (also spelt Douglass), Lady Sheffield, maiden name Douglas Howard (1542/1543 – 1608), was an English noblewoman, the lover of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester and mother by him of the explorer and cartographer Sir Robert Dudley, an illegitimate son. Seventeen years after Leicester's death she claimed in litigation that she had secretly been his wife, even though she had herself remarried while Leicester was still alive.