Part 9

This villa first belonged to the Strozzi, who sold it to the Rinieri in 1460, when it was called “La Lepre dei Rinieri.” About a century later it was bought by Francesco di Jacopo Sangalletti, whose estates were confiscated by the Medici, and sold to Pagolo Donati in 1597. It again changed hands and at last became the property of Cosimo de’ Medici, son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I, but finding it useless to have three villas—Petraja, Castello and Rinieri—so close together, he sold the last in 1650 to Piero Cervieri, who died without heirs and left all he possessed to the Jesuits. On the suppression of their Order the villa was bought by the Lanfredini, from whom it passed into the possession of the great house of Corsini, who enlarged and altered it, probably from the designs of Antonio Ferri, the same architect who built the large saloon, the fine staircase and the façade of the Corsini palace on the Lung’ Arno in Florence.

Villa Corsini stands at the foot of the royal villa La Petraja. It is a rather stately baroque edifice, with a large square courtyard in the centre; and though but little raised above the plain, the view of Florence from the south side of the garden is lovely. On the north is a typical Italian pleasaunce, where narrow paths meander under the deep shade of tall ilexes, oaks and fir trees; grey stone columns and balustrades surround small squares and circles of ground, as though it had been once parcelled out among the children of the house. A fountain represents a prancing seahorse who is unceasingly occupied in keeping a huge sarcophagus, entirely overgrown with maiden-hair fern, always brimful of water. Standing by the splashing fountain we get a beautiful glimpse of Petraja through the trees, standing high up on the hill behind. Prince Corsini told me the fine ilexes at Narford Hall were raised from acorns off these trees; the much-travelled Sir Andrew Fountaine, who resided for some time in Florence, and probably bought a good deal of his celebrated collection of Italian pottery from the Grand Duke Cosimo III,[47] was an intimate friend of Prince Corsini who sent a bagful of acorns to Narford. A present feature of the garden of the Villa Corsini is a shady avenue of ilexes which leads to the stable and was planted only fifty years ago.

To English people the villa is interesting as it was inhabited by Sir Robert Dudley, to whom it was lent by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Robert Dudley (born 1573) was the son of the Earl of Leicester by his second wife Douglas Howard, widow of Lord Sheffield; but the marriage, for various private and political reasons, was secretly solemnised and never acknowledged by Leicester, who a few years later married Lettice, widow of the Earl of Essex. Leicester calls Robert Dudley “my base son” in his will, yet he left him “the lordships of Denbighe and Chirke, etc., the castle of Kenilworth with all the Parkes, Chases and Lands after the death of my dear brother Ambrose the Earl of Warwick,” and other estates too numerous to mention here.

The Earl of Leicester died in 1588, and his brother a year later, when Robert Dudley succeeded to Kenilworth. In 1591 he was affianced to Frances Vavasour, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who however forbade the celebration of the marriage on account of Dudley’s youth.

Dudley was educated at Christ Church, Oxford; where, under the date 7th May 1588, he was entered as _Comitis Filius_. But his love of travel and adventure drove him to study navigation; he built some warships, engaged the best pilots he could find and started for the West Indies. After conquering the Island of Trinidad he discovered Guiana (of which he made a map published in his work, _L’Arcano del Mare_), and after taking several galleons from the enemy returned to England with much booty. Entering the navy, he, in the absence of his uncle the Earl of Nottingham, took command of the English fleet in 1596; the following year he led the van-guard in the battle of Cadiz; then he besieged Faro in Algarve in Portugal; and when Calais was taken by Mendoza, he commanded the English ships sent to the rescue.

In a letter to the Rev. Mr Hakluyt, a well-known writer on sea-voyages and travels in the time of Elizabeth and James I, Dudley gives a curious account of his first voyage at the age of twenty-one. “... I weighed ancker from Southampton road the 6th of November 1594. Upon this day my selfe in the ‘Beare,’ a ship of 200 tunnes, as Admirall; and Captaine Munck in the ‘Beare’s Whelpe,’ Vice-Admirall; with two small pinnesses, called the ‘Frisking’ and the ‘Earwig,’ I passed through the Needles, and within two dayes after bare in with Plimmouth. But I was enforced to returne backe. Having parted company with my Vice-Admirall, I went wandering alone on my voyage, sailing along the coast of Spaine, within view of Cape Finisterre and Cape St Vincent, the north and south capes of Spaine. In which space, having many chases, I could meet with none but my countreymen or countrey’s friends. Leaving these Spanish shores, I directed my course, the 14th December, towards the Isles of the Canaries. Here I lingered twelve dayes for two reasons; the one, in hope to meete my Vice-Admirall; the other, to get some vessel to remove my pestered men into, who being 140 almost in a ship of 200 tunnes, there grew many sicke. I tooke two very fine caravels under the calmes of Tenerif and Palma, which both refreshed and amended my company, and made me a fleet of three sailes.... Thus cheered as a desolate traveller, with the company of my small and newe erected Fleete, I continued my purpose for the West Indies.

“Riding under this White Cape two daies, and walking on shore to view the countrey, I found it a waste, desolate, barren and sandie place, the sand running in drifts like snow, and very stony; for so is all the countrey sand upon stone (like Arabia Deserta and Petrea), and full of blacke venemous lizards, with some wild beasts and people which be tawny Moores, so wilde, as they would but call to my caravels from the shore who road very neare it. I now caused my master Abraham Kendall to shape his course directly for the Isle of Trinidad in the West Indies; which after twenty-two dayes we descried, and the 1st Feb. came to anker under a point thereof, called Curiapan, in a bay which was very full of pelicans, and I called it Pelican Bay. About three leagues to the eastward of this place we found a mine of Mercazites, which glister like golde (but all is not golde that glistereth), for so we found the same nothing worth, though the Indians did assure us it was Calvori, which signifieth golde with them. These Indians are a fine shaped and a gentle people, all naked and painted red, their commanders wearing crowns of feathers. These people did often resort unto my ship, and brought us hennes, hogs, plantans, potatos, pines, tobacco, and many other pretie commodities, which they exchanged with us for hatchets, knives, hookes, belles and glasse buttons. The countrey is fertile, and ful of fruits, strange beasts and foules, whereof munkies, babions and parats were in great abundance.

“Right against the northernmost part of Trinidad, the maine was called the high land of Paria, the rest a very lowe land. Morucca I learned to be ful of a greenestone called Taracao, which is good for the stone. Caribes I learned to be man-eiters or canibals and great enemies to the Islanders of Trinidad. In the high land of Paria I was informed by divers of these Indians, that there was some Perota, which with them is silver, and great store of most excellent cane tobacco.... I was told of a rich nation, that sprinkled their bodies with the powder of golde, and seemed to be guilt, and that farre beyond them was a great towne called El Dorado, with many other things.... And after carefully doubling the shouldes of Abreojos, I now caused the Master (hearing by a pilote that the Spanish Fleete ment to put out of Havana) to beare for the Meridian of the yle of Bermuda, hoping there to finde the Fleete. The Fleete I found not, but foule weather enough to scatter many Fleetes which companies left me not, till I came to the yles of Flores and Cuervo; whither I made the more haste, hoping to meete some greate Fleete of Her Majestie my Sovereigne, as I had intelligence, and to give them advise of this rich Spanish Fleete; but findinge none, and my victuals almost spent, I directed my course for England.”

Here he fell in love with, and married, a sister of Thomas Cavendish, who died without children in 1596. Soon afterwards he married Alice, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, by whom he had four daughters. His one desire after coming into possession of Kenilworth was to clear his own and his mother’s reputation and honour, and for this purpose he instituted proceedings at law to prove his legitimacy. At first in the Ecclesiastical Court he had hopes of success, but the influence of the Essexs and Sydneys proved too strong; the case was transferred to the Star Chamber, which ordered that all “depositions should be sealed up and no copies taken,” and only admitted the evidence of Lady Essex.

Irritated by such injustice Dudley left England, and with him went his beautiful young cousin Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Southwell. At Lyons they entered the Roman Catholic Church, obtained the Pope’s dispensation from the laws of consanguinity, and were married, Lady Alice Dudley having in vain offered to join him with their four girls and to become a Catholic.

From Lyons Sir Robert and his new wife went to Florence and Dudley wrote to the Grand Duke asking for his protection and offering his services. In quaint French he set forth his noble birth and high lineage, claimed by virtue of descent to be Duke of Northumberland, Earl of Warwick, and Earl of Leicester, and declared himself second to none in the science of navigation and the art of ship-building; he also promised to make the Grand Duke absolute master in the seas of the Levant in spite of all Spanish, infidel and other galleys.

[Illustration: (Drawing of navigation compass)]

Ferdinando II, made inquiries of Lotti, his Minister in London, about the “Conte di Varuich” before taking him into his service. After expatiating upon the “exquisite stature, fair beard and noble appearance” of Sir Robert Dudley, Lotti added that King James was very angry at his marriage and his assumption of the title of Earl of Warwick, and then writes in cipher, “the chief reason is that His Majesty does not want Catholic subjects, especially when they are brave and worthy men.” This brought the matter to a conclusion, and Dudley immediately began building ships for the Grand Duke. He wrote proudly of the galleon _San Giovanni_, “she was a rare and strong sailer, of great repute, and the terror of the Turks in these seas”; and his designs seem to have attracted notice in England, as Lotti wrote to the Grand Duke in March 1607, “H. E. (Sir Thomas Challoner, tutor to Prince Henry) showed me the design of a ship made in Leghorn by the Earl of Warwick, and he also showed me another which he said was more perfect than any.” This may account for James I, sending Dudley an order to return to England, promising him an earldom and the title of Earl of Warwick. But all offers that left his own and his mother’s name under a slur were refused by Dudley, who remained in Tuscany where, thanks to him, Leghorn became a great commercial port. He induced the Grand Duke to build fortifications, to declare it a free port and to allow an English factory to be set up. The draining of the marshes between Leghorn and Pisa was also suggested by him.

In the _Specola_, or Natural History Museum, in Florence, are three large manuscript volumes in Dudley’s writing on ship-building. The two first are in English, the third in Italian, and his orthography, to say the least, is in both languages peculiar. In the same museum is a curious instrument of his invention for finding the ebb and flow of the tides, of which I give, through the kindness of Mr Temple Leader, an engraving taken from his interesting _Life of Sir Robert Dudley_, from which most of my facts are taken.

In Florence, Dudley and his wife (mentioned by Lord Herbert of Cherbury as “the handsome _Mrs Sudel_ whom he carried away with him out of England and is here taken for his wife”) were known as Earl and Countess of Warwick, until the Emperor Ferdinand II, to please his sister the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, whose grand chamberlain Dudley was, created him Duke of Northumberland in 1620.

Dudley was undoubtedly a remarkable man. He had been carefully educated, was a brave and scientific seaman and well versed in military and naval architecture; he excelled in all knightly exercises and was cited for his courtly and polished manners. A man of letters and a good mathematician, he also busied himself with medicine and invented a powder known as _Pulvis Comitis Warvicensis_, much praised by Mario Cornacchini, professor of medicine at Pisa, who declares that “clearing the Italian seas of barbarous and evil pirates was not a greater benefit to mankind than his fighting and exterminating the evil humours which molest humanity and cause disease.”

Of Dudley’s twelve children the eldest, Maria, married the Prince of Piombino; Maria Maddalena became the wife of Malaspina Marchese d’Olivola, High Steward to Queen Christina of Sweden; and Teresa married the Duke della Cornia. Robert, the eldest son, died a few days before he attained his majority, and his mother was so affected by his loss that she followed him to the grave within a few weeks, to the intense grief of her husband. The second son, Charles, was an unmannerly scapegrace who gave his father infinite trouble. He married a Frenchwoman, Marie Madeleine, daughter of Charles Antoine Gouffier, Marquis de Braseux and Seigneur de Crevecœur. His daughter was the beautiful, witty and wild Christina Dudley married to the Marchese Paleotti of Bologna, whose adventurous and romantic life has been so well described by Signor Corrado Ricci,[48] and whose daughter Adelaide, after various adventures, turned Protestant, married the Duke of Shrewsbury, became a leader of fashion in London and Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Wales; her son Ferdinand, after giving endless annoyance to the Shrewsburys, ended his ill-spent life on the gallows. He was hung at Tyburn on March 28th, 1718, for the murder of his Italian servant, and curiously enough the Tuscan Minister present at his execution was Don Neri Corsini, whose family now own the villa where Sir Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Earl of Warwick, lived for so many years and died in Sept. 1649.

Since 1230, when the Corsini came from Poggibonsi, their name fills many a page of the history of Florence as Priors and Gonfaloniers of the city. Andrea, the beloved and revered bishop of Fiesole, left such a reputation for goodness and sanctity that he was beatified in 1440 and canonised by Urban VIII, in 1629. He restored the cathedral of his diocese and the façade we now see was built by him. His brother Neri succeeded him as bishop of Fiesole, while another brother, Matteo, went to England, where his uncle was Master of the Mint, and made a large fortune in trade. He is known as the author of interesting family records and of the _Rosaia della Vita_, often quoted in the dictionary of the Crusca as a model of pure and elegant Italian. Tommaso di Duccio, their uncle, a learned jurist and a great statesman, was one of the chief citizens of Florence in the fourteenth century, and to his prudent counsels and wise administration the Republic owed much of her prosperity and power. After long negotiations he induced the Visconti to make peace with Florence, and when this was at length signed in 1353 he withdrew from public life, entered the Order of the _Gaudenti_ (instituted for the protection of widows and orphans) and jointly with the Rossi and Manieri erected a monastery outside the Porta Romana. For himself he built a small house hard by the monastery and passed the rest of his days almost as a hermit, occupied in prayer and good works. Notwithstanding the large amount given in charity he left a very considerable fortune to his sons; the eldest, Amerigo, was bishop of Florence at the time of the Council of Constance, which put an end to the schism of the Church and elected Martino V, Pope. In order to conciliate the citizens Martino raised Florence to the rank of an archbishopric and bestowed the privilege of wearing the crimson robes of a cardinal on her archbishop.

Luca Corsini was the popular Prior of Florence who shut the door of the Palazzo della Signoria in the face of Piero de’ Medici after his cession of Pisa, Leghorn, Pietrasanta and Sarzana to Charles VIII, of France. As ardent a republican and as great an enemy of the Medici as he was a friend of Savonarola, it is related that in 1498 the grave magistrate was seen throwing stones and fighting in the streets in defence of Fra Girolamo like any young lad. A daughter of the house of Corsini, Marietta, married the celebrated Niccolò Macchiavelli and is said to be depicted in his novel _Belfegor_; this may be—but he mentions her in his will with affection and esteem. Bertholdo Corsini, who was elected a Prior of Florence in 1531 after the fall of the Republic, must have been a weak man. He paid court to Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, who made him custodian of the fortress of San Giovan Battista; but when Alessandro was murdered by his cousin Lorenzino, Corsini repented and offered to give up the arms and ammunition in the fortress to the citizens, who fearing a snare refused to listen to him. When Cosimo II, entered the city, Bertholdo fled and joined the standard of Piero Strozzi. He escaped with his life from the battle of Montemurlo and after fighting in Piedmont and in France, returned to Italy when the Siennese revolted and was appointed custodian of the castle of Sienna. In the battle of Orbetello Bertholdo was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, sold to Cosimo for 600 scudi, and beheaded on the 2nd March 1555 in the Piazza S. Apollinari.

Not many years passed before the Corsini and the Medici became partners in a great banking firm in Rome, chiefly managed by Filippo Corsini who had been created Marchese of Sismano, Casigliano and Civitella by the Grand Duke Ferdinando II. Filippo was an intimate friend of Pope Urban VIII, with whom he was connected by his marriage with Maria Macchiavelli, a considerable heiress. Their eldest son Bartolomeo, brought up at the Tuscan court, was after the death of Ferdinando made Master of the Household to his widow Vittoria della Rovere. The second son Neri was a cardinal, and his moderation, prudence and good sense was of infinite service to the Holy See on two different occasions—when Avignon and when Ferrara revolted against the priestly rule. Filippo their nephew, was the companion and friend of Cosimo, son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, and the interesting account, now in the Laurentian Library, of the Prince’s visits to Oxford, Cambridge and many towns and country houses in England, was written by him and illustrated by P. M. Baldi. A member of most of the Academies of that day, he contributed largely to the cost of publishing the fourth edition of the Della Crusca dictionary. Lorenzo, his younger brother, became a cardinal in 1706 and twenty-four years later, when seventy-eight years of age and nearly blind, was elected Pope. It is related that when hailed as Clemente XII, he knelt down and begged the Consistory to allow an old blind man to die in peace; but they insisted, and Lorenzo Corsini unwillingly accepted. His first care was to put the finances in order and to dismiss Cardinal Coscia, the venal favourite of his predecessor Benedict XIII. He reformed the administration of justice, and ordered an emission of new coinage to replace the debased currency of former Popes. The magnificent gallery of the Campidoglio was founded by him; he built the fountain of Trevi, several churches, the façades of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and of San Giovanni in Laterano, and restored the Vatican. But much of this was done with money derived from the abominable _Giuoco del Lotto_—“esterminio e ruina de’ popoli,” as the Venetian Ambassador Mocenigo calls it—which had been prohibited by Benedict XIII, and was restored by Clemente under the specious pretext that his subjects would spend their money in gambling outside the papal dominions if they were debarred from gambling at home. On his accession to the Papacy he summoned his two nephews, Bartolomeo and Neri, to Rome. The former was created Prince of Sismano, Duke of Casigliano and Captain-General of the Papal Guards. Tempted by Charles III, who held out hopes that Spain would renounce her claims on Parma and Tuscany in his favour if he aided her to secure the kingdom of Naples, he identified himself entirely with the Spanish party, only to find his ambitious plans absolutely ignored by the Congress of Vienna. As some consolation he was appointed Viceroy of Sicily in 1737 and a Grandee of Spain two years later. Neri was made a cardinal and practically ruled the Papal States not only under his uncle, who trusted him implicitly, but under three successive Popes. He built the great Corsini palace at Rome and formed magnificent collections of pictures, engravings, manuscripts and books. Intensely hostile to the Jesuits, he used all his influence to obtain the suppression of the Order, but died in 1770 before the promulgation of the decree against them.