Douglas Sheffield, Baroness Sheffield

Douglas Sheffield , Baroness Sheffield, maiden name Douglas Howard , was an English noblewoman and the mother of the explorer and cartographer Sir Robert Dudley, illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. Seventeen years after Leicesters death she claimed in litigation that she had secretly been his wife, even though she had herself remarried while Leicester was still alive.

Douglas Howard was at court by about 1559, probably as a maid of honour. In 1560 she married a rich peer, John Sheffield, 2nd Baron Sheffield. They had a son and a daughter Edmund Sheffield, 1st Earl of Mulgrave, who was born in 1565, and Elizabeth Sheffield, who later married Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde, and died in November 1600.

Source: Wikipedia