Thomas Stukley, prosecuted for debt on his release in August 1553, had been compelled to become a soldier of fortune once more.

This was not his only financial difficulty: once, claiming a legacy, he had broken into the late testator's house and searched the coffers, in defiance of a court injunction.

In another episode, he had been imprisoned in the Tower at the suit of an Irishman he had robbed.

He had returned to England in December 1554 in the train of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, after obtaining an amnesty against his creditors' suits, possibly by the grace of the Duke of Suffolk.

His credit had temporarily improved upon his marriage to an heiress, Anne Curtis, but he is reputed to have squandered £100 a day and to have sold the blocks of tin with which his father-in-law had paved the yard of his London house.

Within a few months, a warrant for his arrest had been issued on a charge of uttering false money and he had fled abroad again, deserting his wife, to enter the service of the duke of Savoy, fighting on the victorious side at the Battle of St. Quentin in 1557.

The following year, Stukley had been summoned before the council on a charge of piracy, although he was again acquitted owing to insufficient evidence, and had managed to retain Mary's favor.

On the death of his wife's grandfather at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he had come into money, and things looked up for him as he accommodated himself to the Protestant succession and became a supporter of Sir Robert Dudley.

He had in 1561 been given a captaincy at Berwick, where he lived sumptuously; during the winter, he had made firm friends with the Gaelic Ulster lord, Shane O'Neill, upon the latter's visit to court at London.

He had earlier in 1562 obtained a warrant permitting him to bring French ships into English ports although England and France were only nominally at peace.

At about this time, on being presented to the queen, his reputed half-sister, he said he would prefer to be sovereign of a molehill than the subject of the greatest king in Christendom and that he had a presentiment he would be a prince before he died.

She is said to have remarked, "I hope I shall hear from you when you are installed in your principality".

He responded that she surely would, and she demanded, "In what language?"

He answered: "In the style of princes, to our dearest sister."

The Queen falls ill with smallpox in October 1562.

Believing her life to be in danger, she asks the Privy Council to make Robert Dudley Protector of the Realm and to give him a suitable title together with twenty thousand pounds a year.

There is universal relief when she recovers her health; Dudley is made a privy councilor.

He is already deeply involved in foreign politics, including Scotland.