Leicester House is named after Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who made the request to Queen Elizabeth I in 1573 for a charter for the School to be founded.
Its House name is therefore a continuing reminder of the School’s long and proud history, and of its distinguished origins more than four centuries ago. Dudley was one of the Queen’s closest courtiers and among the most influential men in the land until his death in 1588. It had, for a time, been widely anticipated that he would marry Elizabeth and it is probably the closest that ‘The Virgin Queen’ came to marriage during her reign.