She undertook, if Mary would accept {51} Dudley, to make him a duke; and, in the meantime, she created him Earl of Leicester.
— from Queen Elizabeth by Edward Spencer Beesly

For myself, all I can say is that I am very grateful to you that you have been so fair-minded as to admit the innocence of myself and my fellow hostages in connection with an affair over which we have had no control, yet for which you might, had you so chosen, have exacted our lives as a penalty.”
— from The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer by Harry Collingwood

In order, apparently, to forward Dudley’s chances of success as a suitor for the hand of Mary Stuart, for which at this time Elizabeth pretended to be anxious, she created him Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbeigh, on Michaelmas day 1564.
— from The Great Lord Burghley: A study in Elizabethan statecraft by Martin A. S. (Martin Andrew Sharp) Hume

One of his sons, calling himself “earl of Leicester,” came to England and gained, some said clandestinely, the affections of the princess Eleanor, daughter of king John, and sister of Henry III.
— from The Life and Reign of Edward I. by Robert Benton Seeley