Renaissance humanism and science figured large in the Dudley children's education.Wilson 1981 pp. 11, 15–16; French 2002 p. 33 In 1553 Jane Dudley herself commissioned two works from the mathematician and Hermeticist John Dee about heavenly configurations and the tides.French 2002 pp. 32–33 Jane Dudley was close to her children; her eldest son, Henry, had died during the siege of Boulogne in 1544, aged 19. A postscript she wrote in 1552 under a letter by her husband to their then eldest son, John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, reads: . She also had health problems: In 1548 her husband was unwilling to leave her side, because she "had had her fit again more extreme that she had any time yet."Beer 1973 p. 68
