Leicester's wife.
Leicester had, among his other estates, a lonely mansion in Berkshire, about fifty miles west of London. It was called Cumnor House. Leicester's wife was sent there, no one knew why; she went under the charge of a gentleman who was one of Leicester's dependents, and entirely devoted to his will. The house, too, was occupied by a man who had the character of being ready for any deed which might be required of him by his master. The name of Leicester's wife was Amy Robesart.
Her mysterious death.
In a short time news came to London that the unhappy woman was killed by a fall down stairs! The instantaneous suspicion darted at once into every one's mind that she had been murdered. Rumors circulated all around the place where the death had occurred that she had been murdered. A conscientious clergyman of the neighborhood sent an account of the case to London, to the queen's ministers, stating the facts, and urging the queen to order an investigation of the affair, but nothing was ever done. It has accordingly been the general belief of mankind since that time, that the unprincipled courtier destroyed his wife in the vain hope of becoming afterward the husband of the queen.
Leicester hated by the people.
Various rumors.
The people of England were greatly incensed at this transaction. They had hated Leicester before, and they hated him now more inveterately still. Favorites are very generally hated; royal favorites always. He, however, grew more and more intimate with the queen, and every body feared that he was going to be her husband. Their conduct was watched very closely by all the great world, and, as is usual in such cases, a thousand circumstances and occurrences were reported busily from tongue to tongue, which the actors in them doubtless supposed passed unobserved or were forgotten.
The torch-light conversation.
The servants quarrel.
One night, for instance, Queen Elizabeth, having supped with Dudley, was going home in her chair, lighted by torch-bearers. At the present day, all London is lighted brilliantly at midnight with gas, and ladies go home from their convivial and pleasure assemblies in luxurious carriages, in which they are rocked gently along through broad and magnificent avenues, as bright, almost, as day. Then, however, it was very different. The lady was borne slowly along through narrow, and dingy, and dangerous streets, with a train of torches before and behind her, dispelling the darkness a moment with their glare, and then leaving it more deep and somber than ever. On the night of which we are speaking, Elizabeth, feeling in good humor, began to talk with some of the torch-bearers on the way. They were Dudley's men, and Elizabeth began to praise their master. She said to one of them, among other things, that she was going to raise him to a higher position than any of his name had ever borne before. Now, as Dudley's father was a duke, which title denotes the highest rank of the English nobility, the man inferred that the queen's meaning was that she intended to marry him, and thus make him a sort of king. The man told the story boastingly to one of the servants of Lord Arundel, who was also a suitor of the queen's. The servants, each taking the part of his master in the rivalry, quarreled. Lord Arundel's man said that he wished that Dudley had been hung with his father, or else that somebody would shoot him in the street with a dag. A dag was, in the language of those days, the name for a pistol.
Splendid style of living.
Public ceremonies.