That the greatest Kings and Princes of Europe sought the young Queen's hand; that ambassadors tumbled over each other in their eagerness to press on her this splendid alliance and that, mattered nothing to her. Her hand was her own as much as her Crown—she would dispose of it as she wished, and none should say her nay. To the fears and anger of her people at the prospect of her alliance with a subject she was as indifferent as to the jealousies of Dudley's Court rivals. She could afford to smile at them all—and she did.
And, while Dudley was thus basking in the smiles of his Sovereign, the Lady Amy was eating her heart out in loneliness and a futile jealousy in Norfolk. Her husband, it is true, paid her a duty visit now and then, and kept her purse well supplied for dresses she had not the heart to wear. She knew she had lost his love, if, indeed, she had ever had it; and she spent her days, as was known too late, in tears and prayers for deliverance from a burden she was too weary to bear longer.
One day, in September 1560, an ominous rumour began to take voice. Dudley's wife had been poisoned—by her husband, it was said with bated breath. The Queen herself heard, and repeated the report to the Spanish Ambassador; varying it on the following day by the statement that "Lord Robert's wife had broken her neck. It appears that she fell down a staircase." And this amended version proved to be tragically true. While Dudley was dallying with his Queen amid the splendours of the Court, his devoted wife was found, with her neck broken, lying at the foot of a staircase in the house of a Norfolk neighbour, whose guest she was.
How had this tragedy happened? and had Dudley any hand in it? were the questions that passed fear-fully from mouth to mouth, from end to end of England. The story, as told at the inquest, throws little light on what must always remain more or less a mystery.
This story was as simple as it was tragic. It seems that Amy Robsart (for by her maiden name she will always live in memory and in pity) rose early on Sunday morning, the 8th of September, the day of her death, and suggested that the entire household at Cumnor Place, at which she was staying, should leave her alone and spend the day at a neighbouring fair at Abingdon. "As for me," she said, "I shall be quite happy alone. I have no taste for pleasure; but I always like to know that others are enjoying themselves, even if I cannot." Eagerly responsive to such a welcome suggestion the entire household repaired to the fair, except the hostess (Mrs Owen) and a lady guest; and with them as companions Amy Robsart spent a quiet and peaceful day. During the evening she rose suddenly from the card-table, at which the three ladies were playing, and left the room; and nothing more was seen of her until the servants returning from the fair found her dead body at the stair-foot.
Was it suicide or a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either conclusion, and gave as their verdict "accidental death." That Amy Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting this plausible theory, turned to thoughts of murder, and branded Dudley as slayer of his wife. It was even commonly whispered that he had bribed one of his minions, Anthony Foster, to hurl her down the stairs to her death.
Whatever may be the truth, none could prove it then; and who shall succeed now? It is more generous and certainly more probable to suppose that Amy Robsart by her own act—wilful, at the dictate of a brain disordered by grief, or accidental—removed the barrier to her husband's passion for his Queen. Certain it is that Dudley affected, if he did not actually feel, deep sorrow at his wife's death, and that he spared no pains to solve the mystery that surrounded it.
His grief, however, seems to have been short-lived; for before the unhappy Amy had been many months in her grave we find him more ardent than ever in his devotion to Elizabeth, whose hand he was now free to claim. But the Queen, who was nothing if not an arrant coquette, was in no mood to be caught even by the man she loved. She drove him to distraction by her caprices. One moment she would "rap him on the knuckles," only to smile her sweetest on him the next. One day she would flaunt in his face a patent of peerage, as evidence of her affection; the next she would cut the parchment to pieces under his nose, laughing the while. She roused him to frenzies of jealousy by dallying with one Royal offer of marriage after another—now it was Philip, the Spanish King, now His Majesty of Sweden—canvassing their respective merits and charms in his presence, and flaring into angry retorts when he ventured to ridicule his august rivals.
She carried her tortures even to the extent of seeming to encourage a match between her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots; and, to make him a worthy suitor for a Royal hand, granted him the peerage she had so long dangled before him. Robert Dudley as Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester was no unfit husband for her "Royal sister"; certainly a much more possible personage than "Sir Robert" could have been. But she never intended thus to lose her most acceptable admirer, and was relieved—though she affected to be angry—when news came that Mary had chosen Darnley for her husband. Thus was Leicester's loss Elizabeth's gain; and his reward was that he took still a higher place in her favour.
If he was not now King Consort in name, he was, at least, in place and power. When the Queen fancied she was dying of small-pox she announced her wish that he should be appointed Protector of the Realm at a princely salary; and, when she recovered, he was empowered to act as her deputy—to receive ambassadors, to interview ministers, and to sit in her seat at the deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the "country squire."