This unfortunate youth has been accused not only of ingratitude to his royal benefactress by making secret advances to her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, but also of the serious offence of disloyalty and treason towards the monarch. But though, indeed, he may have committed the former mistake, a critical examination of the evidence produced clears him of knowing and wilful participation in any of the serious plots which the proposed marriage of the Queen with Philip of Spain had aroused among her subjects. Sir Thomas Wyat unreservedly absolved Courtenay from all knowledge of his rising, and the leniency with which Mary, little given to clemency, extended towards the Earl shows that she, at least, believed in his innocence. Probably the truest aspect of the case is shown by Burnet, who declares, when writing of the harsh treatment dealt to Elizabeth by her royal sister: “Others suggest a more secret reason for this dispute. The new Earl of Devonshire was much in the Queen’s favour, so that it was thought that she had some inclination to marry him, but he, either not presuming so high or having an aversion to her and an inclination to her sister, who of that moderate share of beauty which was between them had much the better of her and was nineteen years younger, made his addresses with more than ordinary concern to the Lady Elizabeth, and this did bring them both into trouble.” [Illustration _From the original portrait by Sir Antonio More, at Woburn._] [_Engraved by T. Chambars._ EDWARD COURTENAY, EARL OF DEVONSHIRE. ] It is plain enough that this young man, little older and assuredly not more experienced than a boy, was a tool in the hands of those astute intriguers, de Noailles and Simon Renard, the French and Spanish ambassadors. The one, strenuously opposing the Spanish marriage, the other, equally determined in his advocacy of the alliance, united in using the innocent Earl of Devonshire as a factor in their game, with disastrous results to the unfortunate victim.