The early prospects of Lord Robert Dudley, as third son of the Duke of Northumberland, were perhaps not particularly brilliant, and as a young man of eighteen or nineteen years he had in 1550 married Amy, daughter and heiress of Sir John Robsart, of Stanfield Hall, Norfolk. That was in the reign of Edward the Sixth, the young King himself being present at the wedding. There is no reason against the assumption that this was a love-match; but there is every reason to assume that in after-years, when his ambitions were kindled, it was bitterly regretted by Dudley, who, in the changes that had befallen with the successive deaths of Edward the Sixth and of Queen Mary, and with the accession of Queen Elizabeth, had become not only a courtier, but a royal favourite, looked upon with amorous glances by that great Queen herself, whose subtle character has defied the analysis of historians. Queen Elizabeth’s lovers, looked upon with favour, were not few, but Dudley was pre-eminent among them, and presumed, and was allowed to presume, more than any others. The Queen continually enriched him with grants of land and with the monopoly of the export of wool and other commodities, until he became extraordinarily wealthy, and able to maintain a magnificence remarkable even for that period. The loves of Dudley and his Queen afforded gossip for not only the Court, but for the nation at large, and a forthcoming marriage was looked upon as so sure a thing that the Spanish Ambassador found it possible to write home to his sovereign, referring to Dudley as “the King that is to be.” And all this while, we are to bear in mind, Dudley’s wife, Lady Robert Dudley (the “Amy Robsart” of the looming tragedy) was alive! What was that meek woman doing while such well-founded gossip was heard in every corner of the land? She was travelling and visiting in many different parts of the country, and doing so in considerable state. Among the relics of her to be seen, framed on the walls of Cumnor Church, is the facsimile of a letter from her to her husband, dated 1557, displaying nothing but perfect confidence and trust, which she might do, well enough, and yet find her trust misplaced. Or, possibly, those letters were cast in a conventional form, and hid a breaking heart.