But, although Dudley and his wife had for some years lived apart, and although he was notoriously a false and faithless man, whose varied gallantries were the talk of the time, there was not yet, in 1557, any question of getting rid of her, and no great and dazzling ambition made him or his agents contemplate a crime. Queen Mary yet ruled and it was not until the following year that she died, and was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth. No sooner, however, did Elizabeth become Queen than Dudley appeared as the most favoured courtier. That he was to become King-Consort none doubted, and it is singular to consider that, in all the records of that time, the fact of his being already married appeared to offer no bar to that contemplated union. Continuously, from the Queen’s accession, these circumstantial rumours spread, and it is beyond the bounds of credibility that Lady Dudley should not have been made perfectly well acquainted with them in the course of the two years in which they were current. Lady Dudley—why historians and others continue to write of her after her marriage by her maiden name of Amy Robsart is not clear—had been accustomed to visit a Mr. Hyde, a kinsman of Dudley’s, at Denchworth, near Abingdon; and it does not, therefore, appear extraordinary that when Anthony Forster, her husband’s steward, took Cumnor Place on lease, in 1559, she should elect to visit there: the more especially so if there were any truth in the rumour that she was ill at that time, for Cumnor, as we have already seen, was supposed to be a particularly healthy spot. But it is by no means so sure that she was at all unwell. It is one of the most damning evidences of foul play in this famous case that rumours were current for some time before the murder, or the accident, whichever it was, to the effect that she was suffering from cancer and was sure to die shortly, and that this gossip was contradicted at the time. Among those who gave the lie to it was the Spanish Ambassador, writing to the Duchess of Parma. “They,” he said, “are thinking of destroying Lord Robert’s wife.” Who “they” were we can only conjecture. “They have given out that she is ill; but she is not ill at all; she is very well, and is taking care not to be poisoned.” Is it at all reconcilable with the theory of accident that a person whose continued existence stood in the way of so ambitious a man as Dudley, and of whom it was so freely said that she was dying, when she was known to be well, and whose life was said to be in danger from violence or poison, should in fact meet her end so immediately and mysteriously? No modern coroner’s jury would return a verdict of accidental death under such suspicious circumstances.