After hearing to that effect from the foreman he wrote to Blount, saying that after the jury had rendered their verdict, he could only wish there would be a second inquiry. He wished Arthur Robsart, the dead woman’s brother, and Appleyard, her half-brother, to be present. Never at any time, in all these scenes, was Dudley himself present. It is uncertain whether a second jury was summoned, or whether the sittings of the first were extended; but it is certain that an inquiry was still in progress on September 27th, and that this resulted at last in a verdict of accidental death. But the affair cast an indelible stain upon Dudley’s reputation, and although the question of his marrying the Queen was not dropped, and was ardently debated from time to time, his wife, being dead, proved a more insuperable obstacle than she had been while living. The dark suspicions, if not of his actual complicity, at least of Forster’s having contrived the tragedy in his master’s supposed interest, would not be allayed. Everywhere mutterings were heard, and the Queen did not dare marry one under such a cloud. Lady Dudley was buried in great state in the church of St. Mary, Oxford, and even there the grisly accusation of assassination came up, in Dr. Babington, the preacher, chaplain to Dudley himself, thrice making a slip of the tongue; desiring the prayers of the congregation for the lady “so pitifully murdered,” instead of “slain.” This incident serves sufficiently to show what was in men’s minds. In 1566, seven years after the tragedy, Appleyard was brought before the Privy Council for having declared that he had not been satisfied with the jury’s verdict, but for Dudley’s sake had covered the murder of his sister. He was intimidated, and fully apologised, for Dudley had become all-powerful; and he was made to explain his words as “malice,” and to beg pardon for them; but an apology extracted by such means does not carry great weight. Years afterwards Cecil could find it possible to say that Dudley was “infamed by his wife’s death,” and so infamed he still remains, whether we find it by direct participation or by the deeds of his too-subservient agents. We must here come to the conclusion that Dudley was not himself guilty; but that Forster certainly was. That conclusion can, indeed, hardly be avoided. The country side thought so, and it is not sufficient for apologists to point to his gentility and his culture, and to exclaim that such an one would be incapable of such a crime. Whenever did honourable descent or cultivated tastes prevent a man from bearing a villain’s part? The view that because Forster was a gentleman, and interested in the arts, he was incapable of crime is the conventional view of people who are not satisfied that a villain is a villain unless he wears a scowl and other distinguishing signs.