DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

ae ae the Duke of Northumberland, cannot be excused. In the opening years of her reign she drew forth from political obscurity this man who was entirely devoid of every title to notice, and whose only claim to dis- tinction rested in his good looks, made him Earl of Leicester, a Field Marshal, and heaped upon him honours, riches, and rewards. Leicester had married Amy Robsart, a young and lovely heiress, whose tragic story Walter Scott has immortalised in his novel ‘Kenilworth.’ Leicester secreted his wife in his castle, in charge of his steward. This treacherous scoundrel, to ingratiate himself with his master, contrived her murder by inducing her to believe, one dark night, that her husband was coming to see her. She rushed out of her room to meet him, and fell through a trap into a vault and was killed on the spot. Leicester feigned regret, and ordered a coroner’s inquest, while his steward took good care to secure the return of a verdict of death by misadventure. Many years later, Leicester married again, and Elizabeth gave way to a hysterical outburst of anger and jealousy. The second wife avenged the first, as, hating her husband, she eventually poisoned him. Elizabeth’s aversion to matrimony has never been clearly accounted for. However, the singleness of her life served her political purposes, for by dallying