The Queen was furious. She thrust down her fan, behind which she had been coquettishly giggling with a courtier, rose from her throne and strode towards the woman who had dared to enter her chamber.
And when Queen Elizabeth I reached the Countess of Leicester she soundly boxed her ears and screamed: “Get out!”
The new countess fled and was never to appear at court again. Her crime was to be the second wife of the man Elizabeth adored.
Lord Robert Dudley had tried for years to marry the captivating and tempestuous Queen and now, fed up and resigned to the fact she would never consent to the match he had tried so ardently to bring about, he had married a young relative of Elizabeth’s called Lettice Knollys. Yet Elizabeth refused to let this derail a deep love affair that was the scandal of Europe.
Lettice was effectively banished, her social life effectively over by royal decree before it had even started. “From the time of her accession in 1558 Elizabeth I and her dashing but married Master of the Horse, Lord Robert Dudley, cast caution to the winds in pursuing their passion for each other,” says bestselling historian Alison Weir whose latest novel explores the Queen’s fascination with Dudley in particular and men in general.
