When news of this double treachery, with the ugly suspicions that attended it, reached the Queen’s ears, her rage knew no bounds.  She vowed that she would send her faithless lover to the Tower, that his head should pay forfeit for his false heart; and it was only when her anger had had time to cool that more moderate counsels prevailed, and she was content to banish him to a virtual prison at Greenwich.

It was not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her “sweet Robin” was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to resume his place at her side.  In fact his very falseness and his follies seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty and his love-making had ever done.

These days of silken ease were, however, soon to be changed.  When, in 1585, Elizabeth wished to send her soldiers to help Holland in the struggle with Spain, her choice fell on Leicester to take command of the expedition, though his only experience of war had been more than a quarter of a century earlier, when young Dudley had left the Tower and his fellow Princess-captive’s side to give his sword its baptism of blood in Picardy.  At Flushing and Leyden, Utrecht and Rotterdam, the great English Earl and friend of England’s Queen was received with the rapturous homage due to a Sovereign deliverer rather than to a subject.  All Holland abandoned herself to a delirium of joy and festivity, and before he had been many weeks in the Netherlands a heroic statue rose at Rotterdam in his honour; and he was invited with one clamorous and insistent voice to take his place as governor and dictator of the land he had come to save.

Such a splendid lure was too potent for Leicester’s ambition to resist.  Without troubling to consult his Sovereign at home he accepted the “throne” that was offered to him; and it was only after ten days had elapsed that he deigned to despatch a messenger to Elizabeth with news of his promotion.  Meanwhile, and long before his envoy, who was delayed by storms on his journey, could reach the English Court, Elizabeth had heard news of her favourite’s presumption, and her Royal anger blazed into flame at his insolence in daring to accept such honours without consulting her pleasure.

She promptly despatched Sir Thomas Heneage, his whilom rival, to the Netherlands armed with a scathing letter in which the Queen poured out the vials of her wrath on Leicester’s head.

“How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been used,” she wrote, “you shall by the bearer understand.  We could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in honour ... and therefore, our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you