During all this time the court buzzed with whispered scandals.
Elizabeth was by nature an incorrigible coquette. Robert Dudley, Earl
of Leicester, the Earl of Essex, and Sir Walter Raleigh were by turns
her favorites. Over her relations with Dudley there hangs the
terrible shadow of the suspected murder of his wife, the beautiful Amy
Robsart.[3]
[3] See the "De Quadra Letter" in Froude's "England."
Elizabeth's vanity was as insatiable as it was ludicrous. She issued
a proclamation forbidding any one to sell her picture, lest it should
fail to do her justice. She was greedy of flattery even when long
past sixty, and there was a sting of truth in the letter which Mary
Queen of Scots wrote her, saying, "Your aversion to marriage proceeds
from your not wishing to lose the liberty of compelling people to make
love to you."