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“It is a great while me thinkethe, Cousin Cecile, since I sent unto you, in my neices behalf, albeit I knowe, (opportunitie so servinge) you are not unmindful of her miserable and compfortlesse estate. For who wantinge the Princes favor, maye compt himselfe to live in any Realme? And because this time of all others hathe ben compted a time of mercie and forgevenes I cannot but recommende her woefull liffe unto you. In faithe I wolde I were the Queen’s confessor this Lent, that I might joine her in penaunce to forgive and forget; or otherwise able to steppe into the pulpett to tell her Highness, that God will not forgive her, unleast she frelye forgeve all the worlde.”

This letter is worth quoting because it shows the prevailing attitude of the Elizabethan courtier. No one who lacked the favour of the sovereign could be accounted as one living. Lady Catherine, once under that heavy cloud of disfavour, never emerged, but died broken and miserable within six years of her unhappy marriage. Wherefore Lady St. Loe had chance enough to learn her lesson, and was fortunate in that her share of the affair was visited only by a cross-examination and warning. She was not at all the sort of woman to brook being left out in the cold. She was too wise, of course, ever to have engulfed herself in a marriage of this sort, but in such a case, had she not managed to divert Elizabeth’s anger by some master stroke of wit and diplomacy, she would certainly not have languished of “woofull griefe” nor starved herself to death, like Lady Catherine, for sorrow.