Queen Elizabeth's Greatest Favourite.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 141, 22 March 1909, Page 4

Queen Elizabeth's Greatest Favourite.

Notwithstanding the high and unequalled favour that Queen Elizabeth always showed to the Earl of Leicester no evidence has ever come to light to prove that the relationship was any closer than platonic. A recent writer says, with some troth: —"In that strange, mysterious country which the French so aptly term 'Le pays du tendre,' there are many hidden, unsuspected byways; but, even ho, the charity most surely be more than common broad and undisceming which admits as wholly and lastingly platonic a jealous, absorbing intimacy which, having begun between a normal man and free woman in earliest youth, lasts till the death of the man. Elizabeth's only serious quarrels with Leicester were, with one exception, always concerned with his dealings with other women; while he, on his side, twice attempted to murder Simier when the latter astute Frenchman, acting as proxy for the Due d'Anjou, managed to concentrate on himself the Queen's fancy. All through Elizabeth's life she kept a miniature of her'sweet Robin,'painted in early ygtith, in her jewel casket; and after ber death, in this same casket, was found a folded piece of paper on which the Queen had inscribed in her own handwriting the words, 'His last letter.' " But then wc must remember that Elizabeth was ever to all her friends very loyal and true.