Ammon News - A rare signed letter to Queen Elizabeth I from her lifelong friend and possible love interest, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, has been sold for £32,700 – four times more than the estimated price.

The document contains an enigmatic reference to an unspecified great matter of state, said to bear directly on the Queen’s life and likely relating to England’s policy towards Scotland in the aftermath of the Throckmorton plot of 1583.

This was a conspiracy between English Catholics and continental powers to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots.

The earl also apologises in the letter for his elusiveness during his recent journey across the Midlands of England.

His marriage in 1578 to Lettice, dowager countess of Essex, who Elizabeth loathed, is believed to have contributed to his absence and he was forced to keep his marriage half-hidden as a result.

The statesman and Queen had known one another since childhood and although he had failed to win her hand in marriage, they remained close friends until his death.

Experts at Lyon & Turnbull, the auctioneers who sold the letter on Wednesday, traced just two other autographed letters from the earl to Elizabeth.

One is now at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. The other, at the National Archives in London, was written by him a few days before his death.

Meanwhile, a letter written and signed by Henry VIII’s elder daughter Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland, known as Bloody Mary, fetched £37,700 – more than double the asking price.

Signed “Mary the quene”, it was written to William, Lord Paget, on the outbreak of Wyatt’s Rebellion, on January 28, 1554. The Independent