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Though Elizabeth is not one of those great English rulers whose lives are associated indissolubly with the Palace, she spent much of her reign there, and it was there, more than anywhere, that the scandals which the State Papers so freely hint at were most notorious. An ingenious writer endeavoured some years ago, before a body of Oxford historical students, to prove that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was really Queen Elizabeth's son. The whole scandal belongs to the history—or the legends—of Hampton Court. And so no less do the merry stories of her talks in the gardens with ambassadors, of her secret interviews with eligible suitors; and above all that charming scene, which Sir Walter Scott so much delighted in, when Andrew Melville, baited with questions by the vain woman, at last admitted that Mary, his queen, was the taller. "She is too high," quoth Elizabeth," for I am myself neither too high nor too low." At Hampton Court much of the tragedy of Mary was unravelled. Elizabeth there was most luxurious, most subtle, most intriguing: the