Certain cipher accounts of his life and works have now been decoded with sufficient accuracy to tell persons of this generation who he really was, and to a considerable extent the literary work he accomplished in his lifetime under various pen-names. Other masks could, he knew, be found later. From the ciphers in the books of the seven it was decoded that Francis was the elder son of a secret marriage between Queen Elizabeth and Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester. These matters are mentioned in order to explain a situation which without this key could not readily be understood. A secret may not be one in fact.
Many people know it or consider they do.
But concerning an autocratic sovereign like Elizabeth, to have repeated it openly and unproven would have been high treason. However true, its truth was not provable, and the man or woman who ventured to affirm that Francis and Robert were sons of the Queen was liable to the severest punishment. Indeed, one Norfolk gentleman named Marshan was condemned to lose his ears for having stated that the Queen had two children by the Earl of Leicester. Amongst the fifty odd peers of that time, and the fifty or more knights and gentry who, and whose wives, were admitted to the intimacies of the Royal Court, there must have been a general suspicion that Francis and Robert were sons of the Queen, whether bastards or not. Royal bastards have been tolerated in almost all times.