‘I should be open to the still graver charge of betraying H. M. Govt.’

In the months leading up to the Christmas of 1877, a series of rumours began to gain traction in political society. At their heart, they all had the same kernel—that details of cabinet discussions were being made known to the Russian Government in St Petersburg—and they implicated and involved a wide range of political society, from the Prime Minister to civil servants, ambassadors to the press. By Boxing Day, the rumours had morphed into something more damaging. The Queen, through her chaplain, the Dean of Windsor, accused Mary of leaking government secrets to her friend the Russian Ambassador. While little scholarly attention has been paid to the role rumour and gossip played in political society, public men, as Trollope warned, ‘felt horror at the thought of being made the subject of common gossip and public criticism’. This chapter charts the origins of and journeys these rumours took through political society and considers their implications for Mary’s political reputation.