This meant that Rutland's inheritance was complicated by the demands of two wills and jointures for two dowager countesses and disputes between them.

[5] Rutland received his MA on 20 February 1595,[6] in a grand ceremony planned and managed by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the Queen's then-favourite and the late Dudley's stepson.

[7] He was taken to the Tower of London but allowed to bring his own furnishings, including a suite of tapestry from the Great Chamber of Haddon Hall.

[8] In order to pay the debt he was forced to sell land, causing a major argument with his mother, who refused to accept the loss of family estates.

In 1618–19, Gerard Johnson the elder built a tomb in St Mary the Virgin's Church at Bottesford, Leicestershire commemorating the fifth earl and his wife.

His candidacy was first suggested by Burkhard Herrmann (using the pseudonym "Peter Alvor") in 1906, who argued that Rutland collaborated with the Earl of Southampton to create the works.

[11] It was most vigorously promoted by the German critic Karl Bleibtreu (1907), and later supported by a number of other authors, including Lewis Frederick Bostelmann (1909), the Belgian politician Célestin Demblon (1912) and the Russian writers Pyotr Sergeevich Porokhovshchikov (1940)[12] and Ilya Gililov (2003).