Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! : Amy Dudley, Part Two: WHODUNNIT
I think he did it but I just can't prove it
The Investigation
Robert, who had been at Windsor Castle with the Queen this whole time (alibi?), was informed of his wife’s death one day after her body had been found. He is said to have reacted with shock and surprise and rushed to Cumnor Hall to see what was happening. He was prepared to demand an inquest into her death but found one was already in process. Here’s how that worked: the coroner pulled together a group of fifteen gentlemen in a sort of jury, who were brought in to view Amy’s body and poke around to see what clues they could find in and around her body (from which they removed the clothes, to look for bruises, etc., on her body).
The investigators spoke with other members of the household, from whom they learned about Amy’s angry insistence that everyone go to the fair, as well as her habit of apparently praying that God would deliver her of her desperation. This second note came from Amy’s maid, Mrs. Picto, who seems to have been the first to suggest her death may have been suicide. A possible clue against that was Amy’s ordering of a dress just over a week before her fatal fall; would a suicidal woman have been making plans like this? But then again, the date of her death seems more than a coincidence: why would she die one day after the Queen’s birthday? Had the thought of her husband off celebrating with his new love driven her to kill herself? More than one of Amy’s former acquaintances at Cumnor Hall noted that she had a “strange mind” — she was prone to angry mood swings. While there had been rumours she was quite ill, no illness was mentioned during this investigation.
Ultimately, the jury found that Amy’s death and fall had been accidental. Her neck broke as she fell, and the other head wounds were likely from hitting her head against the stone stairs. Her fall had only been of a short distance, eight steps. They concluded that she had merely fallen in an unlucky position. When Robert heard their findings, he was relieved but also suggested another jury may want to investigate to clear his name. Oh, because as soon as news of Amy’s death came out, everybody assumed Robert had done it so he’d be freed up to marry Elizabeth. And Robert knew that, as long as he was a suspected wife-killer, he’d never be able to marry her. He paid the total cost of an ornate burial for Amy and left the royal court to spend his mourning time away. He wore mourning colours for six months; the royal court did the same for one month.
Yet, even at the time, rumours ran rampant that Amy’s death was far too conveniently timed to be an accident. Rumours that she had, perhaps… been MURDERED!
The Suspects
Scenario 1: Amy Tripped And Fell (And Died)
In 1910, the historian A.F. Pollard supported the theory that Amy’s death was merely an unlucky accident. In 2008, The National Archives released the coroner’s report on Amy’s death. Its details support — unsurprisingly — what the coroner had announced at the time: that Amy had an extraordinarily unlucky fall. How could someone break their neck falling just eight steps, though? Well, in 1956, a medical professor named Ian Aird suggested that Amy may have had breast cancer (supported by a note in contemporaneous documents that she had a malady of the breast), which may have led to cancerous deposits in her spine that would weaken her neck enough that even a slight fall could have killed her.
Also of note: there are theories that Amy had been the victim of unknowing poisoning for some time, which may have also led to whatever symptoms of illness she may or may not have been displaying.
Scenario 2: Amy Killed Herself
People who support this theory base it on Amy’s maid’s description of Amy’s mood swings and having prayed to be delivered from her current troubles. In addition, combined with the breast cancer possibility (and the ensuing lack of pain management or effective cancer treatments in the 16th century), she may have been living in chronic pain, which could have added to her depression. This theory explains why she was so adamant about sending away most of the household to the fair: she wanted to be alone when she killed herself. Her depression may have been exacerbated by her husband’s cruelty, by the knowledge that the day beforehand, Robert had been off partying with Elizabeth for her birthday, and potentially by the medical effects of either her illness or her being long-term poisoned.
This theory first came to prominence in 1870, when the historian George Adlard printed letters between Amy and Robert, which he felt supported the theory of Amy’s suicidal depression. Yet, if she wanted to kill herself, why wouldn’t she use a steeper set of stairs to be more sure she’d die? Throwing oneself down eight stairs doesn’t seem like a particularly effective method of killing oneself unless one has calcified bones from cancer (see above), but why would she know she had that if she had that?
Scenario 3: Robert Dudley Did It (Or Hired Someone To Do It)
The coroner’s report notes not just that Amy’s neck had broken but also that she had two “dates” in her skull — two wounds, one 1/4-inch deep and the other 2 inches deep. These seem to suggest injuries other than what may be sustained by a fall down eight stairs.
Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth I were both at Windsor Castle at the time that Amy died at Cumnor Hall, so if either or both were involved, they almost certainly would have hired someone else to do the actual killing. This isn’t evidence, but it’s incredibly juicy gossip, so get ready. In 1584 (twenty-four years after Amy’s death), an anonymous book called Leicester’s Commonwealth began circulating in London (note: by then, Robert had made Earl of Leicester). Though the author’s identity is unknown, this book was almost definitely the work of Catholics who opposed Elizabeth’s Protestantism and Robert’s influence over the Queen. It’s a laundry list of every terrible thing Robert had ever been accused of doing, including (according to this bananas book) arranging Amy’s death as well as the deaths of some other inconvenient spouses of some other people.
It’s from this book that some details, now often assumed to be factual, were first invented, such as that Amy’s body still wore her headdress, undisturbed (suggesting that she hadn’t fallen down the stairs at all). The popularity of this book kept the rumours about Robert’s potential wife-murdering alive. In 1608, a play called A Yorkshire Tragedy included a line noting that falling down the stairs was an easy way to eliminate an inconvenient wife. In 1821, Sir Walter Scott published a novel called Kenilworth, which re-told the death of Amy using much of the scandalous made-up detail from Leicester’s Commonwealth. The Scott novel was a huge hit and inspired a whole craze of artists using Amy’s death as inspiration for new paintings.
Later in the 19th century, two more historians consulted contemporaneous correspondence that they felt proved Robert had been poisoning Amy and, therefore, must have been responsible for hiring the person who killed her. The correspondence both of these historians used to base their theories had been written by Bishop de la Quadra, a Spanish ambassador who hated Robert Dudley. It’s from de Quadra’s papers that we get details such as the rumours that Amy was being poisoned, as well as a recounting of de Quadra’s conversation with Cecil, allegedly taking place before Amy’s death, in which Cecil confides his suspicions that Robert and Elizabeth may be planning to kill Amy.
While it’s the most dramatically satisfying solution, the concept of Robert as Amy’s murder has been mostly discredited based on available information. The main thing is that Robert’s letters from just after Amy’s death suggest a man who is in shock and distraught and who is wholly unprepared to deal with this situation. Robert was also clever, so if he had decided to kill his wife, he likely wouldn’t have done it in such a suspicious manner. After all, her death and the ensuing scandal were what prevented him from being able to pursue marriage with Elizabeth.
That being said, there is more evidence that Robert may have influenced the findings of the coroner’s inquest into Amy’s death. The jury foreman was potentially a former household servant of Elizabeth’s, connecting him to the Queen and Robert. Yet, Robert’s suggestion of a second inquest seems to negate thoughts that he’d unduly influenced the first one. Also, as noted by historian Susan Doran, if Robert did lean on the jury to find the death an accident, he could have been covering up for Amy’s suicide rather than for a murder.
Scenario 4: William Cecil
So, historians including Alison Weir (and the novelist Fiona Buckley) have suggested that Elizabeth’s trusted secretary (and notoriously cutthroat schemer), William Cecil, may have been the mastermind behind Amy’s murder. At the time of her death, he was noted to be extremely agitated by the possibility that Elizabeth may marry Robert. And certainly, the odd and vaguely suspicious manner of Amy’s death did ruin any chance of Elizabeth taking Robert as her husband. So, this scenario theorizes that Amy’s death wasn’t about her at all but was a small piece in a larger plan to ruin Robert’s reputation. Whether Cecil was responsible or not, he certainly leaned into the tragedy to increase his badmouthing of Robert around town.
For instance, remember above, the Spanish Ambassador’s letters relating Cecil worrying that Robert might be about to kill Amy? So, it looks pretty likely that Cecil had found out before anyone else that Amy was dead. As such, he rushed over to gossip with the Spanish Ambassador, like, “Oh wow, rumour has it Robert Dudley may be trying to kill his wife like if Amy shows up dead, chances are it’s Robert who killed her.” And lo and behold, Amy was dead. So the Spanish Ambassador was like, “OMG, Dudley is the killer!!” but actually, Cecil is just the ultimate puppet master.
That being said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Cecil was involved in Amy’s death; it could just mean that he took advantage of the situation for his own gain. But it also shows how he was playing 3-D chess against a bunch of people who were very bad at Checkers, so framing Robert for Amy’s death is not Cecil’s style. Plus, he hated Robert Dudley and would do anything to prevent him from marrying Elizabeth.
Scenario 5: Sir Richard Verney (Who?) Did It
Sir Richard Verney appears in a 1563 chronicle about Amy’s death and in the 1584 mostly made-up propaganda book Leicester’s Commonwealth. The assassin is identified as a Sir Richard Verney servant of Robert’s. In that work, Verney is shown to be working on orders of Robert first to attempt to poison Amy to death until he eventually breaks her neck. In Kenilworth, Scott suggests that Verney acted on his own volition and killed Amy to help our Robert — but that Robert had never assigned the task to him. First poison, then kill
Aftermath
Rather than freeing up Robert and Elizabeth to marry, the suspicious circumstances of Amy’s death made their union impossible. The jury may have cleared Robert of responsibility. Still, he’d made so many enemies at court that nobody was ready to believe him innocent, as it was to everyone else’s advantage to continue to treat him as a murderer. It took a bit for Elizabeth to realize the PR nightmare that had overtaken her favourite. Still, once she did, she accepted that to marry a suspected wife-killer would destroy her reputation. She kept Robert around for the rest of his life (including as he married and had children with two other women, including Elizabeth’s much younger doppelganger; more on her next week!) but never married him, nor anyone.
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