Amy Robsart - Death and Inquest

Death and Inquest

On Sunday, 8 September 1560, the day of a fair at Abingdon, Amy Robsart was found dead at the foot of a pair of stairs at Cumnor Place. Robert Dudley, at Windsor Castle with the Queen, was told of her death by a messenger on 9 September and immediately wrote to his steward Thomas Blount, who had himself just departed for Cumnor. He desperately urged him to find out what had happenend and to call for an inquest; this had already been opened when Blount arrived. He informed his master that Lady Dudley had risen early and

would not that day suffer one of her own sort to tarry at home, and was so earnest to have them gone to the fair, that with any of her own sort that made reason of tarrying at home she was very angry, and came to Mrs. Odingsells ... who refused that day to go to the fair, and was very angry with her also. Because said it was no day for gentlewomen to go ... Whereunto my lady answered and said that she might choose and go at her pleasure, but all hers should go; and was very angry. They asked who should keep her company if all they went; she said Mrs. Owen should keep her company at dinner; the same tale doth Picto, who doth dearly love her, confirm. Certainly, my Lord, as little while as I have been here, I have heard divers tales of her that maketh me judge her to be a strange woman of mind.

Mrs. Picto was Lady Dudley's maid and Thomas Blount asked whether she thought what had happened was "chance or villany":

she said by her faith she doth judge very chance, and neither done by man nor by herself. For herself, she said, she was a good virtuous gentlewoman, and daily would pray upon her knees; and divers times she saith that she hath heard her pray to God to deliver her from desperation. Then, said I, she might have an evil toy in her mind. No, good Mr. Blount, said Picto, do not judge so of my words; if you should so gather, I am sorry I said so much.

Blount continued, wondering:

My Lord, it is most strange that this chance should fall upon you. It passeth the judgment of any man to say how it is; but truly the tales I do hear of her maketh me to think she had a strange mind in her: as I will tell you at my coming.

The coroner and the 15 jurors were local gentlemen and yeomen of substance. A few days later Blount wrote that some of the jury were no friends of Anthony Forster (a good sign that they would not "conceal any fault, if any be") and that they were proceeding very thoroughly:

they be very secret, and yet do I hear a whispering that they can find no presumptions of evil. And if I may say to your Lordship my conscience: I think some of them be sorry for it, God forgive me. ... Mine own opinion is much quieted ... the circumstances and as many things as I can learn doth persuade me that only misfortune hath done it, and nothing else.

The jury's foreman assured Robert Dudley in a letter of his own that for all they could find out, it appeared to be an accident. Dudley, desperately seeking to avert damage from what he called "my case", was relieved to hear the impending outcome, but thought "another substantial company of honest men" should undertake a further investigation "for more knowledge of truth". This panel should include any available friends of Lady Amy's and her half-brothers John Appleyard and Arthur Robsart, both of whom he had ordered to Cunmor immediately after Amy's death. Nothing came of this proposal.

The coroner's verdict, pronounced at the local Assizes on 1 August 1561, was that Lady Dudley, "being alone in a certain chamber ... accidentallly fell precipitously down" the adjoining stairs "to the very bottom of the same". She had sustained two head injuries—one "of the depth of a quarter of a thumb", the other "of the depth of two thumbs". She had also, "by reason of the accidental injury or of that fall and of Lady Amy's own body weight falling down the aforesaid stairs", broken her neck, "on account of which ... the same Lady Amy then and there died instantly; ... and thus the jurors say on their oath that the Lady Amy ... by misfortune came to her death and not otherwise, as they are able to agree at present".

Amy Dudley was buried at St. Mary's, Oxford with full pomp, which cost Dudley some £2,000. He wore mourning for about six months but, as was within custom, did not attend the funeral, where Lady Dudley's half-brothers, neighbours, as well as city and county prominence played the leading parts. The court went into mourning for over a month. Robert Dudley retired to his house at Kew; a hostile contemporary chronicler, who had however never seen him, described the scene: "Himself, all his friends, many of the Lords and gentlemen, and his family be all in black, and weap dolorously, great hypocrisy used."