In This Series:
- Gossip as History: Anne Boleyn, Part 1
- Gossip as History: The Murder of Amy Robsart.
- Gossip as History: Figure Flingers, Poisoners and Shrovetide Plays.
- Gossip as History: The Letters of John Chamberlain.
Always, somehow, Elizabeth’s
attachment was of the heart. He claimed
to have known her since she was eight years old. Both were prisoners in The Tower for a time in
1554. If she ever considered marrying,
as Queen, it was with Leicester. But she
slowly became aware that such an arrangement would be untenable. And, if it was untenable with him, it was
untenable with any of her subjects.
Instead she would reward him above all men and expect him to realize his
bounds. He failed from time to time to
meet his obligation and a spat occurred much like a lovers’ spat. It was their version of a marriage.
As Leicester gained his earldom and
various other lavish gifts from the hand of the Queen, the traditional nobility
grew furiously jealous. He was a younger
son of a treasonous family. They were
eldest sons of families whose treasons were forgotten in the far more distant historical
past.
As his power grew so did his pride. Never quite sure the Queen would not change
her mind and marry the man she clearly loved, that pride was an even more
fearful thing to the traditional nobility, even more infuriating. Everything he did went beyond the pale. Rumors swirled around him so thickly that he
was reputed to be utterly without conscience.
The first sudden death Leicester was
rumored to have caused was that of his wife, Amy Robsart, in 1560. In that year, it was still not clear whether the
Queen would marry. But
certainly not her beloved Leicester if he were married. Robsart fell down “a pair of stairs,”[1] at the Dudley estate Cumnor Place, breaking her neck.
Dudley (not yet created Earl of Leicester) had been attending at Court at the time, as was his constant habit. He made a point of
not contacting the members of the inquest lest he be thought to have affected
it. He directed that a second inquest
should be undertaken to verify the findings of the first. The Queen sent him away in an attempt to squelch the rumors that were sure to be spread.
His agent in this was his servant Thomas
Blount who sent him a letter three days after Robsart’s death recounting a conversation
with a local man:
I asked him what was his judgment
and the judgment of the people. He saide, “some weare disposed to saie well,
& some evill.”
The
whole town was talking. Some suspected
an evil act had been committed upon his wife.
The inquest would return a verdict of accidental death.
Add
to all of this that Robsart is suspected to have been suffering from late
stages of breast cancer. She was very
weak, and probably in considerable pain, and had sent away all the servants in
the house for the day to a nearby fair.
Blount himself suggests once, during the correspondence, that she might
not have been in her proper mind.
We
do not have a floor layout or description precise enough to know what “a pair
of stairs” amounted to. It sounds,
however, like she most likely threw herself down from the highest story she could
manage, in the gap between ascending flights of stairs. Her husband and family hoped for a finding of
“accident” rather than “suicide” so she could receive a Christian burial.
If the townspeople whispered, the
nobility that was already furious with Leicester’s rise and dreading the
prospect he might become their king were far more direct. They were eager to spread the worst rumors to
the ambassadors of the countries resident at Court. Passing along just such
rumors, to the home office, was a main part of the job of an ambassador.
William Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary
of State, was soon receiving reports. “The bruits be so brim, and so
maliciously reported here,” Nicholas Throckmorton wrote, from Paris, “touching
the marriage of the lord Robert, and the death of his wife, that I know not
where to turn me, nor what countenance to bear.”[2] Thomas Chaloner wrote from the Spanish Court
where he was temporarily filling in:
I assure you, sir, thies folks are
brode mowthed, where I speke of oon to[o] much in favor as I estem… To tell you
what I conceive, as I count the slawnder most false, so a young princess canne
not be to[o] ware.[3]
The Queen’s reputation was in danger
of being shredded as well. She was reputed
not only a Jezebel but a murderess.
By 1583, the year of the libelous book Leicester’s
Commonwealth the purported murder of Robsart was reputed to be just one of
many. Over 20 years of accusations of
the worst kind were gathered up to publish to the world. An
exile English Catholic community, in France and the Netherlands, finding plenty
of encouragement and support from England’s frenemies, presented the case that the
heinous Earl of Leicester had been a murderous and dishonorable master of
deception from the start. His every
honor was, in fact, a repackaged crime.
[1]
Pettigrew, Thomas. An Inquiry Into
the Particulars Connected with the Death of Amy Robsart (1859). 28. “Immediately
upon your departing from me there came to me Bowes, by whom I do understands
that my wife is dead, &, as he saithe, by a falle from a paire of stayres:…”
Lord Robert Dudley to Thomas Blount. September 9, 1559.
[2]
Lingard. Lingard - The History of England From the First Invasion by the
Romans to ..., (1883). VI.69n. October 28, 1560.
[3]
Ibid. December 6, 1559.
[4] Ashmole, Elias. Antiquities of Berkshire (1719), Vol. I, 149 —154.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576. June 10, 2019. “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot. The citizens were prepared to give them a fight. Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
- A Thousand Years of English Terms. June 2, 2019. ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”. There was no clock to be o’. But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
- A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603. April 28, 2019. “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
- The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
- Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave. July 22, 2018. “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794. But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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