Anne Boleyn and the French Hood

Above: The most well-known portrait of Anne (left).
Natalie Dormer played an especially fashionable Anne in television series The Tudors (right).

Anne Boleyn is, and was, regarded as an elegant woman who deeply loved fashion. It is telling that the virulent propagandist Nicholas Sander, who claimed in his account that Anne was monstrously deformed, felt compelled to describe Anne's love of dress thus: 'She was unrivalled in the gracefulness of her attire, and the fertility of her invention in devising new patterns, which were imitated by all the court belles, by whom she was regarded as the glass of fashion'. If we were not aware of Sander's background and his fierce opposition to Henry VIII's second marriage, we might think that he was an admirer of Anne. Whether, in describing her love of dress, he was merely relating a fact about the queen, or whether he was using it to portray Anne as frivolous, is uncertain. While there has as yet been no individual study of Anne Boleyn's clothing, in most biographies of her there is some exploration of her love of dress. 

Sander later explained: 'She was the model and the mirror of those who were at court, for she was always well-dressed, and every day made some change in the fashion of her garments'. Sander was probably drawing on contemporary evidence dating from Anne's own lifetime. Lancelot de Carles, a French scholar, poet and diplomat who was at court at the time of Anne's fall, described her as 'beautiful and with an elegant figure'. George Wyatt, who wrote a sympathetic account of Anne, described her as well-dressed. 

Contemporary observers, then, tended to agree that Henry's second wife was elegant and well-dressed. However, none of them referred to Anne's supposed favourite garment - the French hood. Modern history writers have tended to assert ad verbatim that Anne either introduced the French hood to England or popularised its use following her return to England in 1522. There is surprisingly little evidence for the first assertion. This blog post seeks to examine the evidence for the headdresses that Anne favoured and seeks to ask the question of whether Anne introduced, or popularised, the French hood in England.

Above: The most well-known portraits of Anne present her wearing a French hood (left).

Anne has become so associated with the French hood that it almost always appears in popular representations of her, as in the film The Other Boleyn Girl (right).

As we have seen, contemporary writers stressed Anne's love of fashion and her ability to dress well, whether they were her admirers or her enemies. They did not, however, describe her as wearing the French hood, which is perhaps surprising given that it was a garment viewed as elegant and chic. We have some surviving accounts of Anne's personal spending on clothes. Shortly before her arrest, we know that she bought gowns in tawny velvet with black lambs' fur; in velvet without fur; in damask; in satin, furred with miniver; a russet gown in heavy silk; two in black velvet and one in black damask; one in white satin; one with crimson sleeves; a purple cloth of gold gown lined with silver; eight nightgowns; three cloaks; and thirteen kirtles. Anne's gowns were often embroidered with jewels; in early 1532, for example, she was provided with a gown with nineteen diamonds set in trueloves of gold, along with twenty-one rubies and twenty-one diamonds set in gold roses and hearts. 

At every occasion, Anne's costume was detailed - at court entertainments, at her coronation, and most spectacularly, on the scaffold. We know that she seemed to favour the colour black. We also learn from her accounts that she was greatly occupied with her daughter Elizabeth's attire. In a period of three months, the queen bought her daughter a gown of orange velvet, kirtles of russet velvet, of yellow satin, white damask and green satin, embroidered purple satin sleeves, a black muffler, white ribbon, Venice ribbon, a russet damask bedspread and a taffeta cap covered with a caul of gold. Anne's lavish spending on dress should not be misidentified as evidence of vanity or frivolousness. At this time, a monarch was expected to be immaculately dressed and be spectacular in appearance, in order both to impress and reassure one's subjects, and to project a confident aura to neighbouring kingdoms. In dressing outstandingly, Anne was seeking to glorify her husband's lineage and strengthen her claim to be England's true queen.

There is some evidence that Anne wore the French hood. In the same accounts that detail Anne's expenditure on gowns, it is related that she spent up to £9 on the French hood, a costly sum in the sixteenth-century. In surviving paintings of the queen, she is usually portrayed wearing the French hood, as can be seen in the most famous portrait of her housed at the National Portrait Gallery (see the top of the page). However, it is worthwhile asking whether she really did introduce the French hood to England. The short answer to this is no.

Above: Anne of Brittany wearing the French hood, c. 1500-1510.

The French hood was characterised by its rounded shape, and was worn over a coif that was tied under the chin or secured to the hair. It had a black veil attached to the back, which covered the back hair completely and hung in a straight fashion. The billaments were usually costly, these forming the decorative border along the upper edge of the hood and the front edge of the coif. As the name indicates, this style of headdress was especially popular in France and probably originated in Brittany. Early admirers of the hood included the consort Anne of Brittany, who is shown wearing it in numerous depictions of her. Claude of France, wife of Francois I, also favoured the French hood, as can be seen in surviving portraits of the queen. 

Above: Claude of France favoured the French hood, as can be seen in this portrait of her.

The French hood was similar to the round hood, which was worn by women living in the Imperial territories. Queen Juana of Castile, for example, favoured the round hood. By the time that Anne Boleyn arrived in England, the French hood was a popular and fashionable item of headwear worn across Europe, especially in its native land. Its use was not yet, however, widespread in England. Interestingly, the first English woman portrayed wearing the French hood was not Anne, but Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, duchess of Suffolk. In 1515, Mary married Charles, duke of Brandon, and the couple were painted the following year. It is not surprising that Mary favoured the French hood. At the age of eighteen, she had married Louis XII of France, thus becoming the French queen in the process. Presumably, she chose to wear the French hood as queen in order to appear fashionable: as we have seen, contemporary monarchs were expected to appear dressed in lavish costume in order to glorify the monarchy. Following the death of Louis and her remarriage, Mary chose to continue wearing the French hood in order to appear fashionable and to emphasise her rank: she was one of the highest-ranking women in the kingdom because of both her Tudor blood and her marriage to a duke, one of only two in England. For Mary, the French hood was associated with lineage, with power, and with splendour.

Above: Mary Tudor and her second husband, Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. In the portrait, Mary is wearing a French hood.

By the time that Anne Boleyn returned to England in the mid-1520s, the French hood was not yet a garment that was worn by many women at court. While Mary Brandon favoured it, the majority of English noblewomen and gentlewomen continued to wear the gable hood, which was also worn by Katherine of Aragon. Given the popularity of the French hood in continental Europe and its early usage in England, it cannot truly be claimed that Anne Boleyn 'introduced' the garment to England, because it was already known there. It is possible, however, that she popularised its usage. As we have seen, few female courtiers wore the French hood in the mid-1520s. Anne Boleyn spent great sums on the garment and, presumably, wore it on a regular basis, although it cannot be known for certainty. 

There are numerous difficulties in using Anne Boleyn's reputed portraiture to assert that she favoured the French hood. A recent trend, first advocated by Susan E. James and later mentioned by G.W. Bernard in his recent biography of Anne, asserts that the standard portraits of Anne are not of her at all, but are probably based on paintings of Henry's sister Mary. Certainly, there are facial and physical similarities, and James claims that the 'B' choker worn by the sitter actually refers to the surname Brandon, rather than Boleyn. While James' claim has been refuted, her argument does warn of the dangers in viewing alleged portraiture of Anne as true depictions of the real woman. The distinguished historian Lacey Baldwin Smith famously referred to Tudor portraits bearing as much resemblance to their sitters as elephants to prunes. This is nowhere more true than in the case of Anne Boleyn. 

Recent research has questioned whether the NPG portrait of Anne is a portrait of the queen at all. Following her downfall, the majority of paintings of Anne were destroyed or hidden away, and only after her daughter Elizabeth's accession to the throne was it deemed acceptable to paint her again. Thus, the majority of portraits of Anne are later copies, dating at least forty or fifty years, if not more, after her death. The NPG portrait, and the Hever Castle version in which Anne is shown holding a red rose, were painted late in the sixteenth-century or early in the following century. As Brett Dolman has written: 'All of these paintings... give the impression of mechanistically copied and simplified 'head and shoulders' portraits'. It is possible, as has been suggested, that by the time of Elizabeth's triumph 'a pool of portraits of unidentified women dating from the reign of Henry VIII still existed. As was common, these original paintings were not labelled and... the identities of the sitters were generally problematic. Yet for copyists in need of an image, clues within and without seem to have encouraged them to arrive at speculative identifications. The face pattern for Jane Grey was Kateryn Parr and the face pattern chosen for Anne Boleyn was Mary Rose Tudor' (Susan E. James). While controversial, James' argument does have some merit: it is extremely difficult to arrive at firm identifications of sitters in Tudor portraiture, as continuing controversy over the portraiture of Katherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey, for example, demonstrates.

Whether or not James' claim can be agreed with, it is important to be cautious in analysing Tudor portraiture and searching it for clues as to a sitter's 'true' appearance or identity. The most famous portraits of Anne Boleyn were produced only fifty years, or more, after her death, and the facial features were probably based on those of another woman, perhaps even those of Elizabeth herself. It is impossible to view the NPG portrait, for example, as evidence for what Anne really looked like. In relation to this article, although Anne is identified as wearing the French hood in most of these portraits, this does not necessarily mean that she favoured the garment over its English gable counterpart: rather, it reflects the artist's understanding of fashionable dress at Henry VIII's court and what he (or she) might have expected Anne, as a queen during the 1530s, to have worn.

Above: The Nidd Hall portrait of Anne (left).

The only undisputed surviving representation of Anne from her own lifetime, the 1534 medal (right).

Other visual representations of Anne depict her wearing the gable hood, which was the preferred item of headwear for the majority of women at the English court during her life. The only undisputed contemporary portrait of Anne is a lead prototype medal now housed in the British Museum. It dates from c.1534, the year in which Anne was thought to be pregnant with her second child. In it, the queen is clearly shown wearing a gable hood. Other later portraits followed the 1534 style and portrayed Anne wearing a gable hood, as shown in the Nidd Hall portrait, in which the queen wears a gable hood and brooch in the form of a single drop pearl hanging from the monogram 'AB'. Recent research from earlier this year has indicated that the Nidd Hall portrait matches the 1534 medal.

Certainly, the queen was described as wearing a gable hood during her own lifetime; it was the headdress she chose to wear on the scaffold on 19 May 1536. Historians have suggested that she elected to wear the gable hood that day in order to proclaim her English background, or to assert her place as a queen of England. More possibly, but less commonly argued, it was simply because the gable hood, rather than the French hood, was Anne's preferred choice of headdress. We cannot known for certainty. This article has demonstrated that Anne certainly wore the French hood and spent a good deal of money on the item, but it has also indicated that she was known to wear the gable hood and possibly favoured it, as seen in her decision to wear it on the last day of her life. This article has also sought to inject a note of caution in examining Anne's reputed portraiture for evidence of her fashion interests. It is apparent that the French hood was not introduced to England by Anne Boleyn, but it is possible that she popularised it. By the 1540s, it was a highly fashionable garment and was worn as a marker of high status. Henry VIII's last two wives, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr, both favoured the French hood, and it was worn by the young Elizabeth and by her older sister Mary, later Mary I. 

Misconceptions of Katherine Howard

Above: Portrait of an unknown woman, possibly Katherine Howard. (left)
Tamzin Merchant as Katherine Howard (right), encouraging the view of her as a fun-loving, empty-headed teenager.

Many misconceptions exist about Queen Katherine Howard, and I have uncovered more and more of them in the course of my research on her life. Some of them are quite minor, but others are seriously major, and this is quite disturbing, for it means that the prevailing view of her is very far from the truth.
In this article, I will explore some of the most common misconceptions about Katherine, and hopefully show why they are wrong, while offering a likelier interpretation.

1. Katherine Howard was stupid.

Many people, including some academic historians, seriously continue to believe that Katherine Howard was intellectually inferior to Henry VIII's other wives, some going so far to call her "stupid", "dim", or "empty-headed".

In an article about faction at Henry's court (2012), historian John Matusiak rather insultingly suggested that she had "puppy fat for brains". Alison Weir called her "empty-headed". In her novel The Boleyn Inheritance (2006), bestselling novelist Philippa Gregory portrayed Katherine as dull and stupid, thinking of nothing but herself. But is there any historical evidence to back up this prevailing view of Katherine?

The short answer is no. There is nothing to indicate that Katherine was 'intellectually inferior', even 'stupid'. Yes, she did not receive an international education in the courts of Europe like her cousin Anne Boleyn, nor did she receive the royal education accorded to the European princesses Katherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves, nor did her mother provide a humanist education for her like that entitled to Katherine Parr. Like Jane Seymour, Katherine's education was far more typical of her class and status. She learned important household skills, embroidery, and from the age of about twelve began receiving music lessons.

Other evidence frequently cited to support the claim that Katherine was a stupid girl rests on her meetings with Thomas Culpeper, which amounted, in the words of Lacey Baldwin Smith, to "unbelievable imbecility". But this depends entirely on how you interpret her meetings with Culpeper. If she was indeed meeting him for sexual intercourse, as the majority of historians still continue to think, then yes, her actions were rash. But it is more probable that they did nothing of the kind. Whether Katherine was being ruthlessly manipulated by Culpeper, as Retha Warnicke believes, or whether she was merely meeting him innocently, as I believe, then it does not follow that her actions were stupid or rash. Rather, they suggest that Katherine was naive.

The prevailing opinion, then, that Katherine was stupid, rests on no evidence and should be discarded.

2. Katherine was a fun-loving girl who did nothing but party during her time as queen.

Again, a common view is that Katherine Howard literally spent her life partying, wearing beautiful clothes, and generally having a good time. In the opinion of Dr David Starkey, she was "a good time girl". Tamzin Merchant in The Tudors did more than most to encourage this view - she plays a fun-loving Katherine who takes part in mud fights, banquets, dances in the rain, and traipses round her chambers naked.

Most historians take this view, but again, is there any actual historical evidence to back up this claim? The short answer, again, is no. The only bit of evidence which could support this interpretation is the dismissive comment made by an unknown Spanish chronicler, writing probably at least a decade after Katherine's death: "the King had no wife who made him spend so much money in dresses and jewels as she did". But the same author made some glaringly inaccurate comments about Katherine - he depicted her as the fourth wife of Henry VIII, rather than the fifth, and it is he who reported that Katherine promised that she would rather die the wife of Culpeper on the scaffold - no other evidence backs up this claim.

There is no evidence to support Starkey's view that Katherine was a party-loving "good time girl". Historical evidence relating to her time as queen is extremely sparse. The few details we have about her reign suggest that she did attend court functions, banquets and jousts, but we have nothing about her life except her marriage to the king and her downfall. Chroniclers and foreign ambassadors reported little to nothing about her.

By contrast, evidence suggests that Katherine, contrary to belief, actually took her duties as queen seriously. She acted as patron for an author, she interceded on behalf of at least four individuals, she supported her family, rewarded her friends, and corresponded with Cranmer. It is actually more likely that Anne Boleyn was the party-loving Queen, rather than Katherine, if later evidence from Anne's household is anything to go by.

Again, this second misconception is exactly that - a misconception. It is not factual and has no evidence to support it. It is a myth, and should be dismissed as such.

3. Katherine Howard was promiscuous or even a 'slut'.

Here most modern historians are in agreement that Katherine Howard was flighty, and, in a sense, deserved her execution. Alison Weir calls her "certainly promiscuous", while Alison Plowden views her as "a natural born tart". Eric Ives dismissively states that she "had minimal respect for court protocol and refused to draw a line between her position before and after becoming the King's wife". David Starkey believes that "she liked men, and they liked her".

Again, these views rest entirely on how Katherine's relationships are interpreted. These views are somewhat anachronistic because they rely on a twentieth/twenty-first century interpretation of sexuality and gender. In today's world, a girl who has sexual relations with three men before her seventeenth birthday is viewed as a slut or a whore. These historians rely on this prevailing view and believe that Katherine must have been the same. Rather too often, they forget that she lived at least four hundred years before they were writing.

Because issues of sexuality and gender have been practically ignored, we have a very inaccurate view of Katherine's relationships. As my research has indicated, I am in full agreement with Dr Retha Warnicke that Katherine's early sexual liaisons were characterised more by abuse and neglect rather than love. At the age of twelve - when girls could legally marry - she was seduced by her music master, who beseeched her to meet in dark places where he could fondle her. At fourteen, she was aggressively pursued by Francis Dereham, who probably sexually assaulted her and may have raped her. Would we nowadays suggest that a girl who had been aggressively coerced into sex by the age of fourteen was a slut? No, we would say that she was a victim.

Katherine's early experiences seem to have seriously damaged her psychologically. She may indeed even have formed a strong aversion to sex. Her relationship with Thomas Culpeper did not include sexual intercourse, it may not even have included love. As Warnicke writes in her 2006 article: "...in the sixteenth century, when female virginity was highly valued, we can only guess at how Katherine's youthful sexual experiences and punishments affected her psychologically".

Another misconception, then - and this one is perhaps the most serious one of all.

4. Katherine was elegant, but not very beautiful.

Some historians write that while Katherine Howard was elegant and charming, she was not conventionally beautiful. This rests solely on the comment of the French ambassador in 1540, when he first met her, that she was only "moderately pretty".

This is not a serious misconception, but it is one nonetheless. At least three other comments made by different individuals suggests that Katherine Howard may very well deserve her reputation, in the words of Baldwin Smith, as "the most beautiful of Henry's queens". A court observer in 1540 stated that she was "a very beautiful gentlewoman", while the same French ambassador earlier said that she was "a lady of extraordinary beauty". As if that wasn't enough, the unknown Spanish writer called her "more graceful and beautiful than any lady in the Court, or perhaps in the kingdom".

There are no surviving portraits of Katherine, so we cannot ascertain her exact appearance. Portraits purporting to be of her are more likely to be of another royal relative, perhaps Henry VIII's niece Lady Margaret Douglas. Nonetheless, if she was deemed to be conventionally beautiful, then it follows that she was probably pale/fair-skinned, blue/grey-eyed, and fair-haired. We do know that she was "small and slender", in the words of the French ambassador; so it is possible that she was the smallest of Henry's queens as well as the youngest.

The view, then, that Katherine was not particularly pretty is another unconvincing misconception.

Conclusion
These are only four misconceptions which abound about Katherine Howard. Some of them are fairly minor, such as those regarding her appearance, but others concerning her sexual history are far more serious. A fairer consideration of Katherine's career is long overdue. At the very least, it is time to put aside the modern view of her as a stupid, empty-headed, party-loving adolescent who deserved her fate.

New Katherine Howard biography

I am so excited to announce that it looks like I will be researching and writing a biography of arguably England's most tragic queen, Katherine Howard (c.1523/1524-1542). Readers may be aware that I have conducted research into aspects of her life before, namely her birth date and family relations, and on the nature of her downfall in 1541 (which I am still looking into).

The major reason I am looking to do this is because I feel much of Katherine's life has been thoroughly misunderstood and misinterpreted. As historian Retha Warnicke has noted, there is too great a focus from largely male historians on political aspects of Tudor history, rather than delving into aspects of gender and sexuality. This is, of course, particularly relevant when looking at female figures, whether queens, noblewomen or ordinary women.

In view of this, my work will have an underlying focus of gender, women, and sexuality more generally to provide, in my view, a more nuanced view of this queen's life. While politics and faction are, of course, essential in any study of the Tudor court, a more balanced approach is necessary if we wish to de-construct the enigma of Queen Katherine.

The work should be published by CreateSpace, Amazon's own publishing company, and I am tentatively looking at a date of August 2013.

A Tudor Mystery: What Happened to Amy Robsart?

Portrait of a lady, possibly Lady Amy Dudley nee Robsart (1532-1560).

The death of Lady Amy Dudley nee Robsart on 8 September 1560 has generated considerable controversy. What led to the death of this prosperous gentlewoman, discovered at the bottom of a flight of stairs in Cumnor Place, Oxfordshire? The only child of Sir John Robsart, Amy married the wealthy and successful Robert Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland, in 1550 aged eighteen. Rumours circulated at the time and have intensified in modern times that the couple's marriage was unhappy, prominently because of Robert's close relationship - some believed love affair - with the Princess and later Queen Elizabeth. An impenetrable mystery surrounds the circumstances which caused Amy's death, although there are several possible explanations: suicide, cancer, murder (by either the Queen's agents, Dudley's agents, or Cecil's agents) or, simply but tragically, an accident. For an enjoyable - if taken with a pinch of salt - fictional take of Amy's relationship with Robert and her eventual death, readers should consider reading Philippa Gregory's The Virgin's Lover.

First, let us begin with the facts. Amy Dudley, despite being the daughter-in-law of a duke (later disgraced), did not accompany her husband Robert to court in 1559 when he served the new Queen, Elizabeth I, as her faithful courtier. She seems to have spent her time travelling around the country and visiting family friends, while she seems to have enjoyed spending money on clothes from London.

We do not know the personal details of Robert and Amy's marriage. In an age in which marriages between the gentry and aristocracy were arranged for social, material and political advantage, individual couples did not prioritise finding happiness or love in marriage, although of course it was beneficial when this did occur. The couple had no children, yet we do not know whether this was due to fertility problems or whether it was because the couple were often separated. Rumours have circulated that Dudley enjoyed a love affair with Queen Elizabeth, scandalously conveyed in Gregory's novel, yet again, we lack any real proof to fully substantiate this claim. However, courtiers did mention that for over a year before Amy died, the queen and her favourite had merely been waiting for Amy to die so that they could marry.

It is plausible, however, that Robert and Amy's marriage was not entirely happy. They were often separated, had no children, and since many believed after Amy's death that Robert had actually murdered his wife, it seems credible to argue that contemporaries were aware that the marriage was somewhat difficult. After the summer of 1559, Robert never saw Amy again.

On 8 September 1560, the day after the Queen's birthday, Amy Dudley sent away her servants from Cumnor Place, as described by Robert's steward Thomas Blount:

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 [Mrs. Odingsells] 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.

Perhaps suspiciously, she was later described as being angry when her three servants resisted her desire that they leave. Later that day, she was discovered at the bottom of a flight of stairs with a broken neck and two head wounds. So what caused Amy's death?

Firstly, this article will consider the modern explanation of Amy suffering a malady in her breasts which caused her death. It was assumed at the time of the death in 1560 that a simple fall could not have caused Amy's death - there were not particularly many steps as it was a short flight, while Amy's headdress was described as still remaining perfectly undisturbed on her head.  In 1956, Ian Aird proposed this theory, arguing simultaneously that "a verdict of misadventure, in the case of accident, [is] not easily acceptable". Aird's profession as a professor of medicine undoubtedly aided him in putting forward the theory that, rather than suicide, accident or murder, Amy was suffering from breast cancer and so may have meant that her neck was particularly fragile and could break easily. This theory has become somewhat popular in modern times. As he noted: "in a woman of Amy's age the likeliest cause of a spontaneous fracture of the spine would be a cancer of the breast..." Indeed, the Count of Feria reported in April 1559 that Amy Dudley "had a malady in one of her breasts". When one reads Aird's article, his argument that Amy's death resulted from a fall down the stairs, which was worsened than it would otherwise have been by a weakened spine caused by breast cancer, his viewpoint is compelling. Yet it has been attacked. Simon Adams, for instance, asserts that "this theory accounts for a number of the known circumstances, but a serious illness in April 1559 is difficult to reconcile with her extensive travelling in the following months".

An alternative explanation is suicide. If she was suffering illness or depression, even potentially breast cancer, this may have led her to commit suicide in an attempt to escape a life no longer bearable. This can be supported by evidence of her "desperation" in some sources, while some historians have put forward the hypothesis that Amy sent away her servants on the morning of 8 September in order to commit suicide secretly. Robert Dudley himself may have alluded to this possibility. However, Aird attacked this view, stating that "to project oneself down a flight of stairs would not occur to a suicide now, and would have occurred even less to an Elizabethan suicide at a time when the steps of staircases were broad and low, and the angle of descent gradual". Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that, if Amy killed herself, her headdress would still have remained upright on her head when she would not have been able to do this if she was dead by the time she fell to the bottom of the stairs.

Others have suggested that Amy's death was accidental. James Gairdner, in 1898, suggested that her death was a tragic accident. The coroner's verdict in 1561 was that Amy Dudley, "being alone in a certain chamber... accidentally fell precipitously down" the stairs next to the chamber "to the very bottom of the same". This caused two head injuries and injuries to one thumb. Tragically, she had broken her neck in the fall. Because of this, she "died instantly... the Lady Amy... by misfortune came to her death and not otherwise, as they are able to agree at present". However, historians have suggested that Robert Dudley, as an influential and powerful courtier, was able to influence the jury. Aird has argued that "there are several circumstances in relation to Amy Robsart's death which made her contemporaries, and which have made the historians of later times, a little hesitant to accept unreservedly the jury's verdict of misadventure". 

Perhaps most famously, it has been theorised that Amy was, in fact, murdered. Following her death, there was "grievous and dangerous suspicion, and muttering" in both court and country, as people murmured about Amy's death and the renewed relationship between the Queen and her favourite, Dudley. William Cecil, who was Principal Secretary and who has been argued felt threatened by Dudley's increasing influence, informed the Spanish ambassador in the aftermath of Amy's death that Elizabeth and Dudley had been plotting to murder Amy by poison, "giving out that she was ill but she was not ill at all" (which somewhat contradicts the evidence put forward earlier that she was ill). In 1567, Amy's half brother John Appleyarde, in irritation with Dudley, stated that he "had not been satisfied with the verdict of the jury at her death; but that for the sake of Dudley he had covered the murder of his sister". Contemporary evidence raises the possibility that Amy was murdered.

The discovery of the contemporary Spanish ambassadors' correspondence in the nineteenth century supported the theory of murder, reporting that Amy was ill and her husband had been trying to either poison or divorce her as early as the spring of 1559. The report from 11 September 1560, three days after Amy's death, states that Cecil believed that Dudley had murdered his wife. A 1563 chronicle, written by someone violently hostile to the Dudleys, suggested that Robert Dudley's retainer, Sir Richard Verney, murdered Amy by breaking her neck (this is fictionalised in The Virgin's Lover). Catholic exiles wrote the satirical Leicester's Commonwealth in 1584 and, hostile to Dudley, suggested that Verney sent Amy's servants to the market when he arrived at Cumnor Place before breaking Amy Dudley's neck and placing her at the bottom of the stairs. The Victorian historian James Anthony Froude, having found the Spanish ambassadorial correspondence, wrote in 1863 that: "she was murdered by persons who hoped to profit by his elevation to the throne; and Dudley himself... used private means... to prevent the search from being pressed inconveniently far". Alison Weir, in 1999, suggested that Cecil, rather than Dudley, arranged Lady Amy's death because he had a murder motive, ie. to prevent Dudley's potential marriage to his mistress, Elizabeth I, and because Cecil would benefit as a result of the scandal. Other evidence has been put forward: considerable time before Amy did die, both Robert and the Queen predicted to the Spanish ambassador that she would shortly die.

However, many historians have discredited rumours that Amy was murdered. Dudley's correspondence with Thomas Blount and William Cecil in the preceding days has been seen as evidence that he was innocent, while others have noted that both he and Queen Elizabeth were highly shocked when news of Amy's death were brought to them. It has, plausibly, been suggested that he would not have had his wife killed because of the tremendous scandal  that would ensue if he were implicated in his wife's murder. David Loades went so far as to state that "we can be reasonably certain that Lord Robert had no hand in his wife's death". Aird states that there "was no evidence that he [Dudley] had any thought of murdering his wife" even if he did wish to marry the Queen. He also asserts that "a staircase [is not] a convenient weapon for murder. To throw a person downstairs is too uncertain", it cannot be argued that "she was first murdered by some extreme violence and then thrown downstairs". Historians have also recognised that poison was a "stock-in trade accusation" in the sixteenth century to discredit political rivals and the fact that sources support one another in suggesting Amy was murdered was "no more than a tradition of gossip". As Catholic sources, and thus hostile to both Queen and Dudley, we should consider them very cautiously and sceptically. 

To conclude, I have to admit, personally, that I know too little about these mysterious events to put forward my belief of what actually happened on that day. I can only say, however, that it was very suspicious. Why did Amy send away her servants on that particular day? Was it because, to put it nicely but bluntly, she was going mad or even insane due to her illness; was it because she wished to be alone to commit suicide, or was it for some other reason? Why did the Queen and Dudley hint to the Spanish ambassador that Amy Dudley would soon die - was it because they knew she was fatally ill, or is it evidence of murder? Almost all of the sources we have about this event are highly suspect. Thus we cannot conclude with any real certainty about what happened. 

I have suspicions, however. Aird has discredited the notion that Amy was found with her headdress perfectly intact, but if this was true, surely suicide seems much less likely. If Amy threw herself down a flight of stairs, it seems highly unlikely that, dying shortly afterwards, her hood would still be perfectly in position on her head. I am also persuaded by Aird's arguments that falling down a short flight of stairs is hardly a foolproof method of suicide. However, if Amy was melancholy or despairing at this time, as some sources may indicate, perhaps she did have a motive in wishing to end her life prematurely, particularly if her marriage was unhappy, as possibly the case. Out of all the explanations, however, I believe that suicide is the least likely theory.

This leaves accident, murder, or illness. An accident is perfectly possible, but again, we are left with the simple fact that a short flight of stairs would not ordinarily kill a person. Therefore we must consider Aird's argument that Amy's body, because of the malady of her breasts, was weakened considerably, and so a short flight of stairs which, though usually would not result in death, may have caused her death if she was more fragile and physically vulnerable than a 'normal' person would be. This was the verdict recorded after her death, and many historians have suggested that it is what happened. Thus accident and illness are intertwined to provide an explanation, tragically, of accidental death.

A more unsettling interpretation is possible. If one literally accepts the Spanish ambassador's comments, bearing in mind that ambassadors occasionally spoke little to none of the language in the court in which they served, relied on informers, and were frequently deceived by officials and courtiers, it is possible to believe that Amy Dudley was murdered, either by Cecil's agents or Dudley's agents. I have to agree, however, with modern historians who argue that Dudley would not have dared have his wife murdered, as the scandal would almost certainly have meant that the Queen would not have dared marry a man who would only bring controversy and even ridicule to her status. But desperate people do desperate things - if Dudley was so determined to marry the Queen, and only saw his wife as an unnecessary complication, who knows what he might have done? 

To conclude, it is impossible to know what really happened. On the basis of the evidence, I would tentatively conclude that Amy's death was caused by both her breast cancer and an accident; ie. if she had been physically healthy, and had fallen down the stairs, she would not have died, but in tragic circumstances, when her body was physically much more fragile, a simple fall led to her death due to the thinning of her bones. I believe that we can reject suicide as a likely explanation. It is possible that she was murdered, but if one believes that much of the evidence we have for this theory is based on hostile Catholic sources which openly vilified both the Dudleys and Queen Elizabeth, this theory becomes much less tenable. Therefore, I would suggest that accidental death, acting in conjunction with breast cancer, caused Amy's death, but we cannot rule out murder.

Further Reading
Simon Adams, 'Amy Dudley, Lady Dudley (1532-1560)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2008), online edition (Last accessed 13 December 2012).
Ian Aird, 'The Death of Amy Robsart', The English Historical Review 71 (1956), pp. 69-79.
James Gairdner, 'The Death of Amy Robsart', The English Historical Review 1 (1886), 235-259.
James Gairdner, 'Bishop de Quadra's Letter and the Death of Amy Robsart', The English Historical Review 13 (1898), pp. 83-90.

For a fictional take on Amy's death and Robert and Queen Elizabeth's relationship, Philippa Gregory, The Virgin's Lover (2004) (please take it with a pinch of salt, it's not fact, it's fiction!)
Wikipedia for a general overview.