ANNE: Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight. Thou dost infect mine eyes.
RICHARD: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.
William Shakespeare, Richard III (1592)
This month, the BBC announced that relatives of Richard III, England's last medieval king, are launching a legal challenge over plans to bury him in Leicester Cathedral. The mooted burial place of England's most controversial king have inspired furious debate amongst devoted Ricardians, academics, and the general public as a whole, following the sensational news that the body unearthed in a Leicester priory was really that of the defamed king, killed at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485. The Plantagenet monarch's supporters commonly believe that Richard should instead be buried at York Minster, due to Richard's strong associations with the North - where he was much esteemed - during his lifetime.
In an article I wrote earlier this year for my university newspaper, which can be accessed here (http://xmedia.ex.ac.uk/wp/wordpress/?p=6591), I explored the brief outline of Richard's controversial life and the sensational legacy he continues to exert today in modern Britain. How controversial Richard's life and legacy really are can be glimpsed in the March 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine, where academics differed wildly from one another in their judgements of Richard. Chris Skidmore, MP and historian, insists that Richard deserves a state funeral, in order for people to 'reassess' this maligned monarch. Nigel Saul, respected medieval scholar, suggests that the bones of the two sons found in the Tower should be DNA-tested in order to see if they really are those of Richard's nephews. Nigel Jones is especially vehement in wishing 'that the strange cult of this murderous little tyrant would also lie down and die', and insists that he should remained buried in a Leicester car park due to his status as 'a serial-killing child murderer', while Alison Weir agrees somewhat, noting that 'his bad press was probably well deserved'. Yet Phil Stone, chairman of the Richard III Society, strongly disagreed, instead hoping that 'people will start to read about this monarch who did much for this country'.
The sensational nature of Richard III's reign and comparatively short life have meant that he has left a long-lasting legacy in Britain today comprised of controversy and mystery, which ferociously divide those who believe he is a victim of cruel Tudor propaganda and those who, like Nigel Jones, view him as the epitome of evil. This conflict was witnessed during Richard's own lifetime. John Rous, a medieval English historian writing in the fifteenth century, praised Richard as a 'good lord' who punished 'oppressors of the commons', and insisted that he had 'a great heart'. Certainly, Richard's excellent reforms of the English legal system and his desire to provide aid for the poor are well recognised by medieval historians. But the bloody death of Richard at Bosworth Field, and the subsequent triumph of the Tudors, blackened Richard's name beyond redemption. Notoriously, Shakespeare depicted him as deformed, cruel, scheming and evil, stopping at nothing - not even poison and murder - to achieve his ambitions. Thomas More condemned Richard, portraying him as 'little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed... hard-favoured of visage', while Polydore Vergil opined that he was 'deformed of body... one shoulder higher than the right'. For years, devoted Ricardians insisted that this was all nonsense, designed to tarnish the king's reputation beyond redemption, but the unearthing of Richard's body at Leicester goes some way to proving that these writers were truthful in their claims.
However, praise remained for Richard in the early modern period. The late Elizabethan historian William Camden praised his 'good laws', although remarking that he had 'lived wickedly'. Francis Bacon concurred, suggesting that he was 'a good lawmaker for the ease and solace of the common people'. Again, therefore, we can see that while Richard may have alienated nobles and the elites at court, he was popular among the common people for his successful reforms and desire to improve their lot. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, contrastingly, the depiction of Richard as evil and corrupt became the dominant description. David Hume castigated his 'fierce and savage nature'; he had 'abandoned all principles of honour and humanity'. Respected historian James Gairdner believed that Shakespeare and More's views of the king, while exaggerated, were essentially correct. Twentieth century historians have arguably become fairer in their assessments, focusing less on Richard's moral qualities, with Charles Ross believing that 'like most men, he was conditioned by the standards of his age'. Yet other writers, such as Weir, believe that he was highly corrupt and believe that he was responsible for the murder of his nephews, the 'Princes in the Tower', in 1483.
As proof of the controversy and passionate emotions Richard inspires today, I received several comments on my article insisting that Richard could not have been responsible for that heinous crime, the murder of his nephews - the disturbing event which has overshadowed all other events of his short but bitter reign. This has been disputed ferociously by historians, scholars, playwrights, novelists, film-makers, and a host of other professionals to this day. Katherine Emery, fellow student at Exeter, explored who may have been responsible for the murder of the Princes in the March 2013 issue of The Historian, sifting through a variety of evidence which could point towards the murderers being either Richard, Henry VII, the Duke of Buckingham, or Margaret Beaufort. But she concluded that evidence overwhelmingly suggested that Richard was indeed responsible for his nephews' deaths.
On a balance of probabilities, I agree that Richard is the most likely culprit for his nephews' deaths (but that is not to say that he physically killed them himself!) One of the most commonly raised arguments, but one that I wholeheartedly agree with, is that if the Princes were still alive after 1483, why did the King never produce them in London publicly to counter harsh criticism and increasing suspicion that he had murdered them? Henry VII was to do a similar thing during his reign with a pretender who challenged his throne. Rumours swirled in London during Richard's reign that he had 'put to death the children of King Edward, for which cause he lost the hearts of the people.' In Danzig, Caspar Weinreich's contemporary chronicle recorded that 'Later this summer, Richard, the King's brother, had himself put in power... and he had his brother's children killed'. The Croyland Chronicler, who was in fact a royal councillor at court, later wrote that 'the children of King Edward', were 'avenged' at Bosworth through Richard's death. The evidence is convincing.
Richard's reputation was blackened, it would seem, almost beyond repair by other disturbing allegations about him during his own lifetime. Following his queen Anne Neville's premature death in March 1485, it was believed that Richard had murdered her, perhaps by poisoning her, in order to marry his own niece Elizabeth of York. Richard was also condemned for his savage treatment of Hastings, executing him before his coup in 1483, and later ordered the execution of his most erstwhile supporter the duke of Buckingham for rebelling against him. While the rumours about Anne are almost certainly scurrilous, the other charges are correct. If Richard was not the poisonous, cruel, murderous tyrant immortalised in Tudor propaganda, he was certainly scheming, ruthless, and desperate to retain his power at all costs.
Richard's controversial life and sensational legacy will mean that he will always provoke fierce debates and bitter beliefs. But where should the king be buried? Since he was extremely popular in the North, and enjoyed considerable success there, perhaps it is only right that he should be buried at York Minster. The Queen has made it discreetly clear that she will not tolerate a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, which many people seem to agree with. But, although he remains tainted with the crime of murder (including of children), it seems clear that York Minster is the most fitting place for this king to be buried - particularly if it, finally, ends the tiring debates as to where his final resting place should be.
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.
