Роберт Дадлидің әйелі Эми Робсарт өмірі мен трагедиясы

Wife of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester

The Earl of Warwick and future Duke of Northumberland was the most powerful man in England, leading the government of the young King Edward VI. The match, though by no means a prize, was acceptable to him as it strengthened his influence in Norfolk. The young couple dwelt mostly at court or with Amy's parents in law at Ely House; in the first half of 1553 they lived at Somerset House, Robert Dudley being keeper of this great Renaissance palace. He remained there from July 1553 until October 1554; from September 1553 Amy was allowed to visit "and there to tarry with" him at the Tower's Lieutenant's pleasure. After his release Robert Dudley was short of money and he and Amy were helped out financially by their families. Lady Amy's ancestral manor house of Syderstone had been uninhabitable for many decades, her childhood home of Stanfield had been left to her mother for life by her first husband, but on her mother's death had reverted to Amy Robsart's half brother John Appleyard,
From this time a business letter from Amy Dudley survives, settling some of her husband's debts in his absence, "although I forgot to move my lord thereof before his departing, he being sore troubled with weighty affairs, and I not being altogether in quiet for his sudden departing". In the summer of 1558, Robert and Amy Dudley were looking for a suitable residence of their own in order to settle in Norfolk; nothing came of this, however, before the death of Queen Mary I in November 1558. Upon the accession of Elizabeth I Robert Dudley became Master of the Horse and his place was now at court at almost constant attendance on the Queen. By April 1559, Queen Elizabeth seemed to be in love with Lord Robert, and several diplomats reported that some at court already speculated that the Queen would marry him, "in case his wife should die", as Lady Amy Dudley was very ill in one of her breasts. Very soon court observers noted that Elizabeth never let Robert Dudley from her side. He visited his wife at Throcking for a couple of days at Easter 1559, and Amy Dudley came to London in May 1559 for about a month. At this time, on 6 June, the new Spanish ambassador de Quadra wrote that her health had improved, but that she was careful with her food. She also made a trip to Suffolk; by September she was residing in the house of Sir Richard Verney at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. By late 1559, several foreign princes were vying for the Queen's hand; indignant at Elizabeth's little serious interest in their candidate, the Spanish ambassador de Quadra and his Imperial colleague were informing each other and their superiors that Lord Robert was sending his wife poison and that Elizabeth was only fooling them, "keeping Lord Robert's enemies and the country engaged with words until this wicked deed of killing his wife is consummated". Parts of the nobility also held Dudley responsible for Elizabeth's failure to marry, and plots to assassinate him abounded. In March 1560 de Quadra informed Philip II: "Lord Robert told somebody that if he live another year he will be in a very different position from now. They say that he thinks of divorcing his wife." Lady Amy never saw her husband again after her London visit in 1559. A projected trip of his to visit her and other family never materialized. Queen Elizabeth did not really allow her favourite a wife; according to a contemporary court chronicle, he "was commanded to say that he did nothing with her, when he came to her, as seldom he did". also sometimes known as Cumnor Hall, in the village of Cumnor in Berkshire (on the outskirts of Oxford, and now in Oxfordshire). The house, an altered 14th century monastic complex, was rented by a friend of the Dudleys and possible relative of Amy, Sir Anthony Forster. He lived there with his wife and Mrs. Odingsells and Mrs. Owen, relations of the house's owner. Lady Amy's chamber was a large, sumptuous upper story apartment, the best of the house, with a separate entrance and staircase leading up to it. At the house's rear there were a terrace garden, a pond, and a deer park. Amy Dudley received the proceeds of the Robsart estate directly into her hands and largely paid for her own household, which comprised about 10 servants. No picture of her is known to have survived, though according to the Imperial ambassador Caspar Breuner, writing in 1559, she was "a very beautiful wife". However, in 2009, Eric Ives suggested that a portrait miniature now in the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale Miniature, was, in fact, Amy Robsart. the sitter wearing oak leaves and gillyflowers at her breast. The name gilliflower or gillyflower derives from the French giroflée from Greek karyophyllon meaning nut leaf, the association deriving from the flower's scent, making it another possible wordplay for oak for Robert or even Robsart,

Amy Dudley's death, happening amid renewed rumours about the Queen and her favourite, caused "grievous and dangerous suspicion, and muttering" in the country. Robert Dudley was shocked, dreading "the malicious talk that I know the wicked world will use". William Cecil, the Queen's Principal Secretary, felt himself threatened by the prospect of Dudley's becoming king consort and spread rumours against the eventuality. Already knowing of her death before it was officially made public, Likewise strongly opposed to a Dudley marriage, Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador in France, went out of his way to draw attention to the scandalous gossip he heard at the French court. Although Cecil and Throckmorton made use of the scandal for their political and personal aims, they did not believe themselves that Robert Dudley had orchestrated his wife's death. In October Robert Dudley returned to court, many believed, "in great hope to marry the Queen". Elizabeth's affection and favour towards him was undiminished,

However, her international reputation and even her position at home were imperilled by the scandal, which seems to have convinced her that she could not risk a marriage with Dudley. Dudley himself had no illusions about his destroyed reputation, even when he was first notified of the jury's decision: In September 1561, a month after the coroner's verdict was officially passed, the Earl of Arundel, one of Dudley's principal enemies, studied the testimonies in the hope of finding incriminating evidence against his rival.

John Appleyard had profited in terms of offices and annuities from his brother in law's rise ever since 1559; he was nevertheless disappointed with what he had got from Robert Dudley, now Earl of Leicester. In 1567 he was approached, apparently on behalf of the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Sussex, to accuse Leicester of the murder of his wife for a reward of £1,000 in cash. He refused to cooperate in the plot, although he had, he said, in the last few years come to believe that his half sister was murdered. He had always been convinced of Dudley's innocence but thought it would be an easy matter to find out the real culprits. He said he had repeatedly asked for the Earl's help to this effect, claiming the jury had not yet come up with their verdict; Dudley had always answered that the matter should rest, since a jury had found that there was no murder, by due procedure of law. Now, as Leicester became aware of a plot against him, he summoned Appleyard and sent him away after a furious confrontation. Appleyard, instead of giving answers, retracted all his statements; he had also requested to see the coroner's report and, after studying it in his cell, wrote that it fully satisfied him and had dispelled his concerns.

From the early 1560s there was a tradition involving Sir Richard Verney, A 1563 chronicle, which is heavily biased against the House of Dudley and was probably written by the Protestant activist John Hales, describes the rumours:<blockquote>[t]he Lord Robert's wife brake her neck at Forster's house in Oxfordshire her gentlewomen being gone forth to a fair. Howbeit it was thought she was slain, for Sir Varney was there that day and whylest the deed was doing was going over the fair and tarried there for his man, who at length came, and he said, thou knave, why tarriest thou? He answered, should I come before I had done? Hast thou done? quoth Varney. Yeah, quoth the man, I have made it sure. Many times before it was bruited by the Lord Robert his men that she was dead. This Verney and divers his servants used before her death, to wish her death, which made the people to suspect the worse. Here Sir Richard Verney goes directly to Cumnor Place, forces the servants to go to the market, and breaks Lady Amy's neck before placing her at the foot of the stairs; the jury's verdict is murder, and she is buried first secretly at the Cumnor parish church before being dug up and reburied at Oxford. Verney dies, communicating "that all the devils in hell" tore him in pieces; his servant (who was with him at the murder) having been killed in prison by Dudley's means before he could tell the story. Enhanced by the considerable influence of Leicester's Commonwealth, the rumours about Amy Robsart's death developed into a tradition of embellished folklore. As early as 1608, a domestic tragedy named A Yorkshire Tragedy alluded to her fall from a pair of stairs as an easy way to get rid of one's wife: "A politician did it." In the 19th century her story became very popular due to the best selling novel, Kenilworth, by Walter Scott. The notion that Amy Robsart was murdered gained new strength with the discovery of the Spanish diplomatic correspondence (and with it of poison rumours) by the Victorian historian James Anthony Froude. he concluded in 1863: "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." There followed the Norfolk antiquarian Walter Rye with The Murder of Amy Robsart in 1885: here she was first poisoned and then, that method failing, killed by violent means. Rye's main sources were Cecil's talk with de Quadra around the time of Amy Dudley's death and, again, Leicester's Commonwealth. Much more scholarly and influential was an 1870 work by George Adlard, Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leycester, which printed relevant letters and covertly suggested suicide as an explanation. By 1910, A. F. Pollard was convinced that the fact that Amy Robsart's death caused suspicion was "as natural as it was incredible But a meaner intelligence than Elizabeth's or even Dudley's would have perceived that murder would make the[ir] marriage impossible."

The coroner's report came to light in The National Archives in 2008 and is compatible with an accidental fall as well as suicide or other violence. In the absence of the forensic findings of 1560, it was often assumed that a simple accident could not be the explanation—on the basis of near contemporary tales that Amy Dudley was found at the bottom of a short flight of stairs with a broken neck, her headdress still standing undisturbed "upon her head", a detail that first appeared as a satirical remark in Leicester's Commonwealth and has ever since been repeated for a fact. To account for such oddities and evidence that she was ill, it was suggested in 1956 by Ian Aird, a professor of medicine, that Amy Dudley might have suffered from breast cancer, which through metastatic cancerous deposits in the spine, could have caused her neck to break under only limited strain, such as a short fall or even just coming down the stairs. A few modern historians have considered murder as an option. Alison Weir has tentatively suggested William Cecil as organizer of Amy Dudley's death on the grounds that, if Amy was mortally ill, he had the strongest murder motive and that he was the main beneficiary of the ensuing scandal. Against this idea it has been argued that he would not have risked damaging Elizabeth's reputation nor his own position. The notion of Sir Richard Verney killing Amy Robsart after long and fruitless efforts to poison her (with and without his master's knowledge) has been revived by George Bernard and by Chris Skidmore on the basis that Verney appears in both the c. 1563 chronicle by John Hales (also called Journal of Matters of State) and the 1584 libel Leicester's Commonwealth. This coincidence has as often been evaluated as no more than a tradition of gossip, poison being a stock in trade accusation in the 16th century. That Robert Dudley might have influenced the jury has been argued by George Bernard, Susan Doran, and by Chris Skidmore. The foreman, Sir Richard Smith (mayor of Abingdon in 1564/1565 It has, however, not been established that Sir Richard Smith and the "Mr. Smith" of 1566 are one and the same person, Smith being a "very common" name. Susan Doran has pointed out that any interference with the jury could be as easily explained by the desire to cover up a suicide rather than a murder. Apart from alternatives for a murder plot as causes for Amy Robsart's death, his correspondence with Thomas Blount and William Cecil in the days following has been cited as proofs of his innocence; the letters, which show signs of an agitated mind, making clear his bewilderment and unpreparedness. It has also been judged as highly unlikely that he would have orchestrated the death of his wife in a manner which laid him open to such a foreseeable scandal.

Amy Robsart was the daughter of Sir John Robsart of Syderstone (d.1557) and his wife, Elizabeth Scott (d.1549), daughter of John Scott, of Camberwell in Surrey. From her mother's first marriage to Roger Appleyard of Stanfield (d.1528) Amy had four half siblings, John Appleyard, Philip, who married Mary Shelton, Anna and Frances, who married William Flowerdew. Through their son Anthony Flowerdew of Hethersett in Norfolk and his wife Martha Stanley of Scottow in Norfolk, Amy Robsart is the great aunt of Temperance Flowerdew. Amy Robsart's paternal grandparents were Theoderick (Terry) Robsart and Elizabeth (d.20 November 1535), daughter of Sir Thomas Kerdeston of Syderstone.]] Amy was buried in the chancel of St Mary's Church, Oxford, but her grave has been lost. Professor Ian Aird wrote: “The exact site of Amy’s grave has never been known, though in the contemporary account it was said to have been at the east end of the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford." A memorial tile in the church, however, pays tribute to her:In a Vault of brick at the upper end of this Quire was buried Amy Robsart Wife of Lord Robert Dudley K. G. on Sunday 22nd September AD 1560|