Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart [Hardcover]

The great thing about this book is the transcript of the coroner's report of Robert Dudley's wife's death in 1560, found at last by Dr. Steven Gunn in The Natinonal Archives. It says that she had a broken neck and two wounds at unspecified locations on her head, one of which would have involved some form of skull fracture. Since such injuries are not uncommon in serious and fatal stair falls, and since the report is a 16th century piece of paper and not the actual body, it must remain inconclusive. Skidmore concedes that its findings are compatible with an accidental downstairs fall (the jury's verdict); he should have given this possibility more consideration, however. He instead goes on to make a case that Amy Dudley was first poisoned for some 18 months and then murdered by over-assiduous men of Dudley's following without their master's knowledge; in the end he hints that Dudley, and possibly the Queen, did somehow influence the jury.

Skidmore did consult some manuscripts and gives some exciting material, including three photos of manuscript letters by Amy and Robert Dudley. However, apart from a number of astonishing misattributions (e.g., one alleged quotation by Dudley is in fact by the Spanish ambassador de Silva), the forcing of documents into a totally misleading context to press an argument is a recurrent feature. A typical example: As proof of the alleged extreme loyalty of Dudley's servants to their master (which the author needs for his murder theory), Skidmore quotes the military oath of allegiance to Robert Dudley as Lieutenant-General of the Queen's forces for the Netherlands expedition of 1587, 27 years after Amy's death. Skidmore implies that oath was common practice in the Dudley household in 1560!

In many instances, Skidmore falsifies the picture by suppressing facts and by misrepresenting sources. For example, in order to argue that Amy Dudley was not ill, the author goes so far as to make the Spanish ambassador's archival original, "está muy mala de un pecho" (she is very ill in one breast), into "enferma y mala de un pecho" (sick and ill in one breast). From the fact that Lady Amy speaks of her husband as "my lord" in a letter he deduces that she held him in awe. Now, he must know it was absolute standard for a wife to speak of her husband as her "lord", "my lord's" etc. Even Juliet talks of Romeo as her lord as soon as they are secretly married. More striking examples of these problems are the accounts of Dudley's affairs with Lady Douglas Sheffield and Lettice Knollys; they are deeply flawed and distorted, as is much of the political narrative of the book. By witholding vital facts the author paints Dudley, and only him, in an unattractive light: even when he redeems a diamond of Amy's from a pawn-broker after her death, this shows his selfish, materialistic nature: "Jewels, Dudley must have considered, would be wasted on the dead."

After brief discussion, the accident and suicide options vanish mid-way and the book focuses entirely on one murder theory; any alternative murder scenarios are never mentioned. The "murder evidence" rests on the appearance of Sir Richard Verney (a Warwickshire gentleman in whose house Lady Amy had formerly stayed) as organizer of the killing in a c.1563 gossip chronicle and in the satirical libel "Leicester's Commonwealth" of 1584. Scholars have pointed out for years that this proves nothing but that there was a tradition of gossip involving Verney. As is stated even in the 1563 chronicle itself, it was by no means inside information but common talk. However, Skidmore is generally not squeamish about sources. He also ignores incongruities throughout, for example, he presupposes that the stairs Amy fell down were those leading down from the long gallery, although the report says the stairs she fell down adjoined "a certain chamber", possibly Amy's private room from which the only other stairs in the house led down. Skidmore even confidently implies that a quadrangular staircase with a landing is the same thing as a "circular newel staircase".

Verney's murder motive, unsolicited boosting of his master's career, is not at all convincing. At one point Skidmore drops the remark that Cecil would not have risked his position by murdering Amy. Sure! But neither would have Dudley! He would not have risked the axe for murder after having narrowly escaped it for treason (he had also lost 55% of his immediate family between 1553 and 1557 alone; so his ambition was probably balanced by his desire to live). It was natural that all suspicion would fall on Dudley (the more if the crime occurred in his wife's lodgings!), as people were immersed in slanderous gossip regarding him and the Queen. That was a thing his servants, as his enemies in high places, were well aware of.

The "evidence" for Dudley's interference with the jury is that the jury's foreman Sir Richard Smith, formerly "the Queen's man" and later mayor of Abingdon (the town next to the village where Amy died), received some stuffs to make clothes of from Robert Dudley in 1566 -- six years after the event. Skidmore does not bother to explain why the "Mr. Smith, the Queen's man" of 1566 should be the same Smith as the foreman. It's the same with John Stevenson, another jury member; Skidmore thinks he was the same man as John Steaphinson Ferrar, a servant listed near grooms of the stable on a 1559/1560 wages list of Dudley's. The author also tries to implicate Dudley via some payments he made at the end of 1560. Alas, there was nothing ominous about these: Anthony Forster (in whose house Amy had lived and died) was receiving funds to wind up her household; Francis Barthewe, whom Skidmore sees as a mysterious "stranger", was a Flemish merchant to whom Dudley had owed money for some five years (comp. p. 40 of the Accounts); Anthony Butler MP was repaid a "bond" -- a normal procedure. Why should this not happen two and a half months after Amy's death?

The 15 jury members' verdict on oath was accident, "as they are able to agree at present". Skidmore makes a lot out of this disclaimer. Yet, by its very frankness the formulation does not smack of intervention by evil forces.

A fresh voice in Tudor history who gives us nice, long quotes from the movers and shakers, bringing them to life beautifully! And who quotes key documents in full at the back of the book! Great! I look forward to his next book.

Chris Skidmore has written a fascinating book. He has NOT 'solved' the mystery of Amy Dudley's death, however. I didn't read any solution here. He's a historian, not a detective. They don't make cut-and-dried statements.

Refreshingly, he has gone outside the academic box to talk to experts on 'death caused by tumbles down staircases' about likely wounds. He has added a lot of detail to the story, including an old sketch of the staircase in question, which shows how unlikely it is that Amy could fall down it and break her neck especially as there was a landing. He quotes local gossip - always interesting, with its chance details.

Then he meanders off into a long discussion about Elizabeth 1st's various suitors, a topic which occupies most of the book actually. I kept wondering when he would return to Amy's death.

What he should have done - perhaps for a second edition please? - is to talk to forensic experts about the significance of what the coroner's report reveals - two mysterious deep wounds in Amy Dudley's skull.

The staircase expert says that falling downstairs can create wounds like a cheese-grater. But that doesn't tackle the problem of what caused two DEEP wounds. Forensic people would probably supply interesting theories.

With a Miss Marple hat on, it seems obvious to me that a wound half an inch deep followed by one two inches deep could be caused by an assassin's knife as he approached from behind her. It's common for a killer to be hesitant the first time he strikes, making a deeper wound the second time as testosterone kicks in - you get that a lot in Tudor executions; then maybe he grabbed Amy and broke her neck to make sure, arranging her at the bottom of the stairs - with her headdress famously intact, revealing this was a man as a woman would note that kind of detail! - and he made his getaway, as Chris describes, through another exit and out.

Chris, I feel, allows himself to fall in love a little with his real subject, Amy's husband Dudley. It is clear that Dudley was a nasty 'love 'em and leave 'em' type. Cecil, Elizabeth's right-hand man, wrote a note to himself that he was likely to 'prove unkind' if married to the Queen.

Dudley married Amy too young, got bored, treated her abysmally - she never had a home of her own in ten years and he rarely saw her - and then saw his chance of marrying Elizabeth if he could get her out of the way.

She was clearly depressed, from what her servant says, and with good reason. Nervous of being poisoned - Chris brings up some interesting stuff about a doctor who was approached covertly, and refused to treat her, as he suspected 'they' would add poison to his medicine and he'd pay the penalty.

Dudley then had an affair with Lady Douglas Sheffield who bore his son - ironically, the only son who lived to adulthood, and a good egg, whom he bastardised. He married Douglas Sheffield secretly, saw her rarely - what's new? - and then, bored and in love with Lettice, Countess of Essex, offered her £700 to deny the marriage. If, as Chris Skidmore rather casually asserts, Douglas Sheffield was lying, I wonder why he offered her any money at all. She took the money after reviewing her options, and married someone else, then shot her mouth off about Dudley over dinner years later - only to be mortified when her dining companion wrote it all down in an entertaining scandalsheet called Leicester's Commonwealth.

Chris makes a couple of small howlers. The picture of Elizabeth 1st is not young, but middle-aged. And the carter who says 'Now I know the Queen is a woman, like my wife' did NOT say that after glimpsing her naked at her window, as he asserts, but because he was standing by with a loaded cart and she was changing her mind about when and where to go on to, during a progress round the country. Elizabeth is said to have laughed and thrown him a coin out of her window. She would hardly do that if he had seen her naked.

Never mind; Chris, you're going to be up there with the great historians if you go on like this.

So very disappointing. So rare for new evidence to come to light. yet Skidmore's book adds little or nothing to the debate. Where is a detailed discussion of, to pick one example, William Cecil's posible involvement given his out of character remarks? Much of the book is a superficial rerun of Elizabeth's various suitors. I gave the book 2 stars (rather than one) because I found the reproduction of documents - particulalry the coronors report - in the appendices of interest. If only Alison Weir had written this book!