1. HISTORICAL CONFUSIONS AS TO EVENTS BEFORE AMY'S DEATH
Let him who would weep over the tribulations of the historical inquirer attend to the tale of the Mystery of Amy Robsart!
The student must dismiss from his memory all that he recollects of Scott's 'Kenilworth.' Sir Walter's chivalrous motto was 'No scandal about Queen Elizabeth,' 'tis blazoned on his title-page. To avoid scandal, he calmly cast his narrative at a date some fifteen years after Amy Robsart's death, brought Amy alive, and represented Queen Elizabeth as ignorant of her very existence. He might, had he chosen, have proved to his readers that, as regards Amy Robsart and her death, Elizabeth was in a position almost as equivocal as was Mary Stuart in regard to the murder of Darnley. Before the murder of Darnley we do not hear one word to suggest that Mary was in love with Bothwell. For many months before the death of Amy (Lady Robert Dudley), we hear constant reports that Elizabeth has a love affair with Lord Robert, and that Amy is to be divorced or murdered. When Darnley is killed, a mock investigation acquits Bothwell, and Mary loads him with honours and rewards. When Amy dies mysteriously, a coroner's inquest, deep in the country, is held, and no records of its proceedings can be found. Its verdict is unknown. After a brief tiff, Elizabeth restores Lord Robert to favour.
After Darnley's murder, Mary's ambassador in France implores her to investigate the matter with all diligence. After Amy's death, Elizabeth's ambassador in France implores her to investigate the matter with all diligence. Neither lady listens to her loyal servant, indeed Mary could not have pursued the inquiry, however innocent she might have been. Elizabeth could! In three months after Darnley's murder, Mary married Bothwell. In two months after Amy's death Cecil told (apparently) the Spanish ambassador that Elizabeth had married Lord Robert Dudley. But this point, we shall see, is dubious.
There the parallel ceases, for, in all probability, Lord Robert was not art and part in Amy's death, and, whatever Elizabeth may have done in private, she certainly did not publicly espouse Lord Robert.
A Scot as patriotic as, but less chivalrous than, Sir Walter might, however, have given us a romance of Cumnor Place in which Mary would have been avenged on 'her sister and her foe.' He abstained, but wove a tale so full of conscious anachronisms that we must dismiss it from our minds.
Amy Robsart was the only daughter of Sir John Robsart and his wife Elizabeth, nee Scot, and widow of Roger Appleyard, a man of good old Norfolk family. This Roger Appleyard, dying on June 8, 1528, left a son and heir, John, aged less than two years. His widow, Elizabeth, had the life interest in his four manors, and, as we saw, she married Sir John Robsart, and by him became the mother of Amy, who had also a brother on the paternal side, Arthur Robsart, whether legitimately born or not.* Both these brothers play a part in the sequel of the mystery. Lord Robert Dudley, son of John, Duke of Northumberland, and grandson of the Dudley who, with Empson, was so unpopular under Henry VII., was about seventeen or eighteen when he married Amy Robsart--herself perhaps a year older--on June 4, 1550.
At that time his father was Earl of Warwick; the wedding is chronicled in the diary of the child king, Edward VI.**
*Mr. Walter Rye in The Murder of Amy Robsart, Norwich and London, 1885, makes Arthur a bastard. Mr. Pettigrew, in An Inquiry into the Particulars connected with the Death of Amy Robsart (London, 1859), represents Arthur as legitimate.
**Mr. Rye dates the marriage in 1550. Rye, pp. 5, 36, cf. Edward VI.'s Diary, Clarendon Society. Mr. Froude cites the date, June 4, 1549, from Burnet's Collectanea, Froude, vi. p. 422, note 2 (1898), being misled by Old Style; Edward VI. notes the close of 1549 on March 24.
Amy, as the daughter of a rich knight, was (at least if we regard her brother Arthur as a bastard) a considerable heiress. Robert Dudley was a younger son. Probably the match was a family arrangement, but Mr. Froude says 'it was a love match.' His reason for this assertion seems to rest on a misunderstanding. In 1566-67, six years after Amy's death, Cecil drew up a list of the merits and demerits of Dudley (by that time Earl of Leicester) and of the Archduke Charles, as possible husbands of Elizabeth. Among other points is noted by Cecil, 'Likelihood to Love his Wife.' As to the Archduke, Cecil takes a line through his father, who 'hath been blessed with multitude of children.' As to Leicester, Cecil writes 'Nuptiae carnales a laetitia incipiunt, et in luctu terminantur'--
'Weddings of passion begin in joy and end in grief.' This is not a reference, as Mr. Froude thought, to the marriage of Amy and Dudley, it is merely a general maxim, applicable to a marriage between Elizabeth and Leicester. The Queen, according to accounts from all quarters, had a physical passion or caprice for Leicester. The marriage, if it occurred, would be nuptiae carnales, and as such, in Cecil's view, likely to end badly, while the Queen and the Archduke (the alternative suitor) had never seen each other and could not be 'carnally' affectionate.*
*Froude, ut supra, note 3.
We do not know, in short, whether Dudley and Amy were in love with each other or not. Their marriage, Cecil says, was childless.
Concerning the married life of Dudley and Amy very little is known.
