CUMNOR, AND THE TRAGEDY OF AMY ROBSART
One comes more readily to Cumnor by road, but more picturesquely by
river, from Bablockhythe, whence a byway leads steeply up to that famous
place. Cumnor is indeed of such fame that, although one must needs allow
it to be a hill-top—certainly not a valley—village, yet to omit it from
these pages would surely be unpardonable. At Bablockhythe remains the
last of the old river ferries, capable of taking a wheeled conveyance
across; and capable, too, of giving an unwary oarsman or punter a very
nasty check with its rope, permanently stretched athwart the stream.
There is some very noble, still, quiet scenery at, and just above
and below, Bablockhythe, where the water runs with a deep and silent
stealthiness, and the bushy poplars and pendant weeping willows are
reflected with such startling faithfulness that the reflection in the
water beneath looks more solid—much more real—than the foliage above. It
is an illusion of the weirdest kind.
In one or other of the quiet backwaters between this and Oxford there
may be found, by those who care to seek, the curious aquatic plant known
as the “water-soldier.” Botanists of course know it by another, and a
horrific, name: to them it is “_stratiotes aloides_.” But to those few
rustic folk who know at all of its existence—and it is not a common
affair—it is the “water-soldier.” It does not, however, convey any
military impression to the ordinary beholder, being just a plumed bunch
of leaves which in summer-time is found floating on the surface; coming
up from its autumn, winter, and spring home below, in the river-mud, and
growing long suckers, resembling strawberry runners, each of them with
a youthful “soldier”—or recruit, shall we say—at its end. These form
leaves, and each one produces a white flower. When these flowers fade the
“water-soldier” and its outposts of young sink again to the river-bed,
and there rest until summer comes again, when the process is repeated.
But what of Cumnor? It looks boldly down upon the Thames Valley from a
conspicuous wooded ridge. It is a village picturesque alike in itself
and in its romantic history, traditions, and legends. Figure to yourself
a place of scattered rustic cottages, not yet touched to commonplace
by that shrinkage of distances caused by the rapidity and frequency of
modern methods of travel which have brought expansions, rebuilding,
and general modernisings in their train; with an ancient and stately
church rustically overhung with trees quite in the old Birket Foster and
first-half-of-the-nineteenth-century convention. That is Cumnor to-day.
[Illustration: CUMNOR CHURCH.]
In Domesday Book the place appears as “Comenore,” but we hear of
it in Anglo-Saxon times as “Colmonora”; and it is supposed to have
obtained the first part of its name from one St. Colman, or Cuman, a
seventh-century Gaelic saint. The termination, “ora,” doubtless refers to
the shores of the Thames; not, however, nearer than a mile and a half,
and at a considerably lower level.
Cumnor had, apparently, an early church, replaced by the existing fine
Transitional Norman and Early English cruciform building, not yet ravaged
by the “restorer.” Cumnor Place, built about 1350, as a sanatorium for
Abingdon monastery, after the fearful experiences of the “Black Death”
pestilence, stood very closely adjoining the picturesque churchyard, on
its south side, and, after several changes of owners, and at last sunk to
the condition of a roofless ruin, was finally demolished in 1811, and its
stones used in the rebuilding of the church at Wytham.
There is much of interest belonging to Cumnor church, from the battered
old altar-tomb in the churchyard, with barely legible inscription, to
Lieutenant William Godfrey, “who faithfully served King Charles ye I.
from Edgehill Fight to ye end of ye unhappy wars,” down to the curious
epitaph on the exterior east wall, upon “Christian, the wife of Henry
Hutt”:
“Could exemplary Worth, or Virtue Save
One happier Woman had escap’d the Grave.
From every Vice, and female Error free,
She was in fact, what Woman ought to be.
Envy’d no Queens, but pitied all their Cares,
Expecting Crowns less troublesome than theirs.”
This paragon of virtue, worth, and contentment with her station in life
died in 1740, aged 31.
A real startler awaits the stranger who enters unsuspectingly into
Cumnor church. This is none other than a singularly vivid likeness
of Queen Elizabeth, done in stone and standing on a pedestal in the
north aisle. The pale effigy, standing there in the subdued light of
the church, is calculated to stir the nerves of the most stolid. The
statue, a singularly fine one, represents the Queen in the costume of the
period, made familiar in many statues and paintings. She is standing,
and holds the orb and sceptre, symbols of sovereignty. This work of art
has a history of some curious interest. It was originally set up in the
grounds of Cumnor Place by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in honour
of his great patroness. Perhaps it is due to this origin that the statue
represents the Queen so pleasingly. Zucchero, in his painting of her,
and the many other sculptors who plied their chisels on this inspiring
theme, never produced anything to vie with this in combined charm and
dignity. Elsewhere you perceive “great Eliza”—in spite of courtly
efforts to idealise her—rendered not a little uncouthly. Majesty, with
more than a dash of vinegar, and plain evidences of the termagant, are
characteristics of the most of Queen Elizabeth’s portraits in marble,
stone, and paint; but here she is rendered in terms of grace.
[Illustration: STATUE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, CUMNOR CHURCH.]
Upon the decay of Cumnor Place the statue was removed to Dean Court, and
thence to a height above the village of Ferry Hinksey, in 1779. From
that solitude it was taken to Wytham Abbey, and eventually forgotten;
being found, broken to pieces, in an out-house. It was finally removed,
restored, and placed here, in Cumnor Church, in 1888, on a pedestal
detailing these circumstances.
An unusual, and welcome, feature of this church is the series of
engravings, reproductions of seventeenth-century correspondence, and
notes upon the history of the village, for the information of the
cultured visitor. Here you may read something of the grim associations
of the vanished Cumnor Place, and learn, in a chronological table drawn
up by the vicar, to what tune the centuries have jogged along in this
rural parish. That chronology ends with this remarkable thought, this
astonishing intellectual effort: “1893. The Future is not yet!”
It never is.
Brasses, now placed upon the walls, commemorate the virtues and the
benefactions of various persons, including “Katherin, sometyme the
wyffe of Henry Staverton, who dyed a good Christian the xxvth day of
December in ye yere of our lorde God, 1557.” It is perhaps even more
important to have lived a good Christian; but, apart from such counsel of
perfection, the inscription is a significant change from those piteous
pre-Reformation invocations for mercy, and appeals for prayers, that were
the commonplaces of all monumental inscriptions only a few years earlier.
James Welsh, who died in 1612, and Margery, who departed three years
later, each leaving £5 in charity, are celebrated in verse, beginning:
“The body of James Welsh lyeth buryed here,
Who left this mortall life at fourscore yeare.”
In the south transept, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, lie two
Abbots of Abingdon, one of them probably William de Comenore, who died
in 1333. Latest of all the monuments here is that of Sir William Wilson
Hunter, an Indian official, who died in 1900, aged 59.
But the chief interest centres in the fine canopied tomb of grey marble,
on the north side of the chancel, to Anthony Forster and his wife:
Forster, that “Tony Fire-the-Faggot” of Sir Walter Scott’s unhistorical
“historical” romance of _Kenilworth_, in which he is held up to
execration as a villain of the most varied villanies; a time-server and
hypocrite: “Here you, Tony Fire-the-Faggot, papist, puritan, hypocrite,
miser, profligate, devil, compounded of all men’s sins, bow down and
reverence him who has brought into thy house the very mammon thou
worshippest.”
This horrid portraiture of the man is an overdrawn picture. No need to
paint the devil blacker than he really is; and although the evidence
available tends to attach the stigma of “murderer” to him, it does not
by any means follow that he practised all the meannesses and petty vices
with which he is charged.
On the other hand, those whitewashers of smirched reputations who have
long been so actively and unprofitably employed in cleansing historical
characters under a cloud, have overstepped the mark in loudly declaring
their belief in his innocence of all charges brought against him.
The name of Anthony Forster, in fiction and in fact, is closely connected
with the famous tragedy of Cumnor Place and Amy Robsart, which still,
after three hundred and fifty years, exercises the minds of historians,
and arouses controversies; and seems likely ever to do so.
We have already referred to the house as a grange belonging to the Abbots
of Abingdon. It came into the private possession of Thomas Pentecost,
_alias_ Rowland, the last of them, by deed of gift from Henry the
Eighth in 1538. The Abbot, in consideration of his having peaceably and
willingly surrendered the Abbey and all its belongings to the King, was
given Cumnor Place for his life; but as he died the following year, he
derived little benefit from the compact. Seven years later, October
8th, 1546, the King conferred Cumnor Place, with the manor of Cumnor,
and greater tithes, upon his physician, George Owen, in consideration
of some lands at Oxford, including the site of Rewley Abbey; and a cash
payment of £310 12_s._ 9_d._ William Owen, son of this George, married in
1558 one of the Fettiplace family, his father then settling upon him the
Cumnor property. William Owen, however, elected to live elsewhere, and
let Cumnor Place to Anthony Forster.
Who, then, was this Anthony Forster? He was the friend and factor of a
very great man in those times: a man by no means great from force of
character, but from sheer opportunism, good luck, and the favour of a
comely person: none other, indeed, than Lord Robert Dudley, later to
become, by the ennobling hands of Queen Elizabeth, Earl of Leicester.
Around the reputation of Dudley there lurk too many sinister stories for
us to lightly dismiss any charge brought against him or his agents. He
was suspected of having put many persons away by the means of poison: a
method very fashionable in that age of the Renaissance and widespread
neo-pagan culture; and that he was an ambitious man to whose ambition no
bounds of prudence or conscience were set is generally acknowledged by
historians. He was by no means alone in this, but was typical of his age,
an age great in refinements, culture, and wealth; great in arms, and no
less notable in its tortuous policies, national and domestic; and in its
lies and manifold duplicities.
[Illustration: TOMB OF ANTHONY FORSTER, CUMNOR.]
The early prospects of Lord Robert Dudley, as third son of the Duke of
Northumberland, were perhaps not particularly brilliant, and as a young
man of eighteen or nineteen years he had in 1550 married Amy, daughter
and heiress of Sir John Robsart, of Stanfield Hall, Norfolk. That was in
the reign of Edward the Sixth, the young King himself being present at
the wedding. There is no reason against the assumption that this was a
love-match; but there is every reason to assume that in after-years, when
his ambitions were kindled, it was bitterly regretted by Dudley, who,
in the changes that had befallen with the successive deaths of Edward
the Sixth and of Queen Mary, and with the accession of Queen Elizabeth,
had become not only a courtier, but a royal favourite, looked upon with
amorous glances by that great Queen herself, whose subtle character has
defied the analysis of historians. Queen Elizabeth’s lovers, looked upon
with favour, were not few, but Dudley was pre-eminent among them, and
presumed, and was allowed to presume, more than any others. The Queen
continually enriched him with grants of land and with the monopoly of the
export of wool and other commodities, until he became extraordinarily
wealthy, and able to maintain a magnificence remarkable even for that
period. The loves of Dudley and his Queen afforded gossip for not only
the Court, but for the nation at large, and a forthcoming marriage was
looked upon as so sure a thing that the Spanish Ambassador found it
possible to write home to his sovereign, referring to Dudley as “the King
that is to be.” And all this while, we are to bear in mind, Dudley’s
wife, Lady Robert Dudley (the “Amy Robsart” of the looming tragedy) was
alive! What was that meek woman doing while such well-founded gossip was
heard in every corner of the land? She was travelling and visiting in
many different parts of the country, and doing so in considerable state.
Among the relics of her to be seen, framed on the walls of Cumnor Church,
is the facsimile of a letter from her to her husband, dated 1557,
displaying nothing but perfect confidence and trust, which she might
do, well enough, and yet find her trust misplaced. Or, possibly, those
letters were cast in a conventional form, and hid a breaking heart.
But, although Dudley and his wife had for some years lived apart, and
although he was notoriously a false and faithless man, whose varied
gallantries were the talk of the time, there was not yet, in 1557, any
question of getting rid of her, and no great and dazzling ambition made
him or his agents contemplate a crime. Queen Mary yet ruled and it
was not until the following year that she died, and was succeeded by
her sister, Elizabeth. No sooner, however, did Elizabeth become Queen
than Dudley appeared as the most favoured courtier. That he was to
become King-Consort none doubted, and it is singular to consider that,
in all the records of that time, the fact of his being already married
appeared to offer no bar to that contemplated union. Continuously, from
the Queen’s accession, these circumstantial rumours spread, and it
is beyond the bounds of credibility that Lady Dudley should not have
been made perfectly well acquainted with them in the course of the two
years in which they were current. Lady Dudley—why historians and others
continue to write of her after her marriage by her maiden name of Amy
Robsart is not clear—had been accustomed to visit a Mr. Hyde, a kinsman
of Dudley’s, at Denchworth, near Abingdon; and it does not, therefore,
appear extraordinary that when Anthony Forster, her husband’s steward,
took Cumnor Place on lease, in 1559, she should elect to visit there: the
more especially so if there were any truth in the rumour that she was ill
at that time, for Cumnor, as we have already seen, was supposed to be a
particularly healthy spot.
But it is by no means so sure that she was at all unwell. It is one of
the most damning evidences of foul play in this famous case that rumours
were current for some time before the murder, or the accident, whichever
it was, to the effect that she was suffering from cancer and was sure to
die shortly, and that this gossip was contradicted at the time. Among
those who gave the lie to it was the Spanish Ambassador, writing to the
Duchess of Parma. “They,” he said, “are thinking of destroying Lord
Robert’s wife.” Who “they” were we can only conjecture. “They have given
out that she is ill; but she is not ill at all; she is very well, and is
taking care not to be poisoned.”
Is it at all reconcilable with the theory of accident that a person whose
continued existence stood in the way of so ambitious a man as Dudley, and
of whom it was so freely said that she was dying, when she was known to
be well, and whose life was said to be in danger from violence or poison,
should in fact meet her end so immediately and mysteriously? No modern
coroner’s jury would return a verdict of accidental death under such
suspicious circumstances.
What are the known facts? Lady Dudley was residing at Cumnor Place in
September 1560, and the extraordinary cloud of suggestions, innuendoes,
and suspicions current everywhere must have reached her ears. She must
have been superhuman not to have been miserably affected by these doings
of her husband, who, at the time when the tragedy happened, was with the
Queen at Windsor; and she was, as we have seen suggested, probably in
fear of being secretly poisoned. On Sunday, September 8th, the day of
Abingdon Fair, her servants all went to Abingdon, by her express desire,
according to one account. But, at any rate, they did all go, leaving
in the house alone, it would seem, Lady Dudley, Mrs. Hyde, and Mrs.
Odingsell, Mr. Hyde’s sister. The three ladies were that evening playing
a game popular at that time, known as “tables,” when suddenly Lady Dudley
arose and left the room, being almost immediately afterwards found dead
at the foot of a staircase by the servants returning from the Fair;
having apparently fallen and broken her neck.
Where was Forster at this time? The records are silent, and do not
tell of any man about the place. The views of Dudley himself and his
dependents were that the affair was purely an accident. Alternatively, it
was suggested by some that it was suicide.
But Dudley’s conduct on receipt of vague news of tragedy at Cumnor was
suspicious. It would be supposed that the first act of an innocent man
would be to hurry off from Windsor to the scene of this happening, to
learn at first hand what had befallen his wife; but Dudley was content to
send Sir Thomas Blount, a confidential gentleman in his train, to ride
over and make inquiries. On the way Blount met a messenger from Cumnor,
proceeding to Windsor with the detailed news. Next day, at Cumnor,
Blount, examining the lady’s maid, extracted from her the admission
that Lady Dudley had been frequently heard to pray for delivery from
desperation. He eagerly seized upon this as indicating suicide, but the
maid immediately checked him with, “No, good Mr. Blount, do not so judge
of my words. If you should so gather, I should be sorry I said so much.”
What “desperation” might mean is uncertain: it is a strange choice of a
word; but it has been thought that the unhappy woman, knowing she was in
danger of being murdered, thus prayed to be protected from the desperate
resolves against her life.
Blount, writing to Dudley, acquainted him with the feelings of the
neighbourhood about the affair, by which it is sufficiently evident that
this happening was already regarded as a serious thing for Dudley. To
this Dudley replied, directing that the strictest inquiry should be made;
that an inquest should be held immediately, and “the discreetest and most
substantial men should be chosen for the jury.” But surely, the question
of an inquest and the choice of a jury were the affairs of others than
himself, and an inquest would have been held in any case, whether he
liked it or not; and so his directions to that end are mere unmeaning
words. He further begged of Blount “as he loved him and desired his
quietness, to use all devices and means for learning of the truth without
respect to living persons”; and especially desired him not to dissemble,
but to tell him, faithfully, “whether it happened by evil chance, or
villainy.”
He was evidently seriously alarmed for himself; but we look in vain
for any expression of sorrow at his wife’s lamentable end. All he was
concerned with was “the talk which the wicked world will use”: talk for
which his own conduct for long past had given the fullest occasion.
Blount had halted at Abingdon on his journey, and only reached Cumnor
on September 11th. Already, as might have been supposed, the coroner
had summoned his jury. They were, in Blount’s opinion, “as wise and able
men, being but countrymen, as ever I saw.” They deliberated long and
searchingly, and Blount wrote again, on the 13th, that they were very
active; “whether equity is the cause, or malice [_i.e._ suspicion, let
us note] against Forster, I know not.” He further said that they were
very secret, but he could not hear that they had found any presumption
of evil. He thought, however, they would be sorry (these wise and able
men—for countrymen) if they failed. Obviously Blount had been trying to
pump the jury as to their finding. Dudley himself, writing to Blount,
said the foreman of the jury had communicated with him to the effect that
although the inquiry was not yet concluded, for anything they could learn
to the contrary, it was a very misfortune. So Dudley himself had been
trafficking with the jury, a thing that would in modern times afford very
strong presumption of guilt.
If we put faith in Dudley’s own protestations, we must, however, find him
innocent. Yet is it possible to have this faith?
After hearing to that effect from the foreman he wrote to Blount, saying
that after the jury had rendered their verdict, he could only wish there
would be a second inquiry. He wished Arthur Robsart, the dead woman’s
brother, and Appleyard, her half-brother, to be present. Never at any
time, in all these scenes, was Dudley himself present. It is uncertain
whether a second jury was summoned, or whether the sittings of the first
were extended; but it is certain that an inquiry was still in progress
on September 27th, and that this resulted at last in a verdict of
accidental death.
But the affair cast an indelible stain upon Dudley’s reputation, and
although the question of his marrying the Queen was not dropped, and was
ardently debated from time to time, his wife, being dead, proved a more
insuperable obstacle than she had been while living. The dark suspicions,
if not of his actual complicity, at least of Forster’s having contrived
the tragedy in his master’s supposed interest, would not be allayed.
Everywhere mutterings were heard, and the Queen did not dare marry one
under such a cloud.
Lady Dudley was buried in great state in the church of St. Mary, Oxford,
and even there the grisly accusation of assassination came up, in Dr.
Babington, the preacher, chaplain to Dudley himself, thrice making a
slip of the tongue; desiring the prayers of the congregation for the
lady “so pitifully murdered,” instead of “slain.” This incident serves
sufficiently to show what was in men’s minds.
In 1566, seven years after the tragedy, Appleyard was brought before the
Privy Council for having declared that he had not been satisfied with
the jury’s verdict, but for Dudley’s sake had covered the murder of his
sister. He was intimidated, and fully apologised, for Dudley had become
all-powerful; and he was made to explain his words as “malice,” and to
beg pardon for them; but an apology extracted by such means does not
carry great weight. Years afterwards Cecil could find it possible to say
that Dudley was “infamed by his wife’s death,” and so infamed he still
remains, whether we find it by direct participation or by the deeds of
his too-subservient agents.
We must here come to the conclusion that Dudley was not himself guilty;
but that Forster certainly was. That conclusion can, indeed, hardly
be avoided. The country side thought so, and it is not sufficient for
apologists to point to his gentility and his culture, and to exclaim that
such an one would be incapable of such a crime. Whenever did honourable
descent or cultivated tastes prevent a man from bearing a villain’s part?
The view that because Forster was a gentleman, and interested in the
arts, he was incapable of crime is the conventional view of people who
are not satisfied that a villain is a villain unless he wears a scowl and
other distinguishing signs.
It has been remarked that Forster would not in after-years have been
chosen Member of Parliament for Abingdon and would not have been given
University and other honours if he had been what suspicion made him. But
would he not? Dudley could have procured all these things, and more, for
his faithful man, even as he was in a position to secure most things for
himself.
The year following the tragedy of Cumnor Place, Forster purchased the
freehold of it; Owen probably being unwilling any longer to hold a house
with such dark associations. And here he lived the remainder of his life,
dying in 1572. In those twelve years he almost wholly rebuilt Cumnor
Place, which he left by will to Dudley, who had, in the meanwhile,
become Earl of Leicester. If the Earl accepted this gift, he was to pay
£1,200 to Forster’s heirs.
The Earl did accept, but sold the property soon after. It is not to
be supposed that he would care to be any longer associated with the
ill-omened place. By this sale Cumnor passed to the Norris family,
ancestors of the Earls of Abingdon, who still own it.
The entry of Forster’s funeral at Cumnor is to the effect that “A. F.,
gentleman,” was buried on November 10th; and it has been thought curious
that the word “gentleman” takes the place of some other word first
written and then erased: whether the first was uncomplimentary, or merely
the Latin word _miles_, as sometimes suggested, is now of course beyond
the wit of man to discover.
Those who visit Cumnor with this pitiful story in their recollection, and
are disappointed at finding Cumnor Place no longer in existence, will
find in the Purbeck marble monument to Forster an interesting relic,
bringing them into touch with these long-vanished personages; but they
will find no support of the charges brought against him. Nor could such
support be in any way expected; but in the long Latin eulogistic verses
engraved in brass under the brass effigies of himself, his wife, and
their three children, we find him credited with an astonishing variety
of virtues and accomplishments. He was, it seems, distinguished for
his skill in music, languages, and horticulture, and was charitable,
benevolent, and full of religious faith. The brass portraiture, too
(which, after all, is not necessarily a portrait), represents him as a
man of singularly open countenance.
Apart from the personal association, the tomb is interesting as combining
late Gothic and Renaissance decoration.
It has already been said that Cumnor Place is a mansion of the past, and
that it was finally demolished by a former Earl of Abingdon in 1811. An
amusing story is told, to the effect that when the popularity of Scott’s
_Kenilworth_ aroused a keen interest in Cumnor, the Earl undertook to
drive some guests over to see the house, forgetting that he had, several
years earlier, given orders for it to be demolished. The disappointment
of himself and his friends on arriving at Cumnor was very keen.
Cumnor Place was never more than a modest country residence, and bore
no resemblance to Scott’s description; nor had it the imposing towers
described in Mickle’s ballad, which concludes with—
“Full many a traveller oft hath sigh’d,
And pensive wept the Countess’ fall,
As wand’ring onward they’ve espied
The haunted towers of Cumnor Hall.”
It stood to the south of the church, and was in its last years a ruinous
malthouse, finally converted into labourers’ cottages. The stones of it
were removed chiefly for the building of Wytham church; and there, at the
entrance to the churchyard, an archway remains to this day, bearing the
inscription by the pietistic Forster: “Verbum Domini Janva vitae.”
It only remains to once more remark that Scott’s novel, _Kenilworth_,
enshrining many of these things, is full of the grossest perversions of
known facts, and not for one moment to be relied upon, historically.
Raleigh figures in it, and in its pages is knighted by Queen Elizabeth,
in 1560; but he was only eight years of age at the time. Lady Dudley is
represented as the Countess of Leicester; but she met her tragic end
three years before Dudley was created Earl. She is also made to figure in
the grand festivities at Kenilworth, although she had been dead fifteen
years when these great doings took place. There was no “Black Bear” inn
at Cumnor at that time; nor could there reasonably have been such a sign,
for Dudley, whose device it was, did not then own property at Cumnor,
and was not directly associated with the village. The Richard Varney,
co-villain with Forster in the story, was derived by Scott from Ashmole’s
gossipy _Antiquities of Berkshire_, and is not to be readily identified.