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.
When he was a prisoner in the Tower under Mary Tudor, Amy was allowed to
visit him. She lost her father, Sir John, in 1553. Two undated letters
of Amy’s exist: one shows that she was trusted by her husband in the
management of his affairs (1556-57) and that both he and she were
anxious to act honourably by some poor persons to whom money was due.*
The other is to a woman’s tailor, and, though merely concerned with
gowns and collars, is written in a style of courteous friendliness.**
Both letters, in orthography and sentiment, do credit to Amy’s education
and character. There is certainly nothing vague or morbid or indicative
of an unbalanced mind in these poor epistles.
*Pettigrew, 14, note 1.
**Jackson, Nineteenth Century, March 1882, A Longleat MS.
When Elizabeth came to the throne (1558) she at once made Dudley Master
of the Horse, a Privy Councillor, and a Knight of the Garter. His office
necessarily caused him to be in constant attendance on the royal person,
and the Knighthood of the Garter proves that he stood in the highest
degree of favour.
For whatever reason, whether from distaste for Court life, or because
of the confessed jealousy with which the Queen regarded the wives of her
favourites--of all men, indeed--Amy did not come to Court. About 1558-59
she lived mainly at the country house of the Hydes of Detchworth, not
far from Abingdon. Dudley seems to have paid several visits to the
Hydes, his connections; this is proved by entries in his household books
of sums of money for card-playing there.* It is also certain that Amy
at that date, down to the end of 1559, travelled about freely, to London
and many other places; that she had twelve horses at her service; and
that, as late as March 1560 (when resident with Dudley’s comptroller,
Forster, at Cumnor Place) she was buying a velvet hat and shoes. In
brief, though she can have seen but little of her husband, she was
obviously at liberty, lived till 1560 among honourable people, her
connections, and, in things material, wanted for nothing.** Yet Amy
cannot but have been miserable by 1560. The extraordinary favour in
which Elizabeth held her lord caused the lewdest stories to spread among
all classes, from the circle of the Court to the tattle of country folk
in Essex and Devonshire.***
*Jackson, ut supra.
**For details see Canon Jackson’s ‘Amy Robsart,’ Nineteenth Century,
vol. xi. Canon Jackson used documents in the possession of the Marquis
of Bath, at Longleat.
***Cal. Dom. Eliz. p. 157, August 13, 1560; also
Hatfield Calendar.
News of this kind is certain to reach the persons concerned.
Our chief authority for the gossip about Elizabeth and Dudley is to
be found in the despatches of the Spanish ambassadors to their master,
Philip of Spain. The fortunes of Western Europe, perhaps of the Church
herself, hung on Elizabeth’s marriage and on the succession to the
English throne. The ambassadors, whatever their other failings, were
undoubtedly loyal to Philip and to the Church, and they were not men to
be deceived by the gossip of every gobemouche. The command of money gave
them good intelligence, they were fair judges of evidence, and what they
told Philip was what they regarded as well worthy of his attention. They
certainly were not deceiving Philip.
The evidence of the Spanish ambassadors, as men concerned to find out
the truth and to tell it, is therefore of the highest importance. They
are not writing mere amusing chroniques scandaleuses of the court to
which they are accredited, as ambassadors have often done, and what they
hear is sometimes so bad that they decline to put it on paper. They are
serious and wary men of the world. Unhappily their valuable despatches,
now in ‘the Castilian village of Simancas,’ reach English inquirers in
the most mangled and garbled condition. Major Martin Hume, editor of
the Spanish Calendar (1892), tells us in the Introduction to the first
volume of this official publication how the land lies. Not to speak of
the partial English translation (1865) of Gonzales’s partial summary of
the despatches (Madrid, 1832) we have the fruits of the labours of Mr.
Froude. He visited Simancas, consulted the original documents, and
‘had a large number of copies and extracts made.’ These extracts
and transcripts Mr. Froude deposited in the British Museum. These
transcripts, compared with the portions translated in Mr. Froude’s great
book, enable us to understand the causes of certain confusions in Amy
Robsart’s mystery. Mr. Froude practically aimed at giving the gist, as
he conceived it, of the original papers of the period, which he rendered
with freedom, and in his captivating style--foreign to the perplexed
prolixity of the actual writers. But, in this process, points of
importance might be omitted; and, in certain cases, words from letters
of other dates appear to have been inserted by Mr. Froude, to clear up
the situation. The result is not always satisfactory.
Next, from 1886 onwards, the Spanish Government published five volumes
of the correspondence of Philip with his ambassadors at the English
Court.* These papers Major Hume was to condense and edit for our
official publication, the Spanish State Papers, in the series of the
Master of the Rolls. But Major Hume found the papers in the Spanish
official publication in a deplorably unedited state. Copyists and
compositors ‘seem to have had a free hand.’ Major Hume therefore
compared the printed Spanish texts, where he could, with Mr. Froude’s
transcripts of the same documents in the Museum, and the most important
letter in this dark affair, in our Spanish Calendar, follows incorrectly
Mr. Froude’s transcript, NOT the original document, which is not printed
in ‘Documentos Ineditos.’** Thus, Major Hume’s translation differs from
Mr. Froude’s translation, which, again, differs from Mr. Gairdner’s
translation of the original text as published by the Baron Kervyn de
Lettenhove.***
*Documentos Ineditos para la Historia de Espana. Ginesta, Madrid,
1886.
**Spanish Calendar, vol. i. p. iv. Mr. Gairdner says, ‘Major Hume
in preparing his first volume, he informs me, took transcripts from
Simancas of all the direct English correspondence,’ but for letters
between England and Flanders used Mr. Froude’s transcripts. Gairdner,
English Historical Review, January 1898, note 1.
***Relations Politiquesdes Pays-Bas et de l’Anqleterre sous le Regne
de Philippe II. vol. ii. pp. 529-533. Brussels, 1883.
The amateur of truth, being now fully apprised of the ‘hazards’ which
add variety to the links of history, turns to the Spanish Calendar for
the reports of the ambassadors. He reaches April 18, 1559, when de Feria
says: ‘Lord Robert has come so much into favour that he does whatever he
likes with affairs, and it is even said that her Majesty visits him in
his chamber day and night. People talk of this so freely that they go so
far as to say that his wife has a malady in one of her breasts and the
Queen is only waiting for her to die to marry Lord Robert.’
De Feria therefore suggests that Philip might come to terms with Lord
Robert. Again, on April 29, 1559, de Feria writes (according to the
Calendar): ‘Sometimes she’ (Elizabeth) ‘appears to want to marry him’
(Archduke Ferdinand) ‘and speaks like a woman who will only accept a
great prince, and then they say she is in love with Lord Robert, and
never lets him leave her.’ De Feria has reason to believe that ‘she will
never bear children’ *
Sp. Cal. i. pp. 57, 58, 63; Doc. Ineditos, 87, 171, 180.
Mr. Froude combines these two passages in one quotation, putting
the second part (of April 29) first, thus: ‘They tell me that she is
enamoured of my Lord Robert Dudley, and will never let him leave her
side. HE OFFERS ME HIS SERVICES IN BEHALF OF THE ARCH DUKE, BUT I DOUBT
WHETHER IT WILL BE WELL TO USE THEM. He is in such favour that people
say she visits him in his chamber day and night. Nay, it is even
reported that his wife has a cancer on her breast, and that the Queen
waits only till she die to marry him.’*
*Froude, vi. p. 199. De Feria to Philip, April 28 and April 29.
MS. Simancas, cf. Documentos Ineditos, pp. 87, 171, 180, ut supra.
The sentence printed in capitals cannot be found by me in either of de
Feria’s letters quoted by Mr. Froude, but the sense of it occurs in a
letter written at another date. Mr. Froude has placed, in his quotation,
first a sentence of the letter of April 29, then a sentence not in
either letter (as far as the Calendar and printed Spanish documents
show), then sentences from the letter of April 18. He goes on to remark
that the marriage of Amy and Dudley ‘was a love match of a doubtful
kind,’ about which we have, as has been shown, no information whatever.
Such are the pitfalls which strew the path of inquiry.
One thing is plain, a year and a half before her death Amy was regarded
as a person who would be ‘better dead,’ and Elizabeth was said to love
Dudley, on whom she showered honours and gifts.
De Feria, in the summer of 1559, was succeeded as ambassador by de
Quadra, bishop of Aquila. Dudley and his sister, Lady Sidney (mother of
Sir Philip Sidney), now seemed to favour Spanish projects, but (November
13) de Quadra writes: ‘I heard from a certain person who is accustomed
to give veracious news that Lord Robert has sent to poison his wife.
Certainly all the Queen has done with us and with the Swede, and will
do with the rest in the matter of her marriage, is only keeping Lord
Robert’s enemies and the country engaged with words until this wicked
deed of killing his wife is consummated.’ The enemies of Dudley included
the Duke of Norfolk, and most of the nation. There was talk of a plot to
destroy both Dudley and the Queen. ‘The Duke and the rest of them cannot
put up with Lord Robert’s being king.’* Further, and later, on January
16, 1560 (Amy being now probably at Cumnor), de Quadra writes to de
Feria that Baron Preyner, a German diplomatist, will tell him what
he knows of the poison for the wife of Milort Robert (Dudley), ‘an
important story and necessary to be known.’** Thus between November 1559
and January 1560, the talk is that Amy shall be poisoned, and this tale
runs round the Courts of Europe.
*Sp. Cal. i. pp. 112-114.
**Relations Politiques, Lettenhove, ii. p. 187.
Mr. Froude gives, what the Calendar does not, a letter of de Quadra to
de Feria and the Bishop of Arras (January 15, 1560). ‘In Lord Robert it
is easy to recognise the king that is to be... There is not a man who
does not cry out on him and her with indignation.’* ‘She will marry none
but the favoured Robert.’** On March 7, 1560, de Quadra tells de Feria:
‘Not a man in this country but cries out that this fellow’ (Dudley) ‘is
ruining the country with his vanity.’*** ‘Is ruining the country AND THE
QUEEN,’ is in the original Spanish.
*Froude, vi. p. 311.
**Relations Politiques, ii. 87, 183, 184.
***Sp. Cal. i. p. 133. Major Hume translates the text of Mr. Froude’s
transcript in the British Museum. It is a mere fragment; in 1883 the
whole despatch was printed by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove.
On March 28 (Calendar), on March 27 (Froude) de Quadra wrote to
Philip--(Calendar)-- ‘I have understood Lord Robert told somebody, who
has not kept silence, that if he live another year he will be in a very
different position from now. He is laying in a good stock of arms, and
is assuming every day a more masterful part in affairs. They say that
he thinks of divorcing his wife.’* So the Calendar. Mr. Froude condenses
his Spanish author THUS:** ‘Lord Robert says that if he lives a year he
will be in another position from that which he at present holds. Every
day he presumes more and more, and it is now said that he means to
divorce his wife.’ From the evidence of the Spanish ambassadors, it is
clear that an insurance office would only have accepted Amy Robsart’s
life, however excellent her health, at a very high premium. Her
situation was much like that of Darnley in the winter of 1566-67, when
‘every one in Scotland who had the smallest judgment’ knew that ‘he
could not long continue,’ that his doom was dight.
*Sp. Cal. i, p. 141.
**Froude, vi. p. 340.
Meanwhile, through the winter, spring, and early summer of 1560,
diplomatists and politicians were more concerned about the war of
the Congregation against Mary of Guise in Scotland, with the English
alliance with the Scottish Protestant rebels, with the siege of Leith,
and with Cecil’s negotiations resulting in the treaty of Edinburgh, than
even with Elizabeth’s marriage, and her dalliance with Dudley.
All this time, Amy was living at Cumnor Place, about three miles from
Oxford. Precisely at what date she took up her abode there is not
certain, probably about the time when de Quadra heard that Lord Robert
had sent to poison his wife, the November of 1559. Others say in March
1560. The house was rented from a Dr. Owen by Anthony Forster. This
gentleman was of an old and good family, well known since the time of
Edward I.; his wife also, Ann Williams, daughter of Reginald Williams
of Burghfield, Berks, was a lady of excellent social position. Forster
himself had estates in several counties, and obtained many grants
of land after Amy’s death. He died in 1572, leaving a very equitable
distribution of his properties; Cumnor he bought from Dr. Owen soon
after the death of Amy. In his bequests he did not forget the Master,
Fellows, and Scholars of Balliol.* There is nothing suspicious about
Forster, who was treasurer or comptroller of Leicester’s household
expenses: in writing, Leicester signs himself ‘your loving Master.’ At
Cumnor Place also lived Mrs. Owen, wife of Dr. Owen, the owner of the
house, and physician to the Queen. There was, too, a Mrs. Oddingsell, of
respectable family, one of the Hydes of Denchworth. That any or all
of these persons should be concerned in abetting or shielding a murder
seems in the highest degree improbable. Cumnor Place was in no respect
like Kirk o’ Field, as regards the character of its inhabitants. It
was, however, a lonely house, and, on the day of Amy’s death, her own
servants (apparently by her own desire) were absent. And Amy, like
Darnley, was found dead on a Sunday night, no man to this day knowing
the actual cause of death in either case.
*Pettigrew, pp. 19-22.
Here it may be well to consider the version of the tragedy as printed,
twenty-four years after the event, by the deadly enemies of Lord Robert,
now Earl of Leicester. This is the version which, many years later,
aided by local tradition, was used in Ashmole’s account in his ‘History
and Antiquities of Berkshire,’ while Sir Walter employed Ashmole’s
account as the basis of his romance. We find the PRINTED copy of
the book usually known as ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ dated 1584, but
probably it had been earlier circulated in manuscript copies, of
which several exist.* It purports to be a letter written by a M.A. of
Cambridge to a friend in London, containing ‘some talk passed of late’
about Leicester. Doubtless it DOES represent the talk against Leicester
that had been passing, at home and abroad, ever since 1560. Such talk,
after twenty years, could not be accurate. The point of the writer is
that Leicester is lucky in the deaths of inconvenient people. Thus,
when he was ‘in full hope to marry’ the Queen ‘he did but send his wife
aside, to the house of his servant, Forster of Cumnor, by Oxford, where
shortly after she had the chance to fall from a pair of stairs, and so
to break her neck, but yet without hurting of her hood, that stood upon
her head.’ Except for the hood, of which we know nothing, all this is
correct. In the next sentence we read: ‘But Sir Richard Verney, who, by
commandment, remained with her that day alone, with one man only, and
had sent away perforce all her servants from her, to a market two
miles off, he, I say, with his man, can tell how she died.’ The man was
privily killed in prison, where he lay for another offence, because he
‘offered to publish’ the fact; and Verney, about the same time, died
in London, after raving about devils ‘to a gentleman of worship of mine
acquaintance.’ ‘The wife also of Bald Buttler, kinsman to my Lord, gave
out the whole fact a little before her death.’
*Pettigrew, pp. 9, 10.
Verney, and the man, are never mentioned in contemporary papers: two
Mrs. Buttelars were mourners at Amy’s funeral. Verney is obscure: Canon
Jackson argues that he was of the Warwickshire Verneys; Mr. Rye holds
that he was of the Bucks and Herts Verneys, connections of the Dudleys.
But, finding a Richard Verney made sheriff of Warwick and Leicester in
1562, Mr. Rye absurdly says: ‘The former county being that in which the
murder was committed,’ he ‘was placed in the position to suppress
any unpleasant rumours.’* Amy died, of course, in Berkshire, not in
Warwickshire. A Richard Verney, not the Warwickshire Sir Richard,
according to Mr. Rye, on July 30, 1572, became Marshal of the
Marshalsea, ‘when John Appleyard, Amy’s half-brother, was turned out.’
This Verney died before November 15, 1575.
*Rye, p. 55.
Of Appleyard we shall hear plenty: Leicester had favoured him (he was
Leicester’s brother-in-law), and he turned against his patron on the
matter of Amy’s death. Probably the Richard Verney who died in 1575
was the Verney aimed at in ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth.’ He was a kind
of retainer of Dudley, otherwise he would not have been selected by the
author of the libel. But we know nothing to prove that he was at Cumnor
on September 8, 1560.
The most remarkable point in the libel avers that Leicester’s first
idea was to poison Amy. This had been asserted by de Quadra as early as
November 1559. The libel avers that the conspirators, ‘seeing the good
lady sad and heavy,’ asked Dr. Bayly, of Oxford, for a potion, which
they ‘would fetch from Oxford upon his prescription, meaning to have
added also somewhat of their own for her comfort.’ Bayly was a Fellow
of New College; in 1558 was one of the proctors; in 1561 was Queen’s
Professor of Physic, and was a highly reputable man.* He died in 1592.
Thus Bayly, if he chose, could have contradicted the printed libel of
1584, which avers that he refused to prescribe for Amy, ‘misdoubting
(as he after reported) lest if they poisoned her under the name of his
potion, he might after have been hanged for a cover of their sin.’
*Pettigrew, p. 17, citing Wood’s Ath. Ox. i. P. 586 (Bliss).
Nothing was more natural and innocent than that Bayly should be asked to
prescribe, if Amy was ill. Nothing could be more audacious than to print
this tale about him, while he lived to contradict it. But it seems
far from improbable that Bayly did, for the reasons given, refuse to
prescribe for Amy, seeing (as the libel says) ‘the small need which the
good lady had of physic.’
FOR THIS VERY REFUSAL BY BAYLY WOULD ACCOUNT FOR THE INFORMATION GIVEN
BY CECIL TO DE QUADRA ON THE DAY OF AMY’S DEATH. AND IT IS NOT EASY TO
EXPLAIN THE SOURCE OF CECIL’S INFORMATION IN ANY OTHER WAY.
We now reach the crucial point at which historical blunders and
confusions have been most maddeningly prevalent. Mr. Pettigrew, writing
in 1859, had no knowledge of Cecil’s corroboration of the story of the
libel--Amy in no need of physic, and the intention to poison her. Mr.
Froude, however, published in his History a somewhat erroneous version
of de Quadra’s letter about Cecil’s revelations, and Mr. Rye (1885)
accused Dudley on the basis of Mr. Froude’s version.*
*Froude, vi. pp. 417-421.
Mr. Froude, then, presents a letter from de Quadra of September 11,
1560, to the Duchess of Parma, governing the Netherlands from Brussels,
‘this being the nearest point from which he could receive instructions.
The despatches were then forwarded to Philip.’ He dates de Quadra’s
letter at the top, ‘London, September 1l.’ The real date is, at the foot
of the last page, ‘Windsor, September 11.’ Omitting the first portion
of the letter, except the first sentence (which says that fresh and
important events have occurred since the writer’s last letter), Mr.
Froude makes de Quadra write: ‘On the third of THIS month’ (September
1560) ‘the Queen spoke to me about her marriage with the Arch Duke. She
said she had made up her mind to marry and that the Arch Duke was to
be the man. She has just now told me drily that she does not intend to
marry, and that it cannot be.’
When, we ask, is ‘just now’?
Mr. Froude goes on: ‘After my conversation with the Queen, I met the
Secretary, Cecil, whom I knew to be in disgrace. Lord Robert, I was
aware, was endeavouring to deprive him of his place.’ Briefly, Cecil
said to de Quadra that he thought of retiring, that ruin was coming on
the Queen ‘through her intimacy with Lord Robert. The Lord Robert had
made himself master of the business of the State and of the person of
the Queen, to the extreme injury of the realm, with the intention of
marrying her, and she herself was shutting herself up in the palace to
the peril of her health and life.’ Cecil begged de Quadra to remonstrate
with the Queen. After speaking of her finances, Cecil went on, in Mr.
Froude’s version: ‘Last of all he said they were thinking of destroying
Lord Robert’s wife. THEY HAD GIVEN OUT THAT SHE WAS ILL; BUT SHE WAS
NOT ILL AT ALL; SHE WAS VERY WELL, AND WAS TAKING CARE NOT TO BE
POISONED....’ [The capitals are mine.]
This is the very state of things reported in ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth.’
Cecil may easily have known the circumstances, if, as stated in that
libel, Bayly had been consulted, had found Amy ‘in no need of physic,’
and had refused to prescribe. Bayly would blab, and Cecil had spies
everywhere to carry the report: the extent and precision of his secret
service are well known. Cecil added some pious remarks. God would not
permit the crime. Mr. Froude goes on: ‘The day after this conversation,
the Queen on her return from hunting told me that Lord Robert’s wife was
dead or nearly so, and begged me to say nothing about it.’ After some
political speculations, the letter, in Froude, ends, ‘Since this was
written the death of Lord Robert’s wife has been given out publicly. The
Queen said in Italian “Que si ha rotto il collo” [“that she has broken
her neck”]. It appears that she fell down a staircase.’
Mr. Froude, after disposing of the ideas that de Quadra lied, or that
Cecil spoke ‘in mere practice or diplomatic trickery,’ remarks: ‘Certain
it is that on September 8, at the time, or within a day of the time,
when Cecil told the Spanish ambassador that there was a plot to
kill her, Anne Dudley [Anne or Amy] was found dead at the foot of a
staircase.’ This must be true, for the Queen told de Quadra, PRIVATELY,
‘on the day after’ Cecil unbosomed himself. The fatal news, we know,
reached Windsor on September 9, we do not know at what hour. The Queen
told de Quadra probably on September 9. If the news arrived late (and
Dudley’s first letter on the subject is ‘IN THE EVENING’ of September
9), Elizabeth may have told de Quadra on the morning of September 10.
The inferences were drawn (by myself and others) that Elizabeth had told
de Quadra, on September 3, ‘the third of THIS month’ (as Mr. Froude,
by a slip of the pen, translates ‘a tres del passado’), that she would
marry the Arch Duke; that Cecil spoke to de Quadra on the same day, and
that ‘the day after this conversation’ (September 4) the Queen told de
Quadra that Amy ‘was dead or nearly so.’ The presumption would be that
the Queen spoke of Amy’s death FOUR DAYS BEFORE IT OCCURRED, and a
very awkward position, in that case, would be the Queen’s. Guilty
foreknowledge would be attributed to her. This is like the real
situation if Dr. Ernst Bekker is right.* Dr. Bekker, knowing from the
portion of de Quadra’s letter omitted by Mr. Froude, that he reached the
Court at Windsor on September 6, 1560, supposes that he had interviews
with Elizabeth and Cecil on that day, and that Elizabeth, prematurely,
announced to him Amy’s death, next day, on September 7. But Mr. Gairdner
has proved that this scheme of dates is highly improbable.
*Elizabeth and Leicester, Giesener Studien auf dem Gebiet der
Geschichte, v p.48. Giesen, 1890.
In the ‘English Historical Review,’ * Mr. Gairdner, examining the
question, used Mr. Froude’s transcripts in the British Museum, and made
some slight corrections in his translation, but omitted to note the
crucial error of the ‘third of THIS month’ for ‘the third of LAST
month.’ This was in 1886. Mr. Gairdner’s arguments as to dates were
unconvincing, in this his first article. But in 1892 the letter of de
Quadra was retranslated from Mr. Froude’s transcript, in the Spanish
Calendar (i. pp. 174-176). The translation was again erroneous, ‘THE
QUEEN HAD PROMISED ME AN ANSWER ABOUT THE SPANISH MARRIAGE BY THE THIRD
INSTANT’ (September 3), ‘but now she coolly tells me she cannot make up
her mind, and will not marry.’ This is all unlike Mr. Froude’s ‘On the
third of this month the Queen spoke to me about her marriage WITH THE
ARCH DUKE. SHE SAID THAT SHE HAD MADE UP HER MIND TO MARRY AND THAT THE
ARCH DUKE WAS TO BE THE MAN.’ There is, in fact, in Mr. Froude’s copy
of the original Spanish, not a word about the Arch Duke, nor is there in
Baron Lettenhove’s text. The remark has crept in from an earlier letter
of de Quadra, of August 4, 1560.** But neither is there anything about
‘promising an answer by the third instant,’ as in the Calendar; and
there is nothing at all about ‘the third instant,’ or (as in Mr. Froude)
‘the third of this month.’
*No. 2, April 1886, pp. 235-259.
**Spanish Calendar, i. pp. 171-174.
The Queen’s character has thus suffered, and the whole controversy
has been embroiled. In 1883, three years before the appearance of Mr.
Gairdner’s article of 1886, nine years before the Calendar appeared, the
correct version of de Quadra’s letter of September 11, 1560, had been
published by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove in his ‘Relations Politiques des
Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le Regne de Philippe II’ (vol. ii. pp.
529, 533). In 1897, Mr. Gairdner’s attention was called to the state of
affairs by the article, already cited, of Dr. Ernst Bekker. Mr. Gairdner
then translated the Belgian printed copy of de Quadra’s letter, with
comments.*
*English Historical Review, January 1898, pp. 83-90.
Matters now became clear. Mr. Froude’s transcript and translation had
omitted all the first long paragraph of the letter, which proved that de
Quadra went to Windsor, to the Court, on September 6. Next, the
passage about ‘the third of THIS month’ really runs ‘I showed her much
dissatisfaction about her marriage, in [on?] which on the third of LAST
month [August] she had told me she was already resolved and that she
assuredly meant to marry. Now she has coolly told me that she cannot
make up her mind, and that she does not intend to marry.’ (Mr.
Gairdner’s translation, 1898.) So the blot on the Queen’s scutcheon
as to her foreknowledge and too previous announcement of Amy’s death
disappears. But how did Mr. Gairdner, in 1886, using Mr. Froude’s
transcript of the original Spanish, fail to see that it contained no
Arch Duke, and no ‘third of the month’? Mr. Froude’s transcript of the
original Spanish, but not his translation thereof, was correct.*
*As to Verney, Appleyard, and Foster (see pages commencing:--‘Here
it may be well to consider’), Cecil, in April 1566, names Foster
and Appleyard, but not Verney, among the ‘particular friends’ whom
Leicester, if he marries the Queen, ‘will study to enhanss to welth, to
Offices, and Lands.’ Bartlett, Cumnor Place, p. 73, London 1850.