I would say that the majority of us have heard Elizabeth I referred to as “the Virgin Queen” and many of us will also have heard the stories that she wasn’t quite as lily white as she was portrayed. It was rumoured back in the late 1550s that she was having an affair with one Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. However, what many of us probably don’t know or may have forgotten from our history lessons, is that Robert Dudley’s wife, Amy, died in extremely dubious circumstances! And it is even less well known unless you’re a “Norfolk Swede” like me, that Amy Dudley’s roots lay in Norfolk, England.

She was the daughter of Sir John Robsart, a wealthy landowner and the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, and was born at the family home of Syderstone Hall in Norfolk. Amy spent most of her childhood there and her initials can still be seen carved into the churchyard gate and over the entrance to the church tower. Not much is known about Amy Robsart’s early life and there seem to be no paintings of the time to indicate what she looked like, but it is generally understood that she was a quiet and charming girl.

Around 1550 when Amy was 17 or 18 years old, she married Robert Dudley, the younger son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The wedding took place at Richmond Palace and Amy and Robert appeared perfectly happy and at ease with the arrangement as it is widely understood that the marriage contract stipulated that the wedding would only took place if both parties consented. It was a grand affair, fitting of a marriage between two such prominent families, and even King Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, was in attendance.

Upon Edward VI’s untimely death at the age of 15 and the short reigns of Lady Jane Grey (9 days) and Queen Mary (Henry VIII’s oldest daughter), Elizabeth I (Henry’s VIII’s youngest daughter by Anne Boleyn) came to throne in 1558. This is where things began to go more than a little awry for poor Amy Dudley.

Dudley was an extremely ambitious man and soon inveigled himself in the Court of Elizabeth. Almost immediately upon Elizabeth’s coronation he was granted the position of Master of the Queen’s Horse and it became widely rumoured that he was in fact having an affair with Elizabeth.

By 1560 Dudley had moved Amy to Cumnor Place in Abingdon (Oxfordshire), a manor house owned by a friend of Dudley, although Dudley spent little time there, seemingly preferring the company of the Queen to that of his wife.

On 8 September of that year, the day of Abingdon Fair, it’s believed that Amy dismissed all her staff and told them that they should go to the Fair. When the servants returned, they found Amy at the bottom of a short flight of stairs with her neck broken. An inquest took place and it was found by the relevant authorities that Amy had died by “accidental death” (in other words, Amy had fallen). However, it was also rumoured that Dudley may have returned to the house and pushed Amy down the stairs in order that he would be free to marry Elizabeth and gain the highest status possible within the Court. Another theory was that either Dudley or Elizabeth paid someone to do the dirty work for them.

An alternative view was that it was suicide. Amy would have been aware of the rumours abounding about the affair between her husband and Elizabeth. It was also later discovered that she may have had some ailment relating to her chest which, in all likelihood, would have been breast cancer. In those days it would have been terminal and would have resulted in a long period of horrendous pain due to the lack of effective drugs.

Having looked at the possibilities in the cold light of day, I think it unlikely that Amy was murdered by Dudley. As he seldom visited Cumnor Place where Amy was then living, he probably wouldn’t have been aware that she had given the day off to her staff. It was even less likely that he or Elizabeth planned the murder as there wouldn’t have been time to arrange for someone to do the dirty deed. Abingdon, even in these days of tarmac and motorways, is some 65 miles from London and it would have taken some considerable time to travel between the two on horseback.

If there had been a “mole” planted within the household of Cumnor Place who had fed back the information to either Dudley or Elizabeth and assuming that the message reached Dudley or Elizabeth in time to make arrangements for a “hit squad”, it would still seem unlikely that Amy was murdered as a suspicious death would just have compounded the notion amongst the populace that Elizabeth and Dudley had had an affair. This would have made life extremely difficult for Elizabeth throughout her reign and almost impossible for Dudley.

So, if Amy wasn’t murdered, did she commit suicide? The fact that she had, rather unusually, dismissed all her staff on that day might lead us to believe this was the case, but would she have thrown herself down the stairs? She must have been aware that if she threw herself down a flight of stairs there was no guarantee that she would have killed herself. Surely it would have been better to have hung herself, taken poison or drowned? Far quicker and far more efficient.

My own theory is that her death was purely an accident. It’s understood that the flight of stairs from which she fell was only a short one and to some it may seem unlikely that Amy would have sustained such severe injuries but, if she had breast cancer, it could have been the case that this had spread to her spine or neck, thereby weakening that area of her body.

I guess no-one will ever know for sure what happened to poor Amy Robsart of Syderstone Hall, Norfolk on that fateful September day in 1560, but it is said that Amy’s ghost haunted Syderstone Hall until it was eventually demolished, and her unhappy spirit then moved to the local Rectory opposite. Whatever happened to Amy, it certainly hasn’t deterred the current Earl of Leicester from living in the area – he and his family currently live at Holkham Hall, just 10 miles or so up the road!