The Manner of Amy's Death
Page 20
Author’s note: If there had been magazines such as ‘OK?’ and ‘Hello?’ in Elizabethan times, the characters in our story would have featured every week on the front pages. They were the glamorous and wealthy of their age; they were, for the most part, young and sometimes behaved scandalously, living life to the full and participating in life threatening sports and activities. If ever anyone had a ‘walk on the wild side’, it was Elizabeth and her Master of the Horse, Robert Dudley, tall, rugged, darkly handsome and athletic, the ‘Daniel Craig’ of his day. He drank, gambled on anything, played cards and tennis with his male companions, got into fights, creating mayhem at times with his gang of thuggish retainers, trained horses, rode and hunted better than any other man - and borrowed large amounts of money to finance his lavish lifestyle. The young Queen, herself a better rider than most of her courtiers, was besotted with him.
There was only one problem; Robert Dudley was married.
The well-to-do Elizabethans were not altogether unlike us. They enjoyed good food, roast meat, meat pies, fish and sweet desserts. They drank copious amounts of wine, beer and ale. They loved fine clothes and liked to be seen in public dressed to kill in furs, velvet and satin. They built impressive houses and went heavily into debt to fund these luxuries, just as we today are prepared to use our credit cards to have the lifestyle we want, whether we can afford it all or not!
For the poor it was a different matter. A mini Ice Age in the second half of the sixteenth century, from 1550 to 1610 approximately, caused widespread misery, malnutrition and starvation. For these people stories of the excesses at court must have provided a degree of escapism from their own miserable lives.
The tales filtered down from above. Elizabethan gentlewomen and the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting at court had little to do but gossip; indeed they referred to their best friends as their ‘good gossips’. The women’s chambers must have resembled the dormitories of a girls’ boarding school with teenagers and young women sitting up late at night, sharing each other’s bed to keep warm and talking about the latest scandal. One Elizabethan gentleman, describing such groups of women living together in royal palaces without the benefit of garderobes emptying to the outside, thought the smell from the shared ‘close-stool’ (privy) would be so offensive that it was a complete turn-off for any amorously inclined gentleman who entered their chambers! But even this did not deter those courtiers bent on a little illicit sex on the side.
Queen Elizabeth, however, was so particular about her personal cleanliness that she had a bath once a month, ‘even when she didn’t need to’!
High ranking servants often brought news of the goings on in other parts of the royal court; and so the gossip percolated downwards until it reached the men and women in the street. Gossiping was one of the main forms of entertainment for everyone.
The rich were not so different from us in matters of love either. There was marital unfaithfulness, and divorce was not uncommon, although there had to be a good reason. Secret, passionate assignations took place in bedchambers and there were resulting pregnancies that women tried to hide by letting out the laces of their gowns. But, of course, such things could not be hidden for long. Members of the aristocracy who married without the permission of the Queen risked imprisonment in the Tower – or worse! But even this did not stop those who had ‘the hots’ for each other marrying in private so that any resulting children would not be illegitimate. From then onwards it would have been relatively easy to escape from the court for a few moments of satisfying passion. Elizabethan women usually wore no underwear other than a long washable linen shift which doubled as a nightdress!
There is however no proof that Elizabeth and Robert’s affair went any further than a longing, a closeness and outrageous displays of affection. On the other hand neither was there proof that they did not have a sexual relationship. No one knows. Elizabeth never tried to hide her love for him and, at first, rather seemed to revel in the notoriety it caused. She called him her eyes, ‘OO’ in written correspondence. As the eyes were the window to the soul we may say today that he was her ‘soul-mate’.
However it would be wrong to suggest that life was one long party. The Elizabethans worked hard and played hard; they took their responsibilities and duties seriously. For women it was a new age of intellectual freedom and the daughters of the wealthy were educated more and more to the same standards as their brothers. Elizabeth herself, Lady Jane Grey, Katherine Parr, Anne Askew and Bess of Hardwick were just some of the educated and free thinking women of the time. Anne Askew was tortured and executed by Henry VIII for her unwavering stance on religious reform while Bess became a fabulously wealthy and astute business woman.
Into this vipers’ nest of strong, sometimes reckless, women and ambitious, greedy men steps a gentleman farmer’s daughter from Norfolk, Amy Robsart.
Little is known of Amy’s life so I have put her into situations where she may, or may not, have been involved …. Lady Jane Grey’s brief reign, for example. It is, however, entirely possible that Amy interacted with all the rich and famous of the time for she was married to Robert Dudley, the son of the most influential nobleman of them all, the Duke of Northumberland. And this, ultimately, led to her downfall.
History is fun! If you have enjoyed this fictional account of a four hundred and fifty year old murder mystery, you may wish to read the non-fiction secondary sources for this book. But remember that true historians go back to primary sources as well, national archives, manuscripts and documents preserved in castles, university archives and the British Library, where there must be many documents relating to mysterious and important historical events still waiting to be discovered. Only recently has the Coroner’s Report into Amy’s death been found in the National Archives at Kew, under the section for October 1561. Previously, when historians searched for this document, they naturally assumed it would be filed alongside those documents relating to autumn 1560 and hence it was assumed to be lost. This discovery cast a whole new light on the mystery of Amy Robsart’s death.
Non fiction Sources for The Manner of Amy’s Death
De Lisle, Leanda, The Sisters Who Would be Queen (HarperPress, 2008)
Fraser, Antonia, Mary Queen of Scots (World Books, 1969)
Jones, Gwyn and Jones, Thomas (translators), The Mabinogion (Everyman, 1949)
Lipscomb, Suzannah, A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England (Ebury Press, 2012)
Rowse, A. L., The Elizabethan Renaissance, The Life of the Society (Macmillan, 1971)
Skidmore, Chris , Death and The Virgin (Phoenix, 2011)
Starkey, David, Elizabeth (Vintage, 2001)
Whitelock, Anna, Mary Tudor (Bloomsbury, 2009)