ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER
(From National Portrait Gallery)
On Sunday, the 8th September of the following year (1560), Lady Dudley (Amy Robsart) fell down a back staircase at Cumnor Hall, and was found dead at the bottom. The following day, a messenger was sent to Dudley, who was in attendance on the queen at Windsor, informing him that his wife had been killed by falling downstairs, whilst all the servants were absent from the house at Abingdon Fair. Dudley, who manifested neither surprise nor much concern, stated that he did not believe his wife’s death had been the result of accident, but was an act of premeditated violence, and added that he feared he would be implicated in the matter. He immediately sent the news of the Lady Dudley’s death to her relations, and invited them to be present at the coroner’s inquest, which was held at Cumnor a few days later. Early in September, Quadra, in a letter to the Duchess of Parma, informed her that it was rumoured in London that the Lord Robert was “thinking of killing his wife, although she was quite well (and would take good care they did not poison her).” “The next day,” which would be about the 9th of September, the queen returning from hunting, meeting him, said that my Lord Robert’s wife was dead, or nearly so, and asked him not to say anything about it. “Certainly,” he continues, “this business is most shameful and scandalous.” Cecil also, earlier in the year, had told him that he thought and believed that Robert Dudley was planning the murder of his wife. Elizabeth must have been informed of the unfortunate Amy’s death almost as soon as Dudley himself, for in the same letter, dated September 11, Quadra adds a postscript: “Since writing the above the queen has published the news of the death of Robert’s wife, and has said to me, in Italian, ‘She broke her neck. She must have fallen downstairs.’”
It is difficult, after reading the above extracts from the Spanish Papers, not to feel fairly certain that, notwithstanding Robert Dudley’s persistent declarations of innocence, he was guilty; and that Amy Robsart was foully murdered by his orders, and with Elizabeth’s knowledge and consent. If this be the case, the “Wizard of the North,” Sir Walter Scott, was, in the main, right, and his explanation of the mystery of Cumnor Hall fairly correct. It was generally believed in London that Dudley had pre-arranged the murder of his wife, with the intention of marrying the queen as soon as possible.[69] Cecil evidently believed this version of the story, and, greatly disgusted thereat, turned his attention in the direction of Lady Katherine. The supporters of the Earl of Huntingdon, the representative of the house of Pole, availing themselves of the queen’s unpopularity, now began agitating in his favour, and Quadra informed the King of Spain that he had just heard that “they are forming an important plan for the maintenance of their heresies, namely, to make the Earl of Huntingdon king, in case the queen should die without issue.” He added that Cecil had told him that the succession belonged of right to the earl, because he was descended from the House of York. Huntingdon, however, was not really a very formidable claimant, for although married, he had no children. Quadra’s letter is dated the 15th of October, and contains, moreover, the following curious reference to Lady Katherine: “They fear here that if the Queen were to die, Your Majesty [the King of Spain] would get the Kingdom into your family by means of the Lady Katherine. Cecil has sounded me on the subject, saying it would be well if a marriage should take place between her and one of Your Majesty’s relations ... [Here there is a piece torn out of the letter].... She [Lady Katherine] should succeed by virtue of the will of King Henry. He [Quadra] asked Cecil if he thought the Queen would declare her [Lady Katherine] heiress to the Crown; whereupon Cecil answered, ‘Certainly not, because as the saying is, the English run after the heir to the Crown more than after the present wearer of it.’” In all probability, the relative alluded to was the Archduke Ferdinand; or may be, the Infante Don Carlos, whose health, however, was very precarious, so that he, on the other hand, may have been at this time already out of the running. Certainly the Archduke was considered by Quadra as a suitable candidate for Lady Katherine’s hand, and it was hoped that if such a marriage could be arranged, Lady Katherine might eventually ascend the Throne, with Ferdinand as her consort, and England would thus be brought again under Spanish influence, if not actually annexed to that country. With such high interests at stake, therefore, Quadra had already been for some time extremely anxious to marry the Archduke either to Elizabeth or, failing her, to Lady Katherine; and hence he wrote to the Spanish king, in November 1559, in the following terms: “This hatred of the Lord Robert will continue, as the Duke [of Norfolk] and the rest of them cannot put up with his being King. I am of opinion that if the Archduke [Ferdinand] comes and makes the acquaintance and obtains the goodwill of these people, even if this marriage—of which I have now no hope except by force—should fall through, and any disaster were to befall the Queen, such as may be feared from her bad government, the Archduke might be summoned to marry Lady Katherine, to whom the Kingdom falls if this woman dies. If the Archduke sees her [Katherine] he should so bear himself that she should understand this design, which in my opinion may be beneficial and even necessary.”
Unfortunately for this scheme, the Archduke never saw Lady Katherine, and the proposed match fell through. Elizabeth found out this intrigue, and resented it, and it was one of the many reasons for her hatred of Katherine, who, however, was probably totally unaware of the numerous plots which were rife concerning her position as Elizabeth’s heiress; but Hertford, never very courageous, was growing alarmed. He knew that the queen, who at one time had called Lady Katherine her “daughter,” now expressed her contempt for her, and also kept her as far removed from her person as possible, “frowning upon her whenever they passed each other.” He therefore despaired of ever obtaining Elizabeth’s consent to their marriage; and was, moreover, reminded by Cecil (who one day questioned him very sharply about the matter of his courtship) of the existence of a law passed by Henry VIII’s Privy Council and ratified by Parliament, at the time the Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece, married her first husband, Lord Thomas Howard, without the royal consent, to wit, inflicting the severest punishment—imprisonment for life and a fine so enormous as to absorb an earl’s income—upon any man who should marry a kinswoman of the crown without the king’s leave. The details of this interview, between the earl and “Mr. Sekrettory,” came out during the subsequent examination of Hertford touching the marriage. Cecil, who was probably actuated much more by political motives than by any personal desire to save Hertford from the fate which awaited him if he married Lady Katherine, came upon the young man one day, and asked him point-blank, whether there was not “good-will” between him and the lady in question. “There is no such thing,” was Hertford’s prompt but untruthful reply. When on his trial, the earl, tormented by scruples, stated publicly that “he desired it to be noted that there was no truth in his reply to Mr. Secretary Cecil.” A little later on—but, it seems, after the marriage had actually taken place—Cecil tried to find out from Katherine herself how matters stood. Always haunted by the idea that one day she might succeed Elizabeth as queen, he was anxious to try to prevent a marriage which, he wisely foresaw, would but injure her cause yet further in the queen’s eyes. Cecil, a cunning diplomat, commenced by questioning Katherine over some extraneous matter concerning her property, but eventually insinuated a few words, warning her “of her too great familiarity with the Earl of Hertford”; and considerately added, that he “would not make the Queen’s Majesty privy thereto.” Katherine, later on, said that the warning, if it had been given before the marriage, might have been heeded. What reply she made at the time is not on record. Prompted by Cecil, the Marquis of Northampton and the “Fair Geraldine” also approached the princess on the subject, advising her “to beware of the company and familiarity of the said earl,” of whom, one fancies, none of these worthy interferes had a very high opinion. Their advice, however, if indeed it did not really come too late, was disregarded.
Love, like Justice, is reputed blind; and between All Hallows and Christmas, 1560, a year after the death of the Lady Frances, Hertford solemnly pledged his troth to Katherine and presented her with a plain gold ring, which opened with a secret spring in several linked compartments, on each of which he had engraved different Latin distichs of his own composition. They ran as follows:—
As circles five, by art compressed, show but one ring to sight,
So trust uniteth faithful minds, with knot of secret might,