Life in Tudor England was like swimming in a pool with a couple dozen hungry sharks. In this post, I’ll delve into one of the more mysterious (and scandalous) deaths of the time: Amy Robsart Dudley, wife to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The gentleman (and I use the term VERY loosely) was a ‘favorite’ of Queen Elizabeth I. I think we can all read between the lines of what might have been going on there.
Amy Robsart was found dead at the bottom of a staircase at one of her homes on September 8th, 1560. Her neck was broken, and she had two deep wounds in her skull. Death would have been instantaneous. Rumors swirled that her husband had orchestrated her death so he could marry Queen Elizabeth. She had already turned down loads of suitors, royal and otherwise, and harbored a genuine affection for Lord Dudley. With Amy dead, the two were free, right?
Wrong. There were so many rumors and whispers that even if the two had entertained the thought of getting together officially, it wasn’t going to happen. The rest is history. Elizabeth went down in history as the Virgin Queen, and Lord Dudley would remarry and die unexpectedly some years later. Elizabeth’s affection for him never faded, and she kept his last letter to her close until the day she died.
So what really happened to Amy, Robert’s first wife?
Ideas ranged from murder orchestrated by Elizabeth and/or Robert in order to free him for marriage to straight up accident. On the surface, murder seems likely. However, the deeper one digs, the more that notion falls apart.
By all historical accounts, Amy and Robert were a love match. There are few if any records saying that the couple argued, or that they had a dislike for each other. If anything, it seemed the opposite. Robert appeared genuinely distraught at Amy’s death, and while he might have been faking, his contemporaries didn’t think that was the case. And really, why would Elizabeth have a woman murdered when the likelihood that she could lay claim to the widower was remote at best? While Elizabeth and Robert may well have desired each other, there was no political advantage for Elizabeth in choosing Robert.
The reality of Amy Dudley’s death is, if anything, even more tragic.
Elizabeth’s affection for Robert was noted even by outsiders, several of whom commented something along the lines that the two would marry should Robert’s wife die. These same people also note that Amy Dudley was ‘seriously ill in one of her breasts.’
There is a strong possibility that Amy Dudley had advanced breast cancer, and that was ultimately her cause of death. Here is the evidence. Breast cancer has been documented for thousands of years, with the first confirmed case in a 4,200 year old Egyptian mummy. While breast cancer is treatable now, centuries ago it was invariably lethal.
Another insidious aspect of breast carcinoma is its tendency to metastasize, or spread through the body. It particularly likes to invade the skeletal system (in fact, that is how the Egyptian mummy was diagnosed). This can and does cause weakening of the affected bones, so much that they might snap under conditions that would not bother a normal person. In this case, a stumble down the stairs may have been enough to cause the broken neck that killed Amy Robsart.
Was Amy awfully young to have developed this terrible disease? Yes, though breast cancer in a woman her age is not unheard of. Another instance of this disease comes from a 2,500 year old ice mummy, the Altai Ice Maiden. She was between twenty-five and thirty years old at the time of her death, and her bones show strong evidence of metastatic breast cancer. There’s also signs that a fall contributed to her death, just like with Amy Robsart.
The parallels are intriguing, if nothing else. I myself had a breast cancer scare at age twenty-eight, so I can say from personal experience that it can and does hit woman that young. My lesion turned out to be benign, but Amy and others were not so fortunate.
Here is my verdict: Amy Robsart died from breast cancer, or rather, died from the secondary damage it inflicted on her skeleton. She was walking down the stairs, and either slipped/stumbled, or her neck simply snapped on its own due to severe weakening of her cervical vertebrae. Either way, it was a tragic loss of a lady who was universally described as being kind, beautiful, and loyal to her husband.
Why am I writing about this Tudor-era lady? Well, I’ll give you a hint…if I write about a historical person, it’s because they appear as a character in Melusine’s Endgame at some point. How does Lady Amy factor in? I guess you’ll just have to read the series and find out!