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00:01September the 8th, 1560.
00:04The discovery of a young woman's body
00:06is about to shock Elizabethan England.
00:11The death of Amy Robsart will threaten Elizabeth's reputation,
00:15and it will ultimately destroy the Tudor dynasty.
00:18It was Amy's death that Elizabeth became the Virgin Queen.
00:22It was Amy's death that changed the course of history forever.
00:25Amy is found dead at the foot of a staircase.
00:31The authorities claim she broke her neck, accidentally falling downstairs.
00:37Now, by extraordinary chance,
00:39the coroner's report has been unearthed after 450 years.
00:44It suggests foul play.
00:47The magic word, Amy, popped out of the middle of the document,
00:50and that's the point where I realised what it was I was looking at.
00:53It's a eureka moment. It's a huge eureka moment for any historian.
00:58The document contains the explosive revelation
01:01that Amy had other serious injuries.
01:05If I'd carried out this examination,
01:07I think I'd be saying to the officer investigating
01:11to mount a full-scale murder inquiry.
01:23Elizabeth I.
01:29We know her as the Virgin Queen,
01:32one of England's most famous monarchs.
01:35Her 45-year reign was seen as a stable golden age for the country.
01:42But the kingdom she inherited was far from secure.
01:45Mary Tudor had just died.
01:50Her reign of terror had earned her the label Bloody Mary.
01:55England was weak and crippled by debt.
01:57On November the 17th, 1558, messengers raced to Hatfield House
02:06to bring Elizabeth the news that she was now Queen.
02:09The legend is, as at first here, was Robert Dudley,
02:15riding, predictably enough, a beautiful white horse,
02:18I'm sure it was a stallion,
02:19and galloped up and told her that her sister had died
02:22and she was now Queen of England.
02:24At last, Elizabeth had got to where, in her view, she was born to be.
02:28Aged just 25, Elizabeth had to take command of her country.
02:38The first appointment was William Cecil,
02:40who had been her chief secretary and adviser
02:43all through the years of waiting for Mary to die.
02:48Ruthless and fiercely Protestant,
02:51William Cecil became the most influential man in the country.
02:54She called Cecil spirit, and in a sense that sort of signifies
02:58that she's not interested in him physically at all,
03:01but it's also that he's her kind of guiding light,
03:04that he's her better self,
03:06he has an idea of the world that she doesn't have.
03:10Persuading Elizabeth to choose the right husband
03:13is one of Cecil's chief concerns.
03:17They thought it would be a disaster to have a woman rule on her own,
03:21because surely a woman couldn't possibly know how to govern a kingdom.
03:28Foreign suitors circle the Queen like vultures.
03:32Even King Philip of Spain, the most powerful man in Europe,
03:35is eager to marry Elizabeth.
03:38There's terrific pressure on Elizabeth to marry and have children.
03:40On the other hand, there's terrific pressure on her
03:42not to choose the wrong husband.
03:44Had she married someone too powerful,
03:47then England might just have found itself a satellite of another country.
03:52For the Tudor dynasty to survive,
03:54it is vital that Elizabeth produces an heir.
03:58Yet her thoughts are elsewhere.
04:01She had fallen for the wild charms of Robert Dudley.
04:05She nicknamed him Eyes.
04:08His enemies called him the Gypsy.
04:12Elizabeth immediately made Robert Dudley master of her horse.
04:15Now, that, in one sense, means that he's responsible for the royal stables,
04:20which is the transport of the court.
04:21So it's an incredibly responsible position.
04:24But it also means that he's responsible for the real fun things,
04:27like hunting and jousting.
04:29Whereas a lot of the other men around her would have appeared
04:33with hands full of papers and, you know, worried brows
04:36and a mouth full of problems,
04:38he'd have appeared as an invitation to play.
04:42Dudley and Elizabeth's playfulness
04:44was beginning to worry many in the royal court.
04:48It's the first time since she's come to the throne
04:50she's shown any interest in any man.
04:52And it's a very clear interest.
04:54And, of course, it's a very emotional one
04:56and it will remain from that point on.
04:58So, in that sense, he is almost a surrogate husband.
05:02It's the fact she's an unmarried woman.
05:04There's a sexual side to it you wouldn't see
05:06between a male king and his master of the horse.
05:11Elizabeth was behaving like a young woman in love,
05:14not a queen with a country to govern.
05:17Are they having an affair behind the scenes or what?
05:20And it's from the Spaniards and the Austrians
05:22that we get most of the gossip.
05:24In the spring of 1560,
05:26Elizabeth had told the Spanish ambassador
05:28that she couldn't have given him an audience
05:30because she was ill.
05:31He found out later she'd gone to watch Dudley play tennis.
05:34And he wasn't very amused at that.
05:39Elizabeth even has Dudley's bedchamber move next to hers.
05:42They read together, hunt together, and behave like a courting couple.
05:47Their really passionate time,
05:49the time when everyone was terrified that she would marry him,
05:52the time when half the country thought she was, in any case, sleeping with him,
05:57was probably the first two years of her reign,
05:59when she was so besotted with Robert Dudley
06:02that it was hard to see how she would ever make any convincing agreement
06:06to marry anyone else.
06:08But for most of Elizabeth's advisers, her courtiers and her subjects,
06:12Dudley was a poor choice of partner.
06:16Elizabeth's relationship with Dudley was always bound to be controversial.
06:20Controversial because Elizabeth was an unmarried queen
06:23and therefore whoever became her husband
06:26would be of enormous political significance.
06:28Controversial also because of who Dudley was.
06:31His father had been executed for treason.
06:34His grandfather had been executed for treason.
06:37And with a track record like that,
06:39people thought you really couldn't trust the Dudley family
06:41any further than you could throw them.
06:43Most contemporaries would have felt that Robert Dudley
06:45was almost the most unsuitable husband
06:48that you could come up with for Elizabeth.
06:50Dudley was competing with foreign princes like King Philip of Spain,
06:55leader of the most powerful nation in Europe.
07:00So Dudley spared no expense to dazzle his queen
07:03and Elizabeth was anything but a cheap date.
07:07He spent a staggering sum.
07:10He spent tens of what would in today's money
07:13have been tens of thousands of pounds.
07:20Dudley was playing high stakes to woo the queen.
07:25Get me gone!
07:26Fool!
07:27It was the biggest gamble of his life.
07:30The prize to be King of England.
07:38As the autumn days grew shorter,
07:40William Cecil was certain England faced a dark future
07:44if Elizabeth were to marry Dudley.
07:48But one person stood in the way of Cecil's nightmare vision.
07:53A woman barely known to Elizabeth.
07:56Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley's wife.
08:01They had married ten years before.
08:03She was aged 28 and childless.
08:05Although Amy was living little more than 40 miles from court,
08:09her husband had not visited for over a year.
08:13He was with the queen constantly.
08:16Elizabeth hated the gentlemen at court
08:19to bring their wives with them.
08:21She was intensely jealous of them.
08:23She wanted to be, you know, the queen bee in the hive of the court.
08:28It was even more the case for Robert Dudley
08:30that his wife just would not be welcome in the presence of Elizabeth.
08:34In 1560, whispers at court grew darker.
08:43In March, Dudley was rumoured to be divorcing Amy.
08:47In September, William Cecil told the Spanish ambassador
08:50that the queen and Dudley were...
08:53..thinking of destroying Lord Robert's wife.
08:56They had given out that she was ill, but she was not ill at all.
08:59She was very well and taking care not to be poisoned.
09:04She was very well and taking care of her.
09:07Were Elizabeth and her lover plotting to kill Amy?
09:20The court is alive with rumours.
09:22Elizabeth is so obsessed with her lover,
09:24she is abandoning her office and the country.
09:29People were prosecuted and severely punished for gossip about the queen.
09:33Some people said that they were lovers.
09:35Some people said that they were married.
09:37Some people even said that she'd had a child by him
09:39and the child had been hidden away.
09:45William Cecil, now sidelined, is at his wit's end.
09:49Dudley, his arch-rival, is gaining power daily.
09:52All foreign marriages look impossible.
09:55In desperation, Cecil plots against the relationship.
09:59Cecil told the Spanish ambassador he...
10:02..perceived the most manifest ruin impending over the queen
10:06through her intimacy with Lord Robert.
10:08Cecil, Elizabeth's chief minister, knew the Spanish ambassador would tell everyone.
10:17Perhaps the resulting outcry might stop the young lovers.
10:23William Cecil was really an arch-enemy of Robert Dudley
10:26and therefore hated the idea that he was closer to Elizabeth than he himself was
10:31and indeed feared very much that Elizabeth would go an extra step
10:36and actually marry Robert Dudley, which would have been a disaster for William Cecil.
10:41It would have effectively ended his political career
10:43and therefore he did whatever he could to end their liaison.
10:47But on September 9th, 1560, Elizabeth and Dudley's affair was blown apart by news of Amy's death.
10:57The 28-year-old had been found dead at the foot of a staircase with a broken neck.
11:03Was it an accident or something more sinister?
11:07What happened that day remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Tudor age.
11:12Historian Chris Skidmore has now reopened this coldest of cold cases
11:21through a series of startling discoveries.
11:25I think the fascinating thing about Amy Robsart's death
11:29is not just that she was found dead and no-one was there to witness her end,
11:34but the full range of possibilities of how she could have died,
11:38whether it was suicide, accident or murder.
11:42I mean, it's really got up all the ingredients of a proper Agatha Christie thriller.
11:47Amy never had her own home.
11:50Instead, Robert Dudley moved her between the houses of his senior servants.
11:54She died while staying with Dudley's servant, Anthony Forster,
11:58here in the Oxford village of Cumner, at Cumner Place.
12:01The question of how and why Amy died has gripped generations of writers and historians.
12:11The house features in a famous Victorian novel, Kenilworth.
12:18Sir Walter Scott wrote this 19th-century thriller
12:21about the deadly love triangle between Elizabeth, Dudley and Amy.
12:25The door of the Countess's chamber opened, and in the same moment the trapdoor gave way.
12:33There was a rushing sound, a heavy fall, a faint groan, and it was all over.
12:39Varney called in at the window.
12:41Is the bird caught? Is the deed done?
12:43Oh, God, forgive us, replied Anthony Forster.
12:46Of course, it's completely made up, a complete fiction, as Scott intended it to be.
12:52But it didn't stop Victorians reading this in their droves.
12:55It became a bestseller of its day.
12:57Victorians came here, they wanted to see Cumner Place,
13:00feel and experience the place where Amy had died and met her death.
13:06So what happened to the stairs where Amy was discovered?
13:12The staircase is now gone.
13:16In 1810, Cumner Place was ripped down.
13:19The site has since become the village graveyard.
13:22Only a few ruined walls remain.
13:27Although the building was demolished 200 years ago,
13:31Chris can still discover fascinating clues about the staircase.
13:38Archaeologist Edward Impey was born in Cumner.
13:41As a child, he was gripped by Amy's story, and he built a detailed model of Cumner Place.
13:48So, Edward, on the model you have here, whereabouts would Amy have been staying?
13:54Well, it's essentially guesswork, but one would guess that she was given the grandest apartment room in the building.
14:01And where would that have been here, do you think?
14:04And that would be the great chamber, which is here.
14:07So I suspect that's where she was lodged.
14:10Where would the staircase have been that Amy met her fateful end?
14:14The stairs were under this corner of the building here, in other words, at the very west end of the north range.
14:21And we know that from this plan.
14:24The model is based on a sketch made by antiquarian Samuel Lysons in 1805, before Cumner Place was demolished.
14:32I think it's possible you could fall down a stair like that and die.
14:36There's a stone stair with, you know, sharp edges to the steps.
14:42But beyond that really, I mean, that's about the limit of what I think the archaeology, if you like, and the architecture can tell you.
14:49From this unpromising scrap of evidence, modern technology allows us to reproduce what the staircase in the sketch might have looked like.
14:59So here's your plan.
15:02The little portion of the staircase that we've got.
15:06And we can view it three-dimensionally.
15:12And I could just start making up the treads and building up the staircase.
15:15What you can say is it's a dangerous staircase.
15:21And lots of sharp edges, essentially.
15:25The model shows that halfway down the stairs, there is a small landing.
15:30A dividing wall between the two flights of stairs made it almost impossible to fall all the way from the top of the stairs to the bottom.
15:37Every year in England and Wales, more than 600 people die after falling down stairs.
15:48Most of these were elderly.
15:53In Amy's age group, those aged between 25 and 30, there were just four deaths.
16:00We can't rule out the fact that Amy could have died accidentally falling down a set of stairs only eight steps high.
16:09Freak actions like that do happen.
16:11But it does seem highly unlikely.
16:12The body at the foot of the stairs is almost an exam question for forensic pathologists.
16:25We'd be looking for signs, first of all, that somebody has actually come down these stairs.
16:31So on stone steps, concrete steps such as these, hard, somewhat rough surface, somebody falling down the stairs might leave traces of that fall in the form of parts of them, hair, blood, fragments of skin perhaps.
16:50So there will be a careful examination to see if there's any sign of that.
16:54Are they young or old?
16:57Do they have a history of drink problems, drug abuse?
17:01Again, something that might put them unsteady on their feet.
17:04A young woman being found dead at the foot of the stairs, I would say, is in itself a suspicious circumstance and these days would almost invariably warrant further investigation.
17:20These statistics suggest it is improbable that a healthy young woman like Amy Robsart would have died from a staircase fall.
17:31But was Amy really in good health?
17:34One envoy wrote that she'd been ailing for some time.
17:38Another dispatch said she had a malady in one of her breasts.
17:43The question of Amy Robsart's health is one of the central issues of this whole story.
17:47She might have had some form of cancer, possibly breast cancer, which had led to the thinning of her bones, which meant that when she just lost her footing, possibly even on the last stair, that her neck might have cracked, which might have meant that she collapsed dying, but collapsed quite neatly, as it were, with her gown down and her hood still on, that there wasn't a great head over heels fall down the stairs.
18:09And historians have liked that explanation for a long time.
18:14If Amy really was suffering from advanced cancer, it would explain Dudley's chilling remark six months before Amy's death that if he live another year, he will be in a very different position from now.
18:27Perhaps he and Elizabeth knew that Amy had just months left to live.
18:34But Chris Skidmore believes that the cancer theory simply doesn't fit the known facts about Amy's last months alive.
18:44We know that in the final two years of her life, Amy moved from place to place.
18:51She started in Hertfordshire, the home of William Hyde, then went off to Sir Richard Verney's house up in Warwickshire, then finally down to Cummner Place.
19:00The sort of movement around and about doesn't seem like the movements of a woman who may have had terminal breast cancer.
19:11Even if she were somebody with multiple secondary cancer deposits in her bones, that in itself is not going to cause her in itself to be unsteady on her feet.
19:23And is not going to be a situation where if she were to fall over, she's going to end up with a fractured neck.
19:32This is simply not something that we see.
19:35So whilst it's an interesting theory, I fear it's speculative and not much more than that.
19:44And there's one other telling, touching detail which challenges the cancer theory.
19:49It's written by Amy herself, one of two surviving letters that allow us to glimpse who she really was.
20:00Longleat, one of the most impressive Elizabethan houses in England, is the home to this precious document.
20:07It was found by chance more than 300 years after Amy's death.
20:11So what we have here is a letter from Amy Dudley herself to her tailor.
20:20And what's intriguing about it is both that it's one of the only two letters of her own to survive,
20:27and the fact that it was written a bare fortnight before her death.
20:30This is to desire you to take such pains for me as to make this gown of velvet which I send you with such a collar as you made the russet taffet a gown you sent me last.
20:46If she were indeed gravely ill, you might ask whether she would have been writing off to, you know, order a new expensive gown.
20:57It gives us a sense that even that close to her death, from whatever cause, she was still a living, breathing, interested woman.
21:07And I think that that's very valuable because it lets us see a bit of Amy herself and not just as this passive victim of other people's machinations.
21:19Is it possible Amy wanted the dress because she was hoping to be reunited with Robert for the first time in over a year?
21:28She'd heard that he would be at Windsor with the court, just 40 miles from Cumnor.
21:32There are very few references to Amy's state of health that survive, and those are reports from court rumors.
21:40The Spanish ambassador was told by William Cecil in September 1560 that she was quite well.
21:49So, if cancer didn't kill Amy Robsart, what did?
22:03To get closer to the elusive truth about Amy Robsart's death, Chris Skidmore has been re-examining what happened that September over four centuries ago.
22:16It was here at Windsor Castle on the 9th of September 1560 when Robert Ludwig discovered that his wife, Amy, was found dead.
22:22His inner turmoil is revealed in letters, sent to his friend and retainer, Thomas Blount, just hours after hearing of the events in Cumnor.
22:31Cousin Blount, immediately after your departure from me, there came to me Bows, by whom I do understand that my wife is dead.
22:45And, as he saith, by a fall from a pair of stairs, little other understanding can I have of him.
22:56Dudley's in a cleanliness state of quite an emotional spin.
23:01The problem is, is that it looks almost as if he's more worried about his effect on his position than necessary regret or sadness over the death of his wife.
23:11There's something slightly forensic about his approach to it.
23:16The greatness and the seriousness of the misfortune that so perplexed me.
23:23Until I do hear from you how the matter standeth, or how this evil should light upon me,
23:31considering what the malicious world shall brew it,
23:35as I can have no rest.
23:47Desperate for answers, Dudley ordered his servant, Thomas Blount, to ride to Cumnor.
23:55Thomas Blount immediately begins his own investigation.
23:58A jury had begun to assemble, but Blount wanted to find answers, particularly from Amy's servants.
24:06When did you leave my ladyship's house?
24:09At midday, sir, to catch the best of the fair, sir.
24:13What state was she in?
24:15Well enough. She was busy. She had her accounts and books to do, sir.
24:18Was she troubled? Did she have strange airs?
24:26No, sir, not that I did notice.
24:33What Blount's question uncovered was extraordinary.
24:37When Amy died, Cumnor Place should have been a hive of activity.
24:45But Blount discovered, to his shock, that Amy had been alone.
24:50Thomas Blount began his investigations interviewing each servant.
24:55We have a record of him talking to Mrs. Pictou, Amy's maid.
24:59He found that Amy had woken up early that morning, before dawn.
25:02She was woke up in an angry mood.
25:03She was most angry, sir.
25:05For some reason, she insisted that the house be cleared.
25:09There was a fair at nearby Abingdon, and all the servants were going to go.
25:13But she insisted that everybody go, that she have the house to herself.
25:17We will not leave you, mistress. It is not proper.
25:20Away to the fair!
25:22It's a very extraordinary thing for a woman of that period to demand.
25:26This is a time where people live with servants.
25:29The servants are live-in.
25:30You almost always sleep with somebody, you always have a bedfellow.
25:34The idea that you'd want the house to yourself is really quite extraordinary.
25:39It's a modern notion, we can imagine it, but at the time, that's a very odd thing to demand.
25:44Oh, Mary, she will not be brooked.
25:48But that wasn't all that Blount discovered.
25:50Amy, for several weeks, had been praying in desperation to God, according to Mrs Pictou.
26:01At which point, Blount was amazed.
26:03He asked if she had an evil toy in her mind, meaning, did she have suicidal thoughts?
26:06She was a good and virtuous woman, and daily would pray on her knees and ask God to deliver her from her desperation.
26:16The Tudors' attitude to suicide was extreme.
26:18The Tudor society believed that those who committed suicide were possessed by the devil, therefore they weren't given a Christian burial.
26:27Instead, their bodies were stripped naked and buried at a crossroads with a stake dripping straight through their heart.
26:32To a devout Tudor woman like Amy, suicide was unthinkable.
26:37And the letter to her tailor corroborates this view.
26:40That picture of a desperate Amy, longing to be out of her present situation, maybe even out of her life, doesn't quite fit with the woman who was sending off to have a dress altered.
26:57Nor does suicide square with where she was found.
27:01A stair of that type would be an incredibly unsuitable place to try and commit suicide.
27:05So I think that can be pretty much ruled out.
27:08I mean, there are plenty of ways in company you can kill yourself without throwing yourself down a shallow flight of stairs.
27:16So an accident seems improbable.
27:19Suicide does not fit the known facts, which leaves murder.
27:27The fragments of evidence that survive say Amy had a broken neck, but strangely, no other injuries.
27:33For over 400 years, historians scoured the archives searching in vain for Amy's inquest report.
27:42The testimony from witnesses who inspected her dead body.
27:45Chris Skidmore believed it was lost forever.
27:49But then he received a tip-off.
27:54Stephen Gunn was my former supervisor.
27:57One day, he emailed just out of the blue to say, Chris, I think you'd be interested in this document.
28:02Stephen Gunn was studying the decline of archery in Tudor times.
28:05He was scouring the records for deaths due to archery.
28:11In order to find those, I had to read every accidental death report and I was starting to notice all kinds of other interesting accidents.
28:19People killed in football matches, people killed falling out of church towers, bell ringing, people killed mauled by performing bears.
28:29And then in one of these reports, I spotted the name Amy and read on and realised that it was the coroner's inquest on Amy's accident.
28:37Well, the email dropped through in my inbox. I opened it up. Couldn't believe my eyes.
28:41I mean, this really was historical gold. It's just not the sort of thing you get every day.
28:44The magic word, Amy, popped out of the middle of the document and that's the point where I realised what it was I was looking at.
28:52This is Amy's long-lost coroner's report, revealing exactly how Amy died.
29:02We knew Amy was found with a broken neck and no marks on her body and her clothing and headdress intact.
29:09But the report says she also had two massive head wounds.
29:15Written in Latin, it uses an Old English word to describe the wounds, dints.
29:21Vocat dints, and that's the English word dints, which in Old English means a blow to the head, often by a sword or in battle.
29:27And so what's fascinating here is it actually gives the depth of the head wounds so that we have here that the dints one is half a thumb length deep because they actually, in measuring the wounds, stick a thumb to actually measure it.
29:43The other wound on her head is two thumb lengths deep. That's an enormous wound to have in the base of a skull.
29:49If Amy had a two inch deep wound to the top of her head, I'd be looking for some sort of mace ball on the end of a chain with spikes on it, some sort of halberd or spear, something of that sort of nature to cause this sort of penetrating injury to the skull.
30:10It does suggest that these were maybe puncture wounds. So rather than being sort of slashed wounds, then actually the depth of the wound in particular being two thumb lengths deep.
30:19It's just a puncture wound to her skull somehow, which opens the whole question of whether Amy could have been hit on the head, her neck broken, and then her body laying at the bottom of the set of stairs in order to create the semblance of an accident.
30:32I think I'd be saying to the officer investigating to mount a full-scale murder inquiry.
30:39I'm really sorry that she was murdered so brutally. And although I'm thrilled to discover it, and although I have in a sense a detective's excitement, I also have a kind of friend's grief for it in a strange way, which is that, you know, she was a woman who had done nothing to deserve being murdered except for being married to a man that the queen of
31:01England was in love with. And it seems to be really wrong that she should have suffered such a penalty for being in that position.
31:10England was alive with rumours. The queen was linked to a murder.
31:16The scandal surrounding Amy's death was clearly extremely serious for Elizabeth. After all, it was so convenient for Elizabeth, if she really wanted to marry Robert Dudley, that Robert Dudley was no longer married,
31:30that people would have suspected either that she had had a hand in organising things, or even if she hadn't, that she'd had a hand in covering up whoever had organised it.
31:45With Dudley mired in scandal, Elizabeth now turned to William Cecil to help her ride out the storm.
31:53Everyone in England was asking who stood to gain by Amy's murder. Less than a fortnight after her death, Amy's funeral procession crossed these cobbles. The event cost Robert Dudley the equivalent of £100,000.
32:12It would have been quite a spectacle to behold. Every single wall of the church would have been draped in black linen right down to the floor.
32:19At the same time, there would have been hundreds of wax tapers, if not thousands, in every window, in every corner of the church. And towards the chancellery was Amy's body.
32:28The preacher at Amy's funeral gave the sermon, and it was later reported that he slipped up, saying Amy had been pitifully murdered.
32:37Certainly for those here, the mourners at the funeral have been certainly surprised by his choice of words.
32:43The only person missing was Amy's husband, Robert Dudley.
32:52Was this the sign of a guilty man?
32:55If Dudley was to murder his wife, he would have been a widower, single once more, and free to marry the Queen.
33:04And as a result, he would not only become the Queen's husband, but the King of England.
33:10At first glance, Dudley seems the most likely killer.
33:18He had everything to gain from Amy's death, and so did those around him.
33:25Robert Dudley would have had what's called a retinue, a band of followers, who were absolutely dedicated to his cause.
33:30We have documents showing that they were willing to go out in the streets of London with daggers fighting other noblemen's retinues.
33:37They were certainly, let's say, a bunch of thugs who would have done their master's bidding, whatever the cause.
33:46So did their master ever give the order?
33:50Dudley and his wife may not have been close.
33:52He was rumoured to have tried to divorce Amy, but he surely didn't need to kill her.
33:57The besotted Queen would do anything for him.
34:00Why not annul his marriage?
34:02Her father, Henry VIII, had simply dissolved his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
34:08Would Dudley have risked committing a crime so easily exposed?
34:12If I was Robert Dudley and I was going to kill my wife, I would have killed her and got rid of the body.
34:20That would have been infinitely more satisfactory, from Robert's point of view, than signalling a murder, which means everybody has to say,
34:28well, who's most likely to murder her, which means everybody says, for the last 500 years, probably Robert.
34:36That would be a ridiculous thing to do if you were Robert Dudley.
34:39It would be the last thing to do.
34:41And, of course, the consequence of being regarded as her most likely murderer is that the one thing that he wants,
34:47which is to marry Elizabeth, becomes absolutely impossible to him,
34:52because Elizabeth's reputation cannot be damaged by the widespread belief that she has married a man who murdered his first wife.
35:04Evidence in Dudley's defence comes from the letters he wrote soon after his wife's death.
35:09Dudley's reaction when he hears his wife has died is very, very interesting, because really his reaction then is the strongest evidence we have for his innocence.
35:25Robert wrote immediately to Blunt in a tone of complete and utter astonishment and consternation.
35:32Dudley wasn't expressing grief, but is clearly worried about the damage to his reputation.
35:40Blunt's not asked to hide anything, but, in a sense, let the truth out.
35:45And Dudley, who, in that sense, had no doubts about his own innocence,
35:49and, you know, possibly worried that his enemies might do something.
35:54It is a little hard, very hard, to read those letters and believe that Robert Dudley ordered Amy's death at Cumnor that day.
36:03But what if Dudley's henchmen took matters into their own hands and killed Amy?
36:11I think we have to think in what way would a servant say,
36:16well, my master wouldn't be fantastic if his wife was suddenly dead, if her life was ended, and then my master's the king, then I myself will rise up at court.
36:28It's all about power and the nature of power and the abuse of that power.
36:31One such loyal lieutenant stands out. His name, Sir Richard Verney.
36:40In the 1970s, a discovery was made at the British Library.
36:49This contemporary account of Amy's death clearly identifies a prime suspect.
36:54How the Lord Robert's wife break her neck at Forster's house in Oxfordshire, 1560,
37:01her gentlewoman being gone forth to a fair,
37:03howbeit it was thought she was slain, for Sir Verney was there that day,
37:08and whilst the deed was doing, was going over the fair, and tarried there for his man.
37:13Hath thou done, quoth Verney? Yea, quoth the man, I have made it sure.
37:17Here we have evidence that Verney was here at Cumnor at the time when Amy died,
37:25and that he'd arranged her death.
37:30This pious man is thought to be Richard Verney's father with his six sons.
37:36One of these boys will become Sir Richard Verney.
37:40This is the only image known of him.
37:43Could this be Amy Robsart's killer?
37:51But would Robert Dudley have tolerated one of his servants committing such a risky crime?
37:57My suspicion is there's so much at stake here for Dudley,
38:01that if he thought that was the case,
38:03he himself might have brought Richard Verney to justice.
38:07I really think that Dudley would have done anything to clear his name.
38:11So who else stood to gain by Amy's death?
38:16The other person in the love triangle was Elizabeth I.
38:21Could the Queen have ordered the death of her rival?
38:24We clearly have no forensic evidence from the crime scene,
38:40but there may be clues in Amy's odd behaviour on the morning of her death.
38:43She had sent away all her servants leaving the house empty.
38:50The perfect time for an assassin to strike.
38:54Who would make her clear the house?
38:58To whom would she respond with some obedience?
39:00If her husband sent her a message and told her that he wanted to see her quite alone and that no one was to be in,
39:06I think she would have cleared the house for Robert Dudley.
39:09I think she would have cleared the house for William Cecil because he's a man of such importance.
39:13Possibly other people at court, certainly she would have cleared the house at the request of the Queen.
39:18Amy was preventing the Queen from marrying the man she loved.
39:24Could Elizabeth have committed a crime of passion?
39:27Elizabeth had an incredibly fiery temper, I think inherited from both her father Henry VIII and her mother Anne Boleyn.
39:34And she was capable of lashing out at those around her.
39:39Honestly, you're absolutely incompetent!
39:41Get out!
39:43Some of the most notorious involve her ladies-in-waiting when she one day stabbed one of the ladies in the back of her hand with a fork for serving her ill at dinner.
39:53And she broke another lady's finger in a fit of temper when the said lady had dared to marry without Elizabeth's consent.
40:00That usually was the cardinal offence that was guaranteed to send Elizabeth into an absolute fury.
40:07And she was once described by the Imperial Ambassador as being the colour of a corpse when she heard about the misdoings of one of her ladies.
40:15Elizabeth certainly may have had inside knowledge about Amy's death.
40:20A letter from the Spanish Ambassador to his master, King Philip of Spain, makes an extraordinary claim.
40:26Amy's death had not been made public, but the Queen seemed to know the details.
40:33The Spanish Ambassador speaks to the Queen and she says that Amy Dudley is dead, or nearly so.
40:41So you have this sudden idea, the Ambassador suddenly gets the impression that Amy Dudley, who he thought was perfectly well, is at the point of death, if not dead already.
40:51And that the Queen knows this before all of that information had officially come to court.
40:56So would the Queen of England really have risked her reputation and ultimately her throne for love?
41:04She certainly had a very vindictive streak and she was very strong-willed and she was capable of extreme cunning.
41:13So I think she had the right attributes, but I think Elizabeth was far too much of a pragmatist to have taken such a drastic step of involving herself in a murder.
41:24Which, in the very closeted world of the Tudor court, which was riven with spies, the secret would have come out, I think, if Elizabeth really had been involved.
41:35And I don't believe that she would have ever taken such a great risk.
41:39She was a very calm, collected politician.
41:42I don't think it would have entered her rationale to take a step as drastic as to order somebody's murder.
41:52So the Queen and Robert Dudley seem unlikely to have had Amy killed.
41:56Who else had the authority to order her assassination?
42:00We may never be certain of the identity of the killer.
42:04That would require finding a 450-year-old confession.
42:07But it is clear who benefited most from Amy's death.
42:14I believe Cecil murdered Amy Dudley and I think he did it for, in his view, very good reasons.
42:21It's William Cecil who makes the absolute connection between Amy Dudley's death, Robert's reputation and the impossibility of Robert ever being able to marry the Queen.
42:32Amy is murdered in such a suspicious way that everybody believes it's Robert and that disqualifies him from marriage with the Queen.
42:40If you think Cecil capable of that, it's a really brilliant plan. It really is. It's a really brilliant plan.
42:51Before Amy's death, Cecil had been close to resigning.
42:54After her death, his fortune soared and never dipped again.
43:02However, Chris Skidmore is not convinced that Amy's death was arranged by Cecil.
43:07For him, it's a conspiracy theory too far.
43:11Well, there's no doubt that Cecil was an astute political operator.
43:14It may have been that he used Amy's death to his full advantage, but I don't think that that implies that he arranged for Amy's death.
43:24It simply wouldn't make sense for him to have left Robert Dudley a widower and able to marry the Queen.
43:29Whilst Amy's head wounds make murder seem a likely explanation, historians dispute who had the greatest motive to kill her.
43:41The uncovering of Amy's autopsy suggests, over four centuries on, further evidence may still await discovery.
43:48Whether or not Cecil ordered Amy's murder, her death certainly achieved the effect that he wanted.
43:58But Robert Dudley did not give up his attempts to woo Elizabeth.
44:05In 1575, he threw the Party of the Century for Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle.
44:11A very large amount of money was indeed spent.
44:16It is the big party of Elizabeth's reign, there's no doubt about that.
44:20It may well have been that this was Robert's last throw of the dice.
44:25We know about the firework display and the Italian pyrotechnics expert,
44:31who'd originally, apparently, planned to fire live cats and dogs out of his machines,
44:36but was fortunately dissuaded from that.
44:40A banquet of 300 different dishes.
44:43Another pageant, which had Arian riding on the back of this gigantic mechanical dolphin
44:49with six musicians concealed in its belly.
44:52A large number of people attended.
44:55Many of them actually had to be put up in Warwick.
44:57I mean, it's completely swamp Kenilworth town.
44:59And there has been an assumption that among them was a boy from Stratford, William Shakespeare.
45:03There are allusions to these pageants in some of his plays, particularly Midsummer Night's Dream.
45:08But all the expense, the lavish party and gardens, were wasted on Elizabeth.
45:31Dudley had come closer to her than any other man.
45:34Ironically, the death of his wife also killed his chances of ever winning the Queen's hand.
45:42Elizabeth had decided to stay as history remembers her, the Virgin Queen.
45:49And the Tudor dynasty died with her.
45:53In the end, this shall be for me sufficient.
46:00That a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a Virgin.
46:10Would Elizabeth have remained the Virgin Queen had Amy Robson not been murdered?
46:19Amy's life scarcely left any impact on history.
46:24But her death ricocheted down the centuries.
46:34She is the third part of a love triangle, which, you know, she had no part in whatsoever.
46:40You know, he neglected her. He left her.
46:43He never even provided her with a proper house and establishment of her own.
46:45They didn't have children together.
46:48And for me, in many ways, she kind of served as a model of wives who are betrayed by husbands.
46:54Husbands who get more glamorous lives and better offers elsewhere.
46:57Amy's tomb is hidden away in a corner of Oxford's University Church.
47:14Does this seem an appropriate grave for a woman whose life so insignificant and yet in death marks one of the most significant events in Tudor history?
47:22For it was with Amy's death that Elizabeth became the Virgin Queen.
47:27And it was Amy's death that changed the course of history forever.
47:30For it was Amy's death forever.
48:00The Virgin Queen and Sofia
48:08You
48:10You