Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart by Chris Skidmore

Author:Chris Skidmore [Skidmore, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2010-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Your loving friend and kinsman, R.D.4

Of course, life could never return to normal. Despite Dudley’s protestations of innocence, there would always be those who refused to believe him, assuming that the circumstances surrounding Amy’s death were far too suspicious for her fall to have been merely an accident.

38

So pitifully slain?

After the coroner’s jury had finally finished its investigations, on Sunday 22 September, Amy was buried at the Church of Our Lady in Oxford. Her body had been embalmed, ‘safely cered’ and placed in a coffin that was taken secretly to Gloucester College (on the site of Worcester College). For several days her body lay in state, beneath hangings of black cloth and escutcheons of both Dudley’s and Amy’s family arms. Mourners gathered to pay their respects, and a dinner was held in the Great Hall of the college, the walls of which had been draped in black cloth.

Meanwhile, Amy’s most treasured and valuable possessions, including her jewellery, were returned to her husband. There was one item that Dudley was especially keen to have back. The household accounts record the substantial payment of £25 6 shillings and 8 pence to Richard Whetell, ‘for the redeeming of a diamond of my Lady’s’.1 Jewels, Dudley must have considered, would be wasted on the dead.

On the day of the funeral, two conductors carrying black staves led the procession to the church. It was to be a traditional aristocratic funeral, following the set pattern of mourning devised by the royal heralds, who later fastidiously noted every detail of the event in their records at the College of Arms. Behind the conductors followed eighty poor men and women wearing black gowns, then the university professors and doctors, walking in pairs, according to the degree of their colleges. The choir came next, dressed in their surplices and singing, followed by the minister. In between the two royal heralds, summoned specially and paid the princely sum of £66 16 shillings 8 pence from Dudley’s accounts ‘for their pains-taking at my Ladies burial’, followed Amy’s half-brother, John Appleyard, wearing a ‘long gown, his hood on his head’. He walked in front of Amy’s coffin, carrying the banner of arms, the largest and most prominent of all the funeral insignia.

Amy’s coffin was carried by eight tall yeomen. The journey was a long one, and they were attended by four assistants to take turns bearing the load. Two assistants wearing long gowns and with hoods on their heads walked at the front and back of the coffin, and at each corner of the coffin four more hooded gentlemen walked carrying banners. Next came the gentlewomen mourners, some being those with whom Amy had spent her days at Cumnor: Mrs Wayneman, Lady Pollard, Mrs Doylly, Mrs Butler the elder, Mrs Blunt and her neighbour Elizabeth Mutlowe. These were the official mourners, and though many followed behind, including the Mayor of Oxford ‘and his brethren’, three yeomen in black coats had been appointed to separate out this carefully assembled scene of ritual mourning from the crowds of onlookers and hangers-on.

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