On Sunday 8th September 1560, Amy Dudley (nee Robsart) died at Cumnor Place near Abingdon, her rented accommodation.

Her death is rather a mystery. Her body was found at the foot of the stairs when her servants returned from their day out at the Abingdon Fair and although the coroner ruled that Amy, “being alone in a certain chamber… accidentally fell precipitously down”, there were rumours and mutterings that her husband, Robert Dudley, and even Queen Elizabeth I, had been poisoning Amy and had arranged her death.

Read more: http://www.elizabethfiles.com/#ixzz2h6T8pRQ5

Amy Robsart was born in 1532. She was the daughter of Sir John Robsart. She married Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, son of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland and Jane Guilford, in 1550. She died on 8 September 1560, from a fall down stairs. Her married name became Dudley.

The Peerage

1.[S3409] Caroline Maubois, "re: Penancoet Family," e-mail message to Darryl Roger Lundy, 2 December 2008. Hereinafter cited as "re: Penancoet Family."

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On 22 September 1560 Lady Amy Dudley was laid to rest at St. Mary’s Church, Oxford. After her sudden death on 8 September the court had gone into mourning for the wife of the queen’s favourite, Hampton Court being “stuffed with mourners”.1 At Oxford, the deceased had lain in state for a couple of days at Gloucester College, her body “safely cered”, embalmed. Inside St. Mary’s an elaborately carved hearse, 7 ½ feet wide and 14 feet high, had been constructed to receive her coffin for the funeral. The church was hung in black.

The chief mourner was Lady Margery Norris, the queen’s good friend, and the ladies of Cumnor, Lady Amy’s neighbours, featured prominently at the ceremony. So did her half-brother, Sir John Appleyard, who walked in front of the coffin, in a “long gown, his hood on his head”.2 – The whole proceedings had cost her widower, who remained absent as was the custom, some £2,000. The London undertaker, Henry Machyn, was pleased to note:

   The [blank] day of August [sic] was bered my lade Dudley the wyff of my lord Robart Dudley the master of the quen['s] horse, with a grett baner of armes and a vj baners-rolles of armes, and a viij dosen penselles and viij dosen skochyons, and iiij grett skochyons of armes, and iiij haroldes, master Garter, master Clarenshux, master Lanckostur, and [blank].

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