Medieval Murders - Amy Dudley

while most historical murder mysteries were solved not long after the crime was committed sometimes it's left up to modern science and historians to determine how why the person died in this series we'll look at some of the great unsolved deaths of the past bring into life the many theories surrounding them and piecing together the evidence hundreds of years may have passed since these events took place but with the help of forensics criminologists and specialist experts will attempt to solve these medieval murder mysteries according to the official line he died in a drunken brawl perfectly acceptable story is that they were smiled and so died King Edward the second murder and legend has it that Prince Arthur died of the shock of castration it's a possibility most unreliable way of killing somebody England 1560 in a house in the picturesque village of Qunu in Oxfordshire Amy Dudley wife of the Queen's favorite Robert Dudley plays dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs if official accounts of the time are to be believed Amy died from an accidental fall but the suspicious circumstances surrounding her death have led many to question whether it was really an accident or something altogether more sinister there are two slightly unusual features of Amy Dudley's inquest report these are possibly blows to the head before she fell down the stairs which could go with an explanation that involved her her being murdered there are a number of potential suspects in the murder of Amy Robson [Music] some people now think that Amy's death may have had something to do with Queen Elizabeth the first Lord of the Dudley's relationship with the Queen was pretty well known people were bound to be a bit suspicious of his wife dying since it was clear that he might have liked to marry the Queen and possibly the Queen might have liked to marry him while Ellis say that she was murdered on the orders of William Cecil England Secretary of State for me the prime suspect was William Cecil he had most to gain from the death of a mihrab sort and there are even those that believe there's evidence to suggest that lady Amy took her own life given the stigma of suicide it's also possible that she was acting out the revenge on her husband that she would have known that he would have been blamed of the suicide that it would have brought dishonor to him and his family the reason juries would have been particularly sympathetic towards the families of suicides was that suicide was seen as a terrible sin as a crime against oneself a crime against God just what did happen to Amy Dudley [Music] Queen Elizabeth the first was no stranger to controversy during her reign rumors about her private life spread like wildfire through the royal court many people questioned whether she did indeed deserve the title the Virgin Queen stories of her liaisons with male courtiers copy put down to idle gossip but when the wife of her supposed lover was found dead in suspicious circumstances it caused a huge scandal that remains to this day a mihrab thought was the wife of Robert Dudley now he was Elizabeth the first great favorite so much so that it was rumoured that they planned to marry despite the fact that Robert already had a wife Lady Amy was born during the reign of Henry the eighth into a wealthy family in the Norfolk countryside she spent most of her childhood a Stanfield Hall in Norfolk but would also from time to time attend the court of King Edward the sixth with her father Sir John Robert it was probably on one of these visits that she met her future husband Robert Dudley [Music] Dudley was an educated and talented young man from good stock an attractive prospect for the young lady Amy [Music] she married Robert Dudley the son of the Earl of Warwick who later became the Duke of Northumberland the wedding was a lavish affair among the guests who attended with a high nobility of the time including King Edward the 6th of England and a young Princess Elizabeth the future Queen Elizabeth the first [Music] robertson elizabeth had known each other from an early age they first met his children when they attended the royal classroom together and had remained good friends ever since when Elizabeth was finally crowned queen of England Robert Dudley was soon given a position at the royal court in the early years of Elizabeth's reign he became noted as one of the Queen's favorites in fact the Queen's favorites than someone who the Queen was falling in love with Roberts increasing political involvement meant he was having to spend more and more time with the Queen we can be pretty sure that their relationship was a special one an emotional one as as well as the fact that he was her master of the horse and consequently was expected to spend a lot of time with her the close relationship that grew between Roberts and Elizabeth caused a great deal of controversy at the Royal Court Robert Dudley had apartments here at Hampton Court which were very close to Elizabeth's own suspiciously close some courtiers said he could have had easy access to the Queen's bedchamber their relationship was the source of much speculation it said that they were having an affair that they planned to marry Robert definitely wanted to marry the Queen and the Queen would have married Robert had he been single and at one point she turned to the Duke of Norfolk and said to him that she would be married what she meant by that was that she was thinking that Dudley would be able to get to some annulment she after all had been known for 10 years and having no children and there had been annulment many marriages within that kind of time so it may have been that she was thinking that a marriage would be possible but the circumstances was such that that could not have news of scandal traveled fast in Elizabethan England he seems more than likely that Amy would have heard reports of what her husband was up to it's hard to believe she wasn't aware of it and her husband very rarely visited her during the time that Elizabeth was on the throne she hadn't seen him for a year at the time of his death she would almost certainly have heard rumors I mean rumors fly around in that period when there's an absence of newspapers it's hard to believe that she didn't feel depressed and concerned about her future at that time it would have been deemed unacceptable for Elizabeth as Queen of England to marry a man who had just left his wife for her what's an exception could be made if that man was a widower and on the 8th of September 1560 news reached Robert at the Royal Court that is young wife lady Amy who is dead amy was found at the bottom of a flight of stairs now the official reason was that she'd fallen and broken her neck but those stairs were very small there are only a few steps in them it would have been very difficult for her to have died in that way so it's possible that she was murdered and then placed at the bottom of the stairs the circumstances surrounding Emma's death led to accusations against her husband so Dudley called for a coroner's inquest to be held the jury was assembled from witnesses were questioned eventually a verdict of accidental death was reached now the coroner's report has only recently come to light and it showed that she had two injuries to the back of her head that's consistent with the theory that in fact it wasn't an accident it was murder Amy Dudley's coroner's report had remained lost in the National Archives for nearly 450 years but in 2010 dr. Stephen Gunn of Oxford University rediscovered the report journal researched read I found the coroner's inquest report into Amy Dudley's death in the National Archives I was looking for inquest reports into deaths of people doing archery practice and then I found the inquest into Amy Dudley it was filed in a different year from the year that people were expecting to find it when I found it it was immediately obvious that it was Amy Dudley and that it described the death that we all knew about with her falling down stairs and breaking her neck what I didn't know was that no one had found it before I I think I just assumed that because this was a famous accidental death people must have gone and looked for it and then realised that it didn't necessarily tell you anything very different from what the other accounts the death told us the coroner's report give the usual details into the incident but most interesting of all is that it's dirty that Amy had suffered injuries that were previously unknown this is the coroner's inquest report into Amy Dudley's death and it's in the standard format that 16th century coroner's inquest reports were written up in so it tells us where the Inquisition was held and when it tells us who the coroner was who held it and it tells us who the jurors were who gave the verdict about what had happened to Amy their names are all listed here and then it says what they said on their oath about what had happened to Amy and it talks about her falling down stairs but crucially also it talks about the injuries that they found on her body that she had broken her neck falling down the stairs and that that had killed her but also that she had these two other injuries which we didn't know about before we found the coroner's inquest report injuries described as dents they said using the English word in her head and they described as coroner's inquest jurors often did the depth of those wounds which suggests they were actually looking at the wounds on the body one wound in a head a quarter of an inch deep and the other one two inches deep [Music] after the coroner's report was released some historians said it contained details dissented [Music] Stephen Gunn has studied the report in detail and believes there are some unusual aspects that could be deemed suspicious [Music] the inquest report into Amy Dudley's death records two different lots of injuries one is the broken neck that we know about from other sources and the jurors said that she fell down the stairs and broken a neck in falling the other injuries that the report includes which weren't known about from other accounts of the death were to what they called dents in her head and they describe them and this happens it's a standard thing in coroner's inquest reports of the jurors describe the wounds that you can see on the body some people now believe that the injuries reported by the coroner are consistent with bludgeoning [Music] there are two slightly unusual features of Amy Dudley's inquest report so one of them is the people who sat on the jury normally the people who sat on inquest reporter is in 16th century would be respectable but not very important men in towns often tradesmen of one sort or another artisans and so on Amy Douglas report has people of that status but it also has three gentlemen on it that's not unheard of but it suggests that they wanted a serious body of people so that people couldn't say oh those were just stray people you dragged in off the street who would say anything you wanted them to say what we do have are copies of letters from her husband or Robert Dudley to his local agent Thomas Blount encouraging plan to see the investigation carried out properly and to encourage him to have respectable believable people on the jury you could think that or you could think these are the kind of people who would have political connections who maybe could be influenced to come up with the right kind of verdict that would suit Robert Dudley the other unusual thing about Amy Dudley's inquest report is that the jurors asked not to give their verdict when they were first summer there in the end they gave it almost a year after the accident happened now that's unusual because most inquest reports happened within a few days of the death and the jurors would immediately give their verdicts on what they thought had happened so the delay might give us reason to be suspicious on the other hand it's not all that unusual maybe one in 50 something like that inquests in the 1560s had some kind of postponement or delay to them so the idea that the jurors would want to make slightly further inquiries before they came up with the definitive verdict is not necessarily a cause for suspicion on the other hand if you want to read conspiracy and suspicion into it that provides exactly the time lag that you for all sorts of negotiations and settlements to take place to make sure that the convenient verdict was the one that was entered the most unusual new discovery really from the coroner's inquest report was the presence of these two dents or holes here in Amy Dudley's head these dents complicate the question of how she died further because of course she might have got those dents in her head falling down the stairs or particularly because one of them was quite deep they said two inches deep these are possibly blows to the head before she fell down the stairs which could go with an explanation that involved her her being murdered [Music] [Music] it's easy to see why Robert Dudley will be put under suspicion but what would a modern-day barrister pathologist and criminal psychologist make of Emmys death professor Michael Green is a forensic pathologist with over 40 years experience his job is to determine the cause of death and whether it was accidental or foul play Amy Rob's art there are allegations that she was murdered I don't think there's anything to support this but I think it's almost impossible to decide whether it was an accidental death or a natural death leading to the form if we consider first the possibility of accident the people who looked at the body said that she'd broken her neck I don't think this is necessarily sell a freshly found body before stiffening rykor develops the head surprisingly mobile and the layman could well say broken she's got injuries to the back of the head most people who fall down a big fighter stairs and break fall on the face hit their chin and forced their head backwards so real a turn and what else is possible most likely which is hit grab a side of her head and in countries that are off has ruptured an artery between the skull and the brain and had what's called an extra doodle hemorrhage you usually hit that bit of head there if you're going to break your neck you hit your chin and you either stretch it to destruction up at the top and one and two or sometimes down at five and six but as I had everything that's likely natural death small percentage of the population of weaknesses at the various junctions of the blood vessels the arteries at the base of the brain and these blow out and she's called the berry aneurysm sooner or later one of these can go pop it is quite possible in a woman of twenty eight that this is what happened dr. Karen O'Keefe is a criminal psychologist as such he aims to establish whether the crime much is the psychological profile of the suspect [Music] if Robert was involved in the killing of Amy it wouldn't be a crime of passion because there would be a lot of planning involved in that because ultimately they were making it out to look as though a it was a suicide or Bo as an accident because of her illness potentially they could argue it was suicide but either way you're talking about planning so I wouldn't call it a crime of passion in terms of how far somebody would actually go to that lengths of killing their wife simply because they're in love with somebody else and it was seen as an easy way out yes that could happen that really could happen and it's interesting to talk about the psychology of an individual that would see that as the only possible solution to what's going on you'd have to be dealing with somebody who hasn't explored the other possibilities who sees the only possible outcome as being murder and for that reason I would say you're dealing with mental health problems you'd be seen that that's the only way out then yes potentially I could see there being problems with Robert Andrew Rose is a former barrister in cube C he specializes in piecing together historic evidence there would have had to have been an inquest it was a sudden violent unexplained death and you would have expected the jury to be impaneled and in those days the jury would not have been drawn from the general population there would have been managed entry local gentry yeoman farmers people some substance they would all have had to be may alter that was they rule in those days so unless there's some specific evidence that the jury was packed with people who were to find things in a certain way it would look particularly out of the out of the ordinary would it have been possible to doctor the outcome of the coroner's report the coroner had a freehold appointment in those days and he owed his appointment to the monarch and say it was a part of the health system of government really before parliamentary democracy was even thought of so there in every ancient institution and I say they owe their existence to the mark which meant in those days the government so no doubt Karnas only 15 16 17 centuries kept a good eye on a way in which things were going in Whitehall and may well have acted accordingly in sensitive cases [Music] is there really sufficient evidence to suspect Robert Dudley of playing a part in his wife's death some people now believe the term you may have been assassinated by one of our husband's enemies [Music] Tracy Borman his joint chief curator at historic royal palaces she doesn't believe that amy was killed to allow Robert to marry Queen Elizabeth she believes amy was killed to stop the marriage [Music] Robert Dudley was the great favorite of Queen Elizabeth the first it was rumoured that they were in love and planned to marry but there was a problem Robert was already married to a mihrab sight [Music] but two years into Elizabeth's reign Amy was found dead in their home come no place in Oxfordshire now she was found at the bottom of a flight of stairs had she fallen was it just an accident there are theories that it was a good deal more suspicious than that had Elizabeth the first ordered her death or indeed her own husband Robert sadly I think the real culprit was William settled William Cecil Lord Burleigh was Secretary of State for England and chief advisor to the Queen Dudley and Cecil were very much at odds on how best to move the country forward and Cecil worried about the influence Dudley seemed to have over the Queen he was Robert Dudley's great rival at court he had no intention of letting Robert Dudley marry Elizabeth the first so he had his wife murdered because he knew that would create a scandal and that the marriage could never happen after that [Music] there are a number of potential suspects in the murder of a mihrab Sasha including her own husband who it was well known wanted to marry the Queen or maybe Elizabeth at first herself bumped off her rival but for me the prime suspect was William Cecil he had most to gain from the death of a mihrab sort [Music] sessile was the great rival of Robert Dudley he therefore had no intentions of letting him marry the Queen so if he got rid of Roberts wife in a scandalous way such as this he knew that Elizabeth would never be able to marry Robert Dudley could Amy have been pushed down the stairs to implicate her husband and skipper his plans to marry the Queen it has been suggested that somebody threw a me down the stairs I don't think a professional murderer in his right mind is going to do this because the chances of killing somebody by throwing them down the stairs are in fact pretty slim most of them are going to survive and they're going to tell everybody what you've just done to them the other thing of course if there hadn't been any struggle you would have thought that would have been in rip marks on the arms or defense injuries to the hands or she would have been roughed up a bit and what I have seen done is a head injury inflicted first and then the body thrown down the stairs I don't think that's really on if I wanted to get rid of my wife or mistress or whatever the last thing I would do is throw her down the stairs the chances of her surviving and putting me in prison for a very long time would be too good would William Cecil really have had Amy killed for his own political gain I think Liam says what could have employed a third far-future to do this particular act in the circumstances described he was pretty adept at covering his tracks other matters and as we know today that our cases were hitmen are employed where people are big people with a high public persona and everything else to go with it Kings presidents heads of corporations Mafia bosses they can be kept clean they a word not might suffice for something pretty terrible to happen but the main things to ensure that the boss and everything else don't date at their hands and they will repair the deliverable chain of evidence turned a little bit the aim but sometimes because it doesn't always work out that way [Music] or what type of person would order the murder of an innocent woman to use the term sociopath or psychopath in reference to the people that might be involved in kind of a conspiracy to get Amy killed to lay them suspicions on Robert and you know demise of the whole relationship with the Queen I would say that undoubtedly a psychopath because they were doing it with planning they're being very cold and calculating in that respect does that theory hold any water in terms of laying suspicion on Robert I would say that it's actually a very careless attempt to lay suspicion on him because you've got a situation where it can immediately appear to be accidental it can immediately appear to be some form of suicide so it can be one or the other the suspicions lessons in terms of that particular theory from a forensic psychology point of view I don't think I don't think a hold water for me William Cecil was a ruthless and powerful man in Elizabethan England his dislike for Dudley and his politics gave him ample motive to want to stop any potential plans of him marrying the queen but having Amy killed in a way that could be considered accidental seems an unlikely way to frame his enemy could there be another reason behind what happened to Amy on that fateful day one that doesn't involve murder or even an accidental fall is it possible that distraught young Amy took her own life [Music] [Music] dr. Susan Doran is an author and senior research fellow at Oxford University she believes that Amy may have been suffering from depression at the time of her death this is commoner where Amy Rob's art lived and died and this has come to church the last surviving building of that time amy was found dead at the bottom of some eight steps on the evening of the 8th of September 1560 [Music] the coroner said it was misadventure that she had fallen in my view she probably committed suicide the evidence though limited points in that direction [Music] given the stigma over suicide it's also possible that she was acting out revenge on her husband that she would have known that he would have been blamed for the suicide that he would have brought dishonor to him and his family and that in a sense she was taking agency trying to get back at him for the way that he treated her I strongly suspect that Amy committed suicide she had the motive she was I think depressed at her husband's absence and the rumors surrounding him there's evidence that on the day that she died she sent away her maid servants and men servants to the fair at Abingdon and she grew very angry when one of her gentlewoman didn't want to go we also know that Amy had been saying prayers asking God to deliver her from her sad situation so the emotional circumstances seemed to be appropriate for a suicide [Music] would an Elizabethan jury have doctored the outcome of the coroner's report to cover up a suicide [Music] the reason juries would have been particularly sympathetic towards the families of suicides was that suicide was seen as a terrible sin as a crime against oneself a crime against God coroner's inquest reports into suicides describe the person killing themselves acting at the instigation of the devil so there was a issue of shame for the family there's also an issue of extreme disruption if you like the suicides of goods would be confiscated so if someone would say the father of a family then his family would lose all his goods and someone who committed suicide couldn't be buried in Christian burial in a churchyard so that they wouldn't be buried with other members of their family in the churchyard where the rest of their family would then carry on going to church for the rest of their lives and so on so suicides it extremely socially and spiritually disruptive act and if jurors could spare families from the consequences of that then you could see that out of out of charity which is a social value that the 16th century would take very seriously out of charity they might want to spare people the consequences of that if a me did commit suicide why did she choose to do it by throwing herself down the stairs it's interesting in this particular case if we're talking about suicide and and dealing with the pain of what she was going through as being the main motivation undoubtedly if she reached a point where it appeared that there was no resolve no outcome no way out of the pain then I could understand her reaching the point of suicide for somebody to throw themselves off a banister or out a window is not an unusual form of suicide for somebody to throw themselves down the stairs is actually highly unusual if they're actually going through with it there would be a sense of planning in terms of the effectiveness of what I am about to do throwing yourself down the stairs is not an effective way of killing yourself because you could fall down the stairs and survive yes it's not a surefire method to kill yourself by throwing yourself down eight steps even if there were steep steps but possibly she wanted to do herself some damage that it was a kind of suicide attempt or she wanted to evoke the sympathy of her husband a cry for help if you like while throwing yourself down the stairs may not be a particularly foolproof way of committing suicide we do know that lady Amy may have been in a fragile state of mind seemingly abandoned by her husband and suffering the indignity of being the subject of gossip at the Royal Court it seemed plausible that she may have taken drastic measures but when all the stories and evidence are taken into account what are we left with [Music] although it was declared that Sammy died from an accidental fall the circumstances surrounding her death have led many to question the official account was she murdered on the orders of her husband Robert Dudley so that he could be free to marry Queen Elizabeth the first could it be that she was the victim of a political assassination carried out to stop Douglass plans to Wed Elizabeth or did Amy at her lowest point consider her situation so desperate that she felt the only way out was to tragically take her own life [Music] with the rumors of Emmys death still circulating to this day it's hard to separate fact from fiction but is there any real evidence to prove that amy was a victim of murder when you hit somebody on the back of the head you might render them unconscious well then when you throw them down the stairs you've got no guarantee that they're going to break the neck at the bottom they may very well wake up the next morning and remember who it was who hit them it's a possibility but it's one that I'd exclude my own feeling about Amy is that she has died of either an unfortunate accident and tripped or she has had a subarachnoid but whilst I can't exclude murder completely I think it unlikely and again if she'd been assaulted I think that the jury of 7 to 15 people good and true who were asked to look at the body unless they'd been paid off first would have seen injuries to their hands grip marks on the forearms something like that so can't exclude foul play but he slowed down on my list of possibilities should we simply accept the findings of the coroner's report our problem in interpreting the events behind 16th century coroner's inquests is that we're as much dependent as people or at least a central government was at the time on what the jurors said had happened so it's perfectly possible that juries for example reporting on what was probably a suicide reported it as an accident obviously it depends on the circumstances in which people killed themselves people who hanged themselves or cut their throats for example is very hard to claim that that was an accident people who fell into a river if they had a bucket with them if they were fully clothed it was very easy to say well they probably went to get some water and they just fell in by mistake different kinds of suicides left more room for juries to on the side of generosity in claiming that it was probably an accident once they'd done that then we're none the wiser we can't get back behind what the jurors said in order to understand what had really happened [Music] did idle gossip a court later unfounded accusations in the case of Amy Rob's are clearly a huge rumor machine was set up after she died but on the face of it it looks plausible but she did commit suicide in the sense that she was said to be depressed she may have been suffering from some severe possibly painful illness and also she was fully aware of her husband's infidelities and it may be in those circumstances that she felt it was all too much for us decided to take her own life in a very simple and obvious way falling downstairs [Music] the Elizabethan Royal Court was amongst other things a place where people came to exchange news and of course gossip with all eyes firmly on the Queen and those close to her and regardless of whether it was true or not it once had taken long for word to spread about her relationship with Robert Dudley so with over 450 years have him passed how do we separate the truth from the lies and the innocent from the guilty experts seem to agree that while there's room for speculation that Robert Dudley may have had his wife murdered so he could marry the Queen it seems to be an extreme measure as there were other alternatives he could have explored such as divorce or annulment he would also have been aware a suspicion would have fallen on him so we have a young healthy woman no evidence of natural disease we don't think she's been drinking she's at the bottom of the stairs either she's tripped over her long dress or night dress and fallen and got herself a bleed within the skull the injuries to the back of the head I don't think matter at all they look worse than they really are because she when you bruise the back of your head you get a big soggy swelling and the lay man who feels it it says oh dear I can stink me fingers into this so that's just postmortem and nothing to worry about so whoever is alleged to have killed Amy as far as I'm concerned he's off the hook while William Cecil would almost certainly have wanted to put a stop to Dudley marrying Elizabeth he would have understood that killing lady Amy would not just have made Dudley's suspect but the Queen - which in turn would have weakened his own position a court saw who some historians have suggested might have arranged her death in order to discredit Dudley with the Queen that it just doesn't hold out it to my mind because vessel would have realized that the Roman Catholics would have taken advantage of this in order to discredit Elizabeth and that was the last thing that he wanted for Amy's marriage to have been the subjects of public gossip scandal and ridicule he seems reasonable to accept that she may have been suffering from depression and given the fact that she'd been old what's abandoned by a husband it seems possible that she took the desperate and tragic choice to take her own life [Music] with his wife deceased Robert Dudley was now free to marry Elizabeth but by now their chances of having a future together was looking bleak his circumstances were very difficult his relationship with the Queen was pretty well known people were bound to be a bit suspicious of his wife dying since it was clear that he might have liked to marry the Queen and possibly the Queen might have liked to marry him although she was going to stand by Dudley she didn't believe he was guilty of the murder nonetheless it was going to be very difficult to marry him because it would bring her dishonor and possibly accusations that she had been complicit in the murder she did it she did it for a couple of months about what to do there was only a few months afterwards she decided marriage would be impossible in those kinds of circumstances there were rumors of the French Court that she was behind the murder people were laughing behind her back in the end Dudley remained as her very close friend her dearest brother as she calls him and she gave him great honours he was raised to the Oldham of Leicester he was given properties of great worth he was given all kinds of rewards and honours he became the leading man at her Court and he had to make do with that instead of taking the queen's hand Dudley did eventually remarry he became way to a woman called Latisse Knowles she'd been maid of honor to Her Majesty the Queen when Elizabeth found out about the marriage she's reported to have banished Dudley's new wife from the Royal Court famously the Queen never took a husband she reigned on the throne for 44 years died in England through war political troubles and religious turmoil Elizabeth the first died in 1603 married only to her country and her people [Music]

Channel: Hal Monroe

Views: 12,712

Rating: 4.7142859 out of 5

Keywords: Medieval, Murders, Dudley

Id: VBO-Ks2R8p4

Length: 43min 13sec (2593 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2017