00:00In 1560, Queen Elizabeth I had fallen deeply in love.
00:04The man beside her was Robert Dudley, handsome, ambitious, and the Queen's master of the horse.
00:11He was almost always at Elizabeth's side.
00:14They rode together.
00:15They danced together.
00:17They appeared so close that foreign ambassadors began reporting across Europe that the Queen
00:22of England was preparing to marry Dudley.
00:25But there was one problem.
00:27Robert Dudley already had a wife.
00:30Her name was Amy Robsett.
00:31She was 28 years old and had been married to Robert since she was 18.
00:36While her husband lived at the dazzling royal court beside the most powerful woman in England,
00:42Amy was living far away at a country house called Cumnor Place, near Oxford.
00:47Robert had not visited her in more than a year, and England was talking.
00:52That summer, the Spanish ambassador reportedly wrote home that Elizabeth was simply waiting
00:58for Amy Robsett to die so she could marry Dudley.
01:01Amy heard the rumors.
01:03According to testimony from one of her servants, she became so distressed that she was heard
01:08praying alone in her room, asking God to rescue her from despair.
01:13Then came September 8, 1560.
01:16It was a Sunday, and Amy did something strangely deliberate.
01:20A large fair was being held in nearby Abingdon, and Amy insisted that every servant in the house
01:27attended.
01:28She ordered them all to leave.
01:30One of her companions, Mrs. Ottingsells, reportedly protested that a respectable woman should not
01:36be seen at a public fair on a Sunday.
01:39Amy became angry and refused to change her mind.
01:42By midday, Cumnor Place was almost completely empty.
01:47Amy was alone.
01:48Hours later, the servants returned from the fair.
01:52They were laughing and talking about everything they had seen in town.
01:56Then they entered the house and stopped.
01:59It was completely silent.
02:01They called for Amy.
02:02There was no answer.
02:04Then they found her.
02:05She was lying dead at the bottom of the staircase.
02:09Her neck was broken.
02:10But investigators noticed something else.
02:14Amy had two injuries to her head.
02:16A small cut near her temple and another, deeper wound toward the back of her skull.
02:21The staircase had fewer than ten steps and was not particularly steep.
02:26So how had a healthy 28-year-old woman died there?
02:30Within a day, news of Amy's death reached Robert Dudley at Windsor, where he was with Elizabeth's
02:36court.
02:37Dudley immediately demanded an investigation.
02:41He called for a coroner and a jury and insisted in writing that he had played no part in his
02:47wife's death.
02:47But suspicion was already spreading.
02:50According to later accounts, Dudley's representatives arrived at Cumnor carrying gifts for members
02:56of the jury.
02:57He also reportedly paid the owner of the house a substantial sum and had influence over the
03:03selection of jurors.
03:04One of the jurors was even connected to his household.
03:08Then came the verdict.
03:10Misfortune.
03:11An accidental death.
03:13But the verdict did little to silence the rumors.
03:16Across England and Europe, people began asking the same question.
03:20How did Amy Robsett really die?
03:23For more than four centuries, historians have debated competing explanations for what happened
03:28inside that nearly empty house.
03:31And Amy Robsett's mysterious death became one of the darkest scandals surrounding the love
03:36between Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley.
03:39All yours.
03:39We'll be back.
