Not Just the Tudors21 Aug 2025

Tudor True Crime: Murder of Amy Dudley

**WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of suicide**

On 6 September 1560, Amy Robsart Dudley died after falling down a staircase at Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire. But did she fall? Was she pushed? Or did she throw herself down the stairs? These questions exercised Tudor courtiers and foreign ambassadors at the time. The truth mattered because Amy was the wife of Queen Elizabeth I’s leading courtier and very close friend, Robert Dudley, and his wife’s death could clear the way for Elizabeth to marry Dudley. But in practice, the circumstances of Amy’s death precluded any possibility of a royal marriage.

In this second episode of our Tudor True Crime Month on Not Just the Tudors, first released in February 2023, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Joanne Paul to discuss what really happened - was it an accident, suicide or murder?

MORE:

The House of Dudley >

Robert Dudley: Elizabeth I's Forbidden Love >

Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. Edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.

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