Tudor True Crime: Murder of Amy Dudley

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

**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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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb.
0:02.6	If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:10.5	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries,
0:16.0	including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and enjoy a new
0:23.7	release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:33.5	Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast from the BBC that takes history seriously.
0:39.5	Each week, I'm joined by a comedian and an expert historian to learn and laugh about the past.
0:44.5	In our all-new season, we cover unique areas of history that your school lessons may have missed,
0:49.0	from getting ready in the Renaissance era to the Kellogg Brothers.
0:52.4	Listen to Your Dead to Me now, wherever you get your podcasts.
1:01.6	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb,
1:04.3	and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,
1:07.4	the podcasts in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs,
1:11.9	from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise. Relieved by regular doses of
1:17.9	murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words just the Tudors, but most definitely
1:23.9	also the Tudors.
1:35.0	Murder, wrote the Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton.
1:39.7	Sure, tis a meritorious deed to rid a man of such a woman.
1:49.0	But for the unfortunate victim in my investigation today, the ignoble death she suffered was surely not warranted. She had committed no crime, but she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
1:54.0	She was the wife of a prominent courtier, but not just any old courtier.
1:59.0	Queen Elizabeth the first favourite and potential suitor.
2:04.2	All this month on not just the Tudors, I'm delving into our archives to revisit some of the extraordinary true crimes that shook England in the early modern period.
	...

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