50 Amye Robsart. 
supply. To keep to my point; what are the authorities upon which 
Sir Walter Scott based his popular novel of Kenilworth? He tells 
us himself. The first is Mickle’s very beautiful ballad, which begins: 
‘¢ The dews of summer night did fall, 
The Moon, sweet Regent of the sky, 
Silver’d the walls of Cumnor Hall, 
And many an oak that grew thereby.” 
His other authority (as stated by himself, at the end of the novel, 
when first published) was “ Ashmole’s Antiquities of Berkshire :” 
and, he adds, “ the story is alluded to in many other works which 
treat of Leicester’s history.” As Sir Walter says nothing about 
having taken any trouble to inquire into the truth or probability of 
it, I suppose he believed it to be true. In a later edition of Sir 
‘Walter’s novels there is a preface to Kenilworth, written by I know 
not whom, but it would seem by himself, in which (his novel having 
from the first encountered some censure) he qualifies the matter 
thus: “If we can trust ‘Ashmole’s Antiquities of Berkshire’ there 
was but too much ground for the tradition which charges Leicester 
with the murder of his wife.” He then gives Ashmole’s narrative 
at length.t 
Ashmole’s so-called “ Antiquities of Berkshire” is one of the most 
meagre of publications: he died 1692, one hundred and thirty-two 
years after Amye Robsart’s death. His book was not published by 
himself, and consists of very little more than notes of epitaphs in 
Berkshire Churches which he had visited, and which notes were 
found among his papers, and were printed after his death. Among 
them was also found the story of Amye’s death: but it had been 
merely copied from another authority. That other authority was a 
much older one called “ Leicester’s Commonwealth.” This was one 
of the most virulent compilations that ever was put together, and 
1 Several writers upon this Cumnor story, copying one from another, have 
named our old Wiltshire friend, John Aubrey, as the author of the tale which 
Ashmole copied. I have not been able to find a single word about it in Aubrey’s 
MSS. He has preserved many anecdotes and “on dits” of his own day: and 
many that came down to him by tradition ; but for this he is not answerable— 
so far as I know. 
