By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, FSA. 73 
own doing, and a very strange thing indeed for her todo. (2), The 
narratives say that the body was hastily buried, and that her father, 
Sir John Robsart, ordered it to be exhumed for the coroner, 
Amye’s body was not buried: for the inquest was already sitting 
when Sir Thomas Blount arrived at Cumnor: and instead of 
the matter being hastily smuggled through, it was most closely 
inquired into, in the presence of all the lady’s own friends and 
relatives that could be got together, under no restraint from the 
presence of Dudley himself. Nor could her father Sir John Robsart 
have given any order, for he had himself died several years before, 
viz., in A.D. 1553. 
3. Though (as I said in the earlier part of this paper) the evidence 
found at Longleat does not clear up the whole mystery, still its 
tendency is to give a new complexion to many of the circumstances, 
It certainly does not present any traces of estrangement between 
Dudley and his wife, nor of dark arrangements for putting her out 
of the way. 
Mr. Pettigrew (whom I mentioned as having written upon this 
subject) accepts the verdict of the jury, that it was pure accident. 
* But,” he adds, “there are at the same time some circumstances 
that lead to a suspicion that it might have been her own act. The 
strange stories which Sir Thomas Blount heard from the lady’s 
maid: Amye’s prayers to be delivered from desperation and the 
sending all servants out of the house for the day, for them to find 
her dead when they returned.” These circumstances lead Mr. 
Pettigrew to think that possibly she might for some time have been 
labouring under mental infirmity, and that care and seclusion in the 
house of friends with female companions about her, may have been 
desirable, instead of her appearing about the Court, where her‘con- 
duct might have excited remark and have been inconvenient. I 
would add that the prevailing whisperings and slanders about the 
Queen’s only waiting for her death, and that treachery was on foot 
against her, may, indeed must, have reached her: and it is not 
difficult to believe that continual suspicion of being marked, may 
have had a depressing, perhaps a fatal effect. However, after a pro- 
longed enquiry, the jury found it mere accident. For Dudley it was 
