74 Amye Robsart. 
a very untoward accident: and that it shou/d just happen when every- 
body was saying that something wow/d happen was undoubtedly one 
of those very extraordinary coincidences which it is not easy to 
explain to public satisfaction. She was buried by Dudley in St. 
Mary’s Church, Oxford, with great expense and maguificence: a 
number of ladies attending as mourners, followed by the University 
dignitaries, and Dudley’s friends, some of them of the Privy 
Council. The expenses of the funeral are mentioned in one of the 
account books on the table. (Appendix, No. V.) The exact site 
of the vault had been forgotten, but it has lately been ascertained 
and an inscription ordered to be cut upon the top step of the three 
steps rising into the chancel. I observed, in an Oxford newspaper, 
mentioning this circumstance, that the Secretary of the Architectural 
Society there, in sending to the paper some extracts from an old 
MS. account of the funeral, says: “The more the death of Amye, 
Lady Dudley, is investigated the clearer does it appear that the 
traditional accounts are almost entirely wrong. It is a source of 
great regret to all lovers of historical truth that the well-known 
ballad of “ Cumnor Hall,’ and the more famous novel of “ Kenil- 
worth,” 
should serve to perpetuate historical fallacies long since 
proved to be false.””’ 
In that opinion I certainly agree.! 
Another favourable feature in this case is, that distinguished 
men of the day who were familiar with Dudley harboured no sus- 
picion of unkind feelings on his part towards the wife of his youth. 
Among them particularly, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Ambassador 
at Paris, of a party wholly opposed to Dudley in religion, being a 
Roman Catholic. (Appendix, VI.) Also Sir Henry Sydney, father 
of the famous Philip. Sir Henry told the Spanish Ambassador that 
1 But I do not know whether the villagers of Cumnor will so easily give up 
their tradition. They used, in my Oxford days, to adhere very closely to the 
rumour of “foul play.” The magnificent funeral had dwindled down into 
this legend, from the mouth of the old parish clerk, viz: That ‘‘ Madame 
Dudley’s ghost did use to walk in Cumnor Park, and that it walked so obsti~ 
nately that it took no less than nine parsons from Oxford ‘ to lay her.’ That 
they at last laid her in a pond, called ‘Madam Dudley’s Pond:’ and moreover, 
wonderful to relate, the water in that pond was never known to freeze after- 
wards.” See also Wilts Arch. Mag., i. 343, 
