In his novel Kenilworth, Sir Walter Scott tells his romanticized version of the death of Amy Robsart, wife to Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, favored by Queen Elizabeth I. Set in 1560, the novel seeks to, as Scott writes in his introduction, equal the “delineation of Queen Mary” by providing a similar story “respecting ‘her sister and her foe,’ the celebrated Elizabeth.” He provides the caveat that, as a Scot naturally more sympathetic to Mary, he will hope that prejudice, as natural to the author “as his native air,” will not greatly affect his “sketch.”
As in all his novels, Scott provides information regarding his sources. The main source used as the basis for this story is Ashmore’s Antiquities of Berkshire, and he includes a lengthy quoted passage that outlines the Earl’s supposed murder of his wife, a crime he committed with the hope that Queen Elizabeth would marry him. The description of Dudley reports that he was “singularly well-featured, being a great favorite to Queen Elizabeth,” whose wife feared for her life, and for good reason. A “professor of physic” at New College, Oxford, stated that when he refused to participate in poisoning the “poor, innocent lady,” the Earl “endeavored to displace him in the court.” The description of Amy Robsart, as a woman persuaded that “her present disease was abundance of melancholy,” would arouse sympathy in the coldest of readers.
Robsart’s murder proved vicious. Men “first stifling her, or else strangling her… afterward flung her down a pair of stairs and broke her neck.” Bribed by the Earl, the local coroner ruled the death accidental when Robsart’s father demanded an investigation. In an act portraying great grief, the Earl later exhumed the body of “so virtuous a lady,” dear “to his tender heart,” and had her reburied in St. Mary’s church in Oxford “with great pomp and solemnity.” Several men supposedly involved in the deed later confessed, as each died miserable, guilt-ridden deaths. As for the Earl, he died from poisoning, with the location of his murder disputed; some claim it occurred at one Cornbury Lodge, while others placed it at the ironically named Killingworth in 1588. The famous Renaissance poet and playwright Ben Jonson wrote that Leicester, apparently intent on another in a string of murders, had given poison to “his lady,” telling her it was a treatment for her fainting. He departed and then returned to court, at which point his lady, not knowing the liquid was poison, gave it to Leicester. Not recognizing its source, he drank it and died.
The story eventually influenced many ballads and plays, one drama named the “Yorkshire Tragedy” containing the lines, “The only way to charm a woman’s tongue / Is, break her neck—a politician did it.” Scott borrows incidents and names from Ashmole but also cites a favorite poem by Mickle, published in Evan’s Ancient Ballads. He readily admits his easy influence by all things romantic, as one verse from the poem named for the setting of the murder, “Cumnor Hall,” demonstrates, its speaker using flowers as symbols for both Amy and Elizabeth: “Yes! now neglected and despised, / The rose is pale, the lily’s dead; / But he that once their charms so prized, / Is sure the cause those charms are fled.”
Scott’s version does adhere to many facts regarding the murder, although they are inserted within a romance format. Amy Robsart is persuaded to marry the Earl of Leicester in secret; because Queen Elizabeth considers him a favorite, the Earl does not want her to learn of the marriage. Robsart is hidden away at Cumnor Place, outside Oxford, by the dastardly “moral monster” Richard Varney. Because of his attentions to Robsart, Varney appears to be her lover to outsiders. One of those men is Robsart’s ex-lover, Edmund Tressilian, who remains bitter over his rejection. When his attempts to convince her to return to her home fail, Tressilian charges Varney at court with abduction of Robsart. Varney declares to the queen that Robsart is his wife in order to protect the Earl, and Elizabeth summons Robsart to Kenilworth, one stop on the queen’s royal progress around England. Varney and Leicester fail in their plea to Robsart that she claim she is wife to Varney, and she rebelliously declares her true identity to the queen after an adventurous escape from Cumnor Place to Kenilworth. Leicester believes her to be involved in an affair with Tressilian, particularly when she is discovered hiding in his room at Kenilworth. However, she has no ulterior motive but only wants to be reunited with her husband. Leicester’s anger toward Robsart causes him to send her home to Cumnor Place and charge Varney to murder her. He cries in the highly charged dialogue that marks the story as romance, “she shall die the death of a traitress and adulteress, well merited both by the laws of God and man!” Varney willingly agrees to the murder plan, having already been spurned by Robsart, who fought off Varney’s attention with the help of the monster guard, Laurence Staples, as Varney attempted to rape her.
When the Earl realizes Robsart’s innocence, he repents his action and confesses his marriage to an outraged Elizabeth. Despite efforts to resist her fate, Robsart dies in an “accidental fall,” when Tressilian is unable to rescue her. In an especially cruel act, Varney imitates the Earl’s voice, to which Robsart responds, leading to her death. As Varney’s partner in crime, Foster, passionately notes, “Thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections. It is a seething of the kid in the mother’s milk!”
Peopled with romantic characters, such as the artist Wayland, the ne’er-do-well Michael Lambourne, and Staples, in addition to interestingly imagined historical figures, including the queen, Robsart’s father, and Sir Walter Raleigh, the plot manages to retain tension, even though readers already know its outcome. Scott adds liberal doses of detailed imagery to enhance his scenes. For instance, Elizabeth is described as wearing a “sylvan dress, which was of a pale-blue silk, with silver lace… approached in form to that of the ancient Amazons,” a look well suited “to the dignity of her mien,” which “long habits of authority had rendered in some degree too masculine to be seen to the best advantage in ordinary female weeds.” Such gender-linked description interests feminist critics as well as new historicist critics. The scenes of pomp and outrageous drama framing Elizabeth during her visit to Kenilworth provide additional engaging imagery. Based on real reports of the pageantry produced for the queen, specifically a reenactment of the tale of the Lady of the Lake, the woman portraying that Lady “amid her long silky black hair […] wore a crown or chaplet of artificial mistletoe and bore in her hand a rod of ebony tipped with silver. Two nymphs attended on her, dressed in the same antiques and mystical guise.”
Finally, Scott imbues his tale with a surprising irony that casts doubt over the Earl’s motivation for the killing of his wife. Throughout the fictional version of what history purports to be a true story, Robsart carries with her a letter of great import. Her husband believes the letter will implicate her as an adulterer with Tressilian. When he finally procures the letter, he discovers it simply explained his wife’s flight from Cumnor Place to Kenilworth, and her need for the protection of Tressilian upon her arrival there. She had come to Kenilworth seeking only Leicester’s protection and care. He allowed the covetous Varney to convince him that she possessed motives that never existed. This understanding moves him to confess his marriage to the queen and to send, too late, Tressilian to rescue Amy Robsart. He also dies a gentler death, although still by poison, than in real-life accounts, a proper ending for a romance character.
Bibliography
Kerr, James. Fiction Against History: Scott as Storyteller. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Scott, Sir Walter. Introduction to Kenilworth. New York: Wm. L. Allison, n.d.
Shaw, Harry E. The Forms of Historical Fiction: Sir Walter Scott and His Successors. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983.
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