Rainthorpe Hall was the home of Amy Robsart. In 1550 she married Robert Dudley, who became a favourite at Elizabeth I's court. When Amy fell ill, there were rumours that her husband had posioned her - Robert was aiming at a royal marriage. Two years later, her body was found in Cumnor Hall near Oxford. . .

Amy Robsart.

Amy Robsart lived at Rainthorpe Hall before her family moved to Stanfield, where in 1549 she first met Robert Dudley.

She was married to Robert Dudley on June 5th 1550 at Sheen (Richmond) Palace. Both she and Dudley were only 18. It was a grand occasion with even King Edward VI attending the wedding.

However, only eight years later, Elizabeth I came to the throne and she made Robert Dudley Master of the Horse and it was widely known that she greatly favoured him. So it was that he spent more time at court with the Queen than he ever did at his marital home with Amy. It is widely believed that had Dudley been a bachelor at the time of Elizabeth's succession to the throne wedding bells would have been rung out for him and Elizabeth. During this time Amy fell ill, and rumours began to spread that Robert was poisoning her in order to marry the Queen.

In 1560, the Dudleys, or rather Amy, lived in Oxfordshire in Cumnor Place. It was the 8th September 1560 and Amy insisted that all her servants attend the fair at Abingdon, which was some three miles from the Hall, thus leaving her alone in the house, or was she?!

It is impossible to imagine what might have been going through Amy's mind on that day or why it was that she emptied the Hall. It is known that she was extremely unhappy with the state of affairs. There were also rumours that she had breast cancer, which in those days would have inevitably led to death.

Rainthorpe Hall.

On the other hand it might be that somebody knowing that Amy would be alone took advantage of this fact, and trying to curry favour with Lord Dudley, threw his unwanted wife down the stairs, thus freeing him to marry the queen.

Or perhaps Dudley himself arranged for his wife to be done away with. Many theories have been suggested but unfortunately we will never really know the circumstances behind her death. Murder, accident or suicide! What is known that when the servants returned from the fair they found their mistress at the bottom of the Hall's staircase with a broken neck!

The widowed Robert Dudley ordered a lavish funeral. The guilty conscience of a murderer or the remorse of a neglectful husband? An inquest was held into the circumstances of her death but the conclusion was that it had been an accident.

Though what legal body in their right mind would convict the favourite of the Queen of England? It ruined Robert's chances of marrying the Queen, however, who instead made him Earl of Leicester.

Amy reputedly appeared to Robert just before his own death, and haunts the scene both of the tragedy and her happier childhood. Her ghost was seen at the Old Hall shortly after her death and continues to appear there. Her ghost also appears in the nearby Rectory, where windows started to be found opened by themselves after being carefully closed and bolted the night before.

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