my Lord of Leicester for the death of his wife", and what had moved him to say that "the death of the Earl of Leicester's wife" was "procured by any person". Appleyard, instead of giving answers, retracted all his statements; he had also requested to see the coroner's report and, after studying it in his cell, wrote that it fully satisfied him and had dispelled his concerns. Early traditions and theories From the early 1560s there was a tradition involving Sir Richard Verney, a gentleman-retainer of Robert Dudley from Warwickshire, in whose house Lady Amy Dudley had stayed in 1559. A 1563 chronicle, which is heavily biased against the House of Dudley and was probably written by the Protestant activist John Hales, describes the rumours:[t]he Lord Robert's wife brake her neck at Forster's house in Oxfordshire … her gentlewomen being gone forth to a fair. Howbeit it was thought she was slain, for Sir ----- Varney was there that day and whylest the deed was doing was going over the fair and tarried there for his man, who at length came, and he said, thou knave, why tarriest thou? He answered, should I come before I had done? Hast thou done? quoth Varney. Yeah, quoth the man, I have made it sure. … Many times before it was bruited by the Lord Robert his men that she was dead. … This Verney and divers his servants used before her death, to wish her death, which made the people to suspect the worse. The first printed version of Amy Robsart's alleged murder appeared in the satirical libel Leicester's Commonwealth, a notorious propaganda work against the Earl of Leicester written by Catholic exiles in 1584. Here Sir Richard Verney goes directly to Cumnor Place, forces the servants to go to the market, and breaks Lady Amy's neck before placing her at the foot of the stairs; the jury's verdict is murder, and she is buried first secretly at the Cumnor parish church before being dug up and reburied at Oxford. Verney dies, communicating "that all the devils in hell" tore him in pieces; his servant (who was with him at the murder) having been killed in prison by Dudley's means before he could tell the story. Enhanced by the considerable influence of Leicester's Commonwealth, the rumours about Amy Robsart's death developed into a tradition of embellished folklore. As early as 1608, a