Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep24: Loremen S4 Ep 24 - The Ghost of Dudley's Castle

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

What connects Queen Elizabeth I with a pond in Oxfordshire that just won't freeze? The answer is the ghost of Dudley's Castle. And we're not talking about Dudley Castle in the West Midlands. We're talking about Cumnor Hall, home to Robert Dudley and his ill-fated wife Amy Robsart. Prepare thyself for a Tudor tale of betrayal and death by misadventure. And look out for a triptych of Loremen staples - a poem, an accent and a blowing of something wide open! Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

We're all built a little differently, and that includes our feet. Hi, I'm Sean from New Balance Toronto, and we know everyone has uniquely shaped feet, which is why New Balance shoes come in widths from narrow to extra wide. Our fit specialists are trained to measure and scan your feet to determine the proper size, width, and level of support for your perfect fit. Don't just guess, get the right shoes the first time. New Balance Toronto, your neighborhood fit specialist for over 24 years. Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore.

I'm James Shakeshaft. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And Alistair, we are currently in December. December. The most Christmassy of all the months. Yes, it is. Yeah. And so I've got a bit of a spooky tale of lost love and scandal. Does it involve Christmas in any way?

No. Great. Perfect. What's it called? The Ghost of Dudley's Castle. so to business for this um this week's tale i'm juggling you're juggling i've got a number of texts oh okay as in books as sources for this not as in like just a thread sms's yes and a couple of mms's oh any emojis in there sadly if there were to be any emojis they would be the sadder end of the emoji scale the the emoji register did you know i just discovered this on twitter because it took twitter by storm is it about elon musk it's no it's

not oh it's the only other thing that was happening on Twitter. It's the other thing that everyone's talking about. Go on. You know the sad face emoji? Do you know what that's called? No. It's called frown. Oh. Now, I ask you this as an Englishman to Englishman.

Is that emoji frowning? No. Now, our American listeners will be spitting out their hot coffee and their Coca-Colas with shock. I've got a feeling they're not gonna forget about it hey i'm listening to a podcast here because they're um in the film midnight cowboy would they be furrowing their brow and frowning they will be furrowing their brow and frowning because americans i just learned and i think you might already have known this think that the sad face

where you where you turn the corners of your mouth down, look, I shied a baby, they think that is frowning. Whereas we correctly believe that frowning is when you furrow your brow into a V shape. Yeah. And the mouth is not involved at all. But also, like, I don't think English people do that facial expression, the sad face.

Like, you don't really do that face, do you? Only if I want to pretend that I'm not that bothered that I didn't get given any sweeties. It's like, it's a symbol, isn't it? Like, other expressions happen naturally, whereas that one has a sort of symbolic value. You do the sad face face. Yes, it is quite performative it's extremely performative so take that america however in defense of america on this point all right um that has made sense of the phrase turn that frown upside down turn that frown upside down yes that was the first thing i said because otherwise i'm shocked if i were to turn my frown upside down, suddenly I'm shocked. Yes.

As soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, that's what that phrase means. Yeah, the whole world's changed. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Which country's scientist did the study that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile? I'm glad you asked james i don't think that's based on a real scientific study and i'm not actually 100 sure it's true either whether whichever type of frown you're talking about when you do the the forehead one it does

sort of feel like you're doing like sit-ups with your face my jowls are tired from trying to pull that weird sad face that I never normally do. It's exhausting. Well, what a load of learning. Well, yes. Yes, some of that might have been learning. So what's your story about this week? That's a nice little bit of levity before we get into a very sad story. Although it starts happily with a tale of young love. A boy and a girl. Just. A boy and a girl.

Just an innocent boy and a girl. Born in the 1500s. On the same day, almost the same hour. They grew up together. Everyone thought they were destined to be together. However, she was Queen Elizabeth I. The Virgin Queen. So a bit of a spoiler there.

Not an insult. And he was Robert Dudley. And he grew up into a handsome ladies' man. He married at 18 to a lady called Amy Robsartart who the eagle eared of you will have noticed is not queen elizabeth good listening skills yeah bobby duds he had a wandering eye and he had an eye for the ladies and he was a charmer was he a one of the rover a lot of these fellas were at that time wild rovers i think he was a bit of a wild rover yes yeah so he married amy robsart uh when queen elizabeth or probably princess at the time was not happy with that uh but she still

she still held a torch for old bobby duds and in fact their ongoing friendship was kind of a bit scandalous he was one of the many suitors that Queen Elizabeth was linked with. The Spanish ambassador. Spambassador. Yes, the spambassador. Would gossip, saying that one of the reasons that... Say it in the accent, James. If you're going to do the spambassador's voice,

do it in a Spanish accent, please. One of the reasons she will provide no air it's i mean he's spent a lot of time outside of the country obviously he's a lot of time in france yeah he's a spamb ambassador travels the world basically sort of laying the blame of the fact that she's not going to give england uh an heir to the throne at the fact that she's you know spending time with this married man bobby duds robert dudley yeah there's a lot of scurrilous rumors going about the place amy robsart wants to watch her back that someone is gonna poison her sir william cecil, Billy says. The cesspit. The Secretary of State,

he had directly told Her Majesty that he hoped God would direct her to procure a father for her children. He told the Spambassador that he thought this intimacy between Elizabeth and Dudley would ruin the country. And he indiscreetly expressed

his opinion that Dudley was thinking of killing his wife and the wife Amy was said to be ill but Cecil Billy says the cesspit said that was not true that she was well and taking care not to be poisoned right some people think she was actually ill, potentially ill, even with breast cancer. But that wasn't what killed her. Right. Because she was found on the 8th of September, 1560, at the bottom of the stairs at her house,

Cumnor Place. Deaded. Wow. She'd fallen down the stairs. Well, she was found at the bottom. All we can say for sure is she was found at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck. I was going to say, James, are you a local police officer investigating this? Well, bottom of the stairs seems like a clear case of falling down the stairs to me.

Case closed. Case closed. There was an inquest which did provide a verdict of misadventure for an accident yeah yeah but there was a lot of rumor mill going around that place there was a big funeral for her in oxford almost a state level funeral this was because you know bobby dudley was a member of the court i think the king of england had been at his wedding, although at that time the King of England was nine. Still, pretty impressive.

Probably messing around, sliding around on his knees. I think it's impressive to be King of England at nine. That's not to be sniffed at. That's true, yeah. I hadn't achieved anything by nine. So that would be Edward VI? Eddie VI. So, yeah, she had a big funeral, almost state-level funeralinkle uh robert dudley didn't go her husband i believe that is um what we would call orcs that

is at minimum orcs that's awks not orcs yes yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely yeah yeah you do have to specify that especially in ox Oxford, because of token. Token? Because of all the token going on there. Yeah. That opened up the way for Bobby Duds to marry Queen Elizabeth, right? Yeah. Happily ever after, right?

Simple. No. No. Because anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of England's kings and queens will know that Queenabeth did not marry she died the virgin queen not an insult actually a compliment she still liked duds but there was so much scandal going on because of this moida a potential murder james potential murder potential murder the spambusada he's still sticking his oar in, wrote on the 22nd of January,

There was hardly a person who did not believe there'd been foul play. The preachers in their pulpits spoke of it. Even old, um, the cesspit. Yeah. Billy Sess, Sir Billy Sess, sorry. He wrote a note about possible husbands of the queen and reasons against e of l which is the earl of leicester robert dudley number four was he is infamed by the death of his whiff

in infamed by the death of his whiff i'm guessing he meant wife that's number four what were the other what were the first three reasons not to marry him apart from possible wife murderer he's a bit smarmy two bad vibes three bobby duds silly name uh four infamed by the death of his wife yeah so there's never really been a certain no one's ever really certainly said what did happen to Amy. What happened that fateful night? None of her servants were there. In fact, no, all of her servants have been sent away

apart from two who were busy playing backgammon at the time. Right, well, they can't be expected to have heard anything over the sound of backgammon. It's such a high-octane game. Yeah, I think a lot of the noise of backgammon is people going, what? Isn't there triangles and discs? Huh?

How do I play this? Just people shouting, what are the rules? It's a gambling game, backgammon. I didn't realise that. Really? Yeah, it's played for money. So it got banned a lot. Perhaps that's why they don't teach you it when you're a kid.

Maybe that's why none of us know how to play backgammon. I played Ludo yesterday, and it genuinely took me an hour to roll a six. Really? Yeah, an hour. I was furious. Everyone else was rolling six for fun. They were getting their guys back out of base.

You know, they got sent back to base. They were coming out of base. Some of them were rolling sixes, not even getting their guys on the starting thing just letting didn't even need the six yeah didn't even want to use it who knows a funny one because the name just means game doesn't it does it games should have names like backgammon that don't mean anything yeah there are two different types of bacon yeah now robert dudley he realizes things aren't going well between him and the queen now he's probably not going to marry her and so in secret he marries her cousin lettuce okay in fact her name is lettuce

knolls which sounds like how i sound off most of my emails when I ask someone something. Just let us know. Lettuce Knowles. Lettuce Knowles. Lettuce. Lettuce with an I. Oh, right, yeah. It'd be ridiculous to spell it lettuce. So aside from marrying a woman named after a vegetable, things don't go great for Bobby Duds.

Things don't go great for Bobby Duds. In 1584, there is an anonymous attack on him known as Leicester's Commonwealth, which is sort of purported to be the reporting of a conversation between a couple of English people. And it kind of starts out as a bit like that at the start, and then it just turns into a sustained attack on Bobby Duds, just, like, coating him off for pages and pages and pages

it says that he's a princely villain a princely villain with poisonous in his train and i think it's it describes him as a machiavellian figure these days that would be a a meme with very poor graphic design. And the Queen banned it. She had it fully banned. She did fall out with Bobby Duds, though, the Queen, because he'd married a cousin, Lettuce. In fact, he had to go so far as to pretend to be ill so that she would rush to his bedside and they could make up.

Classic method. Yeah. One of his literal hunting grounds was Cornbury Park near Chalbury, and he used to go hunting in Witchwood Forest, which we've talked of before on the show. Oh, yes, of course. And he went hunting, as was his want, on August the 25th, 1588. And there in them woods, in front of him, appeared the ghost of Amy Robsart. Ooh.

And she pointed at him and said, In ten days thou will be with me and he returned to the house and fell ill actually ill this time real not fake ill no not fake ill and 10 days later on september the 4th 1588 he died wow so did he tell people that he had seen that vision in the woods i can only imagine he would have must have mentioned it in those nine days he must have mentioned it otherwise how could we know that exactly because the ghost didn't write anything down no but that ghost did not stay silent it haunted cumnor place and it ended up having to be laid by nine or twelve parsons in a pond nine or twelve nine or twelve parsons to to lay this ghost in a pond which was known afterwards as madam dudley's pool nice and it has never frozen since okay i've got an extract from account of cumnor place uh this is in law of the land westward and

simpson this comes from alfred bartlett's historical account of cumnor place the apparition was said to appear chiefly in the form of a beautiful woman superbly attired and was mostly to be seen at the foot of a stone staircase in the northwestern angle of the building where the remains of her ladyship are said to have been discovered at length the panic becameern angle of the building where the remains of her ladyship are said to have been discovered at length the panic became so general and the building so dreaded that the fear-stricken superstitious villagers had recourse to exorcism to expel the spirit and the tradition yet remaining is that the ceremony was performed by nine parsons from oxford who laid the ghost in a pond in the adjoining close.

And it is said that the water never afterwards froze over the spot. So there. Yeah, yeah. Very spooky, yes. Very spooky. And in fact, these nine or twelve parsons weren't very good at laying this ghost because she was still said to haunt the village and the house so bad that in 1810 they pulled it down because her ghost gave the locals so much trouble and that might have been why it didn't freeze because she was constantly in and

out just just getting in and out yeah getting in and out like a cheeky ghost and there was a poem written about this by a scottish poet oh which which scottish poet um not your Rabbie Bums. Not Rabbie Bums, unfortunately. Okay. It was William Mickle. William Mickle? Yeah, Willie Mickle. So not Rabbie Bums, Willie Mickle. Here's a little stanza or verse.

I don't know. Don't know about poems. The village maids, with fearful glance, avoid the ancient moss-grown wall, nor ever lead the merry dance amongst the groves of Cumnor Hall. That's a little bit of the poem. Very good.

Very atmospheric. I did a little goog around Willie Mickle and he's best remembered for the line There's nae luck about the hoose. Never heard it before but apparently it's quite a famous line. Yeah, yeah. We're always saying it down our way. Oh, there's nae luck about the hoose never heard it before but apparently it's quite a famous line yeah yeah we're always saying it down our way oh there's no luck about the hoose yep and her ghost is still set to be at large uh around cumna also around cornbury park where if you see her at night

it is warning that you will suddenly die in 10 days yeah yeah yeah and she also knocks around the university church of saint mary the virgin in oxford i've got a little spooky uh spooky eyewitness account here so in the university church of saint mary the virgin or smv for short her body is buried at that church and often children talk about the strange lady in the chapel and the parents can't always see the figure that the children are talking about she's always given the same description and claim that she's wearing what seems to be tudor dress i think she's wearing tudor dress what kind of a posh kid knows i can describe a dress like that the sort of child that goes to

the university church of saint. Mary the Virgin, or SMV for short. Yeah, yeah. So there you have it. Spooky, right? Very, very spooky, yes. And an important lesson for people who think about killing a spouse. Yeah.

What's the lesson? Don't do it? Probably don't do it. Best not to? Best not, for the most part. It will hamper your attempts at social climbing yeah yeah yeah i mean that said there's probably a few wives who've killed a few husbands where i sort of think fair play but they didn't good then go on to try and marry a king yeah yeah that's the mistake yeah it's greedy so yeah you're ready to gear some scores i would i'd love to score it yes

it's a delightful tale of sadness. We're getting towards Christmas spooky season. I thought we'd get a bit of a classic Tudor ghost. I don't know. Why are ghosts always Tudors? Is it something about the ghost story being popular in Victorian times and they were the right period in the past

for a Victorian haunting? I think, because it's Tudor slash Cavalier, so it kind of goes from that kind of 150, 200 year period. It's all head chopping off times. Yeah, and I think it was such a harrowing time. It's rough era.

I mean, R-U-F-F as well as R-O-U-G-H. Yes, that's lovely. So, score me. Alright, what's your first category naming named well yeah all right it's it's the names are not that great but i feel like um you jazz them up a bit we've got the span ambassador yeah the cesspit and bobby duds bob D-U-D-Z. Definitely. Yeah. What's your score, Lettuce Knowles? Oh, I forgot about lettuce. All right, it's a four.

And it's a four just basically for lettuce. Yes. I would have to have a heart of iceberg to give it a lower score. Iceberg is a type of lettuce. It is. So you gave me a four just cause. Yeah. It's very good.

That's another lettuce pun. Another kind very good. That's another lettuce pun. Another kind of lettuce. That's all I've got. The rest, I'd have to slip into cabbage puns if I was to do any more. I was moving straight for cabbages, yeah. Come on, sweetheart. I can't refer to the sweetheart cabbage not in a Cockney accent. You've been a little bit sexist.

So, next category. Supernatural. There's a type of lettuce called the Boston Bib. Never heard of that before. Do you think it was used as an edible bib? I don't know, yeah. It doesn't seem that curly, but a curly lettuce leaf could... Hold on.

I'm looking at a guide to lettuce and it's just got cabbage in there. Cabbage isn't a kind of lettuce. Wait a minute. Is it? Is this the biggest trick the devil ever pulled? trying to convince us that lettuce and cabbage were different plants which convinced the world he wasn't a lettuce cabbage is a lettuce is it cabbage is a let i mean you can see when now they say it i'm looking at a meme and it's telling me that they're the same whoa you can't cook a lettuce which is Which is kind of like those memes where they say,

look, crisis actors. And they'll just circle two, like it'll just be two white men with sunglasses at different terrorist attacks. And they'll be like, it's the same guy. It's like, it's not the same guy. It's just two men. They're similar haircuts.

And he's on a mobile phone in a Charlie Chaplin film. Explain that. Oh, no. I'm going to send you a meme which is a picture of lettuce and a picture of cabbage, both of them circled. Is cabbage just cooking lettuce? Wow. A cabbage is a brassica, right? So what genus does the lettuce belong to?

I don't even know what a brassica is. Anyway, it's four out of five, but I mentally have really moved on to lettuce gate. Yeah, I think we're just, we're going to be doing the rest of the scores, but we're mostly going to be thinking about lettuce now totally totally different family it does not belong to the same family as cabbage they just look similar they just look similar is it like the postman was it if you look at the postman of the two houses was it i think i had other categories but all i can think of is vegetables now. So, supernatural.

Well, okay. It started out fairly historical, I have to say. Far more research than normal for the podcast. Well done. And then, just as I was starting to go, where's the ghosts? He went riding in his hunting grounds and he met a ghost. He met a ghost of his dead wife and what a tenacious

ghost she was yeah she will not be late every time she sits down there's a servant you know it's like when the doorbell keeps ringing

there's a servant needs spooking and she has to get back up out of the pond yep like oh just put my feet up for five minutes

I just want I wanted to just have a little lay down just have a little lay down. Can I just have a little lie down in a pond? It's not a minute's peace in this house. And still doesn't freeze to this day, so they say. Because she's always getting in and out.

They had to demolish the house, she was so spooky. Fill in the pond, I would say, as a starter, before you demolish the house. That would probably make more sense, yeah. And she haunts three places. She's a busy ghost so um for four out of five again just take it four out of five for supernatural well i did want to do scandal exclamation mark oh yeah because there's a bunch of them huge

scandals there's the lettuces cabbage scandal. Breaking scandal. They're the same thing. Oh, a shadowing. Everything. But there's also the stairs misadventure. The stairs misadventure. There's the, was she really the Virgin Queen scandal? Yeah.

Just the scandalous pamphlets. And the Spambasadas sticking his Spanish oar in. I'm not sure how a Spanish ore is different from a normal ore. Maybe it is finished off in the oven or something. You can't use it around 1pm. That's a little beret. It's too hot. And I guess the scandal of the rubbish Parsons, the rubbish exorcists.

Yeah, you've paid expenses for nine Parsons to come and do an exorcism. You expect to get an exorcism. I've paid for 12, but I'm only seeing nine here. So I don't know how you're going to tally that up, Parsons. That's Parsons for you. They come in, they say, we'll have this done in a week. They start the job and then you don't see them.

Oh, they're on another job. Say this to all of us because we've all got the same outfit on. They won't be able to count us. Yeah. Also, people can't really count at the moment. It's a scandal, I tell you. Sc tell you scandals scandals pond scandals five out of five for scandal i'm outraged yes the people must know about parsons or about lettuce all of it mainly lettuce i'm taking the the energy i feel from the lettuce scandal and i'm channeling it into the other

scandals okay all right final category, it's a great name, but I don't know how it's going to score me any points. But I'm just going to go with it because it's a great name. Okay. The Spambassador's Reception. Yes, yes. It's got a tray with hundreds of little lettuces on it. Yeah, yes.

Again, how do the young slash foreign people who listen to this podcast understand any of it? I don't know. I don't know. I feel like they ran that Ferrero Rocher advert for about 10 years. So an advert, it's sort of like a meme, but for a product. I think they should bring it back. Reshoot it in glorious HD 4K.

4K. So what it was, it was the... There's a chocolate called Ferrero Rocher, which is considered quite fancy. But it's not really fancy. I think that's the weird irony of it. Like, it's a relatively affordable chocolate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That tried to give you the impression that the ambassador's ball, it was being eaten in a massive pyramid. You wouldn't put it in your kid's lunchbox. No, no, but it was an after-eights quality confectionery item. Yes, yeah, it was after-eight adjacent. Yeah, exactly. It's five out of five for ambassador's reception. Thank goodness.

James, with this category, you are really spoiling me. You are noted for your exquisite good taste shame we can't get the rights to the ferrara rocher music to come in there did it say that as well my favorite guy the other thing is it's like it's the spambassada's reception so there's there's dignitaries from all over Europe. Oh, yeah. And one of them was German. There's a very confused accent there.

Ferrero make kinder eggs. I mean, it's not that fancy. Do they make Freddos? No, Freddo are Cadbury's. Yeah, I've got confused there because of the similarities. It's a lettuce cabbage situation. It's a lettuce cabbage situation. I think we might have just invented our own new phrase like it's a marmite thing yeah yeah meaning something is either loved or hated yeah you could say it's a lettuce cabbage thing yeah

it's like comparing apples to oranges but when you're comparing two things they're actually quite similar it's like comparing cabbages and lettuce sweetheart people will be like yeah they're quite similar are they wait minute, are they the same thing? Is a cabbage just a cooking lettuce? So, P.S., it was called the Ghost of Dudley Castle because Cumnor Place became known as Dudley Castle because of the ghost that haunted it. But there is a Dudley Castle in Dudley,

in the West Midlands, right? And there's a Cumnor House in, I think it's in South London. Right. It was a tough one to Google. Well, thank you for your efforts. If you as a listener wish to support our efforts, you can give us a five-star rating. Cha-ching!

Leave a review. Pow, pow! Saying, eccellente. Or you can join the law folk at patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod, where you will get access to extra episodes, a badge, and to the law folk discord,

where there's all sorts of chats. I like the way you slipped into the Patreon voice there. Access to. Very nice. Now they've got a ghost of Dudley Castle They've got a ghost Right Yep, I've just seen it in the Metro News

Right, well that's next episode sorted Is it Dudley as in Dudley? Is it? Yes Oh, wonderful Think of the accent potential Think of the accents I might have to have a little look at what's up there, mate.

It's not the Spambassador again. Yes, that was the Spambassador. He was mostly based in Wolverhampton. I'm an acrobat, so you'll never guess what the Protestants are up to. Oh, look at that virgin quite over there. Well, they say virgin. Right here. All right.

Cool. Very nice. I'll stop recording. These slanders.