Physical comparisons of 3 lifetimes: Jessica Jewett, Amy Dudley and Fanny Chamberlain.

The allegation that a soul might have lived more than one "famous" past life leave the door cracked further open for suspicion that it might be fraudulent, wishful thinking or something equally wrong. However, the longer a soul has been in the business of reincarnating, the more likely it is that another life of some notoriety might happen. In this case, my two "famous" past lives are not really that famous but really just lesser figures in the lives of truly famous people. I have always been on the B-list of fame if not completely obscure, as are most other people. After going through the sometimes painful process of identifying my past life of Fanny Chamberlain, I never thought I would be able to identify another past life again. It was exhausting to go through that and, frankly, I was more interesting in helping other people cope with past lives than helping myself cope.

In many cases, past life memories are not triggered until we come across things that are undeniably us or until we meet people who were involved in our past lives. I had never heard of Lady Dudley or even her husband, the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, before I met a man in this present lifetime who triggered those memories. In the interest of protecting his privacy, I will call him David. The moment I met David through a mutual friend, I experienced a sense of instant attraction mixed with old recognition and the possibility of danger. We became fairly close in a short amount of time. The more I wondered why I knew this man even though we were basically strangers before, the more I had two repetative dreams set in a period that I didn't understand much earlier than Fanny. I have always felt utter revulsion for the Elizabethan period and the thought of visiting England always left me feeling threatened or sickened as if I should never, ever go there. Hearing myself speaking Elizabethan English in those dreams gave me similar feelings to panic after waking up from a nightmare.

Specifically, the first dream happened this way: I was seated quite stiffly and formally in a room in an old home that had timbers across the ceiling and a massive fireplace. There was a large table to my left and a man seated in front of me dressed in late Tudor attire (it took a bit of research to figure out what he was wearing). The atmosphere was so tense that I was fighting tears. Finally, I began to plead with the man to stay and to convince him that he didn't need to leave again. At first, I felt as if I might have been a servant because I feared that man as much as I needed him, but I slowly peeled back the layers until I realized that I did love him at some point but it was covered over by intimidation at that time. My sense of it boiled down to, "If he doesn't leave again, we can salvage this mess." The man appeared as stubborn as he did resolute in his impending departure, which seemed to break me even more. He stood, and in passing, squeezed my hand. I woke up at that moment each time feeling lost as if I forgot where I was in the present. I spoke to David about it and he quickly brushed it off as something utterly different from what I described, but he had such a magnetic influence over me that I believed him on the surface while internally knowing the truth.

In the second dream, which began further into my relationship with David, I found myself again in the body of the woman in the first dream. I stood in a bedchamber wearing what I supposed to be like a nightgown but I don't know if that's the right word. I reached for a candle on a table and I noticed discoloration on my wrist peeking out from the sleeve. I pulled the sleeve back and saw a series of bruises along my forearm as if I had been grabbed and wrenched violently. The man from my previous dream went through my mind and I went to a wall where a mirror hung. One side of my face appeared slightly battered. Despite the fear and intimidation rushing into me, I also experienced feelings of relief that he was gone mixed with the longing and mourning for the man I had married. Again, I spoke to David about the dream without directly saying it seemed as if he was the one who became violent toward me. And again, he immediately brushed off the entire incident as something unrelated and much more romantic than the truth. I chose to believe it rather than believe I was getting involved with a person who had been unkind to me in another time. I believed everybody progressed and changed as they lived more lifetimes and that he would not repeat that old cycle.

The Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, and his wife, Lady Amy Robsart Dudley.

Eventually, things became quite dark and complicated with David, and even though it was quite painful, I had to extracate myself from that situation to the point where it was impossible to even be acquaitences. Some souls, I realized, were not going to move beyond certain old destructive patterns in their histories and I could not allow myself to be pulled down into the muck and darkness again. Like the woman in my dreams, I felt a sense of indestructable loyalty and dedication to "fixing" him that I failed to see that fixing someone who couldn't see they were broken would break me too. These things all occurred before I knew anything about Robert and Amy Dudley.

About a year afterward, I moved in with my friend, Ciara, who upon hearing about my dreams, asked me if I had ever heard of Amy Dudley. I said I had not, to which she told me a brief description of how Amy married Robert when they were fairly young but Robert had always had his eye on Queen Elizabeth I. Leaving Amy at home for weeks and months at a time to be with Elizabeth at Court, he basically abandoned his wife even though most accounts believed he loved her at the time of their wedding. Ambition got the better of him and in 1560, Amy was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home, Cumnor Place. Although Robert was never directly accused, most at Court believed he arranged for Amy's "accidental" death in order to be free to marry the Queen. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that if I looked for a painting of Dudley, he would be the man in my dream as well as the man I knew in the present. I looked for a portrait with hesitation but the instant I saw him, I recognized him.

The first thing I noticed when I looked for Amy Dudley on the internet was that the date of her death was September 8, 1560. That struck me immediately as a red flag because September 8 was the birthdate of Fanny Chamberlain's husband in 1828 and my former fiance in 1983. Had I not seen an instant parallel of an important date, I doubt I would have been provoked to look further into the situation. As my reading progressed, I found further date parallels and repeating names. Lady Dudley had sisters names Anne and Frances. My current middle name is Ann and my name used to be Frances in the nineteenth century. Lord Robert was pardoned from execution on October 18 and I as Fanny died on October 18. February 4 (my current birthday), Lord Robert's father granted property in Yarmouth (England) to the couple. Yarmouth is also a place in Maine that Fanny often visited. Lord Robert became Joint-Steward of the Manor of Rising and constable of the castle on December 7, which was the date of Fanny and Lawrence's wedding. Lady Amy was born in Norfolk (England) and one of Lord Robert's subsequent incarnations lived and died in Norfolk, Virgina. Lord Robert and Lady Amy's relationship became serious in 1550 and Fanny and Lawrence became serious about their relationship in 1850.

Cumnor Place as it looked in 1805. Lady Amy Robsart Dudley died here on September 8, 1560.

The many parallels associated with this possible case led me to believe that encountering Lord Robert's present incarnation triggered my memory into my time as Lady Amy. Just as I felt those initial dreams told me what to look for, I also believe they were giving me clues about the truth in that marriage toward the end of her life. The month I turned 28, a book called Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart, which was the same age Lady Amy was when she died. The author quoted from one of her letters in part of the book that said, "although I forgot to move my lord thereof before his departing, he being sore troubled with weighty affairs, and I not being altogether in quiet for his sudden departing." Amy being, "not altogether in quiet for his sudden departing," adds credibility to the dream I had in which I was quite upset in the knowledge that he would leave again to do the Queen's bidding.

In the midst of my research, I sought a reading from Nellie Kampmann, having not told her about my suspicions of being Lady Amy in a previous life. I gave her a period of time to concentrate on and the results she gave me described Amy's life so accurately that the only things missing were names and dates. One thing that Nellie touched upon in her reading was the fact that after my death, I remained there in spirit, unable to accept what had happened to me for many years. I had never considered the way that a soul could end up being a temporary active haunting, but if any part of me would have done so, it would have been after my life as Lady Amy. I looked online for any possible ghost stories and found: "A superstition concerning Amy's ghost persisted for many years. It is said that nine parsons came from Oxford to lay her restless ghost in a nearby pond, which never froze thereafter. Cumnor Place was said to be haunted. It is certainly true that the owners chose not to live there, letting it to tenants so that it gradually became a ruin." By the time of my next life, stories of Amy's ghost came to a halt.

Since the initial dreams, I have gone through other emotional and visual memories from that time of things that were not recorded by history. I went through a long period of being resolutely unwilling to discuss Amy in public at all, only talking to close friends about it. My death and feeling like I was killed even before I knew about Amy left me feeling quite traumatized for a long time. Since I was a small child, I have been extremely phobic of staircases and I have always felt unsafe on them like I might be pushed at any moment. My family regarded my phobia as a joke until they realized what happened to me in 1560. I have not yet made peace with the events of my time as Amy but I'm working on it in order to release my anger, fear and phobias.