Alerted to the danger, King Richard marched his army to the west. Buckingham set out with his troops on 18 October, in the midst of a ten-day storm that flooded the rivers and washed away bridges. With his men scattered by floods and mired in mud, the Duke went into hiding at the cottage of his tenant, Ralph Banaster. A reward of £1000 and land worth £100 a year in perpetuity enticed Banaster to turn his lord over to the Sheriff of Shrewsbury.9 Taken to Richard III at Salisbury, Buckingham was executed on All Souls Day, 2 November 1483. His widow, Katherine Wydeville, joined her sister Elizabeth in sanctuary.
Dorset, who was leading the rebellion in Exeter, was denounced in a proclamation issued by Richard III on 23 October:
Thomas Dorset, late Marquess Dorset, which not fearing God, nor the peril of his soul, hath many and sundry maids, widows, and wives damnably and without shame devoured, deflowered, and defouled, hold[s] the unshameful and mischievous woman called Shore’s wife in adultery.10
After Buckingham’s defeat, Dorset fled to Brittany, where he joined his uncle Edward Wydeville and the forces of Richmond. Bishop Lionel Wydeville entered sanctuary at Beaulieu.11 Bishop John Morton escaped from Brecknock, made his way secretly across country, stopped at Ely to replenish his supplies, and went into exile in Flanders.
Richmond had tried to leave Brittany on 3 October to invade England, but his ships were thwarted by the same storm that destroyed Buckingham’s army. The winds forced his ships back into port, and he could not sail again until 18 October. By the time Richmond’s ships reached Plymouth on 2 November, Buckingham was dead. Richmond returned to Brittany to reconnoitre and plan a second attack. On Christmas Day 1483, Henry, Earl of Richmond took a solemn oath in the cathedral at Rennes to marry Princess Elizabeth of York.
Queen Elizabeth’s plight in Westminster Sanctuary could not have been more desperate. All male members of her family were dead, attainted, or exiled. Sir Edward Wydeville, newly denounced along with Buckingham and the Bishop of Ely in Richard III’s proclamation of 23 October, remained in Brittany. Elizabeth’s eldest living brother, Richard, now the third Earl Rivers, was accused of conspiring in the death of the King and attainted by Richard’s Parliament, which opened on 23 January 1484. Bishop Lionel Wydeville, in sanctuary at Beaulieu, resisted Richard III’s efforts to compel his presence at Parliament in February 1484, and was removed from his bishopric of Salisbury on 15 March 1484.12 He died sometime before 23 June 1484.13
Richard III’s men surrounded Westminster Sanctuary, where Elizabeth depended on the Abbot for sustenance. While she alone might have been able to survive, she had five daughters to worry about, ranging from the seventeen-year-old Elizabeth to the three-year-old Bridget. Unlike her earlier residence in sanctuary in 1470, no sympathetic butcher delivered half a beef and two muttons a week to feed the Queen and her family. Elizabeth and her daughters were living under siege, and totally dependent on charity. The Abbot of Westminster remained in ‘great trouble’ for accommodating his guests.14
There was no end in sight. Richard’s 1484 Parliament officially humiliated Elizabeth by approving Titulus Regius: An Act for the Settlement of the Crown upon the King and his issue, with a recapitulation of his Title. In that document, the three estates of the realm of England (the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal, and the Commons) declared:
that the said pretended Marriage betwixt the above named King Edward and Elizabeth Grey, was made of great presumption without the knowing and assent of the Lords of this Land, and also by Sorcery and Witchcraft, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Mother, Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford…15
Beyond sorcery and witchcraft, Parliament also declared that the ‘said pretended Marriage’ was made privately and secretly, without publication of the banns and at a time when Edward was already married to Dame Eleanor Butler, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. If secrecy invalidated the marriage of Edward and Elizabeth, that impediment surely applied equally to any pre-contract between Edward and Eleanor Butler. No one mentioned that logical discrepancy, however, and Parliament decreed:
Which premisses being true, as in very truth they be true, it appears and follows evidently, that the said King Edward during his life, and the said Elizabeth, lived together sinfully and damnably in adultery, against the Law of God and of his Church… Also it appears evidently and follows, that all the issue and Children of the said King Edward, be Bastards, and unable to inherit or to claim any thing by inheritance, by the Law and Custom of England.16
The sole authority for Edward’s alleged betrothal to Eleanor Butler was Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. That the Bishop had remained silent for nineteen years, during which time the eternal soul of the King was at risk for living in adulterous sin, was ignored. Similarly, no one recalled the fact that Warwick had been negotiating a marriage with Lady Bona of Savoy when Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth stunned the court. Warwick, as uncle to Eleanor Butler, would hardly have been seeking a new wife for a King already contracted to the Earl’s niece. Nevertheless, Bishop Stillington’s belated declaration of Edward’s marital pre-contract proved sufficient to convict the King of adultery and to bastardise his children. No one questioned the Bishop’s motives.
More politician than prelate, Bishop Stillington had earlier befriended Clarence. Their long-time alliance had enabled the Bishop to intervene during Clarence’s dalliance with Warwick, and to persuade the wayward brother to rejoin Edward IV when the King returned from exile in 1471.17 Later, Stillington had been imprisoned in the Tower during Clarence’s trial in 1478, suggesting an association with the Duke’s treasons.18 No one, however, could question a bishop’s moral authority – even though this prelate had himself fathered illegitimate children and neglected his seldom-visited diocese.19 Neither could Eleanor Butler, long dead, speak for herself. Slander now carried the weight of law.
What was Elizabeth to do? Street gossip was devastating enough. With Parliament invalidating her nineteen years of marriage and declaring ten of her children illegitimate, she was publicly humiliated and personally vulnerable. She could only suffer the will of the King, who wielded all the power. Richard III wanted Elizabeth out of sanctuary so that he could gain control over her daughters. The betrothal of Henry Tudor to Elizabeth of York constituted a real threat to the King. Many regarded Princess Elizabeth, a seventeen-year-old beauty with her mother’s golden hair and lovely features, as the legitimate heir to the throne. A union between Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, eldest surviving child of Edward IV, legally challenged Richard’s heritage. She could not be dismissed because of gender, since the entire Yorkist claim to the throne depended on women – beginning with Philippa, daughter of Lionel, and continuing through Anne Mortimer, grandmother of Richard III.
Croyland tells us that during the Parliament of 1484 ‘frequent entreaties as well as threats… strongly solicited’ the Queen to release her daughters from sanctuary.20 Ongoing negotiations took place, that led to Richard III swearing an extraordinary oath before the assembled estates of clergy, nobles and commons, including the Lord Mayor and alderman of London, on 1 March 1484:
I, Richard, by the Grace of God King of England and of France and Lord of Ireland, in the presence of you, my lords spiritual and temporal and you Mayor and Aldermen of my City of London, promise and swear verbo regio upon these holy Evangels of God by me personally touched, that if the daughters of dame Elizabeth Grey, late calling herself Queen of England, that is to wit Elizabeth, Cecily, Anne, Katharine, and Bridget, will come unto me out of the Sanctuary of Westminster, and be guided, ruled and demeaned after me, then I shall see that they shall be in surety of their lives, and also not suffer any manner hurt by any manner person or persons to them or any of them or their bodies or persons, to be done by way of ravishment or defiling contrary their wills, nor them or any of them imprison within the Tower of London or other prison; but that I shall put them in honest places of good name and fame, and them honestly and courteously shall see to be founden and entreated, and to
have all things requisite and necessary for their exhibition and findings as my kinswomen; and that I shall marry such of them as now be marriageable to gentlemen born, and every of them give in marriage lands and tenements to the yearly value of two hundred marks for the term of their lives; and in likewise to the other daughters when they come to lawful age of marriage if they live. And such gentlemen as shall happen to marry with them I shall straitly charge, from time to time, lovingly to love and entreat them as their wives and my kinswomen, as they will avoid and eschew my displeasure.
And over this, that I shall yearly from henceforth content and pay, or cause to be contented or paid, for the exhibition and finding of the said dame Elizabeth Grey during her natural life, at four terms of the year, that is to wit at Pasche, Midsummer, Michaelmas, and Christmas, to John Nesfield, one of the squires for my body, for his finding to attend upon her, the sum of seven hundred marks of lawful money of England, by even portions; and moreover I promise to them that if any surmise or evil report be made to me of them, or any of them, by any person or persons, that then I shall not give thereunto faith nor credence, nor therefore put them to any manner punishment, before that they or any of them so accused may be at their lawful defence and answer. In witness whereof, to this writing of my oath and promise aforesaid in your said presences made, I have set my sign manual, the first day of March, the first year of my reign.21
A modern reader finds Richard’s oath to be rife with unintended irony, since it was a little late to promise that the girls would ‘not suffer any manner of hurt’. One must also ask how Elizabeth could trust Richard to keep his word.
But almost a year had gone by since the death of Edward IV, and if Elizabeth’s situation in sanctuary was difficult, that of her young daughters was untenable. They had no future in sanctuary. And there was no way out. Richard III’s troops surrounded Westminster and controlled the kingdom. Elizabeth could only hope that public scrutiny and political necessity would compel the King to honour his promises. He could not afford to break his oath, made so publicly before the men on whom he depended for military, economic and regal survival.
Elizabeth and her daughters left sanctuary in March 1484, with John Nesfield taking custody of the former Queen, now dependent on Richard’s 700 marks for her support. She was essentially a ward of Nesfield, who did his job so well that no one knows where Elizabeth lived during this period. Richard III confiscated her dowry and denied her title as Queen Dowager. Life, however, had taught Elizabeth patience.
Little is known about the four younger daughters, but Princess Elizabeth re-entered court life and soon regained her former status. By Christmas 1484, she was prominent at court in ways that saddened the Croyland Chronicler:
Many other things… are not written in this book, and of which I grieve to speak, although the fact ought not to be concealed that, during this feast of the Nativity, far too much attention was given to dancing and gaiety, and vain changes of apparel presented to Queen Anne and the lady Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late king, being of similar colour and shape; a thing that caused the people to murmur and the nobles and prelates greatly to wonder thereat.22
Strict sumptuary laws distinguished rank by dress and required that no one wear clothing in a colour or style similar to the Queen’s. For Princess Elizabeth to wear apparel that matched Queen Anne’s could only provoke speculation about her relationship to Richard III. Croyland despairs:
…it was said by many that the King was bent, either on the anticipated death of the Queen taking place, or else, by means of divorce, for which he supposed he had quite sufficient grounds, on contracting a marriage with the said Elizabeth. For it appeared that in no other way could his kingly power be established, or the hope of his rival be put an end to.23
The idea of an uncle marrying his niece defies modern comprehension. Yet the motives of Richard III, although perverse, can perhaps be explained by the unexpected death of his only son, Edward, earlier that year (around 9 April 1484). In February, the eight-year-old boy had been declared his father’s heir in an oath signed by the lords of the realm and the nobles of the King’s household. The boy’s subsequent and early death caused great suffering to his father and mother, perhaps exacerbating Queen Anne’s lingering illness (probably tuberculosis). Anne’s poor health made it unlikely that she could bear another heir. Croyland writes: ‘…the King entirely shunned her bed, declaring that it was by the advice of his physicians that he did so. Why enlarge?’24 Queen Anne, Richard’s wife for fourteen years, died on 16 March 1485, ‘the day of the great eclipse of the sun’, a phenomenon that in superstitious England caused rumours to circulate that Richard had poisoned her. Anne was not quite thirty years old.
Whatever Richard’s intent toward his niece Elizabeth, rumours of a marriage were so prevalent that ‘the king was obliged, having called a council together, to excuse himself with many words and to assert that such a thing had never once entered his mind’. His close advisors, Sir Richard Ratcliff and William Catesby, warned him that if he did not deny such a marriage before the Mayor and Commons of London, his northern supporters (inherited through his wife’s Warwick ties) would blame him for the death of Queen Anne. Croyland adds, however, that Ratcliff and Catesby also feared that the accession of Princess Elizabeth would place themselves in jeopardy for their part in executing ‘her uncle, Earl Anthony, and her brother Richard’.25
The King followed the advice of Ratcliff and Catesby and denied any intended marriage, sometime before Easter 1485. He spoke in a ‘loud and distinct voice’ before the Lord Mayor and the citizens of London, in the great hall of the Hospital of St John. To quiet any lingering suspicions, Richard III sent Princess Elizabeth north into isolation at Sheriff Hutton, where she shared the castle with another York descendant, Edward, Earl of Warwick and son of Clarence. Both enjoyed hereditary rights that placed them closer to the throne than Richard III.
Opinions differ about the role played by Princess Elizabeth and her mother in the rumoured marriage. The seventeen-year-old Elizabeth apparently loved her life at Richard’s court and may, indeed, have fallen in love with her powerful uncle, who could be quite charming when he wished. An infamous letter which Sir George Buck claims was handwritten by Princess Elizabeth asks the Duke of Norfolk to intercede in helping to arrange her marriage with the King, ‘who, as she wrote, was her only joy and maker in this world, and that she was his in heart and thoughts’.26 The letter, which expressed her fear that Queen Anne would never die, supposedly resided in the private cabinet of Thomas, Earl of Arundel and Surrey. Unfortunately, only Buck, an apologist for Richard III, mentions this letter, which has disappeared with its authenticity unconfirmed.
Writing 135 years after the event, Buck contradicts the statement of Polydore Vergil, made twenty-six years after the event: ‘Richard had kept [Elizabeth] unharmed with a view to marriage. To such a marriage the girl had a singular aversion.’27 The antithetical views of Vergil, a Tudor historian, and Buck, a Ricardian, reflect the difficulty of finding truth in the stories about both Princess Elizabeth and her mother.
Claims that Queen Dowager Elizabeth left sanctuary anticipating her daughter’s marriage to Richard are negated by irrefutable facts: Richard III’s son and heir, Edward, did not die until a month after Elizabeth departed from sanctuary. Richard’s wife, Anne, died more than a year later. Elizabeth Wydeville left sanctuary because she and her daughters had no alternative.
Richard’s biographer, James Gairdner, claims that
…the queen dowager had been completely won over by Richard, so that she not only forgot her promise to the Countess of Richmond, but even wrote, at the king’s suggestion to her son, the Marquis of Dorset, at Paris, to abandon the party of the Earl of Richmond and come to England.28
While Elizabeth did request her son to come home, her motives remain unknown. It is possible that she wrote under compulsion by Richard – or that she needed Dorset’s physical and emotional support for herself and her daughters.
Dorset, who had begun to despair of Richmond’s chances, secretly left Paris for Flanders, on his way to England. When his plans were discovered, Richmond sent Humphrey Cheney to intercept and persuade Dorset to stay in France, which he did.
By summer 1485, defectors from Richard III’s cause were flocking to Richmond, whose invasion of England was drawing near. Sedition was growing throughout the land. The Great Chronicle reports the hanging and disembowelling of a man named Colyngbourn for demeaning Richard III’s supporters Lovell, Ratcliff and Catsby with a ‘seditious rhyme’, which slandered the King and his badge of the white boar:
The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our dog
Rule all England under an hog.29
The most damning evidence comes from The Great Chronicle: ‘the more in number grudged so sore against the King for the death of the Innocents [the two princes] that as gladly would they have been French, as to be under his subjection’.30
When Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond landed at Milford Haven in Wales on 7 August 1485, he had no trouble gathering support as he marched east to meet Richard III in battle. Among the chief men of his army was ‘Edward Wydeville, brother of Queen Elizabeth, a most valiant knight’.31 The two armies met near a small town named Market Bosworth, on 22 August 1485, a battle that has been immortalised in drama and history beyond anything its participants could have envisioned. Richard III died heroically, charging down a hillside to attack Richmond in person, even as his followers failed to support him. Most significantly, the troops of Lord Stanley waited to see which way the tide turned before joining the forces of his stepson, Henry Tudor.
With the death of Richard III, Queen Dowager Elizabeth could once more hope for the future. Her daughter, Elizabeth of York, left Sheriff Hutton for London, where her betrothed was now King of England. Nineteen years old, she was a beautiful woman with golden hair and tall stature, who instantly won the hearts of the people. She had never met Henry Tudor, a man quite different from her father and brothers and uncles. Cautious, parsimonious and dull, Henry VII was exactly the type of King needed by a country battered by eighty-five years of war and political instability.
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