The union of the houses of Lancaster and York did more than bring peace and economic growth to England. Under the Tudors, the barons progressively lost ground to an increasingly powerful monarch. That transition was made easier by the preceding decades of internecine warfare, in which cousins fighting cousins had destroyed many of the noble families of England. If the ordinary citizens of England were largely untouched by the hostilities, the powerful barons suffered irretrievable losses. The Lancasters and the Nevilles had effectively annihilated themselves. Only two male heirs remained in the House of York: Edward, Earl of Warwick, the reputedly feeble-minded son of Clarence, and John, Earl of Lincoln, the son of Elizabeth (sister to Edward IV, Richard III and Clarence).
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Queen Dowager Elizabeth
Henry VII’s treatment of his wife’s mother – the role that Elizabeth Wydeville would play for the rest of her life – was honourable, but careful. In 1485, he immediately restored her ‘estate, dignity, preeminence, and name’, along with all possessions held before the Parliament of Richard III deprived her of them.1 At the same time, he ordered the defamatory Titulus Regius to be ‘cancelled, destroyed, and… taken and avoided out of the roll and records of the said Parliament of the said late king, and burned, and utterly destroyed’.2 Anyone with a copy or even a ‘remembrance’ of that bill was ordered to destroy it or deliver it to the Chancellor, before ‘the feast of Easter next’. Otherwise, imprisonment and ‘fine and ransom to the King at his will’ would result.3
Queen Dowager Elizabeth attended the wedding of her daughter, Elizabeth of York, and Henry VII at Westminster on 18 January 1486, five months after Bosworth Field. On 4 March 1486, the King confirmed the Queen Dowager’s dowry rights to six manors in the county of Essex. The following day he added the remainder of her dowry property.4 During the spring, while Henry VII was in the north quelling a rebellion, the women of the family – the new Queen Elizabeth and her sisters, Queen Dowager Elizabeth, and Margaret Beaufort (the King’s mother) – lived at Winchester. Queen Elizabeth was a mother-in-waiting, and her loved ones gathered around during her confinement.
The family dynamics, however, had shifted. Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, was now mother of the King. And even though the Queen Dowager outranked the Countess, Elizabeth was merely mother of the Queen, whose sweet, retiring nature deferred to her husband and her mother-in-law. Friends though they were, Elizabeth Wydeville may have found Margaret Beaufort’s dominance within the household to be a bit overbearing. The Countess was six years younger than the Queen Dowager, and had more energy and vigour than the woman who had lived through three years of sanctuary and sequestration.
Perhaps that change in status explains the lease Elizabeth obtained, on 10 July 1486, from the Abbot of Westminster, for ‘a mansion within the said Abbey called Cheyne gate… with all the houses, chambers, aislement and other…’. The indenture between the Abbot and ‘the most high and excellent Princess Elizabeth by the grace of God Queen of England, late wife to the most mighty Prince of famous memory Edward the IVth’ reflects Elizabeth Wydeville’s change of status. Twice the document addresses her merely as ‘princess’.5
As she approached fifty years of age, Elizabeth Wydeville was entering a period of contemplative reflection, away from the swirling cauldron of court politics. She had always been a deeply religious woman – even choosing Reading Abbey as the site of her honeymoon – and she had twice found solace and sustenance in sanctuary during the most traumatic moments of her existence. In 1486, when she enjoyed the goodwill and grace of Henry VII, as well as her full dowry, the Queen Dowager could have lived anywhere. She chose to sign a forty-year lease for Cheneygate manor within Westminster Close. That residence, close to Westminster Palace, offered proximity both to the family she loved and to the God she worshipped.
When her daughter gave birth to a son, Arthur, on 20 September 1486, Queen Dowager Elizabeth shared in the glory of the moment. At the christening ceremony, she was distinctly honoured by being designated godmother to Prince Arthur, to whom she gave a gold cup. Her second daughter, Cecily, carried the baby to the font. Given the familial closeness Elizabeth had nurtured throughout her life – from the large Wydeville clan to her own royal family – she must have felt warm satisfaction at becoming grandmother to her eldest daughter’s firstborn, a prince!
The crown, however, rested uneasily on Henry VII’s head. Yorkist sympathisers, particularly Edward IV’s sister Margaret, Duchess Dowager of Burgundy, was not pleased with the King, who had killed her brother Richard III. She was ready to fund a rebellion. France and Scotland, always interested in destabilising England, listened sympathetically to proposals that would unseat the new Tudor King. Ireland, a Yorkist stronghold, added resistance to the government of Henry VII.
Conspiracies proliferated, led by pretenders to the throne. In late 1486, a young boy of about eleven appeared on the scene, claiming that he was Richard, Duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV and Elizabeth. Margaret of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV, supported his claim and helped fund an army led by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (son of Elizabeth, sister to Edward IV, Richard III and the Duchess Dowager Margaret) to carry out the Yorkist rebellion. The boy was sent to Ireland, where he changed his identity and claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of Clarence, but still a Yorkist male with a more direct claim to the throne than Henry VII. Such a change of identity was foolish, particularly since the real Warwick was imprisoned in the Tower and the claimant clearly an impostor. The growing Yorkist movement nevertheless rallied around ‘Warwick’ and posed a challenging threat to Henry VII.
On 2 February 1487, Henry VII met with his council of nobles to deal with the rebellion. Polydore Vergil reports on ordinances authorised at that same meeting to deal with ‘improvements in public administration’.
Among other matters, Elizabeth the widow of King Edward was deprived by the decree of the same council of all her possessions. This was done because she had made her peace with King Richard; had placed her daughters at his disposal; and had, by leaving sanctuary, broken her promise to those (mainly of the nobility) who had, at her own most urgent entreaty, forsaken their own English property and fled to Henry in Brittany, the latter having pledged himself to marry her elder daughter Elizabeth.6
Vergil blames Elizabeth for endangering the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth, and for condemning the English nobles to perpetual exile: ‘she was accordingly deprived of the income from her estates, so that she should offer an example to others to keep faith’.7
Vergil’s explanations are puzzling, especially since Elizabeth’s so-called ‘peace with King Richard’ and her departure from sanctuary had occurred in March 1484, three years earlier than this February 1487 meeting. It was a little late to punish the Queen Dowager for that action. Further, since Henry VII’s victory, the King had treated the Queen Dowager with respect and generosity. Speculation abounds about the ‘deprivation’ –Vergil’s word – of Elizabeth’s property, an action endorsed by Parliament on 20 February 1487, along with the grant of an annuity of 400 marks.
Had Elizabeth participated in some activity that caused the forfeiture of her estates? Vergil never connects Elizabeth to the rebellion of the young Yorkist claimant, but that is where speculation has led. Evidence favouring such an allegation might lie in the fact that Elizabeth’s eldest son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, was held in the Tower during the rebellion and not released until after the battle of Stoke, where the Earl of Lincoln was killed and the impostor captured. Evidence against the theory lies in that fact that Sir Edward Wydeville supplied and led 2,000 horsemen at the battle of Stoke, an array of arms Henry VII would never have permitted if he suspected Wydeville treachery. Furthermore, Elizabeth’s sister Katherine had married Jasper Tudor, the King’s uncle, sometime before 7 November 1485, solidifying the family ties.
Those who suspect Elizabeth of supporting the ‘Warwick’ rebellion point to the eleven-year-old boy at i
ts head, whom Elizabeth might have believed was her son Prince Richard. Still, it is difficult to think that she would endanger her daughter, Queen Consort Elizabeth, by favouring any rebel claimant. Once the impostor had changed his identity to Warwick, son of Clarence, it is inconceivable to imagine that Elizabeth Wydeville would support the son of her hated enemy in preference to her own daughter. Equally improbable is her collaboration with another of the rebels, Bishop Stillington – the very man who had declared her marriage adulterous and her children illegitimate!
Perhaps Vergil – writing twenty-six years after the fact – ascribed a motivation to the council’s action that was inaccurate. As Sutton and Visser-Fuchs point out, the Queen’s dowry was being transferred from mother to daughter, maintaining the tradition that the Queen Consort received her principal income from Lancastrian properties.8 The transfer is recorded in ‘Writs under the Great Seal, Easter Term, 2 Hen.VII’:
To the lady queen, for payment of all profits and issues of all lands, honours, and castles, lately belonging to Elizabeth, late wife of Edward the Fourth.9
Henry VII’s orders to the treasurer and chamberlains of his exchequer on 1 May 1487 clearly state that all property of ‘Queen Elizabeth, late wife to the full noble prince of famous memory Edward the Fourth’ be assigned to ‘our dearest wife the Queen’.10 Those transfers were completed on 26 December 1487, when Queen Consort Elizabeth received a grant for life of her mother’s six manors in the county of Essex.11
At this point in her life, Elizabeth Wydeville may even have welcomed the exchange of her dowry property for a cash annuity. Estate management was a strenuous business that required supervision of officials, settling disputes between tenants, granting leases, collecting rents, supervising sales of timber, wood and wool – all conducted over vast estates scattered throughout the kingdom.12 While a large administrative staff handled such transactions, the few letters preserved from Elizabeth’s reign indicate that she took an active, personal role in estate management. In one letter, for instance, she admonishes Sir William Stonor for poaching deer in her forest and chase of Barnwood and Exhill and threatens a law suit; in another she warns the Earl of Oxford not to deny Simon Bliaunt his inheritance in the manor of Hemnals, in Cotton.13 Such matters must have seemed trivial and irrelevant to Elizabeth after the horrifying events of 1483.
The recent deaths of a husband, three sons, and two dearly beloved brothers may have led the Queen Dowager to seek out the convent at Bermondsey, a place where she could make peace with reality. With her daughter Queen Consort and her grandson heir to the throne, Elizabeth Wydeville had done her part for family and country. All we know is that sometime around 12 February 1487, she registered as a ‘boarder’ at Bermondsey Abbey, where she received free hospitality as the widow of a descendant of the Abbey’s founder. What she thought, as she gazed from the south bank of the Thames across to the Tower of London, where her life as Queen had begun in such splendour, we shall never know.
Five days later, on 17 February 1487, the leader of the rebellion against Henry VII was officially declared an impostor and his claim thoroughly disproved by a public appearance of Clarence’s actual son on 29 February. Henry VII released the ten-year-old Edward, Earl of Warwick from the Tower just long enough to exhibit him throughout London and to let him attend Mass at St Paul’s. After Mass, young Warwick met with men who had known him in earlier days, had his identity verified, then returned to the Tower while England prepared for war.
The Earl of Lincoln’s troops, in company with the impostor ‘Warwick’, invaded England in June. A hard-fought, three-hour battle at Stoke on 16 June 1487 resulted in a resounding victory for Henry VII. Lincoln was killed, and the impostor, subsequently identified as Lambert Simnel, taken prisoner. That unfortunate child, used by the Earl of Lincoln and Margaret of Burgundy to reclaim the throne for male Yorkists, was just another pawn in the wars that had destroyed so many noble families during the past century. In a rare bit of uncharacteristic leniency, Henry VII did not execute Simnel, but made him a turnspit in his kitchens – a living lesson to all nobles and commoners of the fate of rebels. No blood ties to royalty have ever been discovered for Simnel, but scullery duties for someone declared a relative by Margaret, Duchess Dowager of Burgundy, sent a powerful and continuing message to all. Simnel, identified in Tudor documents as the illegitimate son of an Oxford organmaker, apparently prospered in his new duties. Later appointed the King’s falconer, he died a quiet death in 1525.
Speculation still runs rife, however, and a 1998 defense of Richard III by Bertram Fields hypothesises that Lambert Simnel was a ‘stalking-horse’ for one of the two missing princes, who had escaped from the Tower and fled to the continent. Since Margaret of Burgundy supported the rebellion, Fields speculates that at least one of the princes was ‘hidden abroad awaiting the moment when he could return and claim the throne’.14 The defeat of the rebels ended such hopes and poor Lambert Simnel, not the real prince, ended up in Tudor hands. That scenario, Fields claims, explains Queen Dowager Elizabeth’s support of the rebellion against the interests of her daughter Elizabeth, Queen Consort to Henry VII. Such speculation about the Queen Dowager’s role exceeds any known facts.
With the rebels defeated, Henry VII finally scheduled the coronation of his Queen, Elizabeth of York, on 25 November 1487, almost two years after their marriage on 18 January 1486. Queen Dowager Elizabeth did not attend her daughter’s coronation. If she watched the procession of boats as the new Queen left Greenwich, sailed past Bermondsey Abbey, and landed at the Tower to spend the night before her coronation, Elizabeth Wydeville’s thoughts must have torn at her soul. Did she look across the Thames at the splendour of her daughter’s coronation and recall 25 May 1465 – her own silk-covered chair, the blue gowns of the newly made Knights of Bath, the scarlet cloaks of the Mayor and alderman, the prancing horses, the cheers of the citizens – as she made her way through Cheapside to her coronation at Westminster Abbey? Or did she see only the Tower’s foreboding grey walls, which enclosed the graves of her two sons, buried, as rumours insisted, in the middle of the night under a staircase? Was she attempting to find peace through religious seclusion? Or did the King forbid her presence at the coronation?
Evidence that the Queen Dowager remained in good favour with Henry VII resides in his continuing grants. In 1487, a grant of 200 marks was made ‘To the Queen Elizabeth, late wife of Ed. IV’.15 A writ to the Exchequer, dated 10 March 1488, orders payment of 200 marks to the ‘right dear and right well beloved Queen Elizabeth, late wife unto the noble prince of famous memory King Edward the IVth, and mother unto our dearest wife the Queen’.16 Unfortunately, the stylised, official language provides no insight into the King’s true feelings. On 30 May 1488, the King made Elizabeth’s annuity permanent, granting ‘100 marks sterling’ in advance of the Midsummer term and ordering that quarterly payments continue ‘unto time ye have otherwise from us in commandment’.17 Within the week, a mandate from the King at Windsor Castle ordered payment of £6 to ‘right dear mother Queen Elizabeth… for a ton of wine towards her costs and expenses’.18
With living expenses covered by her entitlement at Bermondsey Abbey, Elizabeth’s simple life required few material goods. In February 1490, her annuity was increased to £400 granted for life, and in mid-December 1490 the King granted her a special sum of fifty marks ‘against the feast of Christmas next coming’.19 Her son Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, had been restored to full favour by 19 July 1488, when the King ordered payment of Dorset’s £35 annuity, including arrears of £15.20
Except for brief excursions, Elizabeth Wydeville spent the rest of her life in Bermondsey convent. At the age of fifty, she had retreated from the swirling, murderous world of court politics. Experience had taught her the futility of vanity and the imperative of faith, a conclusion supported by her lifelong piety. Throughout her husband’s reign, Elizabeth had gladly filled the Queen’s traditional role in tending to religious offices and activities. In November 1468, she w
as granted the next presentation to the hospital or free chapel of St Anthony in London.21 In 1472, she received the disposition of the next vacant canonry and prebend in the King’s Chapel of St Stephen’s at Westminster Palace.22 In 1474 she became patron of the chantry or priory of Flaunsworde23, and in 1475 she presented George Daune for his confirmation as chaplain in the royal chapel of St Stephen at Westminster Palace, where, in 1476, she was granted the next vacant canonry and prebend.24 Proof that such offices were not merely pro-forma rituals of position resides in her other actions and charities.
Elizabeth’s decision in 1473 to give birth to the King’s sixth child at the Dominican Friary in Shrewsbury, rather than returning to the royal palaces at Westminster or Windsor, reflects not only a mother’s desire to stay close to her son Edward at Ludlow, but a deep-seated trust and belief in the Blackfriars. Highly educated and scholarly, the Blackfriars were well known in Shrewsbury for preaching against avarice and gluttony. They cautioned the fortunate ‘to have wealth of the spiritual value of charity’ and to avoid accumulating riches beyond reasonable need – a wicked act, the Blackfriars taught, unless those riches were used to help the needy. At the height of her glory as Queen, Elizabeth’s retreat to the Dominican Friary speaks volumes about the ideals she embraced.
In 1477, Elizabeth revealed a particular interest in the solitary, ascetic order of the Carthusians, when she obtained a licence to attend services at all Carthusian monasteries founded by the kings and queens of England. Her manor at Sheen enclosed the Great Charterhouse, where the monks studied, prayed, worked, ate and slept in their private cells, congregating only for Vespers and Sunday dinner. On 1 April 1479 she granted its Prior, John Ingelby, forty-eight acres of her land in West Sheen25, and in 1492 she named Prior Ingelby the leading executor of her will. Many Carthusians wore a hair shirt, as did Elizabeth’s brother Anthony at his death.
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