The Women of the Cousins’ War
Page 4
As one might expect, the chronicles and the ‘History’ are all written by men, the foreign visitors are all men too, and these are all men who share the medieval view of the nature of women; some of them – as celibate churchmen – are professionally remote from women. They tell us what has happened in their world, and they tell us what they believe is the nature of that world. They do not expect to see women working effectively and powerfully, and when this is the case they often fail to report it. When they do see an ambitious and powerful woman like Margaret of Anjou they often report her negatively, or as if she were, in some way, manly. Other women, like Margaret Beaufort, appear as saints.
None of the women of this book escapes these stereotypes. Jacquetta’s story is nowhere fully told; but she is sometimes slandered as the sexually driven, secretly married wife of a socially ambitious nobody, and as the suspect witch who put her daughter to bed with a young king by enchanting him. Her daughter Elizabeth Woodville is seen as the woman who seduced a younger man and upset the order of the court. Her greed put her in conflict with the Earl of Warwick and brought war to the kingdom, and her ambition drove her to send her daughter to seduce the probable murderer of her sons, and poison his wife. Margaret Beaufort is an example of the saintly stereotype. There is no evidence of her having sex after her first brief marriage which gave her a son; historians suggest that her third marriage was a celibate union, and depend heavily on the descriptions of her in the history commissioned by her son, as a pious thoughtful woman who prayed for the victory of her son and wept in moments of joy for her realisation that all worldly success is fleeting. Her jockeying for power at her son’s court, her meticulous business sense, her brilliant political strategy, and her cool-headed cold-hearted alliances are not mentioned, let alone celebrated in traditional histories of this founding mother of the Tudor house.
There is one further gap in the record that I would like to mention here, as an invitation to further study. Traditional historians have not only missed the nature of women and the range of their experiences; they have also missed the networks of women that we can see only when we start to look. Margaret Beaufort was lady-in-waiting for years to Elizabeth Woodville, and godmother to Elizabeth’s daughter. Then she was friend and chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne, wife of Richard III, until she betrayed her loyalty and her friendship by conspiring with Elizabeth Woodville, who was herself Anne’s sister-in-law. Then Margaret and Elizabeth were co-grandmothers to the Tudor heirs: Arthur, who died; and Henry, who would become Henry VIII. Margaret lived long enough to be a powerful influence on the young Henry VIII and to see him married to Katherine of Aragon.
Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford, was a lifelong friend of Margaret of Anjou, serving her until the marriage of Elizabeth to Edward IV meant that she became chief lady of the rival court of York. Margaret of Anjou was briefly mother-in-law to Anne Neville, who married her son Prince Edward of Lancaster until widowed at Tewkesbury, when Anne went on to marry Richard Duke of Gloucester, and become sister-in-law, and then successor and enemy to Elizabeth Woodville. There are some amazing connections here among women competing and co-operating that have been hidden from the history along with the characters and actions of these women.
As this is a book for the general reader we three authors decided against footnoting our work but we have each included an account of our sources that you will find at the foot of each section.
A book like this could not be written without the work of fellow scholars. I have to thank firstly the pioneers of women’s rights and women’s history. Without the former I would not have been allowed a place at a university; without the latter I would not have had the material which has illuminated my life. I thank my mother, from my heart, for her determination to get me an education and a trade, and for knowing that these are skills that a woman must have. My warm thanks to David Baldwin and Michael Jones for writing about these wonderful women in the first place, and for writing about them with me.
NOTES AND SOURCES
The phrase ‘hidden from history’ which so precisely describes the unmentioned presence of women in the past is from Rowbotham, S. Hidden from History: 300 years of women’s oppression and the fight against it, London: Pluto Press, 1973. The Bible, Ecclesiasticus 44:1 says ‘Let us now praise famous men . . .’
The encouraging account of Mary Queen of Scots in present tense is from the back-jacket copy of my novel The Other Queen, London: Harper Collins, 2008, and the description of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley from Alison Weir’s Elizabeth the Queen, London: Pimlico, 1999. The instructional tone is from the booklet which came with my new cooker: Neff instructions for use B46W74.0GB; and the chilling voice of Nazi authority is drawn from Noakes, J. and Pridham, G. Documents on Nazism 1919–1945, NY: Viking Press, 1974, pp. 463–7.
The scene as narrated by Jane Boleyn comes from my novel The Boleyn Inheritance, London: HarperCollins, 2006, and the subsequent passage is from the viewpoint of Mary Boleyn: Gregory, P. The Other Boleyn Girl, London: HarperCollins, 2001. Michael Hicks’s exceptionally honest explanation of why women are missing from medieval history is helpfully clear: Hicks, M.A. Anne Neville, Queen to Richard III, Stroud: Tempus, 2006.
The views of women, Eve as a temptress, is quoted by Levin, C. and Watson, J. Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Wayne State University Press, 1987. The lack of interest in Katherine Howard was expressed by a woman historian, Mary Hays: Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of all ages and cultures, facsimile reprint 1803, but this unfortunate view of Katherine Howard comes from David Starkey: Starkey, D. Six Wives, the Queens of Henry VIII, London: Chatto & Windus, 2003. Joanna Denny provides an empathetic biography that also has new evidence as to Katherine’s date of birth. I quote Katherine’s letter from Denny’s book Katherine Howard, A Tudor Conspiracy, London: Portrait, 2005.
Henry VIII’s lack of pleasure in his wedding night with Anne of Cleves is quoted from Weir, A. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, London: The Bodley Head, 1991. The reluctance of scholars to criticise the Virgin Queen is cited: Walker, J.M. Dissing Elizabeth, Negative Representations of Gloriana, London: Duke University Press (1998); Queen Victoria’s widowhood was examined in Lamont-Brown, R. ‘Queen Victoria’s “secret marriage”’, Contemporary Review, December 2003. Lady Macbeth’s speech is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Act 1, Scene v, 38–43.
Polydore Vergil’s history has been edited and republished: Vergil, P. and Ellis, H. Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History Comprising the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III, Kessinger Publishing Legacy Reprint, 1971. Shakespeare’s critical account of Margaret of Anjou comes from Henry VI: Part III, Act 1, Scene iv, 111 – 141/2. Later she-wolves include Hillary Clinton: Feldman, S. ‘Gender traitors’, New Humanist, Vol. 123, No. 4 (August 2008), accessed: http://newhumanist.org.uk/ 1816/gender-traitors, and Margaret Thatcher: Gale Group: Washington Monthly, Vol. 20 (May 1988) Is Margaret Thatcher a Woman? No woman is if she has to make it in a man’s world, accessed: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Is+Margaret+Thatcher+a+ woman%3F+No+woman+is+if+she+has+to+make+it+in+ a. . .-a06676349.
Laura Ulrich cites many exclusions of women in Ulrich, L.T. Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History, New York: Knopf, 2007; Levin and Watson defended the absence of women from the law: Levin, C. and Watson, J. Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987. The absence of women artists was noted by the Guardian, 27 March 2007. Abraham Mendelssohn predicted the importance of music for his son in preference to his daughter, cited by Diana Ambache in Women of Note, accessed: http://www.ambache.co.uk/; and the slow progress of the Vienna Philharmonic to gender-free hiring is demonstrated in Oxford University Press, Timelines in music history: Women in music, accessed: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/page/ womentimeline. Virginia Woolf is a definitive author on these matters of creativity and the difficulties put in the path of women: Woolf, V.
A Room of One’s Own, London: Hogarth Press, 1929. E.H. Carr considers the creation of history but not the gender of the historian in Carr, E.H. What Is History? London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1961.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Amt, E. Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, New York: Routledge, 1993
Baldwin, D. Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002
Barnhouse, R. The Book of the Knight of the Tower: Manners for Young Medieval Women, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
Bramley, P. The Wars of the Roses: A Field Guide and Companion, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007
Carr, E.H. What is History? London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1961
Castor, H. Blood & Roses: The Paston family and the Wars of the Roses, London: Faber, 2004
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Chrimes, S.B. Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Henry VII, London: Macmillan, 1964
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Denny, J. Katherine Howard, A Tudor Conspiracy, London: Portrait, 2005
Duggan, A.J. Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997
Field, P.J.C. The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993
Freeman, J. ‘Sorcery at court and manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the witch of Eye next Westminster’, Journal of Medieval History, 30: 343–57, 2004
Godwin, W. Lives of the necromancers: or, An account of the most eminent persons in successive ages, who have claimed for themselves, or to whom has been imputed by others, the exercise of magical power, London: F.J. Mason, 1834
Goodman, A. The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981
Goodman, A. The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers’ Experience, Stroud: Tempus, 2006
Gregory, P. The Other Boleyn Girl, London: HarperCollins, 2001
Gregory, P. The Boleyn Inheritance, London: HarperCollins, 2006
Griffiths, R.A. The Reign of King Henry VI, Stroud: Sutton, 1998
Grummitt, D. The Calais Garrison, Wa r and Military Service in England, 1436–1558, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008
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Hughes, J. Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002
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Lamont-Brown, R. ‘Queen Victoria’s “secret marriage”’, Contemporary Review, December 2003
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Thomas, K. Religion and the Decline of Magic, New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971
Ulrich, L.T. Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History, New York: Knopf, 2007
Vergil, P. and Ellis, H. Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History Comprising the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III, Kessinger Publishing Legacy Reprint, 1971
Walker, J.M. Dissing Elizabeth, Negative Representations of Gloriana, London: Duke University Press, 1998
Ward, J. Women in Medieval Europe 1200–1500, Essex: Pearson Education, 2002
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Weinberg, S.C. ‘Caxton, Anthony Woodville and the Prologue to the “MorteDarthur”’, Studies in Philology, Vol. 102, No. 1: 45–65, 2005
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ONLINE SOURCES
English History, Katherine Howard: englishhistory.net/tudor/ monarchs/howard.html
Feldman, S. (2008) ‘Gender traitors’, New Humanist, Vol. 123, No. 4, August: http://newhumanist.org.uk/1816/gender-traitors
Gale Group: Washington Monthly Company (1988) Is Margaret Thatcher a Woman? No woman is if she has to make it in a man’s world: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Is+Margaret+Thatcher+ a+woman%3F+No+woman+is+if+she+has+to+make+it+ in+a. . .-a06676349
Mendelssohn, A. cited by Diana Ambache in Women of Note: http://www.ambache.co.uk/
Oxford University Press, Timelines in music history: Women in music: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/page/womentimeline
JACQUETTA OF
LUXEMBOURG
1415/16–1472
Philippa Gregory
CHILDHOOD
Jacquetta of Luxembourg was born, perhaps in one of her family’s chateaux in France, probably in the year 1416. This uncertainty as to her date of birth is not uncommon for women of this period: none of the three women of this book had the date of their birth recorded. Girls were not valued in the fifteenth century, and nobody could have predicted that the oldest daughter of the heir of Luxembourg would be a leading English woman through two reigns and two regencies, a witness to some of the most significant events of two wars, t
he mother of a queen and the founder of a royal dynasty, and a powerful actor in her own right.
She was the second child born to a noble family, in a world that had been at war for so long that neither her father nor her grandfather had known a reliable peace. She spent her childhood in the beautiful castles and fortified chateaux of northern France, which then belonged to England.
The English had inherited northern France through the marriage of a French princess to England’s King Edward II. But many of the French denied the right of a woman to inherit and argued that the throne should belong instead to the male heir of the junior royal family of France: the Valois. Hostilities started in 1337 and continued, with occasional periods of peace, for more than a century – earning the interminable battles the name ‘the Hundred Years’ War’. Although armies were small and battles had only a local impact, the entire country was disrupted by the shifting borders, the assault on towns, the brigandage of the regular forces, the anarchy of the private armies, and the impoverishment of trade – all this amid the normal day-to-day lethal uncertainty of medieval life. The four-generations’ war blighted the disputed territories and impoverished all of France.
Medieval Luxembourg, as imagined in the nineteenth century
It damaged England too. The overseas wars were an unbearably expensive drain on what was little more than a subsistence economy, distracted everyone from building prosperity and peace, and rewarded those who were opportunistic, militaristic, or even outright lawless. There was a constant sacrifice of life and fortune: