Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

by Sarah Gristwood

  The ladies withdrew to Greenwich for the weeks before the coronation: Elizabeth was to be presented to London afresh, almost as though she were a new-arrived foreign princess. When the time came, they would leave the palace at Greenwich by boat, accompanied by a whole flotilla of barges, each resplendent with silken banners, spelling out a careful message of pageantry. Especially fine was the Bachelors’ Barge, with a dragon spouting flames into the Thames. Landing on Tower Wharf, Elizabeth was greeted by the king; while he created fourteen new Knights of the Bath, she prepared for the next day.

  The next morning, Saturday, November 26, she dressed in the traditional kirtle of white “cloth of gold of damask,” a mantle furred with ermine and tasseled with gold. The writer of the anonymous document noticed the “fair yellow hair hanging down plain behind her back”—that symbol of virginity, suggesting anointed queenship as new territory. Elizabeth’s sister Cecily carried her train as they formed for the procession.

  Lengthy descriptions survive of the progress through the City, the litter and canopy. After the horse of state and the henchmen decked with white York roses came the ladies in horse-borne litters. The first had Katherine Woodville (Elizabeth Woodville’s sister, the former Duchess of Buckingham, now Duchess of Bedford) and Cecily. The second had Duchess of Suffolk (Elizabeth’s royal aunt, prominent despite the fact that her son had been Lincoln, the recent rebel), the Duchess of Norfolk, the Countess of Oxford, and all their various gentlewomen behind.

  The night was spent at Westminster, and on Sunday, coronation day, Elizabeth was dressed in purple velvet furred with ermine. She walked to the abbey over a carpet of woolen cloth that the watching crowds would be allowed to take. It was a sign of the people’s love for her, perhaps, that this traditional procedure nearly resulted in a riot, when so many pressed to take their souvenir that some were actually killed and the procession of the queen’s ladies thrown into confusion. England had become used to bloodshed—but not under these circumstances.

  Nothing, however, could be allowed to disturb the solemnity of the abbey ceremony itself, and as Elizabeth lay prostrate in front of the archbishop, for him to anoint her with the holy oil—as he set the crown upon her head and gave her the scepter and the rod, praying the whole while—it must have been a kind of vindication for all her, and her mother’s, former sufferings. Margaret Beaufort watched with her son, the king—and with Clarence’s daughter Lady Margaret Pole—from an elevated stage built at the side of the abbey and concealed by lattice and draperies. One can only speculate about what she felt, seeing another woman transformed into a quasi divinity. Any queen might validate and contribute to her husband’s kingship: an almost mystical symbol. But Elizabeth’s bloodline meant that she was more fundamentally necessary to Henry’s legitimacy—something that must (whatever their personal feelings toward her) have struck both her husband and her mother-in-law as a potential threat, as well as an opportunity.

  Next came the banquet, as the writer of Leland’s manuscript describes. After grace was said, “Dame Katherine Gray and Mistress Ditton went under the table, where they sat on either side [of] the Queen’s feet all the dinner time.” She had the Duchess of Bedford and Cecily on her left (the Archbishop of Canterbury was on her right), while the Countess of Oxford and the Countess of Rivers (Anthony Woodville’s widow) knelt on either side of her and held up a cloth as she ate. It was the same parade of homage that Elizabeth Woodville had received, and reading the descriptions of it—remembering the royally born Jacquetta on her knees before her daughter—one can guess why Margaret Beaufort was not there. Again, “the high and mighty princess his mother” watched with her son from a window at the side.

  After all the banquet menus that had come before, it is hard to guess what would have impressed. The game birds were standard, and the fatted rabbits (“Coneys of high Grece”—grease) and even the swan in a chawdron sauce of its own spiced guts and the peacock in its feathers were no more than one might expect on such an occasion. The whole seal, “richly served”? The fritters, the marchpane, the castles of jelly, the subtleties? Two courses only: perhaps the royal officials organizing the feast remembered that at the coronation of Richard and Anne, no one had had time to eat three. After the alms were given and the queen’s high rank was “cried” around the hall, the ceremony was almost over, barring, of course, the fruit and wafers, the ritual washing, the grace, the trumpets, and the “void” of hippocras and spices. Elizabeth left “with God’s blessing and to the rejoicing of many a true English man’s heart.”

  At mass the next day, Margaret Beaufort sat at the queen’s right-hand side; so she did too when Elizabeth sat in state in the Parliament chamber. The Duchess of Suffolk was still present, and all the lessons of the wars were surely there: divide and conquer, bring past and potential enemies into the fold, and make the defeated (especially the placatory, conciliatory figures of the women) part of the victory. The one person who does not appear to have been at any part of the coronation ceremony was Elizabeth’s own mother. It seems the strongest evidence that she was in some degree of disgrace. But perhaps Elizabeth of York’s relations with her husband, her role as queen, would get easier as her own loving but (from all the past evidence) forceful mother moved out of the way.

  With the coronation ceremony behind her, Elizabeth of York seemed ever more secure in her role as queen. Visiting the queen unexpectedly eight months later, in July 1488, the Spanish ambassador, De Puebla, found Elizabeth of York “with two and twenty companions of angelical appearance, and all we saw there seemed very magnificent, and in splendid style, as was suitable for the occasion.” Already, the envoy of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile was in England to negotiate the marriage treaty between Prince Arthur and their daughter Catherine, which would be ratified the following spring at the Treaty of Medina del Campo. (The haggling had gone as far as quibbles over who should, when the time came, provide the grand wardrobe necessary for Catherine’s arrival. “Husbands,” said Ferdinand and Isabella firmly, “provide the dresses of their wives.”)

  Elizabeth knew how to be a queen of England; she had learned it at her mother’s knee. Ten years later, De Puebla would see Elizabeth and Henry walking in procession to mass and notice that her ladies “went in good order” and were much adorned. The Venetian envoy once wrote that she was “a very handsome woman and in conduct very able”—or as the original Italian has it, “di gran governo.”

  Elizabeth of York’s motto was “humble and reverent”—but that is not necessarily the entire story. Her mother had surely known the value of informal, closet influence over the king—pillow talk, if you like—and maybe Elizabeth of York had learned something from observing the different styles of queenship exercised by Elizabeth Woodville and Marguerite of Anjou and the varying degrees of warmth with which they were received.

  There is some evidence, albeit scanty, to suggest Elizabeth did exercise a behind-the-scenes influence on her husband. There was a letter, for instance, from the pope to Margaret Beaufort saying that Henry had promised to appoint Elizabeth’s candidate to the bishopric of Worcester. Another letter, one of only two intercessionary letters from Elizabeth surviving, written in 1499, recommended to Ferdinand one “Henry Stuke, who wishes to go and fight against the Infidels.” (“Though he is a very short man, he has the reputation of being a valiant soldier.”) And there was a letter concerning the nomination of a chaplain to a vacant position.

  Another, later, Spanish report has Elizabeth receiving two letters from Ferdinand and Isabella and two from their daughter Catherine: “The King had a dispute with the Queen because he wanted to have one of the said letters to carry continually about him, but the Queen did not like to part with hers,” the ambassador relates. It has been taken as evidence of Elizabeth’s independence—and though in fact it may sound more like a thoroughly stage-managed display, intended to show how highly missives from the Spanish court were valued, that too would show Elizabeth as a conscious player in the diplomat
ic game.

  But against that are reports—like Bacon’s comment that Elizabeth of York was “depressed” in status, or like the Spanish report that she was beloved “because she is powerless”—suggesting that Henry’s queen had been sidelined, like Anne Neville before her. It may well have been that a cannier husband had subsumed her rights and powers into his own, while diverting her into a life of ceremonies, interspersed by as many as eight pregnancies. Bacon, indeed, even claimed that the king’s “aversion toward the house of York was so predominant in him as it found place not only in his wars and councils, but in his chamber and bed.” (Bacon did also say, more mildly, that although Henry was “nothing uxurious, nor scarce indulgent” toward his queen, he was nonetheless “companionable and respective [considerate], and without jealousy.”) These reports make curious the fact that she is nonetheless widely assumed to have been happy.

  There are two distinct strands of information concerning Elizabeth’s personality and situation, and the two do not altogether match up. One describes Elizabeth’s peaceful and satisfactory marriage with Henry, her apparent acceptance of a purely domestic role; the other looks back to the perhaps more ambitious figure of her youth. Writers have traditionally reconciled her apparent contentment, and her husband’s dominance, by making her into a woman without ambition and almost without volition.

  But the trouble with that judgment is that it sets up another anomaly: that this placid ruminant of a woman had once, only a few years before, been the passionately proactive girl of Richard’s reign (unless, that is, the Buck letter is to be regarded as a complete forgery and The Ballad of Lady Bessy is to be completely ignored—along with the apparent fears of Richard III’s henchmen that she might avenge her family’s wrongs on them). Perhaps the truth is that the early Tudor chroniclers’ construct of successful monarchy leaves no room for evidence of dissent, and any dissents of Elizabeth’s were, moreover, probably of the private, domestic kind. A happy marriage—and this marriage does seem to have been basically happy—has no story.

  On August 25, 1498, the Spanish ambassador gave another set of letters from Spain to Elizabeth, “the most distinguished and the most noble lady in the whole of England.” She immediately sent for the Latin secretary to write replies; he claimed to have been always obliged to write such letters to Spain three or four times, because the queen always found some defects in them.

  It is possible that Elizabeth’s cultural influence has been underestimated. After all, the chivalric influence at her husband’s and her son’s courts derived from her Burgundian family. When renovations were later made at the Greenwich palace, displaying a Burgundian influence, the queen herself devised part of the plan. From certain similarities in their handwriting, it may have been she who taught her second son and her daughters to write, and in the spring of 1488 Elizabeth’s influence could perhaps be seen when a lady mistress was chosen for Prince Arthur (at a hefty fee of more than twenty-six pounds a year): Elizabeth Darcy, who had presided over the nursery of Elizabeth’s brother Edward V.

  Elizabeth had a measure of literary interest, which she shared with her mother. She owned or used several Books of Hours, and the placing of her signature upon them would seem to indicate that she appreciated their exquisite illustrations, as well as giving them to favored ladies. One is inscribed, “Madam I pray you remember me in your good prayers your mistress Elizabeth R.” A copy of the devotional Scala perfectionis, the Scale of Perfection, presented to her lady Mary Roos was signed both by her (“I pray you pray for me / Elizabeth ye queen”) and by Margaret Beaufort. Elizabeth shared with her mother-in-law an interest in religion that led them particularly to Saint Bridget of Sweden, whose The Fifteen Oes (or O’s) took pride of place in the collection of English and Latin prayers they commissioned together from Caxton.

  One of the big questions about Elizabeth of York is her relationship with Margaret Beaufort. The 1498 report from another Spanish envoy, de Ayala, saying that the queen is “beloved because she is powerless,” continued: “The King is much influenced by his mother and his followers in affairs or personal interest and in others. The Queen, as is generally the case, does not like it.” He also spoke of Elizabeth’s “subjection” to Margaret. There is a strong received impression that the two were antagonistic (or that antagonism was averted only by the supposed placidity on Elizabeth’s part), and perhaps it is true that there was bound to be an element of rivalry between the queen and her strong-willed mother-in-law.

  Henry certainly seems to have tried to ensure that the degree of ceremony accorded to his mother was not too far below that given to his wife. In 1493, when Henry drew up household ordinances, demonstrating the concern he shared with his mother for the dignity and order of the court, they stipulated that a bishop dining in Margaret’s house would be served “as he is served in the king’s presence” and that when Margaret went to church with the king and queen, she too should have her own cloth of estate. When the king took wine and spices after Evensong, it should be served with equal state to him, his mother, and his sons—the queen presumably residing in her own household, separately.

  It must not be forgotten that part of the anxious parade of state and intimacy accorded to Margaret rather than to Elizabeth was because the queen had her own separate establishment and status already, whereas a place had to be created for the sort of “king’s mother” Margaret was determined to be. Perhaps if Margaret had become a queen, a role that she clearly felt Fortune had denied her, she would not have felt the need to press for her rights quite so stridently.

  Cecily Neville had likewise played an active part in the first years of Edward IV’s reign, but Cecily, while possibly as determined a woman as Margaret, had herself been newly arrived at the independence of widowhood when her son became king. She had not spent years imagining her future role as Margaret must have done; she had not played such an active part in bringing her son to the throne.

  Yet the picture of Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort only as rivals may be slightly too simplistic. The Spanish envoy apart, the picture of their hostility depends largely on one particular well-known story of Margaret Beaufort’s intervening to block a man who was trying to petition the queen and his resulting complaint that he had been set aside by “that strong whore,” the king’s mother. Margaret’s action could be seen as officious, or protective—a little bit of both, maybe. Perhaps de Ayala had expectations unrealistic in England, having seen how his joint employer, Isabella of Castile, could exercise power quite openly. But the fact that Elizabeth and Margaret’s contentious relationship is sketched in so few sources does draw its veracity into question.

  Perhaps, too, Elizabeth and Margaret were able to utilize to some degree the fact that between them they represented two very different faces of queenship, or quasi queenship. Certainly, the two women could work together when necessary, joining together to receive the license to found a chantry or to apply for the rights to the next presentation to a deanery, though one might wonder how large a part Elizabeth really had to play in the actions—the more so because both of those partnerships also included, among other participants, her mother-in-law’s old employee Reginald Bray. In 1501 the names of several of Margaret’s trusted connections were among Elizabeth’s officers—but this may mean only that, after all this time, their relationships were simply entangled to a degree, rather than displaying Margaret’s dominance.

  Elizabeth and Margaret probably collaborated more naturally on family matters. In the years ahead, they acted in concert to try to prepare for Catherine of Aragon’s smooth passage into English life upon her marriage to young Arthur and to protect Elizabeth’s daughter Margaret from the perils of too early marriage. But all the same, if Elizabeth of York’s life was spelled out in big ceremonies and childbirths, then in very many of them she had her mother-in-law by her side, a situation that would certainly have displeased some of the other daughters-in-law in this story.

  For the first decade or so at least, report
s of the royal couple’s movements almost always show Margaret with them—if, indeed, she was not with her son when the queen was absent. Margaret was, of course, a woman now past the pressures of childbearing and child rearing, which left her free to act almost like a male counselor. At the Oxfordshire palace of Woodstock, Margaret’s lodgings were linked to the king’s by a withdrawing chamber where the two could be together, for work or leisure. In the Tower, again, her rooms were next to the king’s bedchamber and the council chamber.

  It is hard to imagine how Margaret’s extensive involvement in the royal family could not to some degree have grated on her daughter-in-law. A letter from William Paston describes how the royal trio—the king, his wife, and his mother—“lie at Northampton and will tarry there till Michaelmas,” as though they were one indissoluble entity. A letter of Margaret’s from 1497 wrote that the king, the queen, and all “our” sweet children were in good health.

  By this time, however, Queen Elizabeth would perhaps be able to act more independently. As Henry VII found his feet, Francis Bacon would later claim that he reverenced but did not heed his mother. Nonetheless, to keep the two women closest to him placated must always have been a juggling act.

  Henry’s balancing of his wife’s and his mother’s claims can be seen in operation immediately after Elizabeth’s coronation, at the end of 1487, when the court spent Christmas at Greenwich. On Twelfth Night, the king and queen wore their crowns, though the closest thing Margaret Beaufort could be allowed was (as another manuscript preserved by John Leland records) “a rich Coronal.” But when the king wore his formal surcoat and the queen hers, Margaret dressed “in like Mantel and Surcoat as the Queen.”

  There were, of course, distinctions made between the two royal women. Margaret had to walk slightly behind and “aside the queen’s half train.” After mass, as the king and queen dined in state, the king’s marshal ended the formalities by making “Estate,” or a formal reverence, to the king and queen and “half Estate” to the king’s mother, the same as to the Archbishop of Canterbury. A letter from Henry VIII’s day, after the divorce, would concede that Catherine of Aragon could keep the royal privilege of holding a Maundy Thursday, not as queen, but only “in the name of Princess Dowager, in like manner as my Lady the Kings graunt-dame did in the name of the Countess of Richemount and Derby.”