Early the next year, Margaret was writing her own letter from Calais, commemorating her son’s birthday: “This day of St Anne’s, that I did bring into this world my good and gracious prince, king and only beloved son.” Margaret’s life was as peripatetic as ever, but not necessarily based around the court, since other letters in roughly the same year were signed from other of Margaret’s regular residences, Hatfield and Buckden. Once again, her letter from Calais was addressed to “My dearest and only desired joy in this world” and signed as from Henry’s “humble servant, bedeswoman, and mother.” But the first part of the document was—again—about what Henry had next to do in support of his mother’s long-standing Orléans claim, pursuance of which may have been what brought her across the Channel. “I wish, my dear heart, an [if] my fortune be to recover it [the money], I trust you shall well perceive I shall deal towards you as a kind, loving mother; and, if I should never have it, yet your kind dealing it is to me a thousand times more than all that good I can recover.” It was almost as if the common pursuit of money (and the power—or security—that came with it) was a shared language between mother and son.
They had, however, other ways of speaking freely; in the same letter, Margaret also asks her son to enter into a small subterfuge to help her maintain good relations with her husband, Stanley. Stanley’s son, who held offices on her lands in Kendal, had himself been claiming the allegiance of Margaret’s tenants; rather than claim her own rights directly but tactlessly, she suggested the king send her a letter ordering that all her tenants should be retained only in the name of little Henry, Duke of York—“a good excuse,” Margaret noted, “for me to [give to] my lord and husband.” Perhaps Stanley, now Margaret was officially independent of him, was feeling a little jealous of his rights.
Elizabeth too was having troubles with her extended family. In August 1501, her cousin Suffolk decamped again, this time permanently, inevitably making his way into the Burgundian sphere of influence. Caught up in the fallout were Elizabeth’s nephew Dorset (the son of her half brother, now succeeded to his father’s dignities) and her brother-in-law Courtenay, who was arrested and sent to the Tower. The queen’s financial records show her taking on responsibility for her sister Katherine and her sister’s Courtenay children: payment for their “diets” and servants (two women and a groom at 14s 4d per week), for their journey to London, for their rockers, for their doctor—and, when medicine failed, for the burying of one small boy. Foreign observers had not yet ceased speculating whether the queen might have further children of her own; in May 1501, the Portuguese ambassador had been writing home, “The queen was supposed to be with child; but her apothecary told me that a Genoese physician affirmed that she was pregnant, yet it was not so; she has much embonpoint and large breasts.”
But Elizabeth still had children enough to worry about, and Suffolk’s timing was particularly galling in that 1501 also saw Catherine of Aragon’s long-awaited arrival in the country. Her sea voyage had been stormy even in comparison with those of other royal brides, but her ship finally entered the harbor at Plymouth in early October. As Catherine’s grand arrival into London was planned, Elizabeth’s officers were involved every step of the way, the queen’s chamberlain selecting the ladies who should accompany the new princess and her master of horse providing the henchmen who would ride behind Catherine, himself leading the palfrey of state. The ceremony was to be extraordinary, but Henry the puppet master couldn’t wait for the curtain to go up on his play.
The king took his son Arthur, rushing south to intercept the Spanish bride on her journey, against the protests of her scandalized staff, who declared she had gone to bed. On his return to Richmond, the king immediately reported back to Elizabeth (so an account of Catherine’s arrival published by John Leland recounts): “He was met by the Queen’s Grace, whom he ascertained and made privy to the acts and demeanour between himself, the Prince, and the Princess, and how he liked her person and behaviour.” Margaret Beaufort was presumably not present, but her Book of Hours recorded the progress of Catherine’s journey, and her town house at Coldharbour was being fitted out with almost seven hundred pounds’ worth of fabrics and luxuries to entertain the wedding party. (The additions included new ovens, freshly glazed windows, new liveries and Beaufort badges for the servants, as well as a carpet of “imagery work” for Margaret’s own chamber. Coldharbour boasted even a conservatory, to provide fresh herbs in the winter.)
On November 10, the king and queen, on their separate barges, left Richmond for Baynard’s Castle, to be at hand for the festivities. On November 12, Catherine entered London, with an escort of lords. The king and Prince Arthur watched from a haberdasher’s house, as did a number of the royal women, according to another contemporary document, The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne: “In another chamber stood the Queen’s Good Grace, my Lady the King’s Mother, My Lady Margaret, my Lady her sister [Mary], with many other ladies of the land, not in very open sight, like as the King’s Grace did in his manner and party.” What Elizabeth would have seen as she peeked out of the window was a blooming fifteen-year-old dressed with “fair auburn” hair, “rich apparel on her body after the manner of her country,” and “a little hat fashioned like a cardinal’s hat of a pretty braid with a lace of gold.”
It was the afternoon of the thirteenth that Catherine was taken to Baynard’s Castle, with a “right great assembly,” actually to meet Queen Elizabeth, who welcomed her “with pleasure and goodly communication,” dancing, and “disportes.” On November 14, the king and queen—with the king’s mother—stood “in secret manner” in St. Paul’s to watch the wedding ceremony from behind a lattice. It was arranged that the bridal couple should process along a walkway six feet above the ground to the specially constructed stage where their marriage would be solemnized—so that everyone could see.
Elizabeth watched while her son Henry escorted the bride into the church and her sister Cecily carried Catherine’s train. The Duchess of Norfolk led those who prepared the bed. Later, what did or did not happen in it would become a source of great controversy. Arthur (so it was reported almost thirty years afterward) boasted the next morning that he had “been this night in the midst of Spain,” but Catherine declared that she had remained as “untouched and pure” as when she came from her mother’s belly. But at the time, no one seems to have doubted that everything had gone swimmingly. Next morning the princess kept her chamber with her ladies, while the Spanish delegation was entertained by Margaret Beaufort.
There was Solemn Mass the next day, Tuesday, and a move to Westminster; on Thursday, the usual tournaments began. The queen shared the stage built to accommodate the royal party with her daughters, her new daughter-in-law, and, inevitably, the king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort—a third generation of royal ladies on the dais, heading as many as several hundred other ladies and gentlewomen. Elizabeth’s cousin and nephew Buckingham and Dorset led the challengers. Friday saw more pageants—reluctant ladies successfully assaulted by Knights of the Mount of Love—and afterward the company danced: Arthur with his aunt Cecily and Catherine with one of her ladies (women often partnered with other women) and Henry with his sister Margaret. The ten-year-old Henry, “perceiving himself to be encumbered with his clothes,” cast off his gown and danced in his jacket “in so goodly and pleasant manner that it was to the King and Queen right great and singular pleasure.” At the Sunday banquet, Elizabeth, with her sisters and of course her mother-in-law, sat at a table in the upper part of the Parliament Chamber on, as the report preserved by John Leland has it, “the table of most reputation of all the tables in the Chamber”—another reminder that this chivalric world was her terrain, by virtue not only of her sex, but also of her family history. More tournaments, more spectacles, until the following Friday saw a veritable armada of barges transport the royal party, each in their own craft, and their attendants to Richmond.
The new Tudor palace of Richmond—built on the site of the old palace of Sheen, destroyed by
fire in 1497—was an architectural monument to the young dynasty, its royal apartments offering both luxury and a new measure of privacy. Its richly decorated rooms looked out onto gardens of topiary and statues of heraldic beasts, with a gallery set upon the walls and tables set out ready for guests to play games of chance. On Sunday afternoon, Henry took a party out there, and among the surprises they found was a specially rigged platform where a Spaniard showed off “many wondrous and delicious points of tumbling, dancing and other sleights.” The account, in Leland, was written to praise, but it does paint an impressive picture. After Evensong and supper, the hall was once again decked out with carpets and cloth-of-gold cushions, and a great display of plate; a richly decorated portable stage in the shape of a tower was dragged in by sea horses and occupied by disguised ladies and singing children of the chapel. Coneys and white doves were set free to run or fly about the hall, to everyone’s “great laughter and disport.” After “courtly rounds and pleasant dances” came the void of “goodly spices and wine,” served by a host of nobles. The revelers were ages away from the days when a fleeing Marguerite of Anjou, another foreign princess brought over to become England’s queen, had been reduced to living off a single herring. That was the point, presumably.
The new couple set out for Arthur’s seat at Ludlow just before Christmas, and only a few weeks later, in January 1502, Richmond saw the celebration of Princess Margaret’s marriage to the king of Scotland. After mass in the new palace chapel, the queen’s Great Chamber was the site of the proxy wedding. The description written by John Younge, the official called the “Somerset Herald” and again preserved by John Leland, makes, once again, no mention of Margaret Beaufort being present, though the party did include little Princess Mary.
King, queen, and princess were asked whether they knew of any impediment to the match, Margaret “wittingly and of deliberate mind having twelve years complete in age” affirming that she contracted the match; “incontinently,” after the ceremony was concluded, Elizabeth “took her daughter the Queen of Scots by the Hand,” and they went to dine, both served as queens. Two queens together: it is a pity Elizabeth Woodville could not be there. There were jousts, followed by a supper banquet, and the next morning the twelve-year-old Margaret came into her mother’s Great Chamber and “by the voice of” the officer of arms gave thanks to all the noblemen who had jousted for her, and distributed praise and prizes “by the advice of the ladies of the court.” Margaret was still left in her mother’s charge, but it was agreed she would be sent northward by the beginning of September 1503.
But three months after Margaret’s wedding came tragedy. On April 2, 1502, Prince Arthur died at Ludlow after a short illness; the letter with the news arrived at Greenwich so late in the night of the fourth that the council did not immediately inform the king but summoned his confessor, who broke the news early the next day.
Henry sent for his wife, saying that “he and his Queen would take the painful sorrows together.” Elizabeth, seeing her husband’s distress, rallied herself to speak to Henry with “full great and constant comfortable words.” She urged that he should “first after God, remember the weal of his own noble person, the comfort of his realm, and of her. She then said that my Lady his Mother had never no more children but him only, and, that God by his Grace had ever preserved him, and brought him where that he was.” God had, she pointed out, still left him a fair prince and two princesses, and “God is where he was and we are both young enough [to have more children].” But after Elizabeth had left Henry, her own enforced composure crumbled. “After that she was departed and come to her own Chamber, natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart, that those that were about her were fain to send for the king to comfort her.” Now it was Henry’s turn to “relieve” her. He “showed her how wise counsel she had given him before; and he for his part would thank God for his son, and would she should do in like wise.” It was positive evidence of Henry and Elizabeth’s relationship.
Catherine of Aragon, the youthful widow, was left in painful uncertainty about her fate, and she herself was “suffering”—ill, though perhaps only with distress. Elizabeth sent “a litter of black velvet with black cloth” to bring her back to the capital by slow stages (there was, after all, the possibility of a pregnancy). She reached Croydon by late May, and Elizabeth was careful to remain in reassuring contact, although she herself was planning to journey the other way.
That summer Elizabeth of York went on a progress into Wales, although—at thirty-six, and after multiple childbirths—she must surely have known that she was once again pregnant. Even if she and Henry had earlier decided to content themselves with their existing family, they must both have been acutely aware that the situation had now changed. They had now lost two of their three sons. It was the old situation, an heir but no spare, and even if she really had decided that the time for childbearing was past, it may now once again have appeared worth the risk. The timing of her journey does seem odd, given that she had no particular history of long, solitary trips, but perhaps all the arrangements were in place before she knew of her condition.
An event in the late spring may possibly have had a part in Elizabeth’s desire for some time away from court. On May 6, one Sir James Tyrell was privately executed, in connection with the Suffolk conspiracies, and his death paved the way for subsequent declarations that he had in his last days made a confession of having, at Richard III’s instigation, murdered the Princes in the Tower. Such a declaration was never published, nor seen by any of the chroniclers who mention it.
In early to mid-August 1483, the tale runs, Richard had ordered Sir Robert Brackenbury, the man in charge of the Tower, to put the boys to death. Brackenbury had refused, but he did agree to turn the keys over for one night to a less scrupulous man—Tyrell, who enlisted two ruffians called Miles Forrest and John Dighton—to do the actual deed.
There are both indications and counterindications as to the truth of the tale. In March 1484, Richard rewarded Brackenbury for deeds unspecified, reappointing him to his post for life, “considering his good and loyal service to us before this time, and for certain other considerations especially moving us”; Tyrell too prospered under Richard’s rule. But in fact Tyrell was not in 1483 the needy man on the make Thomas More depicts—we have indeed heard his name, as a successful court official, several times in this tale. Some theories that have the younger Prince, at least, released alive also have him hidden at the Tyrell family seat, while the fact that in late 1484 Richard sent Tyrell to Flanders “for divers matters greatly concerning the King’s weal” could be taken as suggesting that Tyrell had escorted the boy to safer hiding there.
Indeed, almost every piece of evidence can be taken two ways (even, indeed, the fact that Tyrell had once been in Cecily Neville’s wardship, and a Miles Forrest was listed as being one of Cecily’s attendants). In June 1486, Henry VII issued Tyrell with a general pardon for anything he had done before that date; on July 16, he issued him with another one, almost as if, in the intervening month, Tyrell had, with Henry’s knowledge, committed some other heinous crime. (Why, if Henry found the boys alive after Bosworth, should he have kept them alive for almost a year and then murdered them? Perhaps the answer is that Elizabeth of York’s pregnancy gave an urgent reason to remove any threat to his dynasty. It has even been suggested that Elizabeth Woodville found out what Henry had done and that this was why she was dispatched to her convent so abruptly.)
After that time, Tyrell continued to thrive under Henry’s rule, albeit the posts Henry gave him kept him out of the country. When Tyrell was finally attainted in 1504, it was only for treasons in connection with Suffolk, while Dighton (both Forrest and Brackenbury being already dead) was left at liberty. Bacon says that Henry “gave out” word of Tyrell’s guilt, but there is no sign of his having actually published any confession—an incomprehensible oversight, if it is true. It must go down as yet another mystery—but also as one of th
ose stories that do not necessarily reflect well on the Tudor dynasty.
In any event, if such a confession was indeed made, and if Elizabeth believed it, it would have stirred up painful memories. If she had any cause to doubt it—as many have since—then it could have operated on her yet more powerfully.
Before Elizabeth even set out from Woodstock, she was unwell, but she still managed to depart in early August. Modern psychological theory might suggest that her choosing this moment to visit Wales, where her son the Prince of Wales had died a few months before, was linked to her grief for him. But the question of whether a premodern parent had in any sense the same relationship with their children that we now expect is one of the more vexed in history. And in any case, Elizabeth did not visit Ludlow, where Arthur had died, but instead was headed to Raglan, home of the Herbert family, into which her cousin Anne had been married.
From Woodstock the queen traveled to Langley, to Flaxley Abbey, to Mitchel Troy near Monmouth, and the sprawling modern comfort of Raglan Castle itself. There she must have found, perhaps, some escape from recent strains, but her Privy Purse expenses record what must have fallen first on her servants—the myriad minor complications of the actual journey: repairs for her “chair” (or litter), local guides, twenty pairs of shoes for her footmen on her first setting out for Wales (it was a long way to walk), the grooms and the hostlers, the wine and meat to be provided along the way, and a cart and “load of stuff” that had to travel overland on the journey home, rather than crossing the Severn (had Elizabeth been buying souvenirs?). The effort it took to carry a queen and her retinue was staggering, not just the provisioning of what was effectively a small army on the march, not just the hasty upgrading of the houses where she was to sleep, but also the arrangements for the jewels and robes that maintained the queen’s majesty.
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