Queens Consort

by Lisa Hilton

  It is amply evident that Richard III was a man who valued power, and the strategies to obtain it, far above feeling. When Edward died, Anne had to confront her incapacity to fulfil one of the Queen’s primary functions, the provision of heirs. Richard himself was confident of his fertility, and he now urgently needed another child, preferably a son. He had at least two acknowledged bastards, Katherine Plantagenet, who was betrothed in 1484 to William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, and died three years later, and John of Pontefract. Richard knighted John at York in 1483 and gave him the titular captaincy of Calais in 1485. John’s mother was Alice Burgh (possibly a relation of Richard’s wet nurse), who received an annuity of twenty pounds from Middleham revenues. This suggests that Alice was a local woman, and that Richard had therefore begun his affair with her after coming to Middleham on his marriage. Anne had little choice but to accept this blatant adultery, which was not, after all, uncommon, and the fact that she and Richard continued to sleep together until 1485 is another indication that their marriage was reasonably contented. However, when, after the loss of his heir, it became obvious that Anne could not do her duty, and provide him with another, Richard made it obvious he had no use for her. Early in 1485, he announced that he had been advised by her doctors to discontinue marital relations.

  There is a convincing argument that Anne had inherited fertility problems from her own mother, who had given birth for the first time, to Isabel, at the advanced age of twenty-five, at least six years after her marriage was consummated, and bore her second child, Anne herself, aged thirty. The Earl (whose own family were famously prolific) and Countess of Warwick continued to live together until his death, but had no more children.

  Anne’s mother had received a papal dispensation in 1453 to permit her to eat eggs and meat in Lent while pregnant, as she was weakened by sickness and childbearing. This, and the fact that she lost the child she was carrying when the dispensation was granted, points to a history of miscarriage, and the brevity of her successful childbearing years could also be a sign of the late onset of puberty and an early menopause. Isabel of Clarence suffered a premature birth early in the Readeption, and she had two live births in seven years of marriage. Both Isabel and Anne died from tuberculosis, a disease which can affect the genitals and cause a condition known as tuberculous endometritis, an infection of the uterus and fallopian tubes which leads to infertility. This manifestation of the disease creates no obvious symptoms, so if Anne was suffering from it, her frustration would have been exacerbated by the absence of any sign that anything was wrong.

  Richard’s announcement that he had stopped sleeping with Anne was a dreadful humiliation. By this time everyone knew the Queen was ill; now the King was effectively declaring that she had failed as a wife, that he was waiting for her to die. It even appeared he had already selected her successor. At that year’s Christmas court, something was noticed that ‘caused the people to murmur and the nobles and prelates to greatly wonder thereat’. During the games, a great many ‘vain changes of apparel’16 were presented to Queen Anne and Elizabeth of York, and many jokes were made about the similarity of complexion and figure between the Queen and her niece. The gossips were quick to suggest that Richard was planning to make Elizabeth his next queen before his ailing wife was yet in her grave. And, scandalously, horribly, Elizabeth of York was delighted.

  The evidence for Elizabeth of York’s direct involvement in a scheme to marry her uncle before Queen Anne was dead rests on a famously disputed account by the seventeenth-century historian Sir George Buck, a descendant of Sir John Buck, who died fighting for Richard at Bosworth. Buck’s 1619 History of King Richard III contains a third-person version of a letter Buck claimed to have seen in the family collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. The letter was written by Elizabeth of York to John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, in an attempt to win his support for her projected marriage. Buck was a pro-Richard writer, and his history, particularly this aspect of it, has been questioned by many historians, as the original letter is lost and Buck’s work was largely rewritten by his nephew before its eventual publication in 1646. To make matters even more complicated, the original manuscript was badly damaged by fire in 1731. Despite the fact that Buck dedicated his History to Arundel, who would therefore have been in a position to object to any invention or forgery, Buck’s evidence of Elizabeth’s active enthusiasm for the marriage was dismissed for a long time. However, a recent edition of the original manuscript has led to the conclusion that ‘one can hardly doubt that Buck saw the letter and that his version is broadly correct’.17 So what did Elizabeth write?

  ‘She prayed for him [Norfolk] as before to be a mediator in the cause of her marriage to the King, who, as she wrote, was her only joy and maker in this world, and that she was in his heart and thoughts, in body, and in all. And then she intimated that the better half of February was passed, and that she feared the Queen would never die.’18

  Apart from the obviously distasteful evidence of Elizabeth’s eagerness for Anne’s death, the letter implies two things. First, that this was not her first discussion of the subject with Norfolk. Given that she writes in mid-February, the words ‘as before’ support the rumours surrounding the plan at or just after the Christmas court where Croyland had remarked upon it. Secondly, the oddly indecorous phrase ‘in body and in all’ could be read as confirmation that she and Richard had already begun a sexual relationship. Perhaps Elizabeth meant that she intended to dedicate herself to the King and refuse any other suitor (her betrothal to Henry Tudor was a well-known secret), but if Buck’s rendering is accurate, ‘in body’ seems quite physically explicit. Following Croyland, Richard made his declaration that he had stopped sleeping with Anne in mid-February, just as Elizabeth was writing that her body belonged to him. Whether or not they were lovers, Elizabeth was clearly very pleased with the possibility of marrying the man who had injured her family so terribly.

  Anne Neville died on 16 March 1485. Given the gossip, this was just too convenient. ‘Why enlarge?’ was Croyland’s cryptic comment, using the same device of turning enigma to emphasis employed by hostile chroniclers against Eleanor of Aquitaine. Such caution was politic, too, but it was widely believed that Richard had given his lingering Queen a helping hand. By the end of the month the scandal had spread so far that Richard was forced to issue a public denial. He had been advised by two of his most trusted counsellors, Sir Richard Ratclyffe and William Catesby, that Anne’s Neville connections in the north would never stand for a marriage to Elizabeth of York, and that they would take it as evidence that Richard had murdered one of their own. Ratclyffe and Catesby also called for the opinion of twelve divines, who confirmed that the Pope could never grant a dispensation for such a clearly incestuous union. The unambiguousness of the caution his advisers were prepared to give the King, that ‘if he did not abandon his intended purpose … opposition would not be offered to him merely by warnings of the voice’,19 suggests that marrying Elizabeth was indeed his purpose, and that he cried off for fear of repercussions amongst his essential northern allies.

  On 30 March 1485, Richard announced to the mayor and aldermen of London, who were assembled in the hall of St John’s Hospital, Clerkenwell:

  Whereas a long saying and much simple (foolish) communication among the people by evil disposed persons contrived and sown to very great displeasure by the King, showing how that the Queen as by consent and will of the King was poisoned for and to the intent that he might marry and have to wife Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter of his brother … the King … showed his grief and displeasure aforesaid and said it never came into his thought or mind to marry in any such manner wise nor willing or glad of the death of his Queen … For the which he admonished and charged every person to cease of such untrue talking on peril of his indignation.

  To further rout rumour, Richard sent a message to Sir Walter Herbert, proposing for his sister. (Richard seems to have had a propensity for incest. Walter, a son of the first Earl of Pembr
oke, was the brother of William, Earl of Huntingdon, who was betrothed to Richard’s illegitimate daughter Katherine. The King would thus have become his daughter’s brother-in-law.)

  Queen Anne was buried in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey If Richard intended to raise any monument to her, events overtook his plans, and today the precise location of her grave is unknown.

  Holinshed’s Chronicle reports that Elizabeth of York was not permitted to attend Queen Anne’s funeral. ‘Her only joy’ had sent her away from court, to Lord Stanley’s estate in Lancashire. The choice of destination suggests that Margaret Beaufort had heard the whispers, possibly even that Elizabeth was pleased by the match, and wished to have her son’s betrothed under her control. Canny as ever, Lady Margaret used the embarrassment of Elizabeth’s continued residence in Richard’s household as an excuse to take charge. Her prospective daughter-in-law’s rashness had jeopardised her ambitions: Henry was insulted enough to consider a different marriage, but Lady Margaret wrote to reassure him. She recognised that marriage to Elizabeth was crucial to any hope he had of the crown, even if his own wounded pride did not. Elizabeth was then moved to Sheriff Hutton, one of the late Queen’s Neville properties in Yorkshire, with her cousin the Earl of Warwick to keep her company.

  Even before the Elizabeth scandal, Henry Tudor was making Richard nervous. In October 1484, Henry had moved to the court of the new French King, Charles VIII, in response to Richard’s offers of military aid to his former protector the Duke of Brittany. With Richard as an ally, the Duke could no longer be trusted. In December that year, Richard ordered an investigation into the military capacities of his magnates, to ascertain how many men each could muster at twelve hours’ notice, and issued a proclamation against Henry. Even as Richard flirted with Elizabeth at the notorious Christmas court, The Croyland Chronicle claims he knew that Henry was planning to invade the following summer. When Henry did indeed land at Milford Haven, on 7 August 1485, Richard professed himself joyful ‘that now the long wished-for day had arrived, for him to triumph with ease over so contemptible a faction’. For both sides, the prospect of battle was a relief.

  Henry’s troops were at Lichfield shortly after 17 August. Richard set off from Nottingham on the twentieth after summoning a muster at Leicester. It was obvious that his support was waning, as of thirty-five peers who might have responded, only seven turned up. Both commanders employed contingents of foreign mercenaries, and though neither army was large, Richard’s is estimated to have been the greater, over 5,000 men. On 22 August, they faced one another at Bosworth Field, an uncertain location on the Redmoor Plain between Sutton Cheney and Upton. For Henry, all depended on which way his mother’s husband, Lord Stanley, would turn. Stanley had a force nearby but had not yet declared for either party, while his son, Lord Strange, was with Richard, a hostage to his father’s good behaviour. Tudor mythologising portrays the events of Bosworth as the ultimate chivalric encounter, with Henry and Richard pitched against one another in single combat and the victor scooping the crown from the mud of the battlefield. Richard and Henry did not quite take one another on personally, but they came close. After an unenthusiastic start from both sides, Richard spotted Henry’s banner and brought his own household troops around the perimeter of the field to launch a charge. Perhaps the rivals’ swords actually touched; certainly both men had to stand and fight for their lives. The Stanley force now had to declare one way or the other. Sir William, Lord Stanley’s brother and commander, was faced with an extraordinary individual choice, truly a choice that would change the course of history. With Richard cut off from the body of his men, engaged with Henry’s bodyguards, Sir William made his decision. He brought down the full force of his 3,000 troops in a sweeping charge against Richard’s men.

  There is an oddly elegiac quality to Polydore Vergil’s account of Richard’s death. Bosworth is taken as one of those convenient, and contested, points of English history, the moment at which the medieval age ended and a new era began. To contemporaries, this would have been less than obvious. Bosworth was just one more skirmish in a conflict which had seen the reigning dynasty overturned four times since the start of the century, and historians have been arguing ever since about the accuracy and relevance of slotting this battle too neatly into a periodic categorisation. Yet there is an inevitably appealing neatness about Bosworth, a resonance of Hastings, of two men on a battlefield staking their lives for their claims to the crown, a beginning and an end. ‘King Richard alone was killed fighting manfully in the press of his enemies … his courage was high and fierce and failed him not even at the death which, when his men forsook him, he preferred to take by the sword, rather than by foul flight, to prolong his life.’

  Richard’s son Edward, the short-lived Prince of Wales, had been educated in the belief that his supreme duties were to his God and his king. His father had defied both. Peter Idley had warned of the dangers of trusting to fortune:

  Shining as glass, that soon is broken …

  Beware of that maid, for she is unstable,

  Flee from her fast, and trust her never …

  She is flattering and false and double of deed

  And faileth a man ever at his most need.

  CHAPTER 19

  ELIZABETH OF YORK

  ‘A faithful love that did us both combine in marriage and peaceable concord’

  Almost nine months to the day after her marriage to Henry Tudor, Elizabeth of York gave birth to a son at Winchester. Henry’s choice of name for this first Tudor prince made the clearest possible statement of his ambition for his newly established dynasty. The baby was called Arthur. After Bosworth, Elizabeth had been instructed to make her way to London to join her mother, escorted by Sir Roger Willoughby. Meanwhile, apartments were prepared for her in Margaret Beaufort’s house in Coldharbour Lane. Her betrothed husband had been in the capital since September, but it was not until 18 January that their marriage had taken place, after Thomas Lovell, the speaker of the Lords, had made a statement in the December Parliament requesting that Henry make good his promise. Why did Henry wait so long? Was he concerned about the stories of Elizabeth’s relationship with her uncle and if so, did he decide to stall until there was no possibility that she was carrying Richard’s child? Or was the King determined to separate his claim to the throne from his wife’s, which, after all, was far stronger than his own?

  The delay in crowning Elizabeth of York indicates the strength of the latter argument. Henry could not be seen to be assuming the crown through his wife. He had not quite snatched it from the bloodied earth of Bosworth Field, but it was essential that it appear his by right of conquest, rather than claimed through the line of Edward IV. A double coronation could be too easily interpreted as a sign of joint sovereignty. There could be no doubt that Elizabeth and Henry’s marriage represented an alliance between two battling dynasties, as the papal bull read out in churches on Trinity Sunday 1486 made clear:

  Understanding of the long and grievous variance, contentions and debates that have been in this Realm of England between the house of the Duchy of Lancaster on the one party and the house of the Duchy of York on the other party. Willing all such divisions following to be put apart by the council and consent of his college of Cardinals approves, confirms and establishes the matrimony and conjunction made between our sovereign lord King Henry the Seventh of the House of Lancaster of that one party and the noble Princess Elizabeth of the house of York of that other with all their issue born between the same.1

  Henry, however, was keen to play down Elizabeth’s blood claim and accordingly the commemorative medals struck for their wedding referred to ‘a virtuous wife’ being ‘a sweet rose’ and an ‘ornament of her house’. Though clearly there were reminders here of her birth, the priority was to celebrate her virtue over her lineage.

  Elizabeth was not crowned until November 1487, more than a year after the birth of her first child. By this time Henry had already had to deal with two plots against his rule, but 1
487 produced the most serious challenge, the Lambert Simnel conspiracy. At the beginning of the year, it was rumoured that Elizabeth’s cousin, Clarence’s son the Earl of Warwick, who had been kept at the Tower since Henry’s accession, had escaped and was hiding in Ireland. With Lambert Simnel — a nobody who had been persuaded by a priest named Richard Simons to impersonate Warwick — being acknowledged as the Earl by Margaret of Burgundy, Edward IV’s sister, and John de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln, Henry’s exhibition of the real Warwick in London in February did nothing to scotch the story Neither Margaret nor Lincoln necessarily believed that Simnel was in fact the Earl: for them the plot was simply a means of striking against Henry. Margaret supplied 2,000 troops for Lincoln, who arrived in May 1487 in Dublin, where Simnel was crowned ‘Edward VI’ on the twenty-fourth. By June Simnel had landed on the Lancashire coast. Henry raised a large army and defeated Lincoln’s forces at Stoke on 16 June. The first Tudor king is usually remembered as a dour man, but his treatment of Simnel displayed a streak of humour. The pretender was put to work in the royal kitchens as a scullion, and eventually became quite popular, rising to become the master of the King’s hawks. Lincoln had died at Stoke, and though Margaret of Burgundy was to prove a threat for years to come, it was only after the suppression of this last military challenge to his rule that Henry felt secure enough to anoint his queen.