The Princes in the Tower, page 27
By 2 February 1487, Henry had convened a Council at Sheen Palace at Richmond, London. Here, ‘King Edward’ was said to be an impostor posing as the young Earl of Warwick – the real Warwick was incarcerated in the Tower of London. If true, this was an easily remedied situation. However, several events indicate otherwise.
First, the actions of Dorset and Lincoln, who were both present at the Council, but more significantly, the measures now decided against Elizabeth Woodville, who was deprived of her possessions and income and relocated to the Abbey of Bermondsey.49 Vergil remarks that she now led a ‘wretched life’.50
Elizabeth’s jointure and income were awarded to the queen.51 The reason provided by Henry VII’s historian was that King Henry felt aggrieved that Elizabeth had come to terms with Richard III. As many historians have since commented, Henry’s sudden remembrance three years after the event stretches credulity. Sir Francis Bacon would later report that she was confined for ‘dark and unknown reasons’ and that it was dangerous to visit or see her.52
Previously, and notably, on 10 July 1486, Elizabeth had taken out a forty-year lease on the Westminster sanctuary at Cheneygates Mansion.53 She may have enjoyed living there, but the fact that her income was now removed (so she could no longer pay for it and thereby be resident should she require its rights of sanctuary) strongly suggests a retaliatory, or potentially pre-emptive, move on the part of the first Tudor monarch. Henry VII either had information that Elizabeth was using her income to support the king in Ireland, or he suspected the possibility.
Why Elizabeth would support a common ‘lad’54 posing as the son of her former enemy, the Duke of Clarence, thereby acting directly against her own interests and those of her daughter and grandson, was never explained. By contrast, if we consider that the youth in Ireland was indeed her eldest son, Edward V, and Elizabeth knew this, then both her and Henry’s actions fall into place. In November 1487, Elizabeth Woodville did not attend her daughter’s coronation.55
Following the defeat of King Edward and her daughter’s subsequent coronation, it seems that Henry VII made some form of rapprochement with Elizabeth, perhaps at his new queen’s behest. On 29 December 1487, ‘Queen Elizabeth, late wife of Edward IV’, was awarded 200 marks by Henry and his government. This was less than a third of that awarded to Elizabeth by King Richard in 1484.56 It was, however, the same amount awarded to Elizabeth’s sister, Katherine Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham, in 1484. At the time of the award, Katherine was the wife of a known traitor who had been executed for treason.
By May the following year, Henry seems to have had second thoughts, awarding Elizabeth 400 marks a year in quarterly instalments.57 We have no way of knowing, but if Elizabeth was struggling financially (and having to provide for her youngest daughters, the queen’s sisters), this increase may also have been at the behest of Henry’s queen. Elizabeth Woodville is now described by Henry as ‘oure dere moder Quene Elizabeth’. By the end of the year, in peace negotiations with Scotland, Elizabeth was proposed in marriage to James III, and her youngest daughter Katherine of York (aged around 8) was proposed for his son, James. At this remove, it is difficult to assess the seriousness of these negotiations. Elizabeth was 50 and no longer of child-bearing age. King James’ death meant that the marriage proposal came to nothing.
Elizabeth Woodville’s visits to Henry and Elizabeth’s court became less frequent.58 In 1488 and 1490, Henry awarded Elizabeth some small payments towards her costs and expenses.59 Elizabeth’s final visit was significant. On 31 October 1489, Queen Elizabeth moved into confinement for the birth of her second child. By November, Elizabeth was with her daughter, as was Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort.
Royal confinement followed fixed procedures and protocol, and was a strictly female-only affair. Yet, while rumours of a second surviving son of Edward IV were surfacing, Elizabeth of York broke all established protocols and allowed her St Pol relative, François of Luxembourg, Viscount Martigues (died after 1511), in an embassy from France, to see her.60 His first cousin, Elizabeth Woodville, was present, as was Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth’s Chamberlain (Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond) and England’s most senior herald, John Writhe, Garter King-at-Arms.
This extraordinary breach of royal protocol may have occurred in order to honour the English queen’s visiting relative,61 but the timing (and Elizabeth Woodville’s presence) is highly suggestive of potential royal knowledge concerning the survival of the queen’s younger brother, or someone claiming to be him. At this time, Thomas Peirse had long since returned to England. Perhaps her St Pol cousin was putting the queen’s mind at rest for the birth by confirming the recent rumours were unfounded?
In November 1491, Richard, Duke of York, arrived in Ireland. We now know that if Thomas Peirse had fulfilled his errand, Elizabeth Woodville knew this to be her youngest son. On 8 June 1492, Elizabeth died at Bermondsey Abbey, four days after her eldest son, Dorset, had been penalised by the king’s bond.62
On Sunday, 12 June (Whitsun), Elizabeth was buried with Edward IV at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. In her will, she requested no pomp or expense, nor could she pay for it, dying in penury and leaving nothing to her children. Her wishes were followed and only four people attended her burial.63 Elizabeth of York did not attend her mother’s funeral service as she was in confinement at Sheen Palace with her fourth child, whom she named Elizabeth (d. 1495). Elizabeth Woodville did not name Henry VII in her will.
Katherine Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham (1458–97): Maternal Aunt
Katherine was married to Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Although Katherine and her children were not involved in Buckingham’s attainder after his execution on 2 November 1483, her dower and jointure income were removed. In late October–November 1483, her son was discovered in hiding by Sir James Tyrell and his gentleman servant, Christopher Wellesbourne, and placed in safekeeping.64
On 19 December, Katherine was permitted to travel from Wales to London with her children and servants by direct orders of the king.65 Given the extremity of her descent from high estate, and with her sister now at hand, there is little doubt that Katherine and Elizabeth would have met to comfort each other. There is every likelihood, also, that the widow of the Duke of Buckingham had been aware of his role in arranging for the princes’ safety that summer, as evidenced in the Gelderland account (see Chapter 14), long before he was suborned to treason by Bishop Morton.
Faced with a bleak future, Katherine needed support and goodwill, and she had information that could assure her of both while bringing relief to her sister, Elizabeth. With King Richard back in London on 25 November66 and Elizabeth remaining in sanctuary, it is not known what information may have been imparted to her at this time by the government, and if it was believed. Within weeks of Katherine’s arrival, Elizabeth Woodville was engaged in negotiations to leave sanctuary and place herself and her daughters in King Richard’s care.
Elizabeth now received a stipend from the king and government, as did Katherine, who was awarded 200 marks annually.67 Such a relatively small sum suggests that Katherine went to live with family, probably Elizabeth and her young nieces, who were assured of comfortable provision. Her position was not ignored, for she was then awarded a further 50 marks on 24 April 1484.68
That her finances did not improve may be supported by William Catesby’s will of 25 August 1485. Catesby had been made responsible for the winding up of the duke’s estates after his execution, and his will bequeathed to ‘my lady of Buckingham’ £100 to ‘help her children and see my lord’s [Buckingham’s] debts paid and his will executed’.69
After Bosworth, the new king reversed Buckingham’s attainder and reinstated Katherine’s dower and income. She was married to Henry VII’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, newly created Duke of Bedford.70 It seems there was no love in their relationship: there were no children, and neither remembered the other in their wills.
Katherine and Buckingham had had four children. Their elder son and heir (Edward, 8) was made a Knight of the Bath and placed in the care of Margaret Beaufort, together with his younger brother (Henry, aged about 6).71 Their two daughters, Elizabeth (7) and Anne (about 3 years old), were allowed to live with her (see Chapter 11). In 1505, Elizabeth married Robert Radcliffe, 10th Baron Fitzwalter, whose father, John (9th Baron), had been executed in 1496 for his support of Richard of England.
In November 1487, Katherine attended the coronation of her niece, Elizabeth of York.72 By now, those in the know would have been aware of the news, brought secretly to Elizabeth Woodville by Thomas Peirse, that the younger of Edward IV’s sons was presently concealed in Portugal. These circumstances are relevant when we consider the subsequent actions of Elizabeth of York as King Henry’s queen consort.
Following Jasper Tudor’s death in December 1495, Katherine married Sir Richard Wingfield without royal consent.73 She had no further issue. She died on 18 May 149774 and the revenue from her lands was taken into King Henry’s hands.75 Katherine is probably buried at the Wingfield family seat at Letheringham Priory, Suffolk.
Elizabeth of York (1466–1503): Sister
Upon her mother’s agreement with Richard III and his government, Elizabeth of York emerged from sanctuary at Cheneygates Mansion, Westminster, on 1 March 1484. A few weeks earlier she had celebrated her eighteenth birthday.
With the pretender Henry Tudor rallying his defeated rebel supporters by vowing to marry Elizabeth, it was an important objective for Richard III’s government to find a suitable husband for her (and any of her sisters who might equally serve his purpose). Richard’s promise to marry the girls to ‘gentlemen born’ fulfilled his solemn oath to their mother.
Young Elizabeth seems to have been well treated at Richard’s court, and at Christmas 1484 she was honoured at the festivities by being dressed similarly to Queen Anne. There is also some suggestion for Elizabeth of York’s acceptance of her illegitimacy and esteem for her uncle, King Richard. In two books signed by Richard as Duke of Gloucester, Elizabeth added her name. On both occasions, she entered ‘Elizabeth’ without the appellation princess or queen, thus indicating that she wrote during Richard’s reign. In one, she signs with a motto ‘without changing’, in the other with the king’s motto, ‘loyalte me lye’ (loyalty binds me).76
Autograph motto loyalte me lye (loyalty binds me) and signature of Elizabeth of York from around 26 June 1483 to 22 August 1485, from French translation of Boethius’ De consolatione Philosophiae. (British Library MS Royal 20 A xix, f. 195. Redrawn: Philippa Langley)
In 1485, following his queen’s death, Richard arranged the betrothal of Elizabeth of York to the Portuguese Duke Manuel of Beja, the cousin of John II of Portugal (with the death of John’s heir, Manuel would accede to the Portuguese throne in 1495). We have evidence of Elizabeth’s apparent knowledge of the Portuguese marriage in a letter examined by Sir George Buc in his patron’s celebrated collection.77 In her letter, dated late February 1485, an eager Elizabeth apparently requests John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, to mediate with the king in speeding up the matter.
Approaches to Portugal had begun well before Easter (when she may have been moved north), yet malicious rumours were already circulating that Richard planned to marry his niece.78 This he publicly denied in the ‘presence of the mayor and citizens of London’ in a ‘clear, loud voice’.79 That these rumours were intended to damage Richard’s reputation, and reign, is apparent in the king’s vehement denial. To marry his niece, a relative in the first degree, would have been deeply shocking and political suicide. It would also have made a mockery of his election as king: in marrying Elizabeth, Richard would have undermined the grounds upon which he was offered the throne. Furthermore, marrying an English bastard rather than a legitimate foreign princess made no dynastic sense.
Following King Richard’s death, the double marriage agreement came to nothing and, on 18 January 1486, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York. On entering England, and with the princes alive, Henry had tried to get out of the marriage, realising the legal predicament it now placed him in.80 With those who fought for him requiring the marriage and unable to renege on his oath, a short time later the Act of 1484 officially bastardising Edward IV’s offspring was repealed.
Elizabeth gave birth to Prince Arthur eight months later. If any at the new Tudor court had looked upon Elizabeth as a useful but ultimately disposable royal consort,81 the birth of a male heir now cemented her place at the heart of the new regime. The Yorkist uprising on behalf of King Edward in Ireland was beginning around this time, and although her reaction to it is not on record, much has been made of the three-year period between the birth of Arthur and his sister, Margaret, in November 1489.82 Possibly Elizabeth may have suffered a miscarriage, which wasn’t placed on record.
Then came the defeat, injury or possible death of her elder brother in June 1487. Her coronation in the November was marred when several people were killed in a crush, echoing a similar tragedy at Henry’s coronation, two years previously, when some of the staging in Westminster Abbey collapsed.83 In an age of portents and omens, it was an inauspicious sign for the new monarchy. Elizabeth’s imprisoned half-brother, Dorset, did not attend the ceremony, nor did her younger sisters (Anne, Katherine and Bridget).
At the emergence of Richard, Duke of York, as the new Yorkist claimant to Henry’s throne, Elizabeth had two sons (Arthur and Henry) and a daughter (Margaret). With Richard of England’s failed invasion in the autumn of 1496, Elizabeth of York fell ill. She was described as ‘a little crazed’.84
Richard’s invasion in the south-west also failed, and he capitulated to Henry on emergence from sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey. His wife, Katherine Gordon, was sent to Richmond Palace, assisted by ‘guardians’ who were ‘men of surpassing honesty and goodness’.85 Katherine was placed in Elizabeth’s large household as lady-in-waiting, and one of thirty-two ladies-in-waiting and many other female attendants.86 Elizabeth was not allowed any contact with Richard. Following his execution, she again fell ill.87
In 1501, Elizabeth of York visited the newly extended and remodelled Royal Apartments at the Tower of London. Henry had added ‘a bedchamber, a privy closet, and a square new tower – the “King’s Tower” – with a private chamber, a library, and large windows over the river’.88
On 2 April 1502, Prince Arthur died at Ludlow, leaving his parents grief-stricken. Three months later, on 12 July, Elizabeth planned a residence of her own. She undertook a solo progress, travelling without Henry for the first time in their sixteen-year marriage.89 Newly pregnant and possibly unwell, Elizabeth journeyed for two and a half months before finally arriving at Raglan Castle in Wales, home of her cousin Elizabeth Herbert, daughter of the late Mary Woodville and the Earl of Huntingdon (after Mary’s death, Huntingdon had married Richard III’s illegitimate daughter, Katherine Plantagenet). Elizabeth did not visit Ludlow or even Worcester, Arthur’s burial place, but travelled to Oxfordshire to Minster Lovell, the former home of Francis, Lord Lovell, and Ewelme, the former great home of her rebel cousins, the de la Pole family, ‘now in royal hands’.90
These bare outlines of Elizabeth’s story reveal little of a life that was at least as traumatic as those of her peers. Her actions in planning a residence separate from her husband also constitute a significant change in behaviour, which is worth investigating.
Going back to her emergence from sanctuary in 1484, Elizabeth was sufficiently mature and politically aware as an 18-year-old to have shared the confidences of her aunt Katherine, Duchess of Buckingham, as to the duke’s role in safeguarding her brothers, Edward V and Richard of York. She shared the burden, alongside her mother, of protecting this secret from the king she married and his innumerable agents, who would not have hesitated to eliminate the young men as rivals.
We have noted the gap of three years which separated her first born, Arthur, from her next child, a gap that coincided with the uprising, coronation, invasion and eventual defeat of ‘King Edward’, followed by Henry VII’s scarcely credible story of his capture and employment in his kitchens. At some point in 1487, she would have had news from her mother that young Richard of York was still safe and living in Portugal, so the burdensome secret must still be watched over and protected, year after year.
Another great trauma came with the shock of Richard of York’s failed first invasion, when she was so ill as to be described as crazed. The horrors of his eventual execution in 1499, together with her cousin, Edward of Warwick, made her ill again and cannot have failed to scar her psychologically. Perhaps her marriage now meant little more than her devotion to her children, and perhaps the death of Arthur in April 1502 was what broke its last remaining bonds.
In 1502, the year she set up her separate establishment, Elizabeth’s records show certain times when she gave funds to the abbess and ladies of the Minories by Aldgate, beside the Tower of London.91 Analysis of those residing at the Minories reveals a quite extraordinary group of women who collectively knew a great many secrets. They included some who would have known about the princes’ clandestine departure in 1483: Anne Montgomery, Sir James Tyrell’s aunt; Mary Tyrell, Sir James’ sister; and Elizabeth Brackenbury, daughter of Sir Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower at the time.92
Others residing there included members of Lady Eleanor Talbot’s family, who would have known the truth of Edward IV’s pre-contract: Eleanor’s sister-in-law, Jane Talbot (married to Humphrey, Eleanor’s half-brother); and Eleanor’s sister, Elizabeth Mowbray née Talbot, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who was the most senior member of the Minories ladies.
Elizabeth’s gifts of money seem to coincide with her presence at the nearby Tower of London, but there is no record that she ever visited the ladies. If her aim was to show empathy while offering discreet support, it would certainly have been prudent to keep her distance from an establishment that housed so many individuals of long-term interest to the king’s agents.
