Authors: Sarah Gristwood
On ‘the Friday before Saint Katherine’s Day’ the queen (accompanied once again by ‘my Lady the King’s mother’) set out from Greenwich in a flotilla of barges decorated with ‘Banners and streamers of silk’, as Leland put it. Especially fine among the accompanying vessels was the Bachelors’ Barge, from which a dragon spouted flames into the Thames. Landing on Tower Wharf, Elizabeth was greeted by the king; and while he created fourteen new Knights of the Bath, she prepared for the next day.
The following morning she dressed in the traditional kirtle of white ‘cloth of gold of damask’ with a mantle furred with ermine and tasselled with gold. The writer noticed the ‘fair yellow hair hanging down plain behind her back’ – that symbol of virginity, suggesting anointed queenship as new territory. Her sister Cecily carried her train as they formed up for the procession through the city. After the horse of state and the henchmen decked with white York roses came the ladies in horse-borne litters. The first carried Katherine Woodville (Elizabeth Woodville’s sister, the former Duchess of Buckingham, now Duchess of Bedford) and Cecily. The second conveyed the Duchess of Suffolk (still Elizabeth’s royal aunt – never mind that her son had been Lincoln, the recent rebel), the Duchess of Norfolk and the Countess of Oxford. Behind them came their various gentlewomen.
The night was spent at Westminster and on Sunday, coronation day, Elizabeth was dressed in purple velvet furred with ermine as she walked to the Abbey over a carpet of woollen cloth which the watching crowds would traditionally be allowed to take. But: ‘there was so huge a people inordinately pressing to cut the ray cloth that the Queen’s Grace went [‘gede’] upon, so that in the Presence certain persons were slain, and the order of the ladies following the Queen was broken and distroubled.’ Then came the ceremony itself: the anointing, the crowning, the placing of a rod and sceptre into her hands. Margaret Beaufort watched with her son, from an elevated stage concealed by lattice and draperies, as another woman was transformed into a quasi-divinity. Any queen might validate and contribute to her husband’s kingship, but Elizabeth’s contribution was far greater than the norm. It was something that must have struck her husband and her mother-in-law as both a potential threat and an opportunity.
Next came the banquet. 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 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 parade of homage that Elizabeth Woodville had received and, remembering the royally born Jacquetta on her knees before her daughter, it is easy to 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.
The banquet was two courses only – perhaps they remembered that at the coronation of Richard and Anne no one had had time to eat three. But each contained a plethora of dishes: game birds and fatted rabbits, swan ‘in chawdron’ and peacock in its feathers, even a whole seal ‘richly served’. After alms were given and the queen was ‘cried’ around the hall – ‘
De la tres haut, tres puissant, tres excellent Princesse, la tres noble reigne d’Engleterre, et de Fraunce, et Dame d’Irlande
’ – it was almost over; bar the fruit and wafers, the ritual washing, the grace, the trumpets and the hippocras – spiced wine – and further spices. Elizabeth left ‘with God’s blessing and to the rejoicing of many a true English man’s heart’.
At mass next day Margaret Beaufort sat on the queen’s right, as she did when Elizabeth sat in state in the Parliament Chamber; the Duchess of Suffolk was still present. All the lessons of the Wars of the Roses were surely there: divide and conquer, bring into the fold, 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 there was Elizabeth’s own mother, which seems the strongest evidence that she was in some degree of disgrace.
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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.
Visiting the queen in July 1488, the Spanish ambassador De Puebla found her ‘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’. The envoy of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile was in England to negotiate the marriage treaty between the infant Prince Arthur and their daughter Katherine. Some time later the ambassador saw Elizabeth and Henry walking in procession to mass and noticed that her ladies ‘went in good order’ and were much adorned. The Venetian envoy wrote that she was ‘a very handsome woman and in conduct very able’ – or, as the original Italian has it, ‘
di gran governo
’. Elizabeth knew how to be a queen of England; she had learnt it at her mother’s knee.
While the new queen’s motto was ‘humble and reverent’, that is not necessarily the entire story. Her mother had surely known the value of informal, closet influence, and maybe Elizabeth of York had picked up 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. Perhaps, too, if she were influenced that way her own style would in turn affect her son Henry, and the expectations with which he would greet his own queens. There is some slight evidence to suggest that Elizabeth did exercise a behind-the-scenes influence on her husband: for instance, a letter 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 that survive, was written in 1499 to recommend to Ferdinand of Aragon 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.’ A further letter concerns the nomination of a chaplain to a vacant living.
Another Spanish report tells of Elizabeth receiving two letters from Ferdinand and Isabella and two from their daughter Katherine: ‘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, it shows how highly missives from the Spanish court were valued – that too would make Elizabeth a conscious player in the diplomatic game.
Against that are reports – such as Bacon’s comment that she was ‘depressed’ in status, and the Spanish view that she was beloved ‘because she is powerless’ – suggesting that Elizabeth had been sidelined like Anne Neville before her. These writers infer that a canny 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 though Henry was ‘nothing uxurious, nor scarce indulgent’ towards his queen, he was none the less ‘companionable and respective [considerate], and without jealousy’.) It seems curious, in the light of these comments, that Elizabeth of York is 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. Writers have traditionally reconciled her apparent contentment, and her husband’s dominance, by por-traying her as a woman without ambition and almost without volition – ‘a placid, domestic sort of creature’,
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as one of them described her.
The problem with that judgement is that this ‘placid’ ruminant of a woman had been, only a few years earlier, the passionately pro-active girl of Richard’s reign, Elizabeth Woodville’s daughter. Unless, that is, the Buck letter is regarded as a complete forgery; the
Ballad of Lady Bessy
is totally ignored; and the apparent fears of Richard III’s henchmen that she might revenge her family’s wrongs on them are set aside. Perhaps the truth is that the construct of successful monarchy the first Tudors set up leaves no room for evidence of dissent; and any dissents of Elizabeth’s were probably of the private, domestic kind. A happy marriage – and this one does seem to have been basically happy – has no story.
In August 1498 the Spanish ambassador delivered 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 was, the man said, always obliged to write such letters to Spain
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three or four times, because the queen always found some defects in them.
It is possible that Elizabeth’s cultural influence has been underestimated; the chivalric influence at her husband’s and her son’s courts derived from her Burgundian family, and she shared a measure of literary interest with her mother. The renovations at Greenwich, displaying a Burgundian influence, were made following ‘a new platt [plan] … devised by the Queen’. From certain similarities in their handwriting,
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it may have been she who taught her second son and her daughters to write, and in spring 1488 Elizabeth’s influence could perhaps be seen when a Lady Mistress was chosen for Prince Arthur (at a hefty fee of more than
£
26 a year) – Elizabeth Darcy, who had presided over the nursery of Elizabeth’s brother Edward V.
Elizabeth owned or used several exquisitely illustrated
Books of Hours
, as well as giving them to favoured 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 St Bridget of Sweden, whose work took pride of place in the collection of English and Latin prayers they commissioned together from Caxton.
Her relationship with Margaret Beaufort is one of the big questions about Elizabeth of York. The Spanish reports asserting 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.’ It 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 this supposed placidity on Elizabeth’s part – and perhaps it is true that there was bound to be an element of rivalry.
In 1493 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’; that when Margaret went to church with the king and queen she too should have her 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. Indeed, it must not be forgotten that part of the anxious parade of state and intimacy accorded to Margaret rather than to Elizabeth was precisely 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 which 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 she, 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; had not played such an active part in bringing her son to the throne; while Elizabeth of York was not – and this may in part explain why Elizabeth Woodville was relegated to Bermondsey – surrounded, as her mother had been, by so very active a family.
Perhaps it is too simplistic a view to envisage Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort as rivals.
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The Spanish envoy apart, the picture of their hostility depends largely on one particular story of Margaret Beaufort’s intervening to block a man who was trying to petition the queen, and his subsequent 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, or a little bit of both. Perhaps the Spanish envoy had expectations that were unrealistic in England: at home, Isabella of Castile could exercise power quite openly.
Elizabeth and Margaret may indeed have been able to turn to advantage the fact that between them they represented two very different faces of queenship or quasi-queenship. Certainly the two women worked together when necessary: to receive the licence to found a chantry, for instance, or to apply for the rights to the next presentation to a deanery. It is uncertain, even so, how large a part Elizabeth really had to play in these activities – the more so since both partnerships included Margaret’s old retainer Reginald Bray. In 1501, several of Margaret’s trusted connections were among Elizabeth’s officers – but, after all this time their relationships may just have grown entangled to a degree.