Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (28 page)

Herbert and Vaughan both played an important role during the Wars of the Roses with William Herbert becoming friend and advisor to Edward IV. His career continued to prosper until he was executed in 1469, following the Yorkist defeat at Edgecote.

Roger Vaughan, who was responsible for most of the major reconstruction of Tretower Court, was knighted in 1464, was present as a veteran at Tewkesbury, and was finally captured at Chepstow. There, he was beheaded by Jasper Tudor in an act of vengeance for beheading his father, Owen Tudor, ten years previously. Tretower remained in the possession of the Vaughans until the eighteenth century when it was sold and became a farm.

Years of neglect and disrepair followed, and it was not until the twentieth century that preservation and repair work began.

I am not a great fan of reconstructions, although I do realise their value. Too often historic buildings are Disneyfied and their historic role trivialized, but the restoration at Tretower Court is not like that at all, or not yet anyway. The work is totally sympathetic, and the building maintains an elegance and integrity. At the risk of spouting clichés, it is like stepping back in time—one can almost hear the laughter of children from the orchard, the sound of a minstrel singing, or the murmur of women’s voices from the gardens.

The garden is as beautiful and as authentic as any I have seen is this country. Laid out and designed by Francesca Kay, it has a covered walk to keep the sun from the ladies’ cheeks. Tumbling red and white roses, lavender, aquilegia, foxgloves, and marigolds sprawl beside a bubbling fountain in the midst of a chequered lawn.

I spent a long time here on a Sunday morning in July, wandering through the rose arbour, lingering in the orchard before returning to the house. As I progressed along the dim corridors, I could almost hear the skirts of my gown trailing after me on the stone floors. I paused, and time was suspended as I looked through thick, green glass to the courtyard and garden below.

If you should have the good fortune to visit Wales, make the time to call in at Tretower, and don’t forget to bring a picnic and a blanket, for I guarantee you will want to stay a while.

Buried Treasure: St. Mary’s in Burford

by Anne O’Brien

A pilgrim’s heart, a much loved son, and a forgotten Plantagenet princess....

S
t. Mary’s in Burford is a vill
age church, isolated in its churchyard, surrounded by green fields and trees, all within a short distance of the dark and secretive River Teme in the Welsh Marches county of Shropshire.

Far away from any major towns—the nearest market town is Tenbury Wells—it is a beautiful and peaceful place to spend an hour or two. The church is small, perfect in its rural setting, and visitors, I imagine, are few compared with the likes of Worcester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey, both fairly close.

Inside, it is dark and full of history. The chancel goes back to the 12th century, the nave and tower to the 14th. Stepping inside, one gets the impression that very few changes have been made over the centuries, even though we know that it was extensively restored in 1889. The restoration has been very sympathetic.

But the most compelling reason for a visitor to leave the beaten track and go to Burford is to see the astonishing collection of tombs in this little church, the most important connected with the Cornewall family who were medieval Lords of Burford.

In the chancel there are three in particular not to be missed.

To the left of the altar, set in the wall under a carved arch is what looks like the base of an old brightly-painted altar. Now it is the memorial to Sir Richard Cornewall. He died in 1436, in the reign of Henry VI, in Cologne, possibly when returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He left instructions for his body to be buried in Cologne, but his heart to be returned here to his home in Burford.

In the centre of the chancel, directly before the altar, is the fully painted, wooden effigy of Edmund Cornewall. Wooden effigies are quite rare in this part of the world. Edmund died in 1508 at only 20 years of age. He is shown in full plate armour with angels supporting his head and his feet resting on a splendid little dragon wearing a golden crown, crudely carved but with much charm. There is nothing sophisticated or elegant about the carving of Edmund, but this life-sized portrayal of the young man resonates with a sense of tragic loss and grief. His distraught parents must have felt his death keenly to place his tomb in the very centre of the chancel before the altar. It takes the eye, as it was intended to.

And then, the most surprising tomb of all. Set in the wall of the chancel is the life-sized figure and tomb of Elizabeth Plantagenet. Younger daughter of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, her governess was, of course, Katherine Swynford. She is beautifully painted as she lies under the arch—the rich red and blue looks to me as if it was restored in the 1889 renovations—with angels at her head, her cloak lined with ermine. Her face is young and serene in repose, even though she was about 61 years old when she died in 1426. She looks truly royal. Who would have expected such a Plantagenet treasure here, far from a major town?

Elizabeth was buried here because her third husband was Sir John Cornewall, Lord of Burford. Perhaps it was her choice to be brought here after death because she loved the place. We will never know. Interestingly, her husband is not buried at Burford beside her, but in Ludgate in London.

And finally, the ceiling is a true treasure. Above the tombs is a splendid late 19th century barrel vault, carved with angels with their wings outstretched, as if watching over the pilgrim, the much-mourned son, and the Plantagenet princess.

Shropshire is a beautiful county to lure the tourist who wishes to enjoy rural seclusion, and this little church at Burford with its memorials (and there are others not even mentioned here!) is an unexpected jewel in its crown.

Tudor Period (1485-1603)

An Inconvenient Princess

by Nancy Bilyeau

O
n November 11, 1480, a child was baptized in the Palace of Eltham with all solemnity and grandeur, as was
fitting for a royal princes
s of the House of York. The child was named Bridget, after the 14th century Swedish saint who wrote of personal visions of Christ and founded a religious order.

On baptism day Lady Margaret Beaufort, the Lancastrian heiress who was nonetheless in high standing at court, carried the one-day-old princess, a singular honor. Designated godparents were Bridget’s oldest sister, the 14-year-old Elizabeth, and Bridget’s grandmother, Cecily, duchess of York and mother of King Edward IV. No one could have foreseen how profoundly this trio of women would influence the destiny of Bridget of York.

After the Bishop of Chichester completed the baptism, the party carried the tiny princess to her waiting mother, with “great gifts” borne before her in procession. Bridget was the tenth and last child of Elizabeth Woodville, now 43 years of age.

History has not been kind to the consort of Edward IV. She is seen as an icily beautiful conniver who ensnared a love-struck king into a mismatch. There is another side to Elizabeth Woodville, that of a pious and diligent queen who produced a bevy of heirs as she did her best to ignore her husband’s continual infidelities. But no one could deny her stubborn devotion to her own family, the Woodvilles, a myopia that cost her the trust of the kingdom’s nobility.

During the first years of Bridget’s life, her parents were much occupied with matchmaking diplomacy for their older children in the courts of Europe. Everyone assumed glittering futures for the two princes and six princesses.

The family’s Christmastide in 1482 awed chroniclers. Like his grandson Henry VIII, the strapping King Edward loved fashion and splendor. He was
“clad in a great variety of most costly garments, of quite a different cut to those which had usually been seen hitherto in our kingdom,”
said one. The king presented a
“distinguished air to beholders, he being a person of most elegant appearance, and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person.”
The beauty of the daughters who surrounded him was “surpassing.”

Less than four months later, King Edward caught a chill and died of his illness. Bridget’s golden future darkened. She was now set on a path of troubling obscurity, tinged with rumors of madness and even, far in the future, sexual scandal.

It all happened very fast. A few weeks after the death of the king, the Prince of Wales was seized by Edward’s younger brother, Richard of Gloucester, and Queen Elizabeth fled with the rest of her children to the sanctuary of Westminster. There she was observed “all desolate and dismayed.” The most powerful in the land supported Richard, not Elizabeth. Conditions were not comfortable for the new widow and her children. But she refused to leave the Church-sanctified protection of sanctuary.

Bridget stayed with her mother through this harrowing time. After months of pressure, the queen broke down and turned over her younger son, Prince Richard, to men who promised he would be kept safe. The two princes disappeared from view shortly after; their fate is one of history’s saddest and most tantalizing mysteries.

Richard III proclaimed the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville invalid because of an obscure pre-contract to another English woman. All the children were now illegitimate. On March 1, 1484, Elizabeth Woodville finally emerged with her daughters from sanctuary and appeared to be amenable to the new king. But in reality she was deep in conspiracy with Lady Margaret Beaufort to marry her oldest daughter to Margaret’s son in exile, Henry Tudor.

In 1485, Henry Tudor claimed the throne after winning the Battle of Bosworth. He revoked the illegitimacy of the children, including Bridget, now five years old. He married the oldest girl, Elizabeth of York, as he’d promised.

But the status of the entire York family was uneasy in the infancy of the Tudor reign. In the court and country, grumblings turned to conspiracy. Pretenders emerged. Rebellions flared.

Rather suddenly, Elizabeth Woodville retired from public life to a suite of rooms in Bermondsey Abbey, a Benedictine order in the London borough of Southwark. Some believe her son-in-law forced the duplicitous queen dowager into monastic life because he thought she was plotting against him, though there is no evidence of it.

Said one biographer,
“Nineteen years as queen had cost her three sons, a father, and two brothers sacrificed to the court’s bloody politics. Elizabeth Woodville now sought solace and peace in service to her God.”

But what about Bridget? Did she go with her mother to the abbey—or find a place with her sister the queen or another sibling? No one knows. The next time Bridget appears in historical record is in 1490, when she, too, left the public arena for religious life. But the youngest child of Edward IV was sent to live not at Bermondsey but at Dartford Priory, a Dominican order in Kent. No one knows if this was because of her own piety, her mother’s wish to devote a child to God, or the sad fact that Bridget had become an inconvenience to her family.

There were no ten-year-old nuns, not even in the late medieval age. Only adults could take vows. But abbeys accepted boarders, and this might have been what happened to Bridget.

There is a theory to Bridget’s rustication. Perhaps an unhappy childhood had unbalanced her. Ponders a historian:
“Bridget was excluded because she had mental incapacities and was hidden away to save the royal family any embarrassment.”
However, a priory such as Dartford was far from a mental hospital. The sole Dominican convent in England was known for its library and its members’ intellectual achievements. To be considered, a woman must be able to read or be capable of learning.

Another more probable explanation is that Bridget’s grandmother, Cecily of York, had a hand in choosing Dartford. The priory attracted women of aristocratic background, often connected to the House of York. Prioress Joan Scrope, who oversaw Dartford in the 1470s, was the granddaughter of Cecily’s sister, Margaret Neville. Cecily also bequeathed three beautiful devotional books to Bridget, including a tome of the life of Catherine Siena, a Dominican mystic. These seem unlikely gifts to a young woman with “mental incapacities.”

Elizabeth Woodville died in her sleep on June 8, 1492. Her youngest child, twelve-year-old Bridget, attended the funeral, a simple one at the express wish of the queen. She was buried beside her beloved husband Edward at Windsor.

The Tudor regime continued to gain strength. Bridget’s sister, the new queen, gave birth to four children who survived childhood.

Elizabeth of York quietly did what she could to protect her sisters and promote their interests. She supported Bridget with funds from her own privy purse:

On the 6th July, 1502, 3l. 6s.8d. were paid by her sister the Queen to the Abbess of Dartford, towards the charges of Lady Bridget there; and in September following, a person was paid for going from Windsor to Dartford to Lady Bridget, with a message from her Majesty.

At some point Bridget took vows and became a sister of Dartford. One writer says:
“Her whole adult life had been dedicated to God, within the walls of the nunnery, where her family had made little or no effort to see her.”
However, this is something of a misunderstanding of life in an enclosed order.

Visitors, family or otherwise, are rare; the sisters form a sealed-off community dedicated to prayer and intercession for the souls of the dead, with time set aside for study, embroidery, gardening, music, and the more menial tasks of the priory.

Elizabeth of York died in childbirth in 1503; her husband died in 1509, to be succeeded by young Prince Henry. It is not known if Henry VIII ever met his Aunt Bridget. Certainly he gave no thought to sparing Dartford Priory in the break from Rome. It was demolished along with all of the other monasteries of England in the late 1530s.

But Bridget did not live through the Dissolution; she did not suffer yet another wrenching change in her fate wrought by others. Sister Bridget of York died of unknown causes in 1517. She was only 37.

A new theory has come to light. One source believes she gave birth to an illegitimate child, a girl named Agnes, in 1498. Pregnancies were obviously very unusual at a priory and the cause of great scandal, though they did happen. There are no confirmed births to any of the nuns of Dartford.

Still, this girl supposedly became a ward of the priory, her expenses paid by the queen. She was called Agnes of Eltham, a reference to the palace where Bridget was born. According to Wikipedia:
“Agnes later left the Priory and was married to Adam Langstroth, the head of a landed family in Yorkshire (the ancestral home of the Yorks and refuge of York loyalists in the early Tudor period) with ‘a considerable dowry.’”

The leading book on the priory, Paul Lee’s
Nunneries, Learning and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford
, contains no mention of a child of Bridget. Instead, the book says:
“Sister Agnes Roper, daughter of Henry VIII’s attorney general John Roper of Eltham…was a nun at Dartford from the 1520s until the time of Dissolution.”
Were there two women named Agnes, or have historical records become muddled?