Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (28 page)

It has long been assumed that Elizabeth was sent to Sheriff Hutton in June,
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but in fact no date is recorded. It is possible therefore that she was sent there in August, and not impossible that Richard’s men discovered her in hiding at Leicester, and, being preoccupied with more pressing matters, he gave orders that she be sent to Sheriff Hutton at this juncture, rather than earlier in the summer, thus deferring the question of what to do with her. What mattered now was that she was safely beyond Henry Tudor’s reach at Sheriff Hutton.

As Henry marched his army eastward, entering England via Shrewsbury on August 15, the King rode to confront him. The armies met in Leicestershire, near Market Bosworth, on August 22.

Both Croyland and Vergil state that Richard had suffered nightmares in the dark hours before they met in the field. “The King, so it was reported, had seen that night, in a terrible dream, a multitude of demons apparently surrounding him, just as he attested in the morning, when he presented a countenance which was always drawn but was then ever more pale and deadly.” In this mood, he “declared that he would ruin all the partisans of the other side, if he emerged as the victor.”
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Elizabeth was one of those who stood in deadly danger of her uncle’s vengeance—not least because she was seen by many as the legitimate Yorkist heir.

The Battle of Bosworth lasted two hours, with an estimated twenty thousand men engaging in combat, most of them in the royal forces. It was “a most savage battle.”
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Henry Tudor—whom Richard dismissed beforehand as “an unknown Welshman, whose father I never knew, nor him personally saw”
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—did not engage in the fighting, but remained under his standard behind the lines, leaving the experienced John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to command his vanguard. Lord Stanley turned up with his men, but he had secretly met with Henry two days earlier,
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and when Richard commanded his presence, had sent word that he “was suffering an attack of the sweating sickness” and could not attend him.
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“The Song of Lady Bessy” has Stanley meeting Henry before the battle, giving him his blessing and Margaret Beaufort’s, and promising to come to his aid. But when the historical Stanley turned up at Bosworth, he positioned himself some way off to the north with his forces, waiting to see which way the battle was going before joining it. His brother, Sir William Stanley, also notorious for changing sides, was with him. Even if the Stanleys had intrigued with Elizabeth to set Henry on the throne, they were looking to their own advantage before anyone else’s.

On the morning of the battle, the King sent a message ordering Stanley to join him at once, if he wanted his son to stay alive. Stanley, taking a terrible gamble, sent back word that he did not feel like joining the King, and he had other sons, whereupon Richard ordered his
captains to put Lord Strange to death. When they refused, he told them to keep Strange under close arrest until he could deal with him after the battle.

When the King’s side appeared to be losing the day, the Earl of Northumberland, who should have intervened with his men to aid his sovereign, did nothing. Seeing that he was deserted by those in whom he had trusted, Richard gathered a small band of loyal followers and made one final, desperate charge, bearing down on the red dragon banner of Henry Tudor. He cut down the standard bearer and was about to swoop on Henry himself, but now Lord Stanley came racing to Henry’s aid, which decisively turned the tide of the battle, and “a glorious victory was granted by Heaven to the Earl of Richmond.”
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The Croyland chronicler recorded that it was during the fighting, and not in the act of flight, that Richard fell, “like a brave and most valiant prince.” The chronicler John Rous, who had once praised Richard but turned hostile toward him in 1485, was moved to write: “Let me say the truth to his credit, that he bore himself like a noble soldier and honorably defended himself to his last breath, shouting again and again that he was betrayed, and crying, ‘Treason! Treason! Treason!’ ” Even the Tudor historian, Polydore Vergil, conceded that King Richard was killed “fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies.” Croyland declared: “Providence gave a glorious victory to the Earl of Richmond.”

Legend has it that the crown fell from the dying Richard’s helmet and rolled under a hawthorn bush—later a popular Tudor emblem, which can be seen on Henry VII’s tomb and in a window of Westminster Abbey. The crown was lying “among the spoils in the field,”
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where Sir William Stanley spotted and retrieved it.
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As “the soldiers cried, ‘God save King Henry!’ ” he placed it on the head of Henry Tudor, “as though he had been already by the commandment of the people proclaimed King after the manner of his ancestors.”
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The first sovereign of the celebrated royal House of Tudor was “replenished with joy incredible.”
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With Richard III’s death, 331 years of Plantagenet rule had come to an end. Now a new age had begun, and its progenitor, Henry VII, “began to receive the praises of all, as though he had been an angel
sent down from Heaven, through whom God had deigned to visit His people and deliver them from the evils with which they had hitherto, beyond measure, been afflicted.” Croyland commented: “The children of King Edward,” had been “avenged” at last “in this battle: the boar’s tusks quailed, and, to avenge the white, the red rose bloomed.”

Richard’s body, “pierced with numerous and deadly wounds,” was found under a heap of the dead, for many men had been cut down in that last fatal charge. His corpse was stripped naked, “with not so much as a clout to cover his privy members”; then, “with many other insults heaped on it,” it was thrown over a horse’s saddle with a felon’s halter around its neck, and borne, “besprung with mire and filth,” back to Leicester, where it was exhibited for two days in the collegiate church of St. Mary in the Newark.
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“The Song of Lady Bessy” claims that “Bessy met him with merry cheer” and addressed the bloody remains: “How likest thou thy slaying of my brethren twain? Now are we wreaked upon thee here! Welcome, gentle uncle, home!” But there is no other record—as surely there would have been—of Elizabeth being at Leicester on that day; and Sheriff Hutton is nearly 130 miles from Leicester, a journey of at least two days back then. It is inconceivable that she could have escaped Richard’s custodians before his defeat at Bosworth, and more likely that Brereton was taking poetic license to show that she viewed her uncle’s defeat as just retribution for the death of her brothers.

The vanquished King’s body, which had apparently been mutilated after death, was “indifferently buried”
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in a roughly dug grave that was too small for it in the choir of the Grey Friars’ church,
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and in 1502, Henry VII paid out £10.1s. [£4,890] “for King Richard’s tomb” of alabaster.
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This was destroyed along with the church during the Reformation of the 1530s. In the early seventeenth century, Robert Herrick, a mayor of Leicester, built a house and laid out a garden where once the choir had stood. Here, in 1612, Christopher Wren, father of the architect, saw “a handsome stone pillar, three foot high,” bearing the inscription: “Here lies the body of Richard III, sometime King of England.” In 2012 the grave was found under the car park laid out where the Grey Friars’ monastery once stood.
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How rapidly news of these momentous events had filtered through to Sheriff Hutton is unknown, but Elizabeth would certainly have been anxious to hear of the outcome of the conflict between the two men who had played for her hand, for it would seal her own fate. She did not have long to wait, for within hours of his victory at Bosworth, even before departing from Leicester, the new King sent Sir Robert Willoughby and Sir John Halewell
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to Sheriff Hutton to secure her person and that of Edward, Earl of Warwick; they came with “a noble company to fetch [Elizabeth] to her lady mother.”
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André says that when Elizabeth “learned that Henry had won the victory,” she “exclaimed with gladness of heart: ‘so even at last, thou hast, O God, regarded the humble and not despised their prayers. I well remember that my most noble father, of famous memory, meant to have bestowed me in marriage upon this most comely prince! O that I were worthy of him; for, as I have lost my father and protector, I sorely fear me that he will take a wife from foreign parts whose beauty, age, fortune, and dignity will more please him than mine! What shall I say? I am alone, and I dare not take counsel. O that I could acquaint my mother, or some of the lords, with my fears, but I dare not, nor have I the courage to discourse with him himself on the subject, lest in so doing I might discover my love. What will be, I cannot divine, but this I know, that Almighty God always succors those who trust in Him. Therefore will I cease to think, and repose my whole hope in Thee. O my God, do Thou with me according to Thy mercy.’ ” And she “pondered these things privately.”

Allowing for the flowery language, and the likelihood that the speech is invented, there may be some truth in the sentiments expressed; it is unlikely that André would have made all this up. Elizabeth might indeed have come to regard her father’s plan to marry her to Henry Tudor as prescient, if not sacrosanct, and these may well have been the sentiments she expressed at the time. It is credible that she herself was one of André’s sources, for he wrote his official history during the last years of her life.

Henry wanted Elizabeth and Warwick brought south immediately, and Elizabeth “received a direction to repair with all convenient speed
to London, and there to remain with the Queen her mother; which accordingly she soon after did,”
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escorted under Sir Robert’s protection with the honor due to a future Queen of England. Warwick, however, was to be conveyed in secret.

Henry was always to regard young Warwick as one of the chief threats to his crown, despite the fact that the earl, then just ten years old, was barred from the succession and seems to have been mentally backward. But for the attainder against his father, the Duke of Clarence, Warwick would have been the rightful male heir to the House of York; Elizabeth’s claim was better, but she was a woman, and Henry, knowing attainders could be reversed, feared that Yorkists might now look to Warwick in preference to her and the man Richard III had called “an unknown Welshman.” As soon as Warwick arrived in London, Henry had him confined briefly at Margaret Beaufort’s London house, Coldharbour, and then imprisoned in the Tower. Because Henry was fearful lest he escape to “stir up civil discord,”
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the unfortunate boy was to spend the rest of his life there, bereft of companions, tutors, or much in the way of comforts. Thus seriously did the new King regard him as a rival, and with justification, for, captive though Warwick remained, he was to be the focus of several Yorkist plots.

Elizabeth, however, was brought openly to London, attended by an escort of “many noblemen and ladies of honor.”
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That was a good sign, yet she might have felt a passing anxiety as to her future, for until Henry married her, she was essentially a rival claimant to his throne, for all that she was a woman; and she could transmit her claim to any man she married. Probably she had read enough history to know that King John murdered Arthur, Duke of Brittany, a rival claimant to the throne, then imprisoned Arthur’s sister Eleanor for life. But Elizabeth had four sisters, each of whom could replace her in the line of succession, and her proposed marriage was popular, so it was hardly likely that the new King would renege on a promise that had won over so many Yorkists to his cause. And now the courtesy and honor accorded to her must have given her cause to hope that she would soon be Queen, although she may have been disconcerted to learn that Henry “had assumed the style of king in his own name,” on the battlefield of
Bosworth, “without mention of the Lady Elizabeth at all,”
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especially as he was supposed to be marrying her to give legitimacy to his title. Furthermore, when she reached London, she might have found it strange that there was no state welcome in the capital, or any celebrations to mark her arrival, as was usual for a royal bride. These were the first indications that her marriage to Henry VII was not to be regarded as the means of his kingship. Had she processed through the City in triumph, it might have looked as if she herself was the rightful sovereign.
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Observing the proprieties, Henry had arranged for his prospective bride to be lodged with his mother. Apartments had been made ready for Elizabeth and her mother at Coldharbour, which lay on the foreshore south of Thames Street, just outside the City walls; and it was there that she was reunited with Elizabeth Wydeville. The former Queen had been staying at Sheen at the time of Bosworth, but hastened to London, and it was to her care that the new King initially entrusted his future bride. It is likely that Elizabeth’s sisters joined her, for Henry arranged for Margaret Beaufort to be given “the keeping and guiding of the ladies daughter of King Edward IV” along with eight-year-old Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, and the hapless Earl of Warwick.
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Warwick’s sister Margaret probably also joined this bustling household.