Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (43 page)

Elizabeth Wydeville now retired, for “divers considerations,” to St. Saviour’s Abbey at Bermondsey, across the river from the Tower of London.
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It has been suggested that she retreated there at her own request, possibly because of ill health, or because she did not wish to marry the Scots king, or because she was broken by the murders of three of her sons, although they had taken place nearly four years before—but subsequent events would suggest otherwise. It could not have been because she wanted to retire from the world to lead a life of piety, because Bermondsey was a house of monks, and her marriage to the Scots King was still being mooted nine months later. And if she had gone willingly, why had she taken a forty-year lease on Cheyneygates less than a year earlier?

Her retirement came at a time when the threat posed by Lambert Simnel and those who were using him to achieve the restoration of the House of York was becoming more acute. Although no contemporary commentator linked Elizabeth Wydeville to the Simnel conspiracy, the two other orders in council passed on that day at Sheen related to the threat: one offered pardon to all rebels who threw themselves on the King’s mercy; the other was for the parading of the real Warwick at St. Paul’s. It has therefore been assumed by some commentators that the order in council banishing the Queen Dowager to Bermondsey was also connected to the Simnel plot—but that does not necessarily follow.

Francis Bacon, writing more than a century later, was the first to assert that Henry VII distrusted his mother-in-law and banished her to Bermondsey because she had been the prime mover behind that plot: “It cannot be but that some great person that knew [Warwick] particularly and familiarly had a hand in the business. That which is most probable, out of precedent and subsequent acts, is that it was the Queen Dowager from whom this action had the principal source and motion. For certain it is she was a busy negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing chamber had the fortunate conspiracy for the King against King Richard III been hatched, which the King knew and remembered
perhaps but too well.” As she had plotted on Henry’s behalf, the theory went, so she might decide to plot against him, and apparently she had anticipated that her daughter would enjoy more influence as Queen—the kind of influence she herself had enjoyed in her day—but it quickly became clear that Elizabeth was to be allowed no real power at all. Therefore the Queen Dowager “was at this time extremely discontent with the King, thinking her daughter not advanced but depressed.”
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Thanks to Bacon, there has been speculation ever since that Elizabeth Wydeville was involved in the Simnel conspiracy.

Why would Elizabeth Wydeville have plotted against Henry to the detriment and ruin of her own daughter and grandson? There is absolutely no evidence that she did. She had actively worked for Elizabeth’s marriage to the King. If Elizabeth had little power as Queen now, she would have even less if Henry were to be deposed and Lincoln became King. Even if the Queen Dowager really believed Simnel to be Warwick, which is highly unlikely, would she have lent her support to the son of Clarence—in whose ruin she and her party had probably been complicit—above the claim of her own grandson? And would she have collaborated with the ever-busy Bishop Stillington, who was suspected of supporting the rebels—the man who had been instrumental in the impugning of her marriage? The only scenario that makes sense of Bacon’s assertions is that she believed at least one of her sons was still alive, but there is no evidence to support this.

Henry VII might be forgiven for being overcautious, or even slightly paranoid, at this time; Bacon imagines him thinking that his mother-in-law was involved in the Simnel plot, and that “none could hold the book so well to prompt and instruct this stage play as she could.” That the King imprisoned her son Dorset in the Tower until the threat from Simnel and his supporters was dealt with appears to support this assumption, but her brother, Sir Edward Wydeville, was to fight for the King against Simnel’s forces.
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What’s more, no contemporary source mentions Henry voicing the concerns described by Bacon more than a century later.

Yet Henry did have another, more pressing reason for banishing his mother-in-law. Two queens in one kingdom involved unnecessary expenditure.
Throughout the fifteenth century the Queen consort’s dower had been paid out of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, but the income assigned by the King to Elizabeth Wydeville proved a drain on resources that should have supported his wife.
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Probably his only objective in sending his mother-in-law to Bermondsey was to seize her lands, which could then be used to dower his financially embarrassed Queen.

At Bermondsey, Elizabeth Wydeville was registered as a boarder, which entitled her to free board and lodging as a descendant of the founder. She was lodged in an old range of apartments formerly used by the earls of Gloucester, early benefactors of the monastery, whose line had died out in the fourteenth century; maybe these old rooms did not offer the most comfortable or elegant accommodation. The Benedictine abbey, originally a priory, was founded in the eleventh century on the site of what had been successively a Saxon monastery and a royal manor recorded in the Domesday Book. From the twelfth century on it had enjoyed the patronage of royalty, and in 1399 it became an abbey. In 1437, Queen Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, had been sent to Bermondsey after her secret liaison with Owen Tudor (grandfather of Henry VII) was discovered, and died there in childbirth soon afterward. The present abbot, John Marlow, had been among the clergy who officiated at the obsequies of Edward IV.
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In the fifteenth century Bermondsey was a large and important religious house, but it was not an ideal retreat. It had often been poorly run and allowed to fall into neglect—its history is a long catalogue of debt and mismanagement—and it was located in a damp and unhealthy situation, so if Elizabeth Wydeville retired there solely on account of her failing health, as some writers have suggested, it was a strange choice. For Henry VII, though, it provided a solution to the problem of maintaining his mother-in-law, for a condition of the original royal grant of the land stipulated that the monks must always keep a residence for use of the monarch. Thus Henry could send the Queen Dowager there at no cost to himself—and could also provide more easily for his Queen.

At Easter 1487, which fell on April 15, Elizabeth got her dower at last. Royal warrants were issued to officers of the Exchequer to pay
“all profits and issues of all lands, honors, and castles lately belonging to Elizabeth, late wife of King Edward IV,” to her daughter, “the lady Queen.” At Coventry, on May 1, the King confirmed that “whereas we have seized into our hands all honors, castles, manors, lordships, etc., by us late assigned unto Queen Elizabeth, late wife to Edward IV,” he had formally assigned “every of the said honors to our dearest wife the Queen.”
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One of the properties that Henry confiscated from his mother-in-law was Sheen Palace, which he soon proceeded to repair and alter, building two large towers and adding a new lead roof. It was to become one of his and Elizabeth’s favorite residences.

Bacon states that Elizabeth Wydeville was now so tainted with treason “that it was almost thought dangerous to visit her, or even see her”; yet after her retirement she came to court occasionally and was visited by her daughters. The King made grants of money to her from time to time, and they exchanged gifts—in 1488 he rewarded her for sending him a tun of wine, and in 1490 he gave her 50 marks “against the feast of Christmas.” He referred to her in letters as “our dear mother, Queen Elizabeth” or “our right dear and right well beloved Queen Elizabeth, mother of our dear wife the Queen.”
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This all suggests cordiality and concern rather than antagonism. In November 1487, Henry again put the Queen Dowager forward as a bride for James III, which he is hardly likely to have done if he believed she had been plotting treason and saw her as a threat to him—or if she had retired to Bermondsey because of ill health or a desire to retreat from the world.

Elizabeth Wydeville’s wishes for the disposition of her youngest daughter, Bridget, were honored by the King. Possibly in 1490
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—between 1486, when Bridget was considered as a potential bride for James III, and 1492, when she is recorded as coming from Dartford to Windsor—the child was sent to the Dominican priory at Dartford, Kent, to join the sisters of the Order of St. Augustine, “a house of close nuns.”
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Dartford was the only Dominican nunnery in England, and the seventh richest convent in the land at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. It was famous as a center for prayer, spirituality, and education, and had enjoyed royal patronage since it was founded by Edward III in 1349.

Bridget had been destined for the religious life from birth, so possibly she was sent to Dartford soon after her mother retired to Bermondsey, when she was six. Initially, like other children of noble families, she would have lived in the priory as a boarder before entering the novitiate. The earliest date she could have taken her final vows was November 1493, for girls had to be thirteen to become professed Dominican nuns. Candidates had to be highly educated, and to that end Bridget would have been tutored well in the priory’s school and become familiar with the holy texts in its library. On entry to the order, she donned the requisite white tunic and scapular and black mantle and veil, and resigned herself to a strict régime of prayer and contemplation. Nevertheless, she continued to correspond regularly with her sister the Queen. Elizabeth paid her a pension of 20 marks [£3,250] a year (less than she provided for her other sisters), and forwarded sums to the Abbess of Dartford “toward the charges of my Lady Bridget.” In 1495, Cecily, Duchess of York, bequeathed to Bridget three books: the
Legenda Aurea
, a life of St. Catherine of Siena, and a life of St. Hilda.
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Elizabeth has been criticized for acquiescing in her husband’s treatment of her mother, but she was powerless, and Henry may have ignored any protests she made. As usual, she kept her opinions—and perhaps her objections—private. But even if she was relieved to be in possession of her dower at last, it must surely have troubled her that she had profited by her mother’s misfortune.

Elizabeth Wydeville was not the only one to come under suspicion at this time. That same month of February saw Bishop Stillington summoned before the council to answer charges regarding certain “damnable conjurations and conspiracies.” Since receiving his pardon in 1485, the bishop had been living in retirement at the University of Oxford. But Oxford was where the Simnel conspiracy had originated, and these charges may well have related to his suspected involvement. Stillington refused to obey the summons, and claimed the protection of the university. There he remained throughout March, and it was only after he received a royal safe conduct that he agreed to go to Windsor, where he was interrogated in private. No charges were laid against him, yet he was kept under house arrest, and remained more or less in custody in Windsor for the four years that were left to him.

In the first week of February, at Sheen, the council, having arrested the priest, Symonds, decided that the threat posed by the pretender in Ireland was sufficiently serious to justify showing the real Warwick to the people.
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A week after Elizabeth Wydeville retired to Bermondsey, the twelve-year-old earl was paraded in a stately procession through London to St. Paul’s Cathedral to attend Mass. Afterward, he was allowed to mingle freely and converse with the King’s councilors and people he knew, including his cousin Lincoln, before being taken in procession to Sheen Palace, where he was received by another cousin, the Queen. Elizabeth would have known him well—they had both lived in the household at Sheriff Hutton less than two years before—so she must have been able to recognize him, as did others, although when the rebels in Ireland heard of the parading of Warwick, they accused Henry of trickery.

Elizabeth and several lords conversed with Warwick but they found the twelve-year-old unresponsive and backward. Vergil says he could not tell a goose from a capon, while Warwick’s own nephew, Cardinal Reginald Pole, was to declare that his uncle was as innocent as a year-old child. Almost certainly Warwick was of limited intellectual capacity, but just by living he posed a threat to the King, and at the end of the day he was returned to his dismal existence in the Tower.

Soon afterward, in March, Elizabeth—like many other people—was probably shocked to hear that the Earl of Lincoln had left court and fled to Flanders, where his aunt, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, lived. Margaret violently disapproved of Henry VII because he had slain her brother, Richard III, and toppled the House of York from the throne, and she was to do everything in her power to undermine his title. She was “not mindful of the marriage which finally united the two houses of York and Lancaster. She pursued Henry with insatiable hatred,”
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baring “such a mortal hatred to the House of Lancaster, and personally to the King, as she was in no ways mollified by the conjunction of the houses in her niece’s marriage, but rather hated her niece as the means of the King’s ascent to the crown.”
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