Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (47 page)

Lewis Walter was the Queen’s bargeman, with responsibility for the twenty-one oarsmen who rowed her barge—gaily decked out in her colors of blue and murrey—along the Thames, where most of the royal palaces were situated.
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Transport by river through London was quicker, as the streets were so narrow and overcrowded.

Lewis Gough, John Rede, Richard Chollerton (probably a relation of Arnold), and Thomas Barton, who accompanied Elizabeth’s daughter Margaret to Scotland in 1503, were the Queen’s footmen. They wore gowns of tawny damask, doublets of yellow Bruges satin, and jackets of black velvet.
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Elizabeth had her own medical team. She did not forget the debt she owed to Dr. Lewis Caerleon, who had served her mother and been so active on their behalf during the dangerous days of 1483, and received him into her service as her physician.
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He died around 1494–95.
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Robert Taylor was her surgeon,
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but the word then meant one who works with instruments, inferior to a physician, although surgery had for some time been a recognized branch of medicine. Many surgeons were also barbers, who acted as dentists and performed blood-letting, operations, and amputations (the red and white barber’s pole represents a limb in a bloody bandage), all of course without anesthetics. John Pickenham and John Grice were the Queen’s apothecaries.
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She had her own chaplains, who administered to her spiritual needs. One was Henry Haute, her maternal kinsman. Another, Jacques Haute, also related, was her servitor. One of Elizabeth’s chaplains,
Christopher Plummer, later became confessor to Katherine of Aragon.
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Elizabeth’s confessor in 1502 was Dr. Edmund Underwood.
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One example of the Queen operating within her permitted sphere occurred in the autumn of 1498, when, upon the death of Giovanni de’ Gigli (who had written the epithalamium on her wedding), she put forward her confessor as a candidate for the vacant see of Worcester. When Pope Alexander VI wrote to the King suggesting his own nominee—Gigli’s nephew, Silvestro—Henry replied that he had already promised the see to the Queen’s confessor. In the end, however, it went to Silvestro de’ Gigli.
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In 1501, Elizabeth took her half brother, Arthur Plantagenet, Edward IV’s illegitimate son by Elizabeth Lucy (née Waite), into her household, possibly through the good offices of Margaret Beaufort. That year, Margaret mentioned doing the King’s pleasure “for the bastard of King Edward’s,” which, she said, she “would be glad to fulfill to my little power.”
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Older than Elizabeth by three to five years, Arthur Plantagenet was “the gentlest heart living,” according to the future Henry VIII, who liked him enormously—until Arthur fell foul of him in 1540. Elizabeth would have known him well in childhood, for he was raised at her father’s court. In 1472 the Exchequer accounts record that the King’s tailor was paid for robes for “my lord the bastard”—probably a reference to Arthur. But after that he disappears from the record, and it may be that when his father died, he went to live with his mother’s family near Southampton. The next mention of him occurs in 1501, when, as “Arthur Waite,” he entered Elizabeth’s service as her carver.
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He was probably the “Master Arthur” (occupation not specified), paid a handsome salary of £26.13s.4d. [£12,960] in 1503.
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Most of the members of the Queen’s household were men; the women who served her were those who kept her company or attended to her personal needs. Her life was governed by ceremonial and ritual, even in private. She was rarely alone; there was always someone in attendance or within earshot—usually her ladies, gentlewomen, and female servants, who were naturally chosen from the higher ranks of society. These were the women whom the Queen saw daily, in whose company she spent much of her life, and who might, with luck, become
her friends.
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They had to be congenial to her, and virtuous, for their conduct would reflect upon her.

Places in the Queen’s household were much sought after, for they provided women with status and an independent income, as well as perquisites, pensions for good service on retirement, and privileged access to their mistress—and sometimes the King himself—from which could flow the lucrative benefits of patronage. Effectively they were career women, and if they were as efficient as they were well-connected, they could look forward to years in royal service.

Elizabeth’s mother once had just five ladies-in-waiting, but Spanish ambassador Rodrigo de Puebla was astonished to discover that “the Queen has thirty-two ladies, very magnificent and in splendid style,”
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who attended her even in private. Eighteen of them were noble-women.
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In 1502–03, Elizabeth had seven maids of honor, who each received salaries of £6.13s.4d. [£3,300], while sixteen gentlewomen each got £3.6s.8d. [£1,620] per annum. There were also three chamberers—women who attended the Queen in her chamber or, more specifically, bedchamber.
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All the Queen’s unmarried sisters waited on her. Cecily was her chief attendant until her marriage in 1487, when she was replaced by Anne. Next in precedence came Lady Elizabeth Stafford (d. after 1544), who served as first lady of the bedchamber from 1494, at the latest. The daughter of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, by Katherine Wydeville, she was Elizabeth’s first cousin. She married Sir Walter Herbert, who died in 1507, and then George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon. The highest paid of the Queen’s female attendants, she received a salary of £33.6s.8d. [£16,300].
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Margaret, Lady Pole, was another of the Queen’s cousins. Her husband, Sir Richard Pole, was a kinsman of Margaret Beaufort and great-grandson of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. He had been in the service of the future Edward V at Ludlow, and fought for his cousin Henry Tudor at Bosworth. His marriage to Margaret had been arranged to bind another Yorkist claimant to the royal house. Elizabeth’s aunt, Mary FitzLewes, Lady Rivers, widow of the executed Anthony Wydeville, was also one of her favored attendants.
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These close relations ranked above the ladies-in-waiting, married
women who waited daily upon Elizabeth; some were there because their husbands served the King in his Privy Chamber. Impeccable courtesy, discretion, and social skills would have been expected of them, and indeed of all the women and girls who served the Queen. The ladies-in-waiting were her constant daily companions in her privy chamber; they attended her on ceremonial occasions and in private, and their function was to provide pleasant and decorous companionship at all times. They had to have “a vigilant and reverent respect and eye,” so that they might notice by their mistress’s “look or countenance what lacketh, or is her pleasure to be had or done.”
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Elizabeth’s ladies were required to be accomplished in dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, and other pastimes beloved by their royal mistress. Besides music and watching players and other entertainers, Elizabeth took pleasure in her gardens, and enjoyed gambling at games of chance, dice and cards.
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Playing cards, which originated in China, became popular in Europe in the late fourteenth century. The four suits we know today originated in France around 1480, and so would have been known at Henry VII’s court. It was in the fifteenth century that kings, queens, and knaves began to feature on the cards. The “knave” derives from the German
knabe
, meaning a male child or prince.

An old tradition, probably apocryphal, has it that the image of the queen of hearts in a pack of playing cards represents Elizabeth of York. It is said that, after her death, Henry VII ordered her image to appear on every deck of cards, in commemoration of the love they had shared. Certainly the long-lappeted gable headdress resembles the type she is known to have worn, and the queen of hearts is usually shown holding a Tudor rose. But others have claimed that the lady is meant to be Helen of Troy, and still others argue that the figures on playing cards represent no one in particular.

Dancing was often practiced in the Queen’s chamber in preparation for court entertainments, or just for its own sake. The ladies would also have been diverted by the antics of Elizabeth’s fools, Patch and William. Henry VII once bought new shoes for Patch, and Elizabeth paid for William to be boarded out for several months while he was sick; she also bought coats, shirts, and shoes for her fools.
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Every married woman in Elizabeth’s train was expected to put the Queen’s needs before those of her family, for royal service meant spending long periods at court. Time off was allowed for confinements, but once the baby was established with a nurse, the mother would return to court.

Next in rank after the ladies-in-waiting came the maids of honor, unmarried, well-born girls who were often appointed by the recommendation of the ladies-in-waiting, or through the influence of their relations or friends at court. The usual age for appointment was around sixteen. Since Edward IV’s reign, beauty had been a prerequisite, since it would enhance the appearance of the Queen’s entourage, and attract suitable husbands for the girls in question. Ambitious parents would compete to place their daughters in the Queen’s household, for she and the King were better placed than anyone to arrange advantageous marriages for them, upon which they might be promoted to the rank of lady-in-waiting. Maids of honor were therefore expected to be virtuous, for their mistress was in loco parentis, and no scandal could reflect upon her name.

Also residing in the Queen’s household, but not in her service, were the daughters and gentlewomen of her ladies, many of whom made good marriages through living at court. All the women attendant upon the Queen and her ladies had accommodation and board at court, as well as stabling for their horses. In addition to their salaries, they received new liveries and clothing at Christmas and Whitsun, and for coronations, royal weddings, and funerals. They were given gifts by the King and Queen at New Year and at other times, often in recognition of good service, and if they were lucky they were granted annuities and pensions, which could be quite substantial.
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The names of many of Elizabeth’s female attendants are known, although it is not possible to determine in what capacity they all served. They are listed in alphabetical order in
Appendix II
. Some had clearly been appointed at the behest of the King or Margaret Beaufort. Several served Elizabeth for many years, and were later rewarded for good service; some were entrusted with positions in the households of the royal children. The Queen’s personal household, like the court, was
composed of people who were often related to her and/or to one another, making it almost a familial organization.

Elizabeth’s female attendants would have dressed her, for help was essential, given the elaborate clothing worn by high-ranking ladies of the period. Queens were not expected to perform even personal tasks for themselves, so they also washed and bathed her, and attended her when she used the privy or close stool, wiping her with a clean cloth afterward. It was taken for granted that body servants, who were required to be of gentle rank, would be in attendance even for the most intimate of functions.

It was a mark of rank to look clean and smell pleasant. Since the thirteenth century, kings and queens had the luxury of piped hot and cold water from a cistern, and Elizabeth was fortunate in that she had many servants, but not everyone at court was fastidious, and sanitation was poor: hers was a world scented with herbs, spices, and flowers—variously spread or sprinkled on rush matting, napery, food, bedding, and parts of the body—so that offensive smells might be camouflaged. Good manners dictated that the upper classes washed on rising, before and after meals, and on retiring for the night; the royal chamberlains would be at hand at those times with a basin and a towel of fine Holland cloth. Yet it is not known how often, or how thoroughly, people actually washed themselves. Elizabeth’s father, Edward IV, had his head, hands, and feet washed every Saturday, which suggests there was a difference between the ideal and the reality. The rich did take baths fairly often, using a wooden tub lined with cloth and covered with a canopy. The bather sat on a bed of sponges, which were also used to wash her with herbs, rosewater, and soap, and was attended by servants who spread mats for her to stand on and who stood ready with towels. Toothpicks and cloths were used to clean and buff teeth, and Elizabeth’s attendants would have tidied her hair with an ivory comb.

All the Queen’s ladies were expected to be expert needlewomen, as much of their time was spent working with costly materials and threads of silk and gold, embroidering altar cloths, hangings, bedding, and garments, or sewing clothing such as fine shirts. These might be
given as New Year’s gifts. Elizabeth Lock was the Queen’s silkwoman, and also made items for the King. At Christmas 1502, Elizabeth paid her for “certain bonnets, frontlets, and other stuff of her occupation for her own wearing.”
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Like many aristocratic women, Elizabeth enjoyed embroidery. She employed a French embroiderer, Robinet, who got board and wages, and hired other embroiderers,
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but embroidered the King’s garter robe herself, using Venetian gold that Henry had purchased,
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and in 1502 she paid 8d. [£16] for an ell of linen cloth “for a sampler.” A sampler at that time was an embroidery specimen or template that could be copied.
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Much time was devoted by the Queen and her ladies to making, mending, embellishing, or trying on clothes. In an age of outward display, appearance counted for much, and it was expected of them to enhance the splendor of the court by the resplendence of their attire. Elizabeth’s ladies were required to dress almost as lavishly—and expensively—as she did: despite strict sumptuary laws restricting the wearing of certain materials to certain ranks, their dress was to reflect their employer’s status rather than their families’. The rich materials and long trains worn at court reflected the wealth and status of their wearers, for such fabrics were dear. Needless to say, it cost a lot to equip a girl for royal service.