Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (72 page)

In the seventeenth century the poet John Dryden recorded that these effigies lay in open presses, where “you may see them all a-row.” In the eighteenth century, around the time that the practice of making funeral effigies died out, John Dart recorded that they were “sadly mangled, some with their faces broke, others broken in sunder, and most of them stripped of their robes”—by Oliver Cromwell’s men, he supposed. They were a sorry sight—a “ragged regiment.” But the face of Elizabeth of York, he noted, was still perfect. Later still, it was described as having “a pleasant and slightly roguish, or boylike, air.”
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The upper part of her painted effigy of soft Baltic wood, with a jointed left arm (the right is missing) beautifully carved from pear wood, and some beautiful gold satin from the original bodice, survives today in the Norman Undercroft Museum in Westminster Abbey. The rest of the effigy is either lost or in too poor a condition to display, much of the body having disintegrated after being saturated with water when Westminster Abbey was bombed in the Second World War. That also left the head and bust blackened and damaged, the wood split, the nose missing and the remains of the bodice stiff with filth—it was described, prior to cleaning in 1961, as an “unpleasant-looking fabric of dirty gray with a shimmer of yellow.”
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The effigy was made by two Dutchmen, Laurence Wechon, “the carver,” and Hans van Hoof, and was five feet eleven inches tall, with a wooden head and bust, jointed wooden arms, and fir poles for legs. The body—from the bust to the feet—was formed of hoops, stuffed with hay, and covered in leather, which was secured with nails. Beneath the Queen’s own robes of estate, it was clad in clothes specially made for it: a crimson satin square-necked “garment” seamed and bordered with blue and black velvet, having a wider neckline than on bodices in the Queen’s portraits (as appears from the outline on the wooden bust), and dark cloth stockings to the knees; the latter were still in place in 1890, but have since disappeared. The wig was hired and does not survive. The ears have holes, thought to have been for earrings,
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but earrings were not commonly worn at this period, so perhaps they were for attaching the wig.

Almost certainly, the face, which so closely resembles Elizabeth’s portraits, is a death mask, like the head of Henry VII’s funeral effigy, which survives with it. Signs of the stroke that killed Edward III are evident in the face of his funeral effigy, so it is likely that the tradition of using death masks for such effigies dated from 1377 at the latest. The sunken aspect of the features of the effigy reflect the Queen as she looked in death. The accounts for Elizabeth’s effigy record payments to “two porters, for fetching of the coffin from the Princes’ Wardrobe,” to one John Scot “for watching in the Tower a night,” and to two more porters for bringing the effigy to the Tower, presumably so the face could be modeled from Elizabeth’s dead features.

At each corner of the funeral chariot “sat a gentlewoman usher kneeling on [beside] the coffin, which was in this manner conveyed from the Tower to Westminster. On the forehorses rode two chariot men; and on the four others, four henchmen in black gowns. On the horses were lozenges with the Queen’s escutcheon; by every horse walked a person in a mourning hood. At each corner of the chariot was a banner of Our Lady of the Assumption, of the Salutation, and of the Nativity,” and these banners “were all white in token that she died in childbed.” An early sixteenth-century drawing of the funeral procession made for Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms,
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shows the wheeled chariot bearing a large coffin with hooded mourners at each corner carrying their banners. On the hearse lies the effigy with loose hair and a crown and scepter.

The funeral route from the Tower to Westminster was the same as that followed at Elizabeth’s coronation fifteen years earlier; now, as then, nobles, royal officers, citizens, and clergy united together to pay their respects, and hundreds of painted escutcheons bearing the arms of the King and Queen were made, to be carried or displayed in the funeral procession. Following the chariot were “eight palfreys saddled with black velvet, bearing eight ladies of honor, who rode singly after the corpse in their slops and mantles, every horse led by a man afoot without a hood but in a demiblack gown, followed by many lords. The Lord Mayor and citizens, all in mourning, brought up the rear, and at
every door in the City a person stood bearing a torch.” Among the ladies were the Queen’s four sisters, all wearing mourning attire with sweeping trains, even the nun Bridget. The principal mourner was Katherine, Countess of Devon, supported by Mary Say, Countess of Essex, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, and Elizabeth, Lady Herbert.

As the cortege passed each church along the route, “a solemn peal with all the bells was rung,” and each curate came forward to cense the corpse, “and thus was this gracious princess with the King’s Chapel and others singing all the way before her conveyed unto Charing Cross.” “At Fenchurch and Cheapside were set thirty-seven virgins all in white linen, having chaplets of white and green on their heads, and bearing lighted tapers”—each girl representing one year of the Queen’s life, with their chaplets the colors of the Tudor royal livery. They were dressed as virgins because a woman who had died in childbed was honored as a virgin. “In Chepe the Lady Mayoress ordained also thirty-seven other virgins, in their hairs [i.e., with their hair loose], holding likewise pretty tapers, in the honor of Our Lady, and that the good Queen was in her thirty-seventh year [
sic
].”

The somber pomp of the occasion impressed onlookers. “From Mark Lane to Temple Bar alone were five thousand torches” carried by bearers wearing white woolen gowns and hoods, “besides lights burning before all the parish churches, while processions of religious persons singing anthems and bearing crosses met the royal corpse from every fraternity [guild] in the City. And as for surplus of strangers, who had no torches, as Easterlings [Baltic traders], Frenchmen, Portugals, Venetians, Genoese, and Lukeners [natives of Lucca], even they rode in black. All the surplus of citizens of London that rode out in black stood along Fenchurch to the end of Cheap[side].” The London craft guilds had paid for the black mourning clothes worn by their members, and also for white robes worn by those who stood with lighted torches beneath the Eleanor Cross at Charing as the coffin passed.

At Temple Bar the cortege was met by a procession of noblemen headed by Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, who had played such an important role in Elizabeth’s life and was himself to die the following year. At Charing Cross the abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey, wearing black copes, met and censed the corpse, then preceded it to St.
Margaret’s churchyard at Westminster, where it was received by eight bishops,
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the abbots of Reading, St. Albans, Winchcombe, and Stratford, and the priors of All Hallows Barking by the Tower and Christ Church, Canterbury. Here the peers “took their mantles” in readiness for the obsequies in the abbey.

The body was “censed and taken out of the chair,” along with the effigy and banners. With Derby leading the procession, it was carried under a canopy “with all due solemnity” on the shoulders of “certain lords” to the door of Westminster Abbey. Inside the church it was laid on a grand catafalque hung with banners and covered in “cloth of majesty” of black cloth of gold with a valance embroidered with the Queen’s motto, “Humble and reverent,” and garnished with her coat of arms, gold roses, portcullises, and fleurs-de-lis.
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The wooden effigy of Elizabeth was laid on top. “Then began the dirge.”

After the service, Dorset and Derby escorted Katherine Courtenay and all the lords and ladies across to the Queen’s great chamber in the Palace of Westminster, where Katherine presided over a supper at which fish was served. Meanwhile, in the abbey, knights, ladies, squires, and heralds kept watch over the body all night, their vigil illuminated by over 1,100 hearse candles, which were kept burning throughout the rest of the ceremonies.

Royal funerals at that period normally took place over two days, with the state obsequies on the first day and the interment on the second. At six o’clock the next morning, February 23, the Dean of Westminster went to summon the female mourners to Our Lady’s Mass at seven o’clock, and an hour later Katherine Courtenay and the Queen’s other sisters assembled in the “cathedral [
sic
] vast and dim.” The abbey had been hung with black cloth, and was lit by the candles around the hearse and 273 tapers bearing escutcheons, placed high up above the hangings.

The Mass of the Trinity was celebrated. Afterward the princesses and Lady Katherine Gordon, who took precedence immediately after them, were among the twenty ladies who presented thirty-seven palls of blue, red, and green cloth of gold, one for each year of Elizabeth’s life. The first pall was “laid along the corpse” by Elizabeth Say, Lady Mountjoy, who made an obeisance as she approached and kissed her
pall; the rest followed suit. The Queen’s sisters, Katherine and Anne, each presented five palls.
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John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, officiated at the final requiem Mass, with Katherine of York, the chief mourner, making the only offering, in accordance with tradition. Then Richard FitzJames, Bishop of Rochester, preached the funeral sermon, taking as his text Job 19:
Miseremini mei, miseremini mei, saltem vos amici mei, quia manus Domini tetigit me
(Have pity, have pity on me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me). “These words he spake in the name of England, on account of the great loss the country had sustained of that virtuous queen, her noble son, the Prince Arthur, and the recently deceased Archbishop of Canterbury [Henry Deane]”—three deaths that had left a nation bereft.

After the sermon the palls were removed from the coffin and the ladies left the abbey, “after whose departing the image with the crown and rich robes were had to a secret place by St. Edward’s shrine” and the men proceeded to the actual burial. Until the Lady Chapel was completed, Elizabeth was interred temporarily in a vault specially made for her in the crossing of the abbey—“the void space between the high altar and the choir,” where monarchs were customarily crowned. Here, “Her Grace was laid until the new chapel were fully edified and made.”
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William Warham, Bishop of London, hallowed the vault with appropriate rites and ceremony, then the clergy and the King’s chaplains approached the hearse and lifted the coffin, which was lowered into it, whereupon the Queen’s chamberlain and her gentlemen ushers, weeping, broke their staves of office and cast them into the grave, to symbolize the termination of their service. It is possible that, like other early royal funeral effigies, Elizabeth’s was laid on top of her temporary burial place. In his will of 1509, Henry VII left orders that her body be brought from there and interred beside him in the new Lady Chapel.
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To speed Elizabeth’s passage through Purgatory, Henry VII had not only paid for those 636 Masses to be said for her soul, but also for at least £240 [£116,660] in alms to be distributed by her almoner to the bedridden, the blind, lepers, and other unfortunates.
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In 1504, Henry founded a chantry at Westminster for himself, Elizabeth, his parents
and ancestors, and handsomely endowed it with a yearly income of £804.12s.8d. [£391,130].
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In 1506, Margaret Beaufort founded another chantry in the new Lady Chapel for the souls of herself, her parents, her husbands, her deceased daughter-in-law, the Queen, and Elizabeth’s deceased children.
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The King remained in seclusion at Richmond for six weeks after the funeral, prostrate with grief and so ill with quinsy—a complication of tonsillitis that can cause breathing difficulties—that it was said he was near death. He was unable to swallow and could barely open his mouth.
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His mother came to nurse him, bringing sweet wine and ordering physic for him. It seems that the loss of Elizabeth—and of Arthur the year before—impacted badly on Henry; as for the remaining six years of his life, his health steadily declined.
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By 1504 he had become “a weak man and sickly, not likely to be no long-lived man.”
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He could not remain in solitude; life had to go on. The Emperor Maximilian, “hearing that Queen Elizabeth had died, sent a solemn embassy to visit and comfort the King,” whom he had heard was “sorrowful and sad at the death of so good a queen and wife.” On Palm Sunday, March 15, his wasted frame clad in blue velvet,
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Henry rode to St. Paul’s Cathedral “in great triumph” with the Imperial ambassador riding by his side. “And there the bishop made an excellent and comfortable oration to the King concerning the death of the Queen.”
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Henry also wore blue mourning for the ceremonies of Maundy Thursday on March 19.
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In April he paid off Elizabeth’s ladies, gentlewomen, and servants, and in May he settled her funeral expenses, and rewarded her dry nurse with £3.6s.8d. [£1,620].
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The sad news of the Queen’s death had reached Spain by April 11, when Queen Isabella wrote at once to her ambassador in England: “We are informed of the death of the Queen of England, our sister. We have spoken of the audience you are to seek, and the consolation you are to administer upon our part to the King of England, our brother. He is suffering from the loss of the Queen his wife, who is in glory.”
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