Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (8 page)

On October 6, Warwick and Clarence entered the City and took control of the Tower, whereupon the Lord Mayor had no choice but to come to terms with them. They speedily restored order and proclaimed
the feeble Henry VI to the throne once more, transferring him from his prison in the Tower to the opulent rooms vacated by the Queen. He would be formally restored to the throne on October 30.

Warwick had little reason to love “the Queen that was,”
⁶⁹
but he did not persecute women. Instead, he issued a proclamation forbidding his followers to defoul churches and sanctuaries in London and elsewhere, upon pain of death.
⁷⁰
Despite this, the Queen evidently felt it was safer to stay in sanctuary with her daughters for the present; with the situation so volatile and uncertain, no one could predict how long they would have to remain there. Worse still, she was “in great penury, forsaken of all her friends”
⁷¹
and “in great trouble,”
⁷²
lacking even “such things as mean men’s wives have in superfluity.” A London butcher, John Gould, came to her rescue. He loyally donated “half a beef and two muttons weekly for the sustention of her household.” A kindly fishmonger provided victuals for Fridays and fast days. As the Queen neared her confinement, Elizabeth Greystoke, Lady Scrope, was appointed by Henry VI’s council to wait on her, and paid £10 [£5,000] for her services.
⁷³
Marjory (or Margaret) Cobb, who had delivered Princess Cecily and been rewarded with a pension,
⁷⁴
was brought in to act as midwife, and the Queen’s own physician, Dr. Dominic de Sirego, was permitted to attend her.

On the feast of All Saints, November 1, 1470,
⁷⁵
in Cheyneygates, the Queen “was delivered of a son, in very poor estate.”
⁷⁶
It seemed ironic that the long-awaited heir should be born during his father’s exile, yet “from this circumstance derived some hope and consolation for such persons as remained faithful in their allegiance to Edward.” King Henry’s adherents, however, “thought the birth of the child of no importance.”
⁷⁷

The little prince was christened in the abbot’s house by the sub-prior, “without pomp,” and “with no more ceremony than if he had been a poor man’s son”; the Duchess of Bedford and Lady Scrope were godmothers at the font, while the abbot and the prior, John Eastney—in the absence of anyone of higher rank—stood as godfathers. Young Elizabeth bore the chrisom—the robe put on a child after baptism to
symbolize its purification from sin. The infant was named Edward, after his father.

Elizabeth and her mother and siblings had “a long time abode and sojourned at Westminster”: they were to endure another five months in sanctuary, “in right great trouble, sorrow, and heaviness.” The Queen was painfully aware that her son might be seen as a threat to the new régime. She knew that “the security of her person rested solely on the great franchise of that holy place.” But Warwick left them largely unmolested, and the Queen “sustained” her ordeal “with all manner of patience belonging to any creature, and as constantly as ever was seen by any person of such high estate to endure.”
⁷⁸
Yet “what pain had she, what labor and anguish did she endure? To hear of her weeping it was great pity,” and “when she remembered the King she was woe”
⁷⁹
—and doubtless Elizabeth was too, witnessing her mother in such distress.

Spurred on by news of the birth of his heir, and enriched by funds provided by the Duke of Burgundy, Edward IV began gathering a fleet and raising an army, intent on reclaiming his kingdom. In the spring of 1471 he invaded England, which fell to him shire by shire. Clarence abandoned Warwick and made peace with his brother. On April 9, marching south from Dunstable, Edward sent “very comfortable messages to his Queen”
⁸⁰
in sanctuary, giving her great cause for hope that he might prevail over his enemies. Two days later he marched into London unhindered and reclaimed his throne in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Henry VI was again deposed, and returned to the Tower.

That day, after Edward had given thanks in Westminster Abbey for his victory, and come in procession to the Palace of Westminster, the Queen and her children were escorted there from the sanctuary. There followed a joyful reunion, which proved almost too much for Elizabeth Wydeville, and Edward had to comfort her, for she had been deeply affected by her long ordeal in sanctuary. “Ne’theless, she had brought into the world, to the King’s greatest joy, a fair son, a prince, wherewith she presented her husband at his coming, to his heart’s singular comfort and gladness.”
⁸¹
Edward was to refer to his son and heir as “God’s precious sending and gift, and our most desired treasure.”

Elizabeth must have been overjoyed to see her father again. A contemporary poem celebrated this touching reunion:

In July 1471 the King would appoint Abbot Milling chancellor to Prince Edward in reward for his kindness to the Queen and her children while they were in sanctuary, and in 1474 he made him Bishop of Hereford. In return for his “true heart,” Butcher Gould was given permission to load his ship,
The Trinity of London
, at any port and to trade freely with her for a year. Dr. de Sirego was paid £40 [£20,000] for attending the Queen’s confinement, and Mother Cobb received a pension of £12 [£6,000] for her services.
⁸³
In 1478, in thanksgiving for the safe delivery of her son in the most difficult circumstances, the Queen founded a chapel in Westminster Abbey dedicated to St. Erasmus, the protector of women in childbirth.

That night “the King returned to London, and the Queen with him,” and their children. They stayed at Baynard’s Castle, the London residence of Edward’s mother, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York.
⁸⁴
There, young Elizabeth found herself enjoying her first taste of freedom in over five months. In the evening, the King and Queen attended divine service, and the next day, April 11, the royal family kept Good Friday with all solemnity.
⁸⁵

Afterward the King “took advice of the great lords of his blood and others of his council” on his next strategy,
⁸⁶
and later that day the Queen, her children, her mother, and the Duchess of York, accompanied by Earl Rivers and the Archbishop of Canterbury, moved to the royal palace in the Tower of London for safety, while the King marched north to meet his enemies. On Easter Sunday, April 13, Edward defeated
Warwick’s forces at the Battle of Barnet, leaving the mighty Warwick, whom men had called “Kingmaker,” dead on the field. Warwick’s brother, Lord Montagu, whose son Elizabeth was to have wed, was also slain.

But Queen Margaret and her son were still at large, recruiting men. Relentlessly, Edward’s forces marched west, pursuing them toward the River Severn, to prevent them from linking up with Lancastrian supporters in Wales, and on May 4 he decisively defeated them at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Edward of Lancaster was slain after the battle—probably killed by Clarence and Gloucester on King Edward’s orders
⁸⁷
—and Queen Margaret was taken prisoner. The King then marched in triumph to London, his throne secure at last.

Even now “the fury of many of the malignants was not averted.”
⁸⁸
The last days of this first phase of the Wars of the Roses were not without terrifying drama—and young Elizabeth was at the center of it. On May 12, Thomas Neville, the Bastard of Fauconberg, Warwick’s cousin, Vice Admiral of the Fleet and one of Queen Margaret’s most zealous supporters, made a bid to free Henry VI from the Tower. Having sailed up the Thames with a force of seventeen thousand men of Kent and “the remains of Warwick’s mercenaries, mariners, and pirates,”
⁸⁹
he arrived at the gates of London Bridge—“a very famous bridge built partly of wood and partly of stone [and on it] houses and several gates”
⁹⁰
—intending to “subject this most opulent city to their ravages.”

Declaring that he had come to dethrone the usurper Edward and restore King Henry, he demanded permission from the Lord Mayor to march through the City and promised that his men should commit no disturbance or pillage. Then he showed the Lord Mayor and the citizens his commission from Warwick, only to be told it was no longer in force as Warwick was dead. Fauconberg was stunned by this news; he would not believe it, and persisted in his demands, but the City fathers resisted him, closed their gates, and began building barricades. They also, “with right great instance, moved the King in all possible haste to approach and come to the City, to the defense of the Queen, then being in the Tower of London, my Lord Prince and my ladies his daughters, all likely to stand in the greatest jeopardy that ever was.”
⁹¹

The Bastard had his cannon ranged along the shore. He ordered his men to set fire to London Bridge, and simultaneously bombarded Aldgate and Bishopsgate, “where they made most furious assaults and laid waste everything with fire and sword.”

“God gave the Londoners stout hearts”:
⁹²
they bravely defended their bridge, while the cannon from the Tower thundered out in response to the attack. But the Bastard sailed downstream and unloaded five thousand men below the Tower, with the intention of attacking the City from the east. There was a real danger that these troops and the Lancastrian artillery might breach the Tower’s defenses; the Bastard’s men had already fired beer-houses near the fortress. In retaliation “the citizens lodged their great artillery against their adversaries and with violent shot thereof so galled them that they durst not abide in any place along the water side but were driven even from their own ordnance.”
⁹³

In the Tower, five-year-old Elizabeth would have heard the bombardment and the noise; it was the closest she ever got to a battle. It must have been a terrifying episode—and one she probably never forgot. Outside, men were dying as the rebel assault was repelled, but now her uncle, Earl Rivers, accompanied by the Lieutenant of the Tower, Edmund Grey, Earl of Kent, led forth a force of five hundred men out of the Tower Postern and went to the aid of the citizens, “falling at the head of his horsemen upon the rear of the enemy” until they were overcome, and then chasing them as far as Stratford and Stepney. Seven hundred insurgents were killed in the fighting, and hundreds more taken prisoner afterward.

Fauconberg was forced to retreat across the Thames to where his ships were waiting, and fled.
⁹⁴
“Everyone rejoiced” at the vanquishing of these rebels, and soon after, “King Edward entered London in state for the third time, with a retinue far greater than any of his former armies, and with standards unfurled and borne before him. There was now no enemy left for him to encounter.”
⁹⁵

But Edward was taking no chances. “And the same night that King Edward came to London”—May 21, 1471—“King Henry was put to death between eleven and twelve o’clock,”
⁹⁶
struck down while at prayer, according to a very old tradition. The chronicler John Warkworth
noted that the King’s youngest brother, Gloucester, was at the Tower at that time. It was given out that Henry had died “of pure displeasure and melancholy” on hearing of the fate of his wife and son.
⁹⁷

The body of the King was “chested” and displayed at St. Paul’s Cathedral, “and his face was open that every man might see him, and he bled on the pavement there.” Then his corpse was moved to the Blackfriars, where it bled again, before being conveyed to Chertsey Abbey for burial.
⁹⁸
In 1910, Henry’s skull was examined, and it was noted that it was “much broken” as if it had been crushed by a blow, and still had attached to it hair that was “apparently matted with blood.”
⁹⁹

Richard of Gloucester—who was to play a fateful part in Elizabeth’s life—was then eighteen, and while he may not personally have struck the blow that killed Henry VI—for it must have been Edward IV who had “chosen to crush the seed”
¹⁰⁰
—he was probably sent to the Tower by the King to convey the order and ensure that the deed was done. But there were rumors. “The common fame was that the Duke of Gloucester was not all guiltless.”
¹⁰¹
Gloucester, asserted Commines, “killed poor King Henry with his own hand, or else caused him to be killed in his presence.”

Richard of Gloucester’s formative years had been overshadowed by war, treachery, and violent death. He was eight when his father and brother Edmund were killed in battle. He grew up in an insecure, ever-shifting world, and twice suffered the misery of exile. He saw the King his brother betrayed by Warwick, who had been as a father to Richard. By now, Richard had become hardened to the realities of political expediency.

It was after Tewkesbury that Richard’s ruthlessness first became apparent, when, as Constable of England, he had exercised his right to try and sentence to death Edmund, the last Beaufort Duke of Somerset, and other prominent Lancastrians, including one in holy orders who was entitled to immunity from the death penalty. Whether he struck the fatal blow that killed Henry VI or not, Richard, at an impressionable age, had been shown that it was prudent, even necessary, to eliminate the threat posed by the continued existence of a deposed
king, and that the end—peace and stable government—justified the means.

Richard was undoubtedly an able man, hardworking and conscientious. He had in him that which inspired loyalty, and his share of the Plantagenet charisma, as well as “a sharp courage, high and fierce.”
¹⁰²
In many respects he was a typical late medieval magnate: acquisitive, hungry for wealth and power, brave in battle, tough and energetic. He took a keen interest in warfare and heraldry, and loved hunting and hawking. He was loyal to his brother, King Edward, and to his own followers, but would not scruple to ride roughshod over the rights of others.