Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (9 page)

His treatment of his future mother-in-law, the widowed Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, was a case in point. In 1471 the countess sent letters to the five-year-old Elizabeth—“my lady the King’s eldest daughter” (among others)—pleading for the restoration of her lands,
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which Richard and Clarence were determined to appropriate. She received no reply. Evidently the King did not think it politic for his daughter to respond. Under pressure from Richard, he was soon to sanction the division of the Warwick estates between his brothers as if the countess were dead.
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The deaths of Henry VI and his only son brought to an end the first phase of the Wars of the Roses. Clarence had submitted to Edward IV and, at the mediation of the duchess their mother, was forgiven. The House of Lancaster had been vanquished. But there remained a distant sprig of the family tree in the person of Henry Tudor, the posthumous son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Henry had inherited his claim to the throne through his mother, Margaret Beaufort.

Born in 1443, Margaret was the daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and through him descended from King Edward III in a line tainted with bastardy. Margaret’s grandfather, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, had been the oldest son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Katherine Swynford. Their four Beaufort children had been born before their marriage in 1396, but were legitimated the following year by a statute of Richard II. Yet in 1407, Henry IV, in letters patent confirming their legitimacy, added a qualification that the Beauforts
could not inherit the crown. Although letters patent could not overturn a statute, a doubt remained, and the question of the Beauforts’ right to the succession greatly exercised legal minds during the fifteenth century.

Margaret Beaufort was only twelve when she was married to Edmund Tudor in 1455. He did not spare his young bride: he got her pregnant immediately, but died of plague in 1456 before his son was born. Many regarded the Tudors themselves as bastard stock. Edmund Tudor had been the offspring of a liaison—there is no good evidence that it was a marriage—between Queen Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, and Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire. Owen Tudor, or Tewdwr, came from an obscure Anglesey family of landed gentry that could trace its descent back only to the thirteenth century. The genealogies later commissioned by Henry Tudor to show that the Tudors were descended from ancient Welsh and British princes through Rhys ap Tewdwr, Prince of Deheubarth, Wales (d. 1093),
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cannot be substantiated.

The whole procedure of pregnancy and birth seems to have been traumatic for Margaret Beaufort, and the child she bore on January 28, 1457, at Pembroke Castle was to be her only one. She was then thirteen, and had been a widow for twelve weeks. “Like Moses, [Henry] was wonderfully born and brought into the world by the noble princess his mother, who was very small of stature, as she was never a tall woman. It seemed a miracle that, at that age, and of so little a personage, anyone should have been born at all, let alone one so tall and of so fine a build as her son.” But the infant Henry was weak, and it was thanks only to his young mother’s devoted care that he survived.
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He spent his earliest years with her at Pembroke Castle, under the protection of his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke.

In 1461, when Edward IV became King, Pembroke Castle fell to the Yorkists, and Margaret Beaufort and her son were placed under the guardianship of William Herbert, a staunch Yorkist. Henry was raised as Herbert’s ward at Raglan Castle. He had been Earl of Richmond from birth, but the King deprived him of this title in 1462. Already, he recognized the five-year-old boy as a potential rival for the throne.

By then Margaret Beaufort had grown up to be an erudite, pious,
and virtuous woman of strong character. By 1464 she had married a loyal Yorkist, Sir Henry Stafford. Because of her Lancastrian affiliations, Edward IV had shown himself hostile toward her, but this new marriage changed things, and she was now treated with the deference due to one of royal blood. Young Henry saw little of her during these years, but Herbert proved a kindly guardian and had the boy well educated; Henry’s tutor, Andreas Scotus, observed that he had never seen a child so quick in learning. A marriage was planned between Henry and Herbert’s daughter Maud.

But Henry’s childhood was not easy. Later, he would recall to Commines that “from the time he was five years old he had been either a fugitive or a captive.” In 1468, Jasper Tudor having fled abroad, Herbert was given his earldom of Pembroke. In 1469, Warwick, now in rebellion against Edward IV, had Herbert executed for treachery. The following year, Henry was reclaimed by Jasper Tudor, who had been returned to favor after the restoration of Henry VI, and who took him to court to meet the King; it was his one and only visit prior to his accession.

In 1471, Margaret Beaufort’s husband, Henry Stafford, died, probably of wounds received fighting for Edward IV at the Battle of Barnet. Newly widowed, Margaret had to face a long parting from her fourteen-year-old son, for after the Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury Jasper Tudor fled into exile, taking Henry with him. Still styling himself “Earl of Richmond,” Henry spent his youth in penury at the court of Brittany. Both he and Jasper remained stoutly loyal to the House of Lancaster, and after the death of Henry VI, Henry Tudor was regarded by some as his natural heir; indeed, he was the only viable Lancastrian claimant. Henry always deferred to his mother, Margaret Beaufort, as the heiress of the House of Lancaster, but neither of them ever contemplated her actually ruling, because she was a woman. All Margaret’s ambitions were for her son, but clearly Edward IV did not perceive him as much of a threat, since he made only sporadic attempts to capture him. It would be many years before Henry’s claim was taken seriously by the Yorkist kings.

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fter Tewkesbury the long-standing rivalry between Lancaster and York was thought to have been consigned to history, and Christmas of 1471 was kept splendidly at Westminster, with a disguising and a great banquet for the Lord Mayor of London and the City fathers. The Queen was excused from the customary wearing of her crown because she was expecting another child.

Edward IV was finally established on his throne, and settled down to rule England firmly and well. Having seen the splendors of Bruges during his exile, he was even more determined to emulate the Burgundian court, and its influence was greatest during this latter part of his reign. In 1472 he had the “Black Book” drawn up, the first set of ordinances to regulate English court ceremonial details and etiquette, and in them the influence of Burgundy was manifest. Edward’s purpose was to create a display of magnificence, as Burgundian custom dictated. From now on there would be two households at court: abovestairs, so to speak, the Lord Chamberlain’s department, “the King’s house of magnificence”; and belowstairs the Lord Steward’s department, the “house of providence.” Edward IV was determined to
impress foreign visitors, and his own subjects, with the outer trappings of majesty, and observers were struck by his extravagance, his luxurious “chambers of pleasaunce” hung with rich hangings, the ostentatious clothes he wore, the costly jewels, and the sumptuousness of his table. All of this made a lasting impression on the young Elizabeth, who was herself to preside over a splendid court based on the Burgundian model, upon which her own tastes were probably influential.

Mancini described Edward IV as gentle and cheerful by nature. Courtesy and the common touch came as naturally to him as it did to Warwick, his mentor. Elizabeth inherited these qualities from her father, who was “easy of access to his friends, even the least notable. He was so genial in his greeting that if he saw a newcomer bewildered at his royal magnificence, he would give him courage to speak by laying a kindly hand upon his shoulder.” But Edward had another side to him: “should he assume an angry countenance, he could be very terrible to beholders,”
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and as terrifying as his grandson, Henry VIII, who much resembled him.

Gone was the glorious youth of Edward’s earlier years. The father Elizabeth came to know as she grew up, and to whom she became close, was losing his handsome looks. By 1475 the athletic warrior was “a little inclining to corpulence,”
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and thereafter he would become increasingly obese, thanks to a life of unbridled excess and gluttony. “In food and drink he was most immoderate; it was his habit to take an emetic for the delight of gorging his stomach once more. For this reason, he had grown fat in the loins, whereas previously he had been not only tall, but rather lean and very active.”
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Elizabeth, herself fond of good living, would also put on weight as she approached her thirties.

Despite his overindulgent habits, Edward did not lose his grip on affairs. “This prince, although he was thought to have indulged his passions and desires too intemperately, was still a most devout Catholic, a most unsparing enemy to all heretics, and a most loving encourager of wise and learned men, and of the clergy. Men of every rank and condition wondered that a man of such corpulence, and so fond of boon companionship, vanities, debauchery, extravagance, and sensual enjoyments should have had a memory so retentive in all respects.”
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Edward kept three mistresses during these later years. Two were
“greater personages” than the third, and “content to be nameless,” suggesting that the King’s affairs with them were conducted with discretion. “But the merriest was Shore’s wife, in whom the King therefore took special pleasure, for many he had, but her he loved.”
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Elizabeth must have known “Shore’s wife,” for she was prominent at court and had captivated the Londoners’ imagination, probably because she was one of them. Elizabeth (often inaccurately called Jane) Lambert had been born in the City and was “well married, somewhat too soon,” to “an honest citizen,” a goldsmith called William Shore. The marriage was annulled in 1476 on the grounds of his being “frigid and impotent,” which probably “the more easily made her incline unto the King’s appetite when he required her.” Edward experienced no difficulty in “piercing” Mistress Shore’s “soft, tender heart. Proper she was, and fair,” if rather short in stature, “yet delighted not men so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behavior, for a proper wit had she, and could both read and write. She never abused to any man’s hurt, but to many a man’s comfort and relief.”
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Sir Thomas More asserted that the Queen hated Elizabeth Shore, which would be understandable, although there is no record of her showing any animosity toward her in public.

Elizabeth could hardly have grown up unaware of her father’s promiscuity, since it was notorious. Her undoubted virtue may have masked a sensual nature like his, since she clearly enjoyed the finer things in life—good food, conspicuous display, rich clothing, jewelry, and courtly revels. But no one ever accused Elizabeth of promiscuity.

Edward IV had “many promoters and companions of his vices, the most important and especial [being] the relatives of the Queen, her two sons and one of her brothers.”
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This brother, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, was generally lauded as “a man of great valor.”
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Although elegantly fashionable and an accomplished jouster, he “was always considered a kind, serious and just man, and one tested by every vicissitude of life. Whatever his prosperity, he had injured nobody, though benefiting many.”
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That is debatable, for Rivers, like his father, Richard Wydeville, could be ruthless in the pursuit of his ambitions.

He was a complex man, ambitious yet deeply pious, to the extent of wearing a hair shirt beneath his fine attire. He traveled in Italy and
made pilgrimages to Rome and the shrine of St. James at Compostela, and it was his unfulfilled life’s ambition to go on a crusade against the Infidel. Such was his reputation that Pope Sixtus IV appointed him Defender and Director of Papal Causes in England. Rivers was also an able military commander and diplomat.

An erudite scholar, the earl was to patronize William Caxton, who set up the first English printing press at Westminster in 1476. Caxton would print three devotional works that Rivers had translated, including
The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
, the first book ever printed in England. Elizabeth would have grown up familiar with Caxton’s work, for her father was also his patron and took the royal family to visit his shop, which originally stood south of Westminster Abbey’s Lady Chapel, but was moved in 1482 to premises in the Abbey Almonry, and became known as “the Red Pale.” No doubt Elizabeth grew up to have much respect and admiration for her highly cultivated and multitalented uncle, Rivers, and he must have been an early inspiration to her.

Elizabeth’s half brothers—Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and Sir Richard Grey—the King’s other companions in his debaucheries, were the sons of her mother’s first marriage to Sir John Grey of Groby. William, Lord Hastings, the King’s chamberlain and loyal friend, “was also the accomplice and partner of [Edward IV’s] privy pleasures. He maintained a deadly feud with the Queen’s sons,” and not just over Mistress Shore, after whom Hastings and Dorset both secretly lusted.
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