Blood Sisters (38 page)

The new Tudor palace of Richmond had been built on the site of the palace of Sheen, destroyed by fire in 1497. Its richly decorated rooms, the royal apartments glowing with gold leaf offering both luxury and a new measure of privacy, looked out on to gardens of topiary and statues of heraldic beasts, ‘the which gardens were apparelled pleasantly for his Highness and certain Lords there ready set, some with chess, and some with tables, byles [
sic
], dice and cards. The place of butts was ready for archers; and there were bowling alleys and other pleasant and goodly disports for every person as they would choose and desire.’ It was an ideal place in which to continue the festivities. The wedding party watched as, on a specially rigged platform, a Spaniard showed off ‘many wondrous and delicious points of tumbling, dancing and other sleights’. After evensong and supper, the hall was decked out with carpets and cloth of gold cushions, and a great display of plate. A richly decorated portable stage in the shape of a tower was dragged in by sea horses: it was occupied by ladies in disguise and a choir of children. Coneys and white doves were set free to run or fly about the hall, to everyone’s ‘great laughter and disport’. After ‘courtly rounds and pleasant dances’ came the void of ‘goodly spices and wine’, served by a host of nobles.

That account, preserved by Leland, was written to praise, but it does paint an impressive picture. It is miles away from the days when a fleeing Marguerite of Anjou, another foreign princess brought over to become England’s queen, had been reduced to living off a single herring. That was the point, presumably.

The new couple set out for Arthur’s seat at Ludlow just before Christmas and only a few weeks later, in January 1502, Richmond saw the celebration of Princess Margaret’s marriage to the king of Scotland. After mass in the new palace chapel, the queen’s great chamber was the site of the proxy wedding. Once again there is no mention of Margaret Beaufort being present, though the party did include little Princess Mary.

King, queen and princess were asked whether they knew of any impediment to the match. Margaret, according to the account of the Somerset Herald, ‘wittingly and of deliberate mind having twelve years complete in age’ affirmed that she contracted the match; and ‘incontinently’, after the ceremony was concluded, ‘the Queen took her daughter the Queen of Scots by the Hand, and dined both at one Mess covered [using covered dishes]’. Two queens together: it is a pity Elizabeth Woodville could not be there. Jousts and a supper banquet followed. Next morning the new queen of Scots came into her mother’s great chamber and ‘by the voice of’ the officer of arms gave thanks to all the noblemen who had jousted for her,
²²
and distributed praise and prizes ‘by the advice of the ladies of the court’. Margaret was left in her mother’s charge, but it was agreed she would be sent north by the beginning of September 1503.

But three months after the wedding came tragedy. On 2 April 1502 Prince Arthur died at Ludlow after a short illness. The letter arrived at Greenwich so late in the night that the council did not immediately inform the king but summoned his confessor, who broke the news early next day.

When his Grace understood that sorrowful heavy tidings, he sent out for the Queen, saying, that he and his Queen would take the painful sorrows together. After that she was come and saw the king her Lord, and that natural and painful sorrow, as I have heard say, she with full great and constant comfortable words besought his Grace, that he would first after God, remember the weal of his own noble person, the comfort of his realm, and of her. She then said that my Lady his Mother had never no more children but him only, and, that God by his Grace had ever preserved him, and brought him where that he was. Over that, how God had left him yet a fair Prince, two fair Princesses, and that God is where he was and we are both young enough [to have more children] …

After that she was departed and come to her own Chamber, natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart, that those that were about her were fain to send for the king to comfort her. Then his Grace of true gentle and faithful love, in good heart came and relieved her, and showed her how wise counsel she had given him before; and he for his part would thank God for his son, and would she should do in like wise.

It was positive evidence of Henry and Elizabeth’s relationship.

Katherine of Aragon, the youthful widow, was left in painful uncertainty about her fate; she herself was said to be ‘suffering’ – in other words, ill. It was Elizabeth who sent ‘a litter of black velvet with black cloth’ to bring her back to the capital by slow stages (there was, after all, the possibility of a pregnancy). By late May she had reached Croydon, and Elizabeth was careful to remain in reassuring contact for all that she herself was planning to journey in the other direction.

That summer Elizabeth went on a progress into Wales, although she must surely have known that, at thirty-six, she was once again pregnant. She and the king had now lost two of their three sons within the space of a year, and even if she had decided that the time for childbearing was past it may now have appeared worth the risk. The timing of her journey does seem odd, given that she had no particular history of long solitary trips, but perhaps all the arrangements were in place before she knew of her condition. An event that occurred in late spring may possibly have played a part in Elizabeth’s desire to spend some time away from court. On 6 May one Sir James Tyrell was executed in connection with the Suffolk conspiracies, and his death paved the way for subsequent declarations that he had in his last days confessed to having, at Richard III’s instigation, murdered the Princes in the Tower.
²³
If such a confession were indeed made, and if Elizabeth believed it, it may have stirred up painful memories. If she had any cause to doubt it – as many have done – it could have operated on her yet more powerfully.

Before Elizabeth even set out from Woodstock she was unwell, but she still managed to depart in early August. Choosing this moment to visit the part of her husband’s realm where her son the Prince of Wales had died a few months earlier might, to modern minds, seem linked to her grief for him. But whether sixteenth-century parents, in an age of rearing at one remove for the high-born and frequent child mortality for all, had the kind of relationship with their children that is commonplace today is uncertain. In any case Elizabeth visited not Ludlow but Raglan, home of the Herbert family. William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, had raised Henry Tudor as a boy; but now his son was married to the queen’s cousin Anne, daughter of the Duke of Buckingham and of the queen’s aunt Katherine Woodville, Anne’s sister Elizabeth Stafford being one of the queen’s chief ladies.

At Raglan Castle Elizabeth may have found some escape from recent strains, including the myriad minor complications of the actual journey as recorded in her Privy Purse expenses: repairs for her litter; local guides; twenty pairs of shoes for her footmen – it was a long way to walk. There were grooms and ostlers to be organised, and arrangements to be made for food and drink along the way. The expenses mention a cart and ‘load of stuff’ which had to travel overland on the journey home, rather than crossing the Severn. The effort it took to carry a queen and her retinue was staggering: not just the provisioning of what was effectively a small army on the march, not just the hasty upgrading of the houses where she was to sleep, but arrangements for the jewels and robes which maintained the queen’s majesty.

These Privy Purse expenses, from 1502–3, provide a rare glimpse into daily life and emotional reality. In December by Elizabeth’s ‘commandment’ three yards of cloth were given ‘to a woman that was norice [nurse] to the Prince brother to the Queen’s grace’. In the same month 12 pence were given to a man who said Earl Rivers (Elizabeth Woodville’s brother Anthony) had lodged in his house just before his death. Alms were bestowed twice that year on an old servant of King Edward’s; and there were entries for upkeep of the queen’s sister Bridget in her convent. The records detail payment to a messenger carrying a command from the queen in April 1502 that the Duchess of Norfolk should receive the wife of Edmund de la Pole ‘late Earl of Suffolk’ – Elizabeth’s traitorous cousin, who had rebelled against Elizabeth’s husband. There were payments, of course, for the maintenance of the Courtenay children, whose mother was the queen’s sister Katherine but whose father had been implicated in the Suffolk rebellions. A queen was supposed to be the caring face of her husband’s regime and of course Elizabeth would care for her family; there was no suspicion of any insurgency. But all the same, one wishes that comparable records had survived for other years, so that we could know whether this kind of support to old Yorkists had been her standard practice, or whether it was new in any way.

A great many of the entries record only part payment from Elizabeth – to tailors, saddlers, goldsmiths – and some of the money was long due. Her gowns were being mended and she bought shoes with cheap tin buckles; she was pledging plate and borrowing money. Henry may have been keeping her short of funds – or perhaps such details reflect the casual relationship with cash of the aristocracy in any century.

The Privy Purse expenses end with a list of payments to women: a pension to the queen’s sister Katherine, a sum to her sister Anne’s husband for her keep. There were salaries to some half-dozen more ranging from Elizabeth Stafford (
£
33 6
s
8
d
) to Agnes Dean, the queen’s laundress (66
s
8
d
) and the rockers of Katherine Courtenay’s children. The lists reveal a web of female connections. Besides payments to those who had been kind to her mother’s family, there are payments to some who would ease her daughters’ way. The Dame Jane Guildford who received £23 6
s
8
d
in Elizabeth’s final wage bill would become one of Margaret Beaufort’s close attendants and then, a decade later, would escort Elizabeth’s daughter Mary to marry the old king of France; this was the same ‘mother Guildford’ for whose continued company and counsel Mary would beg hysterically.

Black clothing was paid for in June 1502 after the death of Prince Arthur, and in connection with her expected child, offerings were made at the time of the Feast of the Blessed Virgin on 7 and 8 December; the 13th lists a reward to a monk who brought to the queen ‘Our Lady girdle’, traditionally worn by women in childbirth. She had ordered a ‘rich bed’ decorated with red and white roses and with clouds, had purchased linen and interviewed childbed attendants. Then she took boat to Richmond for Christmas; there she played cards, listened to music and paid a messenger who had brought a gift from her mother-in-law. That season, Henry’s pet astrologer William Parron had beautifully illustrated and bound what must at the time have seemed a suitable and seasonal prophecy: that Henry would father many sons and Elizabeth live until she was eighty. It was not to be.

Elizabeth spent one January week at Hampton Court, but on the 26th she went to the Tower. On 2 February she gave birth to a baby girl in what would seem a premature delivery. The Privy Purse expenses record the payment that gives the first urgent alarm: ‘Item to James Nattres for his costs going into Kent for Doctor Hallysworth physician to come to the Queen by the King’s commandment.’ There were entries for boat hire from the Tower to Gravesend and back: for two watermen to wait there while the doctor was hastily fetched; and for horse hire and guides ‘by night and day’. There is no record of whether the birth itself went smoothly, of how any fever first came upon her, of any attempted remedies. But on 11 February 1503 she died. It was her thirty-seventh birthday.

Elizabeth’s body, once sealed in lead by the king’s plumber, was placed in a wooden chest for its progress through the London streets to Westminster. No expense was spared for the ceremony, or for the velvet-clad effigy
²⁴
which would be placed on her coffin. ‘Item to Master Lawrence for carving of the head with Fedrik his mate, xiij
s
iiii
d
. Item to Wechon Kerver and Hans van Hooh for carving of the two hands, iiij
s
… Item for vij small sheep skins for the body … ij
s
iiij
d
.’

And Elizabeth was to have the grandest of resting places, even though work on the building which was to house her tomb had begun only weeks before. At the beginning of the century Henry VII had commissioned a wonderful new Lady Chapel; a monument to his family designed, he hoped, ultimately to house the body of Henry VI, canonised into a Lancastrian saint. The old chapel on the site had been pulled down and also, John Stow wrote, an adjoining tavern called, ironically, the White Rose. The first stone had been laid on 24 January 1503. It would be another fifteen years before the tomb that Elizabeth would share with her husband was finally completed; in the meantime her body was placed in a temporary vault in the crossing of the Abbey, in front of the high altar.

As always, there are stories to be deduced from the records of the burial ceremonies. Though the queen’s sisters Katherine and Anne took a prominent part in the funeral procession Bridget, the youngest, must still have been at her convent at Dartford; and Cecily, though next in age to Elizabeth, was absent either for the offence her second marriage had caused the king or perhaps because of the sheer distance of her residence. Instead, place in the procession after Katherine and Anne went to Lady Katherine Gordon, the widow of Perkin Warbeck, by virtue of her own connections to Scottish royalty.

King Henry’s retreat into grief was profound and he became seriously ill. Margaret Beaufort moved into Richmond to take care of her son, ordering medicines for him and a sustaining supply of sweet wine for herself. Thomas More’s
A Rueful Lamentation of the Death of Queen Elizabeth
vividly imagined Elizabeth’s farewell to the world.