Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (54 page)

If the Paradise Bed was at Knowsley, then Henry and Elizabeth slept in it for just one night. The next day they were in Manchester, then a market town, and on September 6 proceeded southward, lodging at Macclesfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stafford, and Lichfield, before diverting northeast to Burton-on-Trent and Derby, then south via Loughborough to Collyweston, Margaret Beaufort’s house. They continued south to Rockingham, and then to Northampton, Banbury, and Woodstock, where they stayed for ten days. By now Elizabeth knew she was to have another child, so possibly she needed to rest. On October 20 she and Henry were at Ewelme, the Oxfordshire seat of her cousin, Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, then they moved on to Bisham Priory, Berkshire, the burial place of many of her Neville ancestors. From there they went to Windsor Castle, and then to Sheen, arriving on October 31.
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They were to have four days in which to relax after their travels before calamity struck.

I
nfant mortality was high in Tudor times, and in an age long before antibiotics even royal children succumbed to minor illnesses. Elizabeth faced tragedy when, on October 7, 1495,
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when she was nearly five months pregnant, her three-year-old daughter Elizabeth died at Eltham Palace. Her death came at a time when her father was negotiating a marriage for her with the future King Francis I of France, then a year-old child. As the King and Queen were at Sheen when their daughter died,
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her death was probably unexpected.

On November 16, 1495, bravely setting aside their grief, they honored with their presence the traditional feast held by the newly appointed Serjeants-at-Law amid the splendors of Ely Place in Holborn,
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Elizabeth and her ladies dining in one room, and Henry and his retinue in another, as was customary. Ely Place would have held a special relevance for both Henry and Elizabeth, for their common ancestor, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, had lived there with his third wife, Katherine Swynford, mother of his Beaufort children, in the late fourteenth century; but on this occasion it was more likely that Elizabeth’s thoughts were with the child she had lost.

The body of the infant princess was brought from Eltham in a black “chair,” or chariot, drawn by six horses to the gate of Westminster Abbey, where the prior was waiting to receive it. The King and Queen were nearby at Westminster Palace
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but did not attend the obsequies, for which Henry had outlaid £318 [£155,480] on October 26. The funeral was arranged by Cardinal Morton, Giles, Lord Daubeney, the Lord Chamberlain, and others. It took place a month later, on November 26, was conducted with great ceremony and attended by a hundred poor men who had been given black gowns for the occasion.
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Soon afterward the grieving parents raised to the memory of “our daughter Elizabeth, late passed out of this transitory life” a small tomb chest of gray Lydian marble with a black marble cover “on the right-hand side of the altar, just before St. Edward’s shrine, the foundation of which the foot of the grave almost touched.” It cost £371.0s.11d. [£181,400].
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Originally the tomb bore a copper-gilt effigy and inscription, but these have long disappeared, presumed stolen. Fortunately the inscription was copied and preserved by the Elizabethan antiquarian John Stow. It read: “Elizabeth, second daughter of Henry VII, the most illustrious King of England, France, and Ireland, and of the Lady Elizabeth, his most serene wife … On whose soul God have mercy. Here, after death, lies in this tomb a descendant of royalty, the young and noble Elizabeth, an illustrious princess. Atropos, most merciless messenger of death, snatched her away. May she inherit eternal life in Heaven!”
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It is this reference to the goddess Atropos, the oldest of the Fates, that has led historians to conclude that Princess Elizabeth died of “atrophy,” a wasting disease that can have many causes, although the Tudor age understood it to be the result of poor nourishment. It is hard to imagine that Henry, Elizabeth, or Margaret Beaufort would have allowed a child to perish through such neglect; in fact, the epitaph clearly referred not to a disease, but to the dread task of the severe and inflexible Atropos, which was to choose how a person would die and cut the thread of their life short with her shears. The princess had probably succumbed rapidly to a childhood infection that would be easily treated today. There is nothing in the historical record to suggest she was delicate or suffered a long illness.

Late that year Elizabeth, no doubt seeking spiritual comfort and wishing to pray for the blessing of a son, journeyed to the famous shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Walsingham in Norfolk, where Christ’s mother had reputedly appeared in 1061 to Richeldis de Faverches, a devout widow, and asked her to build a replica of the “holy house of Nazareth” where she had received the Annunciation of the birth of Jesus. Angels were said to have assisted in the miraculous construction of what was to become one of the most important shrines in Christendom. In time, Augustinian and Franciscan monasteries were founded nearby to look after the needs of the hordes of pilgrims, and over the centuries the “holy house,” known as “Little Nazareth,” had been visited by numerous kings and queens, and made rich by the offerings of the devout.

Our Lady of Walsingham, the patron saint of mothers, and indeed of all humanity, was said to bestow the gift of calm and serenity to those beset by troubles. Elizabeth had to pass several small chapels along the road leading to the shrine, but at the last, the fourteenth-century Slipper Chapel, dedicated to St. Katherine, she would have removed her shoes and walked the remaining mile barefoot. Thus she reverently entered the holy sanctum of the incense-scented, candlelit Chapel of the Virgin to pray before the gilded and bejeweled image of St. Mary. Relics were displayed nearby, among them a phial of the Virgin’s milk and a statue of her said to be of miraculous origin. Elizabeth would also have seen a kneeling silver-gilt statue of her husband, given during a pilgrimage made by Henry VII in 1487.

Elizabeth was also a patron of the shrine of Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich, which was first recorded in 1152 and now ranked only second in popularity to Our Lady of Walsingham. A daughter of Edward I had been married in the chapel of Our Lady of Grace in 1297. The shrine was closed down in 1538, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and no trace of the chapel survives; a bronze plaque in Lady Lane marks the site where it once stood. Almost certainly a statue of the Madonna in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Grace at Nettuno, Italy, is the original image that adorned the shrine in Ipswich, having been rescued from the pyre that awaited it in Chelsea, where it was to be burned with the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham.
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In November 1495, Perkin Warbeck surfaced in Scotland and was received with royal honors by King James IV at Stirling Castle. James took an instant liking to him, decked him out in clothes befitting a king, settled on him a very generous pension, and took him on a triumphal progress through his kingdom. News of this alarmed Henry VII, for he had been working to seal a peace alliance with Scotland through the marriage of his daughter Margaret to the Scots king.
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James not only seemed determined to provoke his English neighbor, but clearly believed that Warbeck was indeed “Prince Richard of England.” He held tournaments in his honor and married him to his distant kinswoman, Katherine, “a young virgin of excellent beauty and virtue, daughter of George Gordon, Earl of Huntly.”
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If a love letter from Warbeck is genuine, he was deeply smitten. His bride’s eyes were “brilliant as the stars. Whoever sees her cannot choose but admire her; admiring, cannot choose but love her; loving, cannot choose but obey her.”
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This was all bad news for King Henry, for Ferdinand and Isabella were now stalling at concluding the marriage alliance with England while the pretender was at large. But the King was working to neutralize that threat. Fractured relations between England and the Low Countries were healed in February 1496, when he sealed a peace treaty with Maximilian in which each agreed not to support the other’s rebels; the treaty, in both countries’ interests, effectively slammed the door to Flanders in Warbeck’s face, for Margaret of Burgundy had been warned that she would be deprived of her dower lands if she did not honor its terms. Henry had also made peace with the French, so Warbeck was now isolated in Scotland.

Elizabeth’s third daughter was born on March 18, 1496, at Sheen Palace.
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The year is sometimes given as 1495, as Margaret Beaufort incorrectly recorded it in her book of hours. In true medieval fashion she dated the years from Lady Day, March 25, and by that reckoning March 18 would have belonged to the previous year, 1495. Later, Erasmus misleadingly stated that this child, Mary, was four in September 1499; however, he gave the ages of Prince Henry and Prince Margaret
as a year older than they actually were, so it is likely that he gave Mary’s age incorrectly too. The earliest extant document that mentions Mary is a payment to Anne (or Alice) Skern (or Skeron), her nurse, for one quarter ending June 1496, such payments normally paid half yearly. The fact that she was paid only from March confirms that Mary was born in 1496.
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The King and Queen possibly named their new baby after the sister Elizabeth had loved and lost, or after the Virgin Mary. Mary grew up to be very beautiful, much resembling her mother in portraits; like her, she had red-gold hair. The infant princess was sent to Eltham to be brought up with Prince Henry and Princess Margaret.

By May, Henry and Elizabeth had moved to Sheen and thence to Greenwich, where he gave her a gift of £30 [£14,600] to buy jewels.
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That summer, their progress took them to the West Country. In June they left Sheen for Chertsey, then moved on to Guildford, Farnham, Alresford, Bishops Waltham, Porchester, and Southampton, arriving on July 14. They stayed at Beaulieu Abbey and crossed the Solent to the Isle of Wight during their visit, then traveled on to Christchurch, Poole, and Corfe Castle. On August 5 they were at Salisbury, and five days later visited Heytesbury, where Elizabeth probably lived after she left sanctuary in 1484. John Nesfield, her former gaoler and host, had died in 1488, and the manor was now owned by Edward Hastings, Lord Hungerford; he was married to the heiress of the Hungerfords, who had been restored in blood by Henry VII.
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During her visit Elizabeth may have reflected on how settled her life was now compared with the uncertainties of twelve years earlier, when she had resided at Heytesbury during Richard III’s reign.

The royal couple then traveled on to Bath, Bristol, Iron Acton, Malmesbury, Cirencester, and Woodstock. On September 10 they returned via Wycombe to Windsor.
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In September 1496, Prince Henry—or “my Lord Harry,” as he was known
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—performed his first public duty when he witnessed a charter granted by the King to the abbot and convent of Glastonbury Abbey, a monastery he was to dissolve decades later.

Harry was now five, a boy of considerable intellect and talent,
whom his grandmother called the King’s “fair sweet son.”
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It was the King who drew up the rules by which the royal nursery was governed, but the Queen also had a say in the upbringing of her children, as no doubt did Margaret Beaufort. In 1496, Elizabeth appointed Elizabeth Denton, who had served her as wardrobe keeper since her marriage, as a replacement for the long-serving Elizabeth Darcy as lady mistress of the nursery to Prince Henry and his sisters at Eltham Palace.
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Elizabeth Denton also continued to serve the Queen, and by February 1499 had become governess to the princesses and was replaced as mistress of the nursery by Anne Crowmer.
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When Elizabeth Denton accompanied Princess Margaret to Scotland in 1503, Anne Crowmer took over as Mary’s governess. Mistress Denton later served as lady governess and mistress of the nursery to Henry VIII’s own children, Henry, Prince of Wales, and the future Mary I, respectively, and in 1515 was in receipt of an annuity of £50 [£19,000] for good service rendered to the late King and Queen.
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