Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (73 page)

Henry VII never did secure the canonization of Henry VI—Pope Julius II asked too high a price—so his plans for a shrine in the new Lady Chapel at Westminster were abandoned in favor of his own monument being built to the east of the altar. He had always envisaged a fine tomb for himself and his queen. In 1506 he considered a design by Guido Mazzoni, based on the effigy of Charles VIII at St. Denis. The following year he commissioned a black-and-white marble tomb chest with gilt effigies of himself and Elizabeth, which may have been designed by Mazzoni, although royal craftsmen were to execute the work; but these effigies were never made, because Henry VIII “disliked” the designs, according to a later note on the estimate.

It seems Henry VII did too. In his will of 1509 he left a lavish sum of money to be spent on his chapel and monument; the total eventual cost was at least £20,000 [£9.7 million], about £5,000 more than his son estimated. He also left minute instructions for a different tomb, still with a black-and-white marble chest; this was to have “our and our wife’s images” in gilt-bronze lying on it, side by side, “as good or better than any of the other kings and queens in the abbey.”
³⁵
The new chapel was consecrated the day after the King’s death in 1509, so that he could be buried there in the large vault that had been constructed at the east end. As he ordered, he was laid next to Elizabeth; her body had been exhumed and placed in the vault so it could rest beside his for eternity.

The vault measured 2.7 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, and 1.4 meters high. Both bodies were encased in anthropoid lead coffins marked by Maltese crosses, with only the King’s bearing a coffin plate. These were in turn chested in wooden outer coffins. Urns containing the entrails of the royal couple may have been buried with them. Bacon observed that Henry VII “dwelleth more richly dead in the monument of his tomb than he did alive at Richmond or any of his palaces.”

In October 1512, Henry VIII commissioned the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano to build a Renaissance-style tomb for his parents over the vault. Torrigiano, a fearless, volatile man who broke Michelangelo’s nose during a fight, had worked under Pinturicchio on the Borgia apartments in the Vatican. Before 1507 he had traveled to England in the company of some Florentine merchants. By 1511 he had come to the attention of the young King, who asked him to design a
fine tomb and effigy for Margaret Beaufort in the south aisle of the new Lady Chapel. In producing this outstanding sepulchre, which is reckoned to be his masterpiece (and on which Elizabeth of York’s arms appear), Torrigiano proved himself superior to any sculptor then working in England, and so earned himself the honor of building a tomb for the founders of the Tudor dynasty. It was the first major Renaissance monument to be erected in England, and was designed as the centerpiece of the Lady Chapel, which would in time come colloquially to be known as “the Henry VII Chapel.” In 1516, Torrigiano was also contracted to build the principal altar in the chapel. He returned to Rome while these works were being executed, hoping to persuade Benvenuto Cellini to come to England to assist him, but Cellini refused on account of Torrigiano’s arrogance and pride, and because he did not want to live among “such beasts as the English.”
³⁶

Torrigiano’s innovative marble tomb, one of the greatest sepulchres in Westminster Abbey, is considered to be “the finest Renaissance tomb north of the Alps.”
³⁷
It is of white and black touchstone work with elaborately decorated gilt-bronze pilasters and Corinthian capitals at each corner. Tudor roses, portcullises, dragons, greyhounds, and crowns abound in the ornamentation of the monument. The tomb chest of Tournai marble is decorated with an exquisitely carved frieze, copper-gilt Italianate figures, and gilt-bronze medallions with reliefs of the Virgin Mary and the King’s patron saints; cherubs sit at the head and feet of the tomb, supporting the royal arms. The monument is surrounded by a massive intricate bronze grille by one Thomas the Dutchman, dating from 1505 and bearing royal badges and emblems. Originally it was adorned with thirty-two figures of saints, of which only six survive, and enclosed a chantry chapel with its own altar, long vanished, although the step on which it stood remains, along with the bar that once supported a canopy over the altar.

In 1512, Henry VIII commissioned Humphrey Walker and Nicholas Ewen, coppersmiths, to cast gilt-bronze effigies of his parents under the direction of Torrigiano. They took six years to complete, and rest on a white marble plinth. The tomb cost the King £1,500 [£569,400]; it was finished on January 5, 1519. It appears that the sculptors used the death masks from the funeral effigies of the King and
Queen as models for their tomb effigies. The quality of their workmanship is superb, and the naturalism of the heads, hands, and figures marks a departure from the stiff formalism of medieval effigies, and set a new standard for royal tomb sculpture. Elizabeth is portrayed with a slender figure, when in reality she was buxom and plump in her latter years; she and Henry lie side by side with their hands joined in prayer. They wear plain attire without any trappings of royalty, for their crowns—the only regalia ever to adorn the effigies—were lost or stolen after 1677, when they appear in an engraving of the tomb by John Dart in Francis Sandford’s
A Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England
. It is this very simplicity that invests them with a realism at once majestic and pious, and in true Renaissance tradition shows the King to be a scholar, humanist, and great prince. The serene figure of Elizabeth wears traditional ceremonial robes—a square-necked surcoat with a low-slung girdle over a gown with cuffs and a chemise inset, a mantle secured by tasseled cords, and her customary long gable hood, beneath which (unlike in portraits) her wavy hair is loose in token of her purity and her queenship. It bears a good resemblance to her portraits and her funeral effigy. Her head rests on two cushions and her feet on a lion.
³⁸

Henry VII’s will made lavish and precise provision for perpetual daily Masses to be said at the tomb altar for his soul and that of his late wife. Four candles, each eleven feet high, were to be kept burning around the monument, and on feast days and solemn ceremonials of the Church, thirty candles were to enclose it, each taller than a man. The candles were to be replaced when they had burned down to a height of three feet. Each year, on the anniversaries of the deaths of Henry and Elizabeth, no fewer than a hundred candles were to be lit in the chantry. Fines were to be imposed if the monks defaulted on these obligations.
³⁹
Thus did the King hope to ensure the safe passage of his soul and Elizabeth’s through Purgatory to eternal bliss. Alas, the dissolution of Westminster Abbey in 1540 put an end to these sacred rites.

The tomb survived with much of its splendor intact. Elizabeth, wrote Fuller, “lieth buried with her husband in the chapel of his erection, and hath an equal share with him in the use and honor of that, his most magnificent monument.” Writing in the reign of her granddaughter,
Elizabeth I, John Stow also found much to admire in this “sumptuous sepulchre and chapel,” with its breathtaking Perpendicular fan-vaulted roof, Tudor emblems, and brilliant stained-glass windows that flooded the interior with light. It was, opined Bacon, the stateliest and daintiest chapel in Europe.

A white marble tablet inset in the bronze frieze to the right hand of the Queen’s effigy bears the Latin inscription placed there on the order of Henry VIII:

This translates as: “Here rests Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, sometime king; sister of Edward V, who bore the name of king; formerly wedded to King Henry VII; and also the illustrious mother of Henry VIII; who closed her life in the palace of the Tower of London on February 11, in the year of Our Lord 1502 [
sic
], having completed her thirty-seventh year.” This recital of the Queen’s royal connections was intended to proclaim the noble ancestry and connections of the Tudor dynasty, as was a further inscription around the tomb, also placed there by her son: “Here is situated Henry VII, the glory of all the kings who lived in his time by reason of his intellect, his riches, and the fame of his exploits, to which were added the gifts of bountiful nature, a distinguished brow, an august face, an heroic stature. Joined to him his sweet wife was very pretty, chaste, and fruitful. They were parents happy in their offspring, to whom, land of England, you owe Henry VIII.”

Impeccably connected, beautiful, ceremonious, fruitful, devout, compassionate, generous, and kind, Elizabeth fulfilled every expectation of
her contemporaries. Her goodness shines forth in the sources, and it is not surprising that she was greatly loved. She had overcome severe tragedies and setbacks, and emerged triumphant. We have seen how it is possible to reconcile her much debated actions before her marriage with the gentle queen who emerges after it. Certainly the sources show that, as Queen, she played a greater political role than that with which most historians have credited her, and that she was active within her traditional areas of influence. It is also clear that, far from being in subjection to Henry VII and Margaret Beaufort, she enjoyed a generally happy relationship with both of them—and with Henry at least up until the last year of her life.

Elizabeth is often unfairly overshadowed by her successors, the wives of Henry VIII, but she was more successful as Queen than any of them. For this, and for her integrity, her sweet good nature, and her many kindnesses, her memory deserves to be celebrated.

I
n November 1504, Henry VII settled an annual payment of £10 [£4,860] on the University of Cambridge for holding a commemorative requiem service for Elizabeth in the church of St. Mary the Great on the anniversary of her death, for “as long as the world shall endure.” This was first marked on February 11, 1505, and continued up to the Reformation of the 1530s.
¹

Although Elizabeth’s death left him free to make a profitable marriage alliance, Henry never took another wife. In the 1530s a Scots chronicler, Adam Abell, would recall that, in the aftermath of his bereavement, he kept Katherine Gordon so often in his company that “some [thought] that they were married.”
²
Yet there is plenty of evidence that Henry’s grief for Elizabeth was raw and genuine, and maybe Katherine Gordon, who had been close to her too on a daily basis, could offer some comfort at this time. His accounts show that she remained a support to him to the end of his life, partnering him at cards and obtaining medicines for him as his health declined; she even painted cloths of religious scenes to hold up before him as he lay dying; so maybe he did find solace with her.
³
But he did not marry her.

It would probably be fair to say that the loss of Prince Arthur and Queen Elizabeth aged Henry prematurely. But he was a pragmatic man with only one son to succeed him; just that one life stood between the continuance of his dynasty and the ruin of all he had worked for—and he had good reason to know how fragile young lives could be. At forty-six, he was young enough to sire more children—and doubtless lonely.

On hearing of the passing of Elizabeth, Queen Isabella expressed concern about propriety and the welfare of Katherine: “Now that the Queen of England is dead, in whose society the princess our daughter might have honorably remained as with a mother, it would not be right that the princess should stay in England.”
⁴
So when, just weeks after Elizabeth’s death, King Henry, reluctant to return Katherine’s dowry, suggested he marry her himself, the Spanish sovereigns were horrified at the prospect of such an “unnatural” union, and declined the honor. On June 24, 1503, Katherine was betrothed to Prince Henry, who was formally created Prince of Wales in 1504. Henry VII toyed with the idea of several other potential foreign brides, but in each case negotiations foundered.

It has been said that Elizabeth exerted a beneficial influence on him and that he became more miserly, suspicious, and harsh after her death, while his court was a more somber place, but the theory of “an imaginary deterioration” in his character was dismissed years ago by G. R. Elton as being based “only on insufficient knowledge of the facts.” However, it is inconceivable that the loss of his son and his wife, in the space of ten months, would not have left Henry a sadder man, and changed him in other ways too, not always for the better. The glory days were behind him now, and the last years of his reign also witnessed a decline in his health. Sentimentally, he retained the services of Elizabeth’s minstrels, who played for him at every New Year celebration up to his death; in their poignant melodies he could perhaps recapture happy memories of the years he had spent with his late wife, who shared his love of music.
⁵