8
On the morning after her wedding night, Henry presented Elizabeth with Giovanni de’ Gigli’s poem, her morning gift, and then there would have been the traditional small ceremony of her “uprising” as a new wife.1 Henceforth, as a married woman, she would be expected to bind up her hair and cover it with a hood, although queens were invested with symbolic virginity because they were expected to emulate Mary, the Mother of Christ, so they were allowed the privilege of wearing their hair loose on ceremonial occasions when they wore their crowns.
Waking up as Queen of England, Elizabeth would surely have been conscious of the fact that she now occupied the most powerful and socially desirable position to which a woman could aspire.2 She was the wife of the Lord’s Anointed,3 a status that would from now on be reflected in every aspect of the ritual and ceremonial that surrounded her and governed her life; and she, the daughter of a King and Queen, would have been aware of the weight of responsibility that brought with it. She was to be the highest example of virtuous womanhood: the living mirror of the Virgin Mary, as exemplified by her chastity and humility, her anticipated motherhood, her charity, and her acts of mercy. A Queen had to be the embodiment of piety, the guardian of the royal bloodline, an object of chivalric devotion, a gentle and moderate mediator in the conflicts of men, and an inspiration to her husband’s subjects.
Elizabeth now had to prove her worthiness in more practical ways too. She had to bear the heirs so crucial to the Tudor succession and the continuance of the new dynasty. She had a great household to run, and was no doubt thankful that a phalanx of officers had been appointed to help her do it. She had a sophisticated ceremonial role to perform at court and in the realm at large. She had to negotiate the political institution that was the court, which might mean subsuming her private loyalties to her duty to the King her husband. She had to learn to live within her means, yet show herself generous in her charities and make provision for her immediate relations, who would now look to her for support and advancement. She also had to accustom herself to her husband’s ways, combine queenly dignity with the docility and submission expected of a wife, and be a loving helpmeet to this man who clearly expected her to play a subordinate role, despite her superior claim to the throne. Then she had to forge good relations with his influential mother. It was daunting, what was expected of her: yet she had been born a royal princess and reared to know what to expect; and she had the example of her mother before her.
The Queen’s seal survives in the National Archives at Kew. Elizabeth chose “Humble and reverent” as her queenly motto, in place of “sans removyr,” and the white rose of York as her personal emblem. As her father’s heiress, she was legally entitled to bear the royal arms of England, but for Henry VII that implied joint sovereignty, so at his instance she and her sisters bore the royal arms quartered with those of their Mortimer and de Burgh forebears. Their maternal Wydeville heritage did not feature at all.4 Elizabeth’s escutcheon can be seen at the foot of her tomb in Westminster Abbey. For public occasions and court ceremonials, her retinue wore her personal livery of mulberry and blue silk, the colors of the House of York.5 At other times they wore liveries of various colors, such as russet, green, tawny (tan), or black.6
Elizabeth now had to adjust to marriage with the complex twenty-nine-year-old man who was her husband. Bacon called Henry VII “a dark prince and infinitely suspicious,” which is not surprising considering that, from early childhood, his life had been overshadowed by war and intrigue. And as King, as Bacon observed, “his time was full of secret conspiracies.” He was calculating, pragmatic, devious, ruthless, and prone to dissimulation, and he never won the love of his people, only their grudging respect.
But Henry was also “a man of vast ability”7 and hidden depths. He knew four languages, was well read, good at economics, and well versed in the arts of the period. He was clever, hardworking, subtle, shrewd, caring to his family, and possessed of a dry humor. His good qualities would much later be lauded in a funeral oration made by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and chaplain and confessor to Margaret Beaufort, who praised “his politic wisdom in governance” as “singular,” his wit “always quick and ready, his reason pithy and substantial, his memory fresh, his counsels fortunate and taken by wise deliberation.”
Henry’s greatest achievements were to survive on the throne for so long and ultimately to bring stability to England. His aims were a secure throne bolstered by wealth, the maintenance of law, order, and peace, the supremacy of the crown, the future prosperity and standing of his dynasty, and the establishment of his realm as an international power to be reckoned with. He succeeded in them all. He established strong centralized government, a far-flung network of administrators and justices, and effective law and order. He promoted foreign trade and commerce, brought economic prosperity to the merchant classes, and amassed a fortune that made him financially independent of Parliament. By clever alliances he would substantially enhance England’s standing in the arena of European politics.
Henry was haunted by the knowledge that an army as small as the one he had led against Richard III at Bosworth could overthrow him, and by the fear that any of the Yorkist heirs might challenge his title. Yet despite his insecurities, he brought firm government to England. Conscientious and professional, he displayed insight, prudence, patience, and understanding. He was well-informed and astute, and his political acumen earned him universal respect. Ever suspicious of his nobles, he outlawed “bastard feudalism,” the system by which great lords had maintained private armies of retainers, which made the Wars of the Roses possible. Henry reined in the power of the nobility by banning such armies and reviving the Court of Star Chamber,8 which had power to punish those lords who infringed the new laws. He promoted loyal and energetic “new men” who had risen through wealth and ability to prominence.
He was a man who liked to keep an eye on details that other kings might have left to others. Notoriously careful with money, he painstakingly initialed each item in his accounts.9 “He constantly kept notes and memorials in his own hand, especially touching persons, as whom to employ, whom to reward, keeping a journal of his thoughts.” But he was to be confounded. “His monkey, set on, as it was thought, by one of his chamber, tore his principal notebook all to pieces, when by chance he had left it about. Whereat the court, which liked not these pensive accounts, was much tickled with the sport.”10
Henry was an intelligent and cultured man who patronized William Caxton, collected books, appreciated poetry, and encouraged the new learning of the Renaissance in England. He invited French and Italian scholars such as Bernard André and Polydore Vergil to his court. Like Elizabeth, he was genuinely devout, and would attend Mass up to three times a day. He was also liberal when it came to giving alms to the sick, the poor, and the Church.
If Henry lacked the common touch, he liked to give the impression of greatness, and knew when to spend lavishly to project the magnificence expected of monarchs, which would command respect and awe for the new dynasty. Andrea Trevisano, a Venetian envoy, was received by the King in 1497 in “a small hall hung with very handsome tapestry. Leaning against a tall gilt chair covered with cloth of gold, His Majesty wore a violet-colored gown lined with cloth of gold, and a collar of many jewels; and on his cap was a large diamond and a most beautiful pearl.”11 When the King ate, he was served not by his household officers but by peers of the realm. Whenever he ventured out in public, he walked under a canopy of estate and was attended by great ceremonial. He founded the Yeomen of the Guard, the first standing army in English history, as his personal bodyguard. Henry VII’s personal magnificence, typical of princes of the age, helped to convince not only his subjects, but also foreign ambassadors and the princes they served, that his throne was secure. Yet an envoy once observed of him: “He likes to be much spoken of, and to be highly appreciated by the whole world. He fails in this because he is not a great man.”12
Henry was often a cheerful, witty, and congenial companion. He loved court ceremonial, music, cards, dice, gambling, dancing, disguisings, plays, and morris dancers, and delighted in the antics of tumblers, jugglers, acrobats, fire eaters, and court fools, pastimes Elizabeth enjoyed also. He was clearly a thoughtful man, and gave generous gifts to his servants and Elizabeth at New Year, and extra to those who could not attend the festivities.13 To his children, he was an attentive and loving father, “full of paternal affection, careful of their education, aspiring to their high advancement, regular to see that they should not want of any due honor and respect.”14 That he loved them too is apparent in two inscriptions he wrote in a book of hours given to his daughter, Margaret, probably on her departure to marry the King of Scots in 1503: “Remember your kind and loving father in your prayers.” And, “Pray for your loving father that gave you this book, and I give you at all times God’s blessing and mine.”15 Also, he was a faithful and loving husband to Elizabeth.
The carved letters H and E in a lovers’ knot on the tower roof of Sherborne Abbey Church, Dorset, are said to be the initials of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, symbolizing their loving wedlock. Touching mentions of Elizabeth in official correspondence and accounts, such as “the King’s most dear bedfellow, the Queen,” “the King’s most dear consort,” or “our dearest wife, the Queen,”16 were merely conventional forms of reference, and do not necessarily reflect real affection. That there was affection and tenderness between Henry and Elizabeth cannot be doubted, but evidence about the true nature of their relationship is contradictory. A Spanish envoy, Juan de Matienzo, sub-prior of Santa Cruz, claimed in 1498 that Elizabeth “suffered under great oppression and led a miserable, cheerless life.” He suggested to his sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, that “it would be a good thing to write often to her, and to show her a little love.”17 Evidently he thought love was lacking in her life. Yet there is no other evidence that Elizabeth was deprived of it—rather the opposite, for there are instances of both the King and his mother showing genuine concern for her health and her happiness; and on this one occasion there may have been a very good reason why Elizabeth appeared subdued, even unhappy.
In 1613, Bacon asserted of Henry that “his Queen (notwithstanding she presented him with divers children, and a crown also, though he would not acknowledge it) could do nothing with him … Toward [her] he was nothing uxorious, nor scarce indulgent, but companionable and respective [considerate], and without jealousy … And it is true that, all his lifetime, while the Lady Elizabeth lived with him, he showed himself no very indulgent husband to her, though she was beautiful, gentle, and fruitful. But his aversion toward the House of York was so predominant in him, as it found place not only in his wars and councils, but in his chamber and bed.” If this were initially true, it could have had much to do with Elizabeth’s involvement with Richard III, which had upset Henry at the time, and must have seemed like a betrayal. But was it true?
To begin with, Henry may have resented what Elizabeth was, even while growing to love her for herself. He was clearly wary of her lineage and potential influence. That is evident in his determination not to be seen to owe his crown to her, and his relegating her to a dynastic, ceremonial, and domestic role, and placing financial constraints upon her, as will be seen. Above all, it seems, he did not want her to be associated in any way with Richard III, as the matter of Queens’ College, Cambridge, shows. It had been founded by Margaret of Anjou and later enjoyed the patronage of Elizabeth Wydeville and Anne Neville, so it might have followed that Elizabeth of York, as Queen, would assume that role too. But Richard III had also been a patron of Queens,’ and on his accession, Henry VII confiscated all the endowments made by Richard and Anne; significantly, Elizabeth did not become the college’s new royal patron. On her death, however, that role would be taken over by Margaret Beaufort.18
Bacon was sometimes apt to draw sweeping conclusions about Elizabeth that jar with other evidence and should be treated with caution. There is little else to support his damning assessment of the marriage, which was based on negative inferences he had made from Henry VII’s delay in marrying Elizabeth,19 and his belief that Henry had wronged her by not ruling in her right. In fact, historians all the way back to John Lingard, whose history of England was published in 1819, have questioned Bacon’s observations about the relationship between Henry and Elizabeth.
The years spent as a fugitive had taken their toll on the King.
He trusted few and had learned to maintain an autocratic distance. “He was of a high mind and loved his own will and his own way, as one that revered himself and would reign indeed. Had he been a private man he would have been termed proud: but in a wise prince, it was but keeping of distance, which indeed he did toward all, not admitting any near or full approach, either to his power or to his secrets. For he was governed by none.”20 Elizabeth may have found this daunting, at least to begin with, and probably soon realized that her husband was not going to treat her as a political confidante, for it was not in his nature. Children, companionship, and support seem to have been all he wanted from her, at least at the beginning.
It was for these reasons, and possibly more personal ones, that Henry began by keeping Elizabeth in her place. The early years of their marriage were probably challenging, for he had to overcome his suspicions of his Yorkist bride and deal with her dangerous relations. Yet it is clear that Elizabeth left him in no doubt as to where her loyalties lay. Her superior title to the throne never proved a threat to him, and probably she herself made sure that he knew he had nothing to fear from her. As time passed, he clearly grew to love, trust, and respect her; he was affectionate toward her, and they seem to have become emotionally close. We know that she loved him, and she must have appreciated the stability that marriage to Henry brought her after so many years of tragedy, danger, and anxiety.
We will hear how, much later, the couple hastened lovingly to comfort and support each other after losing a child, which argues that, after years of wedlock, they had come to enjoy a close and mutually supportive relationship. Thomas More would write of the “faithful love” that enabled them “to continue in marriage and peaceable concord.” Certainly there is no record of any strife between them. Touching references in Henry’s letters and privy purse expenses reveal his tenderness toward his wife, while his desperate grief after her death suggests that he had come to cherish her, and perhaps felt remorseful that he had not shown it enough. Probably, after suffering an uncertain youth in captivity or exile, he was grateful for the settled existence he came to enjoy with his virtuous queen, and for the welcome peace and tranquillity of his domestic life. And no doubt, over the years, he would have been increasingly grateful to Elizabeth for presenting him with the heirs that were so essential to the future of the Tudor dynasty.
In an age in which royal couples often lived separate lives in separate apartments, and kings were frequently absent on business of their own while queens stayed at home, Elizabeth and Henry participated together in a full social life at court and traveled together frequently, spending much time in each other’s company. They shared a common piety and, it seems, a sense of humor. Inevitably, over the years, they grew closer. There was a softer side to the King that Elizabeth must have known. His privy purse expenses reveal numerous kindnesses, such as money he gave variously to a man wrongfully arrested, a woman with child, children singing for him in a garden, a Jewess for her marriage, the liberating of prisoners, and “a little fair maiden that danceth.”21 A man whose heart was touched by people such as these must have had some kindness and warmth in his character.
We know something of what Henry VII admired in a woman from instructions he was later to give his ambassadors when, as a widower, he considered marrying Joan, Queen of Naples. He could not court her in person, so he asked them to note carefully her age and stature, “the features of her body; the favor of her visage, whether she be painted or not, and whether it be fat or lean, sharp or round, and whether her countenance be cheerful and amiable, frowning or melancholy, steadfast or light, or blushing in communication; her eyes, brows, lips, and teeth; the fashion of her nose, and the height and breadth of her forehead; her arms, whether they be great or small, long or short; her breasts and paps, whether they be big or small; whether there appear any hair about her lips or not; the condition of her breath, whether it be sweet or not; [and] whether she be a great feeder or drinker.”22 It may be that he had come to regard his late wife as an ideal to which any future wife must conform or be found wanting.
Henry had lived a relatively chaste life. He had only one bastard son, Roland de Velville, conceived during his exile in Brittany; Velville was knighted by Henry VII, who appointed him Constable of Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey.23 After marriage, the King was apparently faithful to Elizabeth, and no breath of scandal tainted their union. A Spanish ambassador wrote that “one of the reasons why he leads a good life is that he has been brought up abroad.”24 He was implying that, had Henry been raised at the licentious court of Edward IV instead of being exiled, he might have succumbed to the temptations on offer there. Yet even an exile can indulge in amorous intrigues, so the likelihood is that Henry was, by nature, a monogamous man. And although there is evidence that, after years of faithful marriage, he was attracted to another lady, that was almost certainly as far as it went.
The sources give an overwhelming impression that the union between Henry and Elizabeth evolved into a true partnership, a relationship based on deep affection, if not love, cooperation, fidelity, and trust. She was to show herself devoted to promoting his interests; she never interfered, never openly complained, and proved herself a true helpmeet. In short, this was the most successful and stable marriage made by any of the Tudors.
Kings were not expected to share government with their queens, or to rely on their advice, and certainly they were not supposed to be influenced by them in political matters.25 Medieval queens were “generally the passive instruments of policy”26 and had no formal political identity or power of their own. Queens were applauded, however, when they used their gentle feminine influence to intercede with the King where appropriate, and thus enabled him to rescind a decision without losing face. Instances of queens using their influence probably went largely unrecorded; a queen enjoyed a unique advantage over other petitioners due to her intimate relationship with the King. It was accepted that, because of this, she might be privy to matters of state, but advice that Elizabeth might have read urged that her “wisdom ought to appear in speaking, that is to wit that she be secret and tell not such things as ought to be holden secret.”27 If she ever interceded with Henry, it was in private, and there are instances of his paying heed to her concerns, but it was not in his nature generally to be swayed by her.
As he almost certainly came to appreciate, Elizabeth performed her queenly role to perfection, understanding exactly what was required of her, and conforming seemingly effortlessly to the late medieval ideal of queenship, which constrained her to a role that was essentially decorous, symbolic, and dynastic. She was beautiful, devout, fertile, and kind—the traditional good queen.
In the past, historians tended to compare Elizabeth of York favorably to Margaret of Anjou,28 that “great and strong labored woman”;29 yet today, in the wake of a revolution in female emancipation, it is the proactive Margaret, vigorously fighting her husband Henry VI’s cause, who earns our admiration, rather than the passive Elizabeth. Gentleness, fruitfulness, and piety are no longer qualities esteemed in women. We have learned to admire them for what they do, and for their strengths. But in Elizabeth’s day, queens were not expected to do very much beyond exemplifying the humane, feminine side of monarchy—interceding for others, being charming to foreign ambassadors, or winning popularity by their charities, their gifts to the poor, their pilgrimages, and their pious example. Getting involved in politics and wars was a step too far. Unlike Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth never identified herself with factions at court; unlike her mother, she did not promote a horde of ambitious relatives. Certainly she was not as politically inclined, or as politically active, as Elizabeth Wydeville,30 and she never enjoyed anything approaching Elizabeth Wydeville’s influence. If she had been strongly identified with the Wydeville faction prior to her marriage, that was all at an end, for her mother’s family were never allowed much influence by Henry VII, who clearly preferred to emphasize Elizabeth’s paternal descent.
Yet this was the girl who had schemed to marry her uncle, Richard III, the girl whose vengeance his councilors had feared—that same girl who had probably plotted with the Stanleys on Henry Tudor’s behalf. What drove her had doubtless been the desire to be restored to her rightful inheritance and elevated to the throne. But now that she was Queen, having made that dynastically crucial marriage and achieved her ambition, she retreated from politics and interested herself largely in affairs that were her legitimate province, such as her household, her estates, her court, and her children. Her opinions were seldom to be voiced, and although she would be at the center of great and tumultuous events that must have affected her personally, probably deeply in some instances, we know little of her role—if any—in them, or her views or feelings.
It seems strange that she was now apparently ready meekly to accept a passive role as the price of her marriage and her queenship, but probably it was an adjustment she was happy to make, for there is no evidence that she wanted to involve herself in political affairs. Even so, her married life may have been fraught at times. Her Yorkist blood and her superior claim to the throne ensured that she would tread a tightrope of divided loyalties in the coming years, joined as she was to a husband who was deeply suspicious of her house. How she rose to these challenges we do not know specifically, yet we can surely infer, from the emerging harmony of her marital existence, that she took care never to be controversial and always to place her husband’s interests first.
Her own concerns were apparently domestic rather than political. From time to time the King involved her in diplomatic relations, mainly in connection with the marriages of their children, in which traditionally she was supposed to interest herself. It is often said that Henry allowed Elizabeth no power at all, but evidently it was known that she exercised a gentle, unobtrusive influence on him, as is evidenced by the endless stream of gifts to her from powerful persons who clearly believed that her patronage was worth having.31
However, given that she wielded such influence only in private, it is hard to assess the extent of it. Certainly there are instances of her exercising authority independently of her husband. We find her intervening in matters of law, and petitioning him on behalf of her servants, London merchants, and others. When one of her Welsh tenants complained of the heavy-handedness of Henry’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, Chief Justice of North Wales, she did not refer the matter to the King but sent a sharp reproof to Pembroke herself, which apparently achieved the desired result.32
Another letter from Elizabeth, undated but written in 1492, is among the Paston letters, that great collection of fifteenth-century correspondence; in it, she rebukes John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in regard to disputed ownership of a manor:
To our right trusty and beloved cousin, the Earl of Oxenford.
By the Queen.
Right trusty and entirely beloved cousin, we greet you well, letting you wit [understand] know how it is come unto our knowledge that, whereas ye newly entered upon our well-beloved Simon Bryant, gentleman, into the manor of Hemnals [Hempnalls Hall, Suffolk] in Cotton, descended and belonging unto him by right of inheritance, as it is said, ye thereupon desired the same Simon to be agreeable for his part to put all matters of variance then depending atween him and one Sir John Paston, knight, pretending a title unto the said manor, into th’award and judgement of two learned men, by you named and chosen as arbiters atween them; and in case that the same arbiters of and upon the premises neither gave out nor made such award before the breaking up of Pasche [Easter] term, now last passed, ye of your own offer granted and promised unto the said Simon, as we be informed, to restore him forthwith thereupon unto his possession of the said manor; and how it be that the same Simon, at your motion, and for the pleasure of your lordship, as he saith, agreed unto the said compromise, and thereupon brought and showed his evidence concerning, and sufficiently proving, his right in the said manor unto the said arbiters; and that they have not made nor holden out between the said parties any such award. Yet have not ye restored the same Simon unto his possession of the said manor but continually kept him out of the same, which, if it so be, is not only to his right great hurt and hindrance, but also our marvel. Wherefore we desire and pray you right affectuously that ye will rather, at the contemplation of these our letters, show unto the said Simon, in his rightful interest and title in the said manor, all the favourable lordship that ye goodly may, doing him to be restored and put into his lawful and peaceable possession of the same, as far as reason, equity, and good conscience shall require, and your said promise, in such wise that he may understand himself herein to fare the better for our sake, as our very trust is in you.
Given under our signet at my lord’s Palace of Westminster, the xxv day of June,
Elesebeth.
Beneath is written: “subscribed with the Queen’s hand.” The existence of this letter—and there were probably more like it that are lost—proves that Elizabeth did sometimes venture into the world of public affairs. Here we see her being firm, fair, and concerned to right a wrong, and her influence must have been known to be effective, or Simon Bryant would surely not have judged it worth appealing to her for help. Two months after the letter was written, John Daubeney sent Sir John Paston, Oxford’s councilor, “a copy of the letter that the Queen sent to my lord of Oxford from the manor of Cotton for Bryant.” He reported that the Archbishop of York wanted Oxford to help Paston keep possession of the manor, and was going to “inform the Queen of the matter, and because the Queen hath take[n to] her chamber,” he had sent a ring to the Lord Treasurer, anxious “that he should excuse my lord of Oxford to the Queen,” for he really had no choice in the matter.33
As Queen, Elizabeth traveled widely, often with the King, sometimes on her own, showing the gentler face of monarchy to the people, which doubtless enhanced her popularity. Like her father, she had the common touch; she was charming and accessible. Certainly she was generous, and the multiplicity of her many charities and kindnesses bears testimony to a warm and giving heart. Sadly, her privy purse expenses survive for only one year, 1502–03,34 but they are packed with evidence of her goodness, her open-handedness, and her kindnesses, as will be seen; and no doubt the purse expenses for the missing years would have further served to show why she was such a popular queen.
Elizabeth was seen as “a very noble woman,” as “the most distinguished and the most noble lady in the whole of England,” and she was “much loved”35 by her husband’s subjects, high and low. The Great Chronicle of London states that she “demeaned her[self] so virtuously that she was named the Gracious Queen,” while Edward Hall, writing under her son, Henry VIII, was to recall: “For her great virtue this noble princess was commonly called the good Queen Elizabeth.”
Short of cash though she was, her charities were many. She supported orphans, took children under her wing and raised them, and liberated debtors from London prisons. She gave money, for example, to an anchoress living in St. Peter’s almshouses in St. Albans; in alms to two of her father’s former servants; to a friary clerk, so that he could bury pirates who had been hanged at Execution Dock on the Thames at Wapping; to Nicholas Grey, clerk of the works at Richmond, whose house had burned down; to the children of the College of Windsor; to the son of a madman, for his diet and a gown; to the man who had cured himself of syphilis—“the French pox”; to “little Anne Loveday,” a girl who wanted to be a nun at Elstow Abbey, so that she could have a dowry; to a child christened at Windsor; and alms to many beggars. She also obtained a letter of pardon “for the remission of sins” for the friars of the monastery housing St. Katherine’s shrine on Mount Sinai in the Holy Land.36 She was the generous patron of several religious establishments, including the austere Carthusian priory of the Charterhouse at Sheen, founded by Henry V in 1414, and lying half a mile north of Sheen Palace; and she gave alms, rewards, and cash for repairs to the buildings.37
Her privy purse expenses of 1502–03 reveal that she was the recipient of numerous gifts from many of her husband’s appreciative subjects. She handsomely rewarded them all, from the poor man who came with apples, to the Lord Mayor of London, who presented her with cherries. A substantial number of the gifts were of food: her son’s fool sent her some carp; Lord Stanley sent Malmsey wine; Edith Sandys, Lady Darcy, sent “a present of seal,” the meat of which was then a delicacy; Sir John Williams sent two bucks, Sir John Seymour two does; the prothonotary of Spain sent oranges—a costly delicacy only recently introduced into England—“from Spain to the Queen at Richmond”; Richard Smythe, yeoman of the wardrobe, sent a gift of a fawn “from the park of Swallowfield,” Berkshire, where he was bailiff; the Abbess of Syon sent rabbits and quails; Richard FitzJames, Bishop of Rochester, sent grapes; Henry Deane, Archbishop of Canterbury, sent a “Llanthony cheese,” while Henry, prior of Llanthony, also sent regular gifts of cheeses and some baked lampreys.38
People of all ranks sent gifts for the Queen, and many commoners or poor folk came to the palace gates with humble offerings, such as butter, chickens, wardens (pears), pippins, puddings, apples, peascods, cakes, cherries in season, a conserve of cherries (several gifts of cherries are recorded, so they must have been known as among Elizabeth’s favorite foods), pomegranates, oranges, comfits (candied fruit), cheeses, several bucks, wild boar, tripes, chines of pork, a goshawk, pheasant cocks, capons, birds, a crane, Rhenish wine, roses, fine ironwork, and a cushion. None went away without a handsome reward, usually more than Elizabeth could afford. One man got 13s.4d. [£320] for bringing her a popinjay (parrot).39
Some of the gifts may have been expressions of thanks or appreciation, much as flowers are given to royalty today; some were perhaps given in anticipation of queenly favor to come, given Elizabeth’s reputation for open-handedness and the influence she was perceived to have with the King. But most are probably testimony to the love and goodwill borne by Henry’s subjects for a kind, gentle, and generous-hearted queen.
Ballads were sung about Elizabeth, such as the “White Rose Carol”:
In a glorious garden green
Saw I sitting a comely queen;
Among the flowers that fresh been.
She gathered a flower and sat between;
The lily-white rose methought I saw,
And ever she sang,
This day, day dawns,
This gentle day, day dawns,
This gentle day dawns
And I must home gone.
In that garden be flowers of hue:
The gillyflower40 gent that she well knew;
The fleur de lis she did one rue41
And said, “The white rose is most true
This garden to rule by righteous law.”
The lily-white rose methought I saw,
And ever she sang,
This day, day dawns,
This gentle day, day dawns,
This gentle day dawns
And I must home gone.42
Henry VII did not enjoy that kind of affection, so he was lucky to have such a queen to show to the world the popular face of monarchy.
Elizabeth was “intelligent above all others, and equally beautiful. She was a woman of such character that it would be hard to judge whether she displayed more of majesty and dignity in her life than wisdom and moderation.” This was written by Polydore Vergil, Henry VII’s favored historian, so one might expect it to be flattering in the extreme, but Vergil was not afraid to offend or criticize his royal patron—Henry was decidedly put out when Vergil dismissed the Arthurian legends as myths. That Elizabeth had these qualities in good measure is borne out by the praise of other contemporaries as well. One chronicler called her “noble and virtuous,”43 and a Venetian report described her as “a very handsome woman of great ability, and in conduct very able,” beloved for her abundant “charity and humanity.”44 Erasmus described the Queen in one word: “brilliant.”
Later writers had little to say about her, though. “Besides her dutifulness to her husband, and fruitfulness in her children, little can be extracted of her personal character,” observed Thomas Fuller in the 1660s, and his words sum up a problem faced by her biographers today, because much about her has to be inferred from external evidence. That she was gentle, kind, and devout is patently clear, and she was demonstrably generous by nature. Alison Plowden describes her as fruitful, beautiful, submissive, a loving mother, a dutiful daughter, chaste after marriage, pious, charitable, placid, kind, sweet-tempered, generous, and “naturally indolent.” In short, she had all the virtues of great ladies in medieval chivalric verse.
Certainly she was pious: her privy purse expenses show that she unfailingly made offerings on all the great feasts of the Church and on numerous saints’ days; she had a special devotion to the Virgin Mary and various other saints; she owned religious books that give insights into a conventional, late medieval piety, and “a chest of ivory with the Passion of Our Lord thereon.”45 In 1486 the Pope issued her and Henry with a special dispensation “to have a portable altar, on which they may have Mass celebrated when necessary before daybreak, and to have Mass and other divine offices celebrated in places”—even “under interdict, with doors closed, the excommunicate and interdicted being excluded, bells unrung, and in a low voice, in presence of themselves and their household, etc., provided that they are not the cause of such interdict, nor specially interdicted.” His Holiness also permitted “each of them and for Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the King’s mother, not to be bound to fast in Lent, and during that season to eat eggs, cheese, butter, and other milk-meats, whenever they shall think fit.”46
Elizabeth was hardly indolent. Rather, as Thomas Penn suggests in Winter King, she had a natural serenity. She could bestir herself when she needed to, as when she busily schemed in the months before Bosworth. That serenity made it easy for her to accept the decisions that were made for her, asserting herself with fervor only when important things were at stake, or with anger, as when she intervened to prevent an injustice. Richard III’s councilors feared that she had it in her to be vengeful, but those may well have been assumptions, for it is unlikely they knew her very well. Certainly there is no evidence to give credence to their fears. Elizabeth had neither her mother’s robust energy nor her strong will and steely determination, and maybe felt at a disadvantage beside that practical and capable paragon, Margaret Beaufort. It was fortunate that her serene nature—and no doubt her love for her husband—helped her to survive in a marriage in which she was kept in submission, and in a queenly role that was overshadowed by her mother-in-law. Her love for Henry would have made that easier too.
The appearance of placidity, even indolence, may stem from the fact that all her life Elizabeth was overshadowed by dominant women: her grandmothers, her mother, and her mother-in-law—and it is sometimes said that there was friction between the latter two, although that can only be an assumption. In her early years Elizabeth had learned that it was her lot to be obedient and conformable, and this was to stand her in good stead in adult life. It is hard to imagine any of those domineering female relations being so mild and self-effacing as she undoubtedly was during her years as Queen. She was not domineering and grasping like her mother and mother-in-law, and it was probably because of her dutifulness and her willingness to accept a subordinate role that her marriage was successful, if not happy.
It was not only Henry Tudor to whom Elizabeth had now to accustom herself, but also his devoted, emotional, and possibly overbearing mother. Margaret Beaufort’s lifelong passion was for her son; he was her “own sweet and most dear King, and all my worldly joy.”47 In one letter she reminded him that it was the feast of St. Agnes, “the day that I did bring into this world my good and gracious prince, King, and only beloved son.”48 In another letter, from 1501, Margaret addresses Henry as “my dearest and only desired joy in this world” and calls him “dear heart” and “my sweet King,” saying, “I trust you shall well perceive I shall deal toward you as a kind, loving mother.”49
In 1485, Henry was something of a stranger to his mother—they had been separated since he was fourteen—although he was sensible about what he owed her, and over the years he came to reciprocate her devotion. In 1498 he wrote to her: “I shall be as glad to please you as your heart can desire it, and I know well that I am as bounden so to do as any creature living, for the great and singular motherly love and affection that it hath pleased you at all times to bear toward me. Wherefore, mine own most loving Mother, in my most hearty manner I thank you, beseeching you of your good continuance of the same.”50 Even allowing for the extravagant salutations of the period, this was no mere flattery. Sadly, no letters from Henry to Elizabeth survive, so we do not know if he addressed his wife as warmly as he did his mother.
Margaret Beaufort had been a driving force behind the marriage of her son to Elizabeth of York. His earlier years were ones of anxiety and intrigue, and they took their toll. “Either she was in sorrow by reason of present adversities, or else when she was in prosperity she was in dread of the adversity to come.”51 Elizabeth also owed a debt of gratitude to her mother-in-law, and was probably conscious of the fact.
Contemporaries were unanimous in their praise of Margaret Beaufort. To Vergil, she was “a wise woman, a most worthy woman, whom no one can extol too often for her sound sense and holiness of life.” A friend, Henry Parker, Lord Morley, wrote of “her fame, her honor, her liberality, her prudence, her chastity, and her excellent virtues.”52 According to the funeral oration by her confessor, Bishop Fisher, Margaret was “a scholar and a saint, unkind to none” and “never forgetful any kindness or service done to her. Neither was she revengeful or cruel. Everyone that knew her loved her, and everything that she said or did became her.”
Portraits of Margaret Beaufort show a thin-faced, thin-lipped elderly woman with high cheekbones, wearing a black gown and a severe widow’s chin-barbe under her long-lappeted white gable hood. Yet they all derive from originals painted late in her life. In earlier years she wore fashionable attire, and it was probably only after she took a vow of chastity in 1499 that she adopted more somber garb, and only after her husband’s death in 1504 that she donned a widow’s barbe. Yet however royally or soberly she was robed, she attended Mass six times daily, ate sparingly, observed fast days rigorously, and when in good health wore a hair shirt next to her skin.53 She was extremely devout, spending hours in daily prayer, and repeating moral homilies “many a time.”54
She used some of her vast wealth for the benefit of others, not only doing good works but in furthering education. A great scholar herself, she became renowned as a patron of art, learning, and religion, and was to found two Cambridge colleges: Christ’s and St. John’s. An intelligent woman, she patronized William Caxton and translated books from French, which he printed; she also translated devotional texts. Her influence over the kingdom’s intellectual and spiritual life was considerable.
Yet this was also the woman who sued the widows of her servants for debt, and who ruthlessly pursued her legal and fiscal rights;55 a woman who was vigorously efficient and a formidable disciplinarian, in whom piety combined with practicality. Margaret Beaufort was the greatest landowner in the realm after the King and Queen, and her expenditure was lavish. She kept almost royal state, had a great affinity of dependents, and was at the center of a wide network of patronage56—just as the Queen should have been, but was not.
Although Bacon later claimed that Henry “reverenced [his mother] much” but “heard little” of what she said, Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, reported, in July 1498: “The King is much influenced by his mother,” and stated that Margaret Beaufort’s influence was greater than that of Lord Chancellor Morton or Henry’s chamberlain, Giles, Lord Daubeney. He added: “The Queen, as is generally the case, does not like it.” The sub-prior of Santa Cruz had written only days earlier: “The Queen is a very noble woman, and much beloved. She is kept in subjection by the mother of the King.”57 Yet there is much evidence to show that the relationship between the two women was outwardly one of companionship and cooperation, so if there was any conflict between them, they had concealed it very well for twelve years, and would continue to do so. Indeed, they got on so well that it was said they lived “in peaceable concord,”58 and they seem also to have developed an affection for each other. This suggests that Elizabeth quickly learned to defer to her mother-in-law’s wisdom and decrees, and wisely did not try to compete with her. Probably she appreciated the support that Margaret so readily gave her, and was happy to cooperate with her.
The two Spanish reports are the first of just three references to conflict between the Queen and her mother-in-law. It may be significant that they were written by Spaniards who were used to seeing their queen, Isabella, exercising power in her own right, and were startled by Elizabeth’s lack of it.59 The reports having been written so close together, and independently, suggests they were prompted by something that happened that summer.60 However, in 1500 a yeoman of the crown, John Hewyk of Nottingham, observed during a royal visit to that town “that he had spoken with the Queen’s Grace, and should have spoken more with her said Grace, had [it] not been for that strong whore the King’s mother.”61 Possibly Margaret had intervened to silence an aggravating man, but his remark is in keeping with the Spanish reports, and together they suggest an established balance of power in the relationship. Possibly, on occasion, Elizabeth allowed her irritation to show.
Apart from these isolated observations, all the signs show that Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort were close. Too much credence has been given to these reports and to Bacon’s jaded assumptions, and some modern writers who tend to superimpose their own perceptions of mother and daughter-in-law relationships.
The Lady Margaret was often at court, especially in the earlier years of the reign. Although she played no formal role in politics, her influence in the domestic sphere was strong, and Elizabeth rarely acted independently of her—and possibly was glad of her advice. Yet as Elizabeth was soon to find, Margaret was frequently at her side, or never very far away. Wherever the King and Queen were, there his mother would usually be too, and she often accompanied Henry and Elizabeth on their travels and progresses around the kingdom. Sometimes she appeared in public with Henry when Elizabeth was absent. His household ordinances provided for lodgings to be kept for her at all the royal residences, often next to his private apartments. At Woodstock, their apartments were linked by a shared withdrawing chamber, and at the Tower they adjoined Henry’s bedchamber and council chamber.62 It was soon accepted that the King, the Queen, and the King’s mother formed an inviolable triumvirate.
The pattern was set less than a month after the wedding when, on February 6, 1486, the King issued a license jointly to his “dearest consort, Elizabeth, Queen of England, and his dearest mother, to found a perpetual chantry in the parish church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Guildford, Surrey, for one chaplain to perform divine service daily for the healthful estate of the King, his consort, and his mother, and for their souls after death.”63 In conjunction with this, two gentlemen of Guildford persuaded the Queen, Margaret, and two knights of the King’s household to assist them in the founding of a guild in honor of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, St. George, and All Saints at the same parish church.64 In December 1487, Elizabeth and Margaret, along with Archbishop Morton and Reginald Bray, were granted the right to present their candidate to the deanery of the college of St. Stephen at Westminster.65
Whenever Lady Margaret attended church with the King and Queen, she sat beneath her own cloth of estate. If she entertained a bishop to dinner, he would be treated as if he were in the King’s own presence. After Evensong, wine and spices would be served to Margaret as well as to the King and his sons—the Queen was not included. But when Elizabeth went in procession, Margaret had to walk a little behind her, “aside the Queen’s half train.” When Henry and Elizabeth dined in state after Mass, only “half estate” was accorded to Margaret; and at the Easter Garter ceremonies in chapel, while Elizabeth and Margaret were censed after Henry, only the King and Queen might kiss the pax,66 a small tablet adorned with a sacred image, usually the crucifixion, which the devout kissed instead of each other as a sign of peace.
Thus it was soon made clear to Elizabeth that from now on she was invariably to be associated with her formidable mother-in-law. It was to be expected that Margaret, an experienced and capable woman of forty-three, would take the young Queen under her wing and act as her mentor. That they enjoyed a harmonious relationship is evident from various sources, and the fact that they collaborated on several occasions when they were of one mind about something. The impression one gets is of two women who got on well working in unison together for everyone’s benefit. As Fisher testified, everyone who knew Margaret loved her, and there is no reason why Elizabeth should have been an exception. Furthermore, Margaret had a sense of humor and could provide congenial companionship: she kept two fools, Skip and Reginald the idiot, and enjoyed gambling at cards and chess, as did the Queen.67
The affection between the two ladies may have been facilitated by the fact that they were not continually obliged to enjoy each other’s company. The Lady Margaret sometimes resided at Lathom House or Knowsley Hall, the northern seats of the Stanleys; when in London, she would stay at Coldharbour.68 After 1499, having taken a vow of chastity with Stanley’s permission, she was less often at court, having moved into her own house at Collyweston in Northamptonshire, where apartments were permanently kept ready for her husband and her daughter-in-law the Queen.69 She never visited Lathom after that, but sometimes resided at Woking Palace in Surrey or Hunsdon House in Hertfordshire.
Elizabeth’s good relations with her formidable mother-in-law are testimony to her warm heart, her good judgment of character, her peaceable nature, and her talent for diplomacy.
The court over which Elizabeth presided as Queen was as magnificent as her father’s, and like Edward IV’s it was modeled on that of Burgundy. Henry VII has gone down in history as a miser, but he spent freely on the outward trappings of wealth, such as jewels, on which he paid out upward of £128,000 [£62.2 million], hundreds of pieces of plate bearing the monogram HE (for Henry and Elizabeth), tapestries, rich furnishings, and the rebuilding and decoration of his palaces. His court was imbued with learning, music, and pageantry. He deliberately exploited the symbolism of royal pageantry and the ceremonial, laying down a new series of ordinances for the regulation of daily royal life and etiquette. Small wonder that Bacon called him “a wonder for wise men.”
Elizabeth may have been influential in the development of royal pageantry during Henry’s reign, which would set a pattern for the Tudor court for the next century and more. As the daughter of Edward IV, who had recognized the value of Burgundian court culture, with its emphasis on magnificence and display, and emulated it, she was ideally placed to advise her husband.
On great occasions the court would be the setting for the lavish feasts, tournaments, pageants, and revelry deemed essential for a successful monarchy, but as we have seen, Henry VII enjoyed simpler pleasures too. No great sportsman himself—although he liked hunting, hawking, cock-fighting, bull baiting, shooting crossbows at the butts, and the spectacle of jousting—he nevertheless installed bowling alleys and tennis courts on the grounds of his palaces, and laid on hunting expeditions and lavish musical entertainments, all for the diversion of his courtiers and guests. Elizabeth shared many of these interests, including hunting and archery; her privy purse expenses record payments for her greyhounds and for arrows and broadheads (arrow tips). She went hawking too: Oliver Aulferton was keeper of the Queen’s goshawks and spaniels, and was paid a salary of £2 [£970].70
Where the moral laxity of some European courts was notorious, the court presided over by Henry and Elizabeth was a byword for propriety, which was ensured by the marital fidelity of the King and Queen, and no doubt by the guiding moral hand of the Lady Margaret. It was also a great center of piety and learning, peopled by divines, scholars, and poets.
When they were not on display to the court, the royal family enjoyed living in the warmth and intimacy afforded by the warren of small closets beyond the public chambers of their apartments, an arrangement that reflected the increasing desire of European monarchs to achieve some privacy in their otherwise very public lives, although privacy as they understood it invariably meant having many select persons in attendance to look to their every need. It was during Edward IV’s reign that this growing taste for seclusion emerged, so Elizabeth would have grown up with the notion of kings and queens enjoying a private life away from the court. That would have been a foreign concept to earlier medieval kings, whose lives had been communally centered on the great hall, and who were incessantly on display.
The court was not just a magnificent domestic and ceremonial institution; it was also the seat of government and the political hub of the kingdom. There were two political entities in the court: the Privy Council, which—presided over by the King—attended to matters of state; and the Privy Chamber, the nerve center of monarchical power. It was Henry VII who created the Privy Chamber, the department of state comprising the influential and often powerful gentlemen who waited personally upon the sovereign and were thus able to influence him and bestow patronage. There are frequent references to his retiring among them in his private lodgings, which were also called the privy chamber.
Elizabeth had her corresponding private apartments, where she resided with her ladies and other female attendants—a chaste female enclave within the King’s “house of magnificence.” It usually consisted of three distinct parts: a great chamber, a presence chamber for audiences and entertaining, and a privy chamber, which, like the King’s, might comprise bedchambers, closets, a privy, a privy wardrobe, and sometimes a privy kitchen, where the Queen’s meals were prepared. Guards were stationed at the entrance to each room, and only the King, Elizabeth’s servants, and the most privileged guests would be admitted to her privy chamber. Elizabeth would usually dine with her ladies in her presence chamber, rather than with the King.71 Edward IV’s “Black Book of the Household” had laid down that service to the Queen “must be nigh like unto the King.”72
The Queen was not of course confined to her apartments. She enjoyed the freedom of the court and the King’s lodgings, and it was expected that she would be at his side whenever appropriate: at the great religious festivals, when both wore their crowns, at “days of estate,” feasts, courtly celebrations, receptions and entertainments, and when peers were ennobled. When the King sat in his chair of estate, or throne—the actual seat of government—there she would be, seated on a lower chair beside him, with “the cloth of estate hanging somewhat lower than the King’s, by the valance.”73
Although he was “frugal to excess in his own person,” Henry VII “kept a sumptuous table. There might be six to seven hundred persons at dinner. His people say that his Majesty spends upon his table £14,000 [nearly £7 million] annually.”74 On a “day of estate” when Henry dined before the court in his great chamber, he would have a bishop and a duke, or two earls, at table with him, and Elizabeth—who arrived in procession preceded by her chamberlain and usher—always sat at her own table with a duchess, a countess, and perhaps a baroness. She had her own servers and carver, and her sewer (food taster) to bring her neck towel, or napkin, which was worn over one shoulder. Everyone else was seated below the high tables according to rank. Once the meal was over, the boards were cleared and the royal sewers spread a clean “surnap” (tablecloth) across them, which the ushers then smoothed over. Knights or barons would bring basins and covered ewers containing water, and at a sign from the King everyone washed their hands. The esquires then took up the boards, while the ushers knelt down to “make clean the King’s skirts” of crumbs. Grace was said by a bishop or a royal chaplain.75
Music, minstrelsy, and disguisings were part of the culture of the Tudor court. Elizabeth loved them all, especially music; she had grown up in a court where her parents both employed musicians, and she too had her own minstrels and drummers; three of the latter would serve her son, Henry VIII. Among her musicians were Mark Jaket and Janyn Marcazin, who is listed as a minstrel in 1503, Richard Denouse, William Older, and a fiddler whom Henry VII rewarded.76 Late in 1486, Jaket and Older received a reward of £5 [£2,500]. In 1502 the Queen’s minstrels were headed by “M. of Lorydon,” and each received a salary of £2.6s.8d. [£1,130].77 These minstrels were professional musicians and their function was to entertain the Queen, her household, and her guests, and provide accompaniment for dancing in the privy chamber; they also taught musical skills to the royal children.
Elizabeth was to commission works from William Cornish and Richard Fairfax, two virtuosi of the Tudor court.78 Her passion for music, which was to be inherited by her children, may be measured by the large sums she was ready to spend on it—money she could ill afford. She would handsomely reward minstrels such as the man who played a drone—possibly an organ or a cornemuse (bagpipes)—before her at Richmond. One of her most lavish purchases was a pair of clavichords for herself, costing £4 [£1,950].79Her influence was significant. Her daughters played skillfully upon the lute, and her son, the future Henry VIII, became a notable musician and composer.
Books would have had a prominent place in the Queen’s chamber; they were not just there for the pleasure to be obtained from them, but as outward manifestations of magnificence, for they were fabulously expensive objects of desire and proclaimed the erudition and interests of their owners. Elizabeth’s love of books had stayed with her from childhood. Hers were a mix of the secular and the devotional. She owned one of the finest manuscripts of the age, the beautifully illuminated “Hours of Elizabeth the Queen,” dating from ca.1415–30. It is now thought to have been owned by her, rather than by her mother, as was previously claimed, and had once belonged to her cousin, Cecily Neville, Countess of Warwick (d. 1450), daughter of Ralph Neville, Earl of Salisbury. Its colorful pages illustrate the Hours of the Virgin and the Passion of Christ, the Penitential Psalms, the Office of the Dead, the Commendation of Souls, and prayers to St. Mary. There are eighteen exquisite miniatures, borders lavishly decorated with foliage on solid gold leaf, 423 decorated initials, and roundels showing the signs of the Zodiac. The manuscript bears the inscription “Elysabeth ye quene” in the lower margin of one folio, beneath a miniature of the Crucifixion.80
The beautiful fourteenth-century Bohun Psalter owned by Elizabeth of York as Queen is in Exeter College, Oxford, and is inscribed on the first page in her hand:
Thys book ys myn
Elysabeth ye quene.
It is also known as “The Mass Book of King Henry VII’s Queen Elizabeth and King Henry VIII’s Queen Katherine,” and contains calendar notes by Elizabeth and her daughter-in-law, Katherine of Aragon, to whom it came after her death, and a further autograph inscription:
Thys book ys myn
Katherine the qwene.
Elizabeth also recorded in it the birth dates of her children.81
An illuminated manuscript of verses written between 1415 and 1440 by Charles, Duke of Orléans,82 bears the arms of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. It may have been partly executed for Edward IV at the end of his reign, but was completed by the anonymous Master of the Prayer Books under the direction of Quentin Poulet, Henry VII’s librarian, by 1500.83 It was probably a gift from Henry to Elizabeth. Orléans, a French prince captured at Agincourt, wrote his poems while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. They tell of love, of spring, and of melancholy, and one speaks of jealousy, which may have struck a chord with Henry:
Strengthen, my Love, this castle of my heart,
And with some store of pleasure give me aid,
For Jealousy, with all them of his part,
Strong siege about the weary tower has laid.
Nay, if to break his bands thou art afraid,
Too weak to make his cruel force depart,
Strengthen at least this castle of my heart,
And with some store of pleasure give me aid.
Nay, let not Jealousy, for all his art
Be master, and the tower in ruin laid,
That still, ah Love! thy gracious rule obeyed.
Advance, and give me succour of thy part;
Strengthen, my Love, this castle of my heart.
Henry may also have presented Elizabeth with the “Miroir des Dames,” a manuscript containing moral instruction for queens and other highborn ladies.84 Based on a thirteenth-century text, of which copies had been owned by several European queens, and finished in 1428, it contained an addition in the form of a frontispiece showing the crown of England resting on a hawthorn bush—that favored Tudor symbol—with a salutation to Henry VII, “Vive le noble roy Henry,” perhaps added soon after Bosworth, possibly around the time of the King’s marriage. The nature of the text—which reminds queens that, as the image of feminine perfection, they are blessed with a special grace and must be an example to their sex—makes it likely that this book was given by Henry to Elizabeth of York.85
Another illuminated manuscript associated with Elizabeth is a lavish “Legendary,” a book of the lives of the saints, dating from ca. 1250.86 The flyleaf bears the inscription “God save King Harry and Queen Elizabeth,” which must have been added before 1503, and a mark identifying it as later belonging to Henry VIII’s library.87 A prayer book that had belonged to Elizabeth of York was sold at auction in 1983.88
Like her parents, Elizabeth was a patron of William Caxton and his successor at the Westminster printing press, Wynkyn de Worde. In 1490, Caxton’s translation of Eneydos, a French version of Virgil’s Aeneid, was dedicated to her eldest son, and around 1491, Caxton printed the Orationes: Fifteen Oes and Other Prayers “by commandments of” the Queen and the Lady Margaret. It was his last publication, and comprised fifteen prayers then believed to have been written by St. Bridget of Sweden, all beginning with the letter O.89 It was probably Elizabeth’s grandmother, Cecily Neville, who had nurtured in her a special devotion to St. Bridget, which she shared with Margaret Beaufort. Margaret was a regular visitor to the Bridgetine abbey of Syon,90 where Elizabeth’s cousin, Anne de la Pole, was prioress. When Anne died in 1501, her successor maintained good relations with the Queen, sending her quails and rabbits for her table.91
Books were valued gifts. In 1494, Margaret Beaufort commissioned from Wynkyn de Worde a weighty book of spiritual exercises entitled Scala Perfectionis (The Scale of Perfection) by the Augustinian mystic Walter Hilton, which she and Elizabeth jointly presented to their kinswoman, Mary Roos, who served the Queen as lady-in-waiting. Elizabeth inscribed it: “I pray you pray for me. Elysabeth ye quene.”92 Elizabeth may have been the “Queen Elizabeth” who gave a book of hours to Katherine Neville, the widow of Lord Hastings, but Elizabeth Wydeville could also have been the donor.93
Both the King and Queen wrote inscriptions in a Parisian missal of 1498 owned by one of Elizabeth’s ladies. Henry’s read: “Madam, I pray you remember me, your loving master, Henry R.” Elizabeth’s was less formal: “Madam, I pray you forget not me to pray to God that I may have part of your prayers. Elysabeth ye Queene.” Evidently she felt she needed the spiritual consolation these prayers might afford her.94
Henry VII was astute when it came to finance. His tough upbringing had taught him the value of money and of enforcing policies that would ensure peace and generate wealth; he understood that the subtle practice of statecraft was infinitely preferable to achieving his aims through war. Yet although he was generous in giving alms to the sick and the destitute, and in enriching the Church, he was to gain a lasting reputation for parsimony. It was said that “although he professes many virtues, his love of money is too great.”95The Milanese ambassador reported in 1495, “The King is rather feared than loved, and this is due to his avarice.”96 A Venetian ambassador thought him “a great miser,” and wrote that he “had accumulated so much gold that he was supposed to have more than well-nigh all the other kings in Christendom.”97 The Spanish ambassador observed, “The King’s riches augment every day. I think he has no equal in this respect. If gold coin once enters his strongboxes, it never comes out again. He always pays in depreciated coin. All his servants are like him: they have a wonderful dexterity in getting other people’s money.”98 A papal envoy who came to the English court to raise money for a crusade was disconcerted to find only £11.11s. [£5,650] in his collecting box, “which result made our hearts sink within us, for there were present the King, the Queen, the mother of the King, and the mother of the Queen,” and many lords and ladies.
But the description of Henry as a miser, a gloomy, Scroogelike figure in sober, shabby clothing counting his money, is a distorted one. He had known adversity and realized that strength lay in financial security. By amassing a fortune, he was bolstering the future success of his dynasty, and he was determined to live in a style befitting a great prince. But his subjects paid a high price for it. A few years later Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, imputed “the decrease of trade” to “the impoverishment of the people by the great taxes laid on them. The King himself said to me that it is his intention to keep his subjects low, because riches would only make them haughty.” He was to pay for this with his popularity. “He is disliked, but the Queen is beloved because she is powerless.”99
Henry’s carefulness with money did not extend to the state he kept as King. It was expected of Renaissance sovereigns that they looked and acted the part magnificently, outward display considered essential to command the respect, confidence, and admiration of their subjects and other nations. In this, Henry was following the precepts of the court of Burgundy. Careful in other respects with money, he recognized the value of regal display and spent lavishly on it. “He knew well how to maintain his royal majesty and all which pertains to kingship.”100
As Queen, according to Thomas More, Elizabeth enjoyed “plenty of every pleasant thing.”101 Rodrigo de Puebla, ambassador from the court of Queen Isabella of Spain, observed: “There is no country in the world where queens live with greater pomp than in England, where they have as many court officers as the King.”102
But that high estate had to be maintained. On marriage, every English queen consort received a dower for the financial support of herself and her household. This took the form of a substantial settlement of lands, manors, and other crown property, making her one of the major landowners in the realm.103
Elizabeth was co-heiress with her sisters to lands of the noble families of Mortimer, March, and Clare, which had been inherited by the House of York. These lands, in which Cecily Neville held a share as dower, were not part of the crown estate, and should have been divided between the Yorkist princesses and then passed to their husbands on marriage; but Henry VII appropriated their shares as well as what was his in right of his wife, quietly incorporated them into the crown lands, and dowered Elizabeth from them.104She was in possession of lands of the earldom of March in Herefordshire by September 1486;105 some of the rest went toward the support of Elizabeth Wydeville and Cecily, Duchess of York; but for Elizabeth’s sisters there would be nothing, not even dowries.
Elizabeth had to wait for the rest of her settlement, for it was not finally assigned to her until November 1487; until then her financial needs were mainly met by the King’s household, further—and perhaps deliberately—limiting her sphere of influence and her capacity for patronage. From time to time she received grants from the King, such as the annuity of £100 [£48,900] bestowed on February 3, 1486, at Sheen Palace.106 When she finally was assigned her dower, for life, no set amount appears formally to have been settled on her. To the Mortimer and Clare estates were added her mother’s lands, worth about £1,890 [£924,000], and annuities from fixed rents from the towns of Bristol (amounting to £102.15s.6d., now £50,250) and Bedford. In addition, like her predecessors, she had income from wardships, fines, and tax exemptions granted her by the King, and in 1487, Parliament enacted that she could sell and grant leases in her own name, without the King’s consent, in consideration of the great expense of her chamber. On February 1, 1492, Henry settled upon her the reversion of the dower lands of her grandmother, Duchess Cecily, which she should have inherited anyway as part of the Mortimer and Clare inheritance.107
Henry had not only to maintain his wife, but also her mother—effectively, he was supporting two queens, which placed an unusual strain on his finances, as a new queen was usually assigned the dower of her predecessor; as we have seen, Henry had granted other lands to Elizabeth Wydeville. He also gave grants to his own mother, and was responsible for the maintenance of Elizabeth’s dowerless sisters, although he expected her to support them out of the income allocated her. It did not help that revenues from the dukedom of York were tied up in her grandmother’s generous dower. To boost Elizabeth’s income, the King, “in consideration of the great expenses and charges that his most dear wife, Elizabeth, Queen of England, must of necessity bear in her chamber,” obtained the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament that she should “be able to sue in her own name, without the King, by writs &c., all manner of forms [contracts], rents, and debts due to her; and sue in her own name in all manner of actions, and plead, and be impleaded, in any of the King’s courts.”108 Queens, unlike other married women, enjoyed the unique privilege of granting and acquiring lands as femmes sole, and they could also sue, and be sued, independently of the King.109 However, Henry VII, like Edward IV, was not above alienating lands he claimed to hold “in right of Elizabeth, the Queen consort,” as in 1494 when he gave away some Irish estates of Elizabeth’s earldom of March to her chamberlain, Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond.110
In 1489, Elizabeth was granted the use of some of the property of her aunt, Isabella Neville, Duchess of Clarence, during the minority of Isabella’s son, the Earl of Warwick. In 1495 she inherited Mortimer and Clare property worth £1,400 [£684,500] from her grandmother, Cecily Neville, which she had been granted in reversion in 1492.
Elizabeth had her own auditors. Each year, they and her receiver-general would tour her estates, inspect her stewards’ accounts, compile valuations of her properties, arbitrate in disputes, and advise their mistress on various issues.111 There could be a shortfall between what was due to her in rents and what was actually received.112 There is evidence to show that Elizabeth and her council were obliged to extract as much income as they could from her manors, but that this was resented by her tenants. For example, in 1487 they established a collector of rents at the royal manor of Havering in the hope of ensuring that all monies due to the Queen would be raised, but the local people made life difficult for every occupant of the post until, in 1497, the then incumbent, Thomas Elrington, was assaulted after ordering the bailiff to seize the goods of the Queen’s tenant, local justice of the peace Sir Philip Coke, who might have been knighted for valor in the recent Cornish uprising but had rent outstanding. Coke, whose wife was probably the sister or aunt of Margaret Belknap, one of Elizabeth’s gentlewomen, was accused of an act injurious to the honor of the Queen and as a dangerous example to her other tenants. Her council fined him £5, whereupon Elrington demanded twelve years’ back rent. Coke reacted violently, and was fined a further £5; he never again held office, but in a sense his was the victory, because Elrington was relieved of his post to avoid further violence, and was never replaced.113
The Queen had the right to make a new appointment every time a post on one of her estates fell vacant: it was another way in which she could show favor to those who had served her well. Sir Gilbert Talbot, who had been associated with Elizabeth in “The Song of Lady Bessy” and was now one of Henry VII’s privy councilors, was appointed steward of her lands in Feckenham, Worcestershire. A letter from Elizabeth survives in which she acknowledges the good and faithful service he had rendered to her.114 In November 1502, Talbot sent her a wild boar as a gift.115
Margaret of Anjou had received a dower of 10,000 marks [at least £1.5 million], which was later increased. Elizabeth Wydeville’s dower was at least £4,500 [£2.1 million]. Elizabeth of York’s dower lands were ultimately worth only £3,360 [£1.6 million] in 1506, less than two-thirds of her mother’s income.116 Although she had brought him a great inheritance (the lands of the Mortimers and the Clares), Henry kept her short of money, which meant that financially she would always be heavily dependent on him for loans and gifts of cash, several of which are recorded.117 She was obliged to borrow small sums from her sisters and even her servants.118 Though she appeared outwardly wealthy,119 Elizabeth struggled to make ends meet, and her extant privy purse expenses show that often she could settle her debts only in part, leaving much still owed, in several cases over an extended period. One London silk merchant, Henry Bryan, had to submit his account for £107 [£52,000] several times, and in the end was obliged to settle for payment in installments.120
By 1495, Elizabeth was deeply in debt, and had been driven to pawning her plate to Sir Thomas Lovell for £500 [£250,000], and borrowing money from her chamberlain and her ladies. In February 1497 the King ordered £2,000 [£972,200] to be delivered to her “to repay her debts,” but it was only another loan. When he loaned her money, he expected her to pledge her plate as security, and to redeem it on the due date, and took care to see that she did.121
She was not extravagant in her personal expenditure. She ran her household economically, better than her mother had run hers. She paid her ladies lower salaries than previous queens, the highest being £33.6s.8d. [£16,200]. As well as her dower, she received money from the Exchequer for her chamber expenses, and this she spent on items such as clothes for herself and for her household, horses, repairs to her barge and litters, repeated “boat hire,” household items (such as sheets, baskets, bellows, carving knives, bolts, locks, an axe, brushes, wheels, wax, faggots, and barehides), jewels, a small pair of enameled knives for the Queen’s own use, meat for her goshawks and spaniels, offerings in church, barrels of Rhenish wine, bread, ale, butter, eggs, and milk, and payments to her physicians and apothecaries. There were a few luxury items too, including chair coverings of crimson and blue cloth of gold and crimson velvet with linings of blue satin; and, for the Queen’s litters, twenty-seven cushions of blue cloth of gold, backed with various shades of satin, damask, and velvet. Elizabeth herself checked and signed every page of the book in which details of her income and her privy purse expenses were listed, ensuring that her officers were acting within their means. The most costly items she ever bought for herself—apart from clothing—were the clavichords and popinjay for which she paid a poor man 13s.4d. [£320].122
The small sums of pocket money she apportioned to herself were given by her accountant, Richard Deacons, into the hands of her ladies (usually Lady Anne Percy, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, or Elizabeth Lee), who would put them in her privy purse. It was rare for Elizabeth to receive more than 10s. [£250] or 20s. [£500] at a time, and sometimes she got as little as 4s.4d. [£110]. She was, however, abundantly generous, which may have been the cause of some of her financial difficulties.123 The King gave her only a very small allowance for the charities to which she was expected to dispense, so she had to make stringent economies in order to give to the poor. Much of her available funds were spent on gifts—numerous, but not lavish—and donations to religious establishments. That left less for alms, and it has been noted that she outlaid only £9.11s.5d. [£4,650] on those in her last year. Her gambling debts at Christmas 1502 were about half that amount.124
She also had to support her unmarried sisters, paying them annuities of £50 [£24,450] each out of her privy purse. When they married, they received no dowries from the King, so she paid their husbands annuities of £120 [£58,350] for their maintenance. In addition, she sent her sisters gifts of cash: in 1502, for example, she gave Anne £6.13s.4d. [£3,250] for pocket money.125 Often, Elizabeth would go without to do all this. She might have lived in great state and luxury, but the Queen of England had to juggle her financial resources as carefully as any peasant’s wife.