17

“The Hand of God”

Elizabeth had told Henry that they were still young enough to have other children, and he took her at her word. It was probably at Richmond, around the third or fourth week of May, that she conceived again, not two months after the death of Prince Arthur. At the time she had pressing concerns on her mind. On May 30, doubtless responding to Katherine Courtenay’s worries, she paid Ellis Hilton, her groom of the robes, for warm clothing she had commanded be made for William Courtenay: Holland cloth for shirts, fox fur to line a gown of russet, and a night bonnet. She also paid out for black satin of Bruges and black velvet for covering Katherine Courtenay’s saddle and sable trappings for her horse.¹

The King and Queen were at Richmond for the feast of Corpus Christi, which fell on June 5 that year, and for the celebrations to mark it Elizabeth came briefly out of mourning, sending Richard Justice, her page of the robes, to London to fetch a cloth-of-gold gown trimmed with fur.²

The next day the court moved to Westminster. The Queen had bought orange sarcenet sleeves to enliven her daughter Mary’s mourning gown, and clearly they were a favorite with the child. When it was found that the little princess had left them behind at Baynard’s Castle, Elizabeth sent her page of the robes from Westminster to collect them. Just before she departed from Westminster, she made an offering at the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, kneeling beside the tombs of her dead infants; she also made offerings in the chapel of Our Lady of the Pew at Westminster and at the Norman shrine of Our Lady of Bow in London.³

Elizabeth was back at Richmond on July 11, when there was a disguising at court. Her accounts record 56s.8d. [£1,380] paid to William Antyne, coppersmith, for “spangles sets, square pieces, star drops, and points after silver and gold for garnishing of jackets against the disguising.” This may have been “the disguising in the year last past” for which Elizabeth provided coats of sarcenet in the Tudor colors of white and green for the King’s minstrels and trumpeters, which were not paid for until December.⁴

By June 17 the Queen was at Windsor, having distributed alms on her journey there, as seems to have been her custom when she traveled. On St. John’s Eve, June 23, she gave money to her grooms and pages for making the traditional bonfires. She made her offerings on St. John’s Day itself, and on July 5 she and her daughter Margaret made offerings before the Holy Cross, St. George, and Henry VI’s tomb in St. George’s Chapel. The next day she sent 66s.8d. [£1,600] to the Abbess of Dartford “toward such money as the abbess hath laid out toward the charges of my Lady Bridget there.” An identical sum was also sent to Bridget herself. During her stay at Windsor, Elizabeth enjoyed an outdoor banquet in the “little park,” where a “harbor” had been made specially for her, and the King’s painters were employed “for making divers beasts and other pleasures for the Queen at Windsor.”⁵

That year the King’s mason, Robert Vertue, was building a “new platt [plan] of Greenwich which was devised by the Queen.”⁶ She wanted a separate brick, battlemented residence for herself on the waterfront, with a great tower in the center, a gallery, a privy kitchen, and a garden and orchard, and building it would cost £1,330 [£650,000] over the next six years.⁷ She would not, however, live to occupy it. Her involvement in the project probably reflects her love for Greenwich and an interest in Burgundian architecture and court culture that had no doubt been fostered by her father—but it may have had more significance than that.

Throughout her married life Elizabeth had frequently resided with the King and accompanied him on his travels; apart from going on pilgrimage, there is no evidence for her traveling alone unless there was a pressing reason. Their mutual distress at being apart from each other had been a factor in bringing Henry home from a campaign in France. Yet on July 12, 1502, Elizabeth left Windsor in company with her sister Katherine for the royal palace of Woodstock in Oxfordshire, on the first leg of a solo progress that would take her on a roundabout route to Wales—and away from Henry for much of the coming summer.⁸ Had we her privy purse expenses for earlier years we might find details of other solo progresses, yet this is unlikely, as there would probably be some other evidence, however fragmentary, for them.

It is astonishing that a gravid woman in uncertain health, whose life had been despaired of in her previous pregnancy, should decide to travel so far at such a time, especially as it would mean being apart from her husband for two and a half months. It is possible that Elizabeth was not only unwell but in some distress of mind. Maybe Tyrell’s confession had impacted badly on her, especially in the wake of Arthur’s death. Her own loss must vividly have brought home to her what her mother had suffered after her brothers disappeared, while her ever-present grief for Arthur may have prompted a need to get away on her own for a time. Even so, to embark on such an arduous progress and thereby risk her uncertain health and that of her precious unborn child seems strange indeed.

Possibly there had been a rift between her and Henry. Her plans for a house for herself may reflect a need to have a residence where she could live apart from him. Grief may have led her to blame him for sending their son to Ludlow when he was ailing, although it is inconceivable that Henry would have done so had he known that Arthur was seriously ill. What is likely is that Elizabeth was finding it hard to forgive Henry for the devastation he had wrought upon her sister’s life, for no apparent good reason—and at such a time. It is conceivable that the closeness husband and wife displayed in their shared grief had been fatally undermined by the continued imprisonment of Courtenay and the subsequent plight of Katherine of York—and by the King’s harsh treatment of another of Elizabeth’s sisters.

Sometime after May 13, 1502 (when Elizabeth repaid money Cecily had lent to her), Cecily made an illicit third marriage to an obscure man of low degree, Thomas Kyme (or Kymbe, or Keme) of Lincolnshire or the Isle of Wight. The date of their marriage is not recorded, and it is not until January 1504 that Cecily is first referred to as Kyme’s wife, in the Parliament Roll of 1503–04.⁹ As a princess of the blood, Cecily was not supposed to marry without the King’s permission, still less disparage the royal lineage by throwing herself away on a mere esquire; and unsurprisingly, when Henry discovered what she had done, he banished her from court and angrily confiscated the Welles lands, in which she had a life interest. The fact that Margaret Beaufort, who was sympathetic toward Cecily in her plight, began taking a busy interest in those lands from 1502 strongly suggests the marriage took place that year, after May 13.¹⁰

There is no record of Elizabeth interceding with the King on her sister’s behalf, but such a conversation would surely have taken place in private, and if it did, then her pleas fell on deaf ears. It may be that she was as shocked and angered at the marriage as the King, and that she did not intercede at all, but this seems out of character; the fact that Margaret Beaufort, who had often worked in concert with Elizabeth, was not afraid to help Cecily, suggests not only that she was fond of her, but also that she knew she was better placed than Elizabeth to help her. Elizabeth was grieving for her son; she was pregnant and her health was precarious; she already had troubles enough with one sister’s misfortune, and her marriage may have been under strain as a result of that, so she was probably not in the best position to help.

Margaret offered Cecily and Kyme shelter at Collyweston. From 1502 she took steps to assess the value of the Welles lands and drew up agreements with Cecily. By January 1504 she had negotiated a settlement with the King, whereupon Parliament restored Cecily’s life interest in the Welles inheritance.¹¹

Aside from resenting Henry’s impoverishment of her sisters, there is the possibility Elizabeth was aware of his fancy for Katherine Gordon and that this was another cause of distancing herself. Further than this we cannot speculate. The marriage of Henry and Elizabeth has always been seen as one of fidelity and mutual support, and there is no evidence that the King’s interest in the beautiful Katherine went beyond chivalrous appreciation in Elizabeth’s lifetime. But if that was as plain to his wife as it was to observers, then she had cause to feel threatened, and that could only have added to her resentment.

Elizabeth and her sister first traveled to Colnbrook, where Elizabeth rewarded a poor man who had guided them to St. Mary’s Chapel so they could make an offering to Our Lady; she also gave alms to a hermit there. Then they boarded the ferry across the Thames at Datchet and rode northward via Wycombe, arriving that night at Notley Abbey, an Augustinian monastery by Thame, Buckinghamshire;¹² their mother, Elizabeth Wydeville, had once owned lands nearby. The abbot’s house, where they lodged, still survives; its magnificent timber roof was recently revealed. While they were there, a messenger caught up with them with a letter from Lady Cotton at Havering bearing news of the sudden death of little Lord Edward Courtenay on June 13, and seeking to know the Queen’s pleasure as to where her nephew should be buried; that same day Elizabeth wrote to the Abbot of Westminster. Later she paid for the child’s funeral and gifts for his nurse and his rocker.¹³

On July 14, Katherine having probably gone to Havering, Elizabeth rode northeast via Boarstall to Woodstock, where soon afterward she fell “sick.”¹⁴ It is possible that she was suffering the discomforts of the early months of pregnancy, but this might have been a continuation of her illness of the spring, exacerbated by her condition; there is evidence to suggest that she did not enjoy good health through her pregnancy, and we know there were fears that she would not survive her previous confinement. Either way, her malady may have been aggravated by grief for Arthur, revelations about her brothers’ fate, and stress over her sisters’ plight.

It has credibly been suggested that she was suffering from iron-deficiency anemia as a result of repeated pregnancies,¹⁵ which would have predisposed her to the condition, as each pregnancy can place a high demand on a woman’s stores of iron. In such cases, the fetus and vital organs, such as the muscles that facilitate childbirth, can be starved of oxygen. Left untreated—and the condition was unknown in Elizabeth’s day—iron-deficiency anemia can have serious implications for the health of mother and child. The symptoms include breathlessness, tiredness, dizziness, fainting, pallor, palpitations, and headaches; and the effects can be a lowering of resistance to infections, the exacerbation of minor disorders of pregnancy, a risk of premature labor, perinatal mortality, hemorrhaging before or after delivery, and maternal death.¹⁶

Whatever the cause, Elizabeth’s concern for her health—and probably for a successful outcome to her pregnancy—was manifested in the offerings she either made or sent by proxy to various shrines and churches: St. Mary Magdalene’s Church, Woodstock; St. Frideswide’s at Oxford; the Holy Rood at Northampton; Our Lady’s Well at Linslade, Buckinghamshire; and Our Lady of Northampton, where she paid five priests to say five masses.¹⁷

By August 4, Elizabeth was well enough to travel on to the hunting lodge that Henry VII had built at Langley, Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire; then it was on to Northleach, Coberley, “the rood beyond Gloucester” (probably the Holy Rood in the Saxon church at Daglingworth), and St. Anne in the Wood, a holy well near Bristol. Here, Elizabeth made an offering before proceeding to Over, where she stayed at the Vineyard, the Abbot of Gloucester’s house, and gave alms to an anchoress of Gloucester. On August 6, she was at Flaxley Abbey in the Forest of Dean, a Cistercian monastery dating from the twelfth century (now a private house) that had welcomed several royal visitors since the time of King John; the Queen made another offering at the high altar. She had arrived in Wales by August 14, when she was led by a local guide to Mitchel Troy, where she visited St. Mary’s Priory before traveling on to nearby Monmouth.¹⁸

A red chasuble with opus Anglicanum (fine English) embroidery, dating from ca. 1502, is owned by St. Mary’s Church, Monmouth; it was one of two vestments believed to have been donated by Elizabeth to Monmouth Priory during her visit. The other is the contemporary Skenfrith Cope, embroidered with the Assumption of the Virgin, encircled by angels and saints; it is now in the possession of St. Bridget’s Church, Skenfrith.¹⁹

From Monmouth, Elizabeth journeyed to Raglan Castle, arriving by August 19.²⁰ Here she was the guest of Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert, the illegitimate last male descendant of the Beauforts, who was cousin to the King and served him as a diplomat. It may be significant that Raglan had been the seat of William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, who was close to Richard III, having married the latter’s bastard daughter, Katherine Plantagenet. They were both dead now, but the castle had come to Charles Somerset in right of his wife, Huntingdon’s daughter, Elizabeth Herbert; Henry VII and Elizabeth of York had attended their wedding on June 2, 1492.²¹ Elizabeth Herbert was Huntingdon’s child by his first wife, Mary Wydeville, and therefore the Queen’s cousin. Elizabeth Herbert’s uncle, Sir Walter Herbert, was married to another cousin, Anne Stafford, daughter of the late Duke of Buckingham by Katherine Wydeville; Anne’s sister Elizabeth served the Queen as her chief lady-in-waiting.

This visit, therefore, was a family occasion, but during it Elizabeth might have had the fate of her brothers on her mind, possibly being in some turmoil in regard to Tyrell’s confession; maybe she hoped to find some clarification at Raglan. Wales was a long way for an ailing, pregnant woman to travel, even to visit her relations, so there must have been a compelling reason for going so far—and it was not to visit Ludlow, where Arthur had died, for she did not venture near there. Did she hope that Elizabeth or Walter Herbert, who had known Huntingdon and Katherine Plantagenet, could tell her anything about the fate of her brothers?

During the Queen’s stay, a servant of Sir Walter Herbert brought her a goshawk, and a stranger came to deliver a pair of clavichords, purchased on her behalf from a foreign craftsman by Hugh Denys, a courtier who was married to one of her ladies; they must have been fine instruments, for they cost £4 [£1,950]. On August 24 she was gambling at “tables,” or backgammon, and during her visit her own minstrels entertained her.²² It is possible that she gave one of several sets of beautifully worked vestments, perhaps made by Robinet, “the Queen’s broiderer,” for use in the fifteenth-century galleried chapel in Raglan Castle, of which only ruins remain. A red-and-gold chasuble dating from ca. 1498, probably given by Elizabeth to St. Mary’s Priory, Abergavenny, during her visit to Raglan, now belongs to the Church of Our Lady and St. Michael, Abergavenny.²³ While the Queen was in Wales, a Spanish servant came to her from Katherine of Aragon and was given 20s. [£490].²⁴

Elizabeth returned to England via Chepstow, where she arrived on August 28, then rode through Woolaston before taking the ferry across the River Severn and making for Berkeley Castle, where she stayed from August 29 to September 4 as the guest of the elderly Maurice, Lord Berkeley, a former Knight of the Body to Edward IV, and his wife, Isabella Mead. The “stuff of the wardrobe of her beds” was sent on from Raglan to Abingdon, and thence to London. While at Berkeley, Elizabeth received a servant of a Mr. Esterfields of Bristol, who came with a costly gift of delicacies, oranges and suckets (candied fruits), for which she gave 2s. [£50] in reward. That same day, August 29, she made an offering to the Virgin at the church at nearby Thornbury, and on September 2 she rewarded her minstrels for their performance at Berkeley. The next day she ordered that venison be sent on to London for her table; she feasted on venison while at Berkeley, and wine was bought for her in Bristol. During her stay her litter was repaired with silk points, pins, and a yard of frieze.²⁵

From Berkeley, Elizabeth traveled to Beverstone Castle near Tetbury, another seat of the Berkeleys. She then stayed at Coates Place near Cirencester, and was escorted by a local guide on to Fairford, where she lodged from September 10 to 14 and again dined on venison, and apples sent by Mary, Lady Hungerford, from Heytesbury. On September 16 the Queen was back at Langley, where she remained until October 3. She may have needed to rest because of her condition or poor health, for on September 17, John Grice, her apothecary, was paid £10.19s.11d. [£5,350] for “certain stuff of his occupation by him delivered to the use of the Queen”; and on September 21 she signed her accounts for the last time, after meticulously signing them daily for years, which suggests she was too sick or fatigued to attend to all her duties and had to let some things slide. But the Lord Mayor of London sent her two barrels of Rhenish wine, and venison was delivered to Langley for her table, so she was evidently not too ill to eat. The regular delivery of bucks and harts to the places where she stayed on her progress suggests that she may have had a craving for venison during this pregnancy.²⁶

On September 21, Elizabeth gave 16s. [£390] to John Grice’s servant “toward his wedding gown,” suggesting that the apothecary was still in attendance. Three days later, at her command, a messenger was dispatched from Windsor to her sister Bridget at Dartford, possibly to ask after her health and request her prayers. Again, Elizabeth was sending offerings and seeking intercessions at nearby shrines, notably Our Lady of Caversham and the Child of Grace at Reading, to which she gave a pleated lawn shirt.²⁷

The King, who had been staying at Woodstock and was perhaps concerned about Elizabeth’s health, joined her at Langley on September 28,²⁸ and probably accompanied her for the rest of her progress. On October 6 she visited Minster Lovell Hall, where William Hamerton built her a bedstead.²⁹ The hall was the former residence of Francis Lovell. He had disappeared in 1487 after fighting on the wrong side at Stoke,³⁰ and the manor was now nominally in the hands of Prince Henry. The Queen gave money to an old footman to the prince who was now residing in an almshouse at Abingdon, where on October 13 she presented rich offerings to the silver effigy of Our Lady of Abingdon in the chapel of the Austin Friars.³¹

At Ewelme more memories of the House of York awaited her, for the palatial house had been the seat of her kinsfolk, the de la Poles, so recently disgraced, and was now in royal hands. Here, Elizabeth played dice and received messengers from Prince Henry and Margaret Beaufort; she also marked the feast of St. Edward the Confessor. Three days later she had moved on via Henley to Easthampstead, Berkshire, a royal manor lying in the Forest of Windsor, where she rewarded a “disare,” or reciter, “who played the shepherd before the Queen.”³²

Elizabeth was back at Richmond Palace before October 25, when rewards were paid out to those who had brought her gifts of apples and woodcocks. Two days later she was rowed to Westminster, where she stayed until November 14. On the day of her arrival she sent her barge to Durham House to collect her daughter-in-law, Katherine, who stayed with her until November 6. The Queen made her offering on the Feast of All Saints on November 1, took communion, and rewarded the young choristers of the King’s Chapel for their singing. Later that day she visited Westminster Abbey with Henry to make more offerings in observation of the obit of his father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and to pray at the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor. Around November 4, Elizabeth paid for fifty-two barrels of beer, which she gave annually in alms to the Observant friars of Greenwich, and two days later she sent 15s.8d. [£380] in alms to the Abbess of the Minories and the nuns she had succored there in May.³³

Her accounts show that in November and December her embroiderer, Robinet, and seven hired embroiderers were “working upon the Queen’s rich bed,” probably at Richmond, in readiness for her coming confinement, for “she intended to [be] delivered at Richmond”;³⁴ the hangings were embroidered with white and red roses and clouds, and edged with red satin. Later that month Elizabeth paid out 33s.4d. [£810] for a new trussing bed with a ceiler, tester, and counterpoint of crimson velvet with blue panes, and great rings for the bed curtains; she also ordered a cloth of estate of rich crimson cloth of tissue (taffeta), a pile cloth (possibly a rug or a thick towel) of linen, and matching curtains, together costing £46s.4d. [£1,130].³⁵

Elizabeth was looking for suitable staff for her coming child’s establishment. Dame Katherine Grey recommended a nurse, a Mistress Harcourt, who had an audience with the Queen at Westminster on November 14, before Elizabeth left for Greenwich, but was dismissed with a gift of 6s.8d. [£160].³⁶

From Greenwich, on November 19, Elizabeth removed to Baynard’s Castle, where she received several gifts on November 23. Her cook, Brice, had bought chickens and larks prior to her coming.³⁷

Elizabeth was still looking after the needs of the Courtenay children. In November she paid a man to deliver messages from Lord Henry and Lady Margaret at Havering to the court, probably to their mother. She also paid for clothing for young Henry Courtenay: a gown of black damask lined with sarcenet, a gown of tawny medley bordered with sarcenet, a coat of murrey camlet, a bonnet and a petticoat (the little boy had not yet been put into breeches). She also reimbursed Margaret Cotton for hose, shoes, laces, soap, and other necessaries for the children, including candlesticks and cloth to line a cupboard.³⁸

On November 24 a French nurse was interviewed by the Queen at Baynard’s Castle; like the previous nurse, she too was sent away with 6s.8d. [£160]. The next day Elizabeth gave alms to a poor man who once served her father, and paid a messenger who had fetched bucks for the King from the estate of Sir John Seymour in Savernake Forest.³⁹ If there had been a coolness between the royal couple, it was probably thawing.

On November 26, Elizabeth returned to the Palace of Westminster. As the winter of 1502–03 drew on, she may still have been unwell or needed to rest, as she did not resume her daily checks on her account book. At the end of November her fool, Patch, was rewarded for bringing her pomegranates and apples. On December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas’s Day, when custom dictated that “boy bishops” be appointed in place of priests in churches, she made a generous gift of 40s. [£970] to “the Bishop of the King’s Chapel at Westminster.” Appropriately, on St. Nicholas’s Day itself, when gifts were given to children, the Queen outlaid 5s.6d. [£130] for the expenses of those who brought the Courtenay children “from Sir John Hussey’s place in Essex unto London,” in time for Christmas. She made offerings on St. Nicholas’s Day and in the chapel of Our Lady of the Pew in Westminster Abbey on the eve of the feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary, and on the feast day itself, December 8. On December 9 she sent money to Henry Langton, another old servant of her father, and 12d. [£20] in reward to “a man of Pomfret” in an almshouse, who claimed to have lodged her uncle, Earl Rivers, in his house when the latter had been on the way to execution at Pontefract in 1483.⁴⁰ It seems that her lost loved ones, and maybe the terrible events of 1483, were on her mind as Christmas approached.

On December 12, Elizabeth moved to the Tower. The next day she distributed £20 [£9,720] in rewards to the grooms and pages of her chamber “against Christmas,” and was no doubt grateful to receive a monk of Westminster Abbey, who brought her one of the abbey’s precious relics, “Our Lady’s girdle,” and was rewarded with 8d. [£20].⁴¹ “Women with child were wont to girdle with” it,⁴² and perhaps Elizabeth had found that the relic helped—psychologically at least—during earlier deliveries, or felt it would afford her special protection during her coming confinement. Given her poor health during the past year and her many offerings at shrines, she may have been anxious about the outcome of this pregnancy, as she was before her previous labor, although there is much to suggest that she had good cause for concern this time: she had been unwell, on and off, for months.

On December 21 the Queen went by barge to Mortlake and thence to Richmond, where she spent her first Christmas without Arthur—and the last Christmas of her life. Six does were delivered for her table on Christmas Day. When she went in state with the King to Mass on that solemn feast, Prince Henry was with them. The children of the King’s Chapel sang a new setting of a carol by William Cornish, for which Elizabeth rewarded him with 13s.4d. [£320]. She also rewarded the King’s minstrels with 40s. [£1,000] for their psalms. She made offerings on the feast days of St. Stephen (December 26), St. John the Apostle (December 27), the Holy Innocents, or Childermas, as it was known (December 28), and St. Thomas of Canterbury (December 29), and sent a “Dr. Uttoune” to offer on her behalf at Becket’s shrine and other places in Canterbury.⁴³

We learn of the cheering entertainments enjoyed by Elizabeth during the twelve days of Yuletide from her accounts and other sources. She drank Rhenish wine she had ordered, and was given 100s. [£2,450] for “her disport at cards” on St. Stephen’s Day. She gave rewards to Princess Margaret’s minstrels, who entertained her, and to a Spanish dancing girl, who had probably come to England in the train of Katherine of Aragon. On New Year’s Eve ten more does were brought to her from the park at Odiham, Rutland. She gave gifts on New Year’s Day, rewards to those who had sent presents, among them the servant of Margaret Beaufort, and alms to the poor. The recipients of her gifts were numerous, and included several servants of the King, the royal minstrels, “the children of the privy kitchen,” and “the lord of misrule,” who traditionally held sway over the revels at court.⁴⁴ Henry gave her 10s. [£240] out of his privy purse, to pay for disguisings, and £20 [£9,700] for furs. His expenses also record rewards to “the Abbot of Misrule,” the players of St. Albans and Essex, and “the children of the King’s Chapel for singing of Gloria in excelsis.”⁴⁵

On January 4, 1503, Elizabeth made a donation to the fraternity (guild) of St. Clement by Temple Bar, the western entrance to the City of London. Three days later, now heavy with child, she was conveyed with her ladies by her bargeman, Lewis Walter, “in a great boat with twelve rowers” from Richmond to Hampton Court. Here she retreated to a “cell” to spend time in private prayer before she was confined,⁴⁶ which suggests that her health was still giving her cause for concern. She was placing much faith in astrologers, who had promised her “this year to live in wealth and delice.”⁴⁷ At New Year the court astrologer, Dr. William Parron, had presented the King with his annual almanac; this year’s was an exquisitely bound manuscript, the Liber de optimo fato (Book of Fortunes),⁴⁸ in which Parron prophesied that Elizabeth would live until she was eighty or ninety, and would bear the King many sons.

Elizabeth stayed at Hampton Court until January 14, when Lewis Walter rowed her and her ladies back to Richmond.⁴⁹ Preparations were still apace for her confinement there, and on January 20 the King sent one of his grooms to fetch Robert Taylor, her surgeon, to Richmond,⁵⁰ possibly because she was again unwell. As male surgeons were excluded from obstetrics, Taylor may have performed bloodletting—a common function of his profession—to balance the humors in her body, according to the prevailing belief that an imbalance caused illness. Of course, if Elizabeth was anemic, bleeding her would only have exacerbated the problem.

At this time Elizabeth was thinking of her aunt, Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, mother of the unfortunate Edmund da la Pole, and the Courtenays. Her privy purse expenses record: “Item, for a pair of buskins for the Duchess of Suffolk, 4s. [£100]. Item, to William Gentleman, page of the Queen’s chamber, for carrying of two bucks from Windsor to London, the twenty-fourth Day of [January], one to the Duchess of Suffolk, &c., 5s.4d. [£130].” That month also, hearing that Lord Henry Courtenay had fallen sick, Elizabeth outlaid 10s. [£250] to a surgeon, Richard Bullock, for medicines.⁵¹

Henry VII, having a “singular and special devotion” to the Virgin Mary, had decided to build a splendid new Lady Chapel at the east end of Westminster Abbey as a shrine for Henry VI, whom he had tried—so far unsuccessfully—to have canonized. It was not originally intended as a mausoleum for the Tudor dynasty, for from 1496 the King had made payments for the rebuilding of Henry III’s thirteenth-century chapel of St. Edward at Windsor Castle as a “tomb house” for the anticipated shrine to Henry VI; and here, he had decided, he and his Queen and their royal descendants would be laid to rest. The old chapel at Windsor lay to the east of the new St. George’s Chapel, which was begun by Elizabeth’s father, Edward IV, and continued by Henry VII, who completed the choir and nave.

But in 1498, in response to a protest by the monks of Westminster, who wanted the relics of Henry VI moved from St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, to their abbey, the King agreed that his uncle should be buried there. Between 1498 and 1502 he had the thirteenth-century Lady Chapel at Westminster demolished, along with the chapel of St. Erasmus—founded two decades earlier by Elizabeth Wydeville—in which lay Anne Mowbray, Duchess of York.⁵²

In July 1501, Henry commissioned his tomb at Windsor, and work proceeded there until January 1503, when he changed his mind and decided that he and Elizabeth would rest in a tomb in the center of the new Lady Chapel at Westminster, before the principal altar; and that he would have Henry VI’s remains moved to a new shrine at the east end as soon as the saintly king had been canonized.

In his will of 1509,⁵³ Henry gave the reason for his change of heart as the fact that his grandmother, Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, was buried at Westminster: she had been laid to rest in the original Lady Chapel. Yet when that chapel was demolished, and her open coffin placed aboveground beside the tomb of Henry V, Henry VII made no effort to have it reburied or to erect a new monument. In fact, as Stow noted in 1598, her remains “remaineth aboveground in a coffin of boards behind the east end of the presbytery,”⁵⁴ where they stayed on public view until 1777. But Henry VII had a more important reason for wishing to be buried in Westminster Abbey. It was the church in which English sovereigns had been crowned since 1066; it housed the shrine of the sainted King Edward the Confessor, around which many kings and queens were buried; and interment there would serve to reinforce the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty. Here, according to a Latin inscription placed later around the tomb built for him, he “established a sepulchre for himself, and for his wife, his children, and his house,” where he and his descendants would lie in glory for eternity.

Accordingly the building materials were moved from Windsor to Westminster, where, on January 24, 1503, the foundation stone of the new Lady Chapel was laid on the King’s behalf by Abbot John Islip, whereupon construction began, probably to the design of Robert Janyns and the brothers Robert and William Vertue, three of the King’s most accomplished master masons.⁵⁵

Henry took a great interest in his new chapel; he wanted it to be as sanctified a place as the chapel of St. Edward the Confessor, which lay behind the high altar and housed the shrine and the abbey’s most precious relics. In his will he gave orders that “the walls, doors, windows, arches and vaults, and images of our chapel, within and without, be painted, garnished, and adorned with our arms, badges, cognizants, and other convenient painting, in as goodly and rich a manner as such a work requireth”;⁵⁶ these may be seen today—the leopards of England, Tudor roses, the red dragon of Cadwaladr, crowned fleurs-de-lis, Yorkist falcons and fetterlocks, Richmond greyhounds, Lancastrian collars of SS knots and broom pods, Beaufort portcullises, crowned yales, antelopes and marguerites (for Margaret Beaufort), and hawthorn bushes to commemorate the finding of the crown on Bosworth field, indeed the whole panoply of contemporary royal imagery—adorning every surface. Elizabeth’s badge is among the Tudor emblems that embellish the gates to the chapel. Henry obtained two relics, a piece of the True Cross and a leg bone of St. George, for the small altar that originally stood at the foot of the tomb but was destroyed in 1643.

No effort was spared to make the new Lady Chapel a magnificent resting place for the founder of the Tudor dynasty and his Queen. When it was finished—the main structure was completed by 1509, and the rest by ca. 1512—it was a marvel of late Perpendicular architecture and one of the most splendid royal chapels ever built. Henry VII lavished great gifts on it—tapestries, furnishings, plate, and crucifixes—making it a fittingly sumptuous burial place. Awed by its wondrous fan-vaulting, its intricate sculpture, and its elegant bay windows filled with brilliant glass painted by the royal glazier, Bernard Flower, which echo the oriels in King Henry’s Tower at Windsor, John Leland was to call it “this orbis miraculum”: this “wonder of the world.”

But the Queen would not live to see it.

As Elizabeth’s baby was not due until the middle of February, the King decided they would spend Candlemas together at the Tower. On January 26, Elizabeth and her sister Katherine came by river from Richmond to Westminster,⁵⁷ where the King was waiting for them. Later that day they were all taken by barge to the Tower.⁵⁸

The Tower must have held mixed memories for Elizabeth. It had been her father’s favorite palace, and a place of refuge to her and her relatives in childhood and in recent years, yet it must also have been associated in her mind with danger and uncertainty—and with the disappearance of her brothers. Here, the previous May, Tyrell had made his confession before going to the scaffold. Here, on Tower Green, Lord Hastings had been done to death in that distant, turbulent summer of 1483. Here, the doomed Stanley had been held, as well as Warbeck and her cousin Warwick. Here, now, her brother-in-law Courtenay was a prisoner.

The fourteenth-century royal apartments were in the Lanthorn Tower, and overlooked the River Thames. In 1501, Henry VII had begun extending these lodgings, adding a bedchamber, a privy closet, and a square new tower—the “King’s Tower”—with a private chamber, a library, and large windows over the river.⁵⁹ The medieval Queen’s Lodgings, where Elizabeth stayed in 1503, lay at right angles to the Lanthorn Tower, extending south from the Wardrobe Tower by the White Tower. Timber-framed, with brick foundations and gable ends, they included a great chamber, dining chamber, bedchamber, and an outer chamber adjoining the jewel house to the west, with the Queen’s arraying chamber next to it on the east side; at the north end, steps led down to a privy and an outer entrance.⁶⁰ At the south end this range connected with the King’s apartments and the new tower, completed only six weeks before the royal couple’s arrival.

The Queen was expected to pay £10 [£4,860] to the officers of the royal mint at the Tower, which was customary whenever a member of the royal family stayed there, but she did not have the money and so had to borrow it from one of the King’s gentleman ushers.⁶¹ A carpenter, William Trend, was paid 10s. [£240] for making a chest and armoire (cupboard) for the Elizabeth’s council chamber in the Tower, so she could store her books and papers. Henry Roper, page of the Queen’s beds, was paid 16d. [£30] for the work he did over two days to prepare her apartments for her coming. Her chamber was hung with blue tapestries embellished with fleurs-de-lis of gold.⁶² On January 31 a poor woman came to the Tower with some fine capons for the Queen, and was rewarded with 3s.4d. [£80]. Elizabeth gave her fool Patch 6s.8d. [£160] to buy some very costly oranges, pomegranates, and other fruits. She sent a man to make an offering on her behalf to Our Lady of Willesden. Late in January she was at Coldharbour, where she paid the keeper for “wine and fire.” Possibly she had hoped to see Margaret Beaufort, but found her absent.⁶³

Elizabeth was still at the Tower when her baby came ten days early, on February 2, 1503. It was Candlemas Day, when the King and Queen customarily donned robes of state and went in procession to Mass to celebrate this feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary. Elizabeth’s privy purse expenses record that she made her offering at the high altar that morning, probably in the Norman chapel of St. John the Evangelist in the White Tower, and that a doe had been delivered for her “against Candlemas Day,”⁶⁴ so it must have been later in the day that she “travailed of child suddenly.”⁶⁵

Her premature labor clearly took everyone by surprise, for “she had intended to have been delivered at Richmond.”⁶⁶ If it was a consequence of iron-deficiency anemia, that would account for the absence of any record of the Queen taking to her chamber. Fortunately, Alice Massey, her usual midwife, was able to attend her, having probably already been installed in her household. As usual, Alice received £10 [£4,860] for her services.⁶⁷ There was also a nurse in attendance, to whom the King paid £3.6s.8d. [£1,620]. This was the first royal birth to take place in the Tower since that of Blanche de la Tour, a short-lived daughter of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, in 1341, and no royal baby would be born there after this one.

Henry VII, who had lost two of his three sons in less than two years, must have been anxious to have another, but “upon Candlemas Day, in the night following the day, the King and Queen then being lodged in the Tower of London, the Queen was delivered of a daughter.”⁶⁸ It had apparently been a difficult birth: Thomas More wrote soon afterward that the Queen’s pleasure in her honor and wealth was “doubled with pain” and that she had “endured more woe than wealth” in great sorrow and distress.⁶⁹ It is clear from the rest of his verses (reproduced in full in Chapter 18) that he was referring to her confinement, and not to her life in general, as he represents that as full of joy and prosperity.

On the day of his daughter’s birth Henry VII made an offering of 6s.8d. [£160] to Our Lady of Barking⁷⁰—the Royal Chapel of Our Lady in the churchyard of All Hallows Barking by the Tower, a church founded by Barking Abbey in Saxon times; the chapel had been founded by Richard I and made a royal chantry chapel by Elizabeth’s father, Edward IV, and it contained a beautiful image of the Virgin Mary that was said to work miracles.⁷¹

The baby, who was evidently weak, was “upon the Saturday following christened within the parish church of the Tower and named Katherine,”⁷² possibly after Katherine of York,⁷³ then in attendance on Elizabeth, or Katherine of Valois, the King’s maternal grandmother, or Katherine of Aragon.⁷⁴ The new princess’s baptism in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula is not described by any source, so was probably of necessity low-key. On February 8 the King ordered a woolen mattress and down pillows for the cradle of “Katherine, our right dear daughter,” as well as furnishings for the bedchambers of her nurse and rockers.⁷⁵

On February 9, a week after the birth, Elizabeth became ill. The following day the King summoned a physician all the way from Plymouth,⁷⁶ so evidently there was thought to be no urgency at this stage. The Queen was perhaps developing puerperal fever, then known as “childbed fever,” a common—and often dangerous—ailment of postpartum women in those days. It was a bacterial infection of the placental site caused by poor hygiene during childbirth—dirty hands, instruments, and cloths—and if untreated could invade the bloodstream and cause puerperal sepsis, a form of septicemia. Sufferers could experience severe pelvic pain, a rising or recurring fever, headaches, insomnia, an offensive discharge, and increasing debility. Without antibiotics, there was no effective treatment. One could only wait for the crisis to pass.

Another possibility is that Elizabeth was suffering the consequences of iron-deficiency anemia, which could have accounted for her premature labor and the fact that her baby was frail, and left her at risk of postpartum hemorrhage, another possible effect of the condition. This can occur up to six weeks after delivery, even if the mother is not anemic; other causes are infection or retention of the products of conception. Anemia can also cause fever, rigors, and an abnormally accelerated heart rate. In those days—as in undeveloped countries today—it would have been a major cause of maternal mortality. Anemia can also lead to circulatory shock and death in a newly delivered mother.

The Queen’s condition quickly worsened. On the night of February 10 the King ordered one James Nattres to hasten down to Kent to summon her physician, Dr. Hallysworth (or Aylesworth) from his home at Gravesend, and paid for boat hire, watermen to wait for him at Gravesend, and horses and guides “by night and day” to speed his way with lighted torches.⁷⁷ Worsening fever, postpartum hemorrhage, or the symptoms of shock would explain the desperate urgency suggested by these entries in the Queen’s accounts. Hallysworth came hastening through the night, but he arrived too late. Elizabeth of York, “the most virtuous princess and gracious Queen,” died while “lying in childbed” early in the morning of Saturday, February 11, her thirty-seventh birthday.⁷⁸

She would not have been alone at her passing: besides her husband, a chaplain would have been summoned to give her the last rites and to read devotional texts, and her attendants and servants would have gathered around the bed, it being customary for the dying to be continuously watched over. But it is unlikely that her children were present.

The Queen’s “departing was as heavy and dolorous to the King as ever was seen or heard of, and likewise to all estates of his realm, as well citizens as commons, for she was one of the most gracious and best-beloved princesses in the world in her time being.”⁷⁹Having delegated his mother, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Richard Guildford, Comptroller of the Household, to arrange the funeral,⁸⁰ Henry ordered a barge to convey him to Richmond. He “took with him certain of his secretest, and privily departed to a solitary place to pass his sorrow, and would that no man should resort to him but such [as] His Grace appointed.”⁸¹ Tradition dictated that he would not attend his wife’s funeral. On March 15 he ordered a new velvet cloth of estate of blue, the color of royal mourning. He had books bound in blue velvet, and mourning attire of blue and black, and he came only gradually out of mourning well after a year had passed.⁸²

Coming just ten months after the death of his son, the loss of the wife who had comforted him after bearing the child who was to have been their mutual consolation, was a heavy blow to bear. And if there had indeed been a rift between them during the last months of her life, his grief may have been tinged with guilt or remorse. He would now abandon the Tower, where she had died, ensuring its decline as a royal residence; in the future, monarchs would only lodge there prior to their coronations, as tradition decreed. The ancient fortress became more of “an armory and house of munition, and a place for the safekeeping of offenders, than a palace royal for a king or queen to sojourn in,”⁸³ and within a hundred years of Elizabeth’s death the apartments she had occupied were ruinous. Only the remains of stone walls survive today, while the present Lanthorn Tower is a late Victorian reconstruction, the original having been gutted by fire in 1774.

Presently the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral tolled out for the Queen, and as their mournful chimes were taken up by all the London churches and religious houses, orders went out to every parish and monastery in the kingdom to have masses sung for the repose of her soul. Soon afterward, “throughout the realm” there were “solemn dirges and Masses of requiems.” In London alone, on the day after her death, 636 masses were offered up for her on the King’s orders, and at Walsingham fifty-six pounds of wax candles were burned as the monks prayed for her.⁸⁴ Knowing how beloved Elizabeth had been by her household, the King sent Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert, and Sir Richard Guildford to afford “the best comfort that hath been seen of a sovereign lord” to all the Queen’s servants, “with good words.”⁸⁵

After Elizabeth’s body had been washed, dressed in her robes of estate, and laid out on her bed, her children were brought to pay their respects and say good-bye. On the day after her death, four yards of flannel for swaddling bands was purchased for her motherless infant, “my Lady Katherine, the King’s daughter,” as well as a pair of black sarcenet mourning sleeves for the young Queen Margaret, who had evidently been close to her mother in these past months. According to the evidence in Elizabeth’s accounts, they had offered together at Mass, and Margaret walked only a pace behind Elizabeth at court.⁸⁶ Young Mary was dressed in mourning too; in June she was wearing dark blue damask banded with velvet, white stockings, and tawny silk ribbons.⁸⁷ Prince Henry was provided with mourning attire of black cloth furred with lambskin, a cloak of black velvet, and black hose, shoes, and gloves—twelve pairs of each.⁸⁸

In 1494, Henry VII had drawn up ordinances for the mourning of a queen, and now, since he was incapacitated by grief, it may have been Margaret Beaufort who drew up new ones specifying in minute detail the size and design of hoods, trains, and formal surcoats that were to be worn.⁸⁹ The court was plunged into black, with over nine thousand yards of black cloth supplied to the Great Wardrobe by Richard Smythe, yeoman of the Queen’s robes; Thomas Mounte, John Lewis, William Smith, John Kirkby, and Thomas Spight, merchant tailors; William Bailly, mercer; Richard Conhill, John Copland, and others, intended for the households of the King, Queen, their children, the nobility, and two hundred “poor folk” who would each carry “a weighty torch” in the funeral procession. It was said to be “the greatest livery of black gowns that ever was seen in our day,” and cost £1,483.15s.10d. [£721,270].⁹⁰

On the day she died, Elizabeth’s body was embalmed by the Sergeant of the Chandlery, who had been supplied with “sixty broad ells of Holland cloth, forty ells of lining Holland cloth for the cerecloth, gums, balms, spices, sweet wine” and 156 pounds of wax. The corpse would have been washed with wine and rosewater, anointed with balm and perfumed with spices, then “cered”—wrapped tightly in cloth cut into strips soaked in the molten wax. When that had set, “the King’s plumber closed her in lead, with an epitaph likewise in lead showing who and what she was. The whole was chested in boards [a wooden coffin] covered with black velvet with a cross of white damask.” The coffin was made of holly wood.⁹¹

The Queen’s obsequies lasted for two weeks, and it was “within the parish church of the Tower,” the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, that “her corpse lay for eleven days,”⁹² having been carried there on Sunday, February 12, the day after her death.⁹³ The coffin was borne by persons of the highest rank, with a canopy held over it by four knights; it was followed by Lady Elizabeth Stafford, first lady of the bedchamber, the ladies and maids of honor, and every member of the Queen’s household, walking two by two, “dressed in their plainest gowns,” as their new mourning garments were not yet ready. The stained-glass windows of the chapel had been lined with black crepe and its walls hung with black silk damask; it was lit by the flickering flames of five hundred tall candles. The coffin was placed on a bier before the altar, then, acting as chief mourner, Katherine, Countess of Devon, entered the chapel with her brother-in-law, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. Katherine took her place at the head of Elizabeth’s body, and remained there while Mass was celebrated and the offerings were made, after which she retired.⁹⁴ She must have been deeply grieved at the loss of the sister who had so generously succored her through the past months, and to whom she was obviously close.

Cecily, the sister nearest to the Queen in age, who should have taken precedence before Anne and Katherine, and who had been prominent at court in 1501, was not present at Elizabeth’s lying-instate—but Cecily was still in disgrace. Neither she nor Anne were in attendance on Elizabeth in the weeks leading up to her confinement, and although they were to attend her funeral, Katherine would again act as chief mourner. Cecily’s presence in the funeral procession might suggest that the King had relented in their shared grief and allowed her to join her sisters on this occasion.

Surrounded by eight hundred burning tapers, the Queen’s coffin lay in state, watched over by six ladies at all times, with Katherine Courtenay a constant presence during many of the vigils. They wore the “most sad and simplest clothing that they had, on their heads threaden kerchiefs hanging on their shoulders and close under their chins, and this daily until their [mourning] slops [kirtles], mantles, hoods and paris (partlets [yoyes]?) were made” ready for the funeral.⁹⁵ Katherine’s train, borne by Elizabeth Stafford, was as long as a duchess’s, and she was always attended by Surrey and ladies and gentlemen of the court. “The other gentlewomen gave way to their betters, but the chief mourner kneeled at the head [of the bier] alone, and thus they continued their watch.” Bishops said Mass on three consecutive days, and during the night watches an officer-at-arms recited a paternoster (the Lord’s Prayer) for the soul of the Queen at every Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy, a prayer invoking God), at Oremus (the invitation to prayer), and before Collect (a short general prayer). At the offering, Katherine “was led by two of the greatest estate present, and the noblest gave her the offering, the chamberlains and officers-at-arms marshaling her.”⁹⁶

Not a stone’s throw away from the chapel where Elizabeth reposed in state lay buried the chest in which the bones that almost certainly belonged to her lost brothers were rotting away.