2

“Madame la Dauphine”

After Tewkesbury the long-standing rivalry between Lancaster and York was thought to have been consigned to history, and Christmas of 1471 was kept splendidly at Westminster, with a disguising and a great banquet for the Lord Mayor of London and the City fathers. The Queen was excused from the customary wearing of her crown because she was expecting another child.

Edward IV was finally established on his throne, and settled down to rule England firmly and well. Having seen the splendors of Bruges during his exile, he was even more determined to emulate the Burgundian court, and its influence was greatest during this latter part of his reign. In 1472 he had the “Black Book” drawn up, the first set of ordinances to regulate English court ceremonial details and etiquette, and in them the influence of Burgundy was manifest. Edward’s purpose was to create a display of magnificence, as Burgundian custom dictated. From now on there would be two households at court: abovestairs, so to speak, the Lord Chamberlain’s department, “the King’s house of magnificence”; and belowstairs the Lord Steward’s department, the “house of providence.” Edward IV was determined to impress foreign visitors, and his own subjects, with the outer trappings of majesty, and observers were struck by his extravagance, his luxurious “chambers of pleasaunce” hung with rich hangings, the ostentatious clothes he wore, the costly jewels, and the sumptuousness of his table. All of this made a lasting impression on the young Elizabeth, who was herself to preside over a splendid court based on the Burgundian model, upon which her own tastes were probably influential.

Mancini described Edward IV as gentle and cheerful by nature. Courtesy and the common touch came as naturally to him as it did to Warwick, his mentor. Elizabeth inherited these qualities from her father, who was “easy of access to his friends, even the least notable. He was so genial in his greeting that if he saw a newcomer bewildered at his royal magnificence, he would give him courage to speak by laying a kindly hand upon his shoulder.” But Edward had another side to him: “should he assume an angry countenance, he could be very terrible to beholders,”¹ and as terrifying as his grandson, Henry VIII, who much resembled him.

Gone was the glorious youth of Edward’s earlier years. The father Elizabeth came to know as she grew up, and to whom she became close, was losing his handsome looks. By 1475 the athletic warrior was “a little inclining to corpulence,”² and thereafter he would become increasingly obese, thanks to a life of unbridled excess and gluttony. “In food and drink he was most immoderate; it was his habit to take an emetic for the delight of gorging his stomach once more. For this reason, he had grown fat in the loins, whereas previously he had been not only tall, but rather lean and very active.”³ Elizabeth, herself fond of good living, would also put on weight as she approached her thirties.

Despite his overindulgent habits, Edward did not lose his grip on affairs. “This prince, although he was thought to have indulged his passions and desires too intemperately, was still a most devout Catholic, a most unsparing enemy to all heretics, and a most loving encourager of wise and learned men, and of the clergy. Men of every rank and condition wondered that a man of such corpulence, and so fond of boon companionship, vanities, debauchery, extravagance, and sensual enjoyments should have had a memory so retentive in all respects.”⁴

Edward kept three mistresses during these later years. Two were “greater personages” than the third, and “content to be nameless,” suggesting that the King’s affairs with them were conducted with discretion. “But the merriest was Shore’s wife, in whom the King therefore took special pleasure, for many he had, but her he loved.”⁵

Elizabeth must have known “Shore’s wife,” for she was prominent at court and had captivated the Londoners’ imagination, probably because she was one of them. Elizabeth (often inaccurately called Jane) Lambert had been born in the City and was “well married, somewhat too soon,” to “an honest citizen,” a goldsmith called William Shore. The marriage was annulled in 1476 on the grounds of his being “frigid and impotent,” which probably “the more easily made her incline unto the King’s appetite when he required her.” Edward experienced no difficulty in “piercing” Mistress Shore’s “soft, tender heart. Proper she was, and fair,” if rather short in stature, “yet delighted not men so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behavior, for a proper wit had she, and could both read and write. She never abused to any man’s hurt, but to many a man’s comfort and relief.”⁶ Sir Thomas More asserted that the Queen hated Elizabeth Shore, which would be understandable, although there is no record of her showing any animosity toward her in public.

Elizabeth could hardly have grown up unaware of her father’s promiscuity, since it was notorious. Her undoubted virtue may have masked a sensual nature like his, since she clearly enjoyed the finer things in life—good food, conspicuous display, rich clothing, jewelry, and courtly revels. But no one ever accused Elizabeth of promiscuity.

Edward IV had “many promoters and companions of his vices, the most important and especial [being] the relatives of the Queen, her two sons and one of her brothers.”⁷ This brother, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, was generally lauded as “a man of great valor.”⁸ Although elegantly fashionable and an accomplished jouster, he “was always considered a kind, serious and just man, and one tested by every vicissitude of life. Whatever his prosperity, he had injured nobody, though benefiting many.”⁹ That is debatable, for Rivers, like his father, Richard Wydeville, could be ruthless in the pursuit of his ambitions.

He was a complex man, ambitious yet deeply pious, to the extent of wearing a hair shirt beneath his fine attire. He traveled in Italy and made pilgrimages to Rome and the shrine of St. James at Compostela, and it was his unfulfilled life’s ambition to go on a crusade against the Infidel. Such was his reputation that Pope Sixtus IV appointed him Defender and Director of Papal Causes in England. Rivers was also an able military commander and diplomat.

An erudite scholar, the earl was to patronize William Caxton, who set up the first English printing press at Westminster in 1476. Caxton would print three devotional works that Rivers had translated, including The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, the first book ever printed in England. Elizabeth would have grown up familiar with Caxton’s work, for her father was also his patron and took the royal family to visit his shop, which originally stood south of Westminster Abbey’s Lady Chapel, but was moved in 1482 to premises in the Abbey Almonry, and became known as “the Red Pale.” No doubt Elizabeth grew up to have much respect and admiration for her highly cultivated and multitalented uncle, Rivers, and he must have been an early inspiration to her.

Elizabeth’s half brothers—Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and Sir Richard Grey—the King’s other companions in his debaucheries, were the sons of her mother’s first marriage to Sir John Grey of Groby. William, Lord Hastings, the King’s chamberlain and loyal friend, “was also the accomplice and partner of [Edward IV’s] privy pleasures. He maintained a deadly feud with the Queen’s sons,” and not just over Mistress Shore, after whom Hastings and Dorset both secretly lusted.¹⁰

The Wydevilles were riding high, and that was the way they intended things to continue. From the first, the young Prince Edward’s household was in their control. The Queen appointed Elizabeth, Lady Darcy, lady mistress of the King’s nursery, with responsibility for the prince and a large staff of attendants.¹¹ Lady Darcy had been born Elizabeth Tyrell (c.1436–1507), the daughter of Sir Thomas Tyrell (a distant relation of the Sir James Tyrell who was to play a fateful role in Elizabeth’s life); as the widow of Sir Robert Darcy, after November 1469 she remarried; her second husband was Richard Haute, esquire (1434–87), son of Sir Richard Haute of Ightham Mote, Kent, a cousin of the Queen; in 1473 the elder Haute was to be appointed one of the councilors of the Prince of Wales and controller of the prince’s household.

In June 1471, Avice Welles, a widow, was appointed nurse to the infant prince. The baby had his own household officers, and his chamberlain, Thomas Vaughan, was deputed to carry his young master at public ceremonies. The Queen’s brother, Lionel Wydeville, was appointed chaplain to the heir. That June young Edward was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, and on July 3, King Edward made his privy councilors swear an oath of loyalty to the little boy as the “very undoubted son and heir of our sovereign lord”; foremost among those who did so were young Edward’s uncles, the dukes of Gloucester and Clarence.

The King might have been immersed in debauchery, but unstained virtue was expected of his womenfolk, and his daughters were brought up to be pious and morally irreproachable. The “blind poet”¹² and friar, Bernard André, Henry VII’s admiring chronicler and court poet, could not “pass over in silence the praiseworthy and commendable acts of [Elizabeth] while she was still a girl. She had manifested from her infancy an admirable fear and devotion toward God; toward her parents a truly wonderful obedience; toward her brothers and sisters an unbounded love; and toward the poor and ministers of Christ a reverent and singular affection, instilled in her from childhood.” This was no mere flattery, for these were qualities and bonds that were to be plainly evident all Elizabeth’s life.

By five or six she had begun her formal education, which followed a conventional pattern. Girls, even princesses, were traditionally destined to be wives and mothers, and they were educated to that end. As women were held to be morally and intellectually inferior to men, honesty and chastity were considered far more important than learning. Only slowly was the idea becoming accepted that an educated woman could also be a virtuous one. It was royalty and the aristocracy who led the way: in an age in which most women were illiterate, privileged well-born girls were taught to read and write. Thus they were better equipped to run the great castles and houses of which they would one day be mistress. They could write their own letters and wills, and their minds were broadened by reading manuscripts and the new printed books.

Edward IV was a noted collector of richly illustrated manuscripts and books, and it was arguably he who founded the royal library, or at least reestablished it. He encouraged in his eldest daughter a love of books. A devotional volume, now in the British Library, is inscribed in her own hand: “This book is mine, Elizabeth, the King’s daughter.”¹³ As has been noted, Edward IV, the patron of Caxton, was also deeply immersed in the Arthurian legends and the cult of St. George, both of which underpinned English court culture; he was interested too in the history of ancient Rome and the medieval science of alchemy. His intellectual influence on his daughter was clearly pivotal.

Elizabeth grew up to be “learned and wise.”¹⁴ She and her sisters were taught the skills and accomplishments that were considered appropriate for future queens, skills that would enable them to grace royal courts and equip them to run great households and extensive estates. Much of this was acquired by observing and learning from their mother, their lady mistresses, and the gentlewomen in charge of them. They had to learn what today we would call managerial skills: the ability to wield authority over their servants, manage budgets, and delegate to the officers who assisted them in their vast responsibilities. To do this they needed to be literate and numerate.

Elizabeth was taught to read and write. Her signature bears a strong resemblance to her mother’s, suggesting that Elizabeth Wydeville took an active role in her education, much as her daughter would when it came to her own children. Elizabeth seems to have been more literate than her sister Cecily, whose handwriting and spelling were atrocious,¹⁵ even in an age in which spelling and grammar were not uniform.

A much later source, “The Song of Lady Bessy” (see Chapter 6), asserts that Elizabeth could “indite” (compose) and “full well read both English and also French and also Spanish,” but this was an exaggeration, if not an invention. In 1488 a Spanish ambassador reported that she could not read letters in Spanish, and ten years afterward she insisted that her future daughter-in-law spoke French when she came to England, as she herself did not understand Latin (which was not taught to women before the reign of her son, Henry VIII), much less Spanish.¹⁶ French was seen as a desirable accomplishment among the upper classes, but the evidence suggests that Elizabeth understood it better than she spoke it, for when she received Italian ambassadors in 1497, she struggled to converse with them in French and needed an interpreter.¹⁷

Her daily curriculum was probably similar in many respects to that laid down by her father in 1473 for her brother, Prince Edward. Edward was to spend his days “in such virtuous learning as his age shall suffer to receive” and be read “such noble stories as behoveth a prince to understand and know.” Afternoons were to be spent at lessons or in such recreation as was suitable for “the eschewing of idleness.” Elizabeth would not have been expected to practice the “convenient disports and exercises” thought necessary for a prince, but she would have been taught dancing, horsemanship, music, and needlework instead.¹⁸

Elizabeth Wydeville would also have exercised some intellectual influence on her children, especially her daughters. A patron of education and poor scholars, she refounded Queen’s College, Cambridge, in 1465, when its name was changed to Queens’ College.¹⁹She also patronized William Caxton, who dedicated The Knight of the Tower to her in 1484. Books were luxury items, often bequeathed in wills, and Elizabeth Wydeville owned or commissioned several, notably Caxton’s Receuil of the Histories of Troy, his tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece (which she gave to the Prince of Wales), and an illuminated book of devotions, “The Hours of the Guardian Angel,” dedicated to a queen called Elizabeth. It was once thought that this book was presented to Elizabeth of York, but it has been dated on artistic style to 1475–83.²⁰

At Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, there is a beautiful illustrated vellum manuscript of the “Hours of Our Lady,” dating from 1470–85; it is signed “Elysabeth Plantaegenet” and inscribed in a later hand “the Queen.” It has been suggested that it was once owned by Elizabeth Wydeville and passed by her to her daughter, but Elizabeth Wydeville would not have used the surname Plantagenet, which is how Elizabeth of York might have signed herself before her father’s death. Thus it probably came into the latter’s possession prior to 1483; her signature also appears on another page.²¹

Elizabeth may jointly have owned “The Romance of the San Graal,” a costly illuminated manuscript of French romances that included the legends of King Arthur. It dated from ca.1315–25 and had once been in the library of King Charles V of France. Acquired by the Roos family, it was bequeathed in 1482 by Sir Richard Roos to his niece, the Queen’s damsel and kinswoman, Eleanor Haute. It bears four signatures: one is that of Joan, Elizabeth Wydeville’s sister; another is “E. Wydevyll,” who was probably their brother, Sir Edward Wydeville, as the Queen is unlikely to have signed herself in this way. The other signatures are those of “Elysabeth the kyngys dowther” and “Cecyl the kyngys dowther,” probably written before April 1483. Since it is unlikely that the book was owned by all four signatories, it may have been shared by Edward Wydeville with his sister and nieces.²²

Elizabeth owned another manuscript, the “Testament de Amyra Sultan Nicchemedy, Empereur des Turcs,” which tells the story of the sultan’s attempted conquest of Aleppo and subsequent death and obsequies. It bears the date “12 Sept. 1481” on the title page, and is bound in dark leather stamped with a fleur-de-lis, an appropriate emblem, considering that Elizabeth was then Dauphine of France. The title page also bears the signatures “Elysabeth the kyngys dowghter Boke” and “Cecyl the kyngys dowghter.”²³

Elizabeth was thus inculcated from childhood not only with devotional works, but also with the precepts of chivalry and courtly love, which informed the popular romances and histories of the age and heavily influenced aristocratic and court culture. Yet there was laughter as well as learning in the young princess’s life. No doubt she and her siblings enjoyed the antics and jests of her father’s fool, the disreputable John Scoggin, as much as the King and Queen did.²⁴

Meanwhile the royal family was expanding. On April 10, 1472, Elizabeth Wydeville bore a fourth daughter, Margaret, at Windsor Castle.²⁵ Three months later, at Westminster, the Duke of Gloucester married Warwick’s daughter and co-heiress, Anne Neville, the widow of Prince Edward of Lancaster. Her sister and co-heiress, Isabella, was already the wife of Richard’s older brother, George, Duke of Clarence.

Richard and Anne had probably known each other as children, as he had been raised in Warwick’s household for some years. She was a great prize in the marriage market, for she brought with her half of the vast Warwick estates. After her first husband was slain at Tewkesbury, Richard asked the King for her hand, “but this did not suit his brother, the Duke of Clarence, who caused the damsel to be concealed, as he was afraid of a division of the earl’s property, which he wished to come to himself alone in right of his wife. Still, however, the craftiness of Gloucester so far prevailed that he discovered the young lady in the City of London, disguised in the habit of a cook-maid.” Then “violent dissension” arose between the brothers, but the King ruled that Gloucester should marry Anne and that the Warwick estates were to be divided by arbitrators.²⁶ The settlement Richard received on his marriage gave him a great landed inheritance—much to Clarence’s fury.

In September 1472, Elizabeth, now six, was at Windsor Castle, one of the foremost royal residences in England. A great fortress had stood here since the days of William I, the Conqueror, and successive monarchs had embellished and enlarged it, converting it into a splendid palace. In the fourteenth century, Edward III had built a stately and luxurious range of stone lodgings on the north side of the quadrangle in the upper ward, and converted the old ones in the lower ward into a college dedicated to St. George. To achieve this and create the perfect setting for his court and his new Order of the Garter, he spent unprecedented sums.

Edward III’s palace was rather outdated now, and soon to be modernized by Edward IV. To the south of the main quadrangle, which served as the tournament ground, stood St. George’s Hall, a masterpiece of Gothic splendor with its seventeen tall arched windows and the Royal Chapel. To the north there were separate sets of first-floor “Great Chambers” for the King and Queen, arranged around two inner courtyards, Brick Court and Horn Court. Their children were probably lodged in separate apartments overlooking the quadrangle.²⁷ In 1475, Edward IV gave orders for work to begin on a new chapel dedicated to St. George, inspired perhaps by the collegiate church at Fotheringhay, a Yorkist foundation—and by the desire to eclipse Henry VI’s sepulchre at Chertsey.²⁸ It was here that Edward intended to be buried.

Elizabeth was present with several great lords and ladies at a banquet given at Windsor by the Queen in honor of Louis, Lord of Gruthuyse and Governor of Holland, who had offered the King shelter and hospitality in Bruges during his exile. When Edward brought Gruthuyse to her mother’s withdrawing room, Elizabeth was among the ladies with whom the Queen was playing at marteaux (marbles) and “closheys” (ninepins), “which sight was full pleasant.” Then “King Edward danced with my Lady Elizabeth, his eldest daughter.”

The following evening, after the King had dined with his guest, “the Queen did ordain a grand banquet in her own apartments, at which King Edward, her eldest daughter [Elizabeth], the Duchess of Exeter [Edward IV’s sister Anne], the Lady Rivers [Elizabeth’s aunt, Mary FitzLewes], and the Lord of Gruthuyse all sat with her at one mess [course]; and at another table sat the Duke of Buckingham, my lady his wife [Katherine Wydeville], my Lord Hastings,” and other nobles. “And when they had supped, my Lady Elizabeth danced with the Duke of Buckingham.” This was her cousin, seventeen-year-old Henry Stafford, who was descended from the youngest son of King Edward III. He was to play a fateful role in Elizabeth’s future.

After the dancing, Elizabeth was probably with the ladies who accompanied the King and Queen when they paid their guest the honor of conducting him to the apartments that had been made ready for him. When the ladies withdrew so that Gruthuyse could have a bath, Elizabeth was probably sent to bed. The next day, the court returned to Westminster.²⁹

Elizabeth’s baby sister Margaret did not thrive. She died, aged eight months, on December 11, 1472, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in an altar tomb of gray marble “at the altar end before St. Edward’s shrine,” which now stands between the tombs of Edward III and Richard II, having been moved here during the Reformation. The tomb brass and inscription plate have long vanished, but the Latin epitaph read: “Nobility and beauty, grace and tender youth are all hidden here in this chest of death.”³⁰

It was common in those days for children to learn about death at close quarters from an early age. It has been estimated that, even among the aristocracy, one in every five or six children died at birth or within a year.³¹ There were no antibiotics, and infections that can effectively be treated today could then be lethal. The risks were higher in crowded cities: with their polluted water supplies and accumulation of sewage, they were a breeding ground for diseases such as plague, especially in the summer. This was one of the reasons why royal children were given their own separate establishments in the country, well away from the risk of infection. Despite this precaution, three of Elizabeth’s own children would die young.

The high rate of infant mortality meant that Edward IV’s succession was not secure with just one male heir, so there was cause for rejoicing when the Queen bore a second son, named Richard, on August 17, 1473, at the Dominican Friary in Shrewsbury. This child lived, and was brought up with his sisters. In May 1474 he was created Duke of York, in honor of the grandfather whose name he bore.

Elizabeth was henceforth to see less of the Prince of Wales. In the autumn of 1473 the Queen took him to Ludlow Castle, where he was now to reside as nominal president of a newly created Council of Wales and the Marches. The little boy, now three, had his own household under the governance of his dependable uncle, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, to whom the King had “entrusted the care and direction” of his heir.³²

In May 1474, Edward IV drew up for Rivers specific rules governing the upbringing and education of his son and the management of his household. Actual responsibility for educating the prince was delegated to John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester. Young Edward “was brought up virtuously by virtuous men” and showed himself “remarkably gifted, and very well advanced in learning for his years.”³³

Elizabeth Wydeville’s influence was clear from the first. “Everyone as he was nearest of kin unto the Queen, so was planted next about the prince, whereby her blood might of youth be rooted in the prince’s favor.”³⁴ She was a member of young Edward’s council, which was headed by her brother Rivers and their cousin, Sir Richard Haute, and acted only “with the advice and express consent of the Queen.” She also had responsibility for nominating the officers who served her son.³⁵ This domination of the heir and his council by the Wydevilles was intended to secure their continuing power in the next reign,³⁶ but it would in time prove to be fateful for young Edward—and for Elizabeth and his other siblings.

The prince was not isolated from his family at Ludlow. He was often at court, especially at Christmas, so he would never have become a stranger to his sisters.³⁷ However, royal siblings were customarily split asunder, for it was expected that the girls would leave court to marry great princes or lords in pursuance of their father’s policies. In October 1474, under the terms of a treaty signed in Edinburgh, Cecily of York, aged five, was betrothed to the future James IV of Scots, then only two years old,³⁸ “in the interests of peace.” Edward was planning an invasion of France, and did not want Scotland, France’s old ally, to cause trouble, so this betrothal was arranged to preempt that. On December 26 the formal ceremony of betrothal took place in Edinburgh with a proxy standing in for Cecily, and from this time she was styled “the Princess of Scots.”

Elizabeth’s destiny seemed settled when she was eleven and the King arranged a most prestigious marriage for her. That summer, having invaded France and determined to conquer it, he found himself abandoned by his allies, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and Francis II, Duke of Brittany, and settled instead for coming to terms with Louis XI, who had dangled the carrot of a lavish pension. On August 29, 1475, the two kings met on a bridge at Picquigny and parleyed through a wooden trellis. The result was the Treaty of Picquigny, which sealed a peace between England and France. One of the conditions of the treaty was that “for the inviolate observation of the friendship,” a marriage should be contracted between “the most serene Lady Elizabeth” and Louis’s son, the “most illustrious” Dauphin Charles, “when they shall reach marriageable years.” Another condition was that Edward would surrender to the Dauphin his claim to the duchy of Aquitaine, which had been lost during the Hundred Years War, and that it should be considered part of Elizabeth’s dower. After her marriage the French King would settle upon her rents to the annual value of £60,000 [£30 million] for her maintenance in a manner befitting the future Queen of France. This was fifteen times the dower settled on Elizabeth Wydeville, so the princess could look forward to a life of luxury. If she were to die before the wedding, her sister Mary was to take her place.³⁹

It was agreed that Elizabeth would go to France when she was twelve. Child marriages were made per verba de futoro—as a promise for the future—and it was anticipated that they would be consummated when the couple reached the age of consent, which was twelve for girls and fourteen for boys (unless the contract stipulated they should be older). These were also the respective minimum ages at which the Church sanctioned marital relations. Most royal and aristocratic girls of the period married between the ages of thirteen and sixteen—snapped up because of the advantages and status they would bring their husbands.

“Both the kings laid one of their hands upon the book, and both of them swore religiously that the marriage between their children should be consummated, as was stipulated by the treaty.”⁴⁰ Successfully negotiating this marriage was something of an achievement for Edward, for no English princess had ever become the bride of a King of France. This was the third time that Elizabeth had been offered in marriage as a means of resolving a conflict with one of her father’s enemies.

Her future husband was five years old, and four years her junior. He was King Louis’s only surviving son; his godfather had been Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales. The Dauphin lived at the chateau of Amboise, far from his father’s court, for his health, unlike that of his future bride, was poor. Although he had a pleasant disposition, he was stunted in height, feeble in body and mind, and many thought him too foolish to make a good king.

From the time of her betrothal, Elizabeth was addressed as “Madame la Dauphine” and treated with the honors due to a future Queen of France.⁴¹ Edward apportioned part of the hefty pension paid to him by King Louis for her maintenance as Dauphine, and rich gowns in the French fashion were made for her. She was probably told to work harder at her French lessons. Commines says that the King and Queen were deeply committed to this marriage, and that Elizabeth Wydeville’s pride was so inflated at the prospect of her daughter becoming Queen of France that she repeatedly inquired of King Louis to know when she should send him “her Dauphiness.”⁴²

Elizabeth had been brought up to know what was expected of her. She was probably familiar with Jacobus de Cessolis’s The Game and Play of Chess, published by Caxton in 1474 and dedicated to her uncle Clarence, and its description of the qualities expected of a queen: “A queen ought to be chaste, wise of honest people, well mannered, and not curious [anxious, odd] in nourishing of her children. Her wisdom ought not only to appear in feat and works, but also in speaking: that is, to wit, that she be secret and tell not such things as ought to be holden secret. Amongst all, she ought to be timorous and shamefast.” These were lessons Elizabeth learned well.

Another princess, Anne, was born to the Queen on November 2, 1475, at Westminster.⁴³ She was baptized in Westminster Abbey and given into the care of a nurse, Agnes Butler.⁴⁴ Elizabeth’s lady mistress, Lady Berners, died on December 18.⁴⁵

In July 1476 the King took his family to Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire. The Norman castle there had been granted by Edward III to his fifth son, Edmund of Langley, first Duke of York, in 1377. Edmund had endowed the college and church of St. Mary and All Saints, and for the next century and more Fotheringhay was one of the chief seats of the House of York. Edmund’s son, Edward of Aumale, Duke of York, had built the choir of the now vanished church in which he would later be buried, which he intended as a mausoleum for his family. In the early 1430s a parish church was built onto the collegiate church. The latter and the college buildings were demolished in 1553 during the Reformation, and the large parish church is what remains today, along with some unexcavated humps and hollows where the college quadrangle once stood. The Yorkist badge of the falcon and fetterlock can still be seen in the church, and the painted pulpit was probably a gift from Edward IV.

Elizabeth’s younger uncle, Gloucester, had been born in Fotheringhay Castle in 1452. Edward IV greatly loved Fotheringhay, which was his favorite residence outside London. He had enlarged the castle, and in building “very fair lodgings” for himself and his queen—including galleries, privies, turrets, and a new kitchen—had created a palace “fair and meetly strong” with a double moat and a towering gatehouse.⁴⁶

The royal family had returned to Fotheringhay to give their dead fitting burial. Elizabeth and Mary, the eldest, were probably the two unnamed daughters of the King who, clad in deep mourning—possibly of blue, the color of royal mourning, like that worn by their mother—were present at the somber ceremonies on July 29–30, when the bodies of their grandfather, the Duke of York, and their uncle, the Earl of Rutland, were brought from their humble resting place in the church of the Mendicant friars at Pontefract⁴⁷ and reinterred with all due honors in the collegiate church at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth had never known them, for they were killed at Wakefield in 1460.⁴⁸

On July 29, Elizabeth and her sister stood at the entrance to the churchyard, waiting to receive the cortege with their parents, the Duke of Clarence, the Marquess of Dorset, Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings, and other noblemen. An effigy of the late Duke of York, “garbed in an ermine furred mantle and cap of maintenance, covered with a cloth of gold,” lay on his coffin on a bier blazing with candles and guarded by an angel of silver bearing a crown of gold, to signify that he had been the rightful King of England. York’s youngest son, Richard of Gloucester, with other lords and officers of arms, all in black, followed the funeral chariot, which was drawn by six horses, wearing caparisons of black charged with the arms of France and England.

When the procession drew to a standstill, the King made an obeisance to his father’s coffin “right humbly and put his hand on the body and kissed it, crying all the time.” Then the processions of prelates and peers advanced into the church, where two hearses were waiting, one in the choir for the body of the duke and one in the Lady Chapel for that of the Earl of Rutland. The King retired to his “closet” while his brothers and the officers of arms stationed themselves around the hearses. Masses were sung and the King’s chamberlain, on his behalf, laid seven palls of cloth of gold “in a cross on the body.”

The next day, three funeral masses were celebrated. After their parents, the princesses bowed to the catafalques and offered Mass pennies at the altar rail, as did Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond. Then the bodies of York and Rutland were interred in the church, where tombs were later built to their memory.⁴⁹ After the committals, Elizabeth helped the King and Queen distribute alms among the five thousand people who had gathered at the church. It was said that twenty thousand were present at the feast that followed, which was served partly in the castle and partly in the King’s tents and pavilions.

Among the dishes were capons, cygnets, herons, and rabbits; the bill came to at least £300 [£151,400].

After concluding the treaty with Louis XI, Edward IV had sent an embassy laden with gold to Francis II, Duke of Brittany, asking him to send Henry Tudor back to England, in order to arrange a marriage for Henry that would unite the rival houses of York and Lancaster. This implied that one of the King’s younger daughters would be the intended bride. In fact Edward’s real purpose was to snare “the only imp now left of Henry VI’s brood” into his clutches.⁵⁰ In November 1476, Margaret Beaufort, guessing that this was a ruse to lure Henry back to England, and terrified lest he be abducted and killed, warned him not to return in the event of such a marriage being proposed for him.⁵¹ Henry feigned illness, and Duke Francis, divining a plot, committed his guest to sanctuary in a church in St. Malo.

Edward knew himself beaten, and for the rest of his life he paid Duke Francis to keep the exile in Brittany. The young man was treated “reasonably well,” but he “lived the life of a prisoner.”⁵² Very little is known about this period of Henry Tudor’s life, but he may have spent some of his enforced leisure imbuing himself with the Celtic culture of the duchy, which was similar to that of the Wales of his youth, and embracing the legends of King Arthur, set here in the forest of Broceliande, and of Tristan and Yseult.

In the winter of 1476, Edward IV opened negotiations for the marriage of his heir, the Prince of Wales, to the Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and Isabella, Queen of Castile, whose marriage had unified Spain, and both of whom were highly regarded in Europe. It was two years before these negotiations foundered, and ultimately it would be the Infanta’s youngest sister who married Elizabeth of York’s eldest son. A daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III of Habsburg, was then sought for young Edward, but “the chief difficulty” in regard to arranging a marriage for him was proving to be “the great quantity of money which the King of England will want.”⁵³

It was perhaps in March 1477 that Queen Elizabeth gave birth to a third son, George.⁵⁴ Joan, Baroness Dacre, wife of the Queen’s chamberlain, was appointed his nurse.⁵⁵ In 1478, George was designated Duke of Bedford, the title of which the hapless George Neville, Elizabeth’s former betrothed, had been deprived early that year, although there is no record of any formal creation.

In 1477 eleven-year-old Elizabeth, her mother the Queen, and her aunt, Elizabeth Plantagenet, Duchess of Suffolk, were all made Ladies of the Order of the Garter, and participated in the traditional three-day celebration. Elizabeth no doubt thrilled to see her father the King and his Knights Companions “all mounted on horseback in their habits of blue,” and on the “Grand Day,” St. George’s Day itself, she and her aunt rode with her mother and a company of ladies to the chapel to hear Mass, all wearing a “livery of murrey [mulberry red] embroidered with garters.”⁵⁶ Stalls were not allocated to Ladies of the Garter, so the royal women watched the service from the rood loft. Afterward, Elizabeth was present at the annual garter feast in St. George’s Hall, Windsor, presided over by Edward IV, who was enthroned in solitary state at the high table. Entering with her mother and the other ladies as the second course was borne in, Elizabeth ascended with them to the gallery at the west end of the hall and observed the proceedings from there.⁵⁷

The outward displays of unity by the Yorkist family masked divisions that would soon tear it asunder. Early in 1477, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had been killed at the Battle of Nancy, leaving his duchy in the hands of his only legitimate child, Mary of Burgundy. The dukes of Burgundy were descended from Charles V of France, but they had constantly striven for independence from the French crown. Now Louis XI promptly declared the duchy extinct on the grounds that it properly belonged to France.

Charles the Bold’s widow, Margaret of York, now schemed to marry her stepdaughter Mary to her brother George, Duke of Clarence, whom she loved more than any other member of her family; and naturally Clarence leapt at the idea, for if he married Mary, he would gain a great European fiefdom. However, such a scheme would seriously have prejudiced England’s alliance with France, Burgundy’s enemy, and Elizabeth’s marriage plans. It would also have given the untrustworthy, treacherous Clarence a rival power base on the Continent, with all the riches of Burgundy at his disposal as well as control over the North Sea coast; these resources could have enabled him to challenge his brother’s title to the English throne. Evidently this was what Edward IV feared, not least because a case—admittedly weak—could be made for Mary of Burgundy to claim the English throne, since she was descended from John of Gaunt. But the ambitious and headstrong Clarence was unlikely to bother with legal niceties.

Edward “threw all possible impediments in the way,”⁵⁸ but fortunately for him, Clarence’s schemes were immediately thwarted when Louis XI invaded the duchy and seized Burgundy “proper” (roughly the area now known as Burgundy today), Flanders, Artois, and Picardy. Edward no more wanted Louis ruling Burgundy than he did Clarence, but he was anxious to maintain the alliance with France, so he reminded Louis of the treaty of amity between them, reiterating his desire for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to the Dauphin. But Louis failed to respond with enthusiasm; he was suspicious of Edward’s motives, and proposed that the Dauphin be wed to Mary of Burgundy instead, to which Edward retaliated by offering her Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, as a husband. This kind of diplomatic maneuvering was common, even after marriage alliances had been concluded. Nothing was set in stone, and treaties could be broken or ignored if a more advantageous alliance presented itself. Elizabeth’s future was by no means certain.

In August 1477, thanks to Margaret’s efforts, Mary of Burgundy was married to the husband her father had chosen for her, Maximilian of Austria, son of the Emperor Frederick III. When Maximilian began vigorously resisting French aggrandizement, Louis came to believe that Edward IV—who was striving to remain neutral—meant to marry Elizabeth into the Imperial House with a view to forging a new Anglo-Burgundian alliance against France, and responded by planning strategies to avert that threat.

Thwarted of Burgundy, Clarence had forsaken the court and become aggressive and provocative, showing scant respect for his brother or the law, and before long he and Edward had “each begun to look upon the other with no fraternal eyes.”⁵⁹ On June 10, 1477, amid rumors that Clarence was again plotting rebellion, Elizabeth learned that her uncle had been arrested on her father’s orders and imprisoned in the Tower of London. She was probably too young to understand how he threatened the King politically, but she may have been aware that her father hated and feared him, and she would certainly have heard talk or gossip of the scandals that preceded his arrest. The year before, Clarence’s wife, Isabella Neville, died in childbirth, but he had subsequently accused the Queen of poisoning her by means of a servant, Ankarette Twynho. Elizabeth Wydeville was beyond his reach, but he had the unfortunate—and innocent—servant hanged. Then, when one of his affinity was executed for using sorcery against King Edward and the Prince of Wales, Clarence provocatively defended the man before the council, disparaging the King’s justice. That was a step too far for Edward, who responded accordingly. Clarence was to languish in the Tower for seven months.

Elizabeth and her sisters Mary and Cecily were present at yet another splendid royal occasion when, on January 15, 1478, their brother Richard, Duke of York, aged four, was married to the late Duke of Norfolk’s daughter and heiress, Anne Mowbray, aged five. By this marriage King Edward secured for his son the rich Norfolk estates. The wedding took place in St. Stephen’s Chapel in the Palace of Westminster. This narrow but beautiful Gothic chapel, built in the late thirteenth century in emulation of St. Louis IX’s La Sainte Chapelle in Paris, was two stories high, and the upper chapel, which was used by the royal family, had a vaulted ceiling of sky blue with numerous gold stars, which soared a hundred feet above the tiled floor. For this occasion, the chapel walls, adorned with murals of angels, kings, and religious scenes in vivid scarlet, green, and blue, had been hung with azure cloth embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis.

The Queen escorted her son to the marble altar, where he waited beneath a cloth-of-gold canopy with the bride’s mother, Elizabeth Talbot, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Then Lord Rivers and the King’s nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, led in red-haired Anne Mowbray.⁶⁰ Elizabeth sat with her parents, her brother Edward, her sisters Mary and Cecily, and her grandmother of York beneath another cloth-of-gold canopy while the papal dispensation permitting this marriage of cousins was read out. Then the King gave away the bride and the marriage service commenced.

Afterward Gloucester showered gold and silver coins upon the crowds outside, then spices and wine were served to the wedding party. There were jousts and a lavish banquet in the vast Painted Chamber, at which the little bride was named “Princess of the Feast.” Apart from the incarcerated Clarence, the entire royal family was present, as well as foreign ambassadors, lords, ladies, knights, squires, and guards and servants in the mulberry and blue livery of the House of York. All but the latter took part in the dancing that lasted until the Kings of Arms entered and asked the bride if she would present the prizes that would be won at the jousts to be held the next day. Elizabeth was appointed to assist her, and a council of ladies was convened to decide what share in the ceremony each should take.

After the tournament on January 16, the Kings of Arms gave Elizabeth the prizes: gems set with the golden letters A, M, and E, standing for Anne, Mowbray, and Elizabeth; Clarencieux Herald presented her with the A, set with a diamond, saying: “Right high and excellent princess, here is the prize which you shall award to the best jouster of the jousts royal.” Norroy Herald gave her the E, set with a ruby, for the best runner in armor, and March Herald the M, set with an emerald, for the best swordsman.

Elizabeth handed the A to the little “Princess of the Feast,” who bestowed it upon Thomas Fiennes, who had won first prize. The others went to Sir William Truswell and William Say, to the delight of the noble company.⁶¹

Darker deeds were brewing. Less than a month after the wedding festivities, on February 8, 1478, Clarence was condemned in Parliament. The Act of Attainder passed against him stated that he had “falsely and traitorously intended and purposed firmly the extreme destruction and disinheriting of the King and his issue.” It accused him of spreading “the falsest and most unnatural-colored pretense that man might imagine.” He had “falsely and untruly noised, published, and said that the King our sovereign lord was a bastard and not begotten to reign upon us.”⁶²

The King himself sat in judgment on his brother, but the Queen—in the deaths of whose father and brother Clarence had been complicit—was thought to have brought pressure to bear, as she had “concluded that her offspring by the King would never come to the throne unless the Duke of Clarence were removed, and of this she easily persuaded the King.”⁶³ This Parliament included an influential Wydeville presence—Earl Rivers was one of the four “triers”—which was “easily the most powerful faction.”⁶⁴ Clarence’s attainder deprived him of his life, titles, and estates, and the rights of himself and his heirs to the succession. On the face of it, he was condemned for crimes for which he had already been pardoned and forgiven; but it is possible, of course, that he had recently reiterated his calumnies.

Although the Wydevilles were seen as being responsible for Clarence’s fall, Edward long had reason to believe that Clarence had designs on his throne; he had, after all, joined Warwick in rebellion and in spreading that tale of Edward’s bastardy, something the King could neither have forgiven or forgotten, and recently Clarence had questioned the validity of Edward’s marriage. Years later, when Elizabeth of York was Queen, the historian Polydore Vergil asked Edward IV’s surviving councilors about the reasons for Clarence’s execution, but they were not forthcoming. Possibly they were reluctant to repeat anything Clarence had said that cast doubt on Elizabeth’s legitimacy. Clarence’s recent scheme to marry the heiress of Burgundy had alone represented a major threat to the King, and he had publicly impugned Edward’s justice. All in all, he was a deadly troublemaker, and had proved himself a threat to the realm’s stability.

Because the Duchess Cecily had protested against her son being executed in public, Clarence was put to death privately on February 18, 1478, in the Tower of London. It was said that, allowed to choose how he would die, he opted to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey (Madeira) wine.⁶⁵ He left behind a three-year-old son, Edward, Earl of Warwick, who was barred by his father’s attainder from ever inheriting the throne or any of Clarence’s lands and titles, and also a five-year-old daughter, Margaret, who would wear a tiny wooden wine butt on a bracelet all her life in commemoration of her father; it can be seen in her portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The wardship and custody of Warwick were granted to Elizabeth Wydeville’s son, Dorset,⁶⁶ and Edward IV arranged for the boy to go to Sheen to be brought up with Elizabeth and the other royal children.⁶⁷ It is likely that Margaret of Clarence was sent there too.

Elizabeth cannot have had a good opinion of her uncle. To her, raised under the influence of the Wydevilles, he was no doubt the bête noire of the family; like her mother, she probably saw him as a threat. He bore half the blame for the executions of her grandfather, Earl Rivers, and her uncle, John Wydeville, in 1469, and had accused her mother of compassing his wife’s death by sorcery. But the impact on a twelve-year-old of the judicial killing of her uncle by her father must have been considerable, and a brutal reminder of the dangers inherent in being of the blood royal in this turbulent period of history.

Mancini states that Gloucester was “overcome with grief” at his brother’s execution, and vowed to avenge it. Yet, while he would in time exact a fearful vengeance on Elizabeth Wydeville, there is evidence to suggest that he colluded in, and condoned, Clarence’s fate. Some of his retainers had sat in the Parliament that condemned the duke, and he himself appears to have supported Edward’s proceedings.⁶⁸ He profited too, more than anyone else. Even before his brother’s death, he had requested Clarence’s share of the Warwick inheritance, and his son, Edward of Middleham, had received Clarence’s forfeited earldom of Salisbury, while he himself was appointed Great Chamberlain of England in place of Clarence and granted lands belonging to the latter. It is possible, though, that knowing that Clarence’s fate was a foregone conclusion, and that half the Warwick inheritance was at stake, he gave the King his tacit support, then moved quickly afterward to preempt any designs the Wydevilles may have had on that inheritance. That he was affected by his brother’s fall is suggested by a letter he sent much later to James FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, in which he recalled how he had to keep his “inward” feelings hidden.⁶⁹ Those inward feelings may very well have included hatred for the upstart Wydevilles, who had destroyed a prince of the blood. If Richard really felt such hatred and resentment for the Queen and her kin, it would make more sense of his actions in five years’ time.

Mancini states that “thenceforth Richard came very rarely to court. He kept himself within his own lands and set out to acquire the loyalty of his people through favors and justice. The good reputation of his private life”—in contrast to his brother Edward’s—“and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers. By these arts, Richard acquired the favor of the people, and avoided the jealousy of the Queen, from whom he lived far separated.” Richard’s main political focus was the North, where he had his power base, and his responsibilities there tended to isolate him from the court anyway. He did spend most of the last years of Edward’s reign in the North, as Mancini states, and although he visited the court in London on state occasions, it is unlikely that Elizabeth and her siblings ever got to know this often absent uncle very well.

Mancini’s testimony—which may have owed something to hindsight, although he used as sources people who would surely have known the truth—is often taken to mean that Richard deliberately avoided the Queen after Clarence’s fall. But it is clear that avoiding her jealousy was the consequence of his good reputation, while Mancini merely observes that she lived a long ways away, implying that this was to his advantage. Maybe Richard did fear her influence, having seen what it could do, while her behavior later on might suggest that she had his measure and distrusted and feared him. However, working relations between Richard and her brother, Earl Rivers, remained amicable after 1478⁷⁰—although the catastrophic events of 1483 were to show that Richard saw Rivers too as a threat.

Edward IV “inwardly repented, very often” of having Clarence executed,⁷¹ and reproached his nobles for not suing for mercy.⁷² But ultimately he himself had to bear the responsibility for it; and the young Elizabeth had to come to terms with the knowledge that not even ties of blood were a guarantee against disaster.

It was a superstitious age. Apart from the other reasons for Clarence’s fall, Edward had apparently been swayed by a prophecy that G should follow E as King of England.⁷³ If true, it seems not to have occurred to him that his other brother was Gloucester—or that executing one of his blood had set a dangerous precedent for slaughter within his own house.⁷⁴

That month of February 1478, Elizabeth turned twelve, the age at which she was to go to France and be married. Her dowry was already settled, and it had been agreed that King Louis should meet the expenses of her conveyance into his realm. Soon afterward, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, appealed to Edward IV for aid against Louis XI, but Edward ignored her pleas, for he would allow nothing to compromise Elizabeth’s prospects of marriage with the Dauphin.

On August 11 the King sent Dr. Thomas Langton to France, to press Louis XI to conclude the espousal without further delay, and to ask him to endow Elizabeth with her jointure immediately, in advance of the wedding. Louis—by no means as committed to the match as Edward—stalled. In December his ambassador told the King that he must not expect immediate payment of her jointure, insisting that his proposal was contrary to reason and French custom: Elizabeth could have her jointure only when the marriage took place, but the Dauphin, at eight, was too young to be wed at present, and it was usual for a jointure to be paid only after the consummation of a marriage. Edward’s councilors expressed great indignation and urged him to break the treaty, but he refused, being determined to force Louis to keep to its terms. But the writing was on the wall: France was then relying on England not to intervene on Maximilian’s behalf in Burgundy, and if Louis could treat his ally so dismissively when he needed him, clearly he was not committed to the marriage.

There was grief in March 1479 when Elizabeth’s two-year-old brother George died at Windsor Castle and was buried in St. George’s Chapel. After his death, his nurse, Joan, Lady Dacre, became lady mistress to Princess Mary.⁷⁵ The loss of her youngest son must have been hard for the Queen, who was pregnant again; on August 14, 1479, she gave birth to a healthy sixth daughter, Katherine, at Eltham Palace. It was here that the infant princess was christened. Joanna Colson was appointed her nurse.⁷⁶

Arguments about Elizabeth’s jointure grumbled on through the spring and summer of 1479. Edward’s envoys warned the French that if there was any further prevarication, England would ally itself with Maximilian. In August the Burgundians won a victory over the French, and Maximilian and Mary declared that they would not betroth their heir, Philip, to anyone except Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth. In the face of this, late that year Louis instructed his envoys to offer 10,000 crowns [£1,261,500] as a maintenance grant for Elizabeth, but Edward, who had been greedily anticipating the £60,000 [£30 million] agreed to at Picquigny, angrily turned down the offer because it was contrary to the terms of the treaty.

By now there were doubts in England as to Louis’s sincerity. In January 1480 the Milanese ambassador at the French court shrewdly observed that Edward was not deceived by the French king’s procrastination, and concluded that Elizabeth’s marriage to the Dauphin depended on Maximilian’s ability to repel the French. He reported that the English envoys had been told “to press in and out of season for the conclusion of the marriage. The King here stands in fear of the King of England, on the supposition that if he will not pay him any heed while the Flemings still flourish, England will not be able to get his desire when this king has accomplished his purpose”—the conquest of Burgundy—“and so diamond cuts diamond.”⁷⁷

While Edward continued to put pressure on Louis, French envoys were instructed to divert him by discussing only superficial details, such as the timing and manner of Elizabeth’s journey to France; if she did not come, they said, King Louis would pay 20,000 crowns [£2,520,000] for her maintenance while she remained in England. But Edward insisted that he would accept only the £60,000 agreed as her jointure. In May 1480, John, Lord Howard (later Duke of Norfolk), and Dr. Langton were sent to France to remind Louis of the terms of the marriage contract, but they made little progress. In the wake of this, Edward began seriously considering an alliance with Burgundy against France.

Unknown to Edward IV, Louis, fearing that England would unite with the Habsburgs against him, had begun making overtures to the Scots, England’s enemy, for the marriage of James III’s daughter Margaret to the Dauphin. Early in 1480, Edward learned of this and threatened James with war, thwarting Louis’s schemes. At times like these it may well have seemed to Elizabeth that her marriage would never take place.

In February 1480 she reached her fourteenth birthday. She was growing up to be “very handsome.”⁷⁸ According to Giovanni de’ Gigli, prebendary of St. Paul’s, writing in 1486, she was “the illustrious maid of York, the fairest of Edward’s offspring, deficient nor in virtue nor descent, most beautiful in form, whose matchless face adorned with most enchanting sweetness shines.”⁷⁹ It was almost obligatory for queens to be praised for their looks, but that Elizabeth grew up to be beautiful is borne out by her surviving portraits and her tomb effigy—which reveal a strong resemblance to her mother, especially about the large eyes, a straight nose, and what must have been a rosebud mouth in youth; while the inscription on her tomb, placed there by her son, Henry VIII, describes her as “very pretty.” If her tomb effigy is an accurate representation, she grew up to be a graceful woman of five feet six inches.

In the fifteenth century it was seen as highly desirable for queens to have blond hair, for the Virgin Mary was increasingly being idealistically portrayed thus in art.⁸⁰ Elizabeth conformed to this ideal: she had a fair complexion and long “golden” or “fair yellow hair,”⁸¹ although it looks reddish-gold in her portraits, and may have been the same color as her daughter Mary’s, a lock of which (taken from Mary’s coffin) is preserved in Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St. Edmunds.

In April 1480, Elizabeth’s sisters Mary and Cecily were made Ladies of the Garter, and robes were provided for all three princesses for the annual festival.⁸²

That year, Cecily, Duchess of York, now sixty-five, enrolled herself as a Benedictine oblate and retired to her castle at Berkhamsted to pursue a life of religious devotion. As an oblate, she wore sober secular robes and embraced the spirit of the Benedictine vows in her life in the world, dedicating herself to the service of God. Daily, she observed the canonical hours, prayed, and read the Scriptures, leaving only a little time for enjoying wine and recreation with her ladies. Elizabeth, at an impressionable age, was probably influenced by her grandmother’s piety, and would herself grow up to be sincerely devout.

On November 10, 1480, Elizabeth Wydeville gave birth to her tenth and last child at Eltham Palace. It was another girl, who was called Bridget, an unusual choice of name that had no royal precedent but was perhaps chosen by Cecily, Duchess of York, who cherished a special devotion to St. Bridget of Sweden, foundress of the Bridgetine order, in which the duchess took a particular interest.⁸³ Again Cecily’s influence can be detected, for Elizabeth herself would grow up with a deep reverence for St. Bridget, a fourteenth-century visionary who was celebrated for her piety and charity.

Choosing the name of a saint who left the royal court of Sweden to found a monastic order suggests that the King and Queen decided from the first that they would devote this daughter to God. It was not unusual for wealthy medieval parents to do that, as a gesture of thanksgiving, or to lay up treasure for themselves in Heaven. Their daughter would have no choice in the matter.

On the morning after the birth, St. Martin’s Day, Elizabeth stood godmother to her new sister at her christening in the Great Chapel at Eltham. A hundred “knights, esquires, and other honest persons” entered the chapel first, carrying unlit torches, then came Thomas FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers, bearing a basin and towel, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with an unlit taper, and John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, bearing the salt. There followed other peers, among them the young Duke of York, Lord Hastings; Thomas, Lord Stanley; and Richard Fiennes, Lord Dacre, the Queen’s chamberlain. Then came the Queen’s sister, Margaret Wydeville, Lady Maltravers, wearing “a rich white cloth pinned over her left side” and carrying the chrisom. Margaret Beaufort, the other godmother—no doubt chosen because in 1472 she had married Lord Stanley, a close associate of the Wydevilles—carried the Princess Bridget beneath a canopy borne by three knights and a baron. Elizabeth followed with Dorset and the Duchess of York. William Wayneflete, the octogenarian Bishop of Winchester, was the godfather, and Edward Story, Bishop of Chichester, officiated. “My lady the King’s mother and my Lady Elizabeth were godmothers at the font,” and a squire held the basins for them. At the moment of baptism, the knights and esquires lit their torches and the heralds donned their tabards. The baby was taken up to the altar to be confirmed, and then into an anteroom where the godparents presented their “great gifts,” whereupon she was borne back in procession to the Queen’s chamber to be blessed.⁸⁴

Young York’s wife, Anne Mowbray, was not present. Possibly she was unwell, for sometime between January 16 and November 19, 1481, she died at the palace of Placentia at Greenwich, aged only eight. She was given a lavish funeral and buried in the chapel of St. Erasmus in Westminster Abbey.

In June 1480, Margaret of Burgundy had visited England with a view to enlisting Edward IV’s support against France and arranging a marriage between Maximilian’s son Philip and Anne of York. Aware of her intentions, Louis sent envoys to England with Edward’s pension and the offer of an extra 15,000 crowns [£1,892,210] a year for Elizabeth’s maintenance until her marriage. That placed Edward in an ideal situation for bargaining with Burgundy, and that August he signed a treaty with Maximilian, by the terms of which five-year-old Anne was betrothed to Philip of Habsburg and it was agreed that the marriage would take place when she was twelve.⁸⁵

Before entering into this alliance, Edward had told Margaret of Burgundy that Louis was prepared to concede to all his demands in regard to Elizabeth’s marriage to the Dauphin. But now Louis, facing the prospect of Edward joining forces with Maximilian against him, began to strengthen his defenses for war. He also stopped paying the pension guaranteed to Edward by the Treaty of Picquigny. Plans for a peace conference broke down, and Maximilian continued to press for English aid against France. The Anglo-French alliance now looked decidedly precarious.

In 1481, Edward IV reached an agreement with Francis of Brittany that Prince Edward should marry the duke’s only child, four-year-old Anne, the heiress of Brittany, when she reached the age of twelve. Fourteen-year-old Princess Mary was betrothed to the future King Frederick I of Denmark, and James III of Scots began pressing Edward IV to send Princess Cecily to Scotland to be betrothed to his son.⁸⁶ Among the husbands proposed for Katherine of York were the Infante Juan, Prince of the Asturias and heir to the Spanish throne,⁸⁷ and James Butler, Earl of Ormond. Through the unions of his daughters, Edward envisioned English influence extending through France, Scotland, Denmark, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and beyond. It seemed that soon Elizabeth and her siblings would all be living in far-off kingdoms, rarely or never to see one another again.

But the Scots now began infringing the peace with England, putting the marriage treaty at risk. Hearing that his ally, King Louis, was once more weighing Elizabeth’s betrothal to the Dauphin in the balance, James III led a raid over the border into England. Edward raised a great army in retaliation, but Maximilian was urging him to come to his aid in Burgundy against Louis. Edward prevaricated, while the ailing Louis waited to see what he would do.

Still wanting to maintain his lucrative friendship with France, Edward assured Louis in March 1481 that troops he had sent to Burgundy were not to be used against the French, and that he would continue to uphold the Treaty of Picquigny, on condition that Louis resumed payment of his pension and sent an embassy to arrange Elizabeth’s marriage to the Dauphin. If Louis agreed to this, Edward promised not to send his new army against France, but to Scotland, as he had originally intended. Louis was quick to acquiesce, and in August sent an envoy with Edward’s pension.

At last Edward decided to move against the Scots. In the autumn of 1481, at Nottingham—much to King Louis’s relief—he again confirmed the Anglo-French treaty, but on condition that Elizabeth’s marriage to the Dauphin would not be delayed further. Immediately, Louis abandoned all thoughts of a Scottish marriage for his son.

Tragedy intervened to prevent the fruition of another of Edward’s alliances when, on May 23, 1482, the Thursday before Whitsunday, Elizabeth’s sister Mary died at Placentia at Greenwich, aged just fifteen. The following Monday her body was carried to the nearby church of the Observant Friars, founded by her father, where James Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, sang a dirge over it. Elizabeth and her younger sisters were not present, nor did they or their parents attend a second service the following morning, at which many high-ranking ladies were present, including Joan, Lady Dacre, Princess Mary’s lady mistress. Dinner was served at the palace afterward, then the mourners returned to the church to attend the coffin as it was laid on a chariot adorned with Mary’s arms and drawn by horses trapped with sables to Windsor and burial in St. George’s Chapel. There, Mary was laid to rest beside “my lord her brother” (George), the Prince of Wales present as chief mourner.⁸⁸ The loss of her sister must have affected Elizabeth deeply, for they were only seventeen months apart in age, and had been brought up together from infancy.

The year 1482 saw the arrival at court of a number of foreign ambassadors, come to discuss the marriages of the King’s daughters. After June, when Henry Tudor was granted the lands of his maternal grandmother on condition he return from exile “to be in the grace and favor of the King’s Highness,”⁸⁹ there was some discussion about his marrying one of the princesses, as before, but it would not have been Elizabeth, as she was already betrothed. However, Henry did not venture into England. He may have suspected another trap; unsurprisingly, his life as a fugitive had left him deeply suspicious of others’ motives. Yet it does seem that Edward IV at last genuinely intended to receive him into favor, and Margaret Beaufort, who was now held in high esteem at court thanks to two judicious marriages, assured him of the King’s good faith.

It was Elizabeth, at just sixteen years old, who was soon to discover just how perfidious princes could be. James III had now apologized for his ill-advised border raid, but his disaffected brother, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, whom he had imprisoned, escaped to the English court and dripped poison into King Edward’s ear. As a result, in June, Edward broke off Cecily’s betrothal to Prince James of Scots, and affianced her to the treacherous Albany, of whose designs on the Scots throne he was well aware.⁹⁰“King Alexander” now advanced north on Scotland with Gloucester at the head of the English army. They took James III captive, but Albany soon came to terms with his brother, and Gloucester made peace, with the Scots ceding Berwick to England. Cecily found herself once more betrothed to James’s son, but that was not the end of it: when an attempt was made on the King of Scots’ life, Albany again sought the support of King Edward and secured Cecily as his future bride. In October, Edward finally called off her betrothal to James III.⁹¹

This was just a prequel to what would follow. Possibly Louis never had any real intention of allowing Elizabeth’s marriage to his heir to go forward,⁹² but in March 1482, Mary of Burgundy died after a fall from her horse, and her Flemish subjects, who did not like Maximilian, made overtures to Louis XI, who seized his advantage. On December 23, 1482, an alliance—the Treaty of Arras—was concluded between Louis and the Flemings, providing for the marriage of the Dauphin to three-year-old Margaret of Burgundy, Maximilian’s daughter. Edward IV’s pension was terminated, while Louis got to keep all of Burgundy but Flanders, which was ceded to Maximilian; and thus French ambitions were satisfied.

The treaty left Edward IV’s foreign policy in shreds. Not only had his lucrative pension been abruptly cut off, but his daughter was to suffer the humiliation of being publicly jilted. “It was very well known that the girl was a great deal too old for Monseigneur the Dauphin,” observed Commines, as if that was the reason for Louis snubbing her.

Unsuspecting, the King presided over a splendid court that Christmas, the last time he would ever do so. “King Edward kept the feast of the Nativity at his palace at Westminster, frequently appearing clad in a great variety of most costly garments.” His “most elegant figure overshadowed everyone else” as he “stood before the onlookers like some new and extraordinary spectacle. In those days you would have seen a royal court worthy of a most mighty kingdom, filled with riches and men from almost every nation, and, surpassing all else, those beautiful and most delightful children, the issue of his marriage with Queen Elizabeth,” among them his daughters, five “most beauteous maidens.”⁹³ Twelve-year-old Prince Edward had come up from Ludlow to join his siblings, and appeared in a dazzling outfit of white cloth of gold, while Elizabeth and her mother had received fifteen yards of green tissue (taffeta silk) cloth of gold.⁹⁴ This was the last recorded occasion on which Elizabeth and her brothers and sisters were all together.

On the face of it, they had bright futures awaiting them, but the well-informed Croyland chronicler observed that “although, in earlier years, solemn embassies and pledges of faith in the words of princes had been dispatched, with letters of agreement drawn up in due form concerning the marriage of each of the daughters, it was not now thought that any of the marriages would materialize, for everything was susceptible to change, given the unstable relations between England and France, Scotland, Burgundy, and Spain.” The news of Louis’s perfidy reached England in January, and Edward IV’s fury knew no bounds. “Worried and aggrieved,” and “boldly considering any means of gaining revenge,” he summoned Parliament, “revealed the whole series of gross deceits,”⁹⁵ and demanded that England make war on France. On January 20, in the Lords, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, denounced Louis XI for his deceitfulness, while Croyland accused him of encouraging the Scots to break Cecily’s betrothal too.

Although she could not have been hurt personally, Elizabeth was old enough to feel humiliated and offended by the French king’s rejection of her, but that was as nothing compared to the “evils” that “shortly afterward miserably befell the King and his illustrious progeny.”⁹⁶ In the meantime—as was later asserted by the Elizabethan chronicler, Raphael Holinshed—Edward IV may seriously have begun considering a marriage between his jilted daughter and the exiled Henry Tudor. It was an effective means of removing Tudor from the dangerous arena of European politics and securing his loyalty. Apparently the King had talks on the matter with Margaret Beaufort; Lord Stanley; John Morton, Bishop of Ely; and John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester, with a view to bringing the marriage to fruition. Time, however, was not on Edward’s side.