5
By Christmas 1484 it was being “said by many that the King was applying his mind in every way to contracting a marriage with Elizabeth” himself.1 “The Lady Elizabeth (who had been some months out of sanctuary) was, with her four younger sisters, sent by her mother to attend the Queen at court, at the Christmas festivals kept with great state in Westminster Hall. They were received with all honorable courtesy by Queen Anne, especially the Lady Elizabeth [who] was ranked most familiarly in the Queen’s favor, who treated her like a sister.” But Anne Neville, for all her welcome, was sad and preoccupied: “neither society that she loved, nor all the pomp and festivity of royalty, could cure the languor or heal the wound in the Queen’s breast for the loss of her son.”2
Anne was still only twenty-eight, “in presence seemly, amiable, and beauteous, and in conditions full commendable and right virtuous, and full gracious.”3 Much of Richard’s oft-vaunted popularity in the North, where the Nevilles had long had their power base, was due to his marriage to her, but there are few clues as to whether the couple were happy together. In September 1483, Thomas Langton, Bishop of St. David’s, had said of Richard that “his sensuality appears to be increasing.” But Anne was no longer able to satisfy those needs. By Christmas 1484 she was ailing and her death was anticipated.4
Croyland states that “the feast of the Nativity was kept with due solemnity at the Palace of Westminster.” He goes on mysteriously: “There may be many other things that are not written in this book and of which it is shameful to speak, but let it not go unsaid that during this Christmas festival, an excessive interest was displayed in singing and dancing and to vain changes of apparel presented to Queen Anne and the Lady Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late King, being of similar color and shape: a thing that caused the people to murmur and the nobles and prelates greatly to wonder at, while it was said by many that the King was bent either on the anticipated death of the Queen taking place, or else by means of a divorce, for which he supposed he had quite sufficient grounds, on contracting a marriage with the said Elizabeth. For it appeared that in no other way could his kingly power be established, or the hopes of his rival being put an end to.”5
Given that Croyland, writing after Anne Neville had died, is referring to the anticipated death of the Queen or a divorce, he must have based his account on his inside knowledge of discussions at the time.6 He states that people were saying that Richard wanted to marry Elizabeth, but reveals that the King (not the gossipers) supposed he had sufficient grounds for an annulment, so evidently Croyland knew that an annulment had been discussed and was privy to the King’s intentions.
No wonder he and others murmured and wondered, and that word of Elizabeth’s apparel spread beyond the palace to the common people. The fifteenth century was an age of strict sumptuary laws reserving the right to wear luxurious materials to the upper ranks of society; an act prohibiting all but the King’s family from wearing purple silk and cloth of gold had been passed only two years earlier. The Queen’s clothes were expected, by law and tradition, to be more sumptuous than those of women of lower rank, so the sight of Anne Neville’s bastardized niece “arrayed like a second queen” in robes to which she had no right would inevitably have prompted comment, even in a court where “sensual pleasure holds sway to an increasing extent.”7 It is hardly credible that Anne, welcoming as she was to Elizabeth, would have suggested out of kindness that she wear the same clothes as herself. Born into the higher nobility, she would have known that comment would ensue, and while Elizabeth was at court her reputation was under her aunt’s protection, the Queen being effectively the moral guardian of the unmarried girls in her retinue. It could only have been King Richard, eager to discountenance Henry Tudor, who ordered that Elizabeth appear dressed as a queen; and in that he showed scant regard for her reputation or for his ailing wife.
But this was not the only cause for gossip and speculation. Croyland’s account makes it clear that in the wake of that Christmas court, “the King’s determination to marry his niece reached the ears of his people, who wanted no such thing.” Naturally many found the notion shocking.
The plan was “ill-judged, inept, unrealistic,”8 and “foolish.”9 Richard surely knew it would be controversial, but he had compelling reasons for pressing ahead with it. Many still recognized Elizabeth as the legitimate, rightful heiress of the House of York. Marriage to her could render Richard’s title unassailable. A union with the popular princess whose brothers he was said to have murdered might also help to restore his damaged reputation and win over the loyalty of disaffected Yorkists. Richard desperately needed a son to succeed him, and Elizabeth, who came from fecund stock, was likely to provide one. Above all, their marriage would take her forever beyond the reach of Henry Tudor, and put paid to the latter’s designs on the crown.
It may be that Richard was personally attracted to Elizabeth, for she was young and comely, and there is evidence from which we might infer that there was more to this than politics. Aside from Croyland’s consistently cynical view of his motives, the King’s most trusted advisers, Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby, were to warn him that people would believe he was pursuing this marriage to “gratify an incestuous passion for his niece.”10 Maybe this was purely what people might, or did, infer, but evidently many had a clearer view of what was morally permissible or practically workable than Richard. If he had wanted merely to put Elizabeth beyond Henry Tudor’s reach, any bridegroom would have sufficed—it did not have to be himself.
Sir George Buck, Richard III’s seventeenth-century apologist, believed that the King’s “counterfeit wooing” was just a political ploy to discountenance Henry Tudor and deflect him from his plans, and that he had no intention of marrying Elizabeth. “It may not be denied but that he made love to this lady and pretended [to marr]y her, and obtained both the good will of the lady [and] the Queen her mother. But this love was made in policy, and cunningly, to draw her to him [and divert her] from the Earl of Richmond.” This is at variance with what Croyland, Ratcliffe, and Catesby believed. If Richard had no real intention of marrying Elizabeth, but merely wanted to discountenance Henry Tudor, he did so with little thought of how it would rebound on Elizabeth or his wife, and he failed to take his advisers into his confidence, even in the face of adverse rumors.
Whatever Richard’s initial motivation, he moved quickly—he had to, as Tudor’s prospects were looking decidedly brighter. That autumn, having been warned that the Breton chancellor was plotting with Richard III to seize him, Henry had fled to France. His timing was perfect, as the new French king, Charles VIII, Elizabeth’s former betrothed, was determined to annex Brittany by marrying its duchess, and feared that Richard III would support its independence. Thus he was more than willing to offer Henry his support, which made Henry an even greater threat to Richard. Marrying Elizabeth was, for Richard, an effective way of neutralizing that threat; thus it was a matter that needed to be advanced with some urgency. As Shakespeare has Richard saying, “I must be married to my brother’s daughter, or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.”
Obviously the plan was fraught with difficulties. Elizabeth’s bastardization was the grounds of Richard’s title to the throne. Either he was being ruthlessly pragmatic or at heart he knew that Elizabeth was Edward IV’s lawful issue and the true heiress of the House of York. If she could supply all that was wanting in Henry Tudor’s title, she could also supply all that was lacking in Richard’s, although that would have raised awkward issues, for his marriage to her would be seen by many as a tacit admission that the princes were not only legitimate but also dead. Declaring her and her sisters legitimate would have been tantamount to proclaiming that Edward V was the rightful king but that he and Richard of York were no more, which would have raised yet more contentious questions and given rise to further damaging rumors; it would also have made Richard, in the eyes of many, King only in Elizabeth’s right. Yet it is hard to see how he could have married her without legitimizing her, for kings did not marry bastards, and a queen’s lineage was expected to be impeccable, which was why Elizabeth’s own mother had been so disparaged by the nobility. When it came down to it, the only political advantage to the union that Richard could actually acknowledge was thwarting Henry Tudor, and the path to that was littered with insurmountable obstacles.
The prime obstacle to the marriage was that Richard already had a wife, and although he and Anne were cousins, a dispensation for their marriage had been granted by the Pope himself on April 22, 1472.11 However, the marriage settlement had included a divorce clause allowing Richard to keep Anne’s lands if either of them remarried.
Then there was the grave matter of the close blood relationship between Richard and Elizabeth. Marriage between an uncle and niece was frowned upon by the Church and forbidden by canon law, as it was within the third degree of consanguinity; the ban extended to marriages up to the seventh degree of consanguinity. Dispensations for unions within these prohibited degrees could, for “great and pressing” reasons,12 be granted by the Pope. In 1528, wishing to marry the sister of his former mistress, Henry VIII obtained a dispensation that (had he been so inclined) would have allowed him to marry his mother or daughter; in 1496, Ferdinand II, King of Naples, was granted a dispensation to marry his aunt, Juana of Aragon;13 and in 1582, Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, was permitted to wed his niece, Anne Gonzaga. Otherwise, examples of uncle-niece marriages are rare before the Reformation, after which Parliament banned them in England,14 and there was no precedent in the English royal houses. In 1560 avunculate marriages were forbidden by the Church of England because they were contrary to Levitical law. It is easy to see why such unions were regarded as incestuous in Elizabeth’s day, and why Richard, who had been at pains to show himself an upright, moral ruler, was to be accused of immorality by his contemporaries and later writers. That he risked such a backlash shows how desperate he must have been to put paid to Henry Tudor’s pretensions.
It seems likely that Elizabeth Wydeville knew of Richard’s intentions before Christmas, for she sent her younger daughters to court to “color” their elder sister’s appearance there.15 Stuart and Georgian historians asserted that this proposed marriage was Elizabeth Wydeville’s idea, but that is unlikely; she had no influence now, she was not at court, and there is no evidence to support the assertion. Not many months before, Elizabeth and her mother were told that Richard III had murdered her brothers, and evidently they had believed that. How then could either of them have come to regard a marriage alliance with Richard as desirable? It has been asserted by his apologists that Elizabeth Wydeville would never have consented to her daughter marrying the man she believed had killed her sons, although, again, whether he had murdered the princes or not, he executed Sir Richard Grey without trial. Those who believe Richard innocent of the princes’ deaths often overlook the fact that Elizabeth Wydeville schemed to marry Elizabeth to Henry Tudor, the man whom many revisionists believe was the real murderer.
Probably the former Queen saw marriage with Richard as a means of restoring her daughter’s status, rescuing her from the prospect of an undistinguished union with a man of lesser birth, and setting her up in an advantageous position from which she could exercise influence and patronage, which could only benefit her mother and sisters.
Richard was then thirty-two, fourteen years Elizabeth’s senior; it was not an unusual age gap in an age of arranged marriages. “He was of bodily shape comely enough, only of low stature.”16 A Silesian knight, Nicholas von Poppelau, who visited his court in 1484, described him as lean, with “delicate arms and legs,” while John Rous speaks of “his little body and feeble strength.” His skeleton, discovered under a car park in Leicester in 2012, was found to have severe scoliosis, or curvature of the spine; this would have accounted for him having one shoulder higher than the other, which was what gave rise to the nickname “Crouchback,” first recorded in 1491. Coincidentally, the Greek word skoliosis means crooked. Although five feet eight inches tall, Richard would have appeared shorter because of the curvature. Only this one source mentions him as having any deformity, so clever dressing in padded doublets must have disguised it.
This was probably no easy disability to bear. In all respects severe scoliosis is a serious condition with far-reaching effects on every aspect of life. There was no treatment in Richard’s day, and he probably suffered pain and muscle fatigue in the back, chest, head, hips, shoulders, neck, and legs as a result of postural problems and limited spinal movement. Severe scoliosis can cause constriction of the chest and restrict breathing capacity. It can also lead to serious emotional and behavioral problems such as low self-esteem, mood swings, depression, difficulty in sleeping, poor sexual relationships and interpersonal skills, and social isolation. Untreated, the condition usually worsens. That Richard III overcame such difficulties to the extent of being able to lead a charge in battle says much for his strength of character. One may speculate as to the ways in which his disability might have impacted on his life and actions, but we can never know that for certain. He appears to have been a man much in command of himself.
The reconstruction of his face, based on scans of his skull, was of necessity partly conjectural, as no soft tissue survived, and makes him look very young and fresh-faced; in those days a person of thirty-two was nearing middle age. Richard’s portraits show a set-faced, serious-looking man with a jutting chin, thin lips, and long dark hair. He was no great catch physically, but he was the King, which outweighed that, and that was what mattered to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was probably present on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1485, when Richard entered Westminster Hall wearing his crown, as was customary, and presided over a great feast. During that feast, word was brought to him from his spies on the coasts that “his enemies would without doubt invade the kingdom early the following summer, or at least would attempt to do so.” This was welcome news “as much as it could be seen to be putting an end to all the doubt and misfortune,” but it was also worrying because his treasury was short of money. He was to resort to demanding forced loans, or “benevolences,” from his subjects, just as his brother had, despite the fact that he himself had condemned the practice in Parliament.17
It was probably early in 1485 (the date is not recorded) that the King, bearing in mind Henry Tudor’s vow to marry Cecily of York if he could not have Elizabeth, ensured that a husband was found for Cecily, the relatively lowly Ralph Scrope of Upsall,18 another intimation that he had reserved Elizabeth for himself. She may have felt Cecily’s humiliation keenly, for while Ralph Scrope was hardly “a man found in a cloud, of unknown lineage and family,” as Hall asserts, but the second son of Thomas, the fifth Baron Scrope of Masham, he was no great match for a girl who had once been a princess.
“In the course of a few days” after Christmas, Croyland recorded, “the Queen fell extremely sick, and her illness was supposed to have increased still more and more, because the King entirely shunned her bed, declaring that it was by the advice of his physicians that he did so. Why enlarge?”
Several writers have concluded from this passage in Croyland that Anne’s doctors believed her illness to be contagious, hence the long-held theory that she was suffering from tuberculosis. But Croyland’s cynical aside suggests either that he did not believe Richard’s excuse for shunning her bed, or that he thought the King was glad to have such an excuse. In view of the rumors that had proliferated in the year between Anne’s death and the writing of his chronicle, he might have been implying something more sinister, a matter of such common currency that he had no need to enlarge.
We do not know what killed Anne Neville. It could have been cancer, or one of any number of conditions, to which stress over her son’s death and her husband’s neglect may have undermined her resistance. Tuberculosis can spread rapidly through the lungs—what used to be called galloping consumption—but in view of Croyland’s skepticism, Anne may have died of something else entirely. She lingered into the early spring of 1485, attended by many physicians, but they could do nothing to save her, and on March 16, “upon the day of a great eclipse of the sun, [she] departed this life.” Soon afterward she “was buried at Westminster with no less honors than befitted the interment of a queen.”19 No provision was ever made for a tomb, and the site of her grave is lost. She is commemorated only by a small bronze wall plaque erected in 1960 in the abbey.
Vergil asserts that it was now, when he was “loosed from the bond of matrimony,” that Richard began to “cast an eye upon Elizabeth, his niece, and to desire her in marriage.” As we have seen, Croyland makes it clear that this had been in his mind at least three months earlier. Vergil continues: “Because the young lady herself, and all others, did abhor the wickedness so detestable, he determined therefore to do everything by leisure.” But rumors had spread in the wake of the Christmas court, and public opinion was against such a marriage, while Richard’s enemies had been spreading sedition. For, in the days immediately following Anne’s death, there was “much simple communication among the people by evil-disposed persons, contrived and sown to very great displeasure of the King, showing how that the Queen, as by consent and will of the King, was poisoned, to the intent that he might then marry and have to wife Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter of his brother.”20
Richard was quick to deny it. Within six days of Anne’s passing, “the King’s purpose and intention being mentioned to some who were opposed thereto, [he] was obliged, having called a council together, to excuse himself with many words, and to assert that such a thing had never once entered his mind.”21
Croyland says “there were some persons, however, present at that same council, who very well knew the contrary [as, he implies, he did himself]. Those who were most strongly against the marriage” were Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby, “two men whose views even the King himself seldom dared oppose,” which shows how much he needed their support. “By these persons the King was told to his face that if he did not abandon his intended purpose, and deny it by public declaration before the mayor and commons of the City of London, opposition would not be offered to him merely by the warnings of the voice; for all the people of the North, in whom he placed the greatest reliance, would rise in rebellion and impute to him the death of the Queen, in order that he might, to the extreme abhorrence of the Almighty, gratify an incestuous passion for his niece.” This was the motive imputed to him by Tudor chroniclers such as Hall, who states that Richard “compassed by all the means and ways that he could invent how carnally to know his own niece under the pretense of a cloaked matrimony.”
To give weight to their protests, Ratcliffe and Catesby “brought to him more than twelve doctors of divinity who had sat on the case of a marriage of an uncle and niece, and had declared that the kindred was too near for the Pope’s bull to sanction.”22
These alone were powerful arguments against the match, but “it was supposed by many” that Ratcliffe, Catesby, and others nursed darker, more self-interested concerns, and that they “threw so many impediments in the way for fear lest, if the said Elizabeth should attain the rank of Queen, it might at some time be in her power to avenge upon them the death of her uncle, Earl Anthony [Rivers], and her brother, Richard [Grey], they having been the King’s special advisers in those matters.” Ratcliffe, moreover, had pitilessly supervised the executions of Rivers and Grey. There is no evidence at all that Elizabeth of York had it in her to be vengeful, but she was a Wydeville, so it is credible that Ratcliffe and Catesby believed they had reason to fear that she might seek to avenge her kinsmen’s deaths, or would be persuaded to it by her mother’s family. Some of Richard’s northern councilors had received Wydeville lands and were worried they might lose them if a queen of Wydeville stock married the King. In light of this, Vergil’s assertion that Ratcliffe and Catesby had suggested the marriage in the first place makes little sense. Vergil claimed that the councilors were now decrying the marriage because “the maiden herself opposed the wicked act.”
Richard III urgently needed to beget an heir to his throne; he could not afford to observe a decent period of mourning for Anne, for taking a new wife was a priority. On March 22, 1485, having suppressed whatever disappointment he might have felt at being thwarted of his chosen bride, he sent Sir Edward Brampton to Portugal to negotiate two marriages: one for himself with the saintly Infanta Joana, daughter of Alfonso V, King of Portugal, and a woman close to him in age; and the other for “the daughter of King Edward”23 with sixteen-year-old Manuel, Duke of Beja—the future King Manuel I, a nephew of King Alfonso.24 There has been credible speculation that this match was intended for Elizabeth, for it would have made sense now for Richard to have married her off and put her safely beyond Henry Tudor’s reach; had she died before the wedding, he doubtless meant to substitute one of her sisters.
Since Alfonso V’s death in 1481, Portugal had been ruled by his son, John II, who had a son of his own, so at present there was no prospect of any daughter of Edward IV becoming Queen. England had enjoyed an alliance with Portugal for a century. There was close kinship between the two ruling dynasties: both Joana and Manuel descended from John of Gaunt. For Richard, Joana was arguably the next best dynastic choice after Elizabeth, although the Portuguese councilors feared that he might reject her for another of Gaunt’s descendants, Isabella, Infanta of Castile, daughter of the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. They were therefore keen to conclude the alliance as soon as possible, and aware that “it suits the King of England to marry straight away.” However, nothing came of these negotiations, which continued until August 1485. The Infanta, at heart, wanted to be a nun, and a much later story has her predicting that Richard III would be dead within a year.25 No one could have foreseen that John II’s son would die in 1491, or that Manuel would become king four years later; had Elizabeth married him, she would have been a queen. Even as things stood, this was a prestigious and honorable marriage, far better than she might have expected, and it would have restored her royal status.26
Historians have long speculated as to where Elizabeth stood in all this. Writing much later under a régime that wished to eradicate all remembrance of Richard III’s plan to marry her, Henry VII’s official historian, Polydore Vergil, claimed that “the young lady herself, and all others, did abhor this wickedness so detestable. To such a marriage the girl had a singular aversion.” Richard Grafton, More’s continuator, also asserted that Elizabeth “abhorred this unlawful desire as a thing most detestable.” In his printed edition of the work of his uncle, Sir George Buck, George Buck, esq., emphasized that “all men, and the maid herself most of all, detested this unlawful copulation.” In his original manuscript Vergil says that Elizabeth was “weighed down for this reason by her great grief” and repeatedly exclaimed, “I will not thus be married, but, unhappy creature that I am, will rather suffer all the torments which St. Katherine is said to have endured for the love of Christ than be united with a man who is the enemy of my family!”27
Yet in the early seventeenth century, Sir George Buck wrote that he had seen a letter, now lost, which Elizabeth had sent to Richard III’s loyal supporter, John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, at the end of February 1485, the month in which she turned nineteen. The text of the original letter can now only be guessed at, for Buck only summarized it, and although his unfinished, partially holograph manuscript survives, with revisions by himself and his nephew, George Buck, esq., it was badly damaged in 1731 in a fire that ravaged the Cotton Library, and parts of the text are missing or illegible. What remains is as follows:
… st she thanked him for his many Curtesies and friendly … as before … in the cause of … and then she prayed him to be a mediator for her to the K … ge who (as she wrote) was her onely joy and maker in … Worlde, and that she was his … harte, in thoughts, in … and in all, and then she intimated that the better halfe of Ffe … was paste, and that she feared the Queene would neu …28
There are copies of Buck’s history in other, later hands, mostly with revisions by George Buck, esq.29 The younger Buck—who had not hesitated to revise and publish another of his uncle’s works as his own—extensively and (in parts) inaccurately rewrote The History of King Richard III in a condensed form for publication in 1646, and there are later printed editions based on that.30
Only in 1979 did A. N. Kincaid edit what remains of Buck’s original text, himself supplying some of the missing text—shown in square brackets below—from B. L. Egerton MS. 2216, the closest manuscript copy to the original. The letter appears there in a passage written by Buck’s scribe, in what Kincaid believes to be a fair copy of Buck’s original words, and parts of it are probably in Buck’s own hand; these are shown in italics below.31 This edited version reads:
When the midst and more days of February were gone, the Lady Elizabeth, being very desirous to be married and, growing not only impatient of delays, but also suspicious of the [success], wrote a letter to Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, intimating first therein that [he was the] one in whom she most [affied] [i.e., trusted], because she knew the King her father much lov[ed] him, and that he was a very faithful servant unto him and to [the King his brother, then reign]ing, and very loving and serviceable [in the sense of rendering service] to King Edward’s children. First, she thanked him for his many courtesies and friendly [offices, an]d then she prayed him, as before, to be a mediator for her in the cause of [the marria]ge to the K[i]ng, who, as she wrote, was her only joy and maker in [this] world, and that she was his in heart and in thoughts, in [body] and in all. And then she intimated that the better half of Fe[bruary] was passed, and that she feared the Queen would nev[er die].32
The younger Buck naturally could not claim to have seen the letter, and his bowdlerized version of it is as follows:
When the midst and last of February was past, the Lady Elizabeth, being more impatient and jealous of the success [of the King’s plan to marry her] than anyone knew or conceived, writes a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, intimating first that he was the man in whom she affied [trusted], in respect of that love her father had ever bore him, etc. Then she congratulates his many courtesies and friendly offices, in continuance of which she desires him, as before, to be a mediator for her to the King in the behalf of the marriage propounded between them; who, as she wrote, was her only joy and maker in the world; and that she was his in heart and thought, [the words “in body and in all” are left out] withal insinuating that the better part of February was past, and that she feared the Queen would never die.
As can be seen, this version differs significantly from Buck’s original text.
Sir George Buck—who was praised by his contemporary, the antiquarian scholar William Camden, for his learning—believed that the letter was genuine. “And all these be her own words, written with her own hand,” he wrote, “and this is the sum of the letter, whereof I have seen the autograph, or original d[raft], under her [own] hand, and by the special and honorable favor of the mos[t noble] and first count of the realm, and the chief of his family, Sir Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and of Surrey, and the immediate and lineal [heir] of this Sir John Howard. And he keepeth that princely letter in his rich and magnificent cabinet, among precious jewels and rare monuments.” The text Buck cites bears similarities to other letters written by noble ladies in Elizabeth’s day, notably one by her sister-in-law, Cecily Bonville, Marchioness of Dorset, whose words, “I have none help in the world but him only,” are strikingly similar to those in the Buck letter.
Buck was not unbiased: his great-grandfather, Sir John Buck, had been one of Richard III’s household officers and would fight for him at Bosworth, suffering decapitation two days later; his children would be raised by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, whose own father, John Howard, had been killed in the battle fighting for Richard.33 Buck’s ancestors had close ties with the Howard family and enjoyed their patronage since the fifteenth century, and his history was dedicated to his patron and distant kinsman, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who would have been presented with a copy34 and could have disputed any inaccuracy.
Thus it is likely that Buck was writing the truth about the letter. As Kincaid has demonstrated, there are relatively few inaccuracies in his long history, and he was at pains to get his facts right. He made some errors of fact, and of judgment, such as accepting Titulus Regius at face value, and his memory was sometimes at fault, but he brought integrity to his work, so it is inconceivable that he would have forged or invented the letter.
Arundel was a discerning collector of art, historical artifacts, and a great library; he was also the patron of Sir Anthony van Dyck and Inigo Jones, and at the center of a circle of scholars and literary figures such as Sir Francis Bacon and William Harvey. His magnificent cabinet containing the letter would have stood in one of the galleries at his London residence, Arundel House, where his collections were kept. That he kept the letter in such a prominent place shows that he considered it one of his prized possessions and believed it to be authentic; and Buck’s emphasis on having been shown such a treasure may, as Kincaid suggests, be a compliment to the kindness of his patron. Arundel was prominent at court during the reign of James I, whose title to the throne descended from that of Elizabeth of York, which makes it unlikely that Buck invented any calumny about her; indeed, as Master of the Revels, he showed caution in licensing plays that portrayed women or the ancestors of the nobility in a disrespectful light.35
On Arundel’s death in 1646, his library was divided and given to the Royal Society and the College of Heralds. The Royal Society sold his manuscripts to the British Museum in 1831. A lot of Arundel’s papers are in the archives of the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle; there are more in other collections. Others, inherited by his widow, were auctioned in 1720.36 Elizabeth’s letter is one of only eight sources out of the many Buck cites that are no longer extant. Given the widespread dispersal of Arundel’s collection, it is not surprising that the letter is missing, and it may still survive somewhere among these scattered papers.37
Historians have long questioned the authenticity of the letter, pointing out that Buck is the only source to mention it, and that he reports rather than cites the text. It has been suggested that the letter is a forgery by his nephew, but the manuscript versions give the lie to that. Nineteenth-century historians such as Nicholas Harris Nicolas,38 Caroline Halsted, and Agnes Strickland could not believe that their heroine had written such a letter, and scathingly dismissed it as a fiction or hearsay. James Gairdner thought it “revolting” and “monstrous”—a “horrible perversion and degradation of domestic life”—and rejected any suggestion that Elizabeth was capable of “sentiments so dishonorable and repulsive.”39 Strickland called the letter “infamous,” insisting that Elizabeth “detested the idea of the abhorrent union.” Her “sweet and saintly nature” would never have allowed her to cherish the murderous ambition of her father and uncles, or to wish her kind aunt dead. Why, Strickland asked, did Buck not quote the princess’s words directly? Why had no one else seen the letter? Buck was obviously “too violent a partisan and too unfaithful a historian to be believed on his mere word.” None of these writers ever consulted Buck’s original manuscript.
Recently the historian Rosemary Horrox has concluded that “one can hardly doubt that Buck saw the letter and that his version is broadly correct.”40 One can therefore hardly doubt that it did exist. Many historians have inferred from this letter that Elizabeth believed and hoped that her uncle would marry her and make her Queen. Kincaid, however, concluded that, while the letter was genuine, it proved only that Elizabeth wanted to be married—but not necessarily to the King.41 She asks Norfolk to be a suitor “in the cause of the marriage to the King,” which can be read two ways, especially if a comma is inserted after “marriage.”
Recently it has been suggested that the letter relates not to marriage with Richard III but to that with Manuel of Portugal.42 In either case, it is credible that Elizabeth approached Norfolk, who had been one of her father’s foremost advisers, and was also trusted by Richard; indeed, the letter reveals that he had already acted as a mediator between Elizabeth and the King in regard to the marriage in question, which shows that it had been under discussion for a while. This ties in with Croyland’s report of the Christmas court. The letter was written in February, and there is no evidence that there were any discussions about the Portuguese alliances until March 22, when Richard proposed himself for a Portuguese bride. It follows that he would not have put forward the Portuguese match for himself while there was hope that he might marry his niece—unless, of course, it had been under discussion as an alternative option; the short timescale after Anne’s death might suggest that. But if he had considered it, there was no reason why he should have delayed negotiations for Elizabeth’s marriage to Manuel until after Anne’s death.
The statements of Croyland, the mooted annulment, the rumors, the concerns of Richard’s advisers about his marrying Elizabeth, and his public denial, taken together, are sufficient to demonstrate that there was something to deny, and that until the week after Anne Neville’s death his intention was to marry Elizabeth. Given its context, the balance of probabilities strongly suggests that her letter relates to that. Indeed, Buck cites it in a discussion of this proposed marriage, so obviously he believed that the letter referred to it.
That being so, Elizabeth was actively pushing for the marriage and apparently ready to promise her all to the man who—she so recently believed—had her brothers murdered; indeed, she could not wait for his wife to die. This is not the Elizabeth of York we know in other historical contexts, whose gentle, giving, and kind character shines forth. Many have thought it incredible that she could have written such a letter. But it is not irreconcilable with what else we know of her—and it may have been written for her.
With no guarantee that Henry Tudor would ever successfully claim her, Elizabeth must have known that she would be far better off, and more safe and secure, as Richard’s queen than in the limbo she then inhabited. She may have been living in dread of an unworthy marriage being arranged for her, and in fear for her own and her family’s future. Probably she was ready to give her hand to any man who could put a crown on her head. Pragmatism, necessity, and ambition had overcome her mother’s scruples, and maybe her own, but in her case there was probably a more altruistic reason for pursuing the marriage with the King.
According to Bernard André, Elizabeth had always shown “a truly wonderful obedience” to her mother. Even if she personally shrank from doing Elizabeth Wydeville’s bidding in this case, she bore “toward her brothers and sisters an unbounded love,” which André says “was unheard of, and almost incredible.” This is borne out by her kindness and generosity to her sisters later in life. Very probably she consented to the marriage for love of her mother and sisters, sacrificing herself to ensure their futures and prevent their situation from becoming any worse. Her becoming Queen would restore their lost prestige; and she would be in a position to use her influence on their behalf, particularly in regard to finding husbands for her sisters. The advantages of such a marriage were sufficiently powerful considerations to outweigh any revulsion or fears she might have felt, and Elizabeth probably saw it as the only way of ensuring her own and her family’s future security. This would explain why she was so eager to have it concluded and so rescue them all from their invidious situation. Her pursuance of the marriage is in keeping with the Elizabeth who is so proactive in “The Song of Lady Bessy” (see Chapter 6), an Elizabeth who will fade gracefully and wordlessly into the shadows once she achieves her ambition, and of whom there are only tantalizing glimpses in later years.
It may seem odd that Norfolk would be interceding with the King on Elizabeth’s behalf for a marriage they both knew he wanted. Yet she seems to have been very much in the dark as to what was going on. Buck thought her naïve in thinking that Richard could not marry her while his wife still lived.43 Evidently she did not know that the subject of an annulment had been raised. Buck observed that “by this letter, it may be observed that this young lady was inexpert in worldly affairs.” But her mother was not, and the letter may well have been a diplomatic ploy to bring Richard to the point and discover his true intentions, which he was reluctant to declare while his wife lived. Indeed, the words could have been dictated by Elizabeth Wydeville,44 in which case Elizabeth had probably returned to Heytesbury after Christmas, which would explain why she was writing to Norfolk rather than approaching him personally. Indeed, it is unlikely she would have sent such a letter without her mother’s knowledge and approval.45
In it she described Richard as “her only joy and maker in this world” and wrote that “she was his in heart, in thoughts, in [body] and in all.” The word “maker” meant one who makes or shapes, who advances or contrives, or even frames a legal document or law, possibly a treaty. That would make sense in the context of arranging a marriage, while the rest was intended as a fulsome declaration of loyalty, rather than something more personal. It was probably a means to an end, calculated to convince the King that Elizabeth was eager to marry him and that he held her happiness in his gift.
Several historians have remarked upon her statement that “she was his in heart and thoughts, in body [author’s italics] and in all.” The word “body” is speculative, as text is missing here, although it does appear in Egerton 2216. This might seem to imply a more intimate involvement, but the passage is probably a declaration that Elizabeth would serve the King with every aspect of her being—the conventional phraseology of late medieval fealty as well as courtship. Yet her words have also been taken to mean46 that she had already given herself to Richard. If so, would she have spoken so frankly of it to Norfolk? Sleeping with her uncle without any contract or the dispensation of the Church could seriously have endangered her reputation and her future, not to mention her immortal soul. But speculation on the matter is not just a modern construction; there were rumors at the time, on the Continent, if not in England: the Burgundian chronicler, Jean Molinet, never very reliable, even claimed that Elizabeth bore Richard a child, an assertion that is unsubstantiated by any other source.
There is overwhelming evidence that Elizabeth was virtuous and deeply religious, but even if pragmatism had outweighed moral considerations, an illicit pregnancy could have ruined her. So it is highly unlikely that she took a desperate gamble, hoping that giving herself to a man who was shunning his wife’s bed was the best way to a crown. Vergil, no apologist for Richard III, says the King “had kept her unharmed with a view to marriage.” This chimes with the opinion of his advisers that people would think he was marrying her to gratify an “incestuous passion,”47 which more or less confirms that he had not already done so.
Elizabeth’s letter betrays desperation and a sense of time passing fruitlessly: she is clearly anxious that the matter should be concluded, and apparently ready to display a callous disregard for the dying Queen Anne. In her defense, her sense of urgency may have stemmed from fear that Richard would be dissuaded from marrying her by his advisers—as later happened—and that he might then find her a less acceptable husband, which would put paid to her prospects of ever wearing a crown.
There is no evidence as to her true feelings for Richard III. It appears that at this time she had in her possession two books: a manuscript containing a verse translation in French of Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae [Consolations of Philosophy]48 and “The Book of Tristram,” or “The Romance of Tristram de Lyonesse,” dating from the latter part of the fifteenth century.49 Both had belonged to Richard when he was Duke of Gloucester. The Boethius bears his motto, “Loyalte me lye” [Loyalty binds me], possibly written by Elizabeth, and her signature; the Tristram contains the inscription (not necessarily in his hand) “Iste liber constat Ricardo Duci Gloucestre.” On the same page Elizabeth wrote the motto she had chosen for herself, “sans removyr [without changing], Elyzabeth.” Her signature appears by itself in both books, not in the form she had used as a princess—“Elizabeth, the King’s daughter” or “Elizabeth Plantagenet”—or would use as queen: “Elizabeth ye Queen.” The lack of a title suggests that she owned the books during this period when she had no royal status, while the motto is apposite, given her situation, and may reveal a strength of character that enabled her to cope in adversity with fortitude.
The tale of Tristram of Lyonesse may have had some significance for Elizabeth. Sir Thomas Malory’s version of the Arthurian legends has Tristram falling in love with Isode, whose uncle he has killed,50 just as Richard had Elizabeth’s uncle, Earl Rivers, executed.
Possibly these books were gifts from Richard to Elizabeth, and it has been suggested that they are tangible evidence of a degree of closeness between them.51 It is more likely that they were merely gifts given—or sent—formally by the King to the woman he hoped to marry, conventional and costly expressions of his esteem. Elizabeth had been at court only over Christmas. There was no possibility of courtship while Queen Anne lived, and little opportunity for any relationship to develop.
Elizabeth probably never saw Richard again. She may have been at Heytesbury while the momentous events of the spring were taking place. Holinshed, writing much later, states that the King would not permit her to attend the Queen’s obsequies, and sent her away from court, presumably to escape the rumors, to stay at Lathom House in Lancashire, Lord Stanley’s seat. But it is more likely that Elizabeth was at Heytesbury, itself a good distance from London. It is unlikely that the King would have risked her going to a house where she might come into contact with Margaret Beaufort.
Whether Margaret Beaufort was at Lathom or not, she was still doing her best to bring about Elizabeth’s marriage to her son. That spring, when Henry Tudor, busily preparing ships for his invasion, heard a rumor that “King Richard, his wife being dead, was minded to marry Elizabeth, his brother Edward’s daughter,” and that he had married Cecily, Edward’s other daughter, to the younger son of a peer, it “pinched him to the very stomach,” and left Henry in fear that his friends would forsake him.52 He was so insulted that he decided to seek another bride in the person of Katherine Herbert, daughter of his former guardian. While Katherine could not bring him a crown, marriage to her might rally Welsh support to his cause. But the letter he sent to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland (who was married to Katherine’s sister), containing his proposal never reached its destination,53 and his mother wrote urging him to set aside his pride, insisting that his marriage to Elizabeth was crucial to his success in winning the crown. By then, Henry probably heard that Richard had publicly denied ever intending to wed his niece.54
In view of the rumors, Richard had no choice but to take his councilors’ advice. “A little before Easter (which fell on April 3), in the presence of the mayor and citizens of London, in the great hall of the priory of the Knights Hospitalers of St. John in Clerkenwell, in a loud and distinct voice,” he publicly denied that he had ever intended to wed his niece. Croyland observed that he made “the said denial, more, as many supposed, to suit the wishes of those who advised him to that effect, than in conformity with his own.”
But the King needed to placate his critics. He “showed his grief and displeasure, and said it never came in his thought or mind to marry in such manner wise, nor [was he] willing nor glad of the death of his queen, but as sorry, and in heart as heavy, as man might be”; and he “admonished and charged every person to cease of such untrue talking on peril of his indignation.”55 On April 11 letters containing the text of his public denial were sent to major towns and cities, which shows how widely the gossip had spread. In them the King fulminated against “divers seditious and evil persons in London and elsewhere within our realm [who] enforce themselves daily to sow seeds of noise and dislander against our person, to abuse the multitude of our subjects and avert their minds from us, some by setting up bills, some by spreading false rumors, some by messages and sending forth of lies, some by bold and presumptuous open speech and communication”; and he ordered that such persons be arrested and questioned.56
Richard’s humiliating denials did little to quench the gossip; in fact, they fueled it. Decades later Richard Grafton, in his continuation of More’s history, would still state that Richard had “fancied apace Lady Elizabeth, desiring in any wise to marry with her.” But that was not all that rumor alleged. “After Easter,” The Great Chronicle of London records, “much whispering was among the people that the King had poisoned the queen his wife, and intended with a license purchased to have married the eldest daughter of King Edward. Which rumors and sayings with other things before done caused him to fall in great hatred of his subjects.”
The damning rumors about Anne’s death passed into common currency. Commines heard them in France and reported: “some say he had her killed.” The chronicler John Rous, a Neville adherent who had been full of praise for Richard but turned vitriolic, possibly after Anne’s death, was to state categorically: “Lady Anne, his queen, he poisoned.” Later, Vergil wrote cautiously that “the Queen, whether she was dispatched with sorrowfulness or poison, died within a few days after.”
Later writers asserted that Richard had harried Anne to her death by psychological means. Vergil wrote that he abstained from her bed, then lamented bitterly to Archbishop Rotherham that she was unfruitful, whereupon Rotherham spread the word that the Queen “would suddenly depart from this world.” The King was saying the same, and even spread a rumor that she had died, intending to frighten her to death. When one of her ladies told her of it, Anne was so fearful that she concluded that her days were at an end, and fled to Richard in tears, asking why “he should determine her death,” but he made a show of kissing and comforting her, and bade her “be of good cheer.” In the late seventeenth century Thomas Fuller would write that “this lady, understanding that she was a burden to her husband, for grief soon became a burden to herself and wasted away,” her condition worsened by daily quarrels with Richard and his complaints that she was barren. “Some think she went her own pace to the grave, while others suspect a grain was given her to quicken her in her journey to her long home.”
Of course, these later stories were written at a time when people believed that he had been a tyrant and a monster, but rumors that Richard had done away with Anne were in circulation very soon after her death, at the same time as it was said that he was planning to marry Elizabeth. Since rumors that he murdered the princes had now been in circulation for eighteen months, would not die down, and were damaging his reputation, it must have seemed believable that he had murdered an unwanted wife too. He had, after all, destroyed others—Hastings, Rivers, and Grey—who stood in the way of his ambitions. And it is possible, given the urgent need to neutralize Henry Tudor, that there was more than just rumor involved, and that the man who murdered his own nephews had not scrupled to hasten the end of the wife who stood in the way of his plans. That many people—sufficient to merit a public denial—believed this at the time is clear; and it might be that those who had kept silent felt free to voice their suspicions once Richard was dead, about this and other matters.
The rumors, true or not, had done much damage. In southern England and Wales, Richard had lost any popular support he ever had. This was the man who had ruthlessly maneuvered his way to the throne, impugning the legitimacy of his brother’s children, and his mother’s honor in the process, and committed acts of tyranny, justified by what many regarded to be lies; who was widely reputed to have murdered his nephews and even his wife, and was known to have been contemplating a marriage with his niece, which most people condemned as incestuous. Only in the North did he retain some of his former popularity and support, but some of it had been due to his marriage to the Neville heiress, and now even that was dwindling. Small wonder that, after the Queen’s death, Richard’s “countenance was always drawn.”57 Someone who had known him later told More that he “was never quiet in his mind, never thought himself secure, his hand ever on his dagger,” and that “he took ill rest at night.”
One thing Richard III could have done to put paid to Henry Tudor’s aspirations was marry off Elizabeth—and her sisters. His failure to do so seems inexplicable, as many Yorkists had attached themselves to Henry in the expectation that he would wed Elizabeth and restore the rightful royal line to the throne. Maybe Richard was hoping that the Portuguese marriage would be speedily concluded. But these things took time—and, for him, time was now running out.