6
Publicly rejected and humiliated by the King after being made a spectacle of at the Christmas court, deprived of the chance to wear the crown that would have brought honor and prosperity to her family, and possibly horrified by rumors that Richard had hastened his queen’s death, Elizabeth had every reason to feel distressed and angry. Now plans were afoot to marry her into Portugal, which would put paid to her aspirations, and leave her family without a friend in high places. Small wonder that she now looked to Henry Tudor to deliver her and fulfill her hopes. After all, he had sworn to marry her and rule England with her. Marriage to him probably seemed the best way to satisfy her ambitions, restore her rights, and safeguard her kinsfolk—and it would wreak a devastating revenge on Richard.
She had good reason to hope. In 1485, Charles VIII recognized Henry Tudor as King of England and gave him money, ships, and French troops for an invasion, with the aim—as Henry put it—of “the just depriving of that homicide and unnatural tyrant.” Upon this, many Englishmen hastened to France to join the pretender. Even though Richard III had now repudiated his plan to marry Elizabeth, Henry knew he must invade soon lest the King marry her elsewhere; if that happened, his cause would irretrievably be lost. He was as eager as she was for their marriage. Thus the French aid was a godsend.
There is evidence that Elizabeth enlisted the aid of Lord Stanley, Henry’s stepfather. Stanley may privately have resented Richard III’s treatment of his wife, Margaret Beaufort, and by Christmas 1484 both of them were secretly in contact with Henry Tudor. But Stanley, as ever, would not show his hand until it was safe to do so.
A near contemporary metrical chronicle, “The Song of Lady Bessy,” describes Elizabeth’s involvement in the momentous events of 1485. Although the earliest surviving text dates from ca. 1600, the song was written in Henry VII’s reign, probably before 1500 (see this page), and perhaps disseminated as popular propaganda against Richard III. It exists in three different forms: in the Harleian MS. 367 ff. 89–100, which dates from ca. 1600, and Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript III, which is just slightly later in date; both are probably the most authentic versions and closer to the original, although there is no means of detecting how much the fifteenth-century text has been altered. There is a later seventeenth-century copy, printed with notes by Thomas Heywood in the reign of Charles II, which has suffered by elaborate embellishment.
The song was probably composed by Stanley’s squire, or agent, Humphrey Brereton of Cheshire, who himself features in it and was the person best placed to recount the events the ballad describes. Opinions vary as to its historical accuracy. A few parts are demonstrably inventions, and others may be too—although there are not “numerous anachronisms,” as claimed by Gairdner.1 The inaccuracies probably arise from the author not always being as close to events as he would have liked the reader to think he was, and also no doubt as a result of his partisan zeal. He perhaps exaggerated his own role and the familiar trust in which he was held by Elizabeth and the other high-ranking people who appear in the poem. He invented speeches for his characters; again that was standard practice at this period, even in the recording of history. Stanley’s role in this episode may also have been overstated, for the poem was probably written under his auspices, and with the benefit of hindsight—as well as a good dollop of poetic license.
There is no way of proving if the substance of the poem is based on fact, as the historical record is silent on Elizabeth’s role in the events it describes. Yet despite being mere doggerel, and possibly altered in parts, the minute and exact details in “The Song of Lady Bessy” suggest a close acquaintance with real people and events, and are unlikely to be entirely imaginary. Even Gairdner admitted that there was “a great deal of truth in the poem.” Brereton’s almost affectionate portrayal of the industrious and committed Lady Bessy appears to come from one who was familiar with her. She is a heroine standing up for the right, busily intriguing to achieve her ambitions, and working actively undercover to aid Henry Tudor’s—and her own—cause. It is unlikely that Brereton would have depicted her as such were there not a degree of truth behind his verses. There was no reason to include her if she had not been involved—Lord Stanley’s exploits alone justified a ballad.
There can be little doubt that Brereton was privy to much that was going on in Lord Stanley’s life at that time, and the details in the song suggest that it is firsthand evidence of Elizabeth’s involvement in the conspiracy to put Henry Tudor on the throne. The ballad may exaggerate her role in the intrigues that preceded Henry Tudor’s invasion, yet it is conceivable—even credible—that she did participate, perhaps even to the extent the poem portrays. Written probably within eight years of the events it describes so vividly, and by a trusted retainer of her stepfather-in-law, it would have had to appear credible to anyone who read it, especially as it described in detail the deeds of one who was now Queen of England. What is striking is that the Elizabeth portrayed in “The Song of Lady Bessy” is as proactive as the Elizabeth who wrote to John Howard urging his help in progressing her marriage with Richard III.
Politically, much—if not all—of the chronology of “The Song of Lady Bessy” fits into the context of the known events of 1485. A lot of the information it contains has the ring of authenticity, and affords insights into the kind of intrigues that were secretly at play at this time but otherwise, inevitably, went unrecorded.
If the poem does reflect actual events, given some dramatic license, it may seem strange that Margaret Beaufort barely earns a mention in it; but Margaret had already courted disaster in supporting Buckingham and Henry Tudor, and got off lightly. Given the dread penalty for women who committed treason, she probably felt she dared not test Richard’s leniency a second time, and kept her dealings with her son as secret as possible.
It may be that in becoming proactive in Henry’s cause, Elizabeth was trying to redeem herself in his eyes and make amends for what he had seen as a betrayal; for she could have learned from Margaret Beaufort of his reaction to rumors that she was to marry Richard III.
The poem begins when “Lady Bessy” is sojourning in London with Lord Stanley; internal evidence indicates that this is the spring of 1485, after Queen Anne’s death. At that time Elizabeth may have been living at Heytesbury, but there is no actual evidence for her whereabouts. Her age is given by Brereton as twenty-one when in fact she was nineteen. When we first encounter Bessy, she is apparently distressed and frightened, angry even—much as the historical Elizabeth probably felt at that time—and she complains to Stanley about her uncle, King Richard.
“Help, Father Stanley, I do you pray!” she cries, then tells him that the King has had her brothers put to death by drowning them in “a pipe of wine” in their bed (a garbled description of their fate that owes much to the rumors then in circulation, not only about the princes’ end but Clarence’s also). Then she says that Richard “would have put away his queen for to hath lain by my body.” She begs Stanley to “help that he were put away, for all the royal blood destroyed will be!” She wants to wreak revenge on “that traitor” and “help Earl Richmond, that prince so gay, that is exiled over the sea. For if he were King, I should be Queen.” She loves him, she declares, even though she has never seen him.
She reminds Stanley that her father, King Edward, on his deathbed, “put me to thee to govern and to guide.” She says that the King left her a book of prophecy, and that “he knew that ye might make me a queen, Father, if thy will it be, for Richard is no righteous king,” who will destroy “the royal blood of all this land, as he did the Duke of Buckingham.” She reminds Stanley that Buckingham “was as great with King Richard as now are ye.”
Bessy now reveals that she has busily been thinking of ways to overthrow Richard. She knows that Stanley’s brother, Sir William, could summon up five hundred fighting men, while Stanley’s oldest son George, Lord Strange, then at Lathom House, the family seat in Lancashire, could afford to support a thousand men for three months; and his younger sons, Edward and James, a priest who had “lately” been made Warden of Manchester, could send soldiers too. In fact, James was not appointed warden until July 1485, but Brereton’s memory was probably imprecise. James was made Archdeacon of Richmond in 1500, and Bishop of Ely in 1506.2 Since he is referred to only as Warden of Manchester, and there is mention of Sir William Stanley coming “under a cloud,” a reference to his execution for treason in 1495, the poem must originally have been written between 1495 and 1500.
Bessy persists, telling Stanley that his sister’s son, Sir John Savage, could provide fifteen hundred fighting men, Gilbert Talbot (a younger son of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury) could send a thousand and pay their wages for three months, while Stanley himself could provide another thousand. Historically, Savage was to command the right wing of Henry Tudor’s army at the Battle of Bosworth, and Gilbert Talbot the left; Talbot would be knighted for his support of Henry in the battle and receive several important appointments thereafter. Bessy urges Stanley, “Thou and thine may bring Richmond o’er the sea, for, an [if] he were King, I should be Queen.”
Stanley appears as cautious in the poem as he was in real life. “An King Richard do know this thing, we were undone, both thou and I,” he warns Bessy. What she is plotting is no less than high treason. If anything went wrong, he continues, “in a fire you must burn”—burning at the stake being the penalty for women who committed treason—while “my life and my lands are lost from me. Therefore these words be in vain. Leave and doe away, good Bessy!”
Bessy is determined; her ambition is to wear the crown. “Father Stanley! Is there no grace? No, Queen of England, that I must be.” Tears of frustration trickle from her eyes. “Now I know I must never be Queen! All this, man, is long of thee!” She urges Stanley to think of the dreadful Day of Judgment, crying: “I care not whether I hang or drown, so that my soul saved may be. Make good answer, as thou may, for all this, man, is long of thee.” With that, she pulls off her headdress of pearls and precious stones, throws it to the ground, tears her hair and wrings her hands, saying through her tears: “Farewell, man, now I am gone; it shall be long ere thou me see!”
Stanley stands “still as any stone,” weeping himself. “Abide, Bessy! We part not so soon,” he replies. “Here is none but thee and I. Fields hath eyen and wood hath ears; you cannot tell who standeth us by, but wend forth, Bessy, to thy bower, and look you do as I bid ye.” He tells her to “put away thy maidens bright, that no person doth us see,” and he will come to her bower at nine o’clock at night, when they will talk more of the matter; and she must have ready a charcoal fire—“that no smoke come in our eye”—wine and spices, pen, ink, and papers.
Bessy eagerly complies, and has “all things full ready.” Waiting for Stanley, she looks at her book of prophecy and realizes that, for her to become Queen of England, “many a guiltless man first must die.” When Stanley arrives, he finds her weeping. She bars the door behind him, and when they are seated she gives him wine and spices, saying, “Blend in, Father, and drink to me.” The fire is hot, and soon “the wine it wrought wonderfully,” mellowing Stanley and making him weep.
“Ask now, Bessy, then, what thou wilt, and thy boon granted shall be,” he says.
“Nothing,” she answers. “I would have neither of gold nor yet of fee, but fair Earl Richmond, so God me save, that hath lain so long beyond the sea.” Stanley replies that he would grant her that boon, but there is no clerk he can trust to write to Richmond on their behalf.
“Father, it shall not need,” Bessy assures him. “I am a clerk full good, I say.” And to prove her point she draws “a paper on her knee” and begins to write “speedily.” Stanley tells her to write to his brother, Sir William, at Holt Castle, Denbighshire. “Bid him bring seven sad yeomen all in green clothes, and change his inn at every town where before he was wont to lie; and let his face be toward the bench,” to avoid being recognized. He asks Elizabeth to write to his three sons, as well as to John Savage and Gilbert Talbot, who are all to follow the same instructions and be with Stanley by May 3.
Stanley seals the letters that Bessy has written, then pauses. “Alas!” he laments. “All our work is forlorn, for there is no messenger that we may trust.” It is Bessy who suggests Humphrey Brereton. “He hath been true to my father and me. He shall have the writing in hand. Go to bed, Father, and sleep, and I shall work for thee and me. Tomorrow, by rising of the sun, Humphrey Brereton shall be with thee.”
After Stanley has gone to bed, Bessy works through the night: “there came no sleep in her eye.” Early the next morning she seeks out Brereton in his “bower” and calls out to him “in a small voice.”
“Lady, who are ye that calleth on me ere it be light?” he responds.
“I am King Edward’s daughter, the Countess Clare,3 young Bessy,” she tells him, saying he must come “with all the haste you can” to speak with Lord Stanley. Humphrey throws on a gown and slippers and emerges from his chamber. He goes with Bessy “to the bedside” where Stanley is sleeping. When Stanley wakes, he weeps “full tenderly” at the sight of Brereton.
“My love, my trust, my life, my land—all this, Humphrey, doth lie in thee,” he tells him. “Thou may make, and thou may mar; thou may undo Bessy and me.”
Brereton evidently assures Stanley of his loyalty, as in the next moment Stanley commands him to take the six letters Bessy has written and deliver them to the people whose names are “written on the backside.” Brereton is about to depart when Bessy waylays him, saying, “Abide, Humphrey, and speak with me. A poor reward I shall thee give.” It will be £3, or nine nobles [£1,470]. “If I be Queen, and may live, better rewarded shalt thou be.” She advises him, when he sets off on his mission, to take “no company but such as shall be of the best. Sit not too long drinking thy wine, lest in heat thou be too merry”—and indiscreet. She gives him nine nobles to cover his expenses, and some wine, whereupon he takes leave of her and rides westward to Holt Castle.
Brereton delivers her letters to Sir William Stanley at Holt, and to Lord Strange at Lathom, both of whom rally to the cause, then to Edward and James Stanley in Manchester. These two praise Bessy for her good counsel. “We trust in God, full of might, to bring her lord over the sea!” they declare. Sir John Savage, however, pales when he reads her letter. “Women’s wit is wonder to hear!” he exclaims. “My uncle is turned by your Bessy!” Nevertheless, he promises to do Stanley’s bidding. Brereton then rides to Sheffield Castle, where Gilbert Talbot also pays tribute to Bessy’s true counsel, and says: “Commend me to that Countess Clare; tell her I trust in God to bring her love over the sea. In all this land she hath no peer.”
Brereton rides straight back to London, where he finds Lord Stanley walking in a garden with King Richard. Stanley gives him “a privy twinkle with his eye” and welcomes him warmly as he bends his knee to the King. Brereton pretends he has been visiting the place where he was born and bred, and says that support for Richard is strong there; the people will fight for him “and never flee.” This pleases the King; he thanks Brereton courteously, and assures Stanley: “Father Stanley, thou art to me near; you are chief of your commonalty.4 Half of England shall be thine, and equally divided between thee and me. I am thine, and thou art mine.” It is easy to imagine the beleaguered Richard making such extravagant promises to secure the loyalty of the slippery Stanley.
When the King has gone, Stanley and Brereton hasten to Bessy’s bower, where they find her alone. She is so pleased to see Brereton safely returned that she kisses him three times—a detail Brereton is unlikely to have included were it not true.
“Welcome home!” she cries. “How hast thou sped in the west country?”
Stanley leaves Brereton with Bessy, so that he can tell her the tidings of his journey, which she is eager to hear. Even so, she is fearful. “If I should send for yonder prince [Henry Tudor] to come over for the love of me,” he might be murdered by his foes. “Alas, that were full great pity! Forsooth, that sight I would not see for all the gold in Christendom!”
Brereton recounts how Stanley’s kinsmen and allies have shown themselves ready to overthrow King Richard. “By the third day of May, Bessy, in London there will they be. Thou shalt in England be a queen—or else doubtless they will die.”
As the conspirators’ plans mature, Stanley withdraws from the City to an old inn in the suburbs and draws an eagle (part of the Stanley cognizance of the eagle and child) above the doorway—a prearranged sign to the men who come to find him. Bessy is there with him to greet them—the Stanleys, Savage, and Talbot—and “when all the lords together” meet over flagons of wine, “among them all” is “little Bessy,” who asks, “Lords, will ye do for me? Will ye relieve yonder prince that is exiled beyond the sea?”
Stanley answers, “Forty pound[s] will I send, Bessy, for the love of thee, and twenty thousand eagle feet [men] a Queen of England to make thee.” Sir William Stanley adds, “Remember, Bessy, another time, who doth the best for thee.” He says he has raised a thousand men, who will be ready at an hour’s warning. “In England thou shall be a queen, or else doubtless I will die.” Savage tells her he is sending a thousand marks to “thy love beyond the sea,” and Strange adds, “A little money and few men will bring thy love over the sea.” But they decide it is too hazardous to send their gold abroad, and that they will keep it at home to spend on waging war on Richard III. Edward Stanley also reminds Bessy to remember in the future those who are doing their best for her, “for there is no power that I have, nor no gold to give thee. Under my father’s banner will I be, either for to live or die.”
Bessy falls on her knees before the lords, promising to send £10,000 [£4.9 million] “to my love over the sea.” This seems highly unlikely, as Elizabeth had no money of her own, but it was probably the imagined value of “a rich ring with a stone” that Brereton was to take to Henry Tudor—although it is unlikely that any ring of the period was worth as much. Brereton tells her he dare not take her gold over the sea for fear of being robbed or drowned.
“Hold thy peace, Humphrey,” she replies. “Thou shalt carry it without jeopardy. Thou shalt have no basket nor no [chain] mail, no bucket nor sackcloth; three mules that be stiff and strong, loaded with gold shall they be, with saddles side-skirted wherein the gold stowed shall be. If any man says, ‘Who[se] is the ship that saileth forth upon the sea?’ say it is the Lord Lisle’s—in England and France well-beloved is he.” This was Edward Grey, who had borne the rod with the dove at Richard III’s coronation, and had been created Viscount Lisle by the King.5
Stanley scolds Bessy: “Thou art to blame, to point any ship upon the sea! I have a good ship of my own.” He will send it across the sea with the eagle symbol flying from the top mast, and if anyone asks whose ship it is, the crew must say it is his. It is in this ship that Brereton sails to France with the ring given him by Bessy, which he takes to Henry Tudor at “Bigeram Abbey.” This was probably Bec Hellouin Abbey, west of Rouen, where Henry was raising mercenaries, and south of Harfleur, whence he would sail to England.
When Brereton comes before Henry Tudor, he falls to his knees and delivers Bessy’s letter and her ring. Henry is gladdened at the sight; he takes the ring and kisses it three times. Then he stands silent, leaving Brereton on his knees, perplexed. Eventually, the squire rises.
“Why standeth thou so still?” he asks. “I am come from the Stanleys bold, King of England to make thee, and a fair lady to thy fere [wife]; there is none such in Christendom. She is a countess, a king’s daughter, a lovely lady to look upon, and well she can work by prophecy. I may be called a lewd messenger, for answer of thee I can get none. I may sail hence with a heavy heart. What shall I say when I come home?”
Henry turns to John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Dorset (who is referred to in the poem by his lesser title, Lord Ferrers) and Lord Lisle, who are standing by, and confers with them. Then he tells Brereton he cannot give him an answer for three weeks. The next day he rides off with his lords to Paris, “there arms to make ready,” and to ask the King of France to lend him ships. Historically, Henry visited Paris in June 1485. Back at Bec Hellouin Abbey, he gives Brereton 100 marks [£16,300], promising he will be “better rewarded” in time to come.
“Commend me to Bessy, that Countess Clare,” he says. “I trust in God she shall be my queen. For her I will travel the sea. Commend me to my father, Stanley. Bring him here a love letter, and another to little Bessy. Commend me to Sir William Stanley. Tell him, about Michaelmas, I trust in God in England to be.” The mention of Michaelmas sounds authentic; Brereton might well have remembered Henry saying that, and if he was writing purely with the benefit of hindsight, he would probably have had Henry predicting his arrival in August.
Brereton returns to Bessy and Stanley in London, with the letters from Henry to both of them. At this point, Stanley prepares to ride to Lathom, and Sir William Stanley, Gilbert Talbot, John Savage, and Edward Stanley are raising their levies. The stage is set for the King’s destruction.
If “The Song of Lady Bessy” was pure fiction, Elizabeth may have been at Heytesbury with her mother all along. But it is also possible that at some point she was residing in Stanley’s London house, and there remains a fair chance that Richard III did discover that she was involved in a conspiracy against him—or suspected she was in league with that proven turncoat, Lord Stanley, or even feared she would attempt to flee abroad to join his enemy. He may have anticipated that Elizabeth would do much to win the crown she believed was rightfully hers. Even had he nurtured no such suspicions, with Henry Tudor’s invasion believed imminent, he was taking no chances. He knew that Elizabeth was regarded by many as the rightful heiress to York, and at some stage he decided to move her to a secure place, far out of the reach of Henry Tudor or anyone else who might aspire to a crown by marrying her.
Wherever Elizabeth was, she was vulnerable to intrigue and capture, so the King gave orders that she be escorted to Sheriff Hutton Castle, ten miles northeast of York, to join the household he had set up for her cousins, Edward, Earl of Warwick, and probably Warwick’s sister, Margaret Plantagenet, and his own bastard son, John of Gloucester. It has often been suggested that Elizabeth’s sisters were sent there too, but there is no evidence for this.
Sheriff Hutton Castle was a feudal fortress dating from the 1140s but rebuilt in the late fourteenth century by the powerful Nevilles, who held it until it was confiscated by Edward IV in 1471; soon afterward it was given to Richard of Gloucester. Situated next to a park on a rising bank affording beautiful views across the forest of Galtres, it had two moats, used as fishponds, and the village of Sheriff Hutton had grown up around it. The castle was built of brown stone around a large rectangular courtyard, or “base court.” John Leland, who visited Sheriff Hutton during the reign of Henry VIII, recorded that it had “four great towers with a gatehouse in the middle”—the arched gateway in the Warder’s Tower, which probably accommodated the garrison. “In the second area were five or six small towers.”6 In fact there were eight or nine square towers over a hundred feet high. The connecting stone walls were five stories high and contained narrow galleries and chambers.
In Yorkist times the castle was not only a building of strength and security, but also boasted luxurious accommodation. The tower chambers, accessed by spiral stairs, had arched or vaulted ceilings and painted plaster walls, while below there were strong cellars that could be used as storerooms or dungeons. There was a great hall in the “second area,” and Leland thought “the stately stair up to the hall … very magnificent, and so is the hall itself, and all the residue of the house, insomuch that I saw no house in the North so like a princely lodging.” In Elizabethan times William Camden called Sheriff Hutton a most elegant castle, pleasantly seated among the woods.7
Richard probably felt it would be safer to lodge Elizabeth in the North, where he could command his greatest support, but Sheriff Hutton cannot have had happy associations for her, for it was the place where her uncle, Earl Rivers, had been imprisoned two years earlier before being borne off to execution at Pontefract; and it was a long way from her mother and sisters, and from Westminster and the palaces of the Thames Valley where she had spent most of her life. Again she found herself effectively a prisoner, in “safe custody,” according to Sir Francis Bacon, whose History of the Reign of King Henry VII was published in 1622.8
The household at Sheriff Hutton was under the control of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the King’s Lieutenant in the North, who was then twenty-six. As the eldest son of Edward IV’s sister Elizabeth and John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, he was the heir to a wealthy and noble house, with great establishments at Ewelme, Oxfordshire, and Wingfield, Suffolk. Through his grandmother, Alice Chaucer, Lincoln was descended from the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. He was Richard III’s closest adult male relative and had carried the orb at his coronation.
After the death of the Prince of Wales, Richard III considered naming Clarence’s son, the Earl of Warwick, his successor, but it was a choice fraught with difficulties. Warwick was technically barred from the succession by his father’s attainder, and although that could have been reversed, it would have left him with a better claim to the throne than Richard. Moreover, he was only a child of nine. Richard decided that Warwick was not the best option and, with the consent of the nobility, named Lincoln his successor,9appointing him Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a post customarily held by Yorkist heirs to the throne. Lincoln was also granted the reversion of Margaret Beaufort’s estates.
Little is recorded of Lincoln’s character, saving the conventional praise for his nobility, wisdom, and gallantry. Despite his youth, he was experienced in government and respected for his judgment and political sense. He was a committed Yorkist, as events would prove, especially as he had a crown in his sights and stood to lose much if Henry Tudor was victorious.
Elizabeth probably saw little, if anything at all, of her cousin Lincoln while she was at Sheriff Hutton. His official base was at Sandal Castle, fifty miles away, and in July 1485 he was at Nottingham with the King, preparing to fight for Richard against Henry Tudor. In June, anticipating that Henry would invade soon, Richard had issued a proclamation calling on all true Englishmen to repel a pretender who was “descended of bastard blood both of the father’s side and of the mother’s side, for Owen [Tudor], the grandfather, was bastard born, and his mother was daughter to John, Duke of Somerset, son unto John, Earl of Somerset, son unto Dame Katherine Swynford, and of her in double adultery gotten, whereby it evidently appeareth that no title can nor may be in him, which fully intendeth to enter this realm purposing a conquest.”10
On August 1, Henry Tudor’s invasion fleet set sail from Harfleur in Normandy. Six days later “the enemy landed with a fair wind and without opposition at Milford Haven, near Pembroke.”11 After disembarking, Henry fell to his knees, recited the 43rd Psalm—“Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an unworthy nation”—and kissed the ground. Then, calling on the aid of God and St. George, he urged his men onward, marching under a white and green banner proudly displaying the red dragon traditionally attributed to Cadwaladr. He came, as he was at pains to make clear, to reconcile the warring factions.
From his base at Nottingham, Richard had summoned “his adherents from every quarter” to help him triumph over “so contemptible a faction,”12 but by now he had lost the support of more than half of his nobility.13 Estimates vary from six to twelve, but only a few peers answered his summons, and many knights and gentlemen ignored it. Even the mayor and corporation of York, with whom Richard had enjoyed good relations, sent only eighty men.14
Croyland states that Lord Stanley had sought and received permission to go to Lancashire to see his family, but only on condition that he left his heir, Lord Strange, with the King as a hostage for his loyalty. The King had no illusions about Stanley, who had changed sides to suit himself too often, and whose loyalty could not be taken for granted, especially as he was married to Henry Tudor’s mother. Richard was afraid “lest she might induce her husband to go over to the party of her son.”15
“The Song of Lady Bessy” also has Stanley taking leave of the King and riding to Lathom, but taking Elizabeth with him. He leaves her at Leicester, bidding her “lie there in privity,” and warns her, “If King Richard knew thee here, in a fire burnt must thou be.” Then he spurs his horse toward Lancashire, and sends Lord Strange “to London [sic] to keep King Richard company.”
It has long been assumed that Elizabeth was sent to Sheriff Hutton in June,16 but in fact no date is recorded. It is possible therefore that she was sent there in August, and not impossible that Richard’s men discovered her in hiding at Leicester, and, being preoccupied with more pressing matters, he gave orders that she be sent to Sheriff Hutton at this juncture, rather than earlier in the summer, thus deferring the question of what to do with her. What mattered now was that she was safely beyond Henry Tudor’s reach at Sheriff Hutton.
As Henry marched his army eastward, entering England via Shrewsbury on August 15, the King rode to confront him. The armies met in Leicestershire, near Market Bosworth, on August 22.
Both Croyland and Vergil state that Richard had suffered nightmares in the dark hours before they met in the field. “The King, so it was reported, had seen that night, in a terrible dream, a multitude of demons apparently surrounding him, just as he attested in the morning, when he presented a countenance which was always drawn but was then ever more pale and deadly.” In this mood, he “declared that he would ruin all the partisans of the other side, if he emerged as the victor.”17 Elizabeth was one of those who stood in deadly danger of her uncle’s vengeance—not least because she was seen by many as the legitimate Yorkist heir.
The Battle of Bosworth lasted two hours, with an estimated twenty thousand men engaging in combat, most of them in the royal forces. It was “a most savage battle.”18 Henry Tudor—whom Richard dismissed beforehand as “an unknown Welshman, whose father I never knew, nor him personally saw”19—did not engage in the fighting, but remained under his standard behind the lines, leaving the experienced John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to command his vanguard. Lord Stanley turned up with his men, but he had secretly met with Henry two days earlier,20 and when Richard commanded his presence, had sent word that he “was suffering an attack of the sweating sickness” and could not attend him.21 “The Song of Lady Bessy” has Stanley meeting Henry before the battle, giving him his blessing and Margaret Beaufort’s, and promising to come to his aid. But when the historical Stanley turned up at Bosworth, he positioned himself some way off to the north with his forces, waiting to see which way the battle was going before joining it. His brother, Sir William Stanley, also notorious for changing sides, was with him. Even if the Stanleys had intrigued with Elizabeth to set Henry on the throne, they were looking to their own advantage before anyone else’s.
On the morning of the battle, the King sent a message ordering Stanley to join him at once, if he wanted his son to stay alive. Stanley, taking a terrible gamble, sent back word that he did not feel like joining the King, and he had other sons, whereupon Richard ordered his captains to put Lord Strange to death. When they refused, he told them to keep Strange under close arrest until he could deal with him after the battle.
When the King’s side appeared to be losing the day, the Earl of Northumberland, who should have intervened with his men to aid his sovereign, did nothing. Seeing that he was deserted by those in whom he had trusted, Richard gathered a small band of loyal followers and made one final, desperate charge, bearing down on the red dragon banner of Henry Tudor. He cut down the standard bearer and was about to swoop on Henry himself, but now Lord Stanley came racing to Henry’s aid, which decisively turned the tide of the battle, and “a glorious victory was granted by Heaven to the Earl of Richmond.”22
The Croyland chronicler recorded that it was during the fighting, and not in the act of flight, that Richard fell, “like a brave and most valiant prince.” The chronicler John Rous, who had once praised Richard but turned hostile toward him in 1485, was moved to write: “Let me say the truth to his credit, that he bore himself like a noble soldier and honorably defended himself to his last breath, shouting again and again that he was betrayed, and crying, ‘Treason! Treason! Treason!’ ” Even the Tudor historian, Polydore Vergil, conceded that King Richard was killed “fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies.” Croyland declared: “Providence gave a glorious victory to the Earl of Richmond.”
Legend has it that the crown fell from the dying Richard’s helmet and rolled under a hawthorn bush—later a popular Tudor emblem, which can be seen on Henry VII’s tomb and in a window of Westminster Abbey. The crown was lying “among the spoils in the field,”23 where Sir William Stanley spotted and retrieved it.24 As “the soldiers cried, ‘God save King Henry!’ ” he placed it on the head of Henry Tudor, “as though he had been already by the commandment of the people proclaimed King after the manner of his ancestors.”25 The first sovereign of the celebrated royal House of Tudor was “replenished with joy incredible.”26
With Richard III’s death, 331 years of Plantagenet rule had come to an end. Now a new age had begun, and its progenitor, Henry VII, “began to receive the praises of all, as though he had been an angel sent down from Heaven, through whom God had deigned to visit His people and deliver them from the evils with which they had hitherto, beyond measure, been afflicted.” Croyland commented: “The children of King Edward,” had been “avenged” at last “in this battle: the boar’s tusks quailed, and, to avenge the white, the red rose bloomed.”
Richard’s body, “pierced with numerous and deadly wounds,” was found under a heap of the dead, for many men had been cut down in that last fatal charge. His corpse was stripped naked, “with not so much as a clout to cover his privy members”; then, “with many other insults heaped on it,” it was thrown over a horse’s saddle with a felon’s halter around its neck, and borne, “besprung with mire and filth,” back to Leicester, where it was exhibited for two days in the collegiate church of St. Mary in the Newark.27 “The Song of Lady Bessy” claims that “Bessy met him with merry cheer” and addressed the bloody remains: “How likest thou thy slaying of my brethren twain? Now are we wreaked upon thee here! Welcome, gentle uncle, home!” But there is no other record—as surely there would have been—of Elizabeth being at Leicester on that day; and Sheriff Hutton is nearly 130 miles from Leicester, a journey of at least two days back then. It is inconceivable that she could have escaped Richard’s custodians before his defeat at Bosworth, and more likely that Brereton was taking poetic license to show that she viewed her uncle’s defeat as just retribution for the death of her brothers.
The vanquished King’s body, which had apparently been mutilated after death, was “indifferently buried”28 in a roughly dug grave that was too small for it in the choir of the Grey Friars’ church,29 and in 1502, Henry VII paid out £10.1s. [£4,890] “for King Richard’s tomb” of alabaster.30 This was destroyed along with the church during the Reformation of the 1530s. In the early seventeenth century, Robert Herrick, a mayor of Leicester, built a house and laid out a garden where once the choir had stood. Here, in 1612, Christopher Wren, father of the architect, saw “a handsome stone pillar, three foot high,” bearing the inscription: “Here lies the body of Richard III, sometime King of England.” In 2012 the grave was found under the car park laid out where the Grey Friars’ monastery once stood.31
How rapidly news of these momentous events had filtered through to Sheriff Hutton is unknown, but Elizabeth would certainly have been anxious to hear of the outcome of the conflict between the two men who had played for her hand, for it would seal her own fate. She did not have long to wait, for within hours of his victory at Bosworth, even before departing from Leicester, the new King sent Sir Robert Willoughby and Sir John Halewell32 to Sheriff Hutton to secure her person and that of Edward, Earl of Warwick; they came with “a noble company to fetch [Elizabeth] to her lady mother.”33
André says that when Elizabeth “learned that Henry had won the victory,” she “exclaimed with gladness of heart: ‘so even at last, thou hast, O God, regarded the humble and not despised their prayers. I well remember that my most noble father, of famous memory, meant to have bestowed me in marriage upon this most comely prince! O that I were worthy of him; for, as I have lost my father and protector, I sorely fear me that he will take a wife from foreign parts whose beauty, age, fortune, and dignity will more please him than mine! What shall I say? I am alone, and I dare not take counsel. O that I could acquaint my mother, or some of the lords, with my fears, but I dare not, nor have I the courage to discourse with him himself on the subject, lest in so doing I might discover my love. What will be, I cannot divine, but this I know, that Almighty God always succors those who trust in Him. Therefore will I cease to think, and repose my whole hope in Thee. O my God, do Thou with me according to Thy mercy.’ ” And she “pondered these things privately.”
Allowing for the flowery language, and the likelihood that the speech is invented, there may be some truth in the sentiments expressed; it is unlikely that André would have made all this up. Elizabeth might indeed have come to regard her father’s plan to marry her to Henry Tudor as prescient, if not sacrosanct, and these may well have been the sentiments she expressed at the time. It is credible that she herself was one of André’s sources, for he wrote his official history during the last years of her life.
Henry wanted Elizabeth and Warwick brought south immediately, and Elizabeth “received a direction to repair with all convenient speed to London, and there to remain with the Queen her mother; which accordingly she soon after did,”34 escorted under Sir Robert’s protection with the honor due to a future Queen of England. Warwick, however, was to be conveyed in secret.
Henry was always to regard young Warwick as one of the chief threats to his crown, despite the fact that the earl, then just ten years old, was barred from the succession and seems to have been mentally backward. But for the attainder against his father, the Duke of Clarence, Warwick would have been the rightful male heir to the House of York; Elizabeth’s claim was better, but she was a woman, and Henry, knowing attainders could be reversed, feared that Yorkists might now look to Warwick in preference to her and the man Richard III had called “an unknown Welshman.” As soon as Warwick arrived in London, Henry had him confined briefly at Margaret Beaufort’s London house, Coldharbour, and then imprisoned in the Tower. Because Henry was fearful lest he escape to “stir up civil discord,”35 the unfortunate boy was to spend the rest of his life there, bereft of companions, tutors, or much in the way of comforts. Thus seriously did the new King regard him as a rival, and with justification, for, captive though Warwick remained, he was to be the focus of several Yorkist plots.
Elizabeth, however, was brought openly to London, attended by an escort of “many noblemen and ladies of honor.”36 That was a good sign, yet she might have felt a passing anxiety as to her future, for until Henry married her, she was essentially a rival claimant to his throne, for all that she was a woman; and she could transmit her claim to any man she married. Probably she had read enough history to know that King John murdered Arthur, Duke of Brittany, a rival claimant to the throne, then imprisoned Arthur’s sister Eleanor for life. But Elizabeth had four sisters, each of whom could replace her in the line of succession, and her proposed marriage was popular, so it was hardly likely that the new King would renege on a promise that had won over so many Yorkists to his cause. And now the courtesy and honor accorded to her must have given her cause to hope that she would soon be Queen, although she may have been disconcerted to learn that Henry “had assumed the style of king in his own name,” on the battlefield of Bosworth, “without mention of the Lady Elizabeth at all,”37 especially as he was supposed to be marrying her to give legitimacy to his title. Furthermore, when she reached London, she might have found it strange that there was no state welcome in the capital, or any celebrations to mark her arrival, as was usual for a royal bride. These were the first indications that her marriage to Henry VII was not to be regarded as the means of his kingship. Had she processed through the City in triumph, it might have looked as if she herself was the rightful sovereign.38
Observing the proprieties, Henry had arranged for his prospective bride to be lodged with his mother. Apartments had been made ready for Elizabeth and her mother at Coldharbour, which lay on the foreshore south of Thames Street, just outside the City walls; and it was there that she was reunited with Elizabeth Wydeville. The former Queen had been staying at Sheen at the time of Bosworth, but hastened to London, and it was to her care that the new King initially entrusted his future bride. It is likely that Elizabeth’s sisters joined her, for Henry arranged for Margaret Beaufort to be given “the keeping and guiding of the ladies daughter of King Edward IV” along with eight-year-old Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, and the hapless Earl of Warwick.39 Warwick’s sister Margaret probably also joined this bustling household.
Elizabeth spent the following weeks at Coldharbour. In 1484, Richard III had granted the royal heralds this ancient house as a permanent home. It lay by the River Thames on the site now occupied by 89 Upper Thames Street.40 It was a great mansion, dating from at least the early fourteenth century, and among previous residents were Henry IV, Henry V, Margaret of Burgundy, Sir John de Pulteney—four times mayor of London in the fourteenth century and builder of Penshurst Place—and Alice Perrers, Edward III’s mistress, who added a tower. The heralds had held the house for only a year when Richard III was killed and Henry VII canceled the grant of Coldharbour, which he gave to his mother.
Here, Elizabeth anxiously awaited news that she was to become Queen of England at last.