Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (10 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A much later source, “The Song of Lady Bessy” (see
Chapter 6
), asserts that Elizabeth could “indite” (compose) and “full well read both English and also French and also Spanish,” but this was an exaggeration, if not an invention. In 1488 a Spanish ambassador reported that she could not read letters in Spanish, and ten years afterward she insisted that her future daughter-in-law spoke French when she came to England, as she herself did not understand Latin (which was not taught to women before the reign of her son, Henry VIII), much less Spanish.
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French was seen as a desirable accomplishment among the upper classes, but the evidence suggests that Elizabeth understood it better than she spoke it, for when she received Italian ambassadors in
1497, she struggled to converse with them in French and needed an interpreter.
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Her daily curriculum was probably similar in many respects to that laid down by her father in 1473 for her brother, Prince Edward. Edward was to spend his days “in such virtuous learning as his age shall suffer to receive” and be read “such noble stories as behoveth a prince to understand and know.” Afternoons were to be spent at lessons or in such recreation as was suitable for “the eschewing of idleness.” Elizabeth would not have been expected to practice the “convenient disports and exercises” thought necessary for a prince, but she would have been taught dancing, horsemanship, music, and needlework instead.
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Elizabeth Wydeville would also have exercised some intellectual influence on her children, especially her daughters. A patron of education and poor scholars, she refounded Queen’s College, Cambridge, in 1465, when its name was changed to Queens’ College.
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She also patronized William Caxton, who dedicated
The Knight of the Tower
to her in 1484. Books were luxury items, often bequeathed in wills, and Elizabeth Wydeville owned or commissioned several, notably Caxton’s
Receuil of the Histories of Troy
, his tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece (which she gave to the Prince of Wales), and an illuminated book of devotions, “The Hours of the Guardian Angel,” dedicated to a queen called Elizabeth. It was once thought that this book was presented to Elizabeth of York, but it has been dated on artistic style to 1475–83.
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At Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, there is a beautiful illustrated vellum manuscript of the “Hours of Our Lady,” dating from 1470–85; it is signed “Elysabeth Plantaegenet” and inscribed in a later hand “the Queen.” It has been suggested that it was once owned by Elizabeth Wydeville and passed by her to her daughter, but Elizabeth Wydeville would not have used the surname Plantagenet, which is how Elizabeth of York might have signed herself before her father’s death. Thus it probably came into the latter’s possession prior to 1483; her signature also appears on another page.
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Elizabeth may jointly have owned “The Romance of the San Graal,” a costly illuminated manuscript of French romances that included the legends of King Arthur. It dated from
ca
.1315–25 and had once been
in the library of King Charles V of France. Acquired by the Roos family, it was bequeathed in 1482 by Sir Richard Roos to his niece, the Queen’s damsel and kinswoman, Eleanor Haute. It bears four signatures: one is that of Joan, Elizabeth Wydeville’s sister; another is “E. Wydevyll,” who was probably their brother, Sir Edward Wydeville, as the Queen is unlikely to have signed herself in this way. The other signatures are those of “Elysabeth the kyngys dowther” and “Cecyl the kyngys dowther,” probably written before April 1483. Since it is unlikely that the book was owned by all four signatories, it may have been shared by Edward Wydeville with his sister and nieces.
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Elizabeth owned another manuscript, the “Testament de Amyra Sultan Nicchemedy, Empereur des Turcs,” which tells the story of the sultan’s attempted conquest of Aleppo and subsequent death and obsequies. It bears the date “12 Sept. 1481” on the title page, and is bound in dark leather stamped with a fleur-de-lis, an appropriate emblem, considering that Elizabeth was then Dauphine of France. The title page also bears the signatures “Elysabeth the kyngys dowghter Boke” and “Cecyl the kyngys dowghter.”
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Elizabeth was thus inculcated from childhood not only with devotional works, but also with the precepts of chivalry and courtly love, which informed the popular romances and histories of the age and heavily influenced aristocratic and court culture. Yet there was laughter as well as learning in the young princess’s life. No doubt she and her siblings enjoyed the antics and jests of her father’s fool, the disreputable John Scoggin, as much as the King and Queen did.
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Meanwhile the royal family was expanding. On April 10, 1472, Elizabeth Wydeville bore a fourth daughter, Margaret, at Windsor Castle.
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Three months later, at Westminster, the Duke of Gloucester married Warwick’s daughter and co-heiress, Anne Neville, the widow of Prince Edward of Lancaster. Her sister and co-heiress, Isabella, was already the wife of Richard’s older brother, George, Duke of Clarence.

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

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

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

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

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

After the dancing, Elizabeth was probably with the ladies who accompanied the King and Queen when they paid their guest the honor of conducting him to the apartments that had been made ready for him. When the ladies withdrew so that Gruthuyse could have a bath, Elizabeth was probably sent to bed. The next day, the court returned to Westminster.
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Elizabeth’s baby sister Margaret did not thrive. She died, aged eight months, on December 11, 1472, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in an altar tomb of gray marble “at the altar end before St. Edward’s shrine,” which now stands between the tombs of Edward III and Richard II, having been moved here during the Reformation. The tomb brass and inscription plate have long vanished, but the Latin epitaph read: “Nobility and beauty, grace and tender youth are all hidden here in this chest of death.”
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