Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (16 page)

Elizabeth, who cherished “unbounded love” for her siblings,
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must have been sad not to be reunited with her brother, Edward V. She may have had fears for him. But he was effortlessly winning the love of his subjects. Mancini, who may well have seen the young king at this time, says that “in word and deed, he gave so many proofs of his liberal education, of polite, nay, rather scholarly attainments far beyond his age. He had such dignity in his whole person, and in his face such charm that, however much they might gaze, he never wearied the eyes of beholders.”

Outwardly, all seemed propitious for the new reign, and it might have appeared that the Queen’s flight into sanctuary had been too precipitate. Gloucester saw to it that the laws of the realm were enforced in Edward V’s name; coins were struck bearing the boy’s image, “and all royal honors were paid to him.”
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Given that the duke was now firmly in control of the young king, the council had no choice but to recognize him as protector, although they refused to proceed against Rivers, Grey, and the rest because Gloucester had not—at the time—had the authority to arrest them; nevertheless, the men remained in
prison. A new date, June 24,
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was set for the coronation. Everyone, says Croyland, “was looking forward to the peace and prosperity of the kingdom,” and Lord Hastings “was overjoyed at this new world, saying that nothing more had happened than the transfer of the rule of the kingdom from two of the Queen’s relatives to two of the King’s.” His jubilation was premature, for the council had made it clear that the office of Lord Protector would still lapse with the coronation, and Gloucester knew that the days of his power might be numbered.

Hastings must have been a man of limited imagination to so glibly pass over the tragedies that had overtaken Elizabeth and her family. Whether Gloucester was a threat or not, her mother had compelling reasons to believe that he was, and the atmosphere in sanctuary must have been heavy with grief and anxiety, with no end to it in view. It must have been poignant living in such close proximity to the palace where they had spent so much time in former years, heedless of the events that were to overtake them. And although they were housed in some luxury, as guests of the abbot, they were dependent on him for their security, and before long for the very necessities of life. On May 7, Edward IV’s executors declined to administer his will, on the grounds that while the Queen held his daughters in sanctuary, his bequests to them could not be carried out. Accordingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the late king’s goods under sequestration. Elizabeth had been deprived not only of her freedom, but of her dowry, and the Queen and her children had been rendered penniless.
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The contemporary
Paston Letters
contain a complaint about the “great cost” of living in sanctuary. There is no mention of a butcher like John Gould supplying meat during this second sojourn, and any store of money that Elizabeth Wydeville had brought with her would rapidly have dwindled, because the merchants who came to sell to sanctuary dwellers often charged “right unreasonable” prices.
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It must have been a humbling experience for the Queen and her daughters to be obliged to presume upon the abbot’s charity.

They dared not leave Cheyneygates, even though the boundaries of the Westminster sanctuary extended farther, for fear of being seized; yet anyone could enter to see them, which must have been a further source of anxiety. Although sanctuaries were regarded as holy places
to be treated with reverence, there were notorious examples of their being breached, as had happened in 1471, when Edward IV, brandishing his sword, entered the Abbey of Tewkesbury and dragged out the Lancastrians who had sought sanctuary there.
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The sanctuary at Westminster had long enjoyed the patronage and protection of English kings, who regarded it as an outward symbol of royal power and mercy, but Mancini observed that things had declined since the Queen sought sanctuary under Henry VI, and that “sanctuaries are of little avail against the royal authority.”

Little is recorded about the lives of those in sanctuary. Elizabeth was effectively a guest in a monastery, her life governed by bells and prayer. It cannot have been a happy existence for a bereaved girl of seventeen—indeed it was perhaps a constant ordeal—but the presence of her younger siblings would have enlivened her days and kept her occupied.

Among the luggage the Queen had brought with her was at least one book—a devotional manuscript, “Letters and Collects for Vigils of Saturday before Easter and Pentecost,” dating from around 1300, with later additions. In the margin of the first folio it is inscribed: “Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth
dei gratia
. To my good friend Mortimer.” In the fourth folio is the dedication: “To the victorious and triumphant King Henry,” which must have been written after August 1485. The last folio bears the words “Westminster Abbey.” It is a reasonable assumption that the book was owned and annotated by Elizabeth Wydeville when she was in sanctuary, and that the said Mortimer—who was perhaps Sir John Mortimer of Kyre
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—supported her in some way while she was there. Tradition has it that she gave the book to her daughter Elizabeth, for either could have written the dedication “To the victorious and triumphous King Henry [VII].”
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The council felt that it was not suitable for the young king to stay at the Palace of Westminster because of the proximity of the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where his mother and sisters were staying. Instead it was decided, at Buckingham’s suggestion (possibly prompted by Gloucester), that Edward should lodge in the palace of the Tower of London, where monarchs traditionally stayed before their coronations.
The Tower had not yet acquired the sinister reputation it was to gain under the Tudors; on the contrary, it had been one of Edward IV’s favorite residences, and so would have held happy associations for Edward V. But it was also a strong and secure fortress.

By May the council was becoming uneasy about Elizabeth Wydeville remaining in sanctuary, and the continuing imprisonment of her kinsmen, and concerns were expressed that “the protector did not, with a sufficient degree of considerateness, take fitting care for the preservation of the dignity and safety of the Queen.”
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Gloucester responded to this by making efforts to persuade his sister-in-law to leave sanctuary with her children, appointing a committee to negotiate with her, and sending councilors with assurances of her and the children’s safety, but all were met with a barrage of scorn, tears, and indignation.
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In the first week of June, the council tried again to persuade the Queen to leave sanctuary with her children and go into honorable retirement, but again she refused.

Her obduracy gave Gloucester grounds for treating the Wydeville faction as aggressors. On June 10 he sent a letter to the civic council of York for the muster of troops to march on London against “the Queen, her blood adherents and affinity, which have intended and daily doth intend to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin, the Duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of this realm”
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—proof, if any were now needed, of how deeply he hated the Wydevilles. But the latter’s wings had been well and truly clipped: the Queen was in sanctuary, powerless, and her kinsmen were scattered, either in prison or in hiding, so clearly Gloucester’s accusations were merely an excuse to bolster his power with military force.

Lord Hastings, resentful that Buckingham had usurped his prominence on the council, and mistrusting Gloucester’s intentions, now switched sides to the Queen, although his prime loyalty remained to Edward IV’s son. But on June 13, Gloucester found out that Hastings had confided his concerns about the protector’s ambitions to Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York; John Morton, Bishop of Ely; and Lord Stanley. Within hours Hastings’s “joy gave way entirely to grief,”
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for Gloucester responded by staging a second illegal coup. It was another preemptive strike, a ruthless exercise to eliminate or neutralize
his opponents, and with it he embarked on a reign of tyranny in order to silence all those who stood in the way of his ambitions. And his ambitions, as many had suspected, and as would now become clear, focused on the crown. His much vaunted loyalty to his brother now counted for nothing.

Immediately, that same morning, he summoned Hastings and others to a council meeting in the Tower, and there—in a dramatic scene later immortalized by Shakespeare—accused him of treason and had Hastings summarily executed, “without judgment or justice.” Likewise, Stanley, Morton, and Rotherham were also arrested, but spared execution “out of respect for their status” and—again without trial—sent to Wales to be imprisoned in separate castles. In this way “the three strongest supporters of the new King had been removed, and—all the rest of his faithful subjects fearing the like treatment—the two dukes did thenceforth just as they pleased.” This was achieved in part by the strong presence of Gloucester’s northern troops, “in fearful and unheard-of numbers,” in the capital.
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Gloucester knew that Stanley was too rich and influential to be alienated, and that his loyalty must be bought. Soon he would restore him to the council and grant him new lands and high offices. It might have seemed to Elizabeth that “father Stanley”—as she called him in “The Song of Lady Bessy”—had abandoned her at this frightening time. But Stanley’s first loyalty was to himself.

Even in sanctuary Elizabeth must have heard about Elizabeth Shore doing public penance at St. Paul’s for her harlotry, clad only in a sheet, before being committed to Ludgate Prison, all on Gloucester’s orders. In fact, Mistress Shore had been arrested for her connection with Hastings, and her very public punishment was probably intended to discredit them both and give weight to Gloucester’s summary sentence on Hastings. It also proclaimed that the duke, unlike his late brother, would not tolerate immorality.

Gloucester knew it was not enough to have the young king in his power. He “foresaw that the Duke of York would by legal right succeed to the throne if his brother were removed.” As the day of the coronation approached, “he went to the Star Chamber at Westminster
and submitted to the council how improper it seemed that the King should be crowned in the absence of his brother, who ought to play an important part in the ceremony. Wherefore he said that, since this boy was held by his mother against his will in sanctuary, he should be liberated, because the sanctuary had been founded by their ancestors as a place of refuge, not of detention, and this boy wanted to be with his brother.”
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How true this was is not known; but many lively nine-year-old boys would have chafed against the restrictions imposed by being in sanctuary, and resented being cooped up in a household of women; and maybe young York was eager to join the brother he barely knew, but who must have represented power and glory and freedom, and the chance of some excitement.

Gloucester was prepared to use force to remove York from his mother. On June 16, “with the consent of the council, he surrounded the sanctuary with his household troops” armed with swords and staves, and sent the elderly Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, to persuade Elizabeth Wydeville to give up the young duke. “When the Queen saw herself besieged, and preparation for violence, she surrendered her son, trusting in the word of the Cardinal of Canterbury that the boy should be restored after the coronation.” But “the cardinal was suspecting no guile, and had persuaded the Queen to do this, seeking as much to prevent a violation of the sanctuary as to mitigate by his good services the fierce resolve of the duke.”
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Elizabeth Wydeville’s parting from her younger son was later touchingly portrayed in many narrative paintings of the romantic era. “But the Queen, for all the fair promises to her made, kept her and her daughters within the sanctuary.”
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Clearly she did not think that any of them would be safe if they left it, so her fears for her sons might have been imagined.

Elizabeth was a witness to these events, and they must have caused her great distress, as “the love she bore her brothers and sisters was unheard of, and almost incredible.”
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Thereafter, she must have fretted—even agonized—over her absent brothers, and if she heard what was being reported, she would soon have had even more cause for concern. For “after Hastings was removed, all the attendants who had waited upon the King were debarred access to him. He and his
brother were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper, and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether.”
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This all happened between mid-June and Mancini’s recall from England shortly after July 6. Some of his information came from Dr. John Argentine. His account suggests that the boys were now being held in the White Tower—the keep, or “Tower proper”—and the mention of bars indicates that they were securely confined as prisoners of state. Dr. Argentine, who was “the last of his attendants whose services the King enjoyed,” reported “that the young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him.” Mancini saw “many men burst forth into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him after his removal from men’s sight; and already there was a suspicion that he had been done away with. Whether, however, he has been done away with, and by what manner of death, so far I have not at all discovered.”

Mancini’s evidence is corroborated by the anonymous Croyland chronicler, a privy councilor and canon lawyer—probably John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln,
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“a man of great learning and piety.”
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As Lord Chancellor and a member of the council, he was in a good position to know what was going on. He too states that after Hastings’s execution “was the prince and the Duke of York holden more straight, and there was privy talk that the Lord Protector should be King.” He also mentions that “during this mayor’s year, the children of King Edward were seen shooting and playing in the garden of the Tower by sundry times.” But soon, as Mancini corroborates, they would be seen no more. And after June 8 no more grants were made in the name of Edward V.