Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (20 page)

The rebels were supposed to rise on October 18, but their various groups were poorly coordinated, and on October 10 the Hautes orchestrated premature risings at Maidstone and Ightham Mote, only to be repelled by John Howard, now Duke of Norfolk. Dorset emerged from hiding to rouse the men of Exeter, and Lionel Wydeville stirred the men of Salisbury, his See. The Queen’s younger brothers, Sir Edward and Sir Richard Wydeville, were involved, and there were planned risings in Guildford and Newbury, while Buckingham was to raise Brecon and south Wales. In the wake of the rumors about the murder of the princes, many former members of Edward IV’s household had joined the rebels.

Already, though, “the whole design of this plot had, by means of spies, become perfectly well known to King Richard, who, as ever, did not act sleepily, but swiftly, and with the greatest vigilance.”
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On October 15, Richard had Buckingham proclaimed a rebel and offered free pardons to any who surrendered. He “contrived that, throughout Wales, armed men should be set in readiness around the said duke as soon as ever he had set a foot from his home.”
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Unsuspecting, Buckingham left Brecon on October 18, as planned, and advanced through the Wye Valley, making for Hereford. But storms and flooding wrecked his plans, his army deserted him, and he was forced to flee to Shropshire, where he sought shelter in the cottage of a poor retainer, who betrayed him for a handsome reward. On arrest, he was led to the city of Salisbury, “to which place the King had come with a very large army, on the day of the commemoration of All Souls; and [on November 2], notwithstanding the fact that it was the Lord’s day, the duke suffered capital punishment in the public marketplace of that city.”
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If, as has been suggested, Buckingham had murdered the princes, with Richard’s approval and therefore on his behalf,
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Richard now had the perfect opportunity to lay the blame at his door and so give the lie to rumor. He did not seize it.

On October 31, unaware that the rebellion had collapsed, Henry
Tudor set sail from Brittany with the intention of invading England, but was blown off course by the foul weather. He was stationed off Plymouth harbor when “news of the current situation reached him, both of the death of the Duke of Buckingham and the flight of his own faction,” and realizing that his cause was hopeless, “hoisted his sails and put out to sea again,”
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fleeing back to Brittany.

Richard III was remarkably lenient with Margaret Beaufort, despite her having treasonably conspired against him; she was lucky to escape being attainted by Parliament. He contented himself with giving her estates to her husband (who had rallied to his king), depriving her of the title Countess of Richmond, and ordering Stanley—who claimed he had known nothing of her subversive activities—to keep his wife a virtual prisoner “in some secret place” apart from her household. He also extended clemency, and the offer of a pardon, to Dorset and Morton, but they, Lionel Wydeville, and other rebels had already fled the kingdom to join Henry Tudor.
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What of Elizabeth? André, in a passage that may relate to this time, later wrote that, before the summer of 1485, after Henry Tudor had decided to yield to Edward IV’s wishes and marry her, a “grievous situation nearly brought her noble life to an untimely end. And indeed, as the outcome of the matter later showed, by the pleasure of Edward, his noble and wise daughter was preserved in all her virtue for Henry.”

The context of this passage is unclear, as is André’s meaning. It reads as if it was due to her father’s pleasure that Elizabeth survived this crisis, but it is more likely that the passage refers to Edward’s willing the marriage to take place, rather than to his being responsible for Elizabeth’s survival. The “grievous situation” to which André refers is probably the collapse of Buckingham’s rebellion. He may be implying that Elizabeth too could have been penalized for treason, although Richard’s leniency with Margaret Beaufort, who had been far more deeply involved, precluded Elizabeth from suffering the death penalty. Or André could have meant that she was so distressed at the dashing of her hopes of freedom and a crown that it severely affected her health.

“The Hours of Our Lady,” which bears the signature “Elizabeth Plantagenet” on the flyleaf, has traces of an inscription containing the name “Henry” at the top of that page, which someone has evidently
tried to erase. Maybe it was Elizabeth herself, realizing that her hopes of marrying Henry Tudor were now in the dust, and that it was wiser to delete this evidence of them.
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The rebellion had collapsed, but it demonstrated that Henry Tudor was now a serious contender for the crown. In his native Wales the bards were claiming that he should rule as the rightful descendant of the near legendary Cadwaladr, the seventh-century King of Gwynned, and Brutus of Troy, to whom legend attributed the founding of the kingdom of Britain. The support of a growing body of Yorkist dissidents in Brittany—about four hundred fled to his base at the Château of l’Hermine after the rebellion failed—had strengthened Henry’s cause to the extent that he was now ready to throw down the gauntlet to King Richard. At dawn on Christmas Day 1483, Henry went to Rennes Cathedral and, in the presence of about five hundred of his supporters, publicly, “upon his oath, promised that, as soon as he should be King, he would marry Elizabeth, King Edward’s daughter,”
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thus uniting the rival Houses of Lancaster and York.

In so doing he acknowledged Elizabeth as the rightful heiress to the crown—but she could only be that if her brothers were dead; again Henry and all his adherents must have had good reason to believe that they were before announcing his intention of marrying her. In fact Henry described Richard as a homicide in letters he sent to potential allies in England.
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Effectively, Henry’s oath was also a public acknowledgment that the sons of Edward IV were dead. Had they been living, Richard III surely would have produced them to scupper the Tudor’s ambitions, but—incomprehensibly, if he had not had them killed—he did not.

The oath, optimistic though it was, turned out to be a brilliant masterstroke because it united Lancastrian and Yorkist supporters and again made Henry a rallying point for disaffected Yorkists, many of whom swore homage to him in Rennes Cathedral on that Christmas morning “as though he had been already created King.”
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No doubt there were those who did so in the hope that, if he won the crown, he would restore their property. Until now, few had taken Henry’s claim to be the Lancastrian claimant seriously, but his vow to wed Elizabeth
was a deciding factor for many. It also turned the powerless Elizabeth into one of the most important political figures in England, because marriage would from now on be seen by an increasing number as the key to holding legitimate sovereign power in the realm.

After what must have been a mournful Christmas, compared with the splendid celebrations of the previous year, when her father was alive, and before so many close to her had died or disappeared, Elizabeth and her mother and sisters now suffered another blow. In January 1484, in Richard III’s first Parliament, the act entitled “Titulus Regius” was passed, confirming the King’s title to the throne and setting forth the grounds of his claim. It declared how, thanks to “the ungracious pretended marriage” of Edward IV, “the order of all politic rule was perverted,” and went on to state:

Croyland fulminated, correctly, that Parliament, being a lay court, had no jurisdiction to pronounce on the validity of a marriage, but “it presumed to do so, and did do so, because of the great fear [of Richard] that had struck the hearts of even the most resolute.” Elizabeth and her siblings were now legally bastards; the act had stripped them of their titles and property and barred them from inheriting anything from their parents.

In February, Elizabeth turned eighteen, the average age for marriage for upper-class girls at that period.
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She must have felt that time was passing her by while she was immured in sanctuary, and wondered what the future held for her. Her brothers were dead, her Wydeville relatives murdered or in exile, her mother powerless. It would not be surprising if she was still hoping against hope that Henry Tudor would somehow be able to fulfill his vow and marry her, although the prospect of that probably seemed remote.

Richard III was taking no chances, though. He needed to neutralize the threat posed by the proposed marriage between Elizabeth and Henry Tudor, who was now styling himself King of England, and would, on March 27, obtain a papal dispensation sanctioning the union of “Henry Richmond, layman of the York diocese, and Elizabeth Plantagenet, woman of the London diocese.”
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Richard wanted Elizabeth in his power. He could not continue to allow the Queen Dowager and her daughters to go on hiding in sanctuary, as if they were in danger from him; it did not do his already tarnished reputation any good. The rumors had proved highly damaging. Early in 1484 the Chancellor of France had publicly accused him of “murdering with impunity” his nephews, and Commines records that Louis XI believed Richard to be “extremely cruel and evil” for having had “the two sons of his brother put to death.” In December 1483, Mancini (who had been recalled to France in July) had written unquestioningly that Richard had “destroyed his brother’s children.” But if the King could secure the persons of Elizabeth and her sisters, he could show the world he had no evil intent toward them and marry them off to men of his own choosing, thus preventing Henry Tudor from claiming the throne through marriage to any of them.

He knew he faced a struggle to persuade Queen Elizabeth to let her daughters leave sanctuary. He sent “grave men promising mountains to her” and “frequent entreaties as well as threats,”
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possibly of removing the girls by force. The ring of steel still surrounding the abbey was a constant, intimidating reminder that Richard had the means to carry out such threats. But there was perhaps talk that he was thinking of marrying Elizabeth to his son, Edward of Middleham, who was her cousin and could not have been much above ten years old.
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Vergil says his emissaries to Elizabeth Wydeville prejudiced their arguments at the outset by referring to “the slaughter of her sons,” after which she would not be comforted; if this is true, it amounted to an admission that Richard had the boys killed. Certainly he had been responsible for the judicial murder of another of her sons, Sir Richard Grey, and had given abundant proof of his hatred of the Wydevilles. The former Queen had good cause to be afraid of him.

She made her fears so plain that on March 1 the King felt obliged to make an “oath and promise” in the presence of the lords of the council and the Lord Mayor and aldermen that, if she would agree to her daughters leaving sanctuary, he would offer them all his protection. This he confirmed in writing, declaring: